New Warband for Frostgrave: Pine Martens

The Pine Marten warband using Splintered Light Miniatures

I am continuing my preparation to begin running Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago for the Sunday night gaming group. I am painting up warbands for the players using Splintered Light Miniatures' line of 28mm animals. This warband uses figures from their Pine Marten line. I have to admit, I had never heard of a pine marten before I bought the figures a number of years ago. Apparently, they are a type of weasel more common in Europe.

Each warband will consist of 5 figures, but I will usually be painting up a sixth one for some variety and player choice. This is half the size of a standard Frostgrave player force, but we have a pretty big crew on Sunday nights, so I am worried about games taking too long. Another local group ran a Frostgrave campaign with smaller warbands, as well, and everyone seemed to have a good time, I hear.

The Pine Marten's Heritor, left, and Warden.

The leader of each force is called a Heritor in Ghost Archipelago. He has magical powers, but is often a skilled warrior, as well. His family bloodline has remained pure tracing ancestry back to those that drank at the magical Crystal Pool, which explains his greater powers. The figure above on the left is the one I plan on being the Heritor (although the player who uses them is free to choose a different one, I guess). I gave his chain and plate armor bronze with gold highlights. The fur pattern is probably the one I think turned out best of the group. Meanwhile, the Heritor's assistant is a spellcaster called a Warden. These wizards learn elemental type magic -- based off of water, air, earth, etc. They are not allowed to wear armor or carry shields (but are free to use whatever weapons they choose). So, this figure with a halberd and billowing cloak worked great, I thought. It his hard to tell in the photo, but the cloak is painted in four bands of colors -- pink, burnt orange, red-brown, and dark brown. A wizard has to have a fancy cloak, right?

Two Pine Marten warriors -- one with a morning star and the other with an axe and bow strapped to his back

Next up is a group of ordinary soldier types. The SLM Pine Martens do not come with any archers or missile troops. I decided that I would modify a figure in this case as an archer in case players want missile troops. I thought about cutting off the axe, drilling out the hand, and then inserting a box. However, I am not very good at converting figures. So, I decided to simply glue a bow to the figures back. It is much more noticeable if I turn the right-hand figure around to see the backside, but I was happy with how it came out. The left-hand figure with the morning star turned out well, too, I thought. I especially liked how the pattern on his tunic looks.

Two more SLM Pine Marten warriors

There is not a lot of variety in the SLM Pine Marten figures, so you'll notice duplication here. The left-hand figure is a repeat of the axeman above, while the swordsman is the same pose as the Heritor. Although I love the SLM line of animals, that is one drawback of some of the creature types. Some have only a few poses, some more, some even less. So, it's probably a good thing that I went with the smaller warbands! I would have had to do a LOT more figure modification otherwise.