Greetings Terrans, how goes it? A while back I posted this & described a Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago invitational I was getting involved with. As most of you will probably know, Ghost Archipelago is a pirate/lost-world themed skirmish game written by the excellent Joseph McCollough, and set in the same world as Frostgrave world. It uses the same ruleset with some tweaks here & there to make it more combat oriented & less magic-based. It’ a great looking game, but hasn’t seen the same commercial success as Frostgrave – most likely because the terrain bar is quite high for GA (jungles, pirates, dinosaurs, rivers, pools, etc) whereas FG was very forgiving from a terrain perspective. I’ve also put off getting heavily into GA for that exact reason, so I am really pleased that the invitation arrived & gave me the kick up the arse I needed to get into this. Since my initial model, I have refined the concepts that I’m applying to this project & thought I’d share my thinking with you all:

1: Island of Dr. Moreu inspired warband – use long-neglected beastman-esque figures but de-chaos them and make them more anthropomorphic – they are the once-human victims of cruel scientific experimentation rather than ‘because magic’ capital-C Chaos types. I’m using up a load of minis from the lead pile & oversculpting them to suit, so no splashing the cash. I’m also going to cover as many specialists as I can & have spares, so that I can adjust the warband as it gains in wealth & power.

2: Lost-world bestiary – a mix of mythological creatures, dinosaurs, pulp monsters, etc. Inspiration includes anything by Harryhausen, classic dinosaur films, Tarzan, Indiana Jones, King Kong, etc.  (all firm favourites from my childhood!). I’m permitting myself some purchases here, but again, mostly this is going to be using up what I already have.

3: Jungle terrain… this has been on my wishlist for a long time now, but I’m going to make it happen… I’ve got all the bits I need for the jungle itself so no purchases necessary, but I might splash out on some jungle ruins & maybe some water features too.

4: Other items needed to play GA (boats for example, or specific terrain items), and maybe a big-assed pirate ship to use for a home base.

….

So far, I have worked through about half of the minis I have earmarked for the warband itself:

Heritor Edward Prendick (centre) and two crewmen – these guys had clothing sculpted over them & in the case of the crewmen, had their swords re-sculpted to move away from the fantasy genre.

.

.

Stormwarden Niamh (centre) and two more crewmen – same here, although I kept Niamh’s trident-dagger (looks suitably magical) and pig-man’s axe.

.

.

A trio of Mercenaries – two-handed weapons & heavy armour – I sculpted the Conquistador helmets on to Lion-Man & Turkey-Man, and Lion-Man got shoulder armour too. The tall fella is unmodified – he’s probably a bit weird for this warband, but I think he’s pretty ace.

.

.

Freebooter – heavy armour, hand weapon & shield (left) and Crackshot – Heavy armour & counts-as crossbow (right) – the Freebooter got a Conquistador helmet & re-sculpted sword, while the Crackshot had his pike turned into a musket.

.

.

The crew so far.

.

.

I’ve taken a leaf from The Imperfect Modeller’s book & made the bases a real feature of the minis – I really wanted them to feel different from anything else I’m doing, so put is a bit more effort in this regard.

Aaand that’s it for this week – I hope you’ve enjoyed the pics & me sharing my thoughts on the project. Plenty more fun stuff to follow 😊