More Frostgrave

I played another game of Frostgrave against Grim the other day.  This time we played The Keep, using the splendid teleportation discs made by JP on his Tales of Frostgravery blog.  We decided to keep to the first edition rules for now and continued with our warbands from last game.
Hakon was without some of his better soldiers, the knight and the tracker, wounded and resting for the duration, and a thug and a man-at-arms who died in the ruins last time.  He hired a templar and an infantryman to make up for their loss.  Orangorn had been spending on various potions and scrolls to give himself an advantage, but how well would his planning pay off?

The scenario is an interesting one, with four teleportation discs, each with a treasure on it.  There is a 75% chance that a disc will teleport anyone stepping on it to another random disc.  This gives a wizard an experience boost if he or she is personally teleported by a disc.

The ruins of the keep

Orangorn's warband.  Note the crossbowman on top of the arch

Hakon's band ready to explore

Opening moves, Orangorn's woman-at-arms is the first to try one of the discs

The core of Hakon's strategy.  Keep a magic and missile base, while the rest go after treasure

Thugs from both sides begin claiming treasure

Orangor's new knight faces the blinded templar

Orangorn's thug grabs a treasure, while a rat menaces Jonrik

A great fun game. We felt the scenario really added to the experience.   Highlights included Halfdan Pushing the crossbowman off his arch right at the beginning of the game.  Hakon taking out the bold (wo)man-at-arms who's experiment with the disc took her right in front of the wizard.  No time for fancy spells, Hakon took her out with a wallop from his staff.  One of my archers also got a lucky critical against the new knight.  Hakon himself braved the teleport discs as well, and after a failed try, they took him right in front of Orangorn and the battered crossbowman.  Fortunately, the game ended (time constraints, alas) at the end of that turn, so we assumed the two wizards stared hard and menacingly at each other, then backed off.

It certainly didn't go all my way.  Once again Orangorn made good use of Wizard Eye, and this time proved adept at Blinding Light.  At one time three of my soldiers were blind, and with casting numbers of 17, 17 and 20, I was lucky to get even one back in play.  Worse, one of the blinded solders was my new templar, who I had high hopes for, with Strength giving him a bonus, along with an Enchanted Weapon and Fleet Feet (which I mistakenly cast after he was blinded, having forgotten).

Some of Orangorn's spending had been on teleport potions, which proved doubly interesting when used to teleport onto a teleport disc.  We couldn't decide if it helped or hindered, but it certainly made the game great fun.

In the end I had put four enemy soldiers out of action, for the loss of one.  Fortunately everyone survived, though my Infantryman will have to miss the next game.  None of us actually got treasures off the table, but I had claimed three to Grim's one.  We have house ruled that in such circumstances we get the treasure value, but not the experience.

Hakon gained sufficient experience to rise to level 6, thanks mostly to his trip on the disc and taking out the woman-at-arms.  Orangorn has got to level 5.  Hakon did well treasure-wise, though he was disappointed to find that both grimoires he found contained spells he already knew.  He has traded both of them for one grimoire with a new spell.

I'm not sure when we will get another Frostgrave game in, but this has been a great couple of games, and has helped cement Frostgrave as one of my favourite fantasy skirmish systems.  I'll admit to wondering if I could use the new Fistful of Lead fantasy rules instead of the actual Frostgrave rules to give a similar experience, but I think I'll stick with this.  I will, of course, play the fantasy FfoL anyway, in fact, Bodvoc and I are planning a game for October.