Frostknave Part 1

As we are such a bunch of lonely saddoes, we Wipsters have to go to extreme lengths on order to get some games of mini-men pushing in. 

In our latest globe trotting effort we are all heading to Ireland to be regaled with local legends, drink several kidney's worth of alcohol, gingerly manhug each other and principally to gate crash a board game convention. We've already discussed the mornings RT shenanigans (I'm manfully attempting to get more mooks painted) but in the afternoon and into the evening we are planning to pop our collective Frostgrave Cherry. Hopefully our familiarity with the rules will keep pace with our level of inebriation and we'll all have a great time and win some games.

With this in mind we have been feverishly painting our Warbands ready for that fateful weekend, you will already have seen Mr Saturday's burgeoning deadites and now it's time for me and the Assless one to show you what we've got and why we decided to pick, not only the figures but the henchman for our warbands.

First up are my Wizard and his Apprentice. I don't think you need explaining who is who. I love the wizard model, the fact that he nuts enough to be displaying a still beating heart to his enemies suggests that he means business and is quite possibly fairly unhinged. I haven't decided what kind of wizard he is yet and knowing me might not decide till the flight over to Limerick. Something about him says Burt Reynolds in a wig. The apprentice is from the Fighters/Dogs of War range and like the rest of the warband was sculpted by Aly Morrison.

I originally had no missile weapons in my warband and suddenly realised that I was going to have to risk my characters in combat if I was going to win any games. I changed my mind and hired the two archers above, both from the Marauder fighters range. 

The guy in the yellow one piece counts as a thug and is again from the Dogs of War range and is modelled after an Irish Kern. The last guy is my Warbands theif and is the Rildo the Crafty model from one of the Warhammerquest expansions. I reckon I'm going be sniping with the Archers and using the other two to grab treasure or add some added muscle to combats if they are needed.

These to guys represent the main muscle in my warband and will probably accompany the wizard or the apprentice. These are both men-at-arms and are your kind middle of the range fighter types. The guy on the left is the Altdorf infantryman form the first F2 fighters release and the other guy is Gunther from Dogs of war again.

Here is the starting line up ready to do some damage, it'll be interesting to see how many of them are left by the end of the day.

Assuming I manage to make some cash from some initial games I may need to hire new members of the warband so I've painted up some figures ready to go. 

Above are two infantryman (left and right) who are both from the 3rd F2 release and in the middle is where we start to get expensive (gold pieces worth) as he represents a Barbarian and is in fact the Fergus Mcewman figure from McDeath who I got for much cheapness from ebay (don't believe the naysayers who claim there are no bargains to be had on ebay anymore!)

The final three aren't on hex-bases yet but will be a Paladin, an infantryman and a Knight respectively. The guy on the left is the Moonduke from the Fighters of the known world set (Jes Goodwin I believe) and the other two guys are from the Marauder fighters range.

That's me done - Over to you JB!

(JB takes mic)

CHECK, ONE TWO ONE TWO...

Alright lads, now Colin has unveiled his plan, I better do the same since we're the first 2 to have all our models done for now.
I've decided to pick the champions of Law for Frostgrave as they've been a pleasant force to use in Mordheim before.
Having not played Frostgrave so far, I struggled with how to build a list I have to say. My main concern being to have models that are easily identifiable by partners I've tried to build something around what I had.

The first choice being the Wizard himself I had just the right candidate :

With lightnings coming out of every limb and his own body a whirlwind of special effects, the warlock makes the best wizard you can have really. The choice of type of magic is even a no brainer, whirlwinds and lightnings just scream "elementalist" to me. This guy won't be doing things quietly or discretely, it's gonna be fireballs and show-off all the way !

I haven't picked my spells yet but I'm gonna aim for the simple ones. Lawful knights don't strike me as particularly refined or anything so I want brutal over witty.

For the rest of the band I had a lot of choice but no real model to play the apprentice :

Although the selection above enables me to have a wide choice in case I manage to earn enough to recruit more, I had to get a new model to play the young apprentice, so I quickly painted the imperial wizard below. Bearded like his master but small and with a very simple attire, he'll be the perfect sidekick for his grandiloquent boss :

But what about the rest of the crew ? Not taking an apprentice seems to be a very risky choice from all I have read and I wanted to play by the rules for the first game at least. Problem is, once you pay his price, there's not much left for the rest of the crew.

I do like to have elite infantry in most of my games, I like a bit of reliability so the knight and templars were very tempting. On top of that the model with eagle helmet below seemed like the perfect templar to me :

The other tempting choice would be to get a captain since it's one of the only characters who can progress. Taking one early seems better than to pay the price afterwards. Once again I let my natural lazyness do the thinking and crossed the option out. The game will be my first so I want to keep things simple at the start. I'd rather have a few Jack of all trades than a master of one. 

Selecting the only model with a bow didn't take me long and the look of it made it fit the description of the archer  (I did consider taking a ranger but the cost hurt a tad too much).

Second model on the list was the hound. I love the model, it's silly and weird which is just enough for me to take it but it's also quick and enables me to break my opponent's balls if I'm clever enough. ^^

Most of my force is made of guys with light or heavy armour so since the heavy armoured guys were off because of their cost, I took as many men at arms as I could with what gold coins I had left (which just happened to be exactly enough for 3).

So that's the band so far, 7 models out of the 10 maximum, I have strictly no idea how good is that for a start but I guess with average fighters I shouldn't expect either miracles nor catastrophies! (Dice will surely say otherwise though)

I just cannot wait to roast my oppon... friends with disco flashes of lightnings and fire and beat them to pulp. LAW has to prevail,  right Joe ?

(Huge thanks to Colin for taking the time to add those special effects on our shots, I'm looking forward to seeing them applied to actual gaming shots !)