Fantasy Gaming (5) - Frostgrave, Warhammer Quest and Other Diversions

 A few of the guys have been musing over doing a short, 3-game Frostgrave second edition campaign day and as a result I've dug out all my old original Nickstarter stuff and slapped together two warbands. This is the first of them. I'm going to go with a Sigilist this time around. The Wizard and Apprentice are metal, the remaining figures from Frostgrave Soldiers 1. I went with close to box art for the wizards paint and themed it around that. So the wizard has a body guard themed in dark green with a matching rune and the apprentice has her own with a light green and matching rune. Its simple but as someone who doesn't name models for example I thought it was a nice narrative touch.

I've also been thinking about Dungeons lately, something we'll come back to. I did a tiny bit of digging and discovered that there are just a ton of resources available to print your own copy of Warhammer Quest '95. Now I've never played it and have no idea if its worth the hassle but I've been wanting to learn some of the equipment at work so figured this was a good opportunity to self teach

I mentioned dungeon crawls. I've been in the early stages of writing my own dungeon crawl ruleset. I'm not ready to share much in the way of details yet but after we got a bit of playtesting in the other day I am ready to share that it exists

I didn't manage to get many photos as we were pretty engrossed in the rules discussion. I'll admit I spent quite a while writing rules with place holder numbers that did not work at all on the first encounter. A quick on the fly adjustment though and everything started working perfectly. There will be more down the road but for now all you get is this quick little teaser. 

Dark Ages (1) - Start of SAGA Vikings

 So this was originally going to be the first of many posts about Pillage but we'll circle back to that. 

Below is a photo of the first unit of my new SAGA Viking army. 1 point of Hearthguard. 

And now a brief story. I picked up a copy of Pillage as well as the Anglo Saxon and Viking starter bags. In parallel to this I purchased SAGA 2, Age of Chivalry, Age of Magic, and Book of Battles. I was able to finally find a copy of Age of Vikings, so I figured in for a penny. I figured I could build the pillage sets and then expand into SAGA. On the same visit to my LGS I picked up a bag of the new(ish) Victrix Pagan Rus as well. Now here's where it all gets tricky.

I was originally going to try my hand at LBMS Dry Transfers but as of the time of writing this, the "tariff situation" has made it impossible to source them. Victrix is currently not taking US Orders and from my research no one in the US has enough stock to do a whole bag. 

As I started to build the Vikings I thumbed through the Pillage book and unless I'm mistaken I think I have quite a few figures. The book recommends 100 point learning games, 500 regular, 1000 mega. A chieftain (required) is 50 points with a shield and armor. I think you see my point. This makes the sets an amazing purchase if you're going to just play Pillage. 

It also really solidified my choice to just build a SAGA army and have access to stuff to play Pillage. Rather than build and paint a handful of guys at a time, I figured I'd just paint the 30-40 ish for a SAGA force and then cherry pick to play Pillage. If I can source a unit of Beserkers and combine the Archers in each set to make one unit of 12, I can make the following list:

Warlord
Beserkers
Hearthguard
Warriors
Levy

Which leaves me with enough to either make another Hearthguard or Warrior Unit if were not too fussed about the chain mail being sprinkled in the warrior units. 

So now that the units been built and painted, the question of shields comes roaring back into focus. I wasn't thrilled about the idea of freehanding the shields and was debating trying to make my own decals when, while perusing Koyote's beautiful Pagan Rus, here on Lead Adventure, he mentioned some 3d printable shields from Rodge (who runs the SAGA Thorsday Podcast). I printed about 25 to start. These have very slight relief and basically allow for a more paint by numbers approach. They mostly all curled while drying but seem to have dried and cured flat. 

First, masking taped on to an old filament roll and the backs are given a spray of Vallejo Leather Brown Primer

Flipped and given a light grey primer

And finally painted in place

I picked color palettes based off the shield transfers. They certainly get the job done. I'm just about done with the warlord and his banner bearer, I'm about half way thru the warriors already. I also 3d printed some saga dice to use but will go back and get the official ones if we end up getting in to it. 

I've got some real grand ambitions for terrain for this one but wanted to at least start the project log before I bog down it. 

Napoleonics (7) - Silver Bayonet Playtest

 So we played a game! Scott and I got together and I taught him Silver Bayonet. We played the first scenario from the book about hunting down a hobgoblin. The game was very quick and to sum up the action, we advanced, found the hobgoblin almost immediately and with a couple lucky rolls I was able to kill it and then I took to the hills. Pretty easy system with some neat ideas. My main takeaway is that I didn't enjoy Frostgrave because I found the D20 too swingy. This is a 2d10 system which works much better. 

We're going to get another game in soon and then probably start a quick 3-5 game campaign. Sorry for the lack of photos but I spent so much of the game referencing rules. I've learned my lesson. I had the ebook of the rules, plus new recruit for my list. It was a lot of flipping back and forth and scrolling. Needless to say I think I'll be picking up the hardcover. 

Fantasy Gaming (4) - A City Fit for a King

 I've been threatening to play Mordheim for years now. One of the big barriers to entry however, for anyone familiar with the game/genre is the high amount of terrain needed. I've been printing scenery for it off and on for the last couple years and last weekend decided it was time to break it all out and get it painted for an upcoming mini Frostgrave campaign.

These were all painted with a friend on Saturday and I spent a few hours Sunday and Monday finishing them up. They could stand for a bit of a clean up especially on the wood color but en masse I don't think its really that noticeable. Quality, Quantity, Etc... 

The buildings are currently a mix of two manufacturers. The overwhelming majority are from the Shadowfey ruins set from Printable Scenery. The small corner ruins, small 2 floor corner ruins and the single building in the center with the iron bars on top are all from the Hexengarde range from Tiered World. 

There's still a few details to finish, but it's all very minor stuff. I think I'm going to do the clock face in brass instead of silver but I was rushing to finish before a work trip. I think there's one tiny roof section for one of the larger buildings I need to print. In short though this is all but done and ready to play. I was hoping to take some more set up table glamour shots but that will have to wait until I get a game out. 

For now most of the project fits neatly in this tub. I have a second tub for the wizards tower as well as eventual scatter, bridges, and other bits. 

I think we spent all told around 10 hours painting, but its all done and for that I'm quite happy. 

Fantasy Gaming (3) - The Dwarven Mountain Hold Marches Forth

 As mentioned in the last fantasy post, I've been working on stubby little dwarves. Here are some photos of the "army" in its current state. 

The force so far is the basic contents of the newish starter box for The Old World though I've gone ahead and swapped out one gyrocopter for a Dwarf King from the Skull Pass set. 

So with this, we're ready to play some games. I've already looked ahead a bit towards a couple of the other rule sets and have noticed there will be a few things I need to add. I'm still going to be starting with Old World but am forming a bit of a plan to try other games sooner. I set out originally planning to just commit to these square bases and not think twice about it but as I've been doing rules research I'm much less sure I'm going to like the old world enough to make this the one I've commited to. Well see. 

Next fantasy posts will probably be another subject though I already have more dwarves on the bench. 

Top 5 "New To Me" Boardgames of July 2025

Believe it or not, it's that time again. July saw 33 games played, bringing the yearly total up to 187. I played a few favorites, (Toy Battle 4 times in a row for example) Scout, Ark Nova, Ironwood. I also played a few unplayed titles. As you can tell I'm sure, the pendulum has been swinging back towards wargaming though to me, its all linked. So as usual, let's begin with;

Honourable Mentions

Black Sonata

Black Sonata is a solo deduction and hidden movement game. If you're a solo gamer that sentence either sold or stopped you from getting this one. Mechanically (though it took me one completely messed up game to figure out) the game is really sound and super interesting. It feels like a very real game. I did something very different with this one. I downloaded the free Print and Play version and spent weeks cutting, gluing, holepunching and sorting stuff. It was worth it for the experience and to ultimately say "I won't do that again"

Top 5 of July 2025 

5. Galileo Galilei

A dry euro from Capstone, designed by the same designer of SETI, sign me up. This is a game that I saw on several Origins haul posts. When it arrived at my FLGS I grabbed a copy and it hit the table pretty quick. There's not a ton to this game in terms of innovation but it is a solid Euro experience and it does what it does very well. The iconography was a lot to process at first but by the end I was quite impressed. A very solid game.

4. Farm Hand

The first of two Kickstarter games on this months list, Farm hand is a small box trick taker. In a ever evolving world of "Trick taker games with a list of twists to the formula," Farm Hand sure is a "trick taker with a list of twists to the formula." I happen to love these but YMMV. In short, this is a trick taker that has things like, increasing number of cards each round, if two players play the same number they're out for the hand, and bigging on number of wins. Its also a solid experience and one I'd break out at any chance. 

3. Rome In a Day

This is a classic I'm told. It uses a "I cut, you choose" mechanic which is pretty unique. It fits my usual theming, tile laying interests. There's not a ton to say about this one but I found it super enjoyable and different from most of what I've played lately. Each turn you take your tiles and split them. Each player then chooses to take either the large pile or the small pile from their neighbor. You keep what they don't take. It leads to a lot of interesting decisions in a very short time. 

2. Twinkle Twinkle

This is the latest kickstarter from Allplay to deliver. Twinkle, Twinkle is a tile laying tableau builder. Much like River Valley the game is simple but offers some fun "high score chasing" gameplay. Its quick to play and has rather nice clear tiles that allow for all sorts of placement. Theres a rather large expansion and my only real criticism of this one is that the core box is too small to fit the expansion content. 

1. Tango

Two player trick taker. Trick taking games typically need more players or have some sort of core change to the rules to allow for two. This is a purpose built two player trick taker. The main mechanic involves what is effectively a dummy team mate but it all just works so well. I really enjoyed this one and it fits in my "break it out and get in a quick game on a school night" box. It's rather simple but the game is real snappy and I enjoy trick takers. 

So there you have it. The games this month all fell on the simpler side but it was a nice batch to try out. The pendulum has been swinging hard back towards wargaming and painting lately so even though I've been keeping up on the board games my main interest is gravitating towards painting again. I've nearly got the dwarves totally done and am nearly ready to get in some games with them. I managed a horus heresy game as well as a barons war one. Lots of exciting stuff.

Fantasy Gaming (2) - First Test Building Done

 As mentioned in the original Fantasy Gaming post, there is a pretty long list of rulesets on my radar. One of the sort of "to-do" list items of my gaming and painting career as of late is to finally try Mordheim for example. I don't imagine it will be a ruleset I become obsessive over but as it does require quite a bit of terrain I figured it would make for a good project. 

I have about half a table worth of terrain printed so far. The buildings are a mix of Printable Scenery's Shadowfey Ruins and the Hexengarde range. This first building was one of the "scatter ruins" pieces from Hexengarde.

There are about 3 of us who are going to end up painting the whole board eventually so I kept the paint jobs incredibly basic. Subscribing to my usual "quality, quantity etc" line of thinking I figure that even though I could take this piece quite a bit further, it makes more sense to make it quick and easily replicatable, even for non hobbyists.

I primed in black, drybrushed gray over the stones, wet brushed on the burnt umber and unbleached titanium colors. painted on the metal bits and called it a day. 

I was a little hesitant to post this because I have no idea how soon were getting together to paint the rest of the stuff and it may be a while but because this building only took 33 minutes to paint and I could use a little more respite from the Dwarf project I wanted to crack this out and see how it looked. 

On the dwarf front. I have just half a unit of warriors and the copter left to paint from the original batch. However disaster struck yesterday. Like a moron I had been keeping the box of dwarves on the same bench as the printer. I guess it finally shook them loose and after picking up the pieces I was left with this

I have since reglued almost all of it back together. The bolt thrower is damaged and I havent tried to repair it yet. The king lost his arm and has been mended. Almost everything else was just regluing to bases thankfully. I had just stuck the figures directly into the wet vallejo putty which as you can see was not a strong enough bond at all.

Anyway, we're nearing the end of this first milestone with them and I'm looking forward to showing the "completed" force pretty soon. 

Barons War (1) - First Units

 I managed to get my hands on a copy of the 2nd edition Barons War Starter box from Wargames Atlantic. I guess the demand has been so high for this box that WA pulled it from sale while they catch back up on casting it. I was going to wait, possibly even skip it entirely however with the announcement that it could be potentially difficult to find I decided to grab a box now. 

I had ordered the 1st edition rule book along with some Test of Honor stuff quite a while ago and had intentions of playing the game anyway but never got a chance. Once Wargames Atlantic made the announcement they were doing plastic figures I picked up the first box of knights. I have a growing collection of Crusades era stuff as well though it's my understanding that the rules for all of the supplemental stuff will be updated later. As of the time of this post there are official bridging documents to get version one supplements to version 2. 

Paul has wildly beaten me to the punch and already has something rediculous like 2k points done so I decided to tackle this project next. This is the start of one of the two "demo" forces supplied with the quick start guide. A unit of peasants with hand weapons and a unit of knights with swords and large shields. I decided that much like the Napoleonic project I'm not too fussed with the accuracy so i've decided to go with a Green/Cream colored force and a Yellow/Black to oppose. Loosely using the Game of Thrones Baratheon colors but frankly theyre both just schemes I like. 

 Briefly on the painting. The peasants were done quickly by choosing some palette colors and some consistent colors. Basically all weapons were painted with Vallejo Old Wood from their sadly now discontinued pz aces range. The metal was all AK Gun Metal. All the belts boots and hair were done with AK Leather Brown. These are the "consistent colors." The remaining details were picked out at random using any of the following; AK Hull Red, AK Grey Brown, AK Nato Green, Vallejo Grey Blue 70943. Thats it. Everything in both units was given marine juice. I went heavy handed with the juice and it shows but honestly, they're done and thats what counts. The knights were done similarly but the palette colors are AK Deep Green and AK Vampiric Flesh. The new basing scheme is from Paul and is Vallejo Chocolate Brown with a Vallejo Tan Earth dry brush.

Napoleonics (5) - French Silver Bayonet Unit

Returning for a bit to the Napoleonic Era. I printed up a batch of figures for Silver Bayonet. These are from Kool Kiwi. I think they're pretty nice. The sculpting is pretty good and they were super fun to paint. 

I used more or less the regular French palette I've been using. 

The sculpts are all unique and the price was right. In particular I like this vivandiere. I did a tiny bit of "freehand" on the details which worked nicely with the marine juice.

I have Spanish on the workbench next.

Cabinet Painting (1) - The Mandalorian (and the process of "hate-finishing" a piece)

 Over my time collecting in this hobby, one love I've really had has been Garage Kits. I've collected some models kits, some figure kits by companies like Andrea Miniatures or AK Interactive. Lots of little one off 28mm figures that I've bought solely to paint as what I've referred to as "cabinet pieces." Nothing with gaming intent just stuff to paint and look neat in a display cabinet. 

This is one such piece.

I was in a manic mood yesterday and ended up spending quite a bit of time cleaning and organizing my hobby dungeon. I've run out of shelf space to store unfinished kits and such and now have some piles of boxes accumulating "near" the shelves. I bought some more storage tubs but had to make a decision to move another shelf to a large storage tote. After a lot of deliberation I decided it was time to box up all the plastic Bandai kits as well as a shelf or so of figure kits. I'm not sure why but it felt a little heartbreaking and a bit like a failure on my part. I think a lot of hardcore hobbyists may be able to relate. We buy these kits with good intention to paint them. As they accumulate dust and sit unopened it feels a bit like a wasted opportunity. So as I took each kit, wrote down what it was, and sent it to the bin I kept thinking "Oh! I can't bin this, I need to paint it." Then the rational part of me goes "then just take it out of the bin when you want to paint it you idiot." Still it's had me in a weird mood. 

Now on to the awkward genesis of this piece itself. 

This was a bust purchased probably some time around the first season of the Mandalorian from Blackheart Models at Wonderfest. Like all of my purchases I fully intended to paint it. I had just come hot off the heels of my Hannibal bust (from the hit TV show, Hannibal) and was itching to dive into another kit. I broke out this wonderful sculpt. I think it was maybe 3 parts? I said, this will be cake, have it done in a couple of days. 

Here is a photo from August of 2022

There he is in the background. Another from September of that year

Looming. Watching. Judging. One last one to sell the point, this ones from February of '23

So he sat, almost finished for almost 3 full years. So what happened? Well I'm not thrilled with it. First of all I set the expectation way to high. I really pride myself in part on the quickness I can get through stuff when motivated. My Award-winning Dr. Doom bust was painted the week of the show it medaled at. All this to say when I set a lofty goal and then stall out it kills steam. The first issue was that I struggled hard with the metal on a surface that big. I used AK Gunmetal as I always do and even after a dozen coats it still seemed streaky to me. The second problem was Grogu's skin. I started with the color I used for the kruleboyz and it just didn't want to cover over black. So nothing was quite working how I thought it would. I had been using the base as a handle of sorts so I didn't want to paint it yet so it just didn't feel like any progress was being made after a night of painting so I let it sit. 

Last night I had Scott over for some board games and made a joke about how it isn't finished yet in the context of all that organizing and realized I should probably just finish the thing. Applying a similar "quantity has a quality of it's own" rational to the bigger stuff is sort of a waste to me because the whole point is to look "pretty" but at some point something needs to give. 

The base was a struggle but I chose to trust that process and after going to bed and looking again this morning I'm happy with it. Over a black base I used a blister pack sponge to mottle on Vallejo Tan Earth, Beige brown, and then Iraqi sand. I thinned out some Vallejo grey blue to do the rune looking bits. 

I'm calling it done for now to move on to something else and clear off the desk. The next cabinet piece is partially primed and will see some paint this week maybe. Eagle eyed readers can probably see it in some of the other photos I've posted. 

Fantasy Gaming (1) - Reclaiming the Mountain

 As a lot of (1) posts this one starts with a story. 

Way back in the day, when I first dipped my toes into this hobby, I started with GW. After a trip to the mall resulted in a demo of 40k (Battle for Macragge specifically) and a stern "no that's way too expensive" from the parents I had the itch. A friend and I experimented with DND and a rudimentary skirmish game using legos that we made up but years later I dove head first into the hobby proper. I ended up going way off the deep end and purchasing the starter boxes for LOTR, Battle for Macragge and the WHF Battle for Skull Pass. A year or two after that I ended up getting the batallion box, as well as few odds and ends to add to those Dwarves. 

Now here's the thing. Very shortly after buying all this stuff we ended up discovering Malifaux which resulted in my effectively not touching GW for years. The dwarves and the other projects were boxed up and moved into the back part of the closet as my journey took me from Malifaux to Infinity, to historical wargaming and then many years later, into Age of Sigmar.

During the awkward transisiton of editions, I ended up digging out the dwarves. Some of them had basic serviceably paintjobs for someone who at the time didnt know what he was doing. Ultimately though, I had moved on from them. I sold them for a penny to a friend of ours who wanted to get into Age of Sigmar with us. At the time I had left it at, "if you ever want to move them on again hit me up first and ill buy them back."

A few more years go by and now were past AOS again and I have a strange desire to paint some dwarves. I had heard that they were sold again and this time to another member of the AOS group. By chance he had stopped into the hobby shop I worked at and a deal was made. In Kyle's hands they had formed rank and gotten reinforcements. Back into the cardboard storage boxes they went. 

Another year or so and I broke out a couple dozen of them to try Warlords of Erewhon with Scott. At this point I did finish the scheme and update some of the models to match the new improved but still basic scheme. We tried the game a couple times and then back into storage they went. 

These are some of the oldest models I own. Purchased at the dawn of my hobby career with my own money. This was one of my earliest steps into a world I had no idea would become so all consuming. There are grand plans this time around and my hope is that the journey will be part of the magic. 

So what is this plan? 

My plan is to take these dwarves, build an army out of them and then try the full suite of games. The first part of this plan is relatively simple. I'm going to start by "recreating" the newest starter box for the Warhammer Old World Dwarven army. This is 2 units of melee dwarves, 2 of shooty dwarves and 2 gyrocopters. There is one caveat which is that I only have 1 copter and don't really intend to buy a second. 

That said, we're going to finish these dwarves and then Scott and I are going to play a series of games trying out a pretty long list of rulesets. I've split the list into two general categories; big battle and skirmish. See below

Big Battle:
Warhammer Old World
Battlecry
Warlords of Erewhon
Hobgoblin
Kings of War
OPR Fantasy, and OPR Regiments
Fantastic Battles

Skirmish:
OPR Skirmish
Thud and Blunder
Sword Weirdos
Saga Age of Magic
Warhost
Song of Blades and Heroes

Now this list is by no means comprehensive but it's a start. If you have a fantasy game that you love please let me know what it is and I'll give it a shot. 

Now in all the years of fantasy gaming I've done I've also collected other armies for various projects. My hope is that in finishing these dwarves I'll be able to spark something and be able to use that momentum to finish a few other projects as well. In addition to that, I've always wanted a wood elf army and now that I have the ball rolling, if I'm able to finish this project I think I'll treat myself to that.

For now though, I leave you with a side by side shot of the earliest figures I've painted alongside the updated version on the left. 

As of the time of writing this, I have the king and the warriors above fully painted with just their bases left to do. I also have the Thunderers rebased and about halfway painted. Will probably have more done between writing this but will wait to show it off as a completed force in the next post.