Preparing to play Frostgrave Solo

Today I am going to run through some of the background thinking and organising I have been doing in preparation to play an extended version of Frostgrave. 

Where I travel across wilderness terrain in a sort of Hex crawl manner, using terrain cards and dice rolls to decide if the players have managed to navigate successfully to where they need or want to be.

Visit some locations which have NPCs and thriving communities and others that are more typically Frostgrave by nature, ruined cities and dungeons. To this end I have created a few maps and systems to create the world they will explore. I have also used many supplements that I will list at the end of this post to help in that endeavour.

A close up of the local area the gang will be travelling through and investigating as they do. Starting in the village of Sagan and travelling North  between the two blue glass beads. 

The Gang record sheet that I have put together for this adventure.

The first Hex to be travelled through on the first day. The terrain created by using some cards that I copied from a guy called Avian about 15 or 20 years ago now, and which I recently redrew for clarity. They originally designed to create a random battlefield for Warhammer or Kings of War, so many thanks to Avian.

I like to made colour maps for D&D and have used the same method here, but when it comes to the practicalities of running a game, D&D or otherwise, I prefer to use black and white version to make notes on and for clarity.

This particular Island is one I have used before to play D&D in. Its called Calandara and is part of the Shattered Archipelago consisting of many different sized islands. This particular area has not seen any action in any of the last 5 years of play, so I decided it needed some attention.

A couple of views of how the whole set might look, prior to any tabletop play.

Each Hex on the larger map is represented by another Hex shown below for more detailed exploration.

As you can see, if you squint, it takes 4 days to cross a hex in a straight line. Of course there is always the chance of getting lost or having a random encounter slowing the procedure down.

Thanks to the following for helping in various ways:

Frostgrave, Shadowdark, D30 Sandbox Companion, Une, The Perilous Wilds, Sandbox Generator.

5 Parsecs from Home

Hope that's them all, if not will add some more in subsequent posts.

Cheers.

Dead Trees for 10 mm Play

 

It recently occurred to me that some dead looking trees would go very nicely with all the ruins I had built. Since I had none I set about rectifying the situation.

My first attempts made form a basic card shape and smothered in PVAcrete looked absolutely awful and even after several tries at saving them I could see no future for them other than the bin, which is where they ended their days.

I had seen a couple of You Tube videos using gardening string to create bushes so decided to give it a try. Luckily Mrs Daxio has plenty of course string just right for the purpose, so I set too. 

I immediately preferred where these skinny, gaunt trees were taking me and so persisted.

They look suitably cobwebby and the original colour of the string meant I had little painting to do to get them to a playable state.

Disaster had been avoided and there would be dead trees in the city tonight....I was happy.

Buildings in 10 mm: Frostgrave and Warmaster

This is another small set of buildings I intend using in my 10 mm version of Frostgrave. These are different from the first set in that they are more obviously medieval and featuring lots of timber work made from matchsticks. 

I  intend mixing these in with the other models, they give me the opportunity to create sets or groups of terrain that expand variety and keep games from looking too repetitive and boring.

A few close ups to give a little more incite into how they were made and painted. The only materials I used here that are different from before are the tapers for floorboards and matchsticks for timber sections.

I think these will work well for both Frostgrave and Warmaster, either fantasy or historical.

I am currently working on some rocky outcrops and an Orc or Viking village.

Future projects will include some complete buildings which I think will come in handy for D&D city encounters. 

Frostgrave in 10 mm

This is my 1 foot by 1 foot board for playing Frostgrave at 10 mm scale. It makes setting up and leaving very much easier than in 25 mm and I can have a very large number of buildings and ruins on the board.

These buildings I have been making over the last couple of weeks, had great fun doing them and will do some close ups of the more interesting builds in the future.

There are some rough ground obstacles shown here built on 2p pieces for weight and my initial attempts at treasure markers, which will have to be used as something else as they are too large. 

Here are the 10 mm miniatures I'm using to play with, they are all homemade and if you caught my last post about 30 mm flats then these are some of them reduced on my printer and cut as they were.

Group of skeletons above.

From left to right we have:

Hudson the thug, Eschiva the infantryman, Anselem the enchanter, Hafiza the man at arms and lastly, Brice the thief.

I'm playing solo and with only half a warband, so no apprentice, and all my soldiers are non specialists.

I'm trying a system where bye all the models receive xp and progress. Lets see how that goes?

A bit concerned that at this scale it could be a bit fiddly to say the least, only time will tell but the first practise game seemed ok to me, so will plough on. I'm hoping to sort mix in some Mordheim vibes and create some other game controled warbands that my motley lot have to combat in a narrative way. Will be playing about with some of the rules to suite my needs.

Found some Battle of the five armies terrain ruins yesterday so will be repainting those to use here too.