ASQL: Crusties

This week I 'as mostly bin arsing about with Alien Squad Leader. The rules have just been reprinted and are now available. I bought some 15mm Crusties from Ground Zero Games, and after about eight tests decided to go with a sort of lobstery reddish colour for the chitinous aliens, and then I thought they might go down better with a slice of lemon (and some light blue).

War Doctor/Chronomancer

Here's the War Doctor with a companion and a bunch of Chancellery Guard. Or it's a Frostgrave Chronomancer with apprentice and some soldiers.

The companion is Cinder, who, apparently appeared in the novel Engines of War. I haven't read it but the idea of sticking a Dalek gun and eyestalk on the end of a normal gun was too good to resist.

Not sure why but the Chancellery Guard were just about the hardest thing I've ever painted. I had three separate goes at them over the course of about a year. Really don't know why, but they were just no fun at all.

Tower Gate (Part Two)

Finished my tower gate module thingy.

Frostgrave AAR (Part Two)

Having watched his bodyguard getting killed, my summoner retreated to the other side of the square where his apprentice was just arriving. His rival wiz retreated to the inn courtyard...

...where my last thug was trying to make off with a treasure.

The Bret apprentice, having lost sight of the rooftop infantryman, brought her archers towards the town square, too.

The largely irrelevant ranger and his imaginary friend were left on their own to pick up the last treasure, at their leisure.

Our only wandering monster of the game turned up on the edge of the square...

...and went for the cultists. (We house-rule that treasure-instigated wandering monsters appear d20 inches in a random direction away from the treasure. We think it works better than the RAW.)

Meanwhile the Bret wiz and her knight went for the thug, who didn't really stand much chance, though he made a decent bash of it.

My Summoner and his apprentice backed away from the wolf who made short work of the infantryman cultist.

Faced with the arrival of the Bret apprentice and her archers...

...and another fatality...

my cult leaders made their excuses and left.

A fun, close-ish game, with both sides managing to get away with three treasures, though my cultists took a lot more casualties. Only one, however, was a permanent fatality. The Cult of the Orange Simca mostly live to fight another day.

Frostgrave Warbands

Here's a couple of warbands for Frostgrave. They're made up mostly of figures I've had for ages, from Warhammer FB. One of the best bits about the game is that you can cobble together decent themed warbands from pretty much any mini collection.

These are the soldiers and spell lists I started each of them with. You can't really go wrong when selecting these, istm, as you can base strategies on whatever you come up with. I'd go for a few missile troops, generally, though. My summoner warband suffers coz I didn't have any cultist-with-crossbow minis.

Also, movement type spells like Telekinesis and Leap might not sound very exciting, but we've found them to be the most useful.

Thaumaturge

My pacifist Thaumaturge band, just pretends to be pacifist, and then Blinding Lights you in the back when you're not looking, so you can't look. It started off with all Archers, but now I have some rangers, knights and templars.

Heal

Blinding Light

Dispel

Push

Teleport

Mind Control

Telekinesis

Animal Companion

Summoner

These guys, from the cult of the Orange Simca, are a bit more up front about their belligerence. They could do with some ranged attack soldiers, but I'm waiting to get my hands on the Northstar plastic Frostgrave Cultists box.

Leap

Possess

Summon Demon

Elemental Bolt

Fog

Reveal Death

Monstrous Form

Telekinesis

Frostgrave AAR (Part One)

Here's a game with my 12th level Bret warband being borrowed to fight my new Cultist warband. I was wondering how Frostgrave would get on in my city scenery, coz there's just a few big blocks of scenery and not much else, as opposed to the lots of little bits of interactive scenery we've usually been playing Frostgrave with.

As it happens, this sort of set-up seems perfectly suited to the game. The buildings blocked line of sight adequately (a bit of an issue in Frostgrave with its unlimited range magic) and the easily navigable and well-linked rooftops brought another dimension to the game. So I'm pretty pleased with this and will be dragging this scenery out again for more Frostgrave.

We tried to put the treasures in awkward places, especially away from easy telekinesis spots, and ruled that the treasures themselves, unlike the tokens, were pretty small and quite flat, so you can't get line of sight with them if they are significantly higher. This is designed to nerf Telekinesis a little, as it's a great spell for wrecking fun treasure placement.

My wiz managed to summon a minor demon before the game started. I'm also using this ogre cultist conversion to mark a cultist acting under the influence of the Possess spell. My wiz and these guys went down the middle while...

...my two thugs and their dog went down the left flank.

Steve the apprentice took his infantrymen down the right.

The Bret wiz went to the centre, and Telekinesisised the treasure in the temple.

The apprentice took the archers down the right...

...and the two rangers (the one in the brown cowl is illusionary) took to the city walls. 

At the end of his second turn, my wiz used Leap to get one of the cultists up to the first treasure.

While a Bret grabbed a treasure, too.

My apprentice made his way into the graveyard.

While my wardog got a whiff of cheese and charged towards the Brets.

Fenton!

My apprentice cast fog, mostly coz I'd just bought some cotton wool and I wanted to see how it looked, but also coz they were under line of sight from one of the rangers.

The archers tried to shoot my rooftop bloke down but he got lucky.

The heavies in the centre clashed in the town square. My possessed infantryman took out the templar with one swing, while my wiz Elemental Bolt-ed the Bret wiz for significant damage.

But the Brets counter-attacked, killing my demon, and their wiz Blinding Light-ed my wiz, who was left groping around in a haze like an idiot.

One of the apprentice's infantrymen dragged out one treasure, while another of them climbed the temple to get to their second treasure. The last one, and the apprentice, decided they might be needed in the town square.

Quite spectacularly, this guy managed to jump the two and a quarter inch (more or less) gap between the rooftops, while carrying treasure and being shot at. Man-of-the-Match material.

Fortunately, my wiz managed to recover from the Blinding Light at his first attempt. Unfortunately, that only meant he got a good view of his last minion biting the dust.

My guy reached the treasure on the temple...

...as the roof rangers approached the treasure on the opposite side of the board.

Dodging a hail of arrows, blokey made his way further along the rooftops, almost to safety.

And my last thug, climbed over the stables and managed to grab the treasure in the inn's courtyard. The difficult bit will be getting out again, though.