Collins does a Frostgrave board

Running out of time for this competition and I am working over Christmas too so don’t get any hobby time then either!

Still have 3 buildings to do and I need your input for the last tile which I haven’t figured out what to do with yet!

should I just do a hill to stop Gerry from being upset? take one for the team?

When I played my first game of frostgrave my friend had this tower and I thought it was so very super cool with the exception of one thing… the walkway.

As you can see the wooden floors are very thick and the 3d sculpted walk way struts were very thick, not a full wrap around and were more stepping stones from tomb raider or crash bandicoot rather than something out of Skyrim for example.

So they got right in the bin (or rather, environmentally did not get printed)

So much better, looks more realistic and allows for better gameplay too including allowing for fights on the way up to the tower.

I will add some snow fall to the edges of this to try and blend it in a bit more when I next mix up a batch. Right now it looks very much like an after thought and a sit on piece so a bit jarring, but still better than what the original designer intended, which I expect was due to the limitations of modelling a pretty complicated wrap around twisting crescent moon shape thing. I certainly wouldn’t be able to model that in 3D.

did anyone see the witch?

dead short update because I am struggling with motivation.

I utilised my modpodge flock glass beads mix to add snow to these buildings.

I was careful to not put any under overhangs but also I tried to put it on top surfaces including windows.

one thought I have about it is that I used gloss modpodge which might have been a minor mistake for this purpose… we shall see when it has dried

A quick and easy update for you now.

I chose to go with a different method for snowing up the trees to the first one I did. This is because I felt that a dusting would look better than a doloping of snow.

I simply painted on mod podge and then sieved on the snow flock leaving it to dry in its own time. easy and simple.

Well they turned out well didn’t they!

the snow and gloss mod podge mix worked really well on the cobblestones and also surrounding the fountain where it looks like it have been trodden in really well.

I did go a bit OTT on the graveyard but nevermind, a lesser trodden path…

I had some left over so I dumped it on a tree and fence to see how it would work out. Looks fine but I think I’ll go with a different method in future.

Put a layer of matt mod podge down on the white base areas then I sieved on the snow flock. it leads to a solid flat area of snow. not overly realistic but absolutely fine for gaming.

for the paths I use gloss mod podge which I then saturate with woodland scenic snow flock and a bit of the AK glittery snow flock (basically glass beads) in a ratio of 5:4:1 (glue:snowflock:glass). it is then stippled over everything that I want to have a glossy icy snow layer to it.

We shall reconvene on this one when everything has dried to see whether or not the plan works as intended!

this evening whilst I had an hour to myself I painted 2 half tiles ready for adding trees to and then decided to put the whole lot together to make a 3×3 table.

It’s nice to check in every now and again to check progress and see how well you’re progressing. It has felt slow going so far due to not having much time to work.

I’ve just been too tired recently with work and the baby stealing sleep.

still got to figure out what I want to do with one of the tiles. If anyone has any ideas please shout up. I’m half thinking about making an encampment but could easily just 3d print another building, it is a city after all and I already have 6 non-building tiles out of 16. I would quite like something interesting with a bit of story to it though.

Gerry wanted hills so I have provided mounds…. of muddy snow.

Sculptamold was dumped on the tiles in sausage shapes, L shapes or simply blobs.

then once dried it was painted using the same brown and white acrylic paints as noted before.

Ive done this so that when the trees get added it will hopefully give the impression that the ground is protected from the snowfall a little bit.

I have also printed off a village noticeboard for our wizards to post up ‘wanted for hire’ notices for all the followers, after all thugs and thieves are ten a penny and entirely disposable muscle so there needs to be an ample supply…

the trees are simple heki model trees. I have been impressed by the previous deciduous trees from their range. these however are less than impressive and the bigger they are the more spindly and unimpressive they become. £30 for a box of about 24 so they are cheap and so much more efficient than making them myself, just in comparison they’re not as good as the deciduous range.

To mount them I took a 3mm drill straight to the now dried sculptamold mounds. I just eyeballed it to be honest, no measuring, after all nature doesn’t measure anything so why should I?

when I come to do the snowing I shall glue these in properly and spray with tacky glue to get them slightly dusted by snow flock. im undecided on whether to add ice and stuff the underneath first though. probably should.

This was clearly an extremely scientific test with all the rigours and double blind exercises that go with it. as such I can declare it a success and not at all semi confirmed guesswork.

all in all, the constant move of cold air helped ‘air’ out the moisture from the clay rather than bake it and did it very quickly. It also didn’t warp the boards at all as noted below which was a concern I had.

Basically 8.93/10 would repeat

In this update I have targeted the half and quarter sized boards.

These are getting put in-between all the others and used to pad out or represent the roads etc.

The easy way to achieve this is to go to the old school methods of DAS modelling clay and the greenstuff world rollers.

I have two types on hand, the cobblestone one and the wooden plank one. in the end I elected to only use the cobblestone.

with long and thin boards that have no reinforcement (remember back to entry 1) you need to be careful with the drying not to warp the boards. when adding heat to the boards to help evaporate the moisture they do indeed warp. but so far I have observed that if you get a simple fan and point it at the boards the product dries out but doesn’t warp. granted I’ve only tested this on layers of paint and some sculptamold so we shall see what happens with the DAS clay which is prone to shrinkage

Snow is a pain to do… white is the best colour to become tainted by literally anything else

sometimes that’s a good thing, but often with snow, its a pain in the arse.

As an experiment I’ve tried to add a bit of diversity to the underlying snow structure. muddy paths or murky areas where there would be a lot of footfall fading out to pure snow.

the edges I’ve decided must be pure snow to help blend each tile to the next but in-between can have all sorts going on.

this was achieved using two basic colours from the same manufacturer, a warm brown and a white. I went with a burnt umber (red/orange brown) rather than a raw umber (brown) in an attempt to add a little warmth to the areas for the next stage of them.

that’ll be to add frozen ice snow mulch mix.

sidebar: I also added a bit of sculptamold into the big grave to give it a small elevation for further interest. that’ll need whiting and the match sticks will need more grey and a tad of green but it’ll be fine

as you can see from the test layout I had one wall extra that I didn’t use up in the end. reason being I felt that with the slightly raised grave bed for the largest headstone it would lead to interesting enough ground difference without the need to have a blocking wall. I think it increases the playability of the big square block whilst keeping it visually interesting.

lets talk ruins

I’ve had a 3d printer for about 8 years how, a prusa mk3 i3 and it is a little trooper, I can’t seem to kill it (not that im trying, because im not) it is simply a very good machine that has stood the test of time, both in terms of age, and use.

as this game requires lots of LOS blocking stuff that’s multiple levels and ruin shaped I set the little prusa to work.

ive read through a few scenarios in the book and im glad to say there is some plan for this

there is a fountain of youth/knowledge. there are 3 tall(ish) towers/buildings. there is a crypt and a graveyard for one of the necromantic missions and there is also a sprinkling of woods with even a notice board for when the party want to take up a random hire job.

the smaller sheets will likely get turned into ruined roads or paths for just general filler that’ll be sort of easy to do.

When planning this out I knew I wanted it to be modular. having played a grand total of ONE game of frostgrave and loved it it was clear that the table was the key to the scenario an the added fun of the game.

I already have some exp with a modular system as seen in my project here involving anomalia games tiles. Sadly, like all passion projects it got spoiled by events (detailed in project) and similarly for the people running that company the seem to have wound up business and even been chased by the tax man a bit (according to companies house) #awkward

that meant I needed to find a new solution to this problem.

I picked this up at Penkridge Wargames jumble sale for not a lot of money. the terrain tile system by sarissa precision.

it has enough to make a 3×3 in it, it is modular, it is cheap (£33 normally, I paid £17) and more importantly, it is available.

lets see how this works out for me as the bit that attracted me to the anomalia stuff was that it resisted warping. this TTS has zero reinforcement so it might all bend like cardboard if im not careful