Friday, July 31, 2015

My first game of Frostgrave


Frostgrave is a new game from Osprey. It's a skirmish level game in a Fantasy World. The city of Felstad, once the capitol of a magical empire, is coming out of a Magical Frozen state. Brave adventurers explore the city in search of untold riches and wonderous magic items.

You control a Wizard in search of powerful magics. Your Wizard then hires a band of adventurers to help him in his quest. With your soldiers and maybe an Apprentice Wizard, you explore the city looking for treasure, fighting off other wizards and deadly monsters roaming the frozen landscape.

I bought the game on Kindle, but then I hated reading it on my ipad, so I got the book from Amazon anyway. 

My friend Lou came over last night and brought some really great Mordhiem terrain. I dipped into my Warhammer Empire army and threw together a Warband.

I sure we did some things wrong, but we had fun playing. 

My Warband is a Chronomancer, Apprentice, Man-at-Arms, 2 trackers, 4 thugs and a Warhound. I also raised a zombie before the game. My strategy was to use my Wizard as a Chess Master, moving the right pieces into the right spots and controling the board. I didn't take one offensive spell. I had buffs/ debuffs and movement aids. It worked well, but every other round or so, I wished I had blast or something.


View from my side of the table. We played on a 4x5 table, but set up an extra 6 inches in to account for the extra foot

Side shot, I'm on the left, Lou is on the right.

My friends set up. His warband, was a Wizard, 3 Archers, Ranger, Knight, Thief, Infantry, Man-at-Arms.

 Pre battle shots, the bad guys, from my perspective.

 Pre battle shots, My Apprentice on my left, with Tracker and Thug.

 Pre battle shots.

 My main line, Wizard, M@A, Tracker, Thugs, and of course, Mr Stinky my zombie.

I move up and split into tactical teams, each team going for a treasure. My plan was to grab 3 treasures. Anyone not carrying a treasure was to set up a defensive line. Lou cast Fog to block shooting and spells. That's the green stuff in the center.

 My Thug grabs the treasure, my Tracker is at a window and my apprentice has just cast Decay on a Infantry man. Note the red bead we used to denote wounded, from a failed spell attempt.

Mr Stinky moves up using the well to help block shooting. The blue bead is to note he has Fleet Feet so he moves 6"! I like Fast Zombies. 2 thugs move to the center with the warhound. Lots of bad guys on the other side of the building. The thug in the very bottom of the pic has a treasure.

My Man-At-Arms, and a tracker move to the right. There is a treasure in the building they are hiding behind, on the 2nd floor, but open to line of site of the bad guys. My Tracker is...er was using the wall in an overwatch position, but someone dropped a 2nd Wall of fog on the table.

Side shot of the center of the table. There is a treasure on the 3rd floor of the building in the center.

Lou's archer came out of the building with a treasure and my Tracker moved thru the fog and brought her down with 2 arrows.

 My Man-At-Arms climbs to the 2nd floor and gets blasted by a fireball and shot at by archers. He is wounded, but survives. A knight is fighting my zombie in the street.

2 of Lou's Man-At-Arms, charge through the building and attack my Thug and my Warhound. We each won a fight. I had another Thug here, but after my Wizard cast Jump, he is on the 3rd floor picking up a Treasure. I might get 4 treasures!

My Wizard and Apprentice are in covering positions to aid my thugs in the fight.

 Bad Turn for Lou, I mind controled one of his guys and added him to the fight with the other Man-at-Arms. 3 on 1. I hurt him, but did not kill him.

Mr Stinky holding his own against the enemy. Even wounded him. Above that melee, my Tracker and Lou's Archer have a shootout.

We ended the game after 5 turns. In retrospect we should have allowed more turns, as we were playing on a 4x4 table. No one got off the board with Treasure. At the end of the game, I was in possession of 4 treasures and Lou had one, or maybe 2.

We had a great time with the rules and look forward to playing them again. I've already started painting up a dedicated warband. We have also started planning out terrain building. I see a lot of room for growth with this game, yet it's very complete right out of the gate. Once we get some warbands and terrain completed we will start a campaign.

I had these sheets for baseball cards, with 9 pockets. I printed out Spell Cards I got from Lead Adventures Forum made by Audrey. The first column is my school, the 2nd column is my aligned schools. And the 3rd column is my neutral school. I used a small sticker on top of the casting number to show the increase cost of the aligned and neutral schools. It worked very well.

Anyway, that's it from now. More to come, Xin

Thursday, July 23, 2015

Reaper Bones 3 Kickstarter

Reapers 3rd Bones Kickstarter is about 2 days away from finishing. Holy cow are there some nice pieces in there. Right now I'm in for $100, but I really see more like $200 from all the stuff I want, minimum. There is just too much cool stuff.  Take a look.

Reaper Miniatures Bones 3: The search for Mr. Bones!

Some of the better items, not to mention the tons of figures you get with the base set. I just realized, some of those have not been unlocked yet.










There is still time to jump in and get a ton of figures cheap!

Xin




Sunday, July 19, 2015

Random Pics from Historicon 2015, Saturday

The last big day of the con has come and gone. It's 4 am on Sunday. I crashed early Saturday night and just woke up. These conventions are fun, but can be very tiring. We put on 3 games and one flea market session. It was a good convention.

I got a lot of pictures on Saturday, but I'm sure I missed a lot of good games as well. Just so much to see. Hope you enjoy the pics.

Sorry for some of the blurry shots. I was in a hurry and snapped some shots one handed.

Line for Sat Flea Market

Pig Wars, blurry shot, but beautiful table


Pig Wars


Pig Wars


Pig Wars


WWII Game?


WWII Game?


Huge game, couldn't find any info about it















PBI, Early WWII, I saw this game running all weekend.





54mm Star Wars


54mm Star Wars


54mm Star Wars


Huge Biplane fight, sorry for blurry





Battle of Manchester, GO ManU


MBA table, Beautiful as always


MBA table


MBA table


MBA table


WWII Prison Break, I think


WWII Prison Break


WWII Prison Break


Waterloo and Wavre, Volley and Bayonet


Waterloo and Wavre, Volley and Bayonet


Waterloo and Wavre, Volley and Bayonet


Waterloo and Wavre, Volley and Bayonet


Waterloo and Wavre, Volley and Bayonet


Age of Valor, Crimean War


Age of Valor, Crimean War


Age of Valor, Crimean War


Age of Valor, Crimean War


Age of Valor, Crimean War


JoeHack, Ceasars Salad


JoeHack, Ceasars Salad


JoeHack, Ceasars Salad


JoeHack, Ceasars Salad


JoeHack, Ceasars Salad


JoeHack, Ceasars Salad


JoeHack, Ceasars Salad, That's a lot of storage


Flea Market Booty


Panoramic shot of main gaming area.


Battle of Britain


Battle of Britain


Battle of Britain


Battle of Britain


Zombies


Zombies


Zombies


Zombies


Zombies


Battlefront, we could have used some snow on Saturday, it was quite toasty outside


Battlefront


Battlefront

 WWII


WWII


WWII


WWII


War of the Ring


War of the Ring


War of the Ring


War of the Ring


War of the Ring


War of the Ring


War of the Ring


War of the Ring


War of the Ring


War of the Ring


War of the Ring


Our Marengo game again.


Battle of Ticonderoga


Battle of Ticonderoga,


Battle of Ticonderoga,


Battle of Ticonderoga,


Bolt Action


Bolt Action


Bolt Action


Bolt Action


Muskets and Tomahawks


Muskets and Tomahawks


Muskets and Tomahawks


Muskets and Tomahawks


Muskets and Tomahawks


WWII, SAS Raid at Fuka. I tired a panoramic shot for this, because it's a huge table


WWII, SAS Raid at Fuka


WWII, SAS Raid at Fuka


WWII, SAS Raid at Fuka


WWII, SAS Raid at Fuka


WWII, SAS Raid at Fuka....nice easter egg


WWII, SAS Raid at Fuka


ACW


ACW


ACW


ACW


ACW


Well that was it for me on Saturday. We went back to the room for a short rest and we all fell asleep. We meant to come back to the convention hall and play a board game or something, but we crashed.

Hope you enjoyed the pics, Xin