Bandits, bandits bandits! Frostgrave 01 DEC 2016

Our pursuit of building the better Frostgrave scenario continues with this one -

Bandits! Bandits! Bandits!
by Donal

A bunch of bandits are trying to profit from Felstad the same way our Wizards are - by grabbing treasure! They didn’t reckon on a pack of warbands turning up while they were trying to slip away with the loot. They hole up and try and sit the fight out, not realising that greedy Wizards will happily sacrifice soldiers to root out a nest of Bandits.

Set-Up

There are 1 bandit Archer and 1 bandit Thug (stats as per normal Warband members) per player, plus a bandit Knight as a “leader”. They’ve already collected one third of the treasure chests (1 per player) and have established a fort somewhere near the middle of the board. This should be a square about 10” per side with some high ground for the Archers to stand on. The Thugs should be grouped with the Treasures behind some barriers, walls or other 1”+ high obstacles.

Special Rules

The bandit Archers shoot at the closest visible Warband member every turn in the Monster Phase. The Knight and Thugs do nothing until a Warband member crosses the barricade. Once that happens, they move to attack the closest Warband member within their area. If a Monster Phase starts with only bandits in the area after they've been engaged in combat, the surviving Thugs each pick up a chest and attempt to make it off a random board edge, escorted by the Archers. The Thugs move directly towards the edge, only fighting if engaged (although they will force combat within 1” of a Warband member), using both actions to move. The Archers move first and then will either use their second action to shoot the closest Warband member within LOS or move again. They will stay within 6” of the Thugs. They continue until they are dead or off the edge of the board.

Treasure & Rewards

Each bandit a Warband kills (regardless of which member of the warband kills them) nets the Wizard killing them 10 extra XP.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This scenario worked fairly well, in that the 3 treasures gathered by the bandits drew us all into conflict for the "pot" of treasures that they were guarding. It made for a bit of a snafu in the middle where no model I sent in came out alive! Eoghan picked the side facing the bandit's compound on set up, so as myself and Ger tried to come around at them and into his LOS, he punished us for it. And he ended up having the shortest escape distance (only by inches, but still). In the end, the bandit Archers were the most dangerous part of the equation, so we obviously wiped them out as soon as we could. The others didn't do so well, but more on that in a second.



Set-up time! Eoghan is coming in on the long edge on the bottom of this pic. Ger is at the top. I'm on the short edge on the right of the picture. The bandits are that little gathering just outside the round-topped building in the middle.



Look how tightly packed my set-up was! Close, tight, professional. There's no way a group this good looking could leave the game with 66% casualties, is there? Yes. Yes there is. 4 miniatures walked off the board under their own power, everyone else was broken somewhere.



Eoghan gathered under cover just outside the bandit's LOS. One of the bandit Archers on the roof one-shot no-scope killed one of Ger's Archers with a Critical Hit in the first turn, but then after that they didn't have a massive impact, except making us wary of ranged attacks as usual. Eoghan made devastating use of a spell he hasn't unleashed before - Scattershot, which makes a low-power attack against every enemy figure within 12". He hit my guys and the bandits again and again and again until all those low-power attacks added up and we were on our knees.



Ger came in behind the building and had to work around the long way for the pot of treasures. He definitely got in the mix though, and certainly caused me a whole mess of trouble during the game. In fact, myself and Ger ground up against each other so hard that Eoghan would have had an easy game - if not for wandering monsters!



Our love of wandering monsters destroyed Eoghan this game - a White Gorilla came in an single-handedly flattened 2 or 3 of his dudes and wounded his Sellsword. His left flank was decimated by one big monster wandering on field. Brutal. This left him without the reserve he would have needed to drive Ger away and really win all the marbles.



Ger had acquired a new Construct, so he made this charming home-made model with a creepy, creepy face on the front. It got killed this game though, so there's no need to worry about seeing this nightmare smiling at us again. At least until he gets another one.



The carnage rolled on and on in the middle of the board, but as I said no-one I sent in came out in one piece. Eoghan came out with 4 treasures in the end, I got 2 and Ger got 3. A slight imbalance in treasure return, but still close enough that the scenario seems kind of balanced. The bandits might need some kind of AI behaviour to make them do something. The poor Thugs and Knight got ripped apart without achieving anything except delay.

We might be able to get another game in next week? Who knows with the way schedules align. We can but hope!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Keep an eye out for further updates and Art & miniatures on my Instagram profile.
You can find Eoghan and Gerard at various points on the Internet.

Another day, another Frostgrave 10 NOV 2016

Yay! Game on in the city of Felstad. We had to rush this game as Ger had to head to work asap, but it turned out that my newly written scenario (below) made us hustle as much as possible!

The Piper of Felstad
By Donal

Unknown to our heroes, an unusual musical device attracts monsters to itself. The magical seal on a nearby treasure is currently keeping it inactive, Once that seal is disturbed, however….

Set-up

Set up 3 treasures per player as normal. Something can be used to represent the musical device if desired, but it’s not necessary.

Special Rules

No roll is made for wandering monsters. Instead, every time a treasure is collected, roll a dice. On a 16+, the seal on the musical device has been cracked. Add 3 to the roll for every treasure already collected. Once the seal has been broken, a random encounter is generated every turn until the end of the game.

Treasure & Rewards

The Wizard who gets the chest that breaks the seal off the board gains 50 extra xp from studying the seals on the chest.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We kind of forgot how my Special Rules were written, so we may have rolled for wandering monsters as well as the whole sealymajig. We still love monsters in our games of Frostgrave, so anything that gives us monsters, monsters, monsters is key to us enjoying the game. It turned out that the third chest picked up - by my Barbarian - broke the seal and then there were Monsters EVERYWHERE! Well, actually, most of our results were Giant Rats, which turned up to be not that dangerous a threat. Maybe the SR should limit it to Level 2 or Level 3 encounters (See Frostgrave rule book if you want to find out more about encounter levels). There was only one real moment of terror (for me) when an Ice Toad ripped one of my guys to pieces and badly damaged another. Here's how it panned out - Ice Toads do treble damage and he rolled a natural 20 on the dice, which causes double damage. So my poor Infantryman, who has 10 Health, took 60 damage? It has to be the most punishment one of our dudes have taken so far.



I didn't bother with too many pictures, we were moving too fast for that kind of thing. I'm coming in at the narrow end here, Eoghan is on the long end to my right and Ger on the long end to the left. I've been mostly taking a short table edge on set-up (although Frostgrave is meant to be played on a square field, so bear that in mind on this ramble). A short front means it's easier to project control down the board, particularly with the way that LOS and missile stuff works in Frostgrave. But the point *is* to get in, collect something and leave anywhere on your edge of the board. So do the guys get an advantage on the long edges as they get nearly half as long again to escape with treasures off? Also, this session ended up with a weird case of "travelling" - Eoghan's Wizard almost went the whole way across the board to Ger's side, which has been unusual in our experience. If I wanted to do the same thing down the length of the board, it would take a waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay longer journey.



Eoghan came in packed tight and ready for action. He continued his "everyone gets hopped up on goofballs" strategy. They all drink a ton of potions on turn one and come in buffed (we use blue tokens for buffs). I don't know how much he's spending per game on his guys weird habits, but it must be adding up.





Ger came in strong in the middle and then slightly thinner towards the end furthest from me. He then climbed on a lot of stuff. It was weird in this game, none of us could cast a spell to save our lives. We had to spend health non stop to get spells to work. Ger got a 1 twice on Summon Demon, which creates a hostile Demon that attacks you straight away! Considering we've all levelled up our spells so that they're easier to cast, some of them as much as the system allows, it's weird that we failed more than probably even our first game! Our baby Wizards put us to shame.



Ger and Eoghan clashed hard in the middle of the field. Through poor luck and (probably) those extra Demon attacks, though, this time Ger was the one who bled most profusely. He had an impressive casualty list by the end of the game.



I had a more cautious game ( as usual ), but I tried my hand at a bit of flair here and there. My thief ran along this roof and jumped onto a nearby tower for a satisfying treasure chest collection.



My Archers and Apprentice combination still should be a good base of fire, but my Apprentice suffered the same terrible spell casting as everyone else and my Archers continue to be useless. They contribute a fear factor at least, I suppose. Keeps the guys wary.

Another cracking game of Frostgrave. The extra monsters (and there was loads) added a decent amount of extra violence. We got three treasure chests out each, and again, balanced rewards suggests a fairly balanced scenario. Very unbalanced casualties, think Ger must have had an 80% KO rate on his permanent warband members. I don't know when we'll next have a chance to play, hopefully the stars align next week, but Eoghan has written a crazy scenario that involves a Dragon that might make for another bloodbath of the highest order.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Keep an eye out for further updates and Art & miniatures on my Instagram profile.
You can find Eoghan and Gerard at various points on the Internet.

Night of the Werewolf! Frostgrave 07 OCT 2016

So it was inevitable that we would try and design our own scenarios. And Ger had a freshly painted Werewolf, so.... here's the rules!



Night of the Werewolf
By Donal

On a dark and stormy night in Felstad, a Werewolf-construct is going to cause trouble for a bunch of looting wizards!

Set-Up

Set up 3 treasures per player as normal. Place a Werewolf figure in the middle of the table.

Special Rules

The Werewolf has fallen into a vat of Mind Control potion! If he deals any damage to any figure, that figure acts like a monster, obedient to the Werewolfs desires. It only desires them to kill! The figure becomes a monster like the Werewolf and wanders about in the monster phase like any other random encounter. If the Werewolf dies, they recover their wits and can act as normal.

It’s the dark of night, so LOS is reduced to 18” and all ranged attacks (Magic or mundane) suffer a -2 penalty.

Treasure & Rewards

A warband can decapitate the Werewolf for the usual bounty, or their Wizard can choose to study Mind Control from the liquids in the monster’s corpse. The warband who decapitates the Werewolf and carries the head off the table can choose to learn Mind Control for free or improve the existing spell by 1 if already known.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When I wrote this, I skimmed the Werewolf stat block in the main Frostgrave rule book and thought "Wow, these guys look dangerous". In practise, the first Werewolf got ganked but quick. So we think that maybe it should be "One Werewolf per player". So, we re-tooled mid game to have 1 spawn on the same point until a total of 1 per player had been killed? They still didn't make a lot of impact, as we were having quite the brisk melee between our warbands anyway, but they were a factor. We got a LOT more monsters than normal on the random encounters rolls this time around and those very definitely proved to be a factor.



Here's a great example of a Werewolf-ganking. Eoghan just surrounded the poor Werewolf with infantry and hacked it to pieces. The empty space was a Werewolf 15 seconds before. We ended up feeling sorry for the poor Werewolves.



Here's where we came on the board - that's my table edge facing the picture. Ger came in on the long side on my right and Eoghan came in on the long side on my left. If you've been paying attention to our warbands, you can see that Ger is set up with only one building between me and him. Hrm. Well, this is how it goes. You make one generalisation about how Eoghan takes the biggest risks and takes the largest casualties and the very next game myself and Ger end up locked in a battle to the death and Eoghan would take the least casualties of all of us.



Ger rounded that building and smashed straight into me. Ger would go on to take almost 100% casualties (his Thug and 2 Summoned Demons carried his share of the treasure away. Everyone else bit the dirt) and in the post game recovery rolls his Wizard and Apprentice would both acquire the first "Niggling Injuries" results of our campaign. I had everyone go down except my Spellcasters and 1 Archer (more on this hero later).

edit - My thief also came out unscathed, but he also achieved nothing. I meant to acquire him a sweet Magic Bow but had forgotten. So he wandered in, hung around, and walked away again.



Now, my Apprentice/Archer back line would have made Ger's attack on my troops suffer, if it hadn't been for those extra random encounters I was talking about. The majority turned up on my table side and kept crashing into me. The Archer you can see engaged here went down straight away so my Apprentice and the hero-Archer had to make a run for it. We would have a Wild Boar, an Ice Toad and a Snow Troll all arrive in that side and turn myself and Ger's melee into a multi-sided bloodbath clusterfuck.



Eoghan played a nicely tight game. He stacked scenery with Archers, like this, to deny us big swathes of the terrain. The 18" maximum range because of the special rules in the scenario made this slightly less effective, but effective none the less.



And this little menace (his Treasure Hunter) through a series of lucky rolls mostly, but regardless, caused me endless grief lurking around my flanks. A few fights I thought would be easy had this jerk stagger away, covered in the blood of my loyal minions! Needless to say, I finally managed to get my revenge in the form of a timely Bone Dart, but it was a Pyrrhic victory.



On the bright side, we had gotten close to the equilibrium point - Eoghan had 3 treasures off the board, Ger had three treasures off board and I had 1 off the board and 1 in hand - and I was starting to despair about getting that third treasure to rival my competitors. The third treasure was surrounded by Ger's remaining warband members battling to death with the aforementioned Wild Boar, Ice Toad and Snow Trolls. BUT remember that last Archer I mentioned? I sent him into the jaws of death - mostly I just wanted to make it slightly harder for Ger to escape with the treasure himself! But after the blood had stopped flowing and the dust had somewhat settled, that mad, heroic, lone Archer staggered out of the combat with my third treasure! It was almost worth the extreme carnage of those crazy rounds of combat to get a chance to draw level in the treasure stakes!

What a game of Frostgrave! Bloody, quick paced, very violent. The scenario rules didn't have a huge impact, sadly, but I have written quite a few more, so we'll see if we can get more impact from some wacky rules. The biggest factor was the Night Rules, which we borrowed somewhat from one of the expansions. Once LOS range goes down, it really changes the power of the ranged game. We'll be having another game of Frostgrave within the next few days as our calendars align to give us another chance to play! Wooooooooo! We're going back to the rulebook for a slightly modified version of The Worm Hunts. Modified to have more worms, that is. We enjoy more monsters and more carnage.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Keep an eye out for further updates and Art & miniatures on my Instagram profile.
You can find Eoghan and Gerard at various points on the Internet.

Keeping it Frostgrave 23 SEPT 2016

So after a long month of work, work, work, we finally got together for another Frostgrave spin. We're running with 14+ for a random monster appearance, but it barely made any difference. Only once, where Eoghan's Sellsword got ganked by a freak roll and a pair of zombies.



The scenario we went with this time was The Keep, which places the treasures in the middle of teleportation circles - finish your move in the circles and you get sent to one of the other ones at random! It made for a nail-biting mechanic that dumped people's Wizards and warriors into the middle of other people's set-up's. It. Was. Crazy. Some of the turns made for serious bloodbaths. The only solution I could think of was to have my Wizard down a Potion of Invulnerability and take the trip (the Wizard got some bonus XP if they experienced the teleportation). The Potion gives you a one-turn invulnerability that I used to pop behind Ger's lines and then RUN LIKE CRAZY.



That's my tall Necromantic drink of water beside Ger's hand - Ger studiously ignored me while I was unkillable and I'm sure he knew I was getting the hell out asap too ( my reputation for "caution" is something the guys are used to now ). His guys were filing past to go grab a rich pot of non-teleporting location treasures in the middle of the board.



I made some little rimmed 2" circles to stand in for the teleporters. Eoghan tends to be ballsier and more risk-taking than myself or Ger, so his guys were hopping in and out of teleporters far more than us.



And in...



And out... all my photos seem to include one of Eoghan's guys in the teleporters. He also ends up the 66% casualty ratings each session though - it could be one of those things we should keep numbers on.



I forgot to take many pics this time around, we were playing late at night and some of us had work in the morning, so it was more important to keep stuff moving than record anything. Ger made out the best, working his way out of the corner (above) and keeping it tight and violent. He got 2 treasures from the teleporting circles and 2 from the non-teleporting stash. Eoghan and myself both got 2 teleport circles and Eoghan got the last non-teleporting one. Casualties seemed very high this game, although it was probably partly because there was a lot of Spellcaster casualties this time ( my Sellsword took out Eoghan's Wizard and Ger's Apprentice).

So a short report this time, but a good sign of being back in the swing! We're going to be getting another one under our belts within the next few days. I have a few more photos (not many) from this one, I'll edit this up if I can think of any other pointers or anything relevant that happened, but if you want an edge of your seat game of Frostgrave, I highly recommend The Keep.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Keep an eye out for further updates and Art & miniatures on my Instagram profile.
You can find Eoghan and Gerard at various points on the Internet.

The silence of (the Tower of) the Frostgrave 18 AUG 2016

So we tackled the Frostgrave scenario "The Silent Tower" today and whoa boy, it turned out to be a bloodbath again! It also ran and ran and ran as there was a lot of back-and-forth between Eoghan and Ger for the special treasure at the end. I can see why some people impose a turn limit on their games of Frostgrave. I'm not sure how many turns we ran to in the end, but it must have been between 15 and 20 (and I was off the board from around about turn 10!). The guys slugged it out, old school style. Their wizards must leave this game carrying serious grudges against each other... We ran on so long that we didn't have time to roll the after game resolution of treasure, etc etc, but that will all get sorted out later.

So "The Silent Tower" is three interconnected towers in the middle of the field. They are totally anti-magic. You can't magic onto it, such as by Leap or Teleport and you can't cast magic while in contact with it either. So you have to ascend it the old fashioned way, a long, hard climb to the top. A huge fat treasure (3 treasure rolls worth!) sits atop the roof, and that was the issue that led my opponents to kick ten kinds of tar and as many varieties of shit as they could manage out of each other. There was 6 other normal treasures available, we managed to get two of these each in our race for the loot. Ger made this rather spiffy tower, so it got pressed into action for the occasion.



The scenario special rules didn't cover it, but seeing as it is an anti-magic structure that cancels all spells that touch it, we also ruled that Demons, Constructs and the Undead couldn't make contact with it, so only Warband members could join the scramble up the tower. Another weird twist to the rules that came up - it says "figures are allowed to climb blah blah blah"... so can Warhounds climb? The rules seem to indicate they can. Eoghan's swarm of Warhounds may have been the reason this question came up - and they took advantage of the fact that we agreed they could a little, swarming up one story of the tower after Ger's heroic Barbarian... but more of that later.



Here's how we started out - that's me coming in from this edge, with Eoghan to the left of the M&M's box there and Ger on the right. We drew some patches of difficult ground on the battlemat with a dry erase marker as "Ice". It's a half movement speed obstacle in Frostgrave, so we just drew a few square inches of it here and there. It could get very game-slowing to throw down too much.



From l-r, this is how I came on the board - My Apprentice and her usual friends, a pair of Archers and my Ranger. In the middle, my fast moving group which consists of my Captain, my Barbarian and my Warhound. And then on the far end my Necromancer, his usual bodyguards of a Thug and Infantryman and the Thief hanging out nearby.



Eoghan's Wizard was in a tight knot with his base of Archery fire and 5 (!!) warhounds hanging around behind. His Apprentice is in there somewhere. His Captain and a Construct are toward the top of the picture. Also, the cursed dice of the game. We had so many failures this time around! I don't know how close to the grave from spell failures the guys got, but it was close.



Ger went on a bit of a broader base then us, his Wizard closest to us in this picture. His Captain is in the middle and his apprentice around the corner there. Or maybe the spellcasters are the other way around. I keep mixing up his Wizard and his Apprentice for some reason.



Early on, I hubristically Jumped to the top of an outlying tower. I had a "plan" to drop a Fog between my guys and Eoghans, then fight off his Warhound pack while his Archers couldn't cover them. I failed to cast the damn Fog every damn time. So my Wizard was soon shot off the top of the tower by these guys -



Eoghan's pesky Archers, completely not obscured by Fog. It was the wounding I got here that made me decide not to contest the special treasure up on the top of the Tower. Things were hotting up, and it was time to cut my losses.





Meanwhile, Ger's Barbarian went on a heroic, one-man climb up the damn tower. He made it the whole way up and almost the whole way back to the ground again when Eoghan shot him off the wall.



That's the contested treasure sitting on the right, just past Eoghan's Warhound Warband. When I said it was a bloodbath over there...



My guys slipped off the side of the board just as I caused the only random monster to appear - 3 Armoured Skeletons. We almost never get the random encounters, for some reason. The worst one we ever got was the Bear that mauled Ger's archer in the first game we played. These skeletons were too slow to catch my guys and never got a glimpse of the other Warbands, so they just wandered about for turns and turns and turns.





The guys then had a back and forth for the half dozen turns or so that I mentioned. It had crazy highs and lows. One of Eoghan's Archers picked up the special treasure and finally got it out of there, mostly from a last turn Leap from his Wizard, which was fortuitous because the turn before a failed Leap spell had nearly killed the same Wizard. I don't know what fraction of both their warbands were KO'ed and injured, but it must have been around the 2/3 mark each! Every turn, I was sure a different warband would make it out with the special chest. Drama had, spells cast, blood shed. I was both glad I was away from the carnage and sad to not have benefited from the rich pool of spell casting XP the guys picked up, especially Ger, as the dice roll luck turned and successful spells were a-plenty.

Another great game of Frostgrave! Ger has made the effort to paint his terrain, which I must do for mine - or at least spraypaint them black, which covers a multitude of sins. I have an idea for a slightly different game next time, but we'll see if that pans out. It may use some of the special rules from Into the Breeding Pits, the most recent expansion.... again, if it pans out.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Keep an eye out for further updates and Art & miniatures on my Instagram profile.
You can find Eoghan and Gerard at various points on the Internet.