From Sunday to Friday last week, my two brothers and I ran the whole Thaw Of The Lich Lord campaign. 10 Scenarios in 6 days.

Everything was hosted at my place and prepared by me - I thought you guys might enjoy this little "recap"-Post. :)

Preparation:

I speedran building a gaming table by relying on tabletop scenics' official frostgrave MDF-Terrain line and making it look "icy" only by using rattlecans of different shades of blue.

For Random Encounters I crunched through over 80 Minis in two (extensive) painting sessions. For the effect of the enemies/undead/creatues being surrounded created made of green miasma, I just dipped minis that were primed white in green speedpaint. Giving everyone a fancy base "sold" the look and made them look not-"lazy", haha.

All in all I'm super happy with my decisionmaking in this process, as our table and creatures served it's purpose very well but kept the focus on our intricately painted warbands.

Additionally, to save us time, I prepared engaging map-layouts for all 10 scenarios beforehand, so my brothers only needed to recreate the "map" (with enough room for deviation), while I read the scenario to them.

Houserules:

Apart from a few houserules and "patches" for 2nd edition (using 5 treasures with 1 center-treasure instead of 6 normal treasures for each scenario etc.) we used a homebrew-"supplement" to activate random "mods" for each game (If you wondered what the black cards are for in the pictures).

The supplement took a lot of work and already functions very well. So I'll be able to share the whole thing here soon. :)

Before Scenario 10 I announced to them, that one of our Wizards secretly was working for the Lichlord and sacrificed itself and his warband-members to him. We then all rolled a D20 and the one with the highest roll was allowed to control the Lichlord and his guard during Scenario 10 (I won the roll and proxied Death Cultists with my warband).

As my little brother's beastmen warband needed a bit more space for deployment, we agreed to have a 4" x 4" square available in each corner of the map. This rule will stay, as it didn't hurt anybody and makes things easier if you decide to go for larger minis/bases.

Warbands:

The ideas/builds of our warbands were:

Pirates (Enchanter):

- Enchant and Embedd Weapons

- Use Telekinesis to steal treasure

- Have a Wizard with high fight and use Heal to make up for low HP-stat

(Mostly Reaper Bones Minis with a lot of Kitbashing and Sculpting Beards, Eyepatches, Pirate-Hats, ... The Gorillas are Bears and the little monkeys are Warhounds)

Bees (Chronomancer):

- Be speedy with Time Walk and Fleet Feet

- Play the Objective

- Manipulate uncontrolled creatures using Control Undead, Fast Act and Elemental Hammer

(Halfling Beekepper Minis with Beefolk "specialists" and monsterously large killer-bee Snow Leopards)

Zoo (Elementalist):

- Buff already strong units with Strength

- Decimate enemy warbands with Elemental Ball

- Make up for slow(er) movement with Wall

(Chunky Citadel Beastmen minis including an Owlbear mommy and cubs (Bear and Ice Toad) and a menacing undead minotaur used as a Knight)

Photos:

For most games I did not document everything that happened to a degree to be able to make a battle reports. But I took photos of some highlights where I can give some context. (I will probably make another / multiple other posts for this)

Conclusion:

Pros:

The campaign and setting were a ton of fun. My brothers and I will remember this week for our whole lifes.

For:

the Scenarios full of variety,

the uncontrolled creatures that gave us immense trouble sometimes,

how frustrating Frostgrave is, when you have bad luck

how godlike you feel, when you somehow roll 15+ for an entire game and steamroll everything in your way

and (most importantly)

the fun we had on and off the table.

This game truly is a gem.

Cons:

Hosting the campaign in the matter we did (little time between games) required a lot of preparation (which is not the issue) but even with all the effort I did (preparing trap doors, doorways, the treasure room and the cauldron for example), I would have wished to know beforehand, that some scenarios need a bit of an overwork to "function".

Some scenarios (most noticably the "Run Of The Rangifer") seem like a vague but not entirely fleshed out idea - where the mechanics to make the Scenario work as intended are not present in the book. (In this case: No way to deliberately spare and escort rangifers off the table)

Also, Scenario 10: The Final Battle wrongfully presents itself as a cooperative scenario. In my opinion, having 2-3 players work togehter to kill the lichlord and his guard is child's play. Players that enjoy a challenge are better off fighting for treasure while the Lichlord is a disturbing factor / additional XP-objective for them.

I will definitely soon design a "Scenario 11" for my brothers, where the Lichlord's final form will give them trouble and cooperation is needed in order for them to have a chance.

All in all the campaign was a massive success for me and my brothers and I can definitely imagine a re-run in a few years. :)

Thanks for reading!

My son and I were playing a game of frostgrave. He said he had a clear lign of sight on my aprentice (Fecula Flyblown). I thought my bloodangel Archer was a meatshield. So he took a picture, to prove his point. Well he was right and hit me with a critical hit Elemental Ball....

Had to share the picture with you guys!

Enjoy!

Wizkids Tent & Lean-To, mainly for Frostgrave and Five Leagues.

This is the ruined quarter of our fantasy township, sculpted in clay first, moulded, and now getting painted one building at a time. The sculptor is Johnny Fraser-Allen, who spent years at Weta Workshop before he went full time on terrain.

Every wall was broken deliberately at the sculpting stage rather than snapped afterwards, so the breaks read properly from any angle once it is down on the table. Happy to answer anything about the process. The dog contributes nothing but morale.

Setup for my first ever game of Frostgrave! Managed to put together this table and any feedback or advice is welcomed. I should know more of what i need when i play more games..

"Hey Frostgrave community! Is it normal for a single game to take 5 hours? What's the best way to speed things up? We used a map that was way too big and forgot the rule about pushing enemies back 1" after winning combat. Any tips for faster games?

Good evening my squeakas!

So in the last few months I've been getting into the Skaven from the Warhammer fantasy universe, but I'm not fond of that system of game (RPG, Skirmish or Wargames) but love the Frostgrave system. I have a loose idea of how I want to build my wizard/apprentice (elementalist), however I am unsure if I just want to use the RAW for soldiers since they don't really feel like...well, giant rat people mechanically speaking. So has anyone done this, and if so, what did you do to spice up the warband? Did you homebrew special mechanics? Just use the rules as written? Would love to know.

I’ve been having a lot of fun taking a break from AoS and Trench crusade to paint this silly project. I’m really happy with how they’re turning out, Reaper Minis have come a long way!

Hey everyone,

I've made a ruined terrain collection, including modular ruined buildings, the Church, bridges, and various scatter terrain pieces.

The modular ruins are designed to be mixed and matched, so you can build different layouts depending on the game you're playing.

They're available on MyMiniFactory, and there's currently a 30% sale going on if anyone is looking to add some ruined terrain to their collection.

Hope you like it!

https://www.myminifactory.com/bundle/4396/The-Ruins-of-Lumenfall

So i see in the rule book thieves and thugs are free. So once i use up my 400 gc points should i just fill the rest chaf units. Is there any downside?

Any advise for good dwarf wizard kits. Planning second band already.

The thief's robbed the spotlight in our last game.

Check more pictures in our Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/p/Dca_8jtFr53/?img_index=2&igsi=eG00a2JwMjc3cjNt

I made a group of "skaven" to play with my friends. I decided to make a small video showing them in action.

Using fog, animal companion (the rat ogre is a bear) and teleportation to trap the enemy.

Played my first game yesterday, and I was fortunate enough to do it on one of these stunning boards at a new store in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Had a blast! It was a very exciting and cinematic end, as we managed to extract some treasures and most of the party through a portal before they became wurm food.

Game went great! Thanks for all the advice! The three of use really enjoyed it and are going to start a campaign for a couple of games to see how it goes. This is what my map was after your advice.

Had my semi-weekly game with my daughter. Her witch Nia against my Elementalist Marco the Flame. This time we rolled up the Complex Temple, and it was a blast. I started out in the hole due to 3 of my specialists being out this game (badly wounded from the last games butt-whooping I took). We all made a mad charge for the center, and had a great melee there. High moments for me was my wizard taking her summoned bear out of action. She then proceeded to dismantle the rest of my crew. Only my man at arms and my infantryman made it off with 2 treasures, the rest ended up out of action. Post game was brutal for her though as she lost her barbarian, man at arms, and 2 war hounds to death (she immediately rehired their “twins”). My post game wasn’t as bad, with only my apprentice suffering a badly wounded roll, so she’ll be missing the next game. Fun times. I love this game.

Experimental Withered Crossing Build

A while back, I posted first images of my Withered Crossing bridge expansion for my Diorama Tiles set. Since then, I’ve been experimenting a bit to see just how versatile it really is.

Today I’m showing you a pretty experimental WIP board that’s currently sitting in my hobby room in a similar state:
I wanted to push the limits and test how far I could go in creating truly interlocking and intersecting bridge structures. I think the result is pretty impressive. What do you think?

I’ve also been working intensively over the past few months on an editor designed to generate print lists for my STL setups, so that it will be possible to recreate such setups in the future:

The whole project has taken on a life of its own, and I can now even use it to generate complete, almost Lego-like build guides.

This makes it possible to explore and understand even massive setups like this Lava Board, which I created in my new Builder… and if you’re crazy enough, to build it 1:1 ;-)

But see for yourself - here is a build guide for an extremely large board:

(100x100 cm or 80x80 cm, if you print at 80% like I do)

https://diorama2print.com/diorama-tiles-studio/guides/Lava_Crossing_BuildGuide.html

The new editor is still a work in progress, but it’ll help me share my builds and ideas in future. That’s been a real bottleneck in my one-person project so far :-D

If anyone wants to try moving a few tiles around in their browser, I’ve uploaded some samples to my server that you can download, so anyone interested can give it a try:

https://diorama2print.com/diorama-tiles-studio/builder/

By the way, if anyone’s curious, the Summer Sale is currently underway, and of course I’m in:

🔥 MyMiniFactory Summer Sale – 40% off through September 14

Code: Summer26

https://www.myminifactory.com/users/JoeFrizzy