Ghost Archipelago - Review and First Impressions

Just as I was preparing the latest batch of Haitians the latest distraction landed on the door mat. Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago, I only played the original game once it was a little heavy on the terrian side for my liking but when I saw the setting for Ghost Archipelago it felt like a rule set that could bring all of my odd collections together on one table top allowing me to get to use some of the mini's that rarely see table time.

I backed the base level pledge in the current Nickstarter from Northstar, which provided me with the Rules, spell deck, a box of Crew, Crew Rooster, Treasure tokens and preproduction casts together with the novel to get you in the mood for island hopping.

Everything was well packed with the books bubble wrapped for extra protection. The presentation style is excellent, the rules are hard back and have a high production feel to them, no pages will be falling out of this set unlike Cutlass! 

The Snakeman's sword was damaged but being only one I can't see much use for him anyway.

I did not go to the trouble of selecting the Heritors and Wardens but am happy with the random figures, they have a Eastern feel to them which will allow me to use some of my Ottomans should I need to ground troops or extra crewmen.

 

I quite like the idea of my Atlantians guarding the various temples and jungle outposts, they will definately feature as some of the "bad guys" the rules cater for waterborne warfare with rules for boats, perfect as I picked a couple of these up from Iron gate scenary at Derby a few weeks ago.

The rulebook is 144 pages filled with full color photos of painted miniatures are some lovely art work to inspire the modeller in you. The rules within the book are relatively straight forward and with specific chapters for each area its easy to to find the specific rules. The contents include. Heritors, Wardens, and Crewmen, Chapter 3 Playing the Game, Chapter 4 The campaign followed by Heritor Abilities, Warden Spells, Scenarios (eight in the book), and the Bestiary.

Flicking through the rules and set up this morning, Ghost Archipelago, provides for a basic warband consisting of 10 members that must be purchased using 250 gold coins. Outside of the Heritor and Warden the warband can filled with a mix of  Standard Crewman and Specialist roles such as the Pearl Diver or Scout.

The Wardens must choose from five branches—Beast, Earth, Storm, Warden, Vine, and Wave, allowing your Warden/Wizard to influence the terrian and creatures on the board.

To spice up your encounter Ghost Archipelago also provides a Random Encounter Table with three levels of encounters each giving a different type of creature and with rules for your average wildlife through to Dinosaurs and the undead, plenty of choice to allow me to get those long forgot miniatures on the table - Fishmen anyone?

Ghost Archipelago feels perfect for those mid-week games where you only have a couple of hours to spare, the terrain demands are minimal espically if like me you have been collecting fish tank terrain for years. With 10 figures aside the investment for a warband is quite low and you can always swap out the monsters to fit what you have already - You never know the Bugs may make an appearance....