Ghost Archipelago Review

"The biggest issue of the game set on islands is the fact, that it is set on islands."

I love Frostgrave. I think it is game with one of the biggest potentials to narrate great stories on the gaming table, and one with the most cool (pun intented) settings I know.

But on the other hand, I am no crazy fanboy - and I realize that the game is far from perfect, having all sorts of issues with balance and unclear rules. Especially with unclear rules. It is probably the most house-ruled game I've ever played, and mind you - I am not talking about some details and flavors, I am speaking about serious, game-changing stuff.

So when I first opened Ghost Archipelago rulebook, spiritual successor of Frostgrave, I hope that autor learned and it is not just about re-texturing setting, but mainly about balancing and overall clear up of the rules. And after first reading, I was pleasantly surprised - it really looked like the case... but after playing two games now, I have to say that unfortunately it seems that I was wrong. the game feels even less balanced than Frostgrave, and in some aspect outright broken.

But let's not start with negatives, because there is a lot of good things also.

First of all, the book is just gorgeous. No kidding, this is probably the most beautiful book I have in wargaming collection. Illustrations by Dmitry Burmak and his wife are incredible and whole style of the book add to this - you look at the pictures and you know you're hooked. You just want to play this! Plus whole setting, mystical island in style of oriental tales of Sinbad the Sailor or One Thousand and One Nights is quite unique and interesting and look great on the table.

A few of the Frostgrave issues has been dealt with. For me the most important thing is rebalancing of party structure, which solved the "party bloat" and "specialist spamming" issues in the original. New system is easy and elegant, plus the stats has been rewritten to balance it up. New system for awarding the experience point also seems neat, although I have not tried how it would fare in campaign.

And now for the worst stuff. As the quote in the beginning says, game's greatest asset is it's worst weak spot in the same time. Yes, we played both games in rather extreme setting of small islands, but we really wanted to test the system of water, swimming and small boats, plus there is not a single mention in the rules that table should not be set up like that. Yes, more "conservative" table set-up would lessen the severity of our issues, but frankly it would feel more just like a standard Frostagrave - the one with palms instead of frozen pines. Plus less water would mean eliminating half of the monsters and water warden would have a big problem, as half of his magic would be unusable.

Deep water is really badly balanced mechanic and in both our games water proved to be killer number one. If figure gets into the water (willingly or not) it has to roll for the swimming check, which is for some reason roll against your will stat. If you lose it, you lose the rest of activation for this figure for the rest of the round (meaning you just standing ther in water) plus taking damage. Also deep water is counted as rough ground, meaning it is halving your moves and it gives you -2 to fight rolls. We immediately realized that best tactics is to push enemy into water and just shoot him.

Shooting itself is really strong here - due to the dangers of water our map basically become one big dungeon, where you can move only through the narrow corridors (bridges). But also it was dungeon, where you can see everywhere! Shooting instantly become lethal.

Same issue is with the small boats. In rulebook it sounds like a really cool idea - you can imagine the sailing though the marches, zombies trying to get onboard, sailors fighting them.... but on the table? To get into the boat is suicide. Figures on the boat had disadvantage in fight and boat does not provide any cover. You see where I am going?

"My lord, and now we will be shooting ducks."

And let's not even speak about getting into the boats from the water. That is strenght check, for some reason (the logic whole math behind the game engine is... eluding me). It means that knight in heavy armor is prone to drown, but easily gets up on the boats. Nible thief can swim easily, but has issue in getting up on the boat. And normal sailor? Poor fellow cannot get into the boat and just drown afterwards.

Also pray to the whoever gods you are praying to that edges of map are not water. Get through the water with treasure is almost impossible due to the halving your move for water and for treasure. If your opponent have someone with bow there, you're done.

Or you can drown two inches from the edge. Hilarity ensues.

Also if I hoped that rules will be written in clearer way than rules in Frostgrave, I was mistaken. And again, this is not some nitpicking, but fairly obvious questions I got after first look. Can we cast "Eart wave" or "Earth wall" into the water? What about random movement of monsters into the water? Not a single word about it. Result is predictable - our random encouter with lemming suicide streak jumped off the nearest cliffs into the water and proceed to drown unceremoniously.

But then there is jungle tick, monster with armor 16. That's biggest armor in the book. More than triceratops, more then T-Rex. Yeah, it cannot do much, but it is almost impossible to get through it's armor. And you cannot push it or disengage if you won't hurt it (that's explicitly stated in rules).  Yeah, it's fight stat aren't very good, but give it enough tries (and it will have it due to the armor) and eventually it hits. In our game it blocked my two best fighter for the big part of the game and killed one of them. Pretty good job for monster sitting on the bottom of the random encounter table.

The monster list itself is fine, it seems there is not much excesses like in original Frostgrave ("For this one scenario, and only for this one, you will need 12 hybrids of deer, centipede and minotaur..."). Some of them are bit eyebrows raisers, but generally it makes sense. What does not make sense is why aquatic monsters and ground monsters aren't in separate tables, that would make much more sense (no random generation of mountain goats in the middle of ocean).

Last big trouble is the balancing of spells and heritor abilities.  Spells are extremely situational and schools feel unbalanced. Water Warden will have issues on any map that does not have enough water, Beast Warden seems to be almost useless, while Storm and Earth Wardens could probably compete with Frostgrave wizards.

And Heritor abilites has the biggest issue in single difficulty. Rules don't balance them at all - be it extremely strong ability or weak, situational one, all have the same difficulty roll. Even with those two games it quickly become clear that some sets are much more overpowered than others. I assume after a few games we would find "perfect" set really quickly.

So these are biggest pain points that showed up after playing two games. We have not tested any extreme situation, nor we have been trying to break the game. No, we are fans who just took the first scenario and followed the rules, wanting to try interesting things mentioned the books. And the result was... poor. All the time I had the feeling that I am playing some alpha version of rules intented for play test, not the complete, balanced a finely tuned full game. My question still stands - was this even tested, and how? Again and again I repeat - we have not been trying to break the game, we played the rules as they've been written in the book, just basic things. And all of these issues had come up almost immediately, not in some extreme borderline situations.

So the final verdict?

As fan of Frostgrave I am saddened that I must say that the game feels really poor. Basic idea and setting is great. Fighting hero accompanied by wizard is great. Rules for party are superb... but it is all being spoiled by poor balancing and overall feeling of game not being finished. If you are like me and you like Frostgrave, give Ghost Archipelago a chance. Book is great and it will be centerpiece of any wargaming book collection. But also be prepared that gameplay itself could feel bit wacky.

And it probably drown itself too.

Photo and Written by Dzhuro