Frostgrave with Stormcast and Reaper, and Steamforge Games

To mix things up after a long painting hiatus I bashed together some basic minis and then went with quick paintjobs.

The Stormcast line made a good little wizarding warband, no frills. I think I converted a few, specifically the crossbow was scratch built and the hands sculpted on.

The orcs are from Steamforge Games Epic Encounters range, I really wanted to love them but the mould lines are horrible to remove. That said they are solid sculpts and I tried out the army painter speedpaints on them, over a monochrome basecoat (black spray, grey drybrush, white drybrush).

The wolf and the troll are Reaper Bones, painted the same way as the orcs - monochrome basecoat with army painter speedpaints over the top.

Frostgrave Witch

 Stereotypical witch, reminds me of Grotbags... for those of us who grew up with 80s UK children's tv.

Mantic Ogre Paintjob

Had this set for a while and it's finally made it to the top of the painting queue.

This will go nicely with my Arabian fantasy collection.

Haradrim/Arabian Cultists

These conversions were proof of concepts for my own fantasy Arabian style range. 

They're plastic historical's from Gripping Beast, with a fair amount of sculpting.

Wheel of Time minis

Finally got round to painting these conversions...

 

The Wheel weaves...

I was never a fan of the Wheel of Time books (I think I only got to book 4...) and even less of a fan of the new Amazon series.

That said, these conversions are based on a couple of the main characters. Mostly Frostgrave plastics from Northstar, with the guy on the left using Fireforge Mongol legs and torso. Most of the arms needed sculpting, along with a lot of details and touch ups.

Ice Dragon painting WIP

All the base colours are blocked in and a few washes are going on. This will take a while to paint... and the base will take even longer (few more snow layers and textures still to go).

More Frostgrave terrain painted

 

These latest 3 terrain pieces painted up relatively easy, and they seem to configure in a few different ways quite nicely (totally unplanned).

The entire collection now needs details like signs, railings and the odd crate. I really want to add icicles and snow to everything but it's quite a delicate procedure so I might experiment with photoshopping these images before I jump in with glue and artificial snow... I've never been satisfied with my winter efforts on terrain in the past.

Some gratuitous shots with a background skyline with the Loke battlements DM screen.

Christmas decorations equates to Frostgrave terrain

I wanted to make something that might be a row of houses or reflect a little street in downtown Felstad. I'll do more later continuing this theme but this is a nice little versatile set to start with.

Almost everything is from Firedragon Games: XPS foam sheets and resin windows and doorways. Only the cardboard tiles and wood were entirely raw materials.

In hindsight I might have preferred to make everything from scratch, I'm not sure how those windows will look next to the actual wood texture once painted. I'm sure it will be fine...

New stuff for Frostgrave...

I have a feeling Frostgrave is one of these games that I'll play for life and always wheel it out around the winter time.

This thing is from Steamforged games Epic Encounters series, the box set called Halls of the Orc King. It's a snowy/winter themed set of miniatures.

They're all way too big, more like games workshop 'heroic' style size. But, they will make good big monster types.

This one here is perfect for some kind of stone troll, which can join my slowly forming Orc warband.

And not to be outdone, I'm going bigger with my next painting session... with a true Mountain King and an Ice Dragon. The Dragon is from the Reaper Bones range. I forget where the giant mini is from, I ordered it off Etsy months ago, super sized.

Wizard Eye: The Art of Frostgrave review

I tend to write reviews sparingly but was so pleasantly surprised by this book that I wanted to share some thoughts on it.

I own a lot of large hard back coffee table style art books… so much so that as I type this I realise I should get them all on the insurance. They’re usually expensive. Classical, fantasy and sci-fi stuff.

Frostgrave Wizard Eye falls into the very reasonable cost category as far as art books go.

It’s heavy duty, hardback and larger than your usual Frostgrave gaming books. 

Coming in at 256 pages, it’s great value.

With the larger format I felt like I was seeing some of the artwork for the first time, despite owning most of the Frostgrave gaming books. Details I hadn’t noticed before popped out, the narrative of the scenes played out more dynamically and overall it felt like a de-facto background and lore volume for the world of Frostgrave. 

Don’t underestimate the impact of seeing the artwork laid out in full, instead of hidden within the spine of a smaller book.

The commentary on every single picture was a treat: you get insights from the creator of Frostgrave and the artists. The writing was also very much to my liking, succinct but enriching. It read very much like a transcript of a “making of” special feature documentary, and the brevity of the commentary was entertaining and insightful. 

 

Hearing about the creative process from both the game designer and artist actually felt like a jumping off point. It’s quintessential Frostgrave - just enough to inspire and guide you, with nothing that restricts you.

This is a tiny selection of the content. I always enjoy seeing the sketches and thumbnail concepts - perfect for miniature conversion ideas.

I spent an entire Sunday afternoon going through this book and it’s left me seriously inspired to create more Frostgrave terrain and miniatures...