I'd love to hear some feedback from your group about Frostgrave.
Phil
I played Frostgrave for the first time last night, I had a short run through of the rules with my mate Dan before the other player, Erik, showed up. I let the two of them play a game whilst I ran the rule book. We initially said we’d do a three way, but multi-player skirmish is best avoided where poss. Especially as all three of us were getting used to the rules. There isn’t a basic scenario in the book whereby you simply bash each other up whilst trying to leg it with the loot, so we improvised (easy enough to do). All of the scenarios have specific goals in mind, as well as making off with the treasure. I can see making a few specific scenery items will be a good idea (and should be fun to do).
Speaking of scenery the game seemed to work well with a table not absolutely crammed with the stuff, despite what the books says. It allows missile weapons to be effective, and ditto for spells of that nature. That said, I think scenery typically used in Mordheim will be fine because it has so many height levels, so it affords that kind of opportunity. We could definitely have done with some higher buildings on our table last night. Erik got off a reasonably tricky spell which pushed Dan’s crossbowman off the building he was on, but he didn’t take any damage cos it wasn’t a high enough building. Didn’t seem like a decent enough reward for his mage’s efforts.
Spellcasting is a nice system, and embodies enough risk for the really effective spells to provide a good counterbalance. The game mechanics in general are pretty good, opposed rolls for the most part. People have complained that it being a D20 it provides too much variance and luck of the draw, but I really don’t see that as an issue at all. I like the system whereby you roll to hit using modifiers, and if you ‘win’ it is the unmodified dice roll which the armour value is deducted from to give damage. You are rolling to hit, save and wound all on the throw of one dice which is pretty cool.
Deceptively simple at first glance, the game has enough depth that you are needing to refer to the rule book and bear a few factors in mind, but we were really getting the hang of it after only two games. A two player game was taking well over an hour, but of course that was largely because it being new there was a fair bit of rule referral (and Dan bless him is easily distracted, becoming especially garrulous after a couple of drinks!). I think it will be possible to get fairly swift games going once in the groove with the rules.
Erik had taken some more decent soldiers due to his model collection and whilst definitely more effective, they were not proving invulnerable, so there was a nice balance there.
Neither game ‘counted’ as being ‘proper’ so we didn’t do any post-game. But it was good to see what spells worked and which were better than the ones you’d chosen, so it was really useful in that respect. I shall be re-thinking my spell choices accordingly
. But it is good that the way spell selection works everybody has the opportunity to have a little bit of everything, which is cool. You might think ‘I really like being an Elementalist, but I really like that Sigilillist spell…’, so you have that opportunity which is really good. If you are casting from a list which isn’t your main one it is harder to cast that spell. And depending on how badly you fail in the casting roll, you take damage!
It is a similar concept to Mordheim so of course comparisons are bound to be drawn. However, Frostgrave seems suitably different in the way it plays and feels, so it will stand on its own two feet well enough. A very enjoyable game, perhaps without the overall depth of Mordheim (which I still think is a terrific game) but equally very enjoyable in its own right. It was nice to play something different from Mordheim and the new game buzz around Frostgrave has been very exciting to take part in.
In short, I recommend it. Definite plus is it seems much more approproiate to use whatever models you feel like as there is no perceived feeling of having to conform to Mordheim fluff, as valid or invalid as that is in the first place, and even if you buy stuff new there is very little needed to play a game, especially if you are already a Mordheim player, so cost is kept down. Dan used an old Gandalf model for his wizard last night and a Radagast model from LOTR for his apprentice, and they looked good. Named M'Kellan and M'Coy resepctively!
Moment of the game for me was when Dan blasted Erik’s apprentice with a fireball rolling a 20 to hit once cast, which being a critical did double damage – 20 points of damage and the apprentice simply ceased to exist! Awesome
. I bet Erik was relieved that game was a trial run!
But I say go for it - I don't think you'll regret it.
Bert aka Rob
11 November 2011, 04:09:54 PM