Weather Appropriate Gaming

One of my goals for 2018 was to get in a tabletop game each month.  I managed to squeeze in a game of Frostgrave last night, despite the 'Beast from the East', keeping me on track so far.

We played a three sided game (one player was hit by the Plague and was unavailable) and as it was the first game of Frostgrave for the other two (and it's been a couple of years since I played) I prepared four warbands each with a different wizard to lead it. The warbands were all very similar, being variants on five thugs, two archers and a knight.  I even pre selected spells, avoiding out of game spells, to speed things along.  If we liked it, we could revisit it and select our own warbands.
I borrowed a trick from Ghost Archipelago and placed a central treasure worth double (I suppose it should have been triple?) and we each placed two normal treasures.  We also played to an end time rather than until only one side was left.  We used my two painted warbands (see here and here), plus a selection of D&D prepaints, and just about every bit of ruined building I possess.

I'll not give a blow-by-blow account, but here are a few highlights.

As the warbands arrive all seems quiet.  The Necromancer can be seen marshalling his forces in the top right, my Chronomancer was at the bottom of the table and the Elementalist set up behind the building just visible on the left hand side of the picture.

In the early stages of the game the Chronomancer advances his warband towards two temptingly close treasures.  Poor dice rolling meant no Fleet Feet to speed the thugs along, and some damage to both the wizard and his apprentice.  The Necromancer cautiously advanced through the ruins, hugging the table edge, whilst the Elementalist moved his troops boldly towards the centre.  His missile troops climbed up a ruin to give a good field of fire, and he successfully used Telekinesis to move treasures (including the central one) closer to his side.

As the looting begins, the Chronomancer realises his hiding place at the back is not safe as a Wraith (looking like a vampire) appears.

Although he can't damage the wraith, he can force it back, allowing him to run to safety.  (I then realised that none of my spells could damage the wraith).  In the end the templar charged in and gave his life to protect the 'cautious' Chronomancer (dratted double damage).

One of the Necromancer's archers is in the tower, taking pot shots, mostly at the Chronomancer's troops, while his knight moves to deal with a wandering wolf.  The Elementalist's thief moves towards a treasure, hopping to defeat a nearby thug, after his master had failed to telekinesis (is that a verb?) it away.

As the battle draws to a close and the event known in Felstadt as 'Last Bus' approaches, the Elementalist has cleared up most of the treasures near him.  The Necromancer's thug took out the thief, claiming the treasure, whilst the Chronomancer's apprentice risked death (pushing a spell and ending up on 1 HP) to Leap a  treasure bearing thug to safety.

All-in-all a great fun game.  I'm sure we made some mistakes, and I was unlucky with my spell casting, not only failing many rolls, but failing sufficiently to take damage almost every time I did so.

There was little combat, which perhaps matches the beginning of a campaign, where the wizards, new to Frostgrave, haven't yet built up the rivalries and enemies that develop in a campaign.  The Necromancer lost a thug to one of my archers, and one of my thugs fell to his bowfire.  The Elementalist only lost his thief.  Telekinesis proved very useful, as did Leap.  There was little else in the way of successful spell casting, Bone Dart was cast successfully several times, but it almost always missed.  I suspect if we get more into this we will be a bit cleverer in spell selection.

At the end the elementalist won quite convincingly, with two ordinary treasures and the central one.  We ruled that any treasures still unclaimed on the board were lost, but that any being carried at the end would be claimed.  I'll tighten this up in future, so that the treasure value is gained, but not the experience, unless the treasure is actually carried off the board.

Hopefully we can get another game in next month; I'd like to get a campaign going where we play once a month to give time for preparing the warbands with any new recruits etc, and also to build any required scenery.  Time will tell, now what's the casting number for the 'Create Extra Hobby Time' spell?