1 : Building the Frozen City

Joe McCullough’s Fantasy skirmish game Frostgrave was first published by Osprey Games in 2015. It’s set amongst the frozen ruins of a magical city. As wizards do battle amidst the ruins, the tabletop really needs more than a scattering of model buildings. As Joe has said on his blog, “Frostgrave is best with a very crowded table. It really is ‘the more the merrier’.”

I designed Frozen City models for my own games. These were with 18mm figures. I designed the 18mm models to be highly modular. But not just modular across the tabletop but also stacked one on top of the other. Many a Frostgrave game was enhanced by a cityscape that could be as high as it was wide. It also meant that games could be played on pretty small tabletops with the action taking place on several levels.

I’ve been encouraged over the years to upscale my 18mm designs to 28mm. What follows is an account of my adventure, my project to build a magical Frozen City in 28mm. As you might expect, it began by upscaling my original 18mm drawings. A word or two about doing this. Many gamers underestimate the work needed to translate a model’s design from one scale to another. Just think, for example, of a small-scale spearman for a moment. Upscaling him from, say, 6mm to 28mm would obviously require adding more detail but also necessitate reducing the thickness of his spear. By the time the model is finished, the result is more than likely an almost completely new sculpt.