Review of A Song of Ice & Fire Tabletop Miniatures Game Starter Set: Free Folk

Blurb from the publisher: 'The Free Folk in the north care not for the squabbles of the various Houses south of The Wall. These nomadic tribes will go where they please. And recently, they've been flowing their way into warmer climes. However, the people already in those lands don't take kindly to what appears to be an invading force. Both sides are arming for war.

· Strike Hard and Fast: Speed is also an important element of the Free Folk army. Their primary Tactic Zone is the Maneuver Zone, which should be taken (or denied, if playing against Free Folk) whenever possible.'

What you get: Your USD 99,99 or equivalent will buy you the A Song of Ice & Fire Tabletop Miniatures Game Starter Set: Free Folk, one of the current five Starter Sets for the A Song of Ice & Fire Tabletop Miniatures Game line; a sixth Starter Set (the Greyjoys) was announced a few weeks ago. The rank-and-file wargame with card play and eurodesign elements can accommodate two or more players in around one hour or less. The line is a result of an incredibly successful kickstarter back in 2017 which amassed almost USD 1,7 million.

The Free Folk Starter Set, just like the Baratheon, Night's Watch, Targaryen, and the upcoming Greyjoy sets, only includes one army, and not two like the Stark vs Lannister Starter Set. In that sense, it serves more as an introduction towards the Free Folk faction, as opposed to the Stark vs Lannister set which is pretty much a full game in itself. We will examine all Starter Sets shortly.

In addition to the 32-page rulebook (whose longer, updated version can be found on the publisher's website free of charge), the box contains the following: 5 Combat Unit cards, 5 Attachment cards, 3 Non-Combat Unit cards, 26 Tactics cards, 12 Siege cards, 20 Secret Mission cards, 10 Objective cards, one Reference card, one Free Folk Special Rule card, one Castle Wall card, one Measuring Stick, 71 cardboard tokens, one Tactics board, 10 Free Folk six-sided dice, one white six-sided d3 die, 5 Movement trays, 44 Baratheon miniatures, 10 Terrain pieces, and 3 Castle Walls. All miniatures in this set are made of hard plastic.

Taking the particularities of the game at hand, and since I will effectively review six different starter sets, I will use a different structure than usual. 'Gameplay' will describe how the game plays, and will be copy pasted throughout all the Starter Set reviews. 'Armies' on the other hand will elaborate on what that particular Starter Set does. In that way, you can read only the reviews of the Starter Sets that interest you without having to consult the reviews for Starter Sets and factions that you don't care about. Simply omit reading the 'Gameplay' section if you know how the game works. The side-effect of this approach is that the commentary that relates to the overall gameplay (as opposed to each faction itself) will overlap.

Attention: the Starter Set you buy (be it this one or another one), is likely to include an older Rulebook. I strongly recommend downloading the current rules, gaming modes, and FAQ, all presently at version 1.6 even before you hold the game in your hands. My review is based on the updated rules, not the ones described on the rulebook found inside the game.

Gameplay: After five books and a lavish 8-season TV series, I don't need to introduce the thematic background of A Song of Ice & Fire. The present line is a rank-and-file wargame where players command imposing armies (as opposed to a skirmish wargame where you only lead a warband). Players field armies belonging to one of six different factions. Armies are built on points. A small, 30-point game, will utilize all the miniatures present in this Starter Set. For a medium 40-point game, a large 50-point game, or games even larger than that, a player will need to invest in more units.

Players decide the type of game they wish to play; there are currently eight different types of scenarios available. All games up to 50 army points are played on 4' x 4' (122 x 122 cm) surfaces, even though even bigger games might necessitate the usage of a 6' x 4' (183 x 122 cm) area.

A Game of Thrones is about five random objectives on the battlefield, each granting a unique power. The objectives are identical throughout the Starter Sets. Examples include restoring wounds to a unit when you claim the points of an objective, enemy non-combatants losing their abilities while you control an objective, and forcing the opponent to draw one card less when filling up his hand. A Clash of Kings sees the players start with a small portion of their armies at the beginning of the game, with the other units arriving later. A Storm of Swords is a siege; one army attacks and must dominate the battlefield before round 6, while the other defends and tries to survive until the end of round 6. A Feast for Crows is about mental fatigue and the despair of bodies stacking up during the fight. In addition to other terrain, two Corpse Piles dot the battlefield. Each time a unit activates near those piles, it rolls a morale test. Failure means that it accumulates victory points, yet these are not gained for the player who owns it. On the contrary, they will be claimed by the opposing player if he manages to destroy that unit. The more units get destroyed the more Corpse Piles accumulate. A Dance with the Dragons has the players contest three key objectives across the battlefield. Objectives provide both victory points as well as one-off effects. In The Winds of Winter both armies have two secret missions to complete. Secret Missions are identical throughout the Starter Sets. Examples include gaining victory points every time you attack enemies from the flank or the rear, every time you destroy enemies within a round, every time you successfully charge etc. Fire & Blood is about targeting pre-selected enemy units. These marked units attack at an advantage, yet they grant more victory points when destroyed. Finally, Dark Wings Dark Words sees the players face one another over three known missions.

As expected in such games, terrain might help or hinder your efforts. Expect forests, bogs, stakes, walls of two different types, hedges, palisades, and the Weirdwood tree. Each piece of terrain is associated with a number of keywords with game effects. Weirdwood is inspiring (+1 to morale when in close range), bogs are hindering (reduce the chance of a successful charge) and rough (1'' less move), and so on and so forth.

The game can also be played by more than two players, be it as a team game or as a free-for-all.

Each army is led by one Commander who does not cost points to field. Yet, he has a special power and adds specific cards to the player's Tactics deck. Commanders are mostly Attachments; they replace a nameless figure in a combat unit. In some cases Commanders can also be non-combat units, acting outside of the board.

Each player has a number of combat units at his disposal. Combat units are divided into four types: Infantry, Cavalry, Monsters and War Machines. Each unit is based on a tray with a number of slots and rows, e.g. 12 slots in 3 rows for the Infantry, 4 slots in 2 rows for Cavalry etc. Slots are effectively hit points. In most cases a figure is removed from the tray for each point of damage the unit takes. Depending on the unit, once a row has been fully depleted its efficiency in battle might change. Units have characteristics like Point Value, Speed, Morale, Attack, Defence and Special Abilities. Attachments are powerful individuals, sometimes generic, sometimes unique, which replace a standard unit mini in the unit's tray. From there on, that unit also gets the abilities and advantages of the attached miniature. A combat unit selects its action from a list of five: maneuver, march, retreat, attack and charge. Attack revolves around rolling the number of dice indicated by your attacking unit's full rows, and trying to reach a target number, also dictated by your unit. If reached, the opponent rolls for defense against the defense value of his own unit. If, after this exercise, certain hits remain unblocked, the defender usually suffers one wound per hit. In most cases this removes miniatures from trays. In others it adds wound tokens on trays.

The rules also cover a host of other situations like morale tests, panic, conditions (panicked, vulnerable, weakened), simultaneous actions, orders, etc.

Players also have access to non-combat units which influence the conflict from far away. Each of them has a special power, and interacts with the Tactics Board; it is not deployed on the battlefield. The Tactics board depicts five different powers, like gaining a free attack for a unit, forcing an enemy to make a panic test etc. Non-combat units have only one available action, namely to move into an empty space of the Tactics Board and immediately trigger the relevant effect, along with the non-combat unit's special effect.

Yet, how does the game play? That's easy: six rounds, all of them with an Activation and a Clean-Up phase.

Activation is the core of the game, and is divided over several turns. In a turn, a player resolves start-of-turn effects as indicated by cards or units. He then selects a single unit to activate; a unit can never be activated twice in the same round. The unit performs one action from those available for its type, and the opponent gets a chance to react to it via card-play, abilities etc. That's it; the turn ends. The opposing player now does exactly the same, followed by the first player, followed by the opposing player, until all the units on the table have been activated. Experienced wargamers will recognize this as a typical alternating activation framework. Once all units have acted, the Clean-Up phase begins. This includes resolving phase-specific effects, scoring victory points, removing activation tokens, removing Tactics cards etc. Play order changes at the end of each round, and the opposing player becomes the first player.

To win the game, and irrespective of mode, players claim victory points. If before the end of round six a player reaches the threshold that the game's size dictates (8, 10, and 12 points respectively), he wins. If not, the leading player wins. If there is a tie, the player with the most army points remaining on the table wins.

Armies: Tormund Giantsbane and Mance Rayder are the leaders of the Free Folk. Like every other faction out there with the exception of the Baratheons, each Commander comes in two varieties, a Commander and a non-Commander Attachment. Tormund is either good at charging (rendering units vulnerable when successfully charging them, as well as gaining more powerful charge attacks) or gains additional mobility after destroying an enemy. Mance on the other hand can either increase his unit's and nearby units' morale while fending off the opponent's Tactics cards, or he can influence a unit with additional penalties on top of their existing conditions. The more the conditions, the worse the effects. When it comes to cards, Tormund can restore a unit's wounds no matter how far, allow a friendly unit to immediately make a free charge, or add extra punch on an existing charge. Mance can manipulate his Tactics deck, entrap locations on the Tactics board with the opponent needing to lose troops in order to use them, and provide free attacks to his units before the opponent engages.

Free Folk may never include Neutral Attachments or units. What you see is what you can play with.

Raid Leaders are the Free Folk's Attachments. There's two of them (1 point each), and allow the Free Folk player to better coordinate attacks against a single opposing unit.

The Free Folk bring five units to the battle: two Free Folk Raiders (3 points each), the Free Folk Trappers (3 points), and two Savage Giants (7 points each). The Raiders are the staple. It is rather telling that their main ability is called Gang-up, and they are not worth VPs for the opponent from victory through combat. The Trappers on the other hand cause damage on enemies irrespective of whether they are engaged with them (hidden traps!). They also do not provide the opponent with VPs when eliminated. What is going on here?! The Giants are a totally different story. They have 5 wounds each, but in order to take one wound a giant must receive two unblocked hits. They only attack with one die. Yet, they hit with almost any number, the opponent does not roll defense, they inflict from 3 to 5 wounds plus one additional wound for every wound the opponent already has. Ouch.

The Free Folk's non-combat units are Lady Val and Caster. Lady Val has free Maneuver or Retreat permanently on hold, no matter what action she picks. Caster is unique in that in addition to the Free Folk, he can also be used by the Night's Watch faction. He has a personalized effect which he can use irrespective of the zone he is placed at, namely restoring wounds to friendly units and drawing an additional Tactics card.

The strong points: The impact of A Song of Ice and Fire in contemporary culture is undeniable, the TV show's subpar last season notwithstanding. Don't forget that the literary line is two books short of completion, and these will not follow the series. If you are into the books or the movies, this game is a dream come true. Why? Because it understands the subject matter. It plays on many more levels than the (expected) field of battle and the card play. The worker placement aspect of the non-combatants is such a cool, thematic addition that I wonder how come nobody thought of doing it earlier. Known characters are obviously oriented towards battle-related goals, yet it all fits. There's battle, there are machinations, there is strategizing, there is luck!

The main issue that turns away gamers from rank-and-file wargames is the sheer amount of miniatures they have to assemble before playing. Not here! Download the newest rulebook, open the game box, and start playing immediately. The miniatures are already assembled. They are not small fry either; a standard soldier is a towering 40 mm tall! The designs are sublime, with many different poses, weapons, and extreme attention to detail. When you field the Free Folk against the homogeneous look of pretty much every other faction out there, you realize how much of a motley crew they are, at least visually. There's pick axes and clubs, swords and slings and maces and flails and pole arms, many times within the same unit. The 70 mm giants are impeccable. One wields an enormous home-made club, while the other walks into battle with nothing but a simple log. If you want to buy a set in order to loot the miniatures for other games, the Free Folk are by far the most versatile. Units are comprised of three different types of miniatures each, not of mindless copies of the same design. I don't even count the Attachment minis that you are likely to insert in each unit. When you do that, you end up with four different designs per (say) 12 minis in an infantry unit.

Rules-wise the game is elegant first and foremost. The updated rulebook is only 36 pages long. Compare this to games with rulebooks going on for hundreds of pages and you can immediately see the appeal. The rules are simple and obvious, until all the exceptions and special cases start kicking in. Those, however, stem mostly from the card play and the units themselves. The design is as clear cut and to the point as it can be, while the rulebook remains incredibly efficient. Replayability is very high already, even though one is clearly expected to buy more miniatures to buff up his army. I applaud CMON for not being afraid to retouch not only the rules, but also the content of some of the cards. Pay attention: the present Starter Set was affected. Living games invariably guarantee a balanced experience, even at the inconvenience of needing to tamper with some of the texts.

Gameplay is a song (bad pun, I know). This is much more than a wargame where everything happens on the board and you wait the roll of the dice to decide the outcome. There's a lot of cardplay, while the (admittedly simple) worker-placement element will make hardened wargamers think twice about how they approach the battle. Most things do not happen on the board; they happen on the level of the battle of the minds, and even more so when players are aware not only of their faction's strengths and weaknesses, but also of the opposing ones. You really want to adopt the Sun Tzu approach to battle, and win it before it starts. 'My unit does X, his unit is susceptible to it, I can play this card here to enhance the effect, yet I know his deck has that card which can make me pay dearly for it. Do I play now, or do I wait for that card to be played first?' This is one of the many questions you will have to answer in order to claim victory. This does not however mean that the game is convoluted, nor that it addresses itself to megafans. Your first few games will be a blast as well, even though tactics- and strategy-wise you will be barely scratching the surface. I enjoyed how the game does not stall and rewards aggression. You have six rounds only; make the best out of them. If you think they are not enough, you are mistaken. Once you get the hang of your faction and start to understand its interactions, you will realize how brutally the game treats its combat units. Douze points for that, both on the gameplay level as well as the thematic level.

A Song of Ice and Fire is extremely easy both to learn and teach. Mastering a faction however and making the most out of its tactics and strategies will take time. Isn't that what cool game design is about?

The Free Folk is, for the lack of better words, the guerilla faction. You cannot use them in rigid formations, nor can you hope to win opponents in one-on-one engagements. They are all about mobility, charging, claiming wounds without even engaging, and engaging in numbers. Use the Trappers to thin down the unit you are thinking of engaging next, attack it with both your Raiders for extra effect, and bring in your Giants to finish it off in one fell swoop. By one fell swoop, I literally mean doing all that in the same round if possible. Tormund is the more aggressive Commander; he is also the more straightforward one compared to Mance's more nuanced tactics. Use the first when you are learning the faction, and change to Mance when your plays start becoming predictable. You must be ready to engage, depart and re-engage multiple times, with Craster patching up your units and Lady Val keeping them well-positioned. Craster working as a medic for your Giants can be extremely frustrating for your opponent; these dudes do not take damage easily, even though you should never leave them unsupported.

The game's production values are extremely high. The artwork is not tied to the TV series, and I am very thankful about that. Many of us had imagined the characters differently when we started reading the books, not to mention that the sins of the TV series will not touch this game. All components are top notch, including the custom-made black on khaki Free Folk dice; that was not the case in the Stark vs Lannister set which got an outright bland treatment. You get a stylized giant holding a club instead of a six, while the fimbriated pips look roman/medieval. I wish the contrast was more pronounced, but the dice are still nice The custom made inserts are almost perfect. You can safely store all your minis here even after you paint them. I can't think of a single CMON title which didn't pay attention towards protecting the game's miniatures. Unfortunately, the insert is not as thoughtful when it comes to the cards; keep on reading.

Those looking for a competitive environment are very likely to find one, at least when the Covid-19 pandemic is put under control. The game is obviously created with tournament play in mind. All the relevant documentation can be found on the publisher's website, so there.

This is one of the best supported wargames in the market as we speak. The fact that it has six different starter sets (and more than 60 expansions to support them) is rather telling. We will slowly examine the full line; that's a promise.

The weak points: Assembled miniatures have a few downsides, at least for the most engaged amongst us. Practically speaking, they are usually harder to paint. Their customizability also suffers; four different designs per unit are cool, this however cannot easily compare to fully-blown armies where every single soldier is different. Personally I am very happy by what the game provides already. Seeing how miniatures function mostly like hit points, I prefer an easier game that can be played from the get-go as opposed to a game that I have to devote a couple of hundred hours in order to make it playable.

The game obviously involves luck and a lot of dice chucking. Even more so because many abilities allow rerolls. I don't mind that, and under no circumstances would I insinuate that the game is primarily luck-based. I do have to mention this here however for those wargamers who prefer tables with varied outcomes depending on the might of the opposing forces. This is a simpler experience, at least when it comes to that aspect.

If you face off against an experienced opponent who understands his faction's strengths and your weaknesses you are guaranteed to have your ass handed to you. Do not be dissuaded; this happens in practically every wargame out there. Easy to learn, hard to master, remember?

Like with most wargames, A Song of Ice and Fire is playable out of this box for small-sized battles only. You will have access to all its game modes, yet this is mostly about taking a whiff. With only these miniatures and army compositions at your disposal, you are unlikely to appreciate the scale of the experience. If you like what you see, you'd better have the budget to support it. To bring forth your faction's flavour and to enjoy an infinitely replayable game you will need to invest even more money, as well as have an opponent who is willing to do the same. In fact, the Free Folk are the worst offender when it comes to the amount of armies you will need to own in order to participate in bigger games. Just look at the values of their combat units; they are substantially lower than those of your opponents' units, at least when when one compares Starter Sets. Thus, to field more units than your opponent, you will have to buy them first. Wargaming is an expensive hobby and the Free Folk are the high-end outliers...

...under no circumstances however does this justify the USD 99,99 price tag. That's 33% more per faction than the Stark vs Lannister Starter Set! WTF? So, just because a fan of the franchise is attracted to neither the Starks nor the Lannisters, he has to pay USD 25 more in order to enter the game? Sorry, but fuck this. This set should have cost USD 75, or USD 80 in the worst case scenario. This marketing policy is so disrespectful it hurts. I don't recommend buying this at catalogue price; it's a matter of principle.

There's ample space on the cards, yet for reasons unknown the font size for the numbers and texts is tiringly small. Why? It's not just me that needs to see these numbers, it's also my opponent from the other side of the table. Pointless mistake.

I am not happy about the custom insert not taking into account the fact that most of us sleeve our cards. What is this now? In a game where card contents change, sleeves become a sine qua non. I am amazed by how few publishers get this right. Osprey is one of those bright few. So here it is, as plain as day: do what they do! Make the compartments longer and wider, so that they fit the cards after sleeving.

Conclusion: There's not hiding that A Song of Ice and Fire Tabletop Miniatures Game has impressed me enormously by its blend of fluff and crunch. For hit-and-run tactics, unorthodox warfare, and a few bizarre tricks up your sleeve, the Free Folk is what you need to go with. I don't think it's fair to reduce the item's grade even though I find the catalogue price appalling. At 20% to 30% off, this is a great introduction to the ASoIaF universe.

To find out more about A Song of Ice & Fire Tabletop Miniatures Game and CMON visit https://asoiaf.cmon.com and https://www.cmon.com respectively.

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