Frostgrave - Not a Good Night to be a Wizard

Mark and I played a couple of games of Frostgrave at club last week, my Necromancer and his orcs against the diminutive hobbit warband, which turned out to be a bit of a bloodbath for the magic users. Once again I used my 3x3 cobblestone mat from Ceri Designs, at just £19 this has been a bargain with loads of different uses.

The first scenario was "Genie in the Bottle". The angry genie turned up very early and the game was mostly comprised of running away or hiding from the genie, or else trying to lead it on to your opponent. Early on I put down a wall of fog to cut off the LOS to a treasure for the hobbit apprentice and his bowman. Unfortunately the hobbits came  through the fog and picked up the treasure triggering the genie on my side of the fog. The little sods then legged it through my fog, leaving the genie to hare off after my Necromancer! He managed to avoid the genie by letting it take on one of the orcs, who somehow survived by pushing the genie back in combat and diving out of sight.

In evading the genie however, my wizard out himself into the path of a hobbit bowman who promptly shot him through the eye, killing him outright!

I did manage to get everyone out of LOS of the genie, who them wandered off randomly, straight through the fog and onto the hobbits. It promptly killed both an archer and the apprentice in hand to hand, then took an elemental bolt from the hobbit wizard, which hurt it, but didn't kill it. The genie returned the compliment with a fire arrow which killed the hobbit wizard.

As the only magic user left alive my apprentice decided to call it a day and the orcs slunk off with 3 treasures. What was left of the hobbits also scarpered with 2 treasures.

                                                                      The battlefield.

                                         The genie appears and heads after the Necromancer.....

                                       ...whilst his apprentice keeps his head down.

                                           The hobbits chuckle away behind the fog....

                                       ...not for long, you can just see the dead wizard in the doorway.

The second game was "The Worm Hunts". This was a more of a battle, with much toing and froing. The two wizards spent quite a bit of the game trying to knock each other off, chucking bone darts and elemental bolts back and forth, with much to show for it. My orcs did manage to bag a couple of the little runts and snaffled 3 of the treasures. The worm finally appeared by the last treasure and from then on things got silly as fog and wall spells appeared all over the place as we tried to protect our own warbands and funnel the beastie off onto the opponent's.

A brave hobbit managed to climb to the top of the highest building (where Mark had helpfully placed the treasure) and climb down again with his ill gotten gains, but was caught and eaten before he could get off the table. once again we both considered discretion to be the better part of valour and left the last treasure to the worm.

Other games being played that night were a 6mm Napoleonic battle using Black Powder.

An early experience of WW1 for the Canadians using Chain of Command (with the club amendments)

And finally two games of Warhammer 40K.

                                                      Space Marines vs something else.

                                                         Orcs Sir, thousands of 'em!

Frostgrave

Another introductory game, this time Frostgrave. Colin had played once before, but about a year ago, and wanted to have another try whilst he was waiting for his copy of the rules to arrive. With the plans for a Frostgrave club league later in the year I can see a lot more people wanted to get some practice in over the next few months.

We played two scenarios, Genie in The Bottle and The Living Museum. Colin had a Enchanter and his warband (made up from his historical Vikings) and I used my Necromancer and his dubious followers (all the warband are orcs!).

                                                   The set up for Genie in The Bottle

Genie in the Bottle was a very one-sided game. Colin cunningly used his Telekinesis to drag a treasure from the open to drop at the feet of his wizard and three followers. Unfortunately, as soon as one of the minions picked up the treasure, POOF!, the genie appeared. I didn't help things by promptly dropping a Fog just behind the genie to make sure that all it ever saw were Colin's men. His wizard spent most of the game running away from the genie whilst it killed his followers.

                                        The Necromancer move forward with his bodyguards

This allowed me to gang up on the rest of his warband and cut most of them down, whilst screening his shooters with Fog. I had succeeded in grabbing 5 of the treasures by the end of the game.

                                            A Viking takes a bird's eye view

                                                                As does an orc!

The Living Museum, was a much closer game. Colin also had the Fog spell, and having witnessed my use of it in the first, game, used it with abandon. With both sides dropping Fog all over the place our shooters were mainly redundant and it was a close combat, hack-and-bash game. We had both got a shooter into a high vantage point, but with all the Fog drifting around all they could see was each other, so spent the game shooting at their opposite number without much effect.

                                                                Fog everywhere!

Eventually, in frustration, Colin's apprentice climbed up onto a wall where he could see my sniper and Pushed him off of his perch. Fortunately his fall was less that 4", so he was unhurt. It was a brave act, but one I took advantage of by having my Necromancer stick a Bone Dart in the apprentice's eye. 19 points of damage against an armour of 10, but as the apprentice had already burnt his fingers failing to cast a previous spell, that was enough to kill him outright!

                                     Now I can see everything, ARGGH!
Great fun was had all round!