We gave Frostgrave a try
tonight. No campaign, just a game to try
out the rules to see how they play. We
had four players, so opted for a 4x4 board, covered with as many buildings as
we could muster.
The wizards were from the
following schools:
John brought a Necromancer
Rory brought an Enchanter
Douglas brought a Soothsayer
I opted for a Sigilist.
We played a basic treasure grab,
with each player putting 3 tokens down on the board, so there was lots of
treasure to grab.
Early game saw everyone running for
the easy tokens, and a few potshots from archers and ranged spells. I tried to cast a few spells to enhance my
warband but was not very successful, mostly failing to cast them. In Frostgrave
if you fail to cast a spell you can also take damage, with how much depending
on how badly you fumble the spell. There were a few people who started doing
some serious self-harm from bad spellcasting.
The Necromancer and Enchanter got
stuck in fairly quickly, with the Enchanter throwing some grenades at John’s
band, and John throwing some nasty spells back in his direction. Douglas and I were on the other side of the table
and had a slightly more cautious approach, trying to get as much treasure as
possible without exposing our bands to any unnecessary conflict.
John eventually managed to kill Rory’s
wizard with a Bone Dart, while suffering some casualties in return. Douglas and I started to come to blows, with
Douglas generally getting the better of me, thanks to some lousy die rolls. I
had sent my Wizard into the standing stones in the middle of the table, as
there was a treasure token there. As soon as she picked up she cast a teleport,
moving to my table edge, ready to exit the board as soon as the rest of my band
could get there. Douglas in the meantime
has taken control of my ranger, who was fighting my knight, while his warhound
killed my warhound and there did not seem to be much I could do about it. Even
my archer firing from his advantageous position kept missing his mark.
On the other side of the table
Rory had managed to get away with a few tokens but paid a heavy price with most
of his warband down. John did quite well,
taking out a large number of Rory’s band and making of with some treasure.
Douglas was clear winner, taking
out several members of my group, while getting a good haul of treasure and
managing to stay largely intact thanks to my inability to roll above 10 on a
D20. I managed to get three treasure
tokens, but lost my apprentice, ranger and warhound in the process.
Our first outing at Frostgrave
went fairly smoothly, with everyone getting the hang of the rules quite
quickly. There is a lot of potential in the
game, but a few points were raised as a result of last night’s game:
The terrain needs to be a bit
more densely placed. We played with a fairly open table and everyone could
pretty much see across the boards, which gave some wizard and absolute filed
day (the ones with direct damage spells)
Direct damage spells are the most
effective. While the selection of spells
are great, some of them are very situational, whereas a direct damage spell is
always useful and will have an instant effect on the game. This may change as people get a bit more practice
and become smarter but at the moment, Elementalist for the win!
This is a game that is heavily biased
towards narrative play. Get together,
come up with an interesting background for your band and play an interesting
campaign with an end goal. I think just using the campaign rules and scenarios
for an open ended campaign would end up unbalance pretty quickly (as would
happen in pretty much any campaign).
