Reaper's Drowned Spirit Painted for Frostgrave

    This week I painted Reaper's"Drowned Spirit" figure to use as a wraith in my Frostgrave games.  This figure was newly released when I was planning my Frostgrave harbor terrain build and something about it just made it seem like the perfect fit to be a ghost to haunt the old harbor. So, I ordered it over the holidays, and just now got around to painting it.  I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

    To help convey the frigid Frostgrave look, I added a Water Effects icicle under the rocky outcropping.  Also, I went with a glossy finish, instead of my usual matte, to help bring across the wet look.

The Tree of the Wizard, for Frostgrave

   I had this old shrubbery root sitting around the workshop for a long time. And while I always knew I wanted to make some sort of tree out of it, I was never sure exactly how I wanted to put it to use.  Then I recently had the idea to use it a a piece of Frostgrave terrain, inspired by the Tree of the King that grew in Minas Tirith from the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
     It didn't take long to glue it to a base, build up a little mound around it, and add some gravel, to complete the project.
   I can see running a scenario where the tree is the Frostgrave Tree of Magical Wisdom, with a single bloom growing at the very top (sprouted now that the city has started to thaw); and which ever wizard can get the flower gets an extra roll on the treasure tables.

I don't think I will do any winter effects on the tree, so I still have the opportunity to use it in games outside of Frostgrave.

Making Frostgrave's Harbor: Part III (Final)

  This past weekend, during the big East Coast Blizzard, I worked on building the actual dockside for the city of Frostgrave.  I used pink foam insulation sheeting for the core of the wharf, and the cork tiles,I've been using for my Frostgrave buildings to do the facings.  For the top surface I used some cobblestone roads I got at Walmart over the holidays in their Christmas village section.
   (You can click on any photo to see it larger)

     I made three 1' sections, and a fourth small ramp piece.  After everything was assembled, I primed it all black.  After that, I drybrushed all the stonework with three levels of gray, and the wood with browns, and then applied snow and icicles.

     I'm very happy with how everything has come together.  I think this will be a fun addition to my Frostgrave games.  I can't wait to have a chance to try this setting out.

When I wasn't building terrain, I was outside Frostgrave "LARP-ing" :-)

Part I 
Part II

Making Frostgrave's Harbor: Part II

   This past weekend I was able to finish working on the ships for my Frostgrave waterfront.  I began by base-coating the ships dark brown, and then dry-brushed them with successively lighter coats of a grey-brown mix of paint.  (For part one of this article, see: Making Frostgrave's Harbor: Part I

The small ships with their paint jobs, before I "winterized" them.

The large ship all painted up in it's weathered look before permanently gluing it to its base, and before getting its winter treatment.

     I then applied snow paint and flocking to the bases, and a little to the ships themselves.  I also added a few Water Effects icicles to the ships.

The finished large ship, with the Templar aboard checking out.

A close up of the detail.

The Templar checking out two smaller vessels in the frozen harbor.

Detail shot of one of the smaller ships.

        I'm really pleased with how the ships came out.

     Since the city of Frostgrave is thawing out, I thought it might be fun to add some spots in the harbor where the ice had melted through, and the water was actually visible.  I figured it would be fun to have these areas where folks could push their enemies into the freezing water, or perhaps evil things could emerge.
     While at the local hardware store a couple weeks ago, I picked up a sheet of fluorescent light covering that had a cool crystalline pattern to it.  I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it at the time, but I thought it might work perfectly for this project.  I actually ended up using it to make the water portion, instead of ice, because when you painted the underside, the texture made it look like rippling water.  I began by cutting out a roughly oval section of the sheet.

Painting a "hole" on the underside of the plastic sheet.

I wasn't sure how I was going to do the surrounding snow, so at this point I masked the "hole" and sprayed the sheet white.

In the end, I decided to use some white felt to represent the snow, as that was what I was going to use for the harbor anyway.  I applied a small ring of Water Effects around the hole to represent the edge of the ice, and then I glued the felt over the plastic sheet to be the snow.

   Next up, I will be building the ruined dock along the city's edge, so stay tuned for Part III.

Making Frostgrave's Harbor, Part I

   Last year at a  wargame convention flea market, I was lucky to find some ships which inspired me to want to construct a waterfront area for my Frostgrave games.  The first of these was a model of a ship under construction.  The second was a lot of old pirate ships.

Wooden model of a ship being built. There was one figure on the model that indicated it was scaled for between 15mm and  20mm sized figures. With enough of the scale specific stuff stripped away, I thought it would do fine service for 28mm figures.

 

Simplistic pirate ships.  I'm not sure what they're made of; it looks a lot like the kind of foam insulation you squirt from a can.  I decided to keep the painted ones for they're intended purpose, but the unfinished ones were destined for the Frostgrave docks.

 The wooden model was very old apparently, as many of the glue points had dried out, and there were a lot of bits that had fallen off it.  This didn't bother me, as I already had thoughts of making it look like the ship in the beginning of the first National Treasure movie

A close-up of the "Charlotte" from the movie, National Treasure

And a wider screen-grab of the ship.

     Luckily, I had a friend with a bandsaw who was able to make the wooden ship into a waterline model.  He also was able to cut one of the foam ships in half to give me the ability to use it for two different half-sunk ships.  He also was kind enough to cut out a base for the waterline model to sit on.

     At this point, I've got the all the hulls ready to paint.  I added broken mast stumps to all of them, and used some of the extra bits from the big ship to add a bit of detail to the decks of the smaller ones.  I also made a couple crates to put in the ice around the smaller ships.
    I decided, since the base of the large ship would be snow, to paint the base white separately, and then spray the ship.  I'm not sure if I'm going to go with black or a dark brown.  Likewise, I'm not sure how the foam the pirate ships are made of will react to spray paint, so I think I will give them a coat of paint by hand, and then spray over that.

      Hopefully, I will get a chance to do some spraying later today.


Here is Part II
Here is Part III

Another Frostgrave Cork Ruin Completed.

   I recently completed another ruin for my Frostgrave set-up, using cork tiles.  This one I designed to be a more substantially built building, so less "ruined" than the previous ones.  I used a spare Armorcast doorway I had for the main door, an old set of plaster steps for the front stairway, and a pair of game pieces from the old boardgame "All the Kings Men" for the statuary.

Test fitting the components

The walls cut out, and being glued.

The main structure painted, and now the roof and debris being added.

The finished product.

Another shot of the finished product.

Another Frostgrave Cork Ruin, Two-Story This Time

   I built another cork tile ruin for Frostgrave this week. (You can see my first attempt here.)  This time I wanted to achieve a few things different than the first one; a second story to test how the cork held up to a taller structure, more debris scattered around, and a stone rather than a dirt base.

      I used a 6"x 6" cork tile for the base and inscribed a 1 inch grid on it to represent paving/foundation stones

    The wood is a mix of balsa and bass. The debris was made from cork scraps, aquarium gravel, and course sand.   I  painted it with my regular acrylic hobby paint.

      The snow is from an old bottle of DecoArt "Snow-Tex",  textured snow paint, that I've had sitting around for at least a decade.  I never had a use for it, and making these ruins inspired me to dig it out and put it to use. It goes on nice and thick and lumpy.  Once that was dry, I brushed it with some white glue and then applied Woodland Scenics snow flocking,

     I'm very pleased with how this building turned out, and I am currently considering what to build next.  I'm considering doing a wizards tower, and attempting bend a sheet of cork into a round shape using an oatmeal canister as a base.  my other thought is some sort of twin square towers that have some sort of precarious bridge between them.  I also have in the back of my mind doing some sort of frozen dock for a Frostgrave waterfront...

Dollar Tree Halloween Decoration to Frostgrave Terrain Conversion

  I picked up a couple items during a recent trip to the local Dollar Tree store to use in my Forstgrave games.  The first is a bag of white rocks that will be good for scattering in piles here and there, and the second is one of their Tombstone  Corner Halloween scenery pieces. Folks who read the blog regularly will remember I recently converted one of the "Bone Gazebos" for use in regular non-frozen fantasy games.

      Since Frostgrave is a ruined city, and since I didn't want this looking exactly like a bone gazebo; carefully using a hammer and a chisel, I  knocked out the pillars until the top broke off.

     I then sprayed the whole thing with flat black primer and drybrushed it with assorted grey tones and painted the base white.  Afterwards, I flocked the bottom with Woodland Scenics Snow flock.

     For the price of a dollar, and a very quick conversion, I think it makes a dandy piece of  terrain to add clutter to my Frostgrave table.

Artizan Late War Germans in Winter Gear

  I recently competed a couple packs of Artizan's 28mm Late War Germans in winter outfits.  I plan on using these figures for the club's traditional New Year's Eve game day, and again for Cold Wars, in a GASLIGHT Pulp game called, "Santa Claus vs the Nazis."  Here is the game description as submitted to the Cold Wars PEL:
   "Bent on obtaining fabled and occult objects from across the globe, Hitler sets his sights on the magical factories of Santa’s North Pole workshops. If these factories could be turned to munitions production for the Third Reich, nothing would be able stop the Nazi war machine. The Fuhrer dispatches a team of commandos to capture Santa’s workshops. Can Santa, his elves, and toys stop the invaders, or will evil prevail? Children under 14 with playing adult only."

You can click on any photo to see it larger.

The figures will of course also  be very useful for historical scenarios too.  And will probably see service in the Bulge, and on the Russian Front.

 

  The figures were fun and easy to paint. I first sprayed them with gray Krylon primer, then drybrushed them with successively lighter shades of gray, working my way to white.  The baggy outfits have lots of great folds and creases to pick up the dry brushing.

The bases were painted white, then flocked with a mix of Woodland Scenics snow flock, white sand, and some old mica glitter.  Some were then detailed with either twigs, or rope fibers to represent dead grasses, or small white stones.