Having perused the rules of Frostgrave fully, I am yet to play a game. This may be a weird time to write a review don't you think? But this blog is all about the process of a few guys getting into FG and expanding into a campaign. Mr McCullough has written an excellent rule set, which I cannot wait to get amongst properly, but I do have a few tiny niggles that may or may not get ironed out during play.
Review:
The book itself:
I only have the PDF so my review is based solely on that. The layout and presentation are lush, artwork and painted studio dioramas even better. Everything is in an orderly fashion and is easily referenced. For it's price you will not see much better.
Warband overview:
If you are unfamiliar with Frostgrave, the quick fire jist is that you take control of a powerful wizard, his apprentice and crew of followers (numbering roughly ten models total), seeking power, gold and knowledge in the ruins of the ancient frozen city of Frostgrave (FG). Wargame wise this is regarded as a 'skirmish' level game. So although you may see boxes of twenty models available to purchase for this system, it is NOT a mass battle type affair.
FG is geared heavily into playing a concentrated campaign, where your warband will (hopefully) improve and get better at hurting other warbands. This happens from liberating treasures from the city ruins and spending the loot on newer, better soldiers.
Campaigns begin with the wizard having 500 gold to spend on gearing up a crew to take on the city.
"So it's Mordheim?" I hear you ask.
No, whilst another great game, these are two very different systems in my opinion.
"How do my guys progress?" is one of the main questions anyone asks when the word campaign is uttered. In FG, ONLY your wizard can earn experience. Now some would say that this is a bad thing and they want all members to progress and be rewarded for their skill in battle. But the one word
I would strongly use to regard this game is; simplicity.
Now I am a mega fan of Necromunda. But three games in when you have to look at your roster every time you roll a die, as every guy gets injuries/ skills, does get a bit micro-managey. Mordheim cut that down and only heroes got skills but basic bods could get stat increases. FG does away with that and you only need to really worry about your wizard for recording exp and such. The apprentice is just a statistically smaller version of your wizard, he knows all the wizards spells and his stats are modified directly from the wizard himself, if your wizard gets better, he teaches the apprentice to be better. Clever eh?
Whilst troops do not get exp, there are beefier versions of them for hire, so a thug would 'upgrade' to a man at arms, a bowman to a ranger and so on. I think this is a great mechanic, if you want to see your guys progress, you are figuratively buying them the upgrades.
Wizards and apprentices can be injured in great detail, broken jaws hinder spell casting, broken legs affect movement etc. Soldiers are in one of three states; dead, alive and injured, injured bods miss the next game. Simple, no admin required.
Again having not played, I still think this is a great system, lending to speed and efficiency rather than micro management and deep elements such as upkeep, ammo and sending individual guys to go shopping.
Gameplay overview:
Each turn has four phases: wizard, apprentice, soldiers, creatures. This just dictates who moves when. Each player rolls a D20 for initiative first. the winner choosing who goes first following the above format. So player 1 wins initiative and moves his wizard, then player 2. Player 1 moves apprentice then player 2 and so on until all models have moved. There is a mechanic in place for group activation within 3" of a wizard or apprentice too. Each model gets two 'actions' one of which must be a move, the other could be an attack, cast a spell or interact with treasure etc. Simple.
Movement is again quite easy, and will be familiar to anyone who has played a tabletop wargame before. For your first action you move the models Move stat, if you choose to move for your second action the Move stat is halved. E.g a model with Move 5 can move a total for 7.5 inches for two actions. There is no rounding up or down. Simple.
Once again the combat rules are very geared towards a simple yet effective gameplay. Almost every element of combat (close quarters, shooting and magic) is based around each player rolling a D20, adding/ subtracting modifiers for the relevant stat and weapons etc. with the winner being the highest roll. If the defender in this situation wins, no damage done. The attacker will use their winning roll to determine damage and such like, modified by the defenders armour. Simple.
So both warbands move and fight over around six treasure tokens, which must be carried off the table to 'score'. Once either all treasure is gone, or one team is eradicated, the game ends. Simple.
Obviously this is a bit condensed and more of a jist of the rules, but essentially it is ....simple.
Campaign Overview:
If you are getting into FG, then no doubt you are probably going to be doing a campaign. The campaign revolves around the wizards competing towards transcendence, to become one with magic as it were. To do so the wizards must learn more spells from their school of magic, and upon learning all eight spells from one of ten schools (80 spells in game kids!!) they can attempt to transcend, which is done on a natural roll of a 20. This rule is optional, you can just keep hammering this out until you feel board, saying that, Mr McCullough is writing supplements constantly with 'thaw of the lich lord' already available at time of writing.
After your first game, you choose where to house your wizard, libraries, crypts and pubs are all available, each with their own added bonus. This lair can then be upgrade with cauldrons and summoning circles amongst other interior designs.
As explained earlier, injuries are done straight after a game. Then loot generated from treasures, such as magical weapons, scrolls and grimiores (required to learn new spells). Followed by spending all that nice new goooold!
Then it's back to battle in one of the game's myriad of scenarios. The campaign rules are great. The knock on effects of a game are pretty powerful, I personally do not want to loose my wizard, so may be playing him a bit back field. I am already planning on putting him up in a pub to allow another bod to join my warband. Choices.
Right, this has grown legs now so I will summarise with my worries and things I would like to have seen in the rules followed by the bits I am enjoying the look of (finish on a high).
Gripes:
My gripes are minimal, I have not read the errata or FAQ so these may have been put to be already.
- I would have liked to have seen more weapons. There is a general 'hand-weapon' and 'great weapon', which I think is fine for mass battle games . But on small scale would it have been bad to allow axes '-1 armour' or spears 'reach' etc. But as I said before, the game is geared towards keeping it action packed, without admin overload. I will see when I play if I'm just being picky.
- Campaign stuff. Wizards gain experience for casting spells and damaging things. This may lead to an experience gap between aggressive fireball launching wizards, in comparison to back field 'buffers'. Also there does not seem to be a mechanic in place for a lower end warband to get anything extra for facing off against a harder warband. I have read that "it's up to the players" to solve this, but I think there should be an 'official' nod on this one.
Awesomeness:
I am seriously into this rule set, cannot wait to get a game down. It would take me ages to write down the things I appreciate and like about this game at first glance. So I will leave it here and hopefully get some dice down range this week in a tester game.
Hope this gets a few people into rocking the FG out.
Jay.
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