Frostgrave Part 5: Frostgrave Game Day

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Now for the seriously overdue conclusion to my Frostgrave series. I truly do not know where to begin, I’ve spent the last few weeks ruminating on how to articulate the experience and journey. In short it has caused some serious writers block.

Its been an absolutely wild ride. I started this project at the end of July with the quest towards an epic day of gaming and playing Frostgrave with my wonderful husband. Over the course of the past two months I’ve been tirelessly planning, printing, and painting as much as I could to truly bring a terrain dense and immersive game day. This was to accomplish two primary goals.

• Try to overcome some of the downfalls from truly enjoying the game in our first few games from February which I discuss in Frostgrave Beginnings.

Due to the lack of terrain the game was significantly overpowered towards ranged attacks which reduced the fun of the game for me and really felt tremendously unbalanced as a game. Conclusion Learned: Yes increased terrain does significantly reduce the power of ranged combatants and really make things fun for all warband members.

• I really needed a day to bond with my best friend which wasn’t just about our kids.

If those of you do not know we added another member to our crazy family four months ago and of course newborns can take a serious chunk of time out of your schedule. On top of that, due to Covid it has been incredibly difficult to have a date night or get out of the house. So the result was to find a baby sitter to watch the kids and be able to have a day of action filled gaming. As we do not currently have an active Tabletop group I was sorely missing being able to play and is a big piece of things we enjoy doing together. This was something that I could plan in advance and really get hyped about with him.

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Overall I think these goals were accomplished. Now before I get into it more lets check out a few of the action shots. 

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Scenario: The Mausoleum

Our first game consisted of playing one of the very first scenarios you read in the core rule book for Frostgrave the Mausoleum. This scenario requires two things; a mausoleum and skeletons.

The mausoleum is placed in the center of the board and has 4 sides with doors on each side. There are four treasures on each of the corners of the mausoleum and two placed by players within nine inches of the mausoleum. Of course Mr. Crazy had to place a treasure on the very top of the mausoleum to climb and get to while I placed my extra on a stack of barrels which also had to be climbed (or a well aimed Telekinesis spell). The added features about the scenario is the fact that a skeleton will come out of a random door at the end of a turn along with the monster rolls when treasure was picked up and we added the optional monster encounter rules. This of course lead to a growing danger of more and more monsters as you started to dwindle in warband members.

Overall it was a great and very close game. Mr. Crazy shut down my Sigilist really soundless with Curse and Plague of Insects making it almost impossible to cast any spell. My wardog Yippers was the real MVP and killed almost half of his warband in protecting my people trying to get the treasure. In the end I captured 3 treasures while he only captured 2 with one left on the board swarmed by monsters and unable to be retrieved.

Scenario: The Keep

For game number two we played the scenario the Keep. This story sets up with four magical discs which hold treasure but could magically teleport to a random one of the four. When a player tries to pick up the treasure you would teleport. What made this game interesting is the fact that you could potentially teleport into the enemy own disc and suddenly it becomes incredibly difficult to run away.

This game I really loved the set up of the discs and usage of the ruins from Hagglethorn Hollow. However I did find some areas too clustered for good movement. The more open area allowed for significantly more movement and sometimes advantage for team Necromancer and made my Sigilist warband only transverse less than 1/4th of the board. I definitely feel as if I swung to far in density. But you never know until you try right?

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Conclusion of a Major Project

While I of course didn’t complete every goal I set out to accomplish in this endeavor, I’m incredibly thrilled in what I have accomplished. Ironically during the course of this project I have been constantly reminded by friends and family that I am incapable of doing anything halfway. So to not even start painting pieces of terrain or even prime in some cases definitely bothered me. However there was an indescribable feeling of satisfaction and excitement sitting down at that table after all that time. Knowing you put in so much time and effort and seeing the fruit of your labor and enjoying it for a game is why I started the hobby in the first place.

Overall project and experience are definitely going to end up being a hobby highlight for the year. I had so much fun, my cheeks hurt from smiling for hours afterwards. It felt incredible to have things to plan for and talk about moving.

The Highs

Printing
Almost every single piece of terrain 3D printed on this map was created in the 2021 year (exception of the Mausoleum in the center). Approximately 80% of the terrain was made in a two month span August – September 2021. Some ruined buildings and pillars were made earlier in the year.

100% of this Battle Mat and our Warbands are 3D Printed! Note some random encounter monsters are manufactured miniatures, mostly reaper.

Battle Mat
Usage of Scatter Terrain was 100% a game changer for me and fantastic. I loved having treasure stacked on top of a bunch of barrels requiring you to climb up to them (Or use telekinesis) along with having figures standing on crates to get a better vantage point for shooting. There is so much versatility in spells and cover and highly recommend putting in the time for a collection of scatter terrain.

Painting
Lastly the largest high is that every single member of our warbands had paint on it. They were not 100% finished to my typical standards but having painted minis on the table was an incredible feeling. In the end I painted a record of 19 models in the two month span and of course took the majority of my painting time.

The feeling of community. During this project I really bonded and shared what I do and what I enjoy with not only my husband but also friends. They cheered me on and even helped in the painting of some terrain and models. The tabletop crafting and miniature painting hobby can sometimes be incredibly lonely and it was an absolute treat to be able to have others apart of my journey. If you have been following along with me on this project I thank you for cheering me on.

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The Lows

I of course was disappointed that I did not have the time to paint everything. Yes I know I was being overly ambitious but a girl can dream. At least you can get a glimpse of the colored filament I was trying to use up, I almost always paint what I print (or aspire to) so colored filament doesn’t matter to me.

It also strangely bothered me that I did not have a 3 foot by 3 foot battle mat and I used green construction paper to flush it out. I also do not own a frost or snow themed battle mat (yet) as the 2 foot x 3 foot mat I bought is coming later in the year from a Kickstarter by EC3D Dungeonmats who made the current dungeon mat I am using. I love the double sided mats so much I decided to back their latest kickstarter to get a frost one.

I didn’t fit in all the aspects of map layout design I really wanted to accomplish. I worked hard on a bridge and river to attempt to incorporate water into my board but in the end it did not make sense space wise for the games. I did spend a good deal of time on that and am definitely disappointed it didn’t make it in. This resulted in all the research I did in my map design to be kinda thrown out the window but did turn out to be a fun table in the end regardless.

Hobby burn out. Working so hard on so many things seriously have taken a toll on my hobby printing and painting since game day. It was incredibly difficult to keep up with all the various things I was producing, their hobby status, what I was missing and keeping it all organized. I normally am great with creating pages and print logs for every single thing but in the mad Hussle to get stuff on the table I have yet to compile the data for better searching of what is out there in the community. This is definitely something I plan to fix in the future.

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Since the conclusion of this project I haven’t dove seriously into anything yet for personal hobby time but have officially started working professionally in the 3D printing space. Don’t worry i’ll share more in the time to come.

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What’s Next in Frostgrave?

The Frostgrave series on the site has truly been something special for me and obviously based on comments and feedback a project others can relate with. So I am opening this up to a group conversation and am curious what you think you would like to see and read.

• Would you like to follow on our adventures with Battle Reports of our games?
• Would a useful section of the site specific for Frostgrave be useful on images and tools of how some of the rules work? (A birth of a game section for the site)
• A quest to paint every miniature in the bestiary?
• Reviews of supplements and expansions? What is in them, what they provide
• Simplified “what you need to play?” so other new players can join in the fun.

Or perhaps should I start and prep for a different game in the Joseph Mccullough collection such as Ghost of the Archipelago, Ranges of Shadowdeep, Stargrave.

Let me know!

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As always happy hobby and have a wonderful day.

Cheers,
Carrie, Crazmadsci the Crazy mad scientist

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Frostgrave Series

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Past Hobby Blog Posts