Frostgrave, Halo Ground Command and other tabletop minis

[Tornado]

Yes, it is really simple so far.

Basically I just dumbed down my RPG and converted abilities from RPG useful to board game useful. My years with C3G really helped with this process. I actually tried to do something like it before and it was pretty bad. That is when we started playing Heroscape.

The heart of it is the combat system which features critical charts that can really change things in a single awesome attack, that is if your target does not Lucky Dodge.

My approach so far has been to tweak the rules for the scenario. The first one took place on the deck of two feuding ships so it was pretty basic for movement and what not.
The next one is King of the Hill on a Heroscape map and that requires a lot more rules for movement and engagement ect.
I added in a purchasing mechanic that allows you to buy weapons, power-ups, healing potions, teleports, ect. Neat mechanic but added some extra complication that somewhat goes against our Keep it Simple motto.

I was chipping away at the ship scenario, to make it somewhat ready to sell. That was supposed to be my friends job but it is looking unlikely he will ever contribute to the cause again so I guess it falls to me. If I ever get it squared away I will send you a copy.

[TREX]

Last night my other two brothers came out to have a last minute game night at my place last night. I was halfway into my rear drum brake job on my truck. I had been wanting them to try out frostgrave, but my one brother brought his girlfriend and she wanted to play Zombicide: Black plague again. (We had started a game on the fourth, but didn't finish it.) I had the mausoleum scenario up, and they oohed and ahhed at it. They said they definitely wanted to play it. After finishing up our zombicide game at 12:30 in the morning they didn't really have time to make their warbands but are hooked by all the sweet terrain I've been building. I gave some Demon figures a repaint for frostgrave. 4 of them are from WOW miniatures line, and 2 are quite big DND demon figures. They turned out really well, I'll have to post pics soon.

[Hahma]

Look forward to hearing how they end up liking Frostgrave when they play it.

[TREX]

Originally Posted by Hahma

Look forward to hearing how they end up liking Frostgrave when they play it.

I will let you guys know. I've been taking a lot of pictures but have stuff come up when I am trying to just get on my computer and upload them. I have a good 20 pictures I've been meaning to load up. @Hahma , or any of you guys, do you know a way to just upload them from a cell phone to scapers or at least a 3rd party site like media fire? I don't get on my computer much these days, so its a pain in the neck to get on there and upload stuff.

[quozl]

If you're using an Android phone, Google Photos does it all automatically.

[Hahma]

@TREX

I post my battle reports and pictures on our Tabletop wargamers Facebook page and sometimes on the Frostgrave Facebook page. Easy to upload from my phone to those places. Then to post the pictures here, I view the pictures on Facebook and expand the picture, right click on the and then a tab comes up that let's me copy the url or link to image. Then I have another tab open to here and use the image thingy on the toolbar at the top to paste the link and get the image here.

It can be done from a my phone too, but it's more of a pain in the ass. So I generally go on our computer at home before leaving for work and post the batreps here.

I'm going to try to tone down the images some, as I don't want to get in trouble by eating up too much bandwidth. That happened a long time ago in the early days of CG3, so we used mostly photobucket or some other 3rd party host. Not sure if it would still be a problem now, but I may only post a couple pictures of a battle instead of as many as I have, just in case.

[TREX]

After I got done working yet another 12 hr shift yesterday, my 2 brothers that are yet to play frostgrave called me up and said they wanted to play it. At that point is was already past 8 o clock at night, so they came out and I helped them both set up their warbands. We then re set up the mausoleum scenario but didn't have any time to play. So come Saturday or so I think we will get my other brother over and we'll get to do a 4 player mausoleum throwdown. It should be pretty fun. They especially had fun getting to name all their soldiers ridiculous names.

[Hahma]

That sound like it will be fun, 4 brother throw down. I suspect there will some hard fighting going on.

Naming troops is fun, as is coming up with some backstories about them and creating some narrative while they take actions.

[TREX]

Well we ended up having a 3 player throwdown of frostgrave last night after I got done working another 12. Ive been wanting to play this pretty badly so even though I was tired as ever I told them to get out to my place fast and we'll get to it. We played the mausoleum scenario and it was crazy. (I did take some pics that I'll post later, big surprise, I'm at work again right now for another 12) My brothers tend to gang up on me in other free for all type games especially heroscape and it just so happened that I ended up on the side of the table in between them both. I also had a bigger warband than them from my first game. I bought an additional archer and a knight, also had the beast(my warhound). That put me at 4 archers, a knight, an infantryman, 2 thugs, a thief, and a free warhound from my kennel. Along with my wizard and apprentice. It was a long and bloody battle, because no matter how much I told my brothers that goal number 1 was treasure, they wanted to murder me anyway. I started by moving most of my crew up the center to go for the main treasure. I cast leap on my thief and he was able to grab one of them. My apprentice and some archers went up a ladder up on to a building to grab some treasure. My brother with the summoner split his into two groups, one with the wiz, one with the apprentice. His apprentice was rolling hot, and was shooting the crap out of my soldiers with his elemental bolt. He even was able to cast a plague on my wizard. I had to move all my guys away from them so they wouldn't get rocked. with -4 fight stat on my wizard from the plague, both of them tore into him with all kinds of attacks. I got wounded 13 wounds out of my 14. I was able to move then cast leap on myself to jump off the board before he died. My brother with the summoner got so many kills with his wizard. He shot a couple guys with his bolt.(including my other brothers wizard for a kill) and took out my knight and a couple of thugs when they attacked him and rolled horrible. He ended up getting 440 xp.(Holy crap) He got 3 treasures off the board, one was a special treasure. Killed a whole bunch of guys, including a wizard, and successfully casted 6 spells. Me and my other brother only got like 160-170 xp each. End game, I lost an archer and a thug. My one brother with the cronomancer got three guys wounded to not play the next game, and my brother with the summoner lost 1 thug. We had a couple monsters come on the board as well. A ghoul, on the far end of the table that no one was on. A zombie on my side that attacked my thief on his way off of the table. I did get more than half of my models knocked out from all my brothers wanting me dead. I did get in some good rolls defending myself though. When almost all of the treasure was about off the board, I just went all in trying to kill whatever I could of my brothers for payback before the treasure was off the table. Oh man, that game was sweet. I still can't believe that my summoner brother was able to level up to 4 in one freaking game. He was killing everything with his wizard. I couldn't take him out with my soldiers, I kept rolling 2s 3s, and 4s, against his freaking 19-20 rolls when he was defending. Awesome. Like I said, I do have pics. Later.

[keglo]

That sounds like a ton of fun @TREX . And I think that you are lucky that you get to do this with your brothers.

[Hahma]

Great report @TREX !

Sounds like your brother with the Summoner must have had a horseshoe up is ass. To be able to roll a 14+ with his wizard and 16+ with his apprentice, just to be able to successfully cast the Elemental Bolt, and then obviously rolling well with the +8 shooting attack with it. Not to mention you get to use cover modifiers because it's a shooting attack. That's some crazy good rolling.

That's why I like tons of LoS blockers on the board and defensive spells, so an offensive wizard can't dominate when they have the dice gods on their side and hitting on everything.

Are you the oldest brother? Why do they have it in for you?

[TREX]

Originally Posted by Hahma

Great report @TREX!

Sounds like your brother with the Summoner must have had a horseshoe up is ass. To be able to roll a 14+ with his wizard and 16+ with his apprentice, just to be able to successfully cast the Elemental Bolt, and then obviously rolling well with the +8 shooting attack with it. Not to mention you get to use cover modifiers because it's a shooting attack. That's some crazy good rolling.

That's why I like tons of LoS blockers on the board and defensive spells, so an offensive wizard can't dominate when they have the dice gods on their side and hitting on everything.

Are you the oldest brother? Why do they have it in for you?

Yeah, his die was on fire, and ours were not so much. I was just as wowed at my poor rolls attacking him with my melee guys and then him killing them in melee defending himself. I had tons of LOS blockers but he somehow got into enough positions to get around it most of the time. His apprentice was able to go up a cat walk and have a nice view of all my troops without any real cover. I was calling him death from above. I'm the oldest brother that plays board games, and mini games. I'm the one that has got them all into games and have been out strategizing them since the one was 16 years old and the other two 8 and 12 years old. Now the still see me as a threat so I always get ganged up on. I did have a bigger cooler warband from my good gold luck from my first game. They did not attack each other until like round 5. I got double teamed for a solid 4 rounds. I don't care about stuff like that anymore, It doesn't bug me because I"m quite used to it. I was super glad that now all 4 of my brothers that play have a warband and enjoyed playing it. He didn't even have to hurt himself to help any of his spell casting rolls. I'm hoping to get my other brother that missed out in on the next one for a 4 player blood bath. We'll be playing the genie's lamp scenario. I'm going to go through each manuals missions in order I think. It was a ton of fun even though I had to have my wizard run away. You can probably imagine how much crap I got from my brothers from running him off the board.