On Frostgrave

Thousands of years ago Felstad, a city of arcane wonders and magical might unmatched in the world, stood in the north. One night it was lost to man in magically summoned storm that buried it under feet of snow and ice, soon it passed from common knowledge into myth and legend and then was forgotten by all but the most learned of magical scholars. Now the ice is receding. Magics long forgotten are there for the taking, waiting for mages brave and cunning enough to wrest them from the Frostgrave's frozen grasp.

Frostgrave is a miniatures wargame in which you play as a wizard leading his warband in search of lost magics and artifacts of a forgotten time. Over the course of several games you'll be able to hire better henchmen, acquire new spells and equipment.

Warbands are formed by first choosing a discipline for your wizard from the 10 ten schools of magic which include Chronomancy, Elementalism, Illusion, Necromancy, and Summoning. Your school of magic determines what spells you can start with based their alignment. After creating your wizard you get to choose the rest of the warband, your first option is an apprentice who while expensive, is a worthy addition as they start knowing all spells your wizard knows, but with a lower chance of casting.

Next up in your warband are your soldiers. You can only ever take ten models with you so try not to get to attached to these guys, they won't ever get any better stats through the campaign so it's fine if they die... there is always someone new looking to make a coin. The soldiers you can hire range from wardogs and thugs to knights in armor.

Mechanics for the game are d20 based. combat is resolved by comparing the fighting models rolls modified by their Fight stat, with damage being the the amount that the successful roll surpasses the losers Armor. Spells are cast by rolling over a target number. If you fail to cast your spell the magical backlash could injure or even kill your caster.

The real fun is in playing the game as part of a campaign. A campaign will take place over several games using scenarios from the book, after the game is over you can spend your hard earned gold and experience to make your Wizard a better fighter, your spells easier to cast, or hire new soldiers to reequip and replace your soldiers. You can also decide to set up a base of operations inside the city to make your scavenging trips easier, setting up in an inn lets you increase your party to 11 while a crypt gives you bonuses to Raise Zombie spells.

The best part is that you can use minis you already have in your collection to play, I've been dusting off some of my Reaper Bones minis but anything will work as long as you and your oppenent know what each model is.