If you know Frostgrave you know what to expect. If you don't, it's a game where two or more crews are trying to grab loot and run and each has two special characters. This time around it's a Captain and a First Mate. Unlike Frostgrave, the secondary special character isn't just a weaker version of the primary one: they can have different Backgrounds, with different power sets. The Backgrounds range from standard military veteran to a Jedi-like. The rest of the crew are various type of soldiers, from light Runners without Armour and with a pistol to Armoured Troopers with special weapons. As with Frostgrave, the main mode of play is a campaign with persistent crews.
Things that I liked:
- Variety in backgrounds
- First Mate not being tied to Captain as much as Apprentice was to Wizards
- Simple Crew lists
- Enough starting credits and powers to make pick-up games possible without it feeling boring
- Unwanted Attention random creature list; since alien models are rarer than fantasy creatures, it's good to have an alternative list based on humanoid opponents
- Different types of loot
- A general guideline about terrain density and layout. At least it's not as infuriatingly vague as it was for his previous games.
- Using Grenade Launchers and Flamethrowers. I bet a lot of people will be using Imperial Guard or compatible bits for their Soldiers, so using their most common special weapons is a great move. I have a bunch of these lying around.
Things I didn't like:
- Rules layout: you're forced to go backwards through the book when making a Captain and First Mate
- Scenarios: they're based on terrain and setting rather than making changes to the objectives. That's my big gripe with all of McCullough games so far: rather than being generic games with terrain-agnostic scenarios, like you'd expect, they're all about a specific terrain piece or several in the middle of the table. Why does the "Botched Deal" scenario have to take place in a Wild West town? A botched deal could go down anywhere.
- General random creature list requiring pretty much at least two of everything.
- Random creatures don't have sizes listed, although they're compared to things like rhinos or wolves, so it's not as much of an issue as Rangers of Shadow Deep's giant spiders
- No Sniper Rifles - why? Especially when one of the Soldier types is called "Sniper".
- Minor gripes like Drone enemy lacking the Robot keyword or "Rapid-fire" instead of simply "Machinegun". Or if you really wanted to use a word that doesn't sound like a specific real weapon, maybe think of something less awkward than "Rapid-fire" (sadly Spitfire is taken).
Being a cocky s.o.b. I actually started writing my own scenarios for the game. Ones that are based on objectives or features that are divorced from terrain. I'll upload them here in future. So far I have these written down:
- Bounty hunting for a specific NPC
- Stealing an artifact from a cult
- Getting between warring gangs
- Grabbing loot from a zone filled with toxic gas and patrolled by sentry drones
Things I thought up but not written down yet:
- Encountering an alien creatures pack hunting for another alien creature
- Going into an alien nest
- Capture the flag
- Inactive sentry drones activated when they players pick up loot
It may take me some time as I'm doing it in between my job tasks. I'll have them up for testing soon!
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