Frostgrave Warband

Regular readers may know that although I'm first and foremost a historical gamer I occasionally like to dabble in more "exotic" periods/genres. Last year I did a smallish fantasy project over the summer, and well – this year I did too! Inspired by my mate Dalauppror's superb kit bashed warband for Frostgrave, I had a rummage through my bit box and built a warband of my own.

An old GW plastic wizard was used as the central character. At this time, I didn't have the rules yet, but after flicking through Dalauppror's book I knew there was a wizard type called soothsayer and the crystal ball in the wizard kit would be a perfect match for this school of magic. After trying a couple of different heads, I used one with a fur hat as it looked good and would fit the winter theme of Frostgrave.

For the soldiers, I went with some old Bretonnian men-at-arms as the basis. I liked their heavily armoured look, which I think also fits nicely with the winter theme. The heads, arms and weapons are from a couple of different GW kits, including the original Bretonnians, Empire militia and State Troops. It was fun trying out different poses – tiny adjustments can really make a big difference for the look and character of the model.

To make the soldiers look less uniform and more like a hardened band of mercenaries, I mixed shields from the original kit with different metal shields from Curtey's and Gripping Beast. The lion heads are overpainted transfers.

The apprentice gave me some trouble. It wasn't until I started playing around with a Gripping Beast model it all seemed to click. The model is from the Saga baggage set. He got a spare head from the GW wizard kit, a pole arm from the Bretonnian kit (it's a bit over-sized but hey, it's fantasy!) and a fur cloak for a bit of dramatic flair. I liked the look of the cloak so I went back an added one to one of the soldiers. 

Then it was just a matter of painting them up, trying to find a paint scheme that tied them all together as a force. To make them stand out, I added a bright green colour to some parts of the wizard and the apprentice.

As I said, I didn't have the Frostgrave rules when I built the models. After receiving the rules and reading up on warband creation, I discovered my warband is too large, especially kitted out like this. Oh well, it's nice to have some models for when the warband grows – and of course I can use them for other games as well. 

Thanks for reading – have a great weekend everyone!