"The curious problem with Northstar's Frostgrave soldiers" Topic

I've been spending the past month finally finishing up my Frostgrave warbands and other character models so I can begin playing the game regularly.

Of course as is well known one of the great advantages of a game like Frostgrave is that you can use whatever miniatures you want, there's no official base size, etc.

So a couple years I ago I went ahead and bought up a bunch of stuff, the Northstar plastic soldiers and undead boxed sets, a bunch of other-brand metal wizards and apprentices, as well as a whole host of creatures both metal and plastic from numerous mini. companies.

But just this past week I dug out the Frostgrave rulebook to get reacquainted with the general flow of the game.

And then when I looked at all the Northstar plastic soldiers I had built and nearly had completely painted I was struck with a rather strange revelation.

The rulebook specifies what each type of soldier should be roughly equipped with in terms of recognizing what the model is on the tabletop: one hand vs. two hand weapon, light armor, chain mail, shield, etc.

And of course the Northstar box gives you all kinds of options and variations for building different soldiers. So I just went ahead and built a pretty even distribution of equipment from hand held weapons to bows, crossbows, axes etc.

And then I look at the actual warband list selection in the rulebook!

NONE of the Northstar soldiers have chain mail! Yet in the rules some of the soldiers are identified by that type of armor. Every single model is dressed in what looks like either cloth tunics or maybe leather armor. But nobody has "heavy armor" or chain mail. Nobody.

It's all cloth. Some soldiers do have metal helmets and leather helmets. But no overall body armor.

And for one handed and two handed weapons, well several soldier types carry that and I think that even shields are carried by more than one type of soldier.

The ONLY solder types that are obvious to the model's appearance are like archers and crossbowmen who are holding the primary missile weapon.

So I suddenly realized that I needed to make a bunch of game tokens that specifically say each soldier type on them, and I can put them next to the models on the tabletop during a game.

I just found this whole thing with the Northstar box very strange! I mean didn't they design and produce that boxed set in conjunction with the Frostgrave rulebook army list?

I also have the female soldiers boxed set. Same exact thing. Not one soldier dressed in chain mail or heavy armor, everybody's in cloth or leather.

So it became pretty apparent that with the all the models I built (which I thought I would be fine since the game is supposedly so flexible) I couldn't tell apart soldier types on the table!

In your own Frostgrave games, how do you keep the soldier types in your warband straight on the table? How do you remember which guy is a "Templar" vs. a "Knight" or a "Man at Arms" if the models only vaguely resemble them or don't resemble them at all?

Am I reading too much into this? Maybe the different soldier types aren't different enough in actual abilities to matter that much if you mistake one for another? Then again they have different gold values so some have to be more powerful than others which affect gameplay yes?.

I don't mean to sound so ignorant but I've been building and painting for Frostgrave and haven't played the game in quite a while except for when I first a test game wen I got the book almost three years ago.

Here's the counters I made:

While I was at it I also made a bunch of spell effects tokens, based on a Frostgrave forum's recommendations for what you need to play:

It is Frostgrave and metal armor gets real cold up there in the City.

Plus is the are the stats that determine everything.

What I did was bought a box of Gripping Beast vikings to use for the better soldiers. They match fairly well with the Frostgrave minis and I can even mix bits if I want. I also have a lot of the metal Frostgrave minis and they have the appropriate armour. I tend to try to get WYSIWYG with my minis but you don't really need to as long as you can keep track of who is who.

I always figured their armour was under their warm coats. As long as you declaim who is who to your opponent before the game, I see no issue. :)

Neat idea with the tokens though. I also like Zinkala's idea.

"And Roger here has chain…"

Not a player but I would add something to their base rather than saddle the game with tokens.

For example, a red stripe on a base is a Templar," Orange means "Knight," blue means "Man At Arms."

Thanks for all the feedback!

I was thinking with the ID tokens that they could be put right under the models themselves so that they are not visually distracting during the game. The 25mm bases would sit right on top of them flatly. Then you could just lift the model to check what it is in case you forgot.

I do like the idea of putting colored stripes on the lip of the base. But my OCD always wants bases that are purely scenic with no non-scenic elements. But that's my personal hangup, lol.

If you don't want to paint colour stripes on your bases how about small scenic items like a broken sword, skull or treasure sack? That way you could use extra crispy's idea while keeping your own preference for scenic only basing. Iirc the Frostgrave plastic figures have loads of extras on the sprue that could be pressed into service for the task.

If they're armoured why not have a few serfs running along behind carrying spare armour to indicate they're armoured?

Just an idea.

You've read some good suggestions on how to mark your armored figures.

As to why Northstar did their soldiers that way I can only speculate. It may be that they wanted to provide figures that would otherwise be hard to find. Gamers who do historical settings know where to find suitable unarmored soldiers, but fantasy gamers might not. Most fantasy figures that look like soldiers show metal armor, big two handed weapons, or both. Those are easy to find. Perhaps Northstar was trying to be helpful and assumed we would buy our armored figures elsewhere.

I hope you can find a solution that fits your personal aesthetic hangup. I have my own and know what a bother it can be :-)

Can you use bare heads for no armor, leather helmet for chainmail, and metal helmet for heavy armor?

IIRC when the Frostgrave box first came out it was suggested to use the Fireforge crusaders to provide the armored bodies, as they were designed to be compatible. I have used the Fireforge Templar box exactly for this. I believe the rationale was even given that while there were plenty of historical figures for fighter types, the Northstar box was specifically going to focus on the 'thief/adventurer/murder hobo' aspects like arms carrying bags and lanterns and whatnot.

@Zagloba,

That's really interesting, I was not aware of that! That would certainly make sense in terms of the design. Oh well, I can still use my game tokens. I don't really want to start over again and invest in making two whole new warbands with new miniatures.