Frostgrave Second Edition

I arrived home from my latest road trip with son and heir to view potential universities to find a parcel waiting for me.

Exciting - new toys!

It was of course the second edition rules for Frostgrave.

I wasn't going to buy these. I've not played for ages and had been busy telling myself that even if I wanted to play again there was nothing to stop me using the first edition.

And then I saw the adverts. And the nice new artwork. But mostly I remembered how much I'd loved playing it with the kids, how much I liked the setting and most of all how great the models are.

So I went for the advanced order of the rulebook.

Which I topped up, just a little. The rules came with a free apprentice, which looks great, and so I bought the wizard to match.

And then i bought the genie with lamp, which I've always really liked as a model, just never got around to buying.

Martin and I had a brief chat, and we might be up for a few games. So I'm looking forward to slapping a little paint on these and venturing back into Felstad.

Midgard in the Dark Ages

The rules James is working on are designed to work for all sorts of heroic, low fantasy settings. So we decided to give them a Dark Ages spin.

In fact apart from a smattering of very low level magic this was a straightforward "historical" Dark Age battle - or at least a Sagas version of one.

Martin took the heathen Saxons and I the noble (Romano) British with King Arthur in command.

The fight began, as so many Dark Age ones do, with duelling Champions

Both returned to their ranks bloodied, but unbowed.

Merlin reached in to his top hat, produced a bunch of cards, asked Arthur to pick one and 'Hey Presto!' a swamp appeared in front of the Saxon right flank.

Arthur thundered across the board and crashed in to some spears.

Martin unleashed (arf!) the dogs of war

The battle lines clashed and ground into one another.

On the Saxon right sling stones whizzed back and forth.

Arthur was winning, but being whittled down.

The other British knights decided to emulate their leader.

The other knights lost, which put Arthur as the filling in a Saxon sandwich.

Fortunately Arthur was able to extricate himself and elsewhere on the field his foot-soldiers ensured the shore remained Saxon free for the time being.

This was good fun, always enjoy playing with Martin. The rules work nicely, once we'd remembered them, and the game soon sped up and sped by.

Middle-earth in the snow

 James organised a day's playtesting of his Midgard rules.

Martin and I played out a game involving Arthur and some Saxons (of which more anon) whilst James played a couple of games on his new snowy board using his Middle-earth collection.

Some pics I snapped of James' games in passing.

James was testing (in part) rules for giants - the first game they proved a bit too good, so they were duly toned down for the second one - with better balance results.

Skaven versus Dwarfs in the Underway - Warhammer 8th edition

Following our recent big Skaven Dwarf game Stephen and I are planning a campaign. The Thanquol End Times book has a campaign, using the Underway rules that we played several years ago, so we've decided to do that.

So we had a 1500 point warm up game to get a feel for the rules.

The game began with poison gas. This isn't unusual when men of a certain age get together with beer. But in this case it was a part of the rules.

Both sides suffered a bit as the noxious fumes blew about.

Each turn also began with the Stalactite Phase as lumps of rock dislodged themselves from the ceiling and crushed a few.

I took some shooty dwarfs but was a bit hampered by the reduced range underground.

Weirdly in the tunnels there was a temple of skulls. Doesn't sound very likely for a dwarf mine. I may have to re-write the terrain charts.

The rats had their hamster wheel with them.

After the gas phase and the stalactite phase the rats started running forward.

In pretty short order they had the clan dwarfs surrounded.

Meanwhile the hammerers took a face full of rat ogre.

The thunderers also got some ratty love. Things looked bad in my Underway!

The warriors fled, but their short fat hairy legs saw them escape he clutches of the rat-folk.

Some of whom decided to pick on the organ gun.

The warriors regathered themselves and turned to face their pursuers.

The monks munched on organ.

The hammerers, having seen off the rat ogres circled around.

The warriors got slaves up the rear.

But thy were tough enough to win the fight and chase down the rat pack.

The hammerers, whittled by magic and falling rock still did what elite dwarfs do best.

At this point the rest of the rat-men pulled back, hooping war machines and falling stalactites would do their work for them.

Fortunately for the hold, the dwarfs remained firm and as the battle ended, 900 points of dwarfs remained to only 700 Skaven - victory for the Dawi!

A good fun game. the Underway rules change things up a bit. 

Need to paint up a few more underground things and maybe get a grey mat before we kick off the campaign.