Some more fantasy adventurers

 These have all been made from the North Star Frostgrave Soldiers II box;

Above are three figures who could be a Fighter, A Wizard and a Ranger, although I did gave a D&D Sorcerer in mind when I assembled the figure with the spear and lantern.

Below are a Rogue/Thief, a Cleric or maybe another Fighter  and a Fighter or Barbarian.

Of course, these could be used for all manner of different rulesets, so they are quite versatile as to their roles. They could even fit into a Frostgrave warband quite happily.

The backdrop is a, by now standard John Hodgson one.

I am reasonably happy with these, but I think that the Cleric is possibly the one I like least. I'm not sure if I'll keep them. I might put them up for sale at the club's annual Tabletop Sale in May.

Frostgrave - the long scenario reaches its penultimate stage

People who follow my blog must be aware that we have been playing out a series of linked games around the theme of finding the whereabouts of the treasure of a dreaded but long-presumed vanquished Necromancer. This started in December last year, and will finish in August, once various holidays are out of the way.

This game, together with the preceding two represent three concurrent parts of a single quest to find three Vorpal blades, which can only be handled by spellcasters, and which will play a role in the forthcoming denouement.

This time around, Owen provided the Wizard, I brought along an Apprentice and Richard a Captain, plus assorted warband members for support. Andy, once again ran the game and Nick took charge of the evil creatures.

Here is the initial table. The eagle-eyed might recognise the provenance of the central obelisk.

Everyone had to enter and leave this underground chamber via the portal on the right-hand side.

Bad things began to happen immediately. My hapless Thug was soon killed off by a snake-like guardian.

Vengeance was swift, however, as my Traesure Hunter, Warhound and conjured Zombie triumphed.

Elsewhere, more serpentine evil appeared. People may recognise many of these figures as well.

Daunting though these enemies appeared, we soon managed to see most of them off.

Obviously, the Serpent Wizard was protecting something, so we advanced across the chamber.

My Apprentice cast Wall, to prevent this Hydra, summoned from somewhere by the portal obelisk from easily attacking.

Elsewhere, Richard's Captain took on the Serpent Wizard's Bodyguard.

More nastiness appeared to attach a hapless crossbowman.

The brave Captain fought through to attack the Serpent Wizard, killing it but being killed himself by a Wraith Knight who was holding the Vorpal Blade (no photos, sorry). 

The fearsome Mouth On Legs creature was killed.

The Hydra was much more of a problem.

A Gorgon appeared. By this point, Owen's Wizard was out of the game. To win, I had to keep my Apprentice alive.

But to stay alive, we had to vanquish the Hydra. My Treasure Hunter managed to slay the Beast.

Ans she went on to kill the Gorgon, too. What a star!

Again without pictures, we combined to kill the Wraith Knight and my Apprentice took control of the Vorpal Blade. Time to get out of this chamber.

We fought out way back to the exit, seeing off more Serpent Guardians en route.

So, now, the Wizards, equipped with Vorpal Blades must confront the Evil Necromancer to triumph. 

Female characters for Frostgrave

In between painting my new Saga: Age of magic warband, I have also been working on the North Star female characters for Frostgrave. I bought these last year as part of the massive Maze of Malcor Nickstarter (via Bad Squiddo), and I will be using them as upgrades to my current Frostgrave warband as existing troops get killed off or I can afford to replace them with stronger members. There are eight new models in total; an Apothecary, a Thief, a Barbarian, a Knight, a Templar, a Markswoman, a Tracker and a Warhound.

So, these are all now finished and here they are.

First the Apothecary and the Thief;

Next, the Barbarian, Knight and Templar;

I have tried to give the Knight a shield with a magical sigil as its device, a kind of irregular-shaped flaming multi-pointed star. I think that it works OK. Also, I have tried to make the Templar look a bit like a female version of Marvel's Thor with her red cloak and blonde hair.

And finally, the Markswoman, Warhound and Tracker. I really like the armour on the hound.

These are lovely figures, sculpted, I believe by Mark Copplestone. They have lots of personality and nice details. The castings are really crisp and paint up really nicely. I am very happy with how they have turned out.

What a surprise - a sneak preview of the next Bad Squiddo Kickstarter

Well, actually I am sure that people who follow Annie on Facebook and elsewhere know that there is a new Bad Squiddo Kickstarter in the offing, and that it will feature Dwarves (a.k.a "Dorfs" in Annie-speak), so saying that it is going to happen isn't really a huge surprise.

However, I did get a proper surprise when a small parcel from Bad Squiddo arrived at my house on Friday, mainly because I wasn't expecting anything. Mystified, I opened the box and found the usual fruit teabag, a small figure in a ziplock baggie and a note.

To be honest, I felt honoured. I don't think I am a bad painter, but I am certainly not a Matt Slade, Kevin Dallimore, Paul Sanderson or John Morris in the paintbrush stakes, so being given the chance to paint up an advance figure from the Kickstarter made me really happy.

Anyway, I soon found out that I had a small grumpy woman with a big axe to paint. I got to work as soon as I could and finished her this morning.

There was something about her that spoke to me, saying "I am a grizzled veteran of many fights in the deep places of the world", so I wanted to give her grey hair, and well-worn clothes, but also the richly-embellished accoutrements of a fighter of great repute, hence the jewels set in her belt.

I didn't think she would be wearing bright colours, so I settled on a muted colour palette.

I must say that she was an incredibly crisp and clean casting, with absolutely no flash or moulding lines and she painted up a treat. 

Once again, Annie has really hit the bull'e eye with this figure, and also with a very timely female Dwarves Kickstarter, which will surely be featuring in more than a few Masters (Mistresses?) of the Underearth warbands for Saga Age Of Magic in due course. Equally, there are possibilities with other rulesets. Me? Well I am going to be revamping my Frostgrave band in the near future and I am sure I can find a place for a grudge-bearing Dwarf with a huge axe.

So, an absolutely terrific figure. Just don't mention the Hi-Ho song.

The club Frostgrave League - continuing the scenario

Well, the Frostgrave League was much delayed by an unfortunate accident involving a staircase, an ankle and Andy, who has been running our "Find The Necromancer" series of linked scenarios. Anyway, Any is now back on both feet and the latest round of the adventure will be on 13th May. That, of course reminded me that I never wrote up the previous round, which we played back at the beginning of April.

Anyway, the scenario took our bands of treasure hunters and ne'er do wells out of the Frozen City to a location strewn with ancient ruins on the edge of some woods of bad repute. Woods in fantasy games are always of bad repute and will usually contain denizens who are unlikely to be a bunch of happy Teddy Bears having a jolly picnic and, when it comes to ancient ruins, well, the less said, the better.

This scenario had an unusual starting position. Each band was only allowed to field four of its members, each group to be led by either a Wizard, an Apprentice or a Captain. Richard, Owen and I all diced for who would do what, and I was tasked with providing my newly recruited Captain, with Richard sending the Wizard and Owen his Apprentice.

We were soon moving forwards into the unknown and the first unpleasntness to emerge was a Werewolf (here portrayed by my Werewolf from the My Last Sunrise set from Bad Squiddo). Owen's bunch of adventurers were able to see him off and things proceeded.

My group's job was to proceed to the building we could glimpse in the woods in the distance. However, on the way we were beset by a Giant Spider, but this proved to be vastly inferior to Shelob and was easily dealt with.

Advancing towards the woods, more creatures emerged, throwing javelins and disappearing, leaving me with a deceased Treasure Hunter.

I was unable to get them into combat, which was annoying, but hardly unexpected.

Finally, my Thug did manage to engage one of the things.

Elsewhere, more of them emerged and proved to be tough opponents.

Tough enough to kill my Thug, requiring the attentions of my Captain, Richard's War Hound and, eventually my Archer too.

It was clearly upset by my calling it a "horrible goblin thingy" but I did eventually kill it, but my Captain took a lot of wounds in the process.

Elsewhere, in what one can only call an Accursed Burying Ground a seriously Big Bad Thing emerged. My weakened Captain was in no shape to confront it, but Richard kindly healed some of my wounds with a spell.

It was a tough opponent, and appeared to be immune to normal weapons, but it was eventually killed, leaving Richard to discover an Enchanted Vorpal Sword among the graves.

Elsewhere, a twin Big Bad Thing was causing havoc with Owen's adventurers.

This one appeared to be immune to Magic, so I sent in my Captain, and she proceeded to go into battle against the vile beast. Eventually, the BBT fell to a combined attack from myself and Owen. 

Unhappily, my Captain was then set upon by evil Hounds, but by now the game was over, because we had the Enchanted Vorpal Sword, so we called it a day.

In the next round, I will be supplying the Wizard, so I am hoping that Ermengarde the Elementalist will prove to be a success and not get herself killed.

In the post-game accounting, my Treasure Hunter emerged unscathed, but my Thug was permanently dead.