Stargrave: a first look and comparison with Frostgrave

Stargrave has arrived!

I have recently taken delivery of my copy of Stargrave, which is Joseph McCullough’s science fiction successor to his Frostgrave miniatures rules. While Frostgrave could be seen as a successor to Games Workshop’s Mordheim, with small bands of warriors fighting over the loot in a ruined city, Stargrave takes the Frostgrave gaming concept to the stars.

In many respects Stargrave is what you would expect of a science fiction version of its elder brother. You could ask yourself, why bother? Stargrave in some respects mines ideas from both Frostgrave and its successor Ghost Archipelago. But I anticipate we will have more flavour and crunch to come in the future from Osprey Publishing. Stargrave does, however, let you play with a small collection of science fiction figures. It is highly accessible in this respect.

Stargrave follows the same d20 mechanics as Frostgrave (roll a d20, add an ability, try to beat a target number usually generated by your opponent), so those familiar with the earlier game won’t find that surprising. Players build a crew from scratch using a budget, starting with the Captain who fills the same niche as the wizards of Frostgrave, but can come from a number of different backgrounds. This in turn determines their skills and abilities.

The Captain is very important in Stargrave, as he shapes the flavour of the crew and is essentially as critical as a quarterback on an American football team.

The Captain also has a first mate who is not quite as powerful, and who can draw on a different background. This is a departure from the apprentices in Frostgrave, who are bound to study the same spells as their masters.

The crew is composed of soldiers who are recruited using a budget of 400 credits. Costs vary from absolutely free for a recruit to 150cr for an armoured trooper. As someone who has a range of sci fi figures littered around from various opportunistic purchases and deceased projects, I can already start to see a crew coming together in my head.

A quick word on aliens and robots in the crew – Stargrave gets round this by allowing robots to basically function as soldiers, but giving them immunity to threats like poison and lack of oxygen. So you could take a Necron figure for example, make it an armoured trooper, and give it the additional robotic advantages. There are, however, beneficial powers in the game it can’t benefit from. With aliens, again, they are assumed to function just like normal crew – they may be non-human, but they get no special advantages from that. It is the same as using a halfling as a thief in Frostgrave, as I am at the moment. The halfling functions just the same as a human thief would.

There are rules for lots of weapons and kit of a sci fi nature – e.g. a flame thrower – so all that is new. There are also rules for grenades and weapon jams. There are rules for psionics, as it is possible to have a captain – or mate – with psionic abilities. But the system is a stripped down version of the much bigger and more sophisticated magic system in Frostgrave, as you would expect.

Everything else really seems to run along similar lines. Characters are looking for loot. Most of this is of a mundane nature, but it is also possible to discover advanced tech, for example a gravity suppressor or jet boots.

Crews have a ship which serves the same role as the bases of Frostgrave warbands. Credits can be spent to improve that. For example, 300cr can buy you some external cargo pods. Ships don't seem to play an active role in the game other than this, however.

There is a list of sample scenarios, which are what you would expect – nothing unusual here compared with Frostgrave. And there’s a list of aliens and other encounters which your crew could run across.

So really, yes, this does feel like Frostgrave in spaaaaace. I’ve not played Ghost Archipelago – we have really tended to focus on Frostgrave to date. But this does read like a sci fi version of that game. Nothing wrong with that. I’m sure there is a lot more to come to flesh out the universe.

Stargrave gives you a new lease of life for the odds and ends that may be littered around in your miniatures collection. Looking through the list of soldiers I feel I’ve got a few candidates and could probably build a motley crew in short order. Also, the sky is the limit in terms of where your adventures are set. You are not bound by snow-decked ruins or tropical islands anymore. If you fancy getting out your desert terrain or your old Warhammer gothic ruins, you can.