Stargrave, initial thoughts and first game

    Saturday, WMTG and I sat down for our opening game of stargrave.  My initial thoughts follow...

    WMTG and I  got our love of wargaming in the 40k zone.  Whether it was a childhood playing against brothers  in the basement or going to the LGS every Sunday, something in the far future has called us to the table ever since.  I love fantasy gaming be it minis or RPGs.  I love reading about elves, dwarves, undead, and magic but when it comes to wargaming...my heart holds a special place for laser guns, powered armor, psychic swords, and man-portable artillery:)  So, I've wanted to  play Stargrave ever since I saw the game on the author's blog.

    After reading and rereading the teaser crew creation guide and power list, the book wasn't entirely a surprise.  It builds on the same d20 mechanic as the author's other properties.  You don't have a wizard and apprentice but a captain and first mate.  You have powers instead of spells.  You have a ship instead of a base.  The differences come in small tweaks here and there that don't seem like much at first glance but drive a very different feel.

Our lists, edited for brevity:

WMTG:

Captain - Veteran:

light armor, filter mask, carbine, pistol, hand weapon

        command, coordinated fire, fortune, regenerate, target designation

First Mate - Mystic

filter mask, carbine, medic kit, hand weapon

camouflage, dark energy, heal, suggestion

Hacker, chiseler, two troopers, two commandos, gunner, dog.

Me:

Captain Robotics expert

heavy armor, flamethrower, hand weapon, filter mask, med kit

remote firing, drone, electromagnetic pulse, armory, transport

First Mate cyborg

Combat armor

Camouflage, quick step, void blade, regenerate

4 recruits, codebreaker, safecracker, 2 snipers

WMTG generously printed my models from this excellent collection:

I chose to focus my starting credits on a fast capable ranged element and upgraded objective openers.  My time with rangers of shadow deep opened my eyes to moderately capable disposable troops--hence the recruits.  All my powers  activate on a ten or better so I wanted capable soldiers since I couldn't count on always activating when I needed it.  My captain was supposed to activate drone and do his work from behind cover.  My first mate was supposed to haunt the battlefield, slaughtering where needed.  I grabbed a flamethrower for the captain because  I figured if he ever had to get out of cover...things were really bad and setting things on fire would be a good solution.

Scenario: The botched deal

This was a standard deployment mission with a designated physical loot in the middle of the board and placement of 1 ruffian per player next to a loot token of their choice with additional ruffians placed whenever someone rolled a 4 or less for initiative.

The board had a bunch of old cardboard 40k 90dg ruin walls and some buildings surrounding a huge (15 inch ) multi-part shuttle WMTG printed, complete with removable top and lowered ramp.  The central token went inside the shuttle.  I won the roll for sides and picked a spot where my snipers would have access to a raised platform with plenty of surface area.  We split tokens trying to put them as far from our opponent's  dedicated specialists as possible.  If you didn't put your codebreaker/hacker and company in the middle of the board, you risked having their target token so far away that you would be behind the ball.

    I'm not going to go turn by turn because I don't remember the game that well.  We had to check rules several times, it being our first game with the new rule system.  I had a glass or 2 of excellent whiskey...and well I try not to dwell on first game technical aspects anyway.

• I didn't activate Armory, meaning I had to spend my remaining 50 credits to kit out my first mate with his combat armor.
• The captain failed to activate drone so moved up to support the snipers which hopped to their elevated hide.
• The first mate got off camouflage and void blade while running to support the rush to the shuttle.
• A furious firefight followed with WMTG gutting my first mate with dark energy and lots of fire spraying over the field as we started gravitating towards objectives.
• The battle changed drastically when I moved my captain up to support the troops after he couldn't get a  power off.  He got 3 of WMTG's troops in a flamer hit, nearly killing all of them.
• WMTG hit me with a couple grenade hits when I bunched up after combat.
• I tried to run my captain off the board but the enemy captain started following so I turned around and flamed another 3 models, killing most of them.
• I ended up creating 3 ruffians which I placed to great affect...one of which took 9 health off WMTG's captain with a fluke pistol shot and killed his hacker.
• The game ended with my captain down to one health, my first mate badly wounded, most of my recruits dead, and having secured 2 tokens with the third netted on a lucky roll.
• WMTG's  captain has a lingering injury, first mate has a crushed arm, hacker, commando and dog are badly wounded, and the other commando is dead.  They secured both of their initial objectives...though at a heavy cost.
• I got 190exp and WMTG got 195.
• I rolled 200 credits worth of information, 2 uses of combat drugs (sold for 50 credits), and the first item on the alien technology table which was promptly sold for 300 more credits since I didn't have or expect to get the associated power.
• WMTG got a +1 fight hand weapon and 150 credits in trade goods.
• I leveled up my captain to 16, dropped  armory's activation cost to 10, and bought the armament workshop upgrade.
• WMTG is going to replace his first mate with a biomorph, buy a replacement  commando, and take a recruit in place of the dog.

    This was a ruff game.   I couldn't get most of my powers to work and I couldn't seem to roll over a 6 for the first couple turns.  WMTG's wife got a kick out of the completely uninflected way I moved on from those rolls without comment but it really put a spanner in my plans.  I had counted on drone to let me run my crew from the shadows and the dice weren't having it.  I only got to activate one of my captain's powers, remote firing, once the entire game and it didn't do anything other than earn me 10 experience.  My first mate got his big defensive powers off and then couldn't roll high enough or had to focus on close combat attacks.  Then his captain hit my captain with target designation and the first mate hit my first mate with dark energy, almost killing him outright.

    I looked at WMTG's crew and couldn't figure out the plan.  They represented compromises in quality or value from my perspective, hitting that mid zone between throwable trash and truly elite troops.  I mean, the first mate didn't even have armor.  My mistake was under estimating the value of dark energy especially against robots and what moderately capable troops with grenades and carbines can accomplish.

    That early lack of  powers forced me to try and take ground with my captain and their flamer which mangled a third of my opponent's forces and brought us somewhat back to parity.  It was the placement of those 2 extra ruffians and a couple random high-roll pistol shots that really turned the tables though.  I  got to ambush his  back line with free bodies  in a great firing position.  When both my flamer hits scored big damage it left WMTG with no way to fight back.  I didn't bring on my third ruffian since it was more likely to interfere with picking up that third token than to inconvenience my opponent.

    If you look at experience and loot, WMTG came out a little behind.  If you factor in injury rates then their crew took a serious loss despite netting slightly more experience.  That is my single biggest problem with McCullough's games thus far, one or two bad injury rolls turn a tolerable shellacking into a crushing loss.  The inability to buy off ongoing damage  makes them consider starting from scratch rather than deal with a permanently limped signature character.  After already taking a drubbing on the field of honor, those survival rolls that don't outright kill crew or leave them fully functional feel pretty personal because you'll have to live with them next game--reminding you--again--of that self same drubbing.  Granted, losing most of your crew and getting that many bad survival rolls doesn't happen every game.  However, most games of frostgrave 1st ed and rangers of shadow deep saw at least half our support staff rolling on the injury table with leaders less frequently but consisstently taking their turn as well.  It...doesn't feel good as the "loser" and it doesn't feel great as the "winner either.  I can't tell if this trend is a byproduct of our increasing skill level raising the lethality or just bad luck.

Initial thoughts (insert obligatory disclaimer for only having played one game):

    Let's get the most important thing out of the way.  Stargrave is not frostgrave in space.  Despite what this guy thinks, they are very different games built on similar skeletons.  I'm going to go over some of this in more detail later but loot tokens are handled differently, character advancement and creation are different, power/spell usage are different, weapon selection and usage are different.  I think it's fair to say that they are similar enough that if you don't like frostgrave in broad strokes, stargrave may not be your kind of game but to say they're the same thing with the words changed to add space is incorrect.  That being said, I'm going to compare stargrave to it and rangers of shadow deep a lot since that's where my experience with McCullough's games derives.

    Initially, building a stargrave crew looks a lot like building a frostgrave warband.  However, as soon as you start trying to create a captain and first mate the similarity ends.  Even though you get nine powers between your characters (5 for the captain and 4 for the first mate) the fact that those powers are split between the two characters with the potential to build down different paths and activation costs made me look at the process like picking spells and heroic abilities from ROSD.  Frostgrave lets you pick a suite of spells that your characters share.  You can aford to balance future activation cost reduction with momentary utility with game winning  staples.  Stargrave doesn't allow for that kind of thinking.  If you pick four of your captain's five powers for your first mate, then you've just got a weaker captain and access to less utility.  Powers fall into two groups, the ones from your background and the ones that aren't.  So you can't hedge your bets by choosing a background that gives you better access to certain allied powers as in frostgrave.  Some powers from the psychic and mystic backgrounds are harder to activate depending on what kind of armor you're wearing.  So you've got to think about how you want your characters equipped too.

    WMTG pointed out something I hadn't considered until after our first game.  Every crew member save the dog has a gun.  If you're within ten inches of an enemy model then you're 'within range' of that model.  Even models with 'shoot 0' such as drones can make fluke ranged attack rolls.  It's a very combined arms approach to wargaming; one which fundamentally influences turn-to-turn tactics and colors soldier selections.

    Along similar lines, stargrave is more lethal than frostgrave.  Part of this comes from the base armor stat reducing from 10 to 9.  Part comes from objectives having to be unlocked before they can be picked up--often requiring models to stand in one place for multiple turns.  It's very difficult to avoid threat ranges when everyone can cover a quarter of the board or more just by walking around.  Flame throwers and grenades aren't ubiquitous but their very presence as a standard equipment option means that you have to worry about non-power related affects threatening multiple models all-the-time.  Grenades don't even require line of sight to put up smoke clouds or target concealed figures.

    I found stargrave power activation refreshingly simple and frustratingly difficult.  If you fail a spell casting in frostgrave, you will usually take some dammage from the backlash.  This encourages spellcasters to empower failed rolls since if you're going to take damage, you might as well get something for the price.  Since powers cost health to activate in many cases but don't damage if you fail the activation, the option to just not take damage is far more apealing than in frostgrave especially if yu know you're going to have to take damage/stress when you eventually activate that power later anyway.  This mechanic combined with the fact that my first mate and captain had real equipment from the beginning meant not even bothering to try and activate a power became atractive in 40% of my turns--this in spite of characters generating experience by power activation and getting a free 3 inch move for doing so.  Powers aren't an every-turn deal in stargrave especially since you're lucky to have even one power activate on an 8 or less due to the way background associated power selection operates.

    One element that I haven't seen discussed much is the fact that stargrave isn't a replacement for killteam, 40k, or any military themed offering.  It was tempting for me to view it as such due to the presence of powered armor, robots, flamers, grenades, and machineguns but the very limited availability of those resources is what changed my mind.  It's more like a space western such as firefly where the big guns are available but not to the entire crew all the time.  You can make room for military stories since the weapons and equipment tables provide modifiers rather than specific profiles.  The equipment descriptions specifically allow for gear to come from varying scientific diciplins and cultures provided they end up with the same modifiers.  In this way, an eldar catapolt is much the same as a biocarbine firing bone spikes.  The difference comes in modeling and back story not mechanical impact.  This leaves the base rules as more of a template for players to tell their own stories rather than a dedicated universe with iconic technology and setting elements.  I appreciate the sandbox approach but others may find it a bit generic.  I really hope McCullough does something involving midsized wargaming with vehicles, tanks, aircraft...etc but having played stargrave, it doesn't feel like a good fit.

    One rule we're going to lose is the critical hits rule.  We found that if you roll a 20, adding 5 damage on top of the character's governing combat stat killed everybody outright save some very niche situations.  That's fine if you're playing a ROSD game where we're all on the same side but not so fine if you want to have a relaxed game and a power armored trooper goes down to a freak critical having done nothing and taken no previous damage.  It took the fun out of several combats that would have otherwise been entertaining contests.

    Finally, I want to stress how much better balanced I find stargrave than my 30+games of frostgrave first edition.  There are small quality and quantity of life improvements everywhere such as how experience is gained for enemy crew elimination not based on who does the eliminating.  There are very limited ways to railroad enemy figures and none that outright remove them from the board edge.  There are tons of costs for tactical movement powers which I found were the most valuable in FG1 but which also lead to first or second turn loot scoring (leap and telekinesis I'm looking at you.)  There are no powers that let you carry benefits into future games.  There are rewards for good strategic and tactical play including direct experience for effective soldier employment.  Stargrave represents a multi-layered tactical skirmish challenge; one that I enjoy esthetically even if our first game didn't feel great.  You have to accept the swingy nature of the d20 mechanic but after that there is definitely gold to be mined from this game.

More later.