Review: Stargrave

In a Nutshell: It’s Frostgrave in spa-a-a-ace. SF skirmish wargame from Osprey Games, written by Joseph A McCullough.

Contents

Introduction (4 pages). This is a two-player competitive skirmish game, focused on campaign play. Individual games should be two hours or less, and survivors accrue experience, loot and cool toys which improve their performance in later games. You’ll need a table 2′ x 2′ to 3′ x 3′, tape measure, pencil, crew sheets, a couple of dozen figures, lots of terrain or things to stand in for it (I often use books), a few d20s, and some loot tokens.

Assembling a Crew (24 pages). The premise of the game is that a great interstellar war destroyed the star empires, and now the galaxy is a ruined wasteland, populated by pirate fleets preying on the survivors, and individual ships with small crews (that’s you, that is) looking for loot, revenge, or whatever else motivates them. The crew consists of 10 beings; a captain, the most capable figure and one which represents the player on the table; the first mate; and up to 8 soldiers, of whom up to 4 can be specialists. You begin with Cr 400 to hire soldiers; they cost from nothing to Cr 150, depending on their stats and equipment.

Each has a statline listing their Move, Fight, Shoot, Armour, Will and Health; high is good, and for captains and first mates, the values may be adjusted from the baseline values, depending on which of 8 backgrounds they choose. The captain and first mate also have access to powers (see below). The captain begins with 5 powers, of which 3-4 must be core powers for his background; the first mate has 4, of which 2-3 must be background core powers. Captains begin at level 15 and have 6 slots for carrying items; first mates start at level 0 and have 5 gear slots. Both can advance by gaining experience, which soldiers cannot. Soldiers don’t have powers, and only have one gear slot. Weapons and armour take up 1-3 gear slots according to type.

Aliens look like they look, but use the same statlines and powers as humans. Soldiers start with a fixed set of gear, and while it is replaced between games, they pretty much never get better toys. There are only 10 different kinds of weapons, and 4 kinds of armour; a pistol is a pistol, and has the same stats whether it’s a flintlock, a Glock, or a blaster. So there. I approve all of these messages.

Rules (31 pages). This chapter covers setting up the table, movement, combat, and controlling random NPCs and monsters who might turn up. Table setup depends on the scenario chosen to an extent, but to encourage movement, you’re advised to have tables with a lot of terrain. Figures are placed within 2″ of their starting edge or corner, but 6″ away from any other edge. Your objective in a game, as with Frostgrave, is to acquire loot tokens, and these are now scattered around the table; loot comes in two flavours, physical and data.

Each player rolls a d20 for initiative, and players then act in descending order of initiative. First, everyone moves their captain and up to three nearby soldiers; then, all the first mates act, again each with up to three soldiers; then, all the remaining soldiers act; and finally, any NPC monsters or pirates activate. When a figure acts, it can make one move, and do one other thing – fight, shoot, use a power, open a loot token, or move again (this move is only half the first, though). There is a simple checklist to determine what NPC figures do when activated.

To do something, roll 1d20, add the appropriate stat, and meet or beat a target number; this will either be listed, or be the enemy’s Fight roll – itself a d20 plus the Fight stat; a natural 20 always succeeds, a natural 1 always fails. If fighting or shooting, beating the target’s Fight roll means you hit; now deduct the target’s armour from your attack roll, and if the result is positive, that’s how much Health the target loses. If it loses at least 4, it is stunned (“miss a turn”); at 4 Health, it is wounded (and can only do one thing per turn); at 0 Health, the figure is out of the game.

The game ends either when one side has no live crew left on the table, or every loot token has been carried off the table.

Campaigns (35 pages, most of them about loot). In campaign play, after each game, you check how badly injured your 0 Health crew are, use out of game powers, check for experience points and levelling up, and appraise and spend your loot. Captains and first mates are more likely to survive their injuries, but may suffer other consequences such as losing gear or acquiring a permanent injury; experience can level up the captain or first mate, and give them a stat or power activation boost, or maybe even a new power. Loot once appraised is either a cool toy to add to your loadout, or sold for Credits that can be used to hire soldiers, buy cool toys, or improve the crew’s ship. (The ship takes no direct part in games, but once upgraded can give you benefits between games in a campaign in several ways.)

Powers (16 pages). There are about 50 different powers, which can be mystical or psychic abilities or just plain dirty tricks. Most are used during a game, though some are used before it starts or after it finishes. In game terms, they function like spells; you roll to cast them, pay power points to use them, they have a range, they might inflict damage on the caster (who might also deliberately take damage to improve casting chances), armour might interfere with using them.

Scenarios (21 pages). Here we find ten basic scenarios; the author’s intention is that these should inspire you to create your own. Each gives an explanation of how your crew got there, how to set up the table, any special rules, and what loot and experience can be expected. This, incidentally, is something that McCullough does well; all of his scenarios have some interesting twist or special rule that make them stand out. Often, this involves something from the bestiary.

Bestiary (24 pages). This chapter lists a couple of dozen creatures and NPCs you might bump into either because they’re part of a scenario, or because the included random encounter tables dropped one on the table in front of you. There are two tables, one for creatures and one for sentients with guns, be they police, pirates, or local militia. Creatures appear when you open a loot token; blokes with guns turn up if a roll of 1d20 + game turn number is 15+, and the higher the score, the worse the problem. There are a range of special abilities that these random enemies might have, and you’re encouraged to build your own using the things in the book as examples.

…and we close with a crew sheet, power cards, templates and quick reference, all of them available as free downloads on Osprey’s website, along with the crew creation chapter and the solo bounty hunting scenarios. Props for that, lasses and lads.

Format

176 page Kindle book. Also available in dead tree and PDF, if you’re that way inclined. I went for the Kindle version because it’s quite a bit cheaper than the others, and experience teaches me that most of the games I buy don’t get used, so…

The layout is very basic, I suspect to simplify creating the ebooks for Kindle and whatnot, but that has the avantage that it adapts to tablets or even cellphones easily. I am extremely jealous of the figures and terrain in the photos scattered through the book.

What I Think

Obviously, I’d want to play this solo. That’s possible in three ways; play against random creatures and pirates (probably too easy), the supplements Dead or Alive (solo bounty hunting missions) or Quarantine 37 (bugs or aliens, with two competitive and one solo campaigns).

There’s not much in the way of things to do between fights, but first, this is a skirmish wargame, not an RPG; and second, us grognards played for years when actual RPGs didn’t have much in the way of rules outside combat.

I’m really taken with this game, although I suspect that’s due to dreaming about playing it with a pile of well-painted minis on a table with great looking terrain, none of which I will ever have, although tokens on Roll20 are still an option. Even so, it looks like a fast, simple game I would enjoy playing.