Worst Game Ever…

This past weekend, I met up with Dan and Dan at Chaos Cards in Folkestone for a round of Frostgrave. Chaos Cards is a lovely store – bright and spacious, lots of gaming tables, and snack machines! It costs £2 per person to use one of their tables for the day.

Dan 1 brought all of the scenery for the game, most of it hand made. As you can see we had a table that was properly crowded with ruins. Dan 2 bought a serious bestiary in case we had some random encounters.

This was the first ‘for fun’ game of Frostgrave I have played since GenCon, so I brought back Orderic the Enchanter from that game. He was now level 1 and showing off his flashy ring of teleportation. Along with his apprentice, Pavia, he had a full crew featuring a barbarian, man-at-arms, infantryman, 2 archers, a scout, 2 thugs and a thief.

Dan 1, who started off to my left had a gnoll elementalist, while Dan 2, to my front, had a necromancer.

We decided to play ‘The Stars are Wrong’ from The Frostgrave Folio. In that scenario, there are six pylons that occasionally fire a bolt of eldritch energy between two randomly selected ones.

I got the jump on my rivals and went first. My warband advanced, with Orderic successfully casting Telekinesis to move a treasure into easy grabbing distance. Unfortunately, I was less than careful about my position. Moments later, a certain gnoll Elementalist lobbed an Elemental Ball onto my scout. He was fine, but Orderic, who was standing next to him was critical hit and exploded. (I have a history of having my wizards critical hitted early in games).

Thankfully I still had my apprentice, Pavia. She advanced and also cast Telekinesis…well, she tried to. She failed by four. Figuring my chances for treasure might be limited without my wizard, I decided to take the four points of damage to get the spell off (this would prove significant). The treasure floated closer, and my thug grabbed it.

The rest of the turn saw my enemies advance. One arrow nicked one of my archers doing 1 point of damage. Another cut my Barbarian for 2 points (this would also prove significant).

Just as the second turn got underway, a bolt of energy fired between two random pylons. I stared in horror, realizing that the bolt was going to cut straight through my apprentice, the thug with the treasure, and the Barbarian. Still, it was only a +3 shooting attack. As it turned out, Pavia took 6 points of damage (all the she had left) and died. The thug took 12 points of damage and died. The Barbarian also took 12 points of damage (all he had left) and died.

So, before turn two properly got underway, I had lost 40% of my warband, including my wizard and apprentice. I was able to laugh; my opponents were trying hard not to.

As bad as the game started, I ended up doing okay. Both of the treasures that I had Telekinesed were easy enough for my remaining soldiers to scoop up and run with. I even managed to grab a third, partially in thanks to a wandering zombie who provided cover. I also got a bit of revenge, when my Infantryman took out the gnoll apprentice (in fact, by the end of the game, every spellcaster had violently left the table).

The news after the game wasn’t so great either. All of my warband was fine, except Pavia, who didn’t make it.

Anyway, despite the somewhat random destruction of a third of my warband, it was great fun. In fact, if you can’t laugh at something like that, Frostgrave probably isn’t the game for you.

We are already talking about when to have our next match up, and seeing if we can recruit a few more players. So, if you are in the Folkestone area, drop me a line.