Frostgrave Bound

As part of our 'All Change August' we had a four player game of Frostgrave last night.  It was the first game for three of the players (and I have only played a few games).

I used my 'Men of the North' warband with an Enchanter and one of the players used my 'Sons of Empire' with a Summoner., you can see them both here.  T'Other One brought a freshly (and very nicely) painted Necromancer with assorted hangers-on, most, appropriately, from Reaper Bones.  The fourth player had to make do with assorted D&D pre-paints (some of which made my first warband ages ago).

I set up the ruins in advance, using most of my runed terrain on a roughly 3' square mat.

Close to the beginning, the necromancer and soothsayer's warbands can be seen in the top table corners.

Judas the Summoner (just peeking out from under the floor of the ruin) and his warband savagely pick on one of my thugs (in red on the first floor of the ruin).

The battle hots up around the platform between the necromancers forces and those of the soothsayer.

I think it went well, I certainly enjoyed it, though it did play a bit slowly at first as we grappled with the rules. 

We used the new experience chart in Maze of Malcor (and also available here), which doesn't reward kills other than wandering monsters, and is more rewarding of casting spells.  Perhaps because of this, there was very little fighting to begin with.  We all seemed intent on securing a treasure or two before scrapping over the last few.

There were some great moments, including a big melee around the necromancer's and summoner's knights, with various thugs joining in.  One thug dropped a treasure to get there (we quickly house-ruled that dropping a treasure is a free action), leaving it unattended for Hakon the Wise, my enchanter, to Telekinesis it to safely.  We had to draw things to a close after four turns, though by that point all the treasures had been secured.  At the very end of the game, the soothsayer's knight was killed by a wandering skeleton.  Unfortunate.  In the end we all got some gold and a few shinies, Judas went up to level 1, and the rest of us made level 2.

In summary, great fun, and the ruins looked good.  I think the tower I made a while back using foam textured with a Green Stuff World roller looked best, and I must get more terrain made to this standard.  The cardboard stuff is OK, but not on the same level.  I also need to round up more monsters, although very few arrived in this game.  I suppose I could paint another warband for the soothsayer, if we get to playing this as a campaign, probably using either old heroclix/mage knight minis, or the actual official Frostgrave minis.