On the 9th Game of Gamesmas

The Magpies gave to me, Frostgrave by Osprey!

It's a mega post for game 9 of Gamesmas! Some games of Frostgrave with McBeth, McZermof and Scotty! We haven't played Frostgrave since our first outing last year and it's a game that we've been meaning to play some more. Since then, I've also dug up an old Forest Goblin shaman to act as my apprentice in this warband so I was pretty excited to put him on the table.

The whole exercise started well when McBeth and I rolled a 3 and 4 respectively (on a d20) to see who got to pick sides followed by a 1 and 2 respectively to see who won initiative on the first turn. Unfortunately, McBeth's dice didn't really pick up from there.....

McBeth's and my warbands met in the ruins where both our wizards would be hoping to drink from the Well of Sorrows. The Orc warband was Wizard, Apprentice, a Treasure Hunter, an Infantryman, 2 archers, 2 thugs, a thief and a war hound. The human warband was Wizard, Apprentice, 2 Treasure Hunters and a Tracker.

Orcs attack! 

Humans attack! 

 McBeth (in his own words) had forgotten how to build a starting list and had gone for what was actually quite a cunning plan, at least in principle. His treasure hunters were going to run up the board, grab the loot, drop it back on the base edge and then come back to the fight and give the Orcs what for.

McBeth tries a cunning plan

Unfortunately, when one was Elemental Bolted before he could escape from the board, it started going squiffy.

The Orc Shaman casts Elemental Bolt. Again.

Shortly after that his apprentice went down to a lucky bow shot and the treasure hunter engaged by the war dog wound up being bitten to death. It was all a bit silly. In the end, after a sort of suicidal charge into the centre of my warband to let loose some very effective Scatter Shots, there followed a lunatic exchange of Elemental Bolts and McBeth's wizard was dead and the orcs emerged triumphant.

McBeth rebuilt his warband with some distinctly lower quality troops and we had another crack, this time over some tombs filled with treasure and also filled with gribblies. He started well, with his wizard taking 4 points of damage failing to cast his first three spells with quite a degree of derpitude. I would have mocked, but my Orc shaman was no better. Turns out that casting Elemental Hammer is hard.

The first three tombs we opened summoned gribblies (note the position of both my wizard and McBeth's wizard and their alarming proximity to gribblies) but while wraiths are a very scary beast indeed, being immune to conventional weapons and doing double damage on anything they hit, Prinny graciously rolled terrible hit dice and, once again, Elemental Bolt managed to do most of the work (since in this game, casting Elemental Hammer proved to be somewhat difficult...)

Damaged but impending gribbly! 

McBeth's wizard casts Meat Shield

The second game was much shorter as my appalling dice led to me being 4 orcs down (one who was effectively eaten by a Wraith I couldn't kill with both Elemental Hammer AND Elemental Bolt) in fairly short order and as McBeth easily acquired the one contestable treasure, it became a "run away from the last remaining gribbly" game as I withdrew what was left of my warband. Charging into the teeth and bows across the table wasn't going to end well....not all that Savage Orcy of me, I know, but it was late and it's a reasonable drive back from Casa del McBeth.

CUE TIME TRAVEL.....

And now, it's not Wednesday but Saturday and time for MORE FROSTGRAVE. This time, the Orcs are meeting the Cut-throaty warband of Scotty.

Scotty tried a cunning plan - a Chronomancer and his apprentice, 4 crossbowmen and 4 thieves. It started well enough with a couple of Orc Thugs going down and a human Thief. Then, all of a sudden, the same thing that happened on Wednesday happened. I landed one Elemental Bolt, then another (including on the guy who was a mere inch from the board-edge with his treasure) and the thieves sent to engage my spell casters were thumped into next week (one with a lunatic Elemental Hammer)

Turn one. Fighting stone pillars for treasure (because that's a sentence you use!) 

Thief 0, wizard 1. 

Thieves still 0, wizards 2. 

Shortly after this, a possessed demon spider killed both the Man-at-Arms and the thief.

At the end of this, there was one model standing. He became known as "Scary Goblin." 

This game reminded both of us that this was why you need wandering monsters on the board. It stops people like me getting a bit to blast happy with Elemental Bolts.

For the second game of the day, Scotty Jr. joined in for some teleporting hilarity in his first ever game in the Frozen City. He brought an interesting mix of toys - a Necromancer and his apprentice, a Templar, a Barbarian, 2 thieves and a wardog. And an IMP! There was a bit of photo-fail here...

Suffice to say, we played the Complex Keep as a three-player game (without adjusting the number of treasures) but it all went.....weird. Scotty Jr. teleported a thief in front of my wizard, who promptly Elemental Bolted him into next week. I immediately followed up by teleporting an orc thug, then a goblin thief into the midst of Scotty's warband creating a melee that eventually saw claimed two of Scotty's thieves, Scotty Jr.'s war dog and thief, Scotty's apprentice and, eventually, the goblin thief who will forever now carry the moniker "Scary Goblin." He did a very nice job cleaning up about 300 gc of enemies. Not bad for a 20 gc model with Fight +1. :)

In the end, Scotty Jr went down first (although deserves credit for having the last spell caster standing on the table) followed by me as I was thoroughly overrun by crossbowen whose dagger skills surpassed their shooting.

Once again, Frostgrave is a brilliant beer and pretzels game, it's lots of fun, delivers constant challenge combined with silliness and a lot of laughs. Lots and lots.

I'm going to keep working on my High Elves to bring a real change in the kinds of spells I think I should take to theme the warband and much to my delight, I discovered a classic GW Tzeentch sorcerer riding a flying disc in my collection of random models alongside a box of old Chaos Warriors and a Dragon Ogre! Warband number 3, here I come!

Frostgrave - some thoughts, some piccies and a review of sorts

We played our first games of Frostgrave, the new skirmish game from Osprey, last weekend and if I were to sum up the collective view, I suspect it would be something like "all the lolz!"

All the Regimental Magpies (except for Prinny, who is refusing to give in to his magpieness) are using models out of our existing collections - I'm sure you'll see many photos of their respective warbands over the next little while. I've built my first one out of an old Mordheim warband I picked up some years ago - Savage Orcs and Forest Goblins:

It's a wizard 'Arry! My Savage Orc Shaman

Savage Orc Big Bosses - a Treasure Hunter, a Knight and a Barbarian. 

Some Savage Orc Men-at-Arms

Forest Goblin Archers 

Savage Orc Archers - these are my Rangers

Forest Goblins - two Thugs, a Man-at-Arms and a Tracker

Spiders of Unusual Size

I'm also working on a couple of other projects - a Forest Goblin drummer is being turned into an Apothecary and a Savage Orc Boar Boy who'll be going into the warband. The one thing I'm missing is a Forest Goblin shaman to be the apprentice in this warband. Of course finding one from this generation of GW miniatures might be quite challenging but I'll keep my eyes open.

My second warband (yep, have played 2 games. Already working on a second one.) is made up of some old GW High Elves. This warband is also missing a second wizard for an apprentice but as the GW High Elf range hasn't changed stylistically so much over time I should have more luck. I've also got an old Marienburger warband that has been thrown in the paint stripper on the off chance I can pick up a couple of Empire wizards on the quiet somewhere. Just in case, right?

So what do I think of the game? Well, like I said, I'm already working on a second warband (with a third to follow) so I must like it. :) It's certainly a lot of fun. The rules are simple and easy to understand and allow for lots of variations on gameplay. The combats are decisive and as the scenarios revolve around obtaining treasure as much as they do about fighting your opponents warband means that there's always the tactical decision making about which is more important to you as the player. The magic system is fun and having to select a spell list from across the schools of magic means there are literally hundreds of combinations of spells with goodness-knows which interactions might be in the offing.  The game scales really well for multiplayer as well which I have really enjoyed.

Specific things I like:

• The ability to build a wizard and customise your spell list almost any way you please. It gives you the option to theme your wizard around just about anything you can think of. My Orc shaman is an Elementalist who goes for nuke spells and debuffs, exactly as it should be. My Elven wizard is going to be something quite different. Probably a Sigilist or a Chronomancer with buff spells and things that affect the game board. 
• The generic soldier list allows the player to use whatever miniatures they have in almost any configuration they want. Brilliant. 
• The scenarios are great - each has different features with different game effects. Some add an extra goal to the scenario and others add more hazards to the game board. I think having NPCs in a game with some simple rules to guide their behaviour is hilarious. I rather enjoy the idea that both players can cop it from mysteriously appearing wandering monsters.
• The campaign system - it was what I loved about Mordheim and Necromunda. I like the simplicity of the campaign system too - the upgrades go to the wizard, who in turn upgrades his apprentice. The soldiers don't get better themselves but you can buy better ones over time and get them nice, shiny magical goodness. 
• The author! I've started frequenting the Frostgrave forum on lead-adventure.de and he's been hugely available to the community since the release of the game issuing clarifications on some of the rules almost as quickly as people ask them! I understand there's a bit of an errata in the works which is excellent. I appreciate an author who's prepared to support their game rules like that. 

Is there anything I don't like? Not really! There are a couple of things that I'm not sure about if anything:

• Some of the spells feel a bit out of whack but a part of me thinks that we haven't quite figured all the interactions out yet. Telekinesis and Leap seemed to be the big bug-bears from our first couple of games. 
• I worry about the possibilities of warbands getting seriously out of control in the campaign - I earned enough gold in my first game to add an apprentice and still had enough gold left over to upgrade all my cheap soldiers to some seriously high end troops. By the end of my second game I was able to buy myself magic items.

I think both of these are resolvable easily enough. The first will come with time and more gameplay and I suspect the second is probably me making more of an issue out of it that it actually is. 

Anyway, if you've not tried it, I can heartily recommend giving it a go. Our last gaming day was the most laughs we've had in ages and I think we're all looking forward to more!

Snowtime! 

McZ.