As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve recently decided to take a break from video-gaming and devote more time to my “analog” hobbies. It’s now been roughly six weeks since I’ve played a video game and, honestly, I don’t think I miss it as much as I expected to.

The novel I’m working on is progressing slowly but steadily, and I seem to be on schedule to have a finished draft by the end of the year.

But what else has filled my time? I’ve been finishing up Joe Abercrombie’s First Law series, so expect an overall review on that in the near future. As I mentioned in a recent post on gaming as an adult, I’ve been building a hyperlinked database (in OneNote) of characters, locations, events and other goodies to drop players into for future Shadowrun campaigns conducted in the style of a “narrative hexcrawl” (if you’ll bear with me on the liberal use of the term).

With the remainder of my time not spent on the above, or working, or caring for children, I’ve been returning to a long-running, off-and-on-again love affair: miniature gaming. It started around when I was twelve; my dad brought me back some Warhammer Fantasy miniatures from a business trip to London. I was hooked. I remember fondly spending a lot of time in a partially-finished room of the house he used for his model railroading set-ups, listening to the radio and painting miniatures. That was were I discovered my favorite band (Live) and probably much of the rest of the 90’s music I still enjoy so much (it was the 90’s, after all).

I never actually played Warhammer Fantasy. But I spent hours in middle school and high school playing (and arguing over) Warhammer 40k, Necromunda, Mordheim and Warhammer Quest with my best friends. I worked on a lot of miniatures in college, but never seemed to get in an actual game. Off and on, I’d paint and sell minis, get “out” of the hobby and then return again–there are many people on Ebay and Bartertown that got some great deals out of my indecisiveness. After finishing (law) school, I played Warmachine for a while, then Infinity, then Malifaux. I enjoyed all of them (probably Infinity most of all), but the focus on synergies over tactics in both Warmachine and Malifaux left me unsatisfied at the end of the day.

After a few years away from minis games (and a false start with the new Necromunda), I decided to get into Frostgrave. I’ve found that I prefer skirmish level games, love campaigns where characters can gain XP and improve (how I miss Mordheim!), and kitbashing plastic kits is perhaps my favorite part of the hobby side of miniatures games. I also wanted a game where I could, without spending a small fortune, have enough minis to invite my friends to play without having to first convince them to buy into a game. This all pointed to Frostgrave.

I don’t do anything half-assed, and my approach to miniature games is no exception. I cannot bring myself to play games with unpainted figures and really prefer to have some nice terrain to fight over, too. Fortunately, I’ve collected a modest set of skills to accommodate both preferences over the years.

I began (after collecting all of the PDFs available for Frostgrave) by buying up a collection of plastic minis to build from. I picked up the Frostgrave Soldiers, Soldiers II (the women soldiers), Barbarians, Cultists and two boxes of the newer plastic Wizards. On top of that I added Fireforge Foot Sergeants and Foot Knights as well as a box of Oathmark humans. I had a set of Perry War of the Roses Miniatures from the small set of things I hadn’t gotten rid of the last time I got “out” of minis gaming, and I look forward to acquiring more Perry medievals for three reasons: (1) they’re beautiful minis; (2) they’re pretty good for historical accuracy; (3) while many others have used them for Game of Thrones minis (search Google for “To Westeros with Captain Blood” for the best example, in my opinion), they strike me as perfect for a Witcher minis game (y’know, once I’ve built and painted all the Frostgrave minis, and bestiary monsters, and terrain to complete a good collection).

I started by kitbashing and painting a few random soldiers: a knight here, a few thugs there, a marksman. This is the knight, the first of the minis I’ve painted in a long while:

After a few of these, a thought occurred to me: what if I do a warband that seems to go together rather than a bunch of ragtag outcasts, a group of models with some unity in their clothing and colors. After all, I’ve got thirty Oathmark bodies and plenty of stuff to mix them with.

I’d decided my first warband would be a Sigilist, so I built my wizard and his apprentice (the header photo) and sixteen of their closest companions: thugs, an apothecary, archers, a marksman, a thief, a treasure hunter, a tunnel fighter, etc. I finished painting them today.

The bases still need some detailing (my model snow and foliage tufts are on the way), but they’re otherwise finished. Not the best painting I’ve ever done, but not bad for shaking the dust off after so long.

Of course, after I finished painting these guys was when I looked at how I might assemble them into a starting warband and realized I’m probably at least one thug short for what I should have (and there are a few other soldier “classes” I don’t have represented yet), so I started building some more to accompany them even before my brushes were dry.

I had planned from the beginning, however, for a captain. I wanted my captain to have mail armor, though, and the Oathmark humans, well, don’t. Frostgrave makes a distinction between no armor, leather armor and chainmail armor (the latest game by McCullough, Rangers of Shadow Deep, uses “light armor” and “heavy” armor, which, for a game that encourages you to use whatever minis you want, should probably have been the distinction in Frostgrave as well). Technically speaking, what the Oathmark soldiers are wearing is what D&D (and therefore many fantasy games) calls “studded leather.” This categorization is based upon a misunderstanding of armor depicted in art, where the “studs” that make the leather “studded” are actually rivets holding together small metal plates between a front and back (both probably of cloth, not leather) forming what is called a “brigandine.” This type of armor is probably closer to chainmail in its effectiveness. But, I figure most of those poor souls I can convince to play a minis game with me don’t also want to hear my pedantry about medieval arms and armor–the above is just the tip of the iceberg.

All of that is to say that I decided to go with the conceit that the armor on the Oathmark minis is “leather” armor. Actually, there’s a lot of dispute about just how much leather was used in armors, historically, but…see what I mean about the pedantry?

The point is that I needed a model with mail but wanted one that would still fit with the clothing of the rest of the soldiers. I sucked it up and decided to venture into a new skill, one I’ve actually wanted to pick up as a hobbyist for a long time–sculpting in “green stuff” (kneadatite) for the conversion of minis. So, I started with an Oathmark body and set to work.

Once I’d done the mail for the mini, I couldn’t help but also try a fur cloak. They’ve come out well, but I have a few minor details to sculpt before the mini gets some primer and a proper coat of paint.

As I said, I don’t really tolerate a minis game without some passable terrain as well. The below is my first humble piece, not quite finished (the ladder needs painting and it also needs snowy details). I’m mostly happy with it, but I’ve since learned some techniques to put some more color into the stonework, which is what this piece is currently lacking.

And that’s it for now, but the work continues. My Proxxon foam cutter just arrived today and I’ve drawn up some templates for the main building in the Silent Tower scenario, so I’m itching to put it to work.

So here we are, with a new (sub-section) of the blog, wherein I’ll post some more my work toward getting an entire table worth of terrain and a slew of minis to go with it, hopefully followed by some tales of battles fought by–as my wife calls them–“tiny minions of dice death.”