First Stargrave Game

 Stargrave! 

After the untimely death of Rogue Trader Devona Caligari, her first mate Mortem Castranova took over command of the trader's ship and continued around the universe looking to make some coin. He enlisted the services of a disgraced churchman, the Bishop of Iroas, as his new first mate and on this particular day, they arrived at a Starport to pick up some loot. 

We didn't have four small spaceships so we adapted - we placed four containers on the board which we figured would do the same thing. As I read through the scenario to work out what was supposed to happen, we created a new narrative - instead of the starships taking off, the starport crane would come in and pick up the containers and anyone too close would be smashed by swinging shipping containers instead.

I attacked mostly on my left - Captain Castranova, the Chiseler and the Robot Gunner attacked one flank while everyone else aimed to defend the other. Scotty attacked both sets of objectives equally with a couple of Specialists either side. Scotty got first blood when he shot down my dog. As a result, Captain Castranova went all John Wick...

Some pretty desparate redeployment for me happened as I moved the Bishop, the Guard Dog and the . Scotty made some good use of Remote Firing to shoot his robot at my oncoming dudes. My
Captain, however, wasn't having a bar of it and with a Power Spiked shotgun, took the robot from full health to 1 health in one shot.

In an attempt to stymie my attack, Scotty cast EM Pulse on my Captain, jamming all his weapons while my Chiseler (who you can see on the right of the photo below) busily failed to open a physical loot counter for the third time (trying to hit 14 on a d20+7!!). I was not impressed. This lead to quite a scrap over that loot counter between Scotty's captain and his Void Blade, my Chiseler and the Bishop of Iroas.

In the most John Wick moment, my Captain charged his badly damaged robot, cast Concealed Firearm and shot the thing in the head before it could get up and get me first. About here, a bunch of wild pirates appeared behind my crew! The Robot Gunner turned to deal with them and gunned one down before he was summarily smashed by the starport crane and a combination of fire from a pirate and Scotty's Pathfinder did for him.

Meanwhile, on my right, the Bishop and the three troopers were engaged in a scrap with Scotty's first mate, a Pathfinder and a Gunner. There were a lot of handbags being thrown (I think I rolled 17+ on every shooting defence for two or three turns) and my shots weren't much better. It was this turn that I grabbed a data loot and the central physical loot and Scotty managed to Data Knock the data loot on his side for the Pathfinder to grab.

In the same turn I took this picture, the Pirate marksman who'd appeared on Scotty's board edge, along with two other pirates who had arrived on our flank, collectively gunned down my captain with Scotty reveling in one of the few crits he rolled in this game! I did the maths and I think my captain took....15 damage from that one shot.... 

My troopers on my right finally scragged Scotty's first mate and we collectively started running for the board edges so it was at about this point we gave it away. My Chiseler and my hacker had made it off the board with a data loot and a physical loot each and Scotty's crew managed the same. Most of Scotty's cheap troops had been taken out, alongside his Captain and his First Mate and Captain Castranova had also been gunned down with one of his troopers, his combat robot and his faithful dog! 

We made the game a draw and a fun first outing, even if I did roll A LOT of 20s. D20 games are my jam apparently, although I was never much chop at Infinity. I guess because that wanted you to roll low...

 Stargrave Thoughts

Things I like

I think my favourite thing about Stargrave is how flexible it is. Scotty made his crew up out of models from Star Wars Legion and I with models from Warhammer 40K which I kind of loved. A new club member was looking over our game and was mightily vexed by "another new game" at which point he was pleased to see he could use stuff from his 40K collection. Of course this hasn't stopped me looking around for other interesting options for Stargrace crews...

Mechanically, I enjoy the crew construction changes and the re-characterisation of the Captain and First Mate from the Wizard/Apprentice model. I love that they can be different, their powers are all different and their skills and abilities haven't really got anything to do with each other. I think I need to still be cleverer with my power selections and get some out of game ones too which I didn't take. Again.

Overall, I think it's a slick evolution of the mechanics that began with Frostgrave. I'll certainly be interested in seeing author Joseph McCullough's foray into Gothic Napoleonics that's coming up too.

Anything I don't?

Much like Frostgrave, I have few dislikes to speak of. I always like an index in my rulebooks and there are some layout decisions I would have done differently but that's very much a preference thing. From a game perspective, I don't think there's anything I'd change. It's as swingy as Frostgrave (d20s will do that), which can sometimes be a bit frustrating but the changes to crew construction, loot tables and gear management means that in a campaign I suspect that's a lot less of a problem. 

Definitely keen to play it some more.

 Workbench

I've finished up the two Assault Intercessors for our next slowgrow day in a couple of weeks and just waiting for the Outrider to arrive to add to the Kill Team to finish up the army. 

Blogger Scotty has supplied me with a classic Leman Russ, giving me enough vehicles to build up a Spearhead detachment for my Imperial Guard. It's the last generation Russ with the narrower turret and cast weapons so I'll be building it a) as more of a classic Russ and b) as a command tank (maybe even with a Commissar tank commander, even though those aren't a thing) with lots of radio gear and so forth to kind of highlight the different construction from my other two Russes.

Next Time

The Russ, probably pre-paint, and the finished 1000 point slowgrow army. I've worked out a bit of a plan for the 1500 for late in the year which I'm also enthused about. I'm slowly working through basing up my 15mm Grenadiers as well so there'll be a massive binge paint of those coming up too.