Frostgrave Warband

I started by reading the rules on building your warband and came up with a basic 500 gold group.

Wizard (Enchanter) 0 gold

Apprentice 200 gold

Crossbowman 50 gold

Tracker 80 gold

Infantryman 50 gold

Treasure Hunter 80 gold

Thugs x2 20 gold each

I managed to make the majority of the dwarves in my warband with the dwarf sprue I bought at Salute. I spoke briefly with the writer of the Frostgrave rules Joseph A. McCullough. He appreciated that I had enjoyed the rules and the feedback that I really enjoyed his solo play expansions.

I also bought a Scibor miner dwarf miniature with a lantern and gun that I had wanted to get for ages. The game rules don’t support guns, but I had seen lots of people had shared on Facebook that they were treating guns with the same rules as crossbows. The long reload time and good damage stats of crossbows work out well.

I bought the Frostgrave official enchanter and apprentice minis because I thought that they looked great any way. The hammer etc of this pairing will hopefully gel with the warband of dwarves quite nicely.

I made the sprue go as far as I could. I was easily able to meet the criteria required for each troop type.

That said, because dwarves are rarely seen out of mail or plate armour I feel I have licence to ignore the type of armour sculpted. E.g. The fact that an infantryman should be in leather armour not mail, or that my dwarf thugs are wearing mail. I feel any opponent can make out which troop is which easily enough.

Crossbowman – with gun instead of crossbow

Tracker  – with bow and staff

Infantryman – with double handed axe

Treasure Hunter – with duel wielding hand weapons

Thugs #1 – with rope and sword

Thug #2 – with hammer and sack

The rope in the picture is made from a tea bag string.

The sack top is made from an offcut of sprue on the top of the thugs hand and I will make the main body of the sack with some green stuff. – I might make this thug a thief if I get to play a campaign and add the extra gold into my list.

I have primed almost everything involved and have begun painting.

I hope I can drag the unit together with some common colours and snowy, ruined stone floor basing.

Work in progress.

Not sure how to do a convincing lantern glow effect. Still not calling him finished. Will keep working and take better photos.

Work in progress.

I like these models. For what is meant to be part of a rank and flank range of minis, I think there is plenty of variety available just on one sprue.

I think I will make the duel wielding guy have a ginger beard, for variety and to make him standout as a treasure hunter.

These minis are looking quite different to the Scibor mini on his cool looking base, but then the Scibor mini is a darn sight more expensive, resin and meant to be a painting project piece potentially, rather than an out and out gaming mini like they are.

As I suggested, I went for a ginger beard for my treasure hunter. Still WIP but happy with the improvements and beard colour.

The guy with the odd piece of sprue on his hand finally makes more sense with this green stuff sack hanging underneath it. The hanging sack with its sway towards the back hopefully creates some sense of movement.

To make the sack I started by removing that really stiff bit in between the green / yellow and the blue putty. I mixed the green stuff together in the normal way and rolled out to about the size of a penny piece. I then put the cured stiff bit into the middle of the circle and wrapped around it and pinched it into the basic shape I wanted. It just seemed like a sensible use for the useless cured piece and saves on greenstuff. I used a little drop of super glue on the underside of the hand and on the dwarves side to attach it to the model. I tried to emphasise the creases in the hanging sack with a scalpel. Will paint up later once cured and see whether the creases look convincing or not.

The Dark Alchemy Frostgrave expansion book is a very good book and gives you the opportunity for solo play.

The book will hopefully give me the chance to get used to the rules and see how the campaign / group experience levelling aspects of the game effects the game.

The Alchemical Monstrosity is in the first scenario. He is a sad figure as he is the result of a host of potions being smashed together after a roof caves in. My idea is that a severed rats tail and a zombie have been absorbed and effected the look of the mutation. The big ear is to help him navigate the space because he is blind. The Monstrosity is too volatile to live for long but is lashing out at the world in its sudden, confused and angry state of being.

I already made several treasure markers but the idea of books as a clue or treasure marker seemed like a good idea.

They are just made from cut pieces of cardboard and painted.

The pages are relatively uniform sized pieces and the cover is a longer and slightly wider piece of card that wraps around the cut pages. Superglue to secure it all together.

Rangers of Shadow deep has taken over my hobby table, but the skeletons and the gnolls could end up in my Frostgrave campaigns too.

Finally got back to Frostgrave. This enchanter was primed and screamed out to be painted.

Looking forward to the Apprentice model next.

Enjoyed painting this guy.

The warband is complete. ?

Glad I got back to this project and am calling it done. I may revisit as I add any creatures from the bestiary or if I finally get a game played. ?

Thanks to everyone who liked the idea, skills and tuition buttons throughout the project. It’s much appreciated.

I won a copy of Frostgrave 2nd edition, Red king expansion and a box of Cultists. (Thank you Beasts of War!?!!!)

I also got a copy of the rules as my only Christmas present this year… so i can sell one on ebay and buy a box of the red king demons to play the Red King out properly. (and buy some string) … 🙂

I looked at the in-game warband cost of specialists and some of the changes to the spells and realised that my Enchanter warband will need some changes to field them and I wanted to revisit some of the paint jobs too.

I hadn’t intended to use the animate construct spell, because it didn’t gaurentee that you would actually get a construct, your opponent’s wizard might take a spell to turn your construct against you, and if you did get a lucky roll and generate a construct it would likely replace a thug you paid for; plus a Small Construct looked worse stats-wise than a thug.

Now I look again and this lack of a construct seems a waste. If you pick an enchanter I think you have to want to enchant a construct and have that wade into play. Now the Small Construct has a +1 fight skill it didn’t have before. I got a really cool book monster that can be a Medium Construct from Black Cat Bases. Thugs and thieves being free to field gives me potentially two or three more dwarves to build and paint as options, but the specialists I painted originally cost too much to field in the first game of a campaign as is.

My Small Construct was a fun challenge to build from my bits box.

She was kitbashed from…

Body: Japanese Bolt Action tank exhaust systems stuck together. Left over from Chi-Ha kit.

Victrix Viking cloak on the back and Northstar Gnoll shield on the front.

Arms and legs: Mantic Games Dwarf battle hammers cut down. GW beastmen spearhead behind head and on left hand… Mantic Games Ghoul claw hand as the right hand.

Head: Oathmark Human helmet.

Looking forward to getting some paint on these. The book golem is actually just the shop picture from their site and my one has the mouth open with a book mark / book tassle tongue.

Loin is a thief dwarf from the Oathmark Dwarf kits.

Heavy Inf. Dwarf body and Light Inf. Dwarf head and arms; the left arm is a shield arm and the right arm had an open hand. I found what I think is a Mantic dwarf sword, cut it down and placed it as a knife in the open right hand.

Black Cat Bases is a small site, with a small range, but this book golem is great.

Painted in a variety of GW base and Contrast paints, hit with Agrax and then light drybrushed with zandri dust for waethering and then a very light drybrush of grey seer as a lazy highlight.

Large Construct made from a broken Mantic Games abyssal dwarf lesser obsidian golem and my bits box.

The Abyssal Dwarf Lesser Obsidian Golem came in a fantasy bargin box from Mantic Games a couple of years ago. I started to build them, then they got broken and I seem to have somehow lost some parts. I always thought I would find a use for at least one of them.

The base has a Mantic Skeleton sprue bundle of bones, an Mantic Orc head (gargoyle?), a Mantic dwarf head (from a broken statue?) and off cuts of sprue as crumbled masonry.

I imagine that all my wizard’s Constructs are last minute creations from whatever parts are available at hand. Very much the Macgyver of Enchanters.

The belly is meant to be some kind of oven or stove with a grate, but perhaps it looks more like cell bars.

The head is just a Mantic dwarf head, with the blood from the statue’s eyes to be in keeping with the blood from the Small Construct’s eyes.

The swords and spear protruding from the missing arm are explained in my head by the enchanter getting his rushed animation spell slightly wrong; with the nearest weapons and a banner being bound into the spell instead of some intended rocks adjacent to them.

I still need to decide what design I might put on the banner. Maybe a simple blue stripe down the middle and some specks of blood.

The metal grey and the rock grey I intended didn’t really go together well. No contrast just made it look lazy and uninspired. So I rusted up the metal a touch with a GW orange and GW rhino hide brown and used Citadel Camoshade wash on the stone and it helped define things a little better. The patches of blue green dots, to try and give a better rock feel, was with nighthaunt contrast paint.

I know that I will have more room for thieves and thugs in my party now that second edition makes them free to field. I also wanted to get a sprue of the new Oathmark Dwarf Heavy Infantry.

This mini is made from a Heavy Inf. Dwarf body but with the Oathmark light Inf. Dwarf head and arms. The left arm is a shield arm and the right was a sword arm that I cut down to be knife. I really like the shifty look of the pose. He is probably too well armoured for a Frostgrave thief of any kind, but he looks great and the knife helps define his soldier type.

I used a Halfords red primer as the base. I hit all the armour and knife with leadbelcher, then the whole mini with Nulin oil, then a GW silver over the armour again as a highlight. The red coat is hit with Mephiston Red as a highlight. The arms have a steel legion drab base, with a zandri dust highlight and Agrax Earthshade wash. Bugman’s Glow and Barbarian Flesh highlight on the flesh.

I did a lazy flint chippings rubble, with the standard tab base and snow flock to cover any bits I wasn’t happy with.

A lot of the earlier made minis didn’t get under the photo booth until the group shot at the end and felt it didn’t really show them at their best.

So I added snow to their bases and had a photo shoot.

One of the thugs technically has a two-handed weapon and might be promoted later, but for the current list he’s a thug.

I wanted to make one more thug from the Heavy Inf. Oathmark sprue, to replace Thrax because he really has a double handed axe and should be a specialist in a later adventure.

I ran out of the light Inf. shield arms in my kitbashing so had to turn to a Gripping Beast Viking arm instead and the fist came up a touch smaller than the dwarf arm wielding an axe. Always wanted to use Traantje (Trang-cha) as it’s a cool sounding Dutch word and Smallfist is self evident.

I also didn’t find a Light Inf Oathmark head I liked so I found a Heavy Inf one and removed the helm crest and painted it to try and look like leather armour.

With the Viking chainmail left arm I used a piece of card to mirror the “pauldron”? on the other side and I’m happy with the result.

After this kitbash it gives me two more bodies on the Heavy Inf Dwarf sprue to make maybe a knight, templar or a man-at-arms to bulk this party up if I get them into a campaign and level up a bit.

I was going to have to ignore the armour on the minis and their Frostgrave soldier classes because thugs and thieves shouldn’t be as well armoured as some of these guys are. (To some mini makers a dwarf without armour is a gnome and that’s not the look I was going for.) I have tried to play down the level of armour in my paint schemes as at least a nod to wysiwyg. Loin and Groin with their red leather armour for example and some shoulder plate pieces on thugs painted brown to downgrade to leather where I felt it looked OK. With my Templar and Man-at-arms I can paint everything like it was intended. Metal plates gleaming to make them standout from the beige thugs etc. Looking forward to that.

I have been quite impressed by how easy it has been to build character into what are essentially designed as ranked up mass battle infantry for Oathmark.