Frostgrave and Warband Management

Posted by Ash

Some time ago, myself and Ste got into Frostgrave. It's a great little skirmish game with a low entry fee. All you need is the rulebook - which very reasonably priced and about 10 generic fantasy miniatures. I cobbled together a few dudes with swords and such like (mainly thanks to Ste for donating a sweet GW necromancer looking wizard and some wargames factory saxons). We ferverishly built some appropriate scenery and played a few games but then shinier stuff came along and we haven't played for a while. I really do like the concept of the game though and the rules are streamlined and easy.

One thing that niggled me was the management of the warband. Frostgrave offers a persistent campaign system so your wizard and warband improve over time (or sustain permanent injuries!) and this creates accounting hell. Due to the paperwork involved and my lazyness I decided to create some sort of online tool for managing my warband. This tool took a fair amount of time and I eventually offered its use for free to anyone who plays Frostgrave.

If you're a fan of Frostgrave then I urge you and your friends to use the tool. If you haven't played Frostgrave then go and get it now, you won't regret it.

The online tool is available from the link below. Note that you must have a Google account to use it.

Frostgrave Warband Manager

The artwork in Frostgrave by Dmitry Burmak is superb.

The Normans are coming! (and some Anglo-Danes)

Posted by Ash

My small casual group of gamers are about to start a SAGA age of the wolf campaign and this inspired me to add some more units to my small collection of dark age warriors. I tend to use Vikings or Anglo-Dane warbands as the minis are generally interchangeable apart from a couple of Hearthguard units - Dane axes for the Anglo-Danes, Berserkers for the Vikings.

One thing I am currently lacking is any kind of Levy unit. I tend to shy away from these as they are pretty poor in combat but I've decided to give them a try to see how ranged attacks work out in SAGA. My new levy unit will also be usable in my in progress Norman warband. Normans gain some advantages with ranged attacked if the SAGA dice gods favour you!

Gripping beast are a great source of dark age miniatures which they sell to compliment the SAGA rules. They also sell Shieldwall miniatures which are a nice alternative to the gripping beast range. Shieldwall miniatures are slightly cheaper but do not come with bases and the sculpts are marginally poorer than Gripping beasts own line. I picked up 3 lots of shieldwall archers, Hereward the Wake (a named hero for the Anglo-Dane faction), a Pagan priest (simply because he's kewl) and a bard. Gripping beast also slipped in a free miniature as the order was delayed by a week or so. Hats off to Gripping beast for the ongoing excellent customer service. They have always been pleasant to deal with.

All the metal minis I ordered from Gripping beast.

Crazy Man McShaman-face the pagan priest.

The bard. This chap follows your warlord around in SAGA
and provides you with additional victory points.

The free guy given by Gripping beast. I LOVE YOU GB!

Hereward the Wake. He means business.

For the Normans, I decided to pick up a pack of Conquest Games Norman knights. This boxed set provides you with 15 knights on horseback which will give you 3 units of Hearthguard and a warlord in SAGA currency. I've also ordered some extra sprues from Conquest games so that I can get another unit of Hearthguard on horseback, 1 unit of Hearthguard on foot and 2 warrior units. I'm quite impressed with the Conquest games models for the price. Some of the horses heads are a little tricky to attach but other than that they look great.

I've already assembled the Norman knights, based them and airbrushed the base colours for the various horses with Tamiya paints - the king of airbrush paint.

3 Units of SAGA Hearthguard.

An unwell looking Norman knight. This will look nice as scatter scenery.

William the Bar Steward. My Norman warlord.

William the Bar Steward - When it comes to weaponry, he likes to branch out...

The horses heads didn't quite sit right for me.

I bet those spears become a sore point further down the road
as they will bend and snap, which is why I only added them to
 4 of the little chaps

UPDATE
William and the bard - now known as gheylord are done (apart from basing).

K47 - Oberleutnant and Staff Car

So, when you’re an aspiring evil baddie you have many items on your wishlist – evil sidekick, funny skin colour and some kind of super weapon. However one of the key bits of evil baddie equipment is …….A COOL CAR!

This chap is a Bolt Action German Officer painted in a suitably evil pallete to represent a member of the nazi occult society, The Order of The Black Sun. And as both an officer and senior member of said society he gets to ride around in a rather spiffy staff car which is simply a 1/48 toy car that I picked up on Trademe (NZ eBay) for about $7.

And here’s the gang all together!

K47 - Spinne Mech

So it turns out that Konflikt 47 is crap! 

Well ok that may be a little harsh, what I meant to say is that Konflikt 47 is crap!

Arghh it seems I just can't help myself, maybe its my own fault for getting a little too hyped up for it and  expected something really, really good. But I just can't bring myself to like it. Its got bolted on rules (see what I did there?) that just don't feel right for the mechanic, there are holes and inconsistencies throughout and it could very easily have been a pdf add on to Bolt Action. 

The introduction of reactions is a nice idea but it doesn't feel right in the flow of the game, close quarters combat is different now, with a more complicated set up to it and the whole idea of choosing between point blank shooting or close quarters is counter to the idea of close quarters (where shooting was incorporated in the roll to kill!). Walkers are under powered and its unclear what they are (vehicles or infantry), they can fight if they assault but not if they're assaulted?

However it feels like Warlord and Osprey saw an opportunity to get more mileage (and money) out of Bolt Action v1 from us dumb gamers and so of they went.

One positive thing it did do is allow Clockwork Goblin to get their pretty cool 15mm miniatures into 28mm scale (a proper gaming scale) and therefore here is my most recent offering - a German Spinne Mech light walker.

Not sure when I'll get to play with this fella, maybe when an errata comes out fixing the problems with K47 or someone updates it to BAv2. I'll probably get lambasted for voicing my opinion of this game rather the gushing like a teenage Beiber fan but thats the internet for ya!

Normal Service Will Resume Shortly

Nope, still very much alive, just busy with life and stuff. Normal service will resume shortly.