The adventures of Time the Necromancer: Ishtar’s Weapon Shop

It’s my birthday today, so while my wife was baking me an Eton mess cake and slow cooking brisket, I decided to play Frostgrave with my children. No full report as usual, as I figured it was a recipe for disaster with regards to my children’s patience if I stopped to take notes every time anything happened, so here is a handful of pictures and some key happenings:

My daughter (9) took charge of rolling for the monsters, and my son (5) took charge of rolling for the ‘heroes’ and providing tactical advice. This largely led to multiple castings of the Grenade spell, regardless of what the optimum choice would otherwise have been. So, not much different from when I play solo I guess…

(If you look carefully, you can see the cabinet that I built specially for this game, and also my son’s one - his is the one in much brighter colours!)

The thing with my daughter is, she tends to roll more 20s than I do. Like, a lot. Tim’s group took their usual approach of having a strong force race up the centre planning to smash a path to the cabinet with two faster flanking forces sneaking up the sides to hit the magic locks, only for a pair of goblins to smash my strongest fighters down to 2 Health each in the very first combat of the game.

On the other hand, my son had some amazing rolls too - there was a single combat where my daughter rolled a 20, and so the only way to win was if he could also roll a 20 - which he did! That was pretty cool, as we all absolutely lost it, even dragging my wife in to clap appreciatively…

This next picture is my daughter showing that she’s enjoying the game, just before the Captain used one of their irreplaceable magic arrows with an explosive tip to wipe out half of those goblins, and seriously injure the other two, with some amazing rolls on my son’s part!

It largely went downhill from there though - my daughter continued her hot streak of rolls, taking warriors out left right and centre, and only my tactical nous (and careful hiding, mostly) carried me through.

Both thieves were able to sneak through and unlock the cabinet, but unfortunately one of them got shanked by a goblin, leaving Tim to have to pick up one of their treasure tokens himself with his own hands.

In an incredible display of sense Tim even chose not to cast a spell one turn to be able to put more energy into beating feet back to the exit door, helped along the way by his Apprentice (who had largely been skulking behind various ruined walls by the exit door desperately trying to avoid being spotted by goblins)  poking his head round a corned to cast Leap on Tim, launching him away from a pursuing goblin and closer to safety. 

By the time the game ended, only the spellcasters and the thief with the Treasure Token escaped, leaving a lone zombie doing their best distraction routine (arms waving and ‘kick me’ sign, presumably) surrounded by goblins, and everyone else in various states of unconsciousness.

Post-game, Tim gained enough XP that he could have gained 4 levels, but having no Grimoires to learn new spells from only gained 2, gaining another point of Health (as both spellcasters took a bunch of damage, entirely from failed spell rolls and cutting to empower spells), and improving the Brew Potion spell (because it sure would be handy to have a bunch of healing potions!). I realised that I’d accidentally cheated in the previous game, as you can only improve one spell per game (when I was planning to also improve Strength and Grenade, as the spells which get cast the most), but I’m not going to go back and undo it at this point, I’ll just have to make sure I remember for next time!

The Captain also gained a level (due to making 9 kills this game, which I’m fairly sure is more than they’ve made in the rest of the campaign so far), gaining another point of Health.

For treasure, in this scenario you have the choice of taking a special magic weapon per token, or rolling on the usual treasure tables. While unique weapons are cool, I left the magic vampiric crossbow in favour of rolling for treasure, hoping to get a pile of money and maybe a Grimoire so that Tim could learn a new spell. Unfortunately, I rolled 20gc and a scroll of Banish, which is better than nothing, I guess. The Sword of Wounding & Healing goes to the recently recovered Knight - I would have preferred to give it to the Captain, as it’s basically their magic sword with a fringe additional benefit (and her pockets are full, so it’s not like she could carry a healing potion anyway), but she wouldn’t have given back her existing sword, so I figured it was better to improve the overall combat abilities of the group! Speaking of the Captain, making money (from this treasure, and also finding a handful of coins at their base) meant that she took her cut as usual - 13%, now that she’s levelled up.

Of all of my wounded warriors, everyone was fine apart from the Man at Arms who died, but Tim was able to afford an almost identical replacement. I was tempted to try a different soldier type, but that’s the toughest frontline fighter of the basic soldier types, so we’re sticking with it for now.

Next, Tim thinks he needs to learn some new spells, so is going to follow up on rumours of a hidden underground library that has recently been unearthed…

It being my birthday, the Tally also took a little hit, as my pile of presents included the latest Warhammer part work, after I asked my wife if she could grab me one during the week when she had to nip into town, and she was then secretive when I asked her if she’d been able to:

At this point in life, I’m not super fussed about 40k, but I can’t resist a bargain - and anyway, I’d still be tempted by something narrative like Acolyte or Kill Team…

The Tally now stands at:

45 vs 198 = -153