Category: Wargames, RPG Scenery

Posts about making tabletop scenery for wargames and rpgs

All Alone in Felstad Pt4 – Frostgrave Battle Report – 2nd solo scenario

Isher’s weapon shop

Durnimlath watched as the unconscious bodies of  Seregthaur and Mothorm became surrounded by a hazy light, flickering from blue to purple and back again. The air was filled with a subtle tang of hot metal which she associated with magic being used. Both the elves became indistinct as the light grew stronger. And then, as the light winked out the two forms were replaced by two different elves, Breged and Calaraglar. Both sat up looking confused.

Two Miniatures for the skirmish wargame - Frostgrave
The new Thugs – Breged On the left & Carlaraglar On the right

“Welcome to Felstad” Durnimlath said with an ironic smile. “Tell me. What were you doing before you arrived here?”

“We were patrolling near the Sentry Oak” Breged replied, standing up and brushing dust from the floor from her leather clothing.

“Yes, and then I heard a sound like screaming in the distance that got closer and became louder until I felt like I could not bear it…” Calaraglar said, her voice trailing off into silence.

“I heard it also, yet I thought it more like the cry of marsh geese, and then we were…here.” Breged continued looking at the nodding Calaraglar.

“I am sorry my friends but it seems that someone or something is using strong magic to play games with us. We were likewise patrolling the boundaries of the forest and then we found ourselves on the edge of this ruined city. It is Felstad and we are at the doorway to an abandoned weapon shop. We here have already fought with strange smoke like serpents to get this far. It is my hope that inside we will find items to aid us in returning to Farran. Until then I fear we may have many adversaries to overcome.”

The Setup

This, the second solo scenario from the Frostgrave “Perilous Dark” supplement, takes the war band to the weapon workshop of Isher, in search of magical items. It begins with the war band having come through the doorway of the ruined weapon shop.

I made a change to my war band after the previous scenario and made Brikolad a captain using the rules from “The Frostgrave Folio“. This lets you have a war band member who can gain experience, in return for a small fee. The initial cost is 100GC and as I’d already spent 75 on Brikolad I just paid an additional 25.

I used some home made, slightly wonky, slightly scruffy, dungeon tiles and various piles of rubble and walls also made from XPS foam plus weapon racks and shelves made from coffee stirrers.

Wargames table covered with xps foam dungeon tiles xps rubble, walls and weapon racks made from coffee stirers.

The object is to get from the door to the opposite side of the board where there is a magical cabinet with a switch on either side. When both switches are pulled the cabinet will open, depositing two loot tokens. Then the war must get back to the door and exit the workshop, ending the scenario. At each corner of the board is a numbered spawn point. At the beginning of the game there are two gnoll thugs at each of the spawn points and two gnoll knights standing in front of the magical cabinet.

Diagram of the board set up
Diagram of the board layout
Scenery pieces for skirmish wargame Frostgrave
Switches on walls made with XPS foam and bamboo sticks with green stuff.
Model cabinet for skirmish wargame Frostgrave
The magic cabinet made with thick card and XPS foam

Out of game spells

Durnimlath and Mirhen both cast Out of game spells Familiar, Brew Potion and Animal Companion (more on that at the end). Only the Animal Companions were successful so they each start the game with a Snow Leopard companion.

28mm Snow leopard miniatures

The following are the highlights (and low lights) of the skirmish.

Turn 1

My plan was to move the thieves and snow leopards up the board as fast as possible to throw the switches and open the cabinet, while the Wizard, Apprentice, Captain and knight move up the board ready to grab the loot. The rest of the war band was to stay fairly close to the door to keep it clear for when the others come back with the loot.

Miniatures on a wargames board for the Frostgrave skirmish game

Durnimlath successfully casts enchant weapon on Daetir‘s dagger – this is useful as it negates the -1 damage penalty that daggers have.

In the creature phase II the gnolls begin moving towards the centre of the board. I decided that the two gnoll knights would however, stay guarding the cabinet.

Turn 2

Brikolad gets first blood taking a gnoll down with his bow and Durnimlath casts another Enchant Weapon, this time on Kirgwaith’s dagger.

Miniatures on a wargames board for the Frostgrave skirmish wargame


Mirhen does a great job casting an Elemental Bolt successfully despite an effective -4 penalty and does enough damage to also kill a gnoll. That laser burned up my whole special effects budget!

Miniatures on a wargames board for the Frostgrave skirmish wargame and a laser line marker

Back near the entrance Calaraglar and Galenglim are attacked by gnolls. Calaraglar takes damage but Galenglim wins the combat and damages the gnoll.

In the soldier phase Calaraglar attacks the gnoll and removes it from the game.

Miniatures on a a wargames board for the Frostgrave skirmish wargame

At the end of the turn a gnoll knight spawns at 2.

Turn 3

Apart from maneuvering and some failed casting rolls nothing much happens until the soldier phase when Gurthbor, Galenglim and a snow leopard all attack and kill gnolls.

Miniatures in a game of Frostgrave
Miniatures in a game of Frostgrave
Snowleopard and gnoll miniatures in a game of Frostgrave

At the end of the turn two gnoll thugs spawn.

Turn 4

Durnimlath begins the turn by casting elemental bolt at a gnoll. She needs to empower it (taking damage) but it hits and kills a gnoll.

In the soldier phase the first war band casualty occurs when a snow leopard attacks a gnoll, loses the combat and is killed.

At the end of the turn two more gnoll thugs spawn.

Turn 5

At the beginning of the turn Durnimlath casts another empowered elemental bolt and kills a gnoll.

Later in the turn Mirhen successfully casts bone dart killing a gnoll.

Miniatures on a a wargames board for the Frostgrave skirmish wargame

In the creature phase 2 a gnoll attacks Calaraglar and removes her from the board.

Miniatures on a a wargames board for the Frostgrave skirmish wargame

The Coming of Borock

Borock is a huge gnoll mutated by magic to be a Minotaur/gnoll hybrid. Big bad and able to send other gnolls into a killing frenzy, he will be a big problem for the war band. There is a chance that he might spawn earlier but if he hasn’t, he spawns at the end of turn 5.

Miniature of Borock a Gnoll/minotaur hybrid

I digitally kit-bashed Borock using Microsoft 3D Builder using a gnoll miniature by Evgenii Tkachenko at Maypole Minis and Minotaur horns from Murray – GameScape3D

Turn 6

Breged rolls lucky attacking and killing a gnoll..

Miniatures on a a wargames board for the Frostgrave skirmish wargame

A Gnoll attacks the remaining Snow Leopard killing it while another gnoll loses its combat with Naru Magol and is killed.

Miniatures and scenery being used for the skirmish wargame, Frostgrave

At the end of the turn a gnoll archer spawns.

Turn 7

The thieves continue moving towards the switches while Naru Magol attacks and kills a Gnoll. Gurthbor and Galenglim both attack gnolls and kill them.

Two elven infantry men miniatures used in the Frostgrave skirmish wargame

At the end of the turn both a gnoll thug and a gnoll archer spawn at spawn point 2.

Turn 8

Daetir reaches the left-hand switch and Kirgwaith is nearly at the right-hand switch but, has a gnoll thug and a gnoll archer (who has already done 8 damage) very near-by.

Galenglim and Gurthbor attack Borock, hopefully keeping tied up and not able to inspire other gnolls to frenzy.

At the end of the turn a gnoll knight spawns, at 3 right near the left-hand switch!

Turn 9 – Turn 12

This where it all started to unravel. Galenglim and Gurthbor kept Borock busy but Galenglim was brought down before Gurthbor finished him off. The rest of the the war band were slowly whittled away including Mirhen the apprentice. Durnimlath was left all alone and made a break, heading back to the door to leave but was brought down by gnoll archer, inches away from reaching it.

Post Game

Luckily both Durnimlath. Mirhen and Brikolad had good rolls on the Death and Injury table, making full recoveries.

The soldiers rolls were as follows:

Naru Magol – Full Recovery

Gurthbor – Dead

Galen Glim – Full Recovery

Daetir – Badly wounded

Kirgwaith – Badly wounded

Calaraglar – Badly wounded

Breged – Dead

Badly Wounded means the soldier will not be available for the next scenario. I’m going to replace the two thugs with animal companions and the two thieves with new ones as they are free to recruit. They will look somewhat identical to the ones that the replace. Odd that! Gurthbor is replaced by a new soldier a Man At Arms.

I also realised I had miss-read the rules regarding the Animal Companion spell and that they should have taken up a soldier slot. I also forgot that both the magic users had heal spells – doh!

There was some XP and Durnimlath goes up a level and raises her shoot stat, which will help with Bone Dart and Elemental Bolt. This also means that Mirhen’s shoot stat also raises.

The war band have moved into the Treasury to use as their base and found some Gold Crowns so that was some good news.

I’m undecided whether to run through the scenario again or just go on to the next. I think I will run it again but with a changed gnoll spawning table.

I was surprised at how tough the scenario felt. There is a lot talk on the internet about the previous scenario being overpowered, and Joseph has said as much himself, but I thought this one was as tough, if not more so. What, I think makes it difficult is the spawning of extra gnolls at the end of every turn.

As I think it is said in Perilous Dark, balancing solo scenarios is not easy. Of course, if I had had a lot of better dice rolls, my perception might have been different, and you do have a reasonable chance of any downed soldiers surviving which is a plus. I also possibly didn’t have enough scenery as it is suggested that you have a bit more than for competitive games.

I think I will re jig the gnoll spawns to have less knights and only spawns on every other turn. After all Borock is out of the picture so maybe the gnolls are leaving that area now their leader is gone.

Overall i really enjoyed the game and am looking forwards to playing again.

Gnoll mniatures

Northstar Military Figures – Frostgrave Gnolls

Free STL files used,by:

Jaime Blanco at Warpainted Minis

Nicolas Hughes The Jester Mask

Yasashii Kyojin Studio

And a group of “Heroscape: Gnoll Fighters” which I can’t find any details on plus some basic gnolls from an old D&D game.

Let me know in the comments if you have played this scenario and how you found it? Also how do you find campaign play in skirmish wargames? Are there any that get it spot on?

Making a table top terrain Cottage from corrugated Cardboard

Recently while hunting for hobby related videos on YouTube I found
Selrahc Games
and some great videos about making terrain with corrugated cardboard.

I have a terrible habit of holding onto cardboard packaging, after all, its bound to be useful for something someday, right? I’m still fairly new at terrain building so I’m still learning and trying out new techniques is very useful.

Making terrain from something that was likely going to end up in the recycling bin is a very appealing. I’ve mostly been using XPS foam which I really like, but, while you can get good deals on it, is not cheap. You also end up with a lot of off cuts, which I tend to hang on to rather put in the bin. I have some plans to make some terrain pieces from off cuts at some point so will write about that when I do.

I wanted to try out the method seen on Selrahc Games and decided to make a small cottage which would be useful for Silver Bayonet, D&D or a other games.

To start off I made a rough template for the ends of the cottage. This will be a guide for getting the height of the walls and the pitch angle and rise of the roof.

corrugated cardboard template for cottage end
cardboard end and side wall for model cottage

Next, using the template I drew out then cut out two pieces of card, one for each side and end of the cottage.

The cottage will of course need a doorway and windows so these were added to one of the pieces.

cardboard model cottage end and side with doorway and window cut out
cardboard cottage with bricks added

After cutting cardboard strips and cutting these again to the size I wanted for the bricks, the individual bricks can be added to the wall of the cottage. I use a quick setting wood glue, in preference to standard ‘school glue’ PVA, but either will work. PVA has one of those smells that always takes me back to primary school and making stuff with ‘sugar paper’. Actually why is it called that, I’ll look it up, the hive brain is sure to know.

This next step is the bit that I think really makes this method work. Over the bricks covered with glue, you add a layer of tissue paper, bog roll works really well. As the tissue develops small wrinkles as you add it it will give the bricks texture.

cardboard cottage brick wall covered with a layer of tissue paper
cardboard model cottage roof

For the roof I added pieces to get the shape and help keep the roof in place. My plan is to have the roof be removeable so that miniatures can be easily placed inside.

With both the pieces added and the glue dry the roof is ready for the next stage.

cardboard model roof

I then painted the walls dark grey, the dry brushed a lighter grey and then added some bits of wooden coffee stirrer for the window frames.

For the roof I was planning to add roof tiles made from thinner card but I had a change of mind.

unravelled twine used to make model cottage thatch

What I wanted was to model thatch. I considered making it from cardboard but found a couple of great videos on YouTube one from The Crafting Muse and one from Miniature Wizardry about using jute twine or as I’ve always called it hairy string, to make the thatch.

The twine is unravelled and then glued to strips of cardboard with more wood glue. You want the cardboard strips to be about half the length of thatch.

Starting with the bottom most part of the roof the thatch strips are added. You want the thatch to extend below the roof a little.

This part of the build is messy and time consuming, but sort of satisfying.

Strip of twine 'thatch' added to model roof
two layers of thatch added to model roof

More strips are added until the roof is covered. The last strip is twice the width of the others so that it can be folded to fit on the roofs peak.

For the ends of the roof I just dabbed on some glue and added small bunches of twine to cover the corrugations.

It was also about this point that I found out about plumbers hemp from another video about making model thatch roofs from LNR Models

model roof end
miniature model cottage

And that was more or less it. I gave the thatch a brush over with some black acrylic ink to age it and added some of my basing mix, a melange of Games workshop static grass, Geek Gaming Scenics Foam scatter – Mid green I think, Some old GW gravel, ‘play pit’ sand and some tarragon.

Overall I am quite pleased with the result. The thing I would change for the next time I use this method, is the size of the bricks and to use cardboard with smaller corrugations as the cardboard I used had quiet large ones and this made some of the bricks a little weak.

What do you think? Is this something you would try for your own gaming table? Do you prefer xps foam for terrain building? Let me know in the comments.

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