Bearwoodman in Frostgrave: An Incomplete History

[Spinal Tap]

Continual creative genius; that Acris Bird is outstanding.

[snitcythedog]

That stone skull really looks the biz.  Bird came out great too.

[Bearwoodman]

Thanks all! Now to the game...

The table.



The bearded Enchanter and his band.


The Elementalist Mango Inferno, his Apprentice Monsieur Baguette (the big guy with the golden shirt carrying a freshly baked baguette under his arm) and their strange bunch of followers prepare to explore the Aviary.


A few treasures were placed on top of tall statues which meant retrieving them was a very dangerous process.


Not even "Fog" can help you up there! In fact her return to ground level was helpfully effected through the casting of "Push" at a carefully selected angle. Unfortunately her return was without treasure. Or health.


The Distortionist used "Collapse" to great effect on trees, turning each one affected into a kind of grenade showering those nearby with sharp splinters of bark and branch.


The Acris Birds were pretty tough and occasionally deadly.


At one point we ran out of model Acris Birds so used the next closest thing we had, which was, er, a Unicorn.


The Enchanter did particularly badly this game, caught between Elemental Bolts from the Elementalist, a couple of particularly persistent Acris Birds and a pair of Wraith Knights attacking from behind. The other players of course provided the appropriate amount of sympathy 

[Bearwoodman]

The Maze of Malcor: Scenario Four

The Furnace

The next encounter was to take place deep in the bowls of the University where the magical furnace has somehow just about continued to function despite the icy apocalypse that befell the city.   

Coalmen

The furnace is tended by a very particular and specialised kind of construct designed to withstand high temperatures as they feed fuel and waste into the flames.  They are covered in coal dust and embers, hence their name.

I thought this was a good opportunity to go back to the material I used to make my first ever construct for Frostgrave (see earlier in this thread): cork!

I chopped up some wine bottle corks and a roll of insulation cork and my son and I combined these pieces with some bits from my bots box to come up with some varied designs.






Painting in progress.









And done.  Now they need a Furnace to serve...

[giles the zog]

nice and good builds

[Bloggard]

brilliant interpretation and modelling.

[Bearwoodman]

The centrepiece of Scenario Four is a furnace, a square shaped structure with each side approximately 6 inches long.  There is a door in each side of the furnace through which the fuel is fed by the Coalmen.  Fuel for the furnace arrives in the furnace chamber down four long tunnel-like pipes, each one terminating in a different corner of the board.  It is via these pipes that the warbands will enter the playing area.

My friend volunteered to create some pipes so I would make the furnace.

I had some ideas in my mind about what the furnace might look like so I started sketching out some plans, one of which escalated into a sort of artist's impression of what it might look like:


I am not an engineer, but as I developed my idea it stuck me that the furnace had to have been designed to heat something, presumably water, and that heated water must have been intended to be pumped around the University in order to provide heat.  The design of my furnace ought then to include some kind of tank above the heat source and some pipes to distribute the heated water and bring back cold water for re-heating.  Including these would mean the structure on the table would make a little more logical sense (hardly a requirement when playing a game of magic and fantasy, but nice nonetheless) but more importantly would provide an opportunity to add some additional playable surfaces of different heights.  I find having plenty of raised areas for players to climb up, run along and fall (or be pushed) off tends to improve a game of Frostgrave.

Here is my detailed working drawing:


I made it from cereal packet and toilet roll cardboard, drinking straws and little jewel stickers (the latter to act as rivets):








A fairly simple paint job later and it was ready for the game.  Here are a few pictures - note the rather good entrance pipes in the corners of the board made by my friend from toilet rolls.



Again apologies for the lack of a detailed game report.  My key memory from the game was that it was very bloody with lots of Spellcasters being taken out. 







Some Baboon Thieves approach the Furnace.


My favourite moment, as the controller of the Coalmen, was managing to stuff the Distortionist wizard actually into the furnace (instant death in this scenario).   

Rolling after the game the Distortionist wizard somehow managed to survive his fiery ordeal without a scratch. 

No such luck for the poor Enchanter.  He actually died actually to death.  For the second campaign in a row my friend had lost his wizard and would have to start again at level 0 mid way through.

Some time after the game I had a bit of fun playing around with my phone camera while using some explosion markers made from polyester cushion filing sprayed black and wrapped around a flickering LED tea light to simulate the flames inside the furnace:

[snitcythedog]

Outstanding work!  One suggestion if you will have other builds with rivets find an adjustable leather hole punch.  Looks like this.

You can emboss your flat material with raised rivets without having to glue them in place. 
Again, very cool build. 

[Bloggard]

amazing. 
love the pen and wash sketch too. (that style would be great in the official product books - accompanying the more 'finished' colour paintings.
they could do some really nice stuff with the layout overall using artwork like that.)

[hubbabubba]

Fantastic.

I also think the pen and wash drawing is lovely.

[Little Odo]

That has turned out rather spectacular. Great work!

[Pattus Magnus]

That’s a fabulous build! I appreciate the though you put into why the heating system would be set up a certain way- it really adds to the plausibility!

[Bearwoodman]

The Maze of Malcor: Scenario Five

The Gondola Docks

Firstly, thanks for all the encouraging comments!  I really do appreciate it and I am glad you lot are enjoying following our progress in Felstad.  Thanks also to @snitcythedog for the tip regarding rivets – I feel I have done enough riveting on the Furnace to last me a while but next time I need some I will give that technique a try.

I am flattered by the compliments on my sketch but I am well aware that there is a vast gulf between my efforts and what the professionals produce and therefore I am very keen not to put pressure on myself in terms of quality.  This is mainly because if I feel that I need to reach a certain standard I will probably never complete a drawing (and certainly never share it!).  I will draw a picture if I feel like it and if the result helps me visualise what the scene might look like (or even if it is rubbish but was enjoyable to do) then that is good enough.

Which leads me nicely on to the terrain requirements for the next scenario in the Campaign – a set of docks high up a mountain designed for enchanted flying boats called “Gondolas”.  They are described only very vaguely in the book (although there is an illustration in the book that seems to show them looking like conventional docks on the banks of a frozen river – perhaps these are the docks at the base of the mountain?) so I thought I would have a go at showing how I thought they should look:



My friend said that he had suitable quantities of foam and offered to make them – and in a very short time he had constructed a very impressive set of structures.


The Scenario also introduced a new type of creature that has been happily nesting underneath the Gondolas (until disturbed by prying warbands) – large predatory insects known as Mantodeus.  There is an official North Star model of these creatures but my friend instead proposed using some GW Tyranid figures he had.  Painted in a very vivid green they looked very fearsome and insect-like. 




My only contributions to the modelling preparation for the scenario were:
(a) to make some flight stands to fit the small boats we had made for the “Battle on the River” scenario in the Thaw of the Lichlord Campaign – these would be our Gondolas;



and
(b) to fix up and paint some partially failed 3d prints of park benches that I had got cheap from a bargain box at the UK Games Expo.  I imagined that these could be placed on the docks for passengers to sit down at while they awaited the next Gondola flight to take them down the mountain. 




Here is the table set-up.  Our rules were that the docks ended and the sheer drop down the side of the mountain began at the end of each of the “piers” or at ground level where the cobbled/paved area on the board ended.  Figures could not enter or leave the board on this side unless in a Gondola or if pushed.



The Elementalist's Warband:


The Enchanter's Warband:


The Witch's Warband:


The Distortionist's Warband:


My friend playing the Enchanter had recently acquired the Fireheart supplement and a number of new Construct figures and was keen to try out his new acquisitions, including a small flying construct. 

Inevitably it suffered the fate of all newly painted models and was caught and devoured by the Elementalist’s Warhound.


Other scenes from the encounter:








Apologies again for the lack of a detailed report but unfortunately my memory has faded.  I do remember that the Mantodeuses which were potentially roused from sleep by any rocking of the Gondolas proved very deadly. 


The Distortionist’s warband in particular suffered very heavily from their master’s order to try and escape with a valuable Gondola rather than simply removing the treasures from the Gondola and escaping on foot.

 
After a prolonged and desperate effort the Gondola in question finally came to a halt just a few inches from the board edge (and safety), empty save for a treasure, and a couple of Mantodeuses picking their way over the heaped and unmoving bodies of a significant proportion of the Distortionist’s warband.


The Enchanter’s warband had more luck, however. A random encounter triggered by the picking up of a treasure caused the powerful Wizard Shade of Alentha Lemedes to appear on a board edge (the end of one of the piers) right next to one of the Enchanter’s Thugs. 

The Thug managed to win the first round of fighting but as she was not armed with a magical weapon she could not cause any damage to the Wizard Shade.  She therefore opted to push her opponent back in an attempt to disengage from combat.  This resulted in Alentha toppling backwards off the docks and down the mountainside, much to the Thug’s relief! 

Aletha is not dead of course, and will return. Just not in this scenario.

[Bloggard]

brilliant, as ever.

[Pattus Magnus]

Wow! That’s brilliant!