Review Summary: The working class of Freebooter's Fate is here. Down with the fancy stuff!

Blurb from the publisher: 'Pirates are hardy men and women who love their freedom and have just about had enough of the Imperial yoke, prompting them to carve out their own niche. That the only people who flourish in this niche are those who can nick the other people's gold and keep it for themselves is really just capitalism without any government. Pirates are adept at soaking it up and dishing it out on the battlefield. They can hurt their opponents both from far away as well as close up while being sturdy enough to weather the occasional counterattack.

The box contains 4 highly-detailed Freebooter Miniatures resin figure kits, as well as English- and German-language character cards.

This is a small crew of Pirates to start you off on your way to adventure and booty. The crew consists of Rubio as the leader, ably supported by Lieutenant Krud, a specialist, and backed up by two deckhands, a female Pirate and a Cuchillo. The crew's total hire fee is 270 doubloons.

The Freebooter's Fate #2 rulebook and a bilingual deck of game cards are required for use of these figures.'

What you get: Your EUR 29,90 or equivalent will buy you the Pirates Starter Box (Resin Edition) for you to start battling in the pirate world of Freebooter's Fate, and Freebooter's Fate #2 in particular.

In the interest of full disclosure, I playtested this Starter Box with the Freebooter's Fate 2nd Edition Rulebook Bare Bones Online, which was graciously provided by the publisher. Once I have playtested the full rules of the second edition, we will visit them together.

Contents: The box contains eight unit cards (four in English and four in German) of the characters already mentioned in the blurb, as well as the unassembled and unpainted resin minis themselves. Each mini is composed of one or two resin parts, the plastic base it is to be mounted on, as well as a textured resin cover for each base base. You will need hobby tools, seeing how the resin parts are still attached to sprues and the minis have a fair amount of flash on them. The contents of the box are different to those of the metal Pirates Starter Box which was published for the first edition of Freebooter's Fate.

Rubio, the Pirate leader, looks like an emaciated philosopher, albeit a very well dressed one. He can hold his own both in melee as well as ranged combat. He provides bonuses to his crew simply because he is Attractive (!). His Master Tactician trait allows him to consult, but not alter, the deck of cards that Pirates use. As a commanding figure, he can grant additional actions to a character within his authority through his Order trait. Rallying Cry allows him to grant additional morale tests to characters that are panicking, while his Fearless Trait means that he will never, ever panic himself.

Good old Krud has been now upgraded into a lieutenant, and an expensive one at that. He has by far the scariest laughter in Leonera, not to mention the pet-vulture on his shoulder. Like every other miniature in this box he can fight in both melee and ranged combat. He can denounce opponents with made-up accusations, providing bonuses to everybody that fights them. He is a gunner, and thus requires only one action to fire an artillery weapon. He has a Knock Over value of 4, meaning that every time he deals that much damage to an opponent he knocks him over; the opponent will have to waste an action to get up before he does anything else. As a lieutenant, Krud is ready to assume authority if his captain is taken out. As expected, Lieutenant Krud cannot be fielded with standard Krud next to him in the same crew.

The Pirate and the Cuchillo do not have any special powers, and that's the way they like it. This is a miniature wargame, and the focused, straight-faced pirates don't rely on cheap tricks in order to dominate the battlefield.

The double-sided cards have a standard size of 63 x 91 mm and can be easily sleeved.

The strong points: I like Freebooter's Fate for a dozen reasons, and the quality of the sculpts is only one of them. Rubio is so calm and chatty that he could have easily passed as an Imperial. The male Cuchillo and the female Pirate look half-way between relaxed and ready to spring to action. Lieutenant Krud on the other hand is plain scary. He was scary as a normal character, and he is even scarier with his gun crazily aiming at his opponents. The characters look half-drunk and half-deranged, with none of them coming out at a dynamic action pose or what have you. I actually count this as a positive; it suits the Pirate playstyle well...

...and up to now I like what I see. The Pirates are supposed to be a versatile group, yet they take pride in doing things the obvious way. All of them can handle both long as well as short range combat. Only the leader and the specialist have Special Actions and Traits; one can start playing the faction as soon as someone explains the rules. Thanks to their versatility, the miniatures can afford to find themselves in very different situations, something that is not the case with some of the Imperials who lack ranged capabilities. I like what I see here.

I also like how the minis have been cut. Even though most of the times I prefer to first glue and then paint, in this case I strongly recommend the opposite. This will allow you to paint much more easily the parts that are hard to access. The details are prominent and can really make a miniature shine if you are dexterous enough to paint them. Just look under the female Pirate's flowing coat. I didn't mean it that way, you pervert; distinguishing between the garments and painting everything right requires quite the skill.

As much as the outer box is made of light cardstock, the inner box is heavy and sturdy. If you are not keen on spending for new packaging material, your assembled and painted miniatures will make it just fine in there with some additional bubble wrap.

Freebooter's Fate has been around for long enough to be perfectly supported. It is in fact so well-supported that each of these minis is also sold separately, for those who have been into the game for a while and who wish to opt for a targeted purchase instead of buying a brand new boxed set. On the other hand miniatures cost a lot more when purchased separately.

The weak points: I really liked how the first edition's Starter Boxes included a one-page leaflet that included a condensed set of the rules. No such leaflet is included here. Meh. It was actually easier to convince someone to start playing with nothing but a single Starter Box pitted against another. This is no longer the case.

The rules I used distinguish between Special Actions and Traits. The cards however do not. They indiscriminately dump every Special Action and Trait a miniature has, in alphabetical order, in the same space. That wouldn't have been a problem if the effects of each was reproduced on the back side of the card. Yet, they are not. In other words, not all the Special Actions and Traits are explained, and even worse, a beginning player has to search for the missing ones in two different places. This is dreadful card engineering. Putting all special aspects on the card seriously reduces both the learning curve as well as page-flipping. Here, page flipping is increased because one doesn't even know which chapter to look at. Rubio has five Special Actions and Traits, yet only two are explained on the card. Lieutenant Krud sees three out of four explained. Come on; even first edition games get this right.

There is obviously a lot of work to be done in order to bring these minis to life, I was rather surprised however to stumble upon tons of flash. It takes mere minutes to clean, to be fair. It was just surprising to see the initial components at that state.

Back in 2010, four metal miniatures cost EUR 29,90. The same money in 2019 buys one a similar set in resin. Sign of the times...

Conclusion: Straightforward, no-nonsense, and good at what they do (i.e. a bit of everything), this is the perfect comeback for the Pirates in Freebooter's Fate #2. As for the Freebooter's Fate #2 cards however, Leonera, we'ge got a problem...

To find out more about Freebooter's Fate #2 and the Pirates Starter Box (Resin Edition) visit the Freebooter's Fate website at http://www.freebooterminiatures.de.

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