Frostgrave Winter Campaign: Session 1B

With Colton and Reese’s game report in and my “narrative” session complete, I figured I’d wrap up the rest of the sessions by going over the some last items from reports with a quick write up of my game and a make-up game with the only member that couldn’t make it the first time around. But first, the centerpieces of our games, the Mausoleum and statues.

The Mausoleum is a piece from Sablebadger‘s file on Thingiverse. Reese printed it up and I did a quick stone paint job with some heavy drybrushing. The twist on the scenario we were doing was the mausoleum would be a portal to another world. A world on monochromatic modern zombies. To pull that effect off, I added some purple plastic cut from some cheap folder dividers found at Wal-Mart. A tea light candle in the top and it was ready to go.

The other scenario featured animated statues and these were easily accomplished with some new figures from the North Star Soldier’s sprue. Done again in the same stone style, they were easily finished. The pedestals were from the tops of some cheap Hobby Lobby Roman columns cut down then topped with a 25 mm base.

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My game with our two other Frostgrave players was on the statue map. This map would be the setting for The Living Museum and we saw that we really only have enough of the “nice” terrain for one map at a time. Our map was a little less cohesive but it functioned well.

Our map featured a lot of blocking terrain and almost no 3D elements to gain height advantage so line of sight was a bit easier to mitigate. All three of us set up on our respective sides with Rob pushing his group right up along the 6 inch deployment restriction. I hung back behind terrain and Jeremy spread out across my left side.

Rob’s wizard and man-at-arms made a quick play for the treasure I placed closest to me so I sent my hounds after him. They were just a quarter inch shy of engaging them but if the wizard tried to move, my hounds would be able to engage right away. Unfortunately for me, they didn’t move and just chained the Leap spell to get everyone out of there with the treasure.

Jeremy’s crossbowman was too slow to realize my bear was sneaking around my left flank. He was caught when I had initiative and went down hard. Two of my dogs started chasing Rob’s wizard and another went out to assist my Treasure Hunter, who was making a play for the center.

Rob took out my dogs as they ran headlong into the bulk of his troops. While they died easily, they did slow him down quite a bit and force him to focus on only two treasure chests. This distraction left Jeremy with most of the field and he took advantage of it. By mid-game, Jeremy had claimed 5 treasures and was getting them off the map. I had secured two and Rob had one off the map and secured another.

My remaining warhound went on the offensive and chased down Jeremy’s treasure laden archer. It went berserk on him and killed him outright. My treasure hunter took down the remaining infantryman and the treasure was mine. My bear continued to run up my left flank and was able to chase down another of Jeremy’s treasure burdened soldiers.

As I was trying to relieve the soldier of his burden, Jeremy took the risky play of shooting at us both and ended up hitting his own man. Just for good measure, Jeremy rolled really well and vaporized the soldier. My crossbowmen wasn’t doing anything useful so he made his way over to the dropped treasure and made his way back to my troops.

After moving into position to fire at the bear/soldier melee, Jeremy’s wizard was still in my bear’s threat range so I ran at him and engaged. Jeremy didn’t want to just sit there so he opted to fight and I rolled the dreaded crit, wiping him off the map.

That pretty much took the fight out of Jeremy so he cut his losses and got his three treasures off the map. I ended up securing four while Rob left with two treasures.

The conclusion had me hitting the 300 xp cap while Jeremy and Rob got into the 200s. I rolled pretty poor on my treasure rolls but did snag a few magic weapons and an Elixir of Life. All-in-all, the game went pretty well for me even though 2 of my 3 soldiers died after the casualty rolls. I think only one other soldier in all the games died as well but that’s the way it goes.

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Since we’re only playing a four game campaign, I set up a make-up game for Sean, the player that was sick. I played again knowing that the results wouldn’t count for my band but would still play as if they would. Since it was just the two of us, I set up with all our terrain and it made for a pretty great map with 3D elements and a lot of tall scatter to hide against.

The terrain is our mixed bag of printed castle terrain from Printed Scenery, Heroscape terrain, and AT-43 Frostbite tiles. We were playing the Mausoleum mission that Sean would have played had he not gotten sick.

Setting up on opposite sides, I separated my soldiers into two groups, my Bear and Treasure Hunters with the wizard.

And my hounds and crossbowman with my Apprentice. The Apprentice would go with the dogs and Leap the crossbowman up the tall tower for a commanding view.

I soon noticed an issue with my setup. I couldn’t chase the dogs with the apprentice and cast Leap on the crossbowman at the same time as I would either not be close enough to the dogs on the next activation or the crossbowman would be out of sight. I ended up splitting it up, leaving the dogs to their own devices and staying back to get my only ranged threat into position. I also realized that my infantryman was way on the other side, useless. He’d spend most of the game getting back into position with the rest of my band.

My dogs made a go at mausoleum and could tell something wasn’t right.

Sure enough, otherworldly creatures popped in and made my dogs’ lives a living hell. We were playing that the creatures had the same stats as skeletons. In my previous game, the statues were medium constructs but didn’t give us any issue. The skeletons, for whatever reason, were straight up murderous.

I ended up bringing my treasure hunters forward and the apprentice helped out as well. My bear became perpetually engaged to a zombie he just couldn’t take down and was basically out all game. My wizard used Telekinesis on one treasure and my confused Infantryman came by and picked it up. Looks like he was worthwhile after all as he eventually made it off the map with my first treasure.

The zombies went nuts and killed two of my dogs in quick succession. I tried taking down another with a hound and treasure hunter, and failed on both attacks. Eventually the zombies went down but it was a constant struggle with them respawning out my doorway every round. I pulled one treasure hunter back after my wizard used telekinesis to pull another treasure close.

Eventually I met up with Sean’s forces. He had set up a wizard eye to get access to more of the field but struggled to complete any spells. I think by the end, he successfully cast three of the nine he tried to cast. My hound ran around to harass one of his infantrymen and got double-teamed by another zombie. Sean eventually sent a construct around the edge but got caught by a zombie and I couldn’t help but double-team Sean back to make things difficult. Both the construct and the zombie went down and my treasure hunter secured my third treasure.

With my sides’ treasures secured, I retreated back out to get off the map. Sean’s forces did the same though it took him a little longer.

Even though I had my crossbowman in good position most of the game, Sean’s two archers setup opposite me and we just traded shots all game until a bad roll killed my man. In one sense, that may have been a victory on its own since it meant those archers didn’t start looking for other targets and take out more important members of my team.

I wound up losing all my hounds and a crossbowman but gained half the map’s treasures so it worked out pretty well. Sean fared better as he only lost his construct and also gained three treasures. We ran the end game stats and Sean also capped at 300 xp like I had in my previous game. He ended up with better treasure results with a grimoire, some scrolls, and some gloves of casting.

With the final game of session 1 complete, we’re now planning for session 2 later this month.