With our first game of Frostgrave hitting over the weekend, I spent last week finalizing the warband I had left. I only had to get through my Apprentice and Wizard. The Apprentice was pretty easy and I was pleased to see that his custom wand worked out.
After finishing up my Apprentice, I grabbed my Wizard model and was about to start when I saw a particularly interesting mod. The model is from Descent 2nd edition and a user on Boardgamegeek had the clever idea to remove the model’s falcon friend. I had to do the same (I mean, any excuse to use magnets, right?).
After cutting the falcon off, I drilled a 2mm x 1mm hole for the magnets. I superglued on in the glove hole and one to the bottom of the falcon feet. The falcon’s feet is just too small for the magnets I have.
Now my Wizard is ready to rock. I bagged off everything but the new glove and falcon feet and then reprimed those areas. After that, it was time to paint.
But first, I needed to get some snow on my finished model’s bases. I first painted the snow areas white directly on the base. The snow I’m using (from the hobby area at Hobby Lobby, I think it is a “scenics” brand) isn’t fully opaque and I wanted to make sure the snow looked white enough.
While the white dried, I mixed a 50:50 solution of water and PVA glue and then poured in the snow contents, mixing until I got a goopy wet consistency. I used a crappy brush to then apply it to the base. I think you can also use a coffee stirrer or something similar if you don’t want to mess up a brush.
I started out putting only a little on but found that it didn’t dry well in little quantities so I went back over and added more.
It seemed to work best piled on. As it dries, it will sink down a bit and leave you with a solid crust of snow. I say crust as it is a very specific effect to me that reminds me of when snow is melting and freezing and melting again and takes on a hard, brittle characteristic. I haven’t explored much with this product but it doesn’t seem to create the soft, smooth, pillowy snow that you would see with a fresh fall. I’m ok with this but if you’re looking for that, you may want sculpt smooth mounds out of green stuff and paint it white.
With everything done, I decided to do some photos of the warband. Here we have my warhounds, Runt, Fang, and Claw (left to right).
Next we have the twins, Osbert and Osbert (again, left to right).
For my quick strikers, I have my Treasure Hunters Gil and Rupee (left to right).
For pure beatstick time, we have Mutt, my animal companion.
My forest woodsman-turned-apprentice, Tog, rounds out my Warband.
And to lead them all, Thurgen, my Wizard-Ranger. Sometimes his familiar, Skye, joins him.
And other times, he flies high above.
For this first bout, our Frostgrave game is going to be an Intro match to get the players familiar with the game before they lock in their Wizard disciplines, spell lists, and warband soldiers. Because we also have 6 players total and I don’t want to split the group up right away, I have everyone paring their warband down to just the Apprentice and four soldiers. This will help shorten the game and limit the complexity all while giving them all the rules of the game.
For our first game, I took Tog leading Gil, Osbert, Claw, and Osbert (left to right). We’ll find out how they fared when I write up our session report for next time.