GA: Creating a Warband (Updated)

I often find that reading a game rulebook doesn’t really bring out all the nuances of the game, and that actually playing the game is the best way of assessing it.

So rather than simply leaf through the book and dribble out some thoughts and pictures of pages that have probably been shown elsewhere (and even on you tube), I decided to go ahead and make up some war bands using the Ghost Archipelago rules.

Note – there is NAKED lead, plastic and resin in these photos, so be warned.

So I’d unpacked the pile of lead, and started snipping at the plastic kit. Here’s the war band, all 8 of them. (L-R) Heritor, Warden, Savage, Archer, Guide, herbalist and two (plastic) crewmen.

Reading the book there are some notable differences from frost grave. Firstly, you have a maximum of 8 in your war band, not ten. You can increase this number just as you can in Frostgrave, by upgrading your ship’s capacity, but the war bands will nearly always be smaller.

Heritors – having never played the game this is a stab in the dark. You can randomly roll for them, but I decided not to for the first war band. Throughout the book, there is artwork of statuesque female red heads. As a redhead, I decided to base my character on this artwork and one of my ex-gf, which helped me determine her abilities. So they were mostly based around intimidation: Steelheart and Burning Eyes popped out at me !

You never upset a red head.

Wardens – the spells are similar to but distinct from the Frostgrave spells, less of a stab in the dark (I”ll reserve that for my enemies)

Now one thing I noticed and I’ll discuss later, was lack of ranged firepower, so whilst I chose a Vine Warden (the equivalent of schools of magic) I ensured I chose a ranged offensive spell.

I also chose another female model for the Warden, once again there is a very balanced gender theme throughout the GA rulebook, and no they’re fully clothed with no chain mail bikinis. The figures produced reflect the artwork in many ways.

The Crew. Well you basically only have 6, and as far as I can see, when recruiting the first set of crew you have a freehand without any gold crowns to spend.

Update: A pointed out in the comments, you can have up to 8 crew, so the war band can comprise of Heritor, Warden, 4 Specialists, AND 4 crew.

So I chose a Savage for the sheer grunt power (think Barbarian), an Archer, and a Guide both of whom have a bow. The later two are again females !. Then the fourth Specialist (the max you can have) was a herbalist. Chosen because he has three equipment slots, and looking at the rules this might prove useful in the short term. Once again a small change from frost grave means that the Heritor only has 4 items slots, and the warden only 3.

Then I took two ordinary crew, and equipped them with hand weapons and shields. This might prove a mistake we shall see. The one thing I did note was that ordinary crew cannot have any ranged weapons – so no bows of X-bows !

Building the war band took longer than a frost grave war band, because the Heritor and Wardens have different abilities/spells, plus there is a bit more balancing you need to think about.

Probably spending time tinkering with my spreadsheet also took more time so I may be more pessimistic about times.

For the test run game I will randomly determine the Heritors abilities just to test that out too..

As you can see I also spent time on Sunday and Monday visiting pet shops for some scenery !