NYE (2020) Frostgrave

A game of Frostgrave (1^st edition) played on New Year’s Eve 2020, between me and my partner (E).

E had a Witch and I had an Illusionist. Both warbands consisted of an apprentice, crossbow, two archers, and three thugs. These were slightly smaller than usual, but I wanted to keep things fairly simple. In hindsight, perhaps we should have changed the wizard and apprentice’s activation ability to two soldiers.

I chose a full complement of spells for each of us, as follows:

E	Me
Witch: Animal Companion (8)	Illusionist: Teleport (10)
Witch: Familiar (8)	Illusionist: Glow (10)
Witch: Poison Dart (10)	Illusionist: Monstrous form (8)
Enchanter: Telekinesis (10)	Soothsayer: Reveal secret (14)
Necromancer: Raise zombie (10)	Sigilist: Push (10)
Summoner: Leap (10)	Thaumaturge: Heal (10)
Thaumaturge: Heal (12)	Witch: Familiar (12)
Illusionist: Fool’s gold (12)	Necromancer: Raise zombie (12)

 

I deliberately went a bit heavy on Out Of Game spells. To be honest, I like this for those with higher casting numbers anyway, especially as there’s no possibility (in a one-off game) to improve them, as you can in a campaign. In this case though, I was also mindful of keeping things simpler during the actual game.

We didn’t have that much success with our pre-game spells. Both wizards successfully raised a zombie, my apprentice summoned a familiar, and E’s managed an animal companion – we used a giant goose model, counting as a bear.

Set-up

We weren’t playing a scenario, just a standard ‘treasure grab’.

The table was a 2x3 rectangle with deployment along the long edges. Since this meant that we were fairly close to each other from the start, we decided to just move onto the table in the first turn. That also solved any issues regarding who was to deploy first.

Five treasures were placed: one in the centre (on the remains of a ruined tower) and another towards each corner. This normally means two relatively easy ones for each warband, with the central one likely to determine the winner.

I’ll give all descriptions from my point of view, so the treasures are referred to as far-left, near-left, central, far-right, and near right.

Turn 1

E’s wizard enters the table with a thug and two missile troops, on my right-hand side, and heads towards the far-right treasure. My own wizard enters centrally and tries, unsuccessfully, to teleport herself towards the far-left treasure. E’s apprentice and goose enter centrally and stay behind the ruined tower.

My apprentice decides to be bolder and teleports herself into contact with the far-left treasure, leaving her pretty exposed. E’s thug and zombie move to threaten her, while I have a thug run up to the near-right treasure (but can’t pick it up this turn) and my zombie close in on the near-left treasure.

Here’s the state of play at the end of the turn:

Treasures are represented by the gold discs. You can just see the thug and near-right treasure, poking out from under a bridge. You can’t really see the far-left treasure but again it’s under a bridge, just above the archway on the left-hand side of the picture. You might just be able to see my apprentice’s wand sticking out from under the bridge.

Turn 2

I need to protect my apprentice, so she can grab the treasure and get out alive. My archer shoots and kills E’s zombie. That’s first blood to me (though, of course, the zombie was already dead). My wizard then casts push at her thug, successfully pushing the thug, but not very usefully as the thug hit an obstruction and wasn’t really any further away as a result.

E’s thug grabs the far-right treasure, while her archer and crossbow both shoot at my archer, but both miss.

My apprentice picks up the far-left treasure and starts retreating. I temporarily forgot about the halved movement, so initially thought she could get back through the archway, which would have allowed her to retreat off the left-side of the table behind a wall. I had to go back and correct this shortly after!

E’s apprentice climbs the central tower and moves into contact with the central treasure (but can’t pick it up yet).

In the soldier phase, I made another mistake. I had my left-hand archer shoot E’s thug for 7 damage, before realising he’d already activated in the wizard phase (he was the one who killed the zombie), so I had to do another frustrating take-back. However, this was more than compensated for when my crossbowman shot and killed E’s apprentice, who had been left dangerously exposed. My two thugs then climbed onto the tower, one of them into contact with the central treasure.

Turn 3

E’s wizard hits the thug in contact with the central treasure with a poison dart, reducing him to one activation per turn (ensuring he won’t be going anywhere quickly with that treasure).

My wizard casts push against her goose, then my apprentice teleports back towards my own board edge (taking one damage from empowerment in the process, but well worth it to get to a much safer position with the far-left treasure).

E’s archer and thug climb some ruins and start heading across one of the two bridges leading to the central tower (from my left-hand side). On my right, her archer one-shot kills my archer (with a natural roll of 20), while her crossbow does six damage to the poisoned thug, who is now looking in a bit of trouble.

I decide to use the poisoned and wounded thug as a sacrificial roadblock, putting him at the near-end of the bridge in front of E’s own thug, while my other thug picks up the central treasure.

Turn 4

E’s wizard climbs onto the other of the bridges to the central tower and takes three damage to cast another poison dart at the thug now in possession of the central treasure, but rolls a 2 and misses.

I still need to do something about the two of her soldiers on the bridge, but thankfully they’re exposed. My wizard casts push against the archer, taking one damage herself from empowerment but leaving him facing a 6” drop. My crossbow takes a shot at E’s thug but, despite rolling an 18, misses. My apprentice then pushes the thug 13”, for a 7” drop.

In the soldier phase, E’s thug manages to take the far-right treasure off the board, making her the first to secure a treasure token (albeit that I’m in possession of the other four). Her goose then charges up the bridge that I’d just cleared and kills my sacrificial thug.

My zombie carries the near-left treasure off the board, while my thug does likewise with the near-right one. That’s now two secured for me. The thug in possession of the central treasure moves to the near edge of the tower, drops down (only a 2” fall), and starts the slow journey back towards my board edge.

(No end of turn photo this time.)

Turn 5

E’s wizard drops down from the bridge and this time succeeds in hitting the thug carrying the central treasure with a poison dart. I realise that drastic action is going to be needed here, if I’m to secure that treasure. My wizard advances herself in front of the thug and tries to push him towards my board edge, only to roll a 2. I decide to take a big risk and empower it with eight health. Thankfully, the spell does at least work, and gets him up to my board edge. It has, however, left my wizard rather vulnerable, with E’s forces closing in from each side, especially when E’s archer proceeds to finish off my crossbowman allowing the goose to charge into contact with my wizard.

Turn 6

I win priority, so my archer shoots E’s crossbow-woman, doing 9 damage – not quite enough. My wizard is locked in combat with the goose, but elects not to fight as she’s more likely to lose. (Is this a beardy move? I know other games allow the option of not fighting – we think of it as simply taking evasive action or ‘fighting’ defensively.)

Her wizard then poison darts my archer, but that’s the last meaningful action of the game before my apprentice simply walks off the table, with the last treasure, thereby ending the game immediately and extracting my wizard from a potentially tricky situation. (Again, I wonder whether this is exploiting the rules in a way, but that’s what happens when the last treasure’s taken…)

Post-game

A 4-1 victory to me. We didn’t bother rolling for the treasures, since this isn’t a campaign, but we did roll for injuries anyway. My thug made a full recovery, but the crossbow was badly wounded (miss a game) while my archer was dead. I’d probably have been able to replace the losses with the treasure gained, though it would have put a dent in my winnings. As for E, she’d only lost her apprentice (and the zombie), but she rolled a full recovery, so her one treasure would have been pure profit.