I know some of you fine folks can look at some written rules, and instantly understand the game mechanics. Not me. I have to play the thing to understand how it works. And I really want to make sure that in April, I'm not the simpleton who has no grasp of how to play Frostgrave.
Happily, my good friend Graham agreed to learn the game with me. Except I hadn't finished painting my warband. And Graham doesn't have any fantasy miniatures. Damn!
"What if," I asked Graham "we just use some 40k figures?"
"You mean, play a game of Boltgrave?" Graham replied.
"I like it!" I said.
Playing Boltgrave
Long ago the great city of Boltstad sat at the centre of the Imperium. Its towering industrial flues, labyrinthine slums, and immense data-libraries were the wonder of the age...
If you change the focus, tweak the lenses, and look left instead of right, you can easily flip from the snowy fantasy ruined city of Frostgrave, to the darkly gothic setting of the 41st millennium. Wizards can become psykers. Fighters and soldiers can become...um...fighters and soldiers. Pistols become very close range (i.e. combat only), exotic heavy weapons become bows or crossbows. Pretty neat if I say so myself!
Don't believe me? Here's my 'Wizard' and her warband, masquerading as a pair of Astropaths and their Adeptus Arbites escort:
Alternatively, if gribbly subversive alien cults are more your thing (and why wouldn't they be with Deathwatch Overkill on the horizon), here's another 'Wizard' and his warband, masquerading as a Genestealer Coven:
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| Additional 'Archer' and 'Man-at-arms' not pictured. |
With our justifications made, and our proxies nailed down, we flung ourselves headlong into Boltgrave (the game of psykers and their retinues in the 41st millennium). Heroic things happened, and ancient Eldar treasures were collected.
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| A brave Imperial Scout (thief) nimbly clambers over ruins. |
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| An Arbites Detective (treasure hunter) and his faithful cyberhound (warhound) investigate a water tank. |
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| The cyberhound is sadly torn apart by a Genestealer (Man-at-arms)...the big bully! |
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| Long ranged firepower takes down the Detective, allowing a Magus (Wizard) to teleport onto the treasure. |
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| "I see you Astropath, shame you can't see me!" |
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| A summoned daemon (demon) and Arbites Officer (infantryman) take on another hybrid (archer). |
Our first game completed, we reviewed, discussed and analysed. Speed is good. D20 combat and shooting are both wildly random. Five treasure tokens would be better than six. We'd been playing the activation bit wrong. It was fun.
So far, so good. We gave it another go, this time with some slums guarded by monitor servitors (a haunted village and its wraiths).
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| Is there a monitor servitor (wraith) in this shack? Of course there is! |
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| "Tell me what you see, robot friend." |
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| A pair of hybrids (thugs) lurk in the shadows - doing what they do best. |
Our genre-shifting approach wasn't perfect, but we had fun. Most importantly, I won't embarrass myself by being incompetent, come April. I shall leave that to someone else!
Fantastic!
ReplyDeleteGlad it appeals :)
DeleteBrilliant! This ha been something I've been thinking about doing for a while, glad to see I'm not the only one, and that it's also doable!
ReplyDeleteCertainly doable. I'd consider working in some additional ranged weapons, but as a way to get a feel for the game, just proxying the figures seemed to work fine :)
DeleteLeave embarrassment to me ! Was it not too frustrating not to shoot with every model and to have the Genestealer just as strong as any other henchman ? I sounds like it would from where I stand but maybe you just don't care when playing the game. The modding you did for teh Anarchy in teh Underhive was already great so I guess you just quickly forget about how things "hsould" be and focs on what they are.
ReplyDeleteSplendid looking game anyway and it's actualy fun to have the Psykers and astropaths in teh leading roles !
I'm so conditioned to genestealers being uber-deadly, that there was a point where I was treating them as such! If we properly modded the rules, I think we'd look at including some shorter ranged weaponry. But it was certainly fun, and it didn't seem to incongruous at the time :)
DeleteI can see the Frostgrave rules working with very little modification for Rogue Trader. The games looked great, and that's some truly sexy terrain you got there.
ReplyDeleteWarhammer World supplied most of the terrain Mr Saturday, so I can't claim credit for it! Frostgrave seems pretty open to interpretation. I think I still prefer the Necromunda rules set for Rogue Tradering myself, but Frostgrave is a bit 'lighter'.
DeleteThat looks like it worked fairly well, but it sounds like it's not a rule set I "need" unless there are other folks around that want to play that specifically. (Since I already have Necromunda, along with RT, and a variety of other non-GW offerings that adapt well enough.) Great to see games getting played and thank you for the review.
ReplyDeleteI agree, I'm not sure Frostgrave is a game I'd be playing normally, but an imminent weekend of gaming with mates is an excellent motivator :)
DeleteRT (and it's derivatives) is essentially a fantasy game, focused on heroic melee. A grimdark versin of Frostgrave makes just as much sense, for the sake email reasons.
ReplyDeleteI expect that it felt just right in play.
One of the things that drew me to Frostgrave was the emphasis on magic users. I hope that it will give the game a magical, fantasy theme to distinguish it from the games with amy emphasis on ranged attacks that I enjoy using for grimdark skirmishing, like Pulp Alley.
The game looks like iy was a lot of fun, with two really characterful forces clashing. Good stuff lads :)
You're right cheetor - the wizards give the structure to how the warband operates. Is (s)he offensive or defensive? Can they change movement or the layout of the table. Magic is extremely important...it just isn't very reliable!
DeleteLooks like fun was had with great miniatures on beautiful terrain, which is always the end goal.
ReplyDeletePrecisely. Moving little men around and having fun are the prime objectives ;)
DeleteI think an Inquisition warband would work very well & feel right as a warband can be made up of so many different model, it would also be a good modelling opportunity, from what I've seen in the pictures you guys pulled it off well as a sci/fi game.
ReplyDeleteI only play a couple of games of frostgrave one day but found it to be very enjoyable.
I agree, Inquisition warbands would fit perfectly!
DeleteAbsolutely sexy. I'm most interested in this kind of stuff and tempted to steal the idea. How does the system adapt to the RT ambientation? Does it take hard work to proxy the profiles and weapons? What are the pros & cons of the system? Thanks!!
ReplyDeleteI'm not an expert by any means. We found the D20 system very random - shooting and combat was either ineffectual or devastating. It is light and quick to play though, and I really like the random activation.
DeleteWe didn't go too far down the route of proxying weapons, but it could be done. It might need work to avoid dominating with shooting.
This is a bit of a game changer for me, I have been looking for sci-fi ruleset to play with my Spacefarers collection...
ReplyDeleteI hear Osprey have a sci-fi skirmish game in development - might be worth keeping an eye on!
DeleteInteresting stuff indeed. I will be following with interest. I think Cheetor finally got me sold on Pulp Alley I'm about to give that a try. ;)
ReplyDeletePulp Alley is a very different sort of game to Frostgrave, but I do love it. Its a fantastic way to tell over the top stories with whatever "skin" you want to put over it.
DeleteI hope that you get some enjoyment out of it airbornegrove26.