A while ago I was introduced to a relatively new skirmish game called Frostgrave by Joseph A. McCullough and published by Osprey games. I played a few games and was instantly hooked. It was very reminiscent of Mordheim which I had played years ago. I got the rule book and not long after that decided to go all out and buy every expansion that was available at the time. You could use any models that you had at home and between the two of us that played it was a lot. North Star Gaming Miniatures produce a Frostgrave range which is very good (my war-band is made up of them).
The campaign system was simple, you created a war-band led by a wizard and his apprentice and filled it with random lackeys to help hunt for treasure in the frozen city of Felstad. There were ten scenarios in the main campaign in which you hunted for treasure and completed objectives to gain experience and improve your war-band. Sometimes your wizard would get injured or even die but your apprentice would take over so you could carry on.
Some of the scenarios were fun to play, such as the Silent Tower, and the competitive nature of the game allowed you to attempt to stop your opponent from getting the treasure off the board. Sounds simple enough but there is a random monster table which generates any manner of creatures from skeletons and wolves to snow apes which were the bane of my life. Between scenarios you got to recruit new members to your war-band and learn new spells that would help you through a great experience based system.
Over the course of a few weekends, we played through the main rule book campaign of which there were ten scenarios. Our wizards levelled up, learnt new spells and faced the denizens of Felstad whilst trying to get the hordes of treasure. I created a sheet for our war-band and laminated them so we could just use markers to record everything we needed to. I made spell cards so we didn’t have to keep looking in the rule book which made the game easier, although there is now an expansion of spell cards available to buy.
Overall the game was fun to play and it’s unique campaign system allowed you to adapt it and create house rules to make things easier or as difficult as you liked. One house rule we implemented was using a d4 to randomise where the monsters came from. This meant you may have got cut off from the board edge you had to get to so you had to come up with a new strategy but with the limit of ten turns you had to be quick. We didn’t get round to playing any of the other books but hopefully, we’ll come back to it someday.
Would I recommend this game?
Definitely, if you like games like Mordheim or fantasy games in general. The game is now in its second edition and with more expansions coming out in the future, it could be around for a while yet. If you’re not a fantasy fan and prefer sci-fi games like Necromunda, then don’t worry, Stargrave is out later this year. Stargrave is on my list of books to get this year so no doubt I’ll be writing something about it.
Tabletop Tales 