F:GA Crew pt. 3

Apparently I haven't posted about my crew since December... Well, I've done a lot since then.



A lot! But how did I get to finished? Well, there were a lot of steps along the way...



As you can see in the far right, my Herator originally had a green coat. I hated it though, so I went to red. I thought about blue, but since the Warden was mostly blue already...





I kept the color palet simple. Muddy Olive green, Oceanic Blue, and Heraldic Red were the basic colors. Skin was done mostly with Tanned Leather. Keeping these colors consistent throughout helped make for a unified look for the crew. The hats helped too.





I did play a bit with the accessories. One guy got a backpack, another a belt pouch, a knife, and one a length of rope. The backpack I had to paint on straps.





I'm super pleased with how her face came out, and I love how the blue looks!





But do I ever dislike the fact that she's sculpted with a quiver. If I felt a little more confident, I might have cut off the arrows and turned it into some sort of scroll case.





I'm less pleased with her fact, but I think it ended up okay.





The highlights are a little cartoonish, but they pass the 3' test really well.










Total Minis Painted This Year: 21

Hangout Figure of the Month: November

For November, we picked the Medusa for the figure of the month both because she's one of the few monster minis armed with a ranged weapon, but also because she's an encounterable monster in Ghost Archipelago.

After washing, scrubbing, and glueing her to a 1" base, I based her with brown liner, and then gave her a coat of Reaper's Dragon Green (I think). Her belly scales were painted with Tanned Leather (again, I think). Eyes and fangs were painted with Linen White, with heraldic red for her tongue, and the pattern on her scales (I'm sure on these two).



The red isn't shown above, but you can sort of see it in the picture below.

At this point I added a bit of greenstuff to the base, used brown liner on it, and then washed the whole mini with Sepia Wash. It ended up darker than I was expecting. Mostly this is because there was a tiny bit of brown liner still in the small well I was using, and so also made Medusa a lot darker than just a normal sepia wash would. Since I wanted it to really shadow the scales, this ended up working out. It also had the benefit of bronzing her skin more than I expected, but I guess when you add sepia and green, that's the effect you get.



Not pictured, but I used Desert Sand to highlight the chest scales, and repaint the bow.

F:GA Crew pt. 2

The crew is really taking shape now! It's nice to work with a solid plastic kit again. It's been a long time since I worked from a single sprue and just built the guys on it. Not since my 40K days really... And given that this is my... 5th kit for Frostgrave, it's my own damned fault for waiting this long.

I snipped out all of the hand weapons and the empty left arms to match with them. There were also 2 shields, and a couple of other accessories that I cut off and gave a quick clean up of. I totally forgot to wash them though. Will remember to do better with the next set. After getting them all glued together, I primed them with Reaper's Brush on Primer.



Then, once dry, it was time to get painting! Keeping with my inspirational picture, I selected Reaper's Soft Blue and Muddy Olive as the base for the cloth, and Rich Leather for hats, flesh, and boots. I used a very diluted Brown Liner for the decking. Everything was cut with Flow Improver.



I really need to build/make a better photo backdrop...

F:GA Crewmen

Since I want a fairly cohesive warband, and both my Heritor and Warden are going to be painted with a distinctly eastern flair, to match the artwork for the Warden, I've been thinking that I want to shift a bit away from the slightly Arabic feel of the crewman kit.



Maybe to look a little more like this?



Now, the clothing is generic enough that I can easily pull that off, but the bearded heads with the keffiyeh? Not exactly the look I'm going for. So... Out comes the green stuff. I've got enough beardless faces that can sculpt a conical hat onto for my crew. And enough greenstuff...



Okay, so maybe a little harder than I thought? I found the greenstuff more ready to stick to me or to the table than it was to stick to the heads.



Next is to pick arms and other equipment, and then get painting. I'm looking forward to seeing how they'll look all painted up.

Of the 5, I think 2 will be sword and shield, 2 just hand weapons, and 1 with a staff. For the next set, I'll probably do the hats after the arms are on, to make sure the weapons don't get in the way.

Splintered Deck in Ghost Archipelago

After reading through my copy of Frostgrave Ghost Archipelago, I knew that I'd be starting my warband soon... And not the mythical "I'll get to that soon" but actually soon.

Actually I knew I'd be doing it before I even had the book. So much so, that at ReaperCon one of the few actual purchases I made was for a Splintered Deck texture stamp from Happy Seppuku.



I usually don't focus too much on bases. In fact I tend to make them fairly bland and generic so that they'll fit in whatever game or RPG. For Frostgrave I was a little more focused on making winter themed bases for the minis that I was painting explicitly for it, but since I was using a lot of re-purposed minis, it wasn't consistent. For Ghost Archipelago, It will be! My entire warband will all have the splintered deck bases.

Oh, and soon is NOW!

Of course using the texture stamp means that I'm cutting a lot of minis off of their integrated bases. With the plastics, that's easy. The metal minis? That's a little more effort. On the other hand, it does mean a more scrap for the melt table! Once I had the minis ready, I mixed up a batch of greenstuff, stuck it on the bases and then pressed it into the stamp. After pulling it off, I then stuck the feet into the greenstuff. This warped the stamp's texture a bit so I went in and fixed that with my sculpting blade.



In addition to the Warden and Heritor, I also did up the bases for 5 crewmen using the 5 bodies from a sprue of the crewman plastic boxed set. Of course I need to figure out what these 5 guys are actually going to be. Probably all base crewmen for this batch...

So this is where I'm at now. Next step is to finish building at least these 5 the crewmen, and then get them painted.

Ghost Archipelago Plans!

I already have my Herator and Warden figures, but I need a crew. The plastic boxed set will take care of my basic crew needs, and I can probably squeeze out a good chunk of specialists too, though I should probably dig through my Bones to see what else I can cover. And then there's the credit with Reaper I'm sitting on to use in December during the 12 days event.

For now though, here's my plan, Heritor with the following abilities:

• Crushing Blow
• Iron Skin
• Leap
• Steel Heart
• Surge

Storm Warden with the following spells:

• Cloud Cover
• Lightning Strike
• Wind Walk
• Water of Life

Speaking of, the official minis for the Heritor and Warden, while nice, have some issues. Mold lines aren't bad, but there's a lot of flash. Also the Heritor's swords came very bent. I'm worried about them snapping off. Also the tsuba (hand guard) on both is a little bent, and I'm not sure if that's intentional or not. The Warden's hand looks weird. I don't think it's miscast, but... I wish I was a better sculptor. I'd redo the fingers. I'd also remove the quiver from her back. They didn't give her a bow, so... WTF?



Anyway, for the crew, this is my plan:
4 standard crew w/ hand weapon and shields
2 standard crew with hand weapon
2 archer specialists
2 crossbow specialists
1 Guide
2 Tomb Robbers
2 Scouts
1 Hunter

That should leave me with 4 figures from the box that I can play with later.

Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago: First Thoughts...

Far from the frozen wastes of Felstad, the new setting for Frostgrave takes place in a mysterious archipelago of tropical islands that tend to pop out of existence for centuries at a time. Islands inhabited by all sorts of strange creatures, from dinosaurs to snake-men, with treasures both magical and mundane to tempt the bravest of treasure hunters.



Those familiar with Frostgrave will find a lot familiar in the rules. The core of the system remains pretty unchanged, with only a few changes to the system, but they're some interesting changes!

Most obviously, your main character is a Heritor, the descendant of a previous treasure hunter in the Ghost Archipelago who retains a bit of extra magic in his blood, and is looking for the source of that magic to boost it back up.

Joining him is a Warden, a magic-user of middling power. Hedge-witch to the mages that prowl Felstad. With fewer spells of lesser potency than their colder counterparts, they seem at first under powered, but I get the feeling that in play they'll hold their own.


Interestingly both the Heritors and the Wardens track their XP separately...

The rest of the crew is a similar mix of thugs, thieves, and various combat specialists. The recruiting mechanism is different here than in Frostgrave, as only half of your crew will be specialized, and the other half will just be sailors. And if you need to replace specialists, it's going to cost you an expensive trip back to the mainland!

The new rules for moving in water and small boats seem like they'll be fun, and I like that aquatic monsters get the equivalent of a 2" move onto land to show their reach from the water. It stinks that the Bones 4 minis are still more than a year away... I need so many of them now!!

As with Frostgrave, there is a sad lack of example battlefields shown, with only the briefest discussion of what the tabletop should look like. Thankfully the scenarios do give some clear descriptions of things that need to be included on the field, including various ruins, standing stones, and a tall tower/temple. I think I'm going to use the jungle islands of Indonesia as my inspiration.

One thing I miss in the rule book is the little snippets of quotes and stories that helped make Felstad seem like a more magical place that just the rules and scenarios suggested.

All in all, I'm looking forward to making my first Ghost Archipelago warband, and I think I'll be working on that just as soon as I finish up the Paranormal Investigators currently on my painting table!