Frostgrave inaugural game...

I had to bail when my local gaming group tried out Frostgrave earlier this month, to my great disappointment. Luckily I was able to get a rain date in. One of my buddies was in from out of town last week and we gave the rules a try.

Although I am super excited about the "idea" of this game, and I love the setting etc., I wasn't crazy about the rules. It's going to take a few more games before I can make an educated decision, but my first impression was that luck seemed to play a greater part than most other wargames I've played.

Here are some pics of our trial run. It was a mish-mash of various miniatures and terrain. If I get into the game, I'd like to do a "frozen city" table and paint enough models for all of the scenarios/encounters in the book with a consistent basing style. For now we used whatever we had! Mainly models I had originally painted for Song of Blades & Heroes, Mordheim, or Warhammer.

We tried the "Mausoleum" scenario, and you can see the Mausoleum here in all it's glory...

Here is our layout and some in-game shots.

August Painting

I didn't get my more aggressive goal done this month but I did finish 10 models.

In addition to the Halfling Thief and 3 Thugs for Frostgrave earlier this month, I completed 5 of the unit of 12 Marines that I started for the French:

I think these guys come in groups of 8-12 in Muskets & Tomahawks, so for now (with the 8 I already had painted) I can use them as a unit of 12 plus one officer. At least I can bring a Canadian Officer now... you need a minimum of 10 models of a troop type to take an officer, so until now my 8 Canadian Marines had to go without a leader!

I also worked on a Summoner for Frostgrave. He is a metal character model so again, like the Thugs, I spent a bit more time on him than I would have if he were a Bones model or part of a big unit.

I liked him so I took a bunch of pics of him... and then of course, realized that I hadn't finished painting him! There is actually a small medallion on his neck that I totally forgot to paint. D'oh! So after he was already varnished, photographed, and placed in the cabinet, I realized he needed some more work.... grr...

Here he is with the medallion painted.

Hopefully the extra time I spent on him wasn't wasted... I used the same blues on him as the Marines, since the paints were already out on my desk - but here you can see the extra layers involved in the highlighting led to a smoother transition.

You can also see that the Reaper Fantasy models are sometimes a lot bigger than 28mm historicals!

This guy marked a first for me: he was the first model I ever used fluorescent paints on. I had some fluorescent Vallejo colors sitting around and had never used them; thought it would be interesting to make the smoke coming out of his potion bottle look a bit "magical."

Week 2...

First week of the month I spent a lot of time painting... got up early on the weekend and did a little bit every night.

This did not equate to a lot of models getting done though! Spent most of the time on these guys:

They were a group of Reaper figs that have been in my lead pile for many years, and I thought they would be perfect to round out my Frostgrave warband as a group of "thugs" for my wizard's hired muscle.

The only problem is that they were metal, and so nicely detailed that I couldn't bring myself to do a super quick paint job on them! I spent a lot of hours on them, although it might not be obvious because they are painted in such muted colors. I do like the way they came out though. It's ironic that so far I've spent the most time painting the most lowly troops in the warband!

Anyway, here are some individual shots:

I picture these three in my mind as a group who hire themselves out together to various warbands, and I think of him in particular as the leader. I gave him some brighter colors to reflect his stature as the leader of the crew.

Just your average thug...

This guy was by far my favorite of the group! Such a cool sculpt. I think he could work equally well as a Thief or Thug.

I took a lot of pics of him because I liked the model so much.

Since I spent so much time painting these three, I did not make much progress on any FIW troops this week... AND I have some busy weeks at work coming up. It's not looking good for my aggressive painting goal this month!

Off to a good start...

Wow, first day of the month, and I already finished this bad boy!

I woke up at 6:30 and got painting early. Well, there are only so many hours in the day, so if I want to increase my output this month something's gotta give...

 

Planning on using him in games of Song of Blades & Heroes and Frostgrave. 

Now if I can only paint one model a day for the rest of the month, I'll be golden!