Osprey Games: Up Your Frostgrave Games with These Table Ideas
This weekend, I am spending my time in Stratford (Ontario, Canada) at Hotlead 2019. As you may remember, we did a shout out article on why you should check out Hotlead 2019 earlier on Bell of Lost Souls. Today, we are going to chat a little bit about Frostgrave at Hotlead 2017. The reason we are going back into the past is because as I write this article, I am prepping to run two tables of Frostgrave at this year’s event.
All of the pictures in this post are by Randall Carder. Thanks goes out to him for giving us permission to use the photos.
Going back in the past…
My experience with the group at Hotlead 2017 was absolutely awesome. They took the rules on quickly and everyone around the table had a lot of fun. Many of them went to the closest vendor after playing the game and picked up their own copies of Frostgrave. Better yet, some of them even wrote to Osprey Games telling them what a great time they had playing at my table and how well I did at teaching them the game. This was a huge complement for me and something for which I am very proud.
I also had a lot of strong support behind this game. Osprey Games sends a lot of products to my site for me to review and they decided to send me prize support for this event. That was very cool. XOLK sent me all of the MDF buildings specifically for this event. North Star Military Figures sent me a handful of miniatures to make a special appearance on the table. And finally, Cigar Box Battle sent me that gaming mat for review purposes. All of those items I will reuse at Hotlead 2019. Thanks goes out to all of those companies for helping me out with this excellent looking demo table.
While everyone enjoyed the game, I still find items to improve upon in the future.
Items to Improve Upon…
The first thing that I found with running a 6 to 8 player game of Frostgrave is that I ran the table too large. This year, I reduced the size of the table to a standard 3′ by 3′ rather than a 4.5′ by 4.5′ (roughly) table. I also decided to run the new games as two separate games running beside each other, each with 2 to 3 players.
It’s a great looking table, but it ended up being a little large for demo games.
The issue is better demonstrated in the picture below. See how far apart the characters start. In my next demo, I am running smaller tables so the action can start right away. Don’t worry though, there will still be tons of terrain and cover to hide behind (an absolute must in skirmish games).
The issue here is that the characters have so far to travel before getting to the objectives in the middle of the table.
By reducing the size of the table, the players should be into the action of the game earlier. By reducing the number of players per battleboard, the games should flow quicker with less player downtime between turns. I hope to run two or three different scenarios before the time runs out to give players a sense of the campaign rules (that is where Frostgrave shines the most for me).
More Pictures…
Randall Carder sent in a number of pictures for me to show. Below are more of those pictures.
How great of a table is that!?
A group of Musket (Crossbow) armed Dwarves make their way to the center objective.
Another angle of the table. Those are some GW buildings along side my buildings by XOLK.
A bridge in the middle of a ruined building, How long has that building been ruined that they had to build a bridge through it? Your guess is as good as mine. Not everything has to make sense. This is a fantasy game! 🙂
You may recognize some of the pictures from my Facebook Page or from Must Contain Minis.
Wrapping it up…
Hopefully you enjoyed this quick article. I had a lot of fun running Frostgrave at Hotlead 2017 and I am really looking forward to running the game at Hotlead 2019 with a few changes. For those of you that made it out to AdeptiCon, I hope that you had fun. Attending that show and getting one of those VIG Swag Bag is one of my dreams. Perhaps some day. But, on the bright side, I am very happy that I can attend Hotlead instead.
Thanks for reading and until next time, Happy Gaming Everyone!!!
Read more about great Indy and Historical games on my site!
Again, aside from writing great gaming related articles, I am also working on compiling a list of all Miniature Gaming Conventions in Ontario (Canada). If you are in Ontario, this list should be of interest to you!
