Osprey Games and Joseph A. McCullough are back with another brand new expansion book for Frostgrave. Fireheart adds some seriously awesome rules into the mix for those who want to make more use of Constructs in their Fantasy skirmish wargames.

Buy Frostgrave: Fireheart Here From Osprey Games

With the new book out there in the wild, I thought I'd dive into the book and give me thoughts and first impressions of what can be found inside its pages. If you like clanking Constructs that have been lost to time and brought to life by enterprising wizards, this is the book to snap up!

Animating New Constructs

Constructs have been a part of Frostgrave since it came to be. Enchanters have been able to bring them to life in games and aid a warband, plus the Wizard and their Apprentice, during their adventures. The new rules provided within Fireheart introduce some more complex rules for using your Constructs.

For example, Constructs can now become a much bigger part of your warband and can help supplement the need for you to have Soldiers of various types. They can be awakened up at an earlier stage during the Out Of Game sequence now and on top of that, you can also dive in and do some really funky new things with your Constructs.

One of the best things about summoning Constructs into your games is that now you can start to modify them! Most Constructs can only have one modification but in special cases, if you want to have one "faithful friend" then you might want to allow them to have more modifications to help bring them to life on the tabletop.

What's nice about this is that you can make some specialists based on your Wizard of choice. Or, you can use them to supplement your warband and fill in the gaps that your Wizard and their companions have left. It adds a little bit more paperwork to proceedings but not so much that you'd end up getting confused!

One of the really nice things is that you can dive in and really go to town on things when it comes to modelling and hobby. If you decided to give your Construct a Protective Shield or a Drillhead then you can seriously just dive in and start tinkering with metal, plastic and resin components to make it look awesome.

Because there are no rules on how many Constructs can be included in a warband, you can have a lot of fun when it comes to making a Construct-themed warband. You could start out with your Enchanter and their Apprentice working in a little workshop and have them animate a bunch of Constructs rather than paying for awkward humans who have a habit of dying easily and want to do things like "eat" and "sleep". I love the storytelling potential that this introduces.

Adding Prosthetics!

A lot of your characters will end up losing limbs during their adventures in Felstad and so McCullough has put together a new set of rules for using Prosthetics. If you're a Wizard who is missing a leg or perhaps just a toe, they can get enchanted prosthetics added in their place!

It costs a pretty penny but you could genuinely replace your fingers with fighting claws if you so desire! You could even have a slot in your arm or leg that holds another potion, allowing you to slosh around the ruins of Frostgrave!

What's nice about this is that, again, it enhances the modelling possibilities for your warband. It also helps to turn something of a negative into a positive when you dive into your games. It sucks when something happens to your favourite character. Well, for a bit of gold (so it's still a good story beat!) you can start to tell a different tale with your characters.

Adventuring In The Construct Palace

As well as the new rules for Constructs, there is also a brand new five-scenario adventure for you to dive into. What's nice about this is that it implements a lot of the rules that have been introduced as part of this new supplement.

I won't go into too much detail about the scenarios but they are, as standard now, a lot of fun and can be slotted into any campaign. You can play them one after the other or you could introduce them into the mix piecemeal as you start to develop your warbands.

One of the nice things about the scenarios is that they utilise some of the awesome rules for Interactive Terrain that are also presented in Fireheart. When you're diving into one of these scenarios or if you're just looking to make your gaming table a little more interesting, you can play around with Spinning Discs, Energy Pylons, Death Runes and all sorts of other contraptions. There are twenty of them to choose from and a good handful of these elements were introduced as part of each of the aforementioned scenarios.

The Construct Palace gives you a good way to start out with these different elements presented in Fireheart without possibly feeling lost. I like that it gives a framework for using the new rules without thrusting a possibly inexperienced player into a normal game. It's not that these new terrain rules and Construct elements are hard to understand, especially for a Frostgrave veteran, but I always appreciate ways to introduce new rules to players simply.

New Soldiers & Foes!

Capping things off, I just want to nudge folks toward the new Soldiers and Bestiary options that have been added into the mix. The Soldiers include a new Construct Familiar and Hound as well as a Scrounger and Tinkerer that can be used to boost your Construct-focused warbands.

Monster-wise, you have the terrifying Blade-Dog (pictured above) and then all sorts of fascinating creatures like Werewolves (which are a common creature!) and then things that are a little bit weirder like the Demonic Prison and the Glass Man. I don't think I would want to bump into Gnawgrubs on the tabletop either!

They all feel like they have come from the wild mind of McCullough and I like that at this point, we've almost got a Monster Manual's worth of creatures to play around with in Frostgrave. I like that so many of them feel original and unique as opposed to being carbon copies of something that you've seen before.

Is Fireheart Worth Picking Up?

I feel like Fireheart is there for those that really like playing Enchanters. Are other Wizards going to get a lot out of this particular tome? I would say yes but I don't see this being something you need to pick up. The adventure is really cool, especially if you've picked up lots of the other books and played through them. The new monsters and Prosthetic rules are also really handy and throw some more ideas into the mix.

However, the core of the book is certainly focused on Enchanters and those that want to throw more of them into the game. Every Wizard can expand their repertoire of spells over time of course and gain the use of these automatons in your games but this is certainly one of those sourcebooks that would be great for me but possibly not another player in my group.

I like that this offers up more storytelling options for Frostgrave which is primarily a narrative game. Reinforcing the story and allowing that through the addition of more hobby options for Constructs and Prosthetics is really good fun and I think that might be the thing that gets people to pick this up for themselves.

For a good ol' Enchanter like me, I am all for this though!