The Daemon's Claw

Right, confession time: I've always enjoyed solo wargames. Club days are gold, but rain, work, or just the itch hits at 2am — what then? Enter AI. Not the Skynet takeover bollocks, but tools like Grok (xAI's cheeky beast) that crank out battle reports in my voice, Abnett-style yarns from blog scraps, or even paint schemes that'd make Vallejo weep. We've all seen the generic AI slop — "valiant heroes clashed in epic struggle" — but feed it your style (dry wit, self-dep dice woes, club banter), and suddenly it's your feed assistant. I've had Grok/Echo mirror my Daemon's Claw posts: Vandred's goblin-bashing, Silver Bayonet curses ("Baaaah!"), Frostgrave boar-gored wizards. Photos in, narrative out — turn-by-turn, loot tallies, that "why me" humour. Saves hours editing PowerPoints for YouTube. It's the co-op solo revolution. Rustle stills from vid? AI weaves the tale. Need a Gaunt's Ghosts spin on Rathbourne's jai...

With plenty of time for gaming at the moment, I have started a solo Frostgrave campaign. I am using Solomon Kane and his witch hunters. Solomon is an elementalist and so makes use of fireballs and flaming hammers to bring justice to the enemies of mankind. Enemies are defined as anyone Solomon doesn't like or is suspicious of. Here is the band after the first game. The templar Aemos has joined the team and ready to bring his big axe down on any witches, mutants, daemons or undead. Here are some reserve models. I have some warhounds, they are signature models for witch hunters, Bernard the Thug, wearing the yellow jacket died in the first game but we might need his cousin Ahmed at some point. We also have a knight. I'm not sure what I want the pistols to represent. They don't correspond to anything in Frostgrave. I am currently compiling a video battle report of the first mission. I recorded the whole thing on my phone so it's taking my computer forever to export the vid...

 Here is a quick update on what I have been working on. Here are some extra models to add to the pool of models for our Frostgrave games. Alan gave me a couple of flagellents and these can be either barbarians or infantrymen for the witch hunters. Here is my daemon for the Genie in a Bottle scenario. This is an old model from Raging Heroes. This model is probably at least 10-15 years old. This is one of the filament buildings, it’s the tavern. Here is the front entrance the two levels are playable and there is even detail on the inside of the roof Here is a shot of all 4 buildings squashed together. This gives you an idea of how big the buildings are. That’s the big house, it’s even comes with a little garden area at the back. This is the small house, it’s still well built This is the church. The tower will fit an infantry model inside. It’s not very big other than the tower. I am working on some beastmen to add some complication to the Well of hopes and dreams. The beastmen are do...

Saturday we start our Frostrgave campaign with an introductory session on how to create your own warband. This one we are setting in the Warhammer world and mostly using "bad guy" warbands. I have been painting up some terrain to give my collection more of an Empire feel to it Here is my Mausoleum, the ghosts of Empire heroes past might come out to haunt us.  This is the old Empire chappell. It got a quick paint job but was great to help set the direction of the colour palette for the models. This is an filament 3D print church. it takes paint well and I can't see many layer lines after applying the paint Here is another view of the ground floor. The Ground floor comes with an interior that's big enough to fit some models. The tower is also hollow so you could get a model in there either by magic or a lot of elbow grease. Here is my warband. They are a Warcry team with some backup from models made from FireForge Games Undead peasants. They all wear manacles, so they l...

For our next Frostgrave campaign we are going to theme it with Warhammer models. The idea is that we are all the forces of chaos and destruction and are going to bring down the kingdoms of men elves and dwarfs as part of our 12-step programme to ascension. Using a warhammer theme also makes it more accessible to people that have not played before. Everyone has some GW fantasy models. I have bought a few Warcry warbands and some underworlds boxes to make warbands. I have made some other models out of a box of undead peasants to round out some of the thieves and thugs that are not usually included in Warcry warbands. After reading a Conan story where he encounters a giant composite ghost. I remember I had this model from the Carnevale Doctors range and am painting it to look like it's a ghost. Here are my Khainite Shadowstalkers, these are shaping up to be an illusionist warband. They have some hounds and an illusionary one. These will be very tricky elves. Here are the splintered Fa...

I decided that after the last adventure Arzag would leave town and head south. Vildy stayed behind to marry Azalia and the others were becoming a liability. To play the next adventure I made a new outdoor battle area and some scatter terrain.  I cut out the board from some extruded PVC Alan gave me. I marked out some areas to be swamp, added some broken cobbles and covered the rest in ground coffee. I marked the grid on so I would know where to put the cobbles to line up on a square. Here we are after an initial coat of paint After some initial coats of paint. The flock is from Huge Minis. It;s their moorland blend. I marked the grid back on with a fine Sharpe. I then applied a thinned coat of PVA water and isopropyl alcohol. The water pools got a coat of clear Modpodge gloss. I blew on them to create some ripples. After drying overnight the Modpodge is ready to go. I marked the cracks on the flagstones with the Sharpe. The ripples are slightly visible. Here we go with some scatter...

 Here is my statue from the Blood and Faith box. I started with a zenetial primer coat then went straight to the oil wash. This is a great way to get shadows and stains into the recesses. After wiping off the oil wash. I gave the statue a drybrush of ivory to boost the highlights. This did a great job of bringing out the details and maximising the contrast. This gave the statue a Weeping Angels vibe. After watching Duncan Rohdes painting tutorial, I decided to paint the plinth, candles and details to give it more colour and contrast. St Anna is now ready to appear in about zero Killt Team games.

I got inspired to make a new Kill Team. These are the Angels of Death from the outer darkness beyond the galactic rim. The Space Sharks originally appeared in the 40k Compendium article on the Badab War. When the Black Library created an updated Badab War in the Imperial Armour series the Space Sharks were reborn as the Carcharadons. I started out building some assault intercessors. These are from the Leviathan starter box and one is a duplicate from the space marines hero box. I had some resin accessories from Pop goes the Monkey from back when I made a team for first edition. Here they are with some paint on them. The Shark symbols go on the right shoulder pads. I have the left shoulder symbol on order. I also added some teeth. The Assault Grenadier was created by adding a belt made from the boltgun sling from a Sternguard box and some extra grenades Here is an overview of the team ready to go into their first battle. Here is a close up of the assault sergeant. Here is the captain, t...