Frostgrave.. a start

Now, there's a good chance that I'll never actually play this game. (I have yet to get a game of Lion Rampant, despite finishing my Retinue a while back).. but I was hit by the cosh of inspiration last week and sometimes there is as much joy in the planning and building of a project as there is in playing the game. (?) Having a week off work helped ;-)

Anyhoo.. I was ordering something else on Amazon, and on a whim, having read a little about it (for example, on Tom's blog), I ordered the Frostgrave book. I don't really 'do' fantasy but perhaps secretly I've always looked back in fondness at those days of Tunnels and Trolls with my brother..

As I read the book, I realised that here was an opportunity for some proper 'bashing'.. so started on a number of smaller projects as part of the bigger one... a common thread here is thrift*!

Firstly, scenery. The game is set in a frozen ruined city. I decided to make use of some thin ply rescued from a set of trashed bedroom furniture for the bases, and with hot glue gun and masking tape at hand, set to cutting up and sticking together a load of corrugated cardboard walls. 

cardboard, tape and emulsion

I splashed some greyish emulsion over the pieces to help bind it and keep the masking tape in place, then applied some textured spray paint that I picked up from B&Q - this was an experiment and I quite like the result. Finally, a dab of white emulsion around the bases and voila - cheap and simple, but hopefully effective, terrain pieces!

Textured paint and white emulsion

Next up, figures. Being short of any fantasy figures, I did order a couple of suitable 'wizard' Reaper Bones figures from eBay, these have yet to be painted but were pretty cheap and I'm quite impressed.

For the 'soldiers', I had a number of Fireforge figures left on the sprues, along with a few spare metal dark ages types. With the plastic figures, rather than mess about with greenstuff, I had great fun adding packs, capes, heads and various other modifications using various sources ranging from Greeks to Russian WW2! About half of these are painted up..

a motley crew

Roman helmet plume

Prussian Fusilier backpack

Fireforge figure, with Greek cape and French Hussar head!

Whilst preparing the soldiers, I also dug out some English Heritage gift shop figures which are now painted and based up as statues for my frozen city!

Finally, when I last saw my brother, he handed me a box and said that there were some 'tanks or something' inside - he was having a clear out. Turned out to be a right little mixture of figures, including a group of old Orcs. I think these may have been Asgard. Most likely bought from Tabletop Games (we used to live not far from the old shop). The paint was pretty faded but I figured these could be revived. Rather than completely re-start, I've tried to keep the theme intact, the shields are untouched for example.. but I've re-coloured and added some shading and highlighting as well as re-basing. I haven't tried to repair the broken weapons. Not sure these will see any use in Frostgrave, but I like them and they have been with us for many years!

*The cost of the Frostgrave project so far..

The rulebook - £10.00

Textured Spray paint - £7.95

Gale Force 9 snow - £3.00

4 wizardy figures (ebay) - £10 (ish)

So.. altogether about £30 for the rules, all the scenery and two factions/warbands. Not bad!