Frostwallon Skeletons

First, apologies in advance for the poor photos. It took me about 2 hours to photograph these skeletons because my normal procedure was either making them brilliant white or washing them out entirely. At the absolute end of my rope with the camera, I did the exact opposite of what I normally do and darkened the exposure compensation to its maximum. So, if you're ever shooting white miniatures, that seems to be the trick...

These are a group of skeletons for Frostwallon, originally Rackham Morbid Puppets. These seem to be pretty rare to find these days and I'm really happy I was able to track them down because they have a certain dynamism that most 28mm skeletons lack. I especially love the "en garde" skeleton and the tired, crouching skeleton. Pictures (as I mentioned) don't really do these guys justice and I tried a few new techniques on them. For the bones, I basecoated everything in Antique White, did a first highlight in 50/50 Antique White/White mix, and then did a heavy wash of Vallejo Grey wash, then picked out areas of deep shadow by doing a selective wash of P3 Armor wash, and finally came back and highlighted select areas with pure White. This gives a nice aged appearance to the bone that simply washing with browns or tans would fail to achieve.

Otherwise, there isn't much else to them, but I tried to keep the palette limited to earthy tones - browns, greens, and greys - on the tattered scraps of clothing present, with liberal washes of Vallejo European Dirt wash. The armor was (as normal) painted in GW Boltgun Metal and Testors Steel. However, I wanted a heavily rusted appearance, so I tried a new technique. Using acrylics as washes, I laid down several washes of Testors Rust, Vallejo Red Brown, and Chocolate Brown. After sealing, I then came back with dry pigments but applied them as washes by diluting them in Isopropyl alcohol, which I really like the effect of. I also did a similar effect with the dirt on the bases.

Frostwallon Terrain - Burnt Out Ruins

I've wanted to try my hand at doing some terrain using Hirst Arts molds for years, probably as far back as when I first started gaming, but I always balked at the pricing. Luckily, I have a friend with a nice collection of them who let me borrow a couple to try out. Using Fieldstone Molds #70 & 75 (and Tile mold #200, which I eventually plan to use for a sewer board), I cast up about 4lbs. of a 50/50 mix of Plaster and Rock Putty and put together a bunch of ruined buildings. After casting, I assembled all the pieces using construction adhesive, cut out some MDF bases, and added basswood floors and rubble piles. Once dry, I undercoated everything with flat Grey latex paint, as recommended on the Hirst site. I then used various shades of greys, browns, and tans to add some variation in color. Though I like the end product, the casting process was really labor intensive and (coupled with drying times) was quite time consuming. If you are interested in using Hirst molds, here are a few pointers I learned:

• Use a plastic or disposable container to mix the plaster that can be bent to pop out any dried plaster before the next mix
• Rock putty is a good cheap alternative to dental plaster but is too brittle alone. Mix with equal parts of regular plaster.
• Mixing the plaster too fast causes excess air bubbles to develop
• While lightly tapping the molds helps, I found having a toothpick on hand (to stir the plaster inside each mold and to pop any bubbles) was better
• Even after allowing the plaster to dry before demolding, let it dry it for 24-48 hours before trying to build with it
• Construction adhesive is awesome for locking bricks together
• Latex paint can be bought in small "sample" jars and tinted any color you want. Check your local hardware store.

The intent was to use them for Frostgrave, but I left out any snow or elaborate fantasy bitz, so they could also be used historical or even science fiction gaming.

Horrors of the Tundra: Scenario 3

Horrors Of The Tundra

A Lovecraftian Adventure for Frostgrave

Written by Jeremy Olsen

3 - What Gods Hath Wrought?

After clearing out the ungodly flock of winged beasts, your party advances deeper into the vast trackless wastes of the icy tundra. When you make camp each night, you study the artifacts the carrion birds were protecting finding them impossibly ancient and inscrutable, pulsing with an inner light that betrays an almost organic sentience. Your apprentice grows increasingly obsessed with the artifacts and when you happen upon a group of  cyclopean ruins, he runs mad into them…

Set up as normal. Terrain should consist of dense ruins - the odder, the better.

Special Rules

At the start of the scenario, do not deploy Apprentices or Captains as normal. Instead, when a monster would normally be deployed per a random encounter, deploy an Apprentice or Captain instead until all have been deployed, then proceed with deploying monsters as normal.

Once deployed, each Apprentice/Captain is unhinged by their newfound knowledge and will attack anyone, even members of their own warband. Members of the same warband will do their best to not fatally injure the crazed model - if taken out of action by a member of its own warband, the controlling player may roll twice on the injury chart and apply either result.

Additionally, such are the soporific effects of the treasure in these ruins, that if the Apprentice/Captain comes into contact with any of the treasures in this scenario, they immediately receive +1 Fight and suffer -1 Will for each treasure token they pick up. These effects last until the end of the scenario. If, for whatever reason, any Apprentice/Captain is still living at the end of the scenario, they run screaming into the cyclopean ruins, never to be seen or heard from again. Remove that model from the warband roster.

Treasure & Experience

Treasure and Experience are gained as normal. If an Apprentice/Captain is incapacitated and survives the ordeal, they gain 10 Experience and gains the “Mark of the Chain” Burning Mark.

Horrors Of The Tundra: Scenario 2

Horrors Of The Tundra

A Lovecraftian Adventure for Frostgrave

Written by Jeremy Olsen

2 - Come, Follow Me...

Your party gets little sleep in the following days, hounded by whispers and murmurs from the deep woods, but nothing comes close enough to the illumination of fire or  torchlight. Eventually, the woods clear to reveal the vastness of the frozen tundra that falls away into the distance. As oppressive as the woods were, you now feel exposed, watched by unseen eyes. In the distance, the air shimmers faintly, the effect seemingly moving closer and closer, until nauseously the air forms shapes - a great flock of gibbering, one-legged winged creatures that attack.

Setup as normal. For each treasure placed, randomly place up to 3 Fishers in contact with that treasure. The total amount of Fishers on the board may never exceed the number of models in the largest warband.

Special Rules

Treasures are picked up and moved off the board as normal. However, when a model picks up a treasure it realizes the object is impossibly ancient and festooned with hideous characters and must make an immediate Will check. If this check is passed, the model is fine. If failed, make a note and after this scenario ends, the model suffers the Psychological Scars injury. Chronomancers and Chronomancer Apprentices are unaffected.

After each treasure is picked up, do not roll on the Random Encounters table. Instead, a Fisher appears on the board like any other creature. Remember that the total amount of Fishers on the board may never exceed the number of models in the largest warband.

Fisher From Outside
M	F	S	A	W	H	Notes
6	+1	+0	10	+0	4	Chameleonic, Flying

If a Reveal Invisible spell is cast within 24” of any Fisher, its Chameleonic ability is removed for the remainder of the scenario.

Treasure & Experience

Treasure and Experience are gained as normal

Horrors Of The Tundra: Scenario 1

Horrors Of The Tundra A Lovecraftian Adventure for Frostgrave

Written by Jeremy Olsen

Far to the north of the ancient city of Frostgrave, in the frozen arctic expanse of Felstad, legend tells of a even more ancient city of massive cyclopean architecture built by long dead, inhuman hands. Said to house dark arcane knowledge and unimaginable terrors alike, only the most foolhardy...or possibly the most unhinged wizards seek it out, for the city lies past vast leagues of wilderness, where neither man nor beast lives.

1 - The Thing In The Woods

Your parties hear tales of a strange beast that stalks the forests outside the city, a horrifying humanoid deer with putrified flesh that tries to mimic the voices of men in the dead of night. It calls to them. It pleads to be let in to cabins or stands at the flap of tents, waiting. Those unfortunate enough to be fooled by it disappear into the inky blackness of the deep forests. And one night….it calls for you.

Set up the board as normal, but place at least 5 sections of dense woods at least 8” apart. Instead of placing treasure, place one token in each section of woods.

Special Rules

This scenario takes place on an almost moonless night. As such, when any model wishes to target another model for an effect, spell, or attack that is not in base to base contact, roll one D20. This is the distance that model can see in inches. If the target is beyond this, it cannot be targeted however, the model may choose another target it can see.

Each time a model enters one of the dense woods, roll D20 and add the number of tokens that have been flipped over. If the total is 10 or more, place the Skinwalker in that wood. If not, flip the token over and continue as normal. If there is only one token left, the Skinwalker is immediately placed in that woods.

Skinwalker
M	F	S	A	W	H	Notes
8	+2	+0	12	+3	10	Horns, Horrific, Magic Vulnerability

Treasure & Experience

Treasure and Experience are gained as normal, with the following additions:

• 20 Experience for killing the Skinwalker HOWEVER that model suffers a permanent -1 to its Will value upon witnessing the true nature of the beast unless that model is Undead or a Necromancer/Witch
  

Frostwallon Monsters - Reaper Bones Batch 1

In a further attempt to clear out my backlog of miniatures, here's another batch of monsters for the sewers of Frostwallon, this time all part of the Reaper Bones line of miniatures I picked up at Adepticon this year. These are 77016 Rats, 77187 Tiik Champion, and two 77259 Fly Demons. These are the first Bones miniatures I'e ever painted, having previously had some bad experiences with this type of plastic. On the advice of a friend, this time I primed in Vallejo Acrylic Black Primer using an airbrush and did not seal them, which seemed to do the job nicely enough. I based all these on various sizes of lasercut MDF bases and added texture using acrylic spackle and my sand/model talus basing mix.

Being generic monsters that likely won't get much table time, all of these miniatures were painted fairly quickly for me, in about the span of a week. There's a lot of drybrushing and washes to achieve quick results. The rats are painted in various shades of browns, tans, and greys (really I just grabbed whatever paint pot was closest at hand), then washed with Vallejo Grey Wash, and finally having noses/ears/tails picked out in Tentacle Pink and teeth in Antique White. The giant flies are overall Moss Green with a lot of light highlights drybrushed on, mouths and eye sockets picked out in a Moss Green/Tentacle Pink 50/50 mix, then washed with Vallejo Olive Green Wash, and finally the wings painted in Pewter Grey. The fishman I painted overall AP Wolf Grey, highlighted that with various mixes of AP Wolf Grey/Antique White. I then painted the bottom torso and fins in Moss Green and highlighted that with a 50/50 Moss Green/King's Gold. The gills, around the eye sockets and mouth, and the hands and feet were painted with a AP Wolf Grey/Tentacle Pink mix.

Frostwallon Monsters - Troll, Wraith, Moon Beasts

I'm back! Between the burnout of Adepticon and painting up another commission project, I haven't had much time for personal painting projects until the last few weeks and decided to paint up a few monsters for Frostgrave. I stumbled upon the Pathfinder line of prepainted miniatures and, with the low price on some singles, decided to try my hand at a quick repaint.

The Giant Troll only cost me about $2 and he is massive, standing a good 5-6" high. Very imposing. The Moon Beasts were also about $2 each and I love them because they're actually Lovecraftian monsters from the Dream Cycle; tentacled horrors that inhabit Earth's Moon in an alternate reality. So these will function as demons in Frostgrave and will likely see play in Inquisimunda as well. The Wraith is actually a metal Reaper mini I originally painted about 7 years ago that I wasn't really ever happy with.

I didn't spend much time painting these, using them as experiments for some different painting techniques - red granite for the Troll's club, a different rust technique than what I normally use for the Wraith's scythe, and purple undercoated skin texture for the Moon Beasts. So, while they won't be winning any awards, they were fun to paint and will get a lot of use.

Frostwallon Warband

I've had most of Rackham's Cadwallon miniature line for about a decade sitting in a box collecting dust. While they don't seem very amazing now, at the time, there was nothing else like them - exquisitely detailed, 32mm fantasy miniatures with dynamic, interesting poses and a uniquely quasi-medieval/quasi-Victorian aesthetic. If you've ever read Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, these miniatures really epitomized the characters from the Ankh-Morpork subseries (prior to the release of Micro Art Studio's licensed Discworld 28mm line) - somewhat arcane, somewhat advanced, with a dash of the cartoonish. The problem was, they were just so nice and so detailed, I never felt my skills had been up to tackling them. Enter Frostgrave - an easily approachable fantasy skirmish game that finally gave me an excuse to crack open the box.

This is my first warband with at least another one or two planned just from what I currently have. The bases are CMON's excellent "Mystic" base set.

Witch Ahsa and Harlequin Apprentice

Knight, Man-At-Arms, & Crusader

Marksman & Crossbowman

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