Frostgrave Barbarians

The latest supplement for Frostgrave was once again financed by Nickstarter, Northstar's own crowdfunding solution, and brought along with the "Forgotten Pacts" expansion a brand new box of plastic miniatures. This set of multi-part barbarians will be covered in this review.

Inside the kit, that is offered at a price of 20 GBP, you'll find 4 sprues of 5 barbarian warriors each along with two sprues of flat Renedra 25mm round bases. There is no instruction leaflet, as the separation of the parts is pretty easy to understand.

The sprues are made by Renedra, so there is little to no flash or mold lines and the details are pretty crisp. The barbarian sprue is included 4 times, each one covers;

• 5 bodies
• 10 heads
• 3 pair of arms with of double handed weapons (axe, spear and maul)
• 1 pair of arms with crossbow
• 1 pair of arms with bow
• 5 left arms without weapons
• 1 left arm with dagger
• 5 right arms with weapons (axes, hammer, sword and dagger)
• 2 shields
• 3 knifes
• 3 small axes
• 1 quiver
• 4 small pouches / bags

Beginning with the five different bodies, all of them are wearing heavy clothing with pelts, fur and cloaks. This gives them a hardened, worn look. The poses are standing open in different directions.

All arms fit with all bodies, some just make more sense from a dynamic point of view. The choice of weapons depends on what you're going for. If you're looking for a proper Frostgrave warband, it makes sense to consult the book before hand and see which retinue you want to gather around your wizard. I went with a random assortment, that suits the bodies from my point of view.

From left to the right, dagger, axe, sword and off-hand dagger, spear and a bow.

Along with heads, bare and helmeted, this would give me a thief, a thug, treasure hunter, infantryman / barbarian and archer / tracker. The heads give them a distinctive grim look, mostly fitting wild barbarian faces with beards and long hair, but some helmet options that are influenced by norse mythology or in case of the sword wielding horn-helmet warrior a certain cimmerian hero.

The barbarians are solid 28mm miniatures of heroic scale, but not to overdrawn. They mix well with the Gripping Beast and Fireforge Games. Using these as fantasy-influenced armies for other systems like Swordpoint, Hail Caesar or SAGA shouldn't be a problem.

I added an extra row of comparison pictures with the Warhammer Chaos Barbarians and some Warlord Germans, and in the last picture the ultime Barbarian comparison with Thrudd and some hefty barbarian characters by Hasslefree.

And here are the humble beginnings of a warband all together.

Conclusion
Yes, for plastic miniatures they are on the high price section with a price of 1 pound per miniature, for comparison add 2 pounds and you receive up to double the amount of soldiers. BUT - these are for Frostgrave, so a single box gives you enough for two warbands, all you need to add are two wizard and you are ready to go. So from that point of view a cheap starter set for a skirmish.

For larger army projects this may be an argument to discuss about, but even if you're going with something in the size of SAGA, like I'm doing (They'll be used as Hearthguard) you're still set up pretty good. And the possibilities for this kit is quite broad. They have a generic, low-fantasy look to them, and I don't mean that in a bad way. You can use them for your Game of Thrones themed wildling armies, you can use them as alternative norse barbarians, germanic warriors and so on. Casting is spot on, you get quite a lot of options and they mix great with the remaining Frostgrave range as well as with other similar sized kits like Gripping Beast or Fireforge.

To sum it up, this kit gives you a lot of variation to play with at a more than solid level of quality for just 20 pounds.

Frostgrave is a brand of Northstar Figures and Osprey Games.