Frostgrave: Two more for the Frozen City

Hi folks! In a change to our scheduled programming we're taking a seasonal plunge into winter cold and fantastical locations. Yep, we're back in Frostgrave.

This time I'm bringing a knight and an archer to the party. I decided to keep the Dark Age feel going with the knight and realised that a repurposed Rohan captain would pass muster. I always wanted a mix of fantasy races in the warband so another LOTR figure - the dwarf with the deformed eye - joined up as well. Let's start with him.

In addition to a mix of races, I wanted the warband to have a rag-tag feel rather than a complete mercenary company with uniforms. As a result I'm just choosing whatever colours that I think will suit the model. In this case, green would stand out nicely against the more russet knight and the tartan infantryman already. The pale under-tunic is stone grey which I also used to highlight the green. Helps tie the colours together and gives the whole model a consistent tone.

The knight needed a bit of thought. With the horses on the shield, I needed to stay a long way away from the greens of most of Rohan. Decided that reds and russet browns would be my go-to on the knight. Vallejo Hull Red made a really, really nice russet brown for the cloak, shading with carroburg crimson, over-highlighting with a bit of bone and then knocking back to red-brown with a mix of chestnut and red inks. It's not quite as shiny as it seems. Sadly, I've got to wait for better weather to get some dullcote on there. The rest of the model pretty much used all the brown tones I usually have lying around. The end result, a nice, muted knight, not flashy, a "professional".

With those two - fairly quick - paintjobs done, my warband is almost 50% complete. Three out of seven (well, 11 if you include the zombie and three demons I need to paint) is an agreeable bit of progress. More soon! Until then.

TTFN

Frostgrave: A Tartan Infantryman

Hello one and all and welcome to a significantly chillier corner of PVP towers. Yep, along with some of the Beard Bunker folks I have been tempted into exploring that oh-so-dangerous frozen city. Wrap up warm folks, we're going to Frostgrave...

There's lots of good articles out there about Frostgrave so I won't belabour the explanation, suffice to say, it's a skirmish game on the lines of Mordheim owing a lot to games like Chainmail and D&D for a lot of its mechanics. The emphasis is on the wizard leading the gang and their apprentice; but I wouldn't be me if I didn't get obsessed about the little guys too. To that end, I decided that my first Frostgrave model would be a basic infantryman from my warband:

I'm not massively enamoured of the "official" Frostgrave models (seem competent enough, but a little cartoony for my tastes), but if ever there was a game begging for third party models to represent it's broad, ambiguous "classes" it was this. With that in mind I raided my bits boxes hard and found a bunch of models that would work nicely. Mix of races - there's no distinction made in the rules - and manufacturers, but my first is an old Games Workshop LOTR Clansman of Lamedon model mostly seen in bright blue, white and shiny steel.

didn't notice until way too late that pesky snowflake in his eye socket.

I knew I wanted the armour appearing lighter - the infantrymen are only in leather - so I went for a moulded leather set of armour in a lovely rich brown. This is my new favourite leather mix, Mounfang brown, highlighted with bone, glazes of Agrax Earthshade. Creates a wonderful warm brown which matches a lot of my own leather gear (I'm a LARP-er). On top of that, I definitely wanted that lovely great kilt painted in a realistic traditional tartan. I wouldn't be able to give you a mix guide of any kind as I was mostly fiddling with shades. But the basic way method is to mix half and half of the background colour for the stripes and always mix at least a tiny bit of background colour in for the intersections. Mutes everything and makes for a nice traditional feel. Me likey.

That's it for today. Lots more Frostgrave to come, not least because there's oodles of wandering monsters and NPCs to paint, not to mention my summonable demons... bwuah ha ha haaaaa!

TTFN