This will be fairly description light as it's been 16months since I played the game. Darrens tables are good for eye candy photographs though. The buildings are 3dprinted from corvus (I think) and were (possibly) a gift of some sort to Darren. The graffiti does SO MUCH for the terrain and I loves it. I sent my brother some photos as we was really into graffiti art when he was younger.
More after the jump....
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| insertion via clipping the wire |
He runs a good game. He know the rules and has devised some challenging, convention friendly, scenarios. They usually is a time crunch, in terms of terms/action economy, and it's very easy to get bogged down and over extend. The agents are much (MUCH) better than their opposition, but the opposition is plentiful. It's really the threat of the timer which is the biggest constraint, unlimited turns would really only see very unlucky agents getting taken down.
Insertion is via a boat or the road. Chainlink fences must be cut through. Sea cans must be picked (or cut if you use your equipment slot to have bold cutters). The area is lit, though the generator can be blown meaning show sight ranges (and you can use an equipment slot for night vision goggle making you a lethal hunter in the dark). Vehicles can be hot wired. Lots of interaction is possible with the scenery. Also, each agent is run by a different convention player, so it's easy to have imperfect communication and planning. I love friction in games, so this is wonderful to me.
Prior to the alarm being raised the GM's and players would dice off for each cartel members, high roll would control where they talked.
The alarm would be raised if the cartel members saw the agents at the beginning of their turn. So the agents had a whole turn to react and try and cap anyone who saw them. Explosions would raise the alarm (and did).
The jefe and his bodygaurd (more competent and dangerous) were on the boat. They walked towards the construction office (sea can with stairs on the left).
Meanwhile the agents were searching sea cans, struggling with picking locks, and queuing up more explosions. We almost got blown up more than once. The explosives have a timer which is slightly counter intuitive (I didn't use them but it's a set one turn and it counts down at a weird time, so it's easy for you to short yourself the time needed to get clear).
The guards at the front gate I think were a touch more competent, and EVENTUALLY, there was a firefight across the open area.
Count down timer seen on another sea can. It was awesome as the agent just got far enough away, but the cartel members swarming like vermin towards another agent mostly were blown up.
Refugees were found. My agent managed to hot wire the truck and back it up close enough to load them up. As the jefe approached the office all the agent were running for the slowly departing truck.
We ended up doing a driveby shooting of the Jefe, one of the agents in the front cab was wounded during the firefight, but we were racing out under the wire.
Victory picture! 5 of 6 objectives achieved (no kidnapped jefe). Wounded agents but no deaths. Lots of fun. 4 stars, would recommend.
The system runs around 3 levels of training (green, trained, operative) which guides targets for skill checks, but also the number of actions you get a turn (1, 2, 3). Also, the number of hits you take as suppression before you actually get injured (1,2,3). Operatives are REALLY good. Green troops (raw recruits, gang bangers, etc) are barely speed bumps. The essential tension in the missions is rarely about whether the operatives are going to win, but whether they can do it IN TIME. Tight mission time lines and ambitious optional objectives often is what makes the game really compelling (in my few play throughs).
Having gaming visitors was fun, as it force me to pull out what I had from the Dave cave in order to host a game and have terrain on the table. I was able to hand terrain off to the other nerds while I was digging in boxes, so the tables ended up set up in a way I wouldn't have chosen myself. Win win.
A comment in a previous post was talking about print quality of miniatures. I was very surprised about half a year ago when my friend came over to visit me and offered to print up some minis. The support removal was fairly agonizing, but the end result is impressive.
He is using a cheap bambu printer with a 0.2mm nozzle (vs the more common 0.4) and settings appropriate for the job. Bambu has a reputation for really solid prints with not much (?any) tinkering...at a competitive price point. Unfortunately they also have a bit of a reputation for moving towards a closed ecosystem (think how apple gates all their stay in a walled garden). For lots/most of their customer base it doesn't really matter, but for people who have been in the 3d printing community (which has advanced a lot via open source improvements) for a while it's not a good look.
For that reason I can't really recommend Bambu, and I went with a different manufacturer. The output is certainly pretty awesome though.
With my list of 'things wot I need' I stumbled across some cool stl's early in my printer ownership and progressively printed a bunch. It sat unpainted for much time. Then I swapped some painting with local gamer Garret. He usually zenithal highlights and inks with a home mix to get a satisfying stone look that I dig.
York 867 was chosen to run a variant of '6's are bad'. That is.....roughly the name of the rule set. It's been re-skinned a number of times, but it's a great ruleset for people who feel like they roll an abnormal number of low dice.
In October 2025, Bryan hopped the passenger ferry across the Georgia straight and visited for a weekend. With local gamer Garret we played out a 3 way frostgrave game. Considering the 8 months since I played it I don't have a lot of recollection of the event. I *do* remember having the worst luck (I think 50% of my force was taken out, and possible non at all for the others).
The pillars (printed by me) were magical constructs and would turn into chests when touched. The game was to rush forward, grab what you could and escape (which is the general theme for frostgrave in general TBH). In principle there are 2 chests per team.......but that is so unlikely it's hardly worth noting.
Small table and tight quarters meant some definite clustering to start.
Hard to see with white on white, but I'm a big fan of using mist (cotton fluff) to control long ranged fire and wandering monsters. It usually works quite well....
But not in this game. One of my henchmen gets a wandering monster charging him as soon as an opposing team activates a pillar/chest. These GD toads are slow but have a really impressive bite. Out in a single roll.
The pillars are all converted at this point and we are dragging them away. Plus flinging spells at chests and henchmen to complicate and/or steal them from the other sides. Lots of red 'dead' markers can be seen (blood ringed bodies) in my area of the table. There are lots of square ish red x's showing damage.
The GD toad just keeps on hunting my team.
It's probably subjective but I feel like Garrets archers are usually both effective and annoying.
It was a total rout for my side (I'm not sure I even got a single chest), but Bryan and Garret did all right. Fun times despite the rough handling by dice rolls.
The armies faced at a sabres length at the start of the game along a line that took a 90 degree turn at the onion domed orthodox church.
Behind the church on the Spano-Russian flank were 3 fleche redoubts. In a non optimal outcome, the fleches were defended by a horde of poorly motivated/trained Spanish (lots of elements but not much staying power).
To be honest, my understanding of the fight on the far side of the table was a bit superficial. It seems as though tons of casualties developed with early assaults and then the Centres fell quiet for a bit since artillery was tearing both sides apart.
The Russian Reserves are fully committed in the centre/hinge right. Depleted french units are being murdered by the still robust (thanks to the artillery reserve) Russian cannons creating a no mans land in the middle.
Gortshakov shuffled from the left towards the centre and helped set up a late day push towards the French LOC.
Both sides were on the dagger edge of breaking by this point.
The spanish anchored both flanks for some reason. On my flank I had Gazan and Bagration pushing on one side of the river to cave in the French right. It was held by a token force of poles and two small french cavalry corp.
Across the river Gortchacov held the river line and fired cannon (where line of site permitted). He would soon realize he need to push toward the Centre Right to help avoid the collapse of our forces in the centre and right flank.
Poor command die rolls (pips) made for a slow advance on this side. Cannon are particularly hard to get moving foward on the attack, and the Poles were well played by a new player, Garret, constantly giving just enough ground and launching local counter attacks to prevent overly aggressive advances. The Cavalry was able to hide behind the tree line from Gortsachov and made for difficult opponents to hunt.
The flank was largely a side show for the game but very late in the game this flank was busted open and left a (long) march towards the french LOC, held by a small but credible force.
More pics after the break...
We positioned cards in alternating fashion to denote the start point of the leader of each corp. The cards were flipped and placement of the troops happened alternating in order of the cards. It was fun and different and we ended up with some interesting match ups.
The Russian plan (my side) was to go artillery heavy on the left in a crossfire to give the french a problem to solve. We dropped our fortifications on the right, assuming an attack there, created a battle line across the front, and left a strong reserve of cavalry and elite infantry.
The french overloaded their left flank and refused the right. A token force was left there. The centre had a reasonable force to push. Roughly 60-90 minutes after 'starting' we were all setup and ready to start fighting.
