'Frostgrave' warband 2 - The Northlands

Following my previous article on the Southlands warband here is the rundown on the Northlands warband for the upcoming '4 Corners' campaign batreps. This is an Elementalist warband based almost entirely on stls by 'The printing goes ever on' who started out creating proxies for Lord of the rings but who have expanded both in subject scope and in quality over the several years that I have been a Patreon. This crew combines their Inuit/Sami style minis with some more traditional Northmen who i see as mercenaries but who the Inuit/Sam see as 'soft southerners'!

As a beginner I have no real insight into which spells to take or which soldiers or how they synergise so here are my spells and starting warband. The Elementalist spells are all quite killy and Telekinesis seems good. Control Demon is defensive as I assume the Oriental Summoner warband will be calling Demons into the game. Heal just seems an autotake for early games.

The Soldier component has a missile bias to support the killy spells for now. I have no real idea if this is a good idea or not as the table is pretty dense. The Man at arms is basically a guard for the wizard and will be close at all times.

In theory!

Now the pictures.

Starting with the Wizard (centre) who is an excellent representation of a Shamanic figure. I chose Elemental as the type for these Northlands as clearly controlling the elemenents is going to be vital to their survival in the north. Next to him on his left is his right hand man a more Norse type as Apprentice. I think i built this chap using the customiser available from The printing goes ever on (TPGEO) but I cant quite be sure. It may be a standard stl from the norse release. Lastly and not quite complete yet is the Apothecary. I keep meaning to sort out his staff and pop a skull on the end to replace the point and give a more healer vibe.

A Tracker and his dog (wolf) here. The dog is purely to show who is the tracker and will have no in game role. Bases are done with crackle medium and the AK interactive snow materials which i personally find give a realistic effect at any scale. I first started using them on the Star Wars Legion Crashed Fighter piece https://crashed-x-wing.firstcommissionpainting.co.uk/

Norse hangers on here with a barbarian at left with 2 handed weapon and two thieves. All these are once again stls by TPGEO and are characterful without being caricatures.

The Infantry are the guys with the weird trident arrangement going on, while the spear guy and chap with the shield are the Men at Arms should they be taken. Alternatively Spearman might work as a Ranger for which position I do not as yet have a mini. I am not experienced enough to know whether many warbands take two Men at arms, or in fact any Men at arms to decide on whether or not to print a second mirrored from the spiky ball guy. I have one Man at arms at start so we will see how that goes.

Thugs and Warhound - I really like these guys with their bone armour and strange club made of possibly mammoth tusk weapon - I am reminded of some Freefolk sculpts for A song of Ice and fire which I painted for a customer some years ago. As I think on it those minis would be ideal for this warband and somebody must have done this already. The 'warhound' is obviously just a Polar bear stl shrunk on the printer to half size.

Ranged weapons - I have not come across any stl with a crossbow that I can convincingly add to this warband however I do have the Sami Archer and a second, better equipped who will act as a Marksman or a second archer until the warband can afford an actual marksman. The great thing about 3d printing is that should the need arise during the campaign for any additional figures I can have them printed next day.

The treasure hunter is represented by this DIY figure created using one of the customisers by 'The printing goes ever on'. I dont usually use them but I wanted a searching figure like a d&d Indiana Jones so it was ideal. Unfortunately the print came out poorly which has affected the paint job. I had suffered a failed print and was recalibrating the printer so it is a bit rough. I will probably print another if i find I need one.

For the Ranger I returned to the customiser to create this great pose. I say create I created nothing, I just chose from all the bits I wanted and the software magic pops them together in a finished STL ready to print.

Finally for now here are my Knight with 2 axes and a Paladin. The Paladin is obvious but the Knight is less obvious. I may need to add something to his base to remind me of his role, or print something better, but no mistaking the large and heavily armoured Paladin. So big he needed a 30 mm base to cope with his awesomeness!

That then is the warband so far. I am lacking a crossbowman but will have to live without as I cant find an stl which I like. I suspect the Norse did not have them as I suspect they were a tad later than the 'Viking Age'

Next time I will look at the Occidental Illusionist warband who are just waiting on me finishing a couple of minis!