Frostgrave Playtest 2

fg and I played two more games of Frostgrave using our same warbands.

The set up for the Wurm Hunt game

The Necromancer's men are attacked by the giant wurm while hunting for treasure.

Opposing warbands waiting round the corners of a ruined building for the other party to make the first move.

The Necromancer's rag-tag band enter and search a building.

We realised we played the game wrong late into the second game: movement is halved for the second move in a turn. That aside we found the basic rules robust. The use of d20 means combats aren't a sure thing, and a +2 advantage in Fighting still makes a fight risky.

The first game saw me gaining a huge advantage over fg, until my recklessness saw both my wizard and her apprentice put out of action. The aftermath saw fg's wizard gain a huge lead in experience, which after the second game saw him reach level 12 versus my wizard's level 7.

I enjoyed the games enough to want to continue with the warband, and maybe even try a different one from a different school of magic.

Out of Egypt...

I like mummies.

They are one of those figures that you can use across periods and genre, from fantasy and mythical to VSF to Pulp, and even games like Blood Bowl.

The latest addition to my small collection of mummy figures is the one from Northstar which they released as part of their Of Gods and Mortals Nickstarter. You can see him standing proudly atop a resin base from Fantascape, showing off his six-pack abs. I also managed to paint up two bases of Egyptian-themed critters, which are Bones miniatures given to me by fg.

I really like the Northstar mummy because it wears the double crown of Egypt, which to me speaks of the ancient history of that land.

The next figure on my painting list is the Harbinger of Set figure from Crocodile Games. Hopefully I can get that done over the New Year break.

2013 in Review

Well, it's that time of the year again.

We played a total of 15 sessions, not including two sessions of RPG and my solo dungeon crawl campaign, which is an improvement over the last year.

A game of X-wing on 01 December - Martin bought several packs of fighters the same evening after this game...

Looking at the review post last year I can see that I have failed miserably at not buying more new figures, but at least I gave a good account of myself and painted most of those that I did buy. The main exception here are the Egyptians that I bought for an OGAM warband, and the Ottoman Dystopian Wars fleet that lacks painted opponents. Well, at least I got some of the Egyptians primed yesterday...

One trend that I do see is that we seem to be playing more easy-to-set-up games these past few months instead of the big 15mm games that involve hundreds of figures. Boardgames, pre-painted figures and dungeon tiles do cut a lot of preparation work for me, but I guess I would still want to set up that big game on those occasions where several players can make the session.

I'm not sure how useful it is to predict what we will be playing in the upcoming year, seeing as how last year's predictions came true for the first few months before we got hooked on something new, but goes anyway.

I would like to complete the current campaign arc for our RPG game (three more sessions planned, with a few possible endings that will allow another arc if the players are keen and able). I also expect that fg and I will play a few more playtest games of Frostgrave as we level our wizards up - I have already ordered a couple more figures for this project.

I also want to look into what else I can do solo with my dungeon tiles, or what other solo projects I can get into using my existing figures.

The only big purchase I plan to make is the Perry WOTR foot men-at-arms, plus a few packs of their metal figures to round up my WOTR/Empire army.

Well, that's that then. Have a good year-end holiday season.

Frostgrave Playtest

I recently had the privilege to become a playtester for Frostgrave, a game of dueling warbands led by wizards in a lost city that will be published by Osprey in 2015.

The rules are pretty easy to learn and involve not too much die-rolling: almost everything is resolved by the single roll of a d20, sometimes competitive.

I managed to play a game of it with fg just yesterday, using the Dwarven Forge dungeon terrain he bought.

The game as it stands has 10 schools of Magic for a player to choose from, and a list of 100 spells. Wizards gain experience points and 'level up' with the progress of the campaign and warbands can grow in size and even buy 'building upgrades' much like in a computer game. We will definitely try the game again in the near future.

Dwarven Forge terrain. Took a while to set up, but the result is worth it. The central crypt is from Thomarillion.

The Necromancer's warband, led by a professional Tomb Robber.

Skeletons stream out of the crypt to protect the treasures. The tissue represent the Fog spell cast by my dwarven wizard.

Giveaway Draw Results

I made the draw and here are the results:

Medieval Bundle - Dan Mersey

Mutiny Bundle - Adam from TMP

Do let me have your mailing addresses and I will send the bundles off as soon as I can make it down to the post office.

As for the rest of you, I hope to be giving away some of my other stuff, which include some really old (70s?) ancients and medieval wargames rules, in the near future.

Thanks for participating.