Forestgrave

[Wirelizard]

Apparently it takes a global pandemic to get me gaming again regularly.

A few weeks ago our local COVID-19 situation reached a point where we were able to (cautiously) open our "pandemic pods" up to a limited number of people, so my brother, a friend, and I decided to "open the pod bay doors" in the name of gaming and actually getting some goddamn socialising done. We did a one-off ACW naval game the first Sunday, then decided on Frostgrave as we'd all picked up ebooks of the rules during the Osprey freebie offering a little while ago.

Today was our second outing with our current "we have no idea what we're doing" warbands. I'm running an elementalist, as is Sean, and I think my brother is running an illusionist but can't remember for sure.



To make three-way games fairer my brother took the trouble to cut a 4 foot circular mat; this was slightly undercut by the fact that our dining room table is less than four foot wide and my 2 foot by 4 foot gaming boards are still at a friend's place. The Forestgrave table still looked pretty darn good, I think.

We've decided to re-set with brand new warbands for next Sunday, so we can explore new magic users and totally different warband compostions. After we each have a pair of warbands up to about the same levels (3-5 or so) we'll probably just swap back and forth as the mood takes us, or retire the older warband entirely as we settle into a play style.

More over here on the blog: http://www.warbard.ca/2020/05/31/forestgrave/

We're enjoying getting into Frostgrave, and I see just recently the 2nd edition is now listed as "probably summer 2020 publication" over on the Osprey website, so that's something else to look forward to.

[Bloggard]

good looking set-up.

[syrinx0]

Congrats on getting a game in. 

[Grumpy Gnome]

Great looking table. Sounds like you had a good time.

[scatterbrains]

Very cool looking setup! What's the mat you're using? DIY?

Rounded edges for a game like frostgrave is a good idea I think, looks more natural.

[Wirelizard]

Very cool looking setup! What's the mat you're using? DIY?

Rounded edges for a game like frostgrave is a good idea I think, looks more natural.

The mat is DIY, done on canvas drop cloth with paintable caulk, brown paint, and lots (and lots) of flock.

It's actually at least a decade old, at one point my brother and I made a huge 9x6 mat from drop cloth over the course of a long weekend, but it was so big it was awkward to transport so it mostly sat around. Last year my brother chopped a 4x4 square skirmish mat from it, and now he's cut this 4 foot circular mat and I think just has offcuts remaining.

The rest of the scenery is a mix from all three of us. The conifers based together in the foreground I bought from some guys in Vancouver, the big tree trunks in the background are 3d prints, the ruin bits are new from Corey and mostly Hirst Arts plaster, and the rest of the vegetation bits are mine, mostly scratchbuilt at home. The GW plastic bits are Sean's, he's not much of a scratchbuilder.

I badly need to re-sort my terrain, I have more brush and shrub areas somewhere but they're buried with other terrain. That will take an entire long weekend, though, and involve covering the dining room with gaming stuff while it explodes out of storage to be re-sorted, so my enthusiasm for that job is not high, to say the least.

[EndTransmission]

Great looking table and congrats on getting a game in!

[Wirelizard]

Started on my first piece of dedicated Forestgrave terrain last night, aiming to have it table-ready by Sunday midday. Work from home, while otherwise horrible, makes this more possible as I can wander between my "work" desk and my hobby desk, as they're a couple of metres apart.

Here we have a tree that has lifted a huge stone platform up into the air, somehow. Part of a huge stone platform, anyway. The whole thing is about 6" tall and made almost entirely of scrap diverted from the recycling bin!



Junk CD from work, with some random large washers hotglued to it for ballast. The trunk of the tree is cardstock from one of the Frostgrave plastic figures boxes rolled up and scrunched around, slathered in lots and lots and lots of hot glue. The whole trunk got covered in white glue and toilet paper, which makes awesome tree bark.



The platform is just a chunk of half inch insulation board, that old standby for stone modelling. The small branches above the platform are toothpicks, bulked out with hot glue and also covered in toilet paper.



28mm plastic Frostgrave figure on there for scale, on a 25mm base.

Black primer over everything, mixed with white glue for extra toughness. I've done sand and fine gravel on the base, will paint that up tonight and start the drybrushing of the tree and more on the platform.

[EndTransmission]

Fantastic looking tree!

I know what you mean about working from home making hobby stuff better. My hobby desk is about 90 degrees to my work desk, so I end up doing stuff during conference calls

[Wirelizard]

My computer desk is socially distanced from my painting/modelling desk, just enough that if I've got headphones on (ie am suffering through another goddamn conference call) I can't reach over to my painting desk and grab something to work on. Plus my computer desk is small and crowded already. Ah well.

Weird tree is finished, anyway. I wanted something weird and fae and impossible, and I think I've managed that. Lots and lots of different flocks, tufts, flowers, and such on the base helps a lot.

[syrinx0]

All the different textures really look good on the base as well as the tree.

[scatterbrains]

That's a very cool idea! Might have to steal it ^.^

[Bearwoodman]

That looks great! And thanks for the tip about the tissue paper/white glue bark - that looks very effective and I will attempt to imitate it!

[Wirelizard]

That looks great! And thanks for the tip about the tissue paper/white glue bark - that looks very effective and I will attempt to imitate it!

Doesn't it look great? I didn't come up with the idea, but I can't remember where I found it, so consider this me just passing it on.

If you're interested in tree ideas, Dr Mathias's Arboreal Extravaganza over on the Tutorials board is well worth going through in it's entirety. That may actually be where I first heard the TP-as-bark idea, actually.

[LiamFrostfang]

  way cool!!!