Okay fellas, sorry for not explaining what this game is. Here's the first paragraph from the Introduction in the rulebook, for a quick description.
"Frostgrave is a tabletop miniatures game where players take on the role of wizards and lead their small warband into the frozen city of Felstad in search of lost treasure, enchanted artifacts, and forgotten secrets of magic."
Basically, there is a 120+ page rulebook by Osprey Publishing, and you can get it for less than $20. You play the game on a 3x3 playing area, and will need a good bit of terrain pieces to break up line of sight, as well as make for some interesting movement to different levels and such.
While there is an official line of miniatures available to use for this game, many people use figures from various product lines, either purchasing new, or using minis they already have from other games. The main thing when doing this, is to make sure each type mini representing a specific warband type, is identified for both you and your opponent to know which figure represents what type of character. There are sheets to list your warband member, so it's easy to make a note that the lizard man with a sword is a Thug, etc. If you have more than one member type, say 2 Thugs, each model should either look a little different, or you can mark their base differently if they are the same model design. That way when they take wounds or have some affects put on them, you know which one to mark on the character sheet.
There are 10 different schools of magic to choose from, so players will choose which school they would like their main character wizard to be from. There are base stats for the wizard for move, fight, shoot, will, armor and health. For each school, there is a chart that shows which other 3 schools are aligned with yours, which other 5 are neutral towards yours and which one is opposed to yours. There are 8 spells for each school of magic, but when you first start out, you are only allowed to choose 3 spells from your school, 1 from each of the three aligned schools, and 1 each from two of the five neutral schools, for a total of 8 spells you start out with.
You then have 500 gold to assemble your warband. You will need to spend 200 on an apprentice to your wizard, and the apprentice with have some lesser stats than your wizard, but will know the same spells, but will have a -2 penalty on the d20 roll when trying to cast them. All spells have a casting roll requirement, from 8 on up on the d20. Aligned spells have a +2 requirement, and neutral spells have a +4 requirement.
Then you have 300 gold to buy your soldiers, which include thieves, thugs, infantrymen, archers, crossbowmen, barbarian, treasure hunger, tracker knights, etc. Each has a cost and abilities to match that cost. You can only have a total of 10 (including your wizard and apprentice) members in your warband.
There are sheets where you write down all the stats an information for your wizard and the others to keep track of.
Basically, there are scenarios with special rules in the rulebook, or you can just make one up. But the main gist of the game is for you to get treasure. Usually each player will place 3 treasure tokens randomly on the board with x distance from the edge and from each other. Then players will roll to see who gets what board edge and then for initiative. You place your warband in your starting area and then during the course of the game, you are trying to get a party member to treasure tokens and carry them off the board. Whenever a treasure token is grabbed, you rolld a d20 to see if a monster comes. On a 16+, your roll on the random monster chart to see what monster shows up on a random board edge, though in some scenarios, the monster will come from where the treasure is.
After all treasures are off the board, the game ends. During the game, the primary goal is to get as much treasure as possible, because the game is meant to be played as a campaign, so the treasure helps toward your campaign success. After each game, players roll on a chart to see what each of their treasure tokens end up being. Could be gold, potions, scrolls, grimoires, or magical items. The items can be used in future games and gold can be used to pay for better warband members and to buy items. Also, after the first game, players can choose a home base from a list of different places, such as a library, inn, treasury, and the like. Each one gives you a potential benefit over the course of the campaign. There are also improvements that you can buy to add more benefits to your home base.
Wizards also gain XP's for various things. Sometimes a scenario will give xp's for a specific task, but for the most part, the wizard will get 10 XP'S for each successful spell they cast in a game, 50 xp's for each treasure their warband gets off the board, I believe it's 50 for taking out an opponent's wizard, 40 for opponent's apprentice and maybe 30 for other warband member. Can't remember if that's the exact numbers there, but you get the idea.
For every 100 xp's, the wizard gets, they can level up. They do this between games, but don't have to, as they can choose to wait for awhile and then level up as far as they can or want to. When levelling up, for each level up, you can increase one of your stats by 1, lower the cast number requirement by 1, or learn a new spell. The only way to learn a new spell is to have a grimoire with a spell in it that you don't already know. You can either get a grimoire from treasure you get off the board, or for paying 500 gold for one. So while you start out with 8 spells, you can learn more over time.
When a member of your warband gets reduced to 0 health during a game (they start out with anywhere from 10 to 14, depending on the character), they are knocked out of the game, but not necessarily dead. After each game, you roll a d20 to see how they fare. The soldiers have a separate chart. A 1-4 means they are dead, 5-8 means they are badly wounded and can't participate in the next game, and 9+ means they have recovered. The wizard and apprentice have a different chart and can have more options for being wounded, such as losing an eye or toe, or a nagging injury etc. So they will have a minor affect on the wizard's stats in future games.
Here is a link to a session report I posted here in the other thread, several pictures to give an idea of how things can look.
