Frostgrave: Frozen and Some Big Rats

We had another game of Frostgrave, got to use my new Roman warband, which I decided to make an Enchanter.  We also got to finally field the warband based on Disney's Frozen.  This may only make sense if you are familiar with the movie: Ilsa was an Ice Elementalist, of course, with sister Anna as the apprentice; Olaf the snowman was a small construct, Anna's boyfriend Kristoff was a Ranger; for Sven the reindeer I used the rangifer stats and Oaken the shopkeeper was a pack mule.  I rounded out the band with a few somewhat Nordic-looking thugs.

 This is the table set-up.  We had five players divided into two teams.  One team was the "Dark Magic" forces, a Summoner, a Necromancer, and the Frozen Elementalist team

 My Enchanter was joined by another Elementalist as the forces of "Light Magic."  To even things a little, we had our two warbands start at level 2.

 We played a straight up treasure hunt but each player had an individual Ulterior Motive card.  We also gave the random monsters a 50% chance of showing up each time a treasure was captured.

The Necromancer and Elementalist fought each other on one side of the board, with the Elementalist coming off much the worse.  It think it was the pizza-bearing skeleton that was the problem.

The  Frozen warband didn't have a great day, with Ilsa failing most of her spell rolls.

Sven the reindeer was far more effectice.

I had placed an intact tower in the middle of the board and it became magnet for the players, resulting in pretty claustrophobic killing zone.

My Romans faced off against the Summoner warband, which was run by my son Nick.  Early on I launched my stone golem construct on what I thought would be a suicide attack I meant as a distraction.  I nearly killed his wizard with one blow.  In exchange for one of his treasures, I agreed to a truce.  This also allowed me to achieve  my Ulterior Motive goal, obtaining a magic dagger embedded in a statute.

I was just about to go to the aid on my Elementalist ally when the random monsters started to become more than a nuisance.  First there was a demon, then a polar bear.  By far the worst was a small pack of giant rats that proved nearly impossible to kill and nearly did in my Ranger and Thief. These distractions to me certainly didn't help my ally who suffered about four of his warband as KIAs.

Playing with multiple players as part of a campaign certainly changes the dynamic of the game. We reached a point where we had all gotten treasures or had achieved or used our Ulterior Motive cards.  Rather than risking these gains, we disengaged and headed off the board  I did manage to get my band off the board without losing anyone and four other treasures in addition to the magic dagger.  Interestingly, it was my apprentice who was far more successful in spell casting this game, killing the demon and polar bear almost by herself.  Another fun game of Frostgrave.