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I put together this Barrow from xps foam and a decopage cardboard treasure chest lid. I used a greenstuff world roller to texture the doorway and landing outside. It is all stuck together with super glue. I was keen to make sure that there were flat areas for based minis in the front and at the rear. My minor mistake was making the rear plinth/hill a bit too narrow after sticking on the rear wall section, hence cutting out a slit. When all the glue has dried I will prime it with a mix of mod podge and black paint. Then I will flock the top. I need to decide whether to make this snowy or green. I think that snow will cover more model making sins...

Kislev lives on in our hearts forever. I've continued my theme of building the Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago Crew with a Steppes feel. The majority of these are built using bodies and arms from the Crew kit, with some Empire/Mordheim heads and other outsourced bits. The last batch wound up being more generic Pirate types.

My most recent painted pieces are the Tribals from Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago. I really liked the spirit mask options. My grandmother had a set in her spare room, and I was fascinated with them as a child. The Cyclops is actually a 3D print by Valandar to celebrate the successful funding of his Titans of Legend Kickstarter. The Cyclops stretch goal in the FG:FA Nickstarter wasn't hit, but the file was released the same day. I figured he would fit in with them.

The club's next Ghost Archipelago campaign starts this coming Saturday, so I am taking advantage of the day off to make sure that I am ready. We are starting with new crews, and my new spell caster (warden) has a spell to create a little piece of blocking terrain, so I decided that I had better make a few today. I am hoping/expecting that 6 of them should be enough. The parapet is supposed to be 2" long and a half inch high, so I pulled out some 50mm cavalry bases to stack stones on. Step One: Glue on stones and wait for things to dry.

Seeing this map of the 100 Acre Wood on my Facebook feed made me think what a neat scenario map it would make. This got me thinking how cool a Pooh based Crew would be for Ghost Archipelago. I immediately thought of Reaper’s Werebear, and Wereboar for Pooh and Piglet as the Heritor and the Warden. And coming up with an anthropomorphic Tiger, Owl (Bones Black Owlbear?), and Rabbit shouldn’t be hard. For Eeyore I thought I could convert a Minotaur. Anyone actually make a Weredonkey or Werehorse? My real sticking point is Kanga and Roo. Does anyone make an anthropomorphic kangaroo?

Among my first minis finished in 2019 are the Crew from/for Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago. I did two themed builds, plus a generic sailor who was left over. The Warriors of the Steppes. They were done with a Cossack theme, and they all use official FG Crew bodies/arms, with heads from Warhammer kits (Chaos Marauder Horsemen, Empire Archers, maybe another) The Warriors of the Desert. They were built entirely from the FG Crew sprue. The lone generic Crewman Crunch.

We kicked off this year's campaign season, with our first Ghost Archipelago game this past Saturday. Since it was the first game, and the first time with the rules for a couple of the guys, we played just a simple battle and not one of the scenarios. My Heritor's report can be found here: First Foray onto Fantastic Shores "...As the Elf leaned over to reach into the pedestal, he caught sight of the Heritor Gregorius for the first time, emerging from a patch of jungle on his left. The other Heritor clutched a grime-covered urn to his chest, and as he turned he likewise caught sight of Lord Fortrywn. Gregorius' eyes narrowed as he quickly apprised what Lord Fortrywn was doing. The old Elf could see the turmoil in his opponent's eyes as greed flashed across them. The human Heritor looked at his urn then back at the newly smashed hole in the idol's pedestal, his mind calculating..."

Here are some of the finished crew I have been posting in the WIP thread. I also made some islands, just using MDF, pink foam, and gloss mod podge for a basic water effect. The figures are a mix of Bad Squiddo and Wargames Foundry. I have an eye on a few Reaper figures for wardens and Heritors. I am trying to make more of an effort with basing. Have been making a mix of shoreline bases, sand, planks, then jungle/green bases. Will then mix those up on a few models.

Here are some Reaper Warlord Necropolis faction zombies, painted up as swamp zombies in a speed paint for Ghost Archipelago.

I have put together a crew of North star and Bad Squiddo figures. A reaper druid is going to act as the warden and I will probably use the Bad Squiddo female pirate (drawing her sword) as the Heritor or buy a Reaper female pirate. The concept is that they are all ex navy or ex marines so have similar kit, red breeches, blue grey or linen shirts, dark brown boots. My goals with these are to do better work highlighting/finishing the faces, and to avoid them looking muddy. That looks fine for Frostgrave but a bit dull for GA. At the moment these have just had base/undercoats and a wash of Army Painter Light Tone. C and c always welcome on my posts.

Have got some Frostgrave explorers and some GA crew with a middle eastern focus. Am getting better at kit bashing but these are the first mixed conversions using resin, metal, plastic and greenstuff. The Arabians are Gripping Beast middle eastern infantry and steppes infantry with Frostgrave GA crew arms. The explorers are Fireforge resin bodies, frostgrave or westwind pict heads and a mix of arms. C and C welcome.

Painted a North Star Heritor for Ghost Archipelago, "Heritor II". The mini has been nicknamed in the fluff/lore as 'Big Red" so went for red hair. One thing I was happy with was the base. I just used the "Wood" roller from "Greenstuff World" on some green stuff then stuck it to a washer. The wood grain roller doesn't work too well with foam but was ideal here. Then Vallejo have a paint/wash called "Woodgrain" which nicely goes into all the folds creating depth and highlights. Good to have some literal paint names for once!

Have been stealing coffee stirrers for a while and thought I should disguise them. This is a modular set of docks for pirate settings/City docks, ghost archipelago. All I did was make platforms of various heights with layers of foam core board. Then Iaid cross pieces and laid the decks on top, just using different thicknesses of coffee stirrers. The stanchions are just pva glued to the side of the foam core, under the decks rather than showing above them. I painted the foam core black and am painting the wood using the Crafting Muse video on YouTube as a guide. I won't be basing these. The boat is a lucky find. It is a decoupage model ocean liner. I cut the top off and had a curved boat shape 15cm / 6" long and perfect for 8 models. Only £1.25 on sale. All I did was lay a deck of coffee stirrers then took some of the bits I cut off and glued them back on to the sides. Painted like the Dock. I don't want to add seats, mast, similar detail to this model to maximise how many based minis can stand in it.

With our upcoming Ghost Archipelago campaign less than two months away, I thought I would start introducing the crew I plan to use, as I get the figures painted up. I'll start with are my Heritor (Reaper 77044 Turanil, Male Elf paladin) and Warden (03415 Lanura Windsong, Elf Wizard). We decided for our initial GA test game, which we are having after our December Frostgrave campaign game, that we would roll randomly for Heritor abilities. I got an interesting assortment, and depending on how things go during the test game, I just may keep them. For the Wardens we choose whatever Branch and Spells we wanted. I've had in mind wanting to use these two figures, so I decided to go with a crew of Elves. The figures I'm using for my Heritor and Warden were already painted, so given the color scheme I had used for Warden's figure I deiced to go with a Vine Warden. Heritor: Lord Hytieral Fortrywn- Retired from a lengthy military career to enjoy his wealth and his laurels. Powerful. Landholder. Doesn’t tolerate fools. Not happy that his younger step-sister has out-maneuvered him into taking her daughter, his niece, along with him to act as his Warden. She says it will be good for the girl to have experience in the world; he finds the young magic-user barely tolerable, and the fact she isn’t a true wizard is an embarrassment. Daze- 3 Evade-5 Stand Firm- 5 Surge- 5 Disarm-5 So I think the Daze is going to be interesting as the main ability. Apparently this guy is so formidable looking as he twirls his sword around acrobatically, that enemies just kind of freeze up when they see him. The other abilities I think fall in nicely with someone who was a professional soldier. Warden: Marnilyne Dewdrisane- Young. Impetuous. Curious. Argumentative. Naïve. In awe of her uncle, and a little scared of him; but also terribly excited to be a part of the adventure ahead. Brambles Plant Walk Warp Weapon Summon Animal Changed to: Water of Life after the test game we played. I chose Summon Animal as my out-of-school spell, as I've learned from Frostgrave that having an extra figure to command can make a real difference. Also, I saw this Warden as being generally loving, and being connected to, all living things, plant or animal. During our test game, I became aware of how beneficial having Water of Life was when I watched as my opponent constantly was able to heal his Heritor during the battle, while mine slowly was worn down to half strength.

For the most recent works in progress, a gigantic distraction from my poor Death Guard project. In the last week, multiple delayed Kickstarters (and one on-time Nickstarter) arrived...as well as the ReaperCon Swag Bag! Arrivals included: Stonehaven Miniatures Giants Stonehaven Adventurers 2017 Midlam Miniatures "Winter Adventurers" Reapercon Swag Bag Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago Nickstarter While I am trying to complete the Death Guard, I did ready these groups for prime time: The Giants are nicely sized. While there are some issues with the scaling between Giant "tribes" in comparison to 5E entries, they do tower over adventurers. The Wolf Lord, who I expected to be an Ogre-sized werewolf, is massive!

I recently finished the Dagon Statue terrain pieces from Bones 3. Nothing fancy, but a series of drybrushed layers. Step by step can be found here: http://allbonesabout.blogspot.com/2017/08/dagon-statue-bones-3-terrain.html

So, last year some of us ran a bunch of Frostgrave Demos at ReaperCon. They seemed to go over fairly well. I originally wasn't going to do something of this nature again, as there were some other games that I wanted to get in and the demos monopolized my time pretty well (to the point that I had to do a speed shopping trip on Sunday before the Reaper booth shut down). However, I seem to have taken a blow to the head and am seriously considering doing something similar this year. I have a couple of ideas that I am trying to judge interest in. 1) A straight up Frostgrave tournament. That was what last year was supposed to be, but it was mostly a bunch of demo games with me or buckyball teaching the game. The advantage to this is that people can sign up to battle and I don't have to babysit the table. 2) Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago is released on Sept. 19th. Last year, Reaper was kind enough to set up an island themed table from a previous Warlord tournament for us to use. Thematically this would be perfect for Ghost Archipelago. Plus, with the new pirate faction at ReaperCon this year, it seems like a no brainer. The drawback is that the rule will only have been out for a month or so, and people might not have time to get warbands together (especially when trying to finish contest entries). Plus, it seems with a new game, it would most likely tend to be back to doing demos rather than a tournament. So what I would like to do is to gauge interest in either option. What say you all?