Beneath the Frost - Heart of Ice Part 1: Heavy Hitters 1

I wanted create some generic looking miniatures that I could use to test out new ideas and tactics for warbands without having. Which meant starting yet another new warband... try not to roll your eyes.

I wanted to have a set of miniatures that could represent up to three basic warbands that I had kicking around my head. Taking inspiration from the core rule book, the soldiers have a limited pallet colour scheme so that they can be placed with any of the wizards in any combination. These would not only work for testing out ideas, but allow me to quickly offer to lend other gamers a warband that I wasn't overly precious about.

Here's how my first efforts have come along.

These minis are very much still WiP, but I'm please with the direction and progress so far. This warband is entirely melee focused (something quite different for me) and features a Berzerker, two Infantrymen and five Thugs. The Wizard and Apprentice are the ones I received with the Frostgrave Folio 'Nickstarter' and technically represent Sigilists. But I think with a suitable colour scheme they could be one of a few different schools. I'm planning on buying two more spellcaster pairs to be used in a similarly generic fashion.

Lets take a look at some of the specific soldiers now:

Infantryman, Berzerker (Barbarian), Infantryman

Here we have the heaviest hitters of the group. In my mind the 'now' for the Frostgrave setting is late Dark Ages/Early Medieval; roughly comparable with the 1066 in our world or Rohan and Gondor in the Lord of the Rings movies. To that end, I wanted these guys to have a suitably historic yet fantasy look to them. The Berzerker was simply a Barbarian model with a Gripping Beast Saxon Thegn head. I think it gives him a bit of a 'nobel savage' look that works quite well. The Infantry men have also have Gripping Beast Saxon heads and also spear arms (one Saxon, one Dark Age Warriors).

Initially, I had wanted to put these miniatures together quickly out of a single box of Frostgrave Soldiers, but the temptation to convert was simply to great. I'm glad I gave in, as I'm quite fond of these. There are still mold lines to clean up and more details to add, but the ground work is pretty done.

Three Thugs

These hired bullies were very simple conversions. Extra heads and weapons were taken from the Gripping Beast kits mentioned previously.

Two Thugs

More violent types, again with their weapons (and some other other parts) switched out for Gripping Beast kits.

As I said before, my first thought was just to throw these models together and not worry too much about how they looked. But me being me, I couldn't resist and ended up making this project way more hard work, but way more fun and rewarding.

Two Infantrymen

As you can see, I decided to add baggage to most of the figures. I absolutely love the way that Otherworld Miniatures look. Their adventurers really look like they could be on an adventure, because they've got enough kit with them to survive. Felstad is a grim and unforgiving place. It seems crazy to think any sane man would step foot within the city without kit to survive if he gets trapped in a sudden storm.

Three Thugs

I have very limited experience with greenstuff, and most of that has been less than successful. Thankfully, I found this tutorial online:

Using that, and few Google searches, as a guide I was able create a number of backpacks that I'm quite proud of.

Two Thugs

As I say, these guys are not finished and will need more work. I'll try and post pictures of the completed models before I paint them.

...if I finish them.