[Commission] Samurai and Shugenja

This little group came to me a while ago, but was finished only recently. I don't quite remember why I got them initially, most likely a random ebay win on a minimal bet. These guys include two courtiers, two bushis and a two shugenja. I painted these models after the clans in Legend of the Five Rings.

The courtiers are one Crane (in blue and white) and a Dragon (in green and gold).

The bushi are one Crab (in black and blue) and a Unicorn (in purple and gold).

The shugenja are one Lion (in brown and tan) and one Phoenix (in orange and yellow.)

You may already know, but these guys from the core of my Frostgrave warband! With the crane serving as my wizard and the lion as my apprentice. The crab is my templar and the unicorn my knight.

JP

[Frostgrave Campaign] Thaw of the Lich Lord Day 6

Day 6 of our Thaw of the Lich Lord campaign... This time we heard of a magical mansion known as the House of Longreach which held a number of treasures. Not just us, but another force in the city, one "Lich Lord" also sought the treasure. Well neither Kitty nor Mr Gentil had heard of this fellow, but the promise of treasure was enough to get us to run and seek treasure!

This was the first game of the campaign played with just two of us, as ActionMan chose not to join. It would be a very interesting matchup between two illusionists whose top spell is invisibility.

The setup for this one is rather special: the section where we entered represented the ruins of a gigantic house with a number of portals (represented by Warhammer Quest portals). Every time we crossed one of the portal, we had to make a roll and see where the portal would lead. This was proven to be quite dangerous as it not only moved us at random locations, but we took a significant amount of damage, before finally making our way to the treasure room.

The treasure room had two treasures each guarded by a pair of frost wraiths. For this one, I pulled out the old hero quest board, added terrain to it and this is what we had. Made for a fun change of pace as we moved around the map trying to reach the treasure room.

Now this game was pretty destructive to both our warbands... After three rounds, the main board was pretty much abandoned to the random monsters and the Death cultists as Kitty and I ran for the treasure room. We were set for a showdown.

This is the scene of the showdown: I moved on the right with a barbarian, a knight, a templar, and a thug. Kitty moved on the left with a thug and her wizard. During the next monster phase, the cultist I was fighting would beat up my thug, nearly take out my barbarian, and be reinforced by two more cultists! In the end, I took one treasure and Kitty the other before escaping while invisible.

This was a quick but very challenging game that required a lot of tactical movement and mixed with random movement.

I got the special treasure, but both of us managed to get out with three treasures. There were minimal casualties on either side. I had three models left while Kitty had two. We defeated all of the cultists and their zombie troll.

Tough and fun.

JP

Treasures and objectives

Here are a number of treasure/ objectives we use for Frostgrave. The following are a collection of chests, and barrels for a variety of sources: Privateer Press, DwarvenForge, and Oathsworn.

These serve a variety of purposes in the game, in addition to looking quite good.

JP

Friday of the Dead: Hordes of the Lich Lord

Reaper bones undead collection. These are a mix of goodies Jeff-E gave me years ago. I painted shields with motifs based on the three great houses of Saggakar: House Faremhi (black and white with spider), House Ougozar (red and white), and House Tioten (black and green).

There isn't much of a story to say about these guys, except for the half-guy. That half-skeleton came out completely twisted and in spite of my best efforts it was impossible to redress him. So I had him meet with my hobby knife. Cutting off the legs just about the knee-level twist. I went higher to give me a wider area to glue, so the shields would stabilize the model.

JP

[Frostgrave Campaign] Thaw of the Lich Lord Day 5

Continuing our campaign. The Lich Lord continued his shenanigans and we once again happened on his plots. This time, he planned to killed the creatures known as the rangifers.

This scenario was an odd one where there were a lot of creatures on the board that would either attack or try to get off the board. We wanted to keep the alive. However, the creatures died when they jumped on our gangs. Knights and thugs did quick work of most of them: only three of the nine on the board escaped.

One thing I noticed was that we cast a LOT more spells. With our difficulties going down we succeed more often and thus use them much more. I teleported atop the tower and back down (all this to find the treasure atop the tower was fool's gold, thank Kitty). Actionman kept failing to blast us by fumbling his rolls, good for us!

We used a few more tricks: I pushed the wraith knight into Actionman's people who did quick work of him, with their enchanted weapons...

In the end, I managed to get away with six treasures, Action with two, and poor Kitty a single one. Muhahaha!

JP

[Frostgrave Campaign] Thaw of the Lich Lord Day 4

You are no doubt wondering why there was no post yesterday. Simple: I was sick and have been all week: coughing and gacking. Yesterday, I could barely move. So we did not play, even though the kiddos asked for a game.

So this morning, we were back to the Frozen City to explore and see what the Lich Lord had in store.

As we were ready to play, Jojo decided to join us. She decided to play a Witch. Interesting, a different type of wizard! Here is the warband: her wizard is the witch pony with the hat, her apprentice is the druid (with the horns). She has a knight, two infantry men, a thief, and summons a boar.

This game was called Tide of Undeath. In an area in the center of the board, are a number of treasure and down skeletons and we played in a massive blizzard. At some point in the game, the Lich Lord would activate a ritual that would raise the skeletons. The trick? There were a vast number of treasures among the dead!

We converged on the center, taking shots at each other: I took out ActionMan's wizard because he was a thorn in my side. Jojo and Kitty fought on the other side, trading blows.

The Lich Lord finally activated his ritual, animating the skeletons in the center. After a furious battle, many were dead or down and the skeletons were partially defeated. I forgot that anyone who dies in the between the pillars returns as a revenant. There would have been quite a few more undead to go around. Already the amount of undead was quite challenging!

The Lich Lord dropped by with some of his horrible monsters looking over the battle. Kitty, ActionMan and Jojo.

I finished with six treasures, Kitty with five, ActionMan with four, and Jojo with three.

Another fun and surprise-filled scenario.

JP

[Frostgrave Campaign] Thaw of the Lich Lord Day 3

Day Three saw Kitty with a new wizard join the fray! She was now an illusionist.

This was the first time we faced death cultists and more than a single minion of the Lich Lord! Here the Death Cultists guarded a wagon full of treasures. The table looked pretty good with the columns and the trees.

After the first turn, we all moved towards the wagon.

It wasn't long before we all moved against the wagon creating a massive choke point where got into a huge brawl.

One of the biggest things that happened during this game is that there was a HUGE number of random encounter. The scenario had six ghouls arrive, who were with the Death Cultists, AND then we had a bunch more creatures: a werewolf, an ice spider, and a boar. Most of the ghouls seemed to focus on my band, forcing me to move back from a more aggressive stance. They also slowed down Actionman and Kitty.

In the end, our mages all survived (for the first time). I and Actionman are now level 7 and Kitty is Level 3. We each walked away with three treasures and some gold. My apprentice lost an eye.

The kids want to play another one tomorrow...

JP

[Frostgrave Campaign] Thaw of the Lich Lord Day 2

After having two warbands effectively destroyed by Kitty's band yesterday, ActionMan and I reset our bands and went at it again.

The Second Scenario features a battle on the frozen river that crosses the city. Basic setup has two thin strips of terrain on both sides, with a frozen river littered with ships stuck in there. Well... it just happened that I finished painting some ships I bought this past Gencon. Initially, these were painted "just because", and using them now was a great addition to this table. There was also a rule for running that meant that if someone tried to run on the ice, they could fall and hurt themselves. I was a little wary of the rule, but the kids got it super quick and it really made for a different game. A fun occasional rule that adds both flavor and a twist in the story. The setup had five ships, with the largest one roughly in the center of the table.

We "knew" that during the third turn, a wizard in the employ of the Lich Lord would come out of that central ship with a special double-treasure.

The game started fairly normally: Kitty moved her gang towards mine while ActionMan spread out across his entire side. I was not too sure why, but hey!

I used invisibility quite effectively throughout the game, with both my wizard and my apprentice moving around invisible while Kitty and the boy traded elemental balls and elemental bolts, weakening each other quite a lot, I must say.

Here is a picture of the fight, with the undead wizard fleeing towards my side of the table (roughly in the center of the pic).

In the end, Kitty lost most of her gang, ActionMan's wizard was defeated (by my wizard no less!) and I managed to leave with four of the treasures, including the special double treasure! Got some sweet loot from it too: a sword of undead slaying and a vial of power. ActionMan got an ivory scroll (a scroll that may not be destroyed when used).

JP

[Frostgrave Campaign] Thaw of the Lich Lord Day 1

Today, the kids and I started playing the Thaw of the Lich Lord campaign for Frostgrave. A fun campaign to play especially since I have a small band of players in the form of my kids. For those who do not know, the campaign is a number of linked wargamin scenarios. You can get the book here on DrivethruRpg.Com.

Normally, Frostgrave is set in a frozen metropolis, but my terrain is more conducive to jungle/ warm terrain. So Frostgrave at the house is set in an artificially warm section of town...

Another thing that I really find very interesting is that I use a wide variety of creatures to form the warbands. Thus the gangs you will see below are not "just" humans and elves, but a mixture of creatures I have in my collection. They are a mix of Reaper (Bones and non-Bones) and some bits and bobs I would be hard press to say what they were.

The Gangs

ActionMan has an elementalist (fire wizard). His wizard (the dude with the fire), apprentice (the fat dude), two infantrymen (the beastmen), an archer (the Pathfinder iconic), a knight (the guy with the spear and shield), a warhound (represented by the bear), and two thugs (the bugbears).

Kitty also had an elementalist (the Pathfinder iconic), an apprentice (the lady holding a potion next to her), a templar (the succubus), a barbarian (the half-orc she received for Christmas), two warhounds (the badger and the lion) and four thugs (the bugbears).

JP decided to try something different: an illusionist (the Gandalf), an apprentice (the shugenja), a thief (the ninja), a templar (the Crab samurai with a tetsubo), two infantrymen (the weresharks), four thugs (the dragons and the lizardman).

Game 1: Eclipse

Short recap, Kitty and ActionMan went at it right away, trading fireballs and beating each other up. Kitty managed to kill a large number of enemy combatants by rolling an amazing number of crits and high rolls (15+). As for me, I lurked on the edge and gathered treasure markers. Everything was going great for me until I decided to try something and go for one more treasure. Then my wizard got swarmed by some random encounters (skeletons) and killed!

In the end, Kitty left with the board with a new grimoire, a magic bow, and gold, lots of gold.

The results are bad enough for ActionMan that he too will start the next game with a brand new team as he only managed to cast two spells but did not score anything else.

More details next time!

JP

Friday of the Dead: Ghosts and Zombies

Today, more ghoulish things to threaten people with. Very versatile model indeed. Most of them have interesting tidbits

This guy I received at PaizoCon one or two years ago for participating in Reaper's on-site painting event. After looking at what they had for a few moments, I knew I could not paint it there. Painter's habit I guess.

This second model is for some undersea creature. Now I will say I have no use for those, so I decided to paint it as a ghost. It works, I think.

Finally this zombie mob comes all the way from Colorado. Jeff-E sent me his unusued minis, which I thought was going to be one or two, but no, it was about as much I started with! Zombies are always cool, so they got painted real quick, ready to threaten everybody! Thanks Jeff! More are coming.

JP

This Red dragon wyrmling could become huge

The final of the four dragons that came with my Reaper Bones II.

I kept the final dragon, the red dragon for last. Now I have a love for them as they were the first dragon I wrote in Living Greyhawk, the enormous Kerridzar which terrorized Tusmit and its players for the better part of two years. It was a great monster. Now this one was much smaller - of course - but still one who might become a burning nightmare in a few centuries.

This guy is very dynamic, paints up well and quickly.

JP

[Frostgrave/Pathfinder] Four Wizards

Working my way through Reaper Bones II. Here is the first batch of Frosgrave Wizards. Some may be used for Pathfinder as well.

I realize that I paint them quicker than I post them here... so I will try to push more pics per post. And I may even double-post a few days!

The first mini serves as Kitty's apprentice.

This fellow is ActionMan's wizard. He likes the big fire coming out of his hands and thinks he is so cool.

This guy, I initially wondered what I would use it for until I came up with my idea of building a dwarf gang. This guy is now my apprentice. Yes I plan on playing a dwarven necromancer! Otherwise, a pretty crummy sculpt.

This last guy I keep thinking as a magus in Pathfinder more than as a character for Frostgrave. I like the sword.

JP

[Friday of the Dead] This model suck-didly-ucks

Continuing Friday of the Dead with a skeleton mob from the Reaper deal, again speed-painted. I must admit that I dislike this model: The plastic molding leaves it with very faint details. Plus... Who would really need those on a regular basis?

I hope to find a way to use it as a source for skeleton, like a spawning point. Because otherwise, there isn't much I can it used for...

JP

[Frostgrave] Three Thieves

More Reaper Goodies... This time three thieves.

The first one is a sneaky git. The sculpt is good, but the casting is not. His face did not come out right. But the rest of him is good. I am quite fond of the "Come 'ere" pose with a knife in hand. Very good for a Frostgrave thief!

This second one is one of the most dynamic characters I had to paint. Again, a Frostgrave thief. I really like the flowing cloak on this one. I gave him a really light-skin because I plan to use him as a Kaliban rogue. The cloak was made so he could double-serve as a ranger.

This third fellow is a half-orc thug. Definitely someone I would not want to meet in an alley.

JP