Beginning Stargrave!

A lot of my close friends have been getting into kill team and back on the 40K trail. I built a Tau pathfinder force and was keen to join in and get into a skirmish game that was change of pace and flavour from all of the bolt action I've been playing over the last few years. I was also attracted to the idea of only having to buy a small box of Games Workshop product given the ridiculous pricing of their models.While it was awesome hanging out with my mates and playing some war games I have to say the game of kill team left me wanting.  

Firstly, I found the rules of the game too confusing and too hard to remember to get into casually. Between remembering each of your operatives abilities, all of your faction abilities, your equipment rules, the core rules and all of the key words (which are basically a list of synonyms. e.g. Brutal, Lethal, Severe, Punishing, Ceaseless, Devastating...) and then having to remember all the rules, abilities and equipment of your opponents kill team the game is riddled with missed abilities, ineffective plays and 'feels bad' moments when a player would realise that their strategy doesn't work because the opponent has items or abilities that lets them ignore a dice roll or other key rule. It's just a far cry from the 'beer and pretzels' style gaming of bolt action that I found it somewhat unfun to play. I also have to mention the Crit-Ops and Tac-Ops which adds another level of things to remember during the game which, at least to me, seemed extremely unbalanced and resulted in most of us just picking the same Tac-Ops game after game.

Secondly, due to the granularity of the rules, kill teams and the operatives there are some serious balance issues in the game which leads to match ups where one team is quite clearly stronger than the other team. This leads to more feel bad moments where one bad play from an "F-tier" team can lead to the game being over while an "S-tier" or "A-tier" team has a lower floor and are far more forgiving to mistakes and new players. To compound this, Games Workshop release frequent 'data-slate' rules updates which nerf overpowered teams and buff weaker teams leading to even more feels bad moments where your new and shiny team you just spent 3 months building and painting aren't any good or require a strategy rehaul where you need to take new operatives you haven't even built with the limited parts in the box (yes, you can't even make a complete team with all options from one box purchase for many of the teams!).

Finally, the game is so pre-defined in its missions and even terrain set up(!!!) that it felt like the official Games Workshop terrain is the only terrain you can really use while keeping the balance of the game. This doesn't really encourage creative home-brew campaigns or missions and led to same-y games where you're fighting in the same 2 blown up sci-fi buildings with the same heavy and light scatter terrain again and again just in slightly different configurations. 

It's a real shame because I quite like the 40K universe and can't deny that the models are very cool for a lot of the factions! Determined to still have fun and get the most out of the models and universe I started looking into alternative rule sets that would satisfy the following:

  1. Simple rule set to get into and remember.
  2. Creative freedom in team design, terrain set up, and missions.
  3. Rules that supported campaign style game play (which we've really enjoyed so far in bolt action).

After some searching online I came across the Stargrave game published by Osprey. The game seems to have a relatively small community online, but from everything I was reading it looked like it had some real potential.

The Stargrave rule set

 

Stargrave is a D20 based sci-fi flavoured rule set that is setting and miniature agnostic. It supports PvP games as well as solo-play or PvE. It has campaign rules in which your spaceship crew can level up and get more gear. The rules encourage having fun rather than remembering 50 million different things. It seemed like a perfect fit for what we were looking for and this has encouraged me to get into the game and play a PvE campaign with a buddy over 2026. 

I'm extremely keen to play and see how we go and really see what we can get out of this game. To document the experience I am starting this side blog to complement my Chewie's Bolt Action blog. 

Watch this space for the introduction to our new campaign set into the 40K universe which will be out soon.

Signing out,

Chewie. 

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