9. Frostgrave soldiers

Maybe 5 posts about the wizards was enough, wasn’t it? Let´s talk a bit about the remaining parts of the warband: the soldiers. The warband can consist up to 8 of them, however they don’t gain experience (except the captain in the supplement book), but they are still very important members of the band. The following type of soldiers are in the basic rulebook (the equipment is important because the game should be WYSIWYG):

• Dog: well, it’s a dog…
• Thief: cheap rouge who’s got only a dagger
• Thug: cheap soldier with a hand weapon
• Archer: basic ranged unit with dagger and bow
• Crossbowman: the other basic ranged unit with dagger and crossbow
• Man-at-arms: basic soldier with light armor and a two handed weapon
• Mercenary: the other basic soldier with light armor, hand weapon and shield
• Pathfinder: light armor, bow and a staff
• Ranger: a stronger version of the pathfinder, with hand weapon instead of the staff
• Treasure Hunter: the evolved rouge with light armor, hand weapon and dagger
• Knight: stronger version of the mercenary, with heavy armor
• Templar: stronger version of the man-at-arms, with heavy armor
• Barbarian: unarmored fighter with two handed weapon
• Marksman: heavy crossbowman, with crossbow, hand weapon and heavy armor
• Apothecary: the healer of the warband with staff and a potion

Where to get them? Basically anywhere, but it’s the easiest way to get one of the official soldiers boxes from Northstar Miniatures. There are Soldiers I, Soldiers II (all females), Cultists, if you want so Gnolls and Snakemen also, but my sons choose the Barbarians (but the following is valid for all of these sets):

These boxes contains 20 soldiers, which is enough to make a warband, with all the different options. But what if you want to make two warbands with at least, some options? Yes, planning is needed again. So, there are 15 different warband members, and there are 20 torsos in the box. But for two warbands, with mirrored options, is the 20 only 10… Pretty hopeless. But with the wizards it was a similar situation, so let’s try a similar solution, and group the soldiers, because there are more versions of some units:

• Dog: sad but true, there is no possibility to make dogs out of soldiers… But there are very nice blister packs of metal dogs/wolves from Northstar.
  
  
  
• Thief: no other miniature has only daggers, so they need to be unique, and furthermore you will need more of them, in a basic warband, so lets make 2(4).
  
  
  
• Thug/Mercenary/Knight: all of them have hand weapons, but different armors and with shield or without shield. Let’s make 1(2) with helmet, and 1(2) bare headed, as representation of the armor levels, and think a bit more about the shields…
  
  
  
• Archer: all other archers have bigger weapons, so make 1(2) unique soldiers for them
• Crossbowman/Marksman: as the archer, so 1(2). Maybe give them helmets, and use them as marksman also?
  
  
  
• Man-at-arms/Templar/Barbarian: they all have two handed weapons, but different armors. What to make here? For the beginning let’s make 1(2) with helmet, and 1(2) bare headed, as before by the Thug/Mercenar/Knight trio. How to make another option with even more armor? Maybe a shield on the back? But how to make it removable?
  
  
  
• Treasure hunter: again unique, nobody else has two weapons, so make 1(2).
• Pathfinder/Ranger: both of them have a bow, the difference is the meele weapon: hand weapon or staff. Why not give them a spear? So they can be used as both, again 1(2).
  
  
  
• Apothecary: very unique accessories and not really used in a basic warband, sorry, we wont get him from 1 soldier box.

So, we have almost everything (except the dogs and apothecaries), but only then, if we are able to make somehow removeable shields. Some modelers use magnets for bigger machines (for example mechs or tanks), to make different weapon options. It’s a very good solution, but only if it can be adapted in the much smaller size of hand/shield combination. I found small, round magnets (D2x1mm), and small drills (D2). So I very cautiously bored blind holes in the shields and the arms (at the wrist), superglued in the magnets (be careful with polarity), and voila, it works! The only problem with this appeared later: despite priming before and varnishing after, the paint came off from some of the magnets… You need to be careful, the shields shouldn’t be stored on the arms, but in a separate place, so you can prevent this.

One last thing before the pictures: the painting. I wanted to use a very natural paint scheme, with lot of browns representing the leather clothes of the barbarians, but also wanted to use some dull color against being too boring. So the general appearance is light and dark brown, with dark grey fells, colorful hairs, grayish blue and grayish green cloaks.

Next time here: Monsters? Some Oathmark content? Or the brand new Frostgrave Knights box? Let it be a surprise (also for me).