The Burnt Bugbear Reviews: Fantastic Scuffles by Nic Wright/Irregular Wars Wargaming

Note: The product reviewed here was acquired with my own hard-earned gold coins.

     For me, there is something beautiful about the idea of Song of Blades and Heroes. Most of my. . .let’s call it “idealized fondness” for that quite venerable fantasy skirmish comes from the fact that it lets you build your warbands/retinues/parties as you see fit (mostly). For those who don’t know, SOBH basically says “hey, here’s a simple statblock: staple whatever traits you think help make your model come to life, and have fun.” Years before apps and doohickies made their way into RPGs and wargaming, SOBH was giving you an online statblock builder that let you, theoretically, make whatever fantasy character you wanted to.

     Again, my fondness is idealized. In practice, I’m not a huge fan of SOBH. The rules are too simple for my tastes, the rolls too swingy, and the whole “look dad, there’s two stats on my character sheet: isn’t that awesome!?” approach the game takes to character creation is (for this curmudgeon, anyhow) wholly insufficient. In short, I love what SOBH tries to do, but the end result? Not for me.

     You can imagine, then, that I was quite excited when Fantastic Scuffles hit the shelves a few months back. While it didn’t directly promise to be SOBH+, all the signs were there. Deep customization, a cute little spreadsheet for warband building, and a focus on a fantasy “toolbox” ruleset that had a little more meat on its bones. It even promised to have things like dungeon crawling rules and solo-play procedures. Exciting stuff!

     Now that I’ve got a few games under my belt with the system, it’s time to answer a simple question: is Fantastic Scuffles the big brother I’ve always wanted SOBH to introduce me to (that wasn’t Advanced Song of Blades and Heroes, which doesn’t really address my concerns in any meaningful way)?

     Read on, for the Bugbear has opinions.

A tome for the ages? Maybe, maybe not, but I do like the cover well enough. Those kobolds look nasty!

Down, Down, Down in Spreadsheet Town

     Fantastic Scuffles promises a rich, deeply customizable character builder, and in that regard boy does it deliver. Making profiles for the game involves choosing the following:

1.      Choosing an archetype/class. These are the classic Warrior, Sage, Rogue and. . .Minion. That’s not how you spell cleric, right?

2.      Choosing a size for the model: Small, Average, Large, Huge.

3.      Picking some Traits from a fairly comprehensive list.

4.      Selecting some gear.

     Basically, your archetype gives your model its basic statblock, which traits, size and equipment will further modify. The statblock itself is just right for me in terms of crunch, covering the basics (movement rate, bonus to hit in melee, bonus to hit with shooting, starting wounds) and some more novel stuff (most notably, models have different defence values against shooting and melee). I also like that size further modifies this or that (for example, large models gain +1 to their attack value, their rolls to wound, their starting health, etc., but are easier to hit with shooting attacks, which is fair enough), as this helps really sell the fantasy of controlling a burly bruiser or a nimble little halfling.

     The traits themselves are fantastic (heh), but there’s one problem that needs mentioning. . .a model may only ever have four. “That’s plenty!” I hear you cry, but to be completely honest. . .sometimes it isn’t. Why? Because while some traits are pretty much just cool abilities, others are essentially fundamental to just getting the basics of your character down.

I'll be using this lot for the "background battle report" you'll see images of below. While I found making the broad archetypes (rogue, mage, cleric, fighter/warrior) possible, it wasn't without some quirks. Again, the dwarf is a "small" sage: he's more fragile than almost all his fellows!

     Let me give you an example, yes? Let’s say I have a concept in mind for one of my models: a dwarven cleric. You know the type, right? A paunchy, bearded preacher with a bludgeon in hand and a prayer on their lips. Let’s consider how we build our four-foot firebrand. First, we need to choose their starting archetype. While Warrior is tempting we’re going to have to go with Sage today, because Sage archetypes are the only ones who can know multiple spells (something we would expect a cleric to do, I think), so Sage it is.

     Having selected a Sage, we elect to make them small sized, because the rulebook suggests that’s what dwarves are. Already, things are looking a little dire, as being small actually reduces the fighting prowess and wounds of our dwarf. This means that, I kid you not, literally every dwarf in Fantastic Scuffles is weaker and less resilient than an elf of the same archetype. Or a skeleton. Or anything that is assigned the “average” size.

     Sure, we could ignore what is a pretty silly oversight on the part of Irregular Wars and just give our dwarf a “medium” size (after all, this is a sandbox rulebook), but for the sake of argument we’ll crack on with a small dwarf. Having done so, it’s time to finally buy our dwarf some traits! The party builder spreadsheet actually comes with a handy little “example tropes”  tab that helpfully suggests what traits you might consider default picks to help represent certain fantasy peoples on the tabletop. “Strong” is suggested for dwarves, so we pick that, giving out dwarf +1 on our Attack (and Roll to Wound) stat and letting them pick things up more easily (useful in some scenarios). After that, we’re going to need to pick up the “Holy Orders” trait if we intend to wear armor and cast spells, since by default that’s not how Sages roll.

     So, we’re two traits in and we’ve achieved a dwarf cleric, right? They can cast spells while in armor: mission accomplished (if you can stomach the fact that you’re *still* less resilient than an elven Sage with the same Traits). Well, not quite. You see, to cast spells a model needs to have spells purchased as part of their statblock, each of which takes up a Trait slot as well.

     Each spell. Takes up. A Trait slot. You want your wizard to know four spells? Guess what, that’s all their traits accounted for. This means our cleric can pick up two spells, and then they’re done engaging with the whole trait system. For our example, we’ll chuck Heal and Bless onto their statblock.

     What we’re left with is a dwarf cleric, who has the Strong, Holy Orders, Heal and Bless traits. They can never gain any more traits. Want to play a campaign with wargame progression (which the rulebook provides some simple rules for)? Have at it, but that dwarf? They’re never going to change. They can’t learn new spells, they can’t learn new non-spell Traits, nothing: when its four slots are filled, a model’s career progression is essentially done forever.

     I see this as nothing short of an absolutely heartbreaking approach in a system that’s meant to be all about making bespoke profiles and sending them to bash one another in new and exciting ways. Sure, I can simply ignore this rule and let my dwarf purchase some extra spells or whatever, but this is a review: Fantastic Scuffles doesn’t get marks for my rules.

     At the very least, equipment is varied and meaningful: weapons give different bonuses to hit/wound, armor levels (light, medium, heavy, none) are distinct, etc. In this regard, I think Fantastic Scuffles does a good job of making your choice of gear relevant, which is something I consider important in a skirmish wargame where folks like me want to feel like reaching for a spear instead of a sword makes a difference on the tabletop.

     In short, character creation in Fantastic Scuffles is meaty and fun, but the implantation of the traits system and some edge-case weirdness with things like picking a size or archetype for your model can produce some headscratchers. But how does the game actually play?

The opposing force: some nasty goblins (five of which have practiced their synchronized marching, apparently), their dwarf-shaped leader, and an ogre. Nothing to write home about, but worthy adversaries for what was my fourth or fifth game with the system.

Song of Blades and Heroes, Plus

    When it comes to putting models down and resolving battles, Fantastic Scuffles has a lot going for it. While the game’s added complexity over something like SOBH means it might have some scalability issues, overall I found the actual process of chucking dice satisfying enough.

     Fantastic Scuffles calls for a 2’x2’ board, which is just right for skirmish gaming in this bugbear’s humble opinion. While I can be sold on 3’x3’ boards, anything larger than that feels obnoxious for small-scale, heroic skirmishes, especially when it comes time to assemble a collection of cool terrain suitable for doing battle upon.

Our heroes (well, most of them: the mage is offscreen, hiding in some ruins) prepare to spring a trap on the goblins. The objective I rolled for the good guys was "ambush," allowing them to get stuck in pretty quickly. Ironically, this meant that in this specific game, almost all of the battle happened in a tiny corner of the board.

     The game handles activation through the use of a good old chit bag: chits go in, chits are drawn, the owner of the drawn chit gets to activate one of their models (or a small group of minions, though this has its own nuances), etc. When a model activates it gets to take two actions, though unless they’re a Warrior archetype they cannot attack twice in an activation (this is a fair restriction, and makes Warriors feel distinct from other archetypes). Speaking of attacking, Fantastic Scuffles uses d10s to resolve this (and pretty much everything else), with the basic formula being roll a d10, add all your bonuses and penalties from traits, equipment and contextual factors, and try to meet a number (usually the relevant defence value of an opposing model).

     A successful hit permits a roll on a wound chart, (which can also benefit from bonuses and penalties), which tells you how much a health a model loses as a result of the hit. HP totals are not inflated like in something like a TTRPG (which makes sense for a wargame), and the mightiest hits (those which score 11+ in the wound chart, meaning they’ve rolled high on the d10 and had some bonuses to add) inflicting 4 wounds. Armor can both improve a model’s defence value AND penalize rolls on the to wound chart, and in my games I noticed it was very much a pertinent factor in a model’s survivability.

Armor proved to be a huge factor in my playtesting. The dwarf  and elf both survived what turned out to be a heck of a brawl because they rolled up in their armor. Likewise for the pleasantly plump goblin, who's medium armor kept him fighting for longer than expected. 

     Many scenarios might introduce NPC monsters or noncombatants, and Fantastic Scuffles provides an “AI” for figuring out how they behave from turn to turn by rolling on a table and cross-referencing the result to the situation the NPC finds itself in. This does mean you’ll have to keep tables handy during play, and when we discuss solo play below you’ll see how this granular approach, while not bad by any means, can bog down play a little if there’s more than a couple of NPC models to deal with.

     In terms of scenarios, there’s plenty on offer: ten scenarios which include no NPC models, and ten which do. Well, “scenarios” isn’t really the right word for it, as Fantastic Scuffles has each party roll up an objective of its own for a battle, meaning what the rulebook actually provides is twenty potential objectives your party may pursue. My warband might have to deliver some messenge of import, while yours may have to slay an NPC monster in the region. The asymmetrical nature of the objective-based gameplay creates plenty of fun, forcing players to rush to complete their objective while simultaneously beating the snot out of their opponent to prevent them from achieving theirs. This is good stuff, and exactly the sort of amusing mayhem I’d expect from a low model-count skirmish game.

     Being a fairly detailed rulebook, Fantastic Scuffles includes all sorts of neat stuff to spice up your games. Weather, arena battles, dungeon crawling procedures, detailed rules for different types of terrain and a few other fun tidbits all feature here, with writeups ranging from “functional, if a little threadbare” to surprisingly detailed (like the rules for mimics, those pesky treasure-emulating beasties of yore, who have their own rules in the dungeon-crawl section of the book). Given that Fantastic Scuffles is clearly supposed to be a “toolbox” style book, I think the rapid-fire inclusion of variant/odd rules is fair game!

     This is all to say that the actual “slap things around” part of the game is indeed fun, though it can get a little noodly if you’re the sort who prefers. . .*sigh* models with two stats. For me, though? The medium-crunch core combat rules are where Fantastic Scuffles hits the nail on the head.

Once the ogre hit the scene, things got spicy. While most of the goblins were slain or fled, the ogre and the goblin boss proved to be stouter foes. It didn't help that my mage was deployed terribly, the dwarf was desperately trying to heal his arrow wounds and the rogue was slinging stones, rather than getting stuck in. For a turn or two the elf was on her own!

Playing Alone, and a Rant on What Makes a Campaign

     Fantastic Scuffles is, by default, a PvP (or PvPvE, given the number of objectives which will throw NPC models into the mix) game. However, the rulebook proudly boasts that it’s got your solo rules right here (come and get ‘em!), so let’s see what we’re working with.

     Basically, to play Fantastic Scuffles solo you generate a warband (precisely as you would for a player-controlled roster) and then assign its members one of the NPC reaction table “roles.” In PvP play these “roles” are accompanied by generic statblocks which are plain and functional, which helps you get some gribblies on the table when their main job is to spice up a competitive game by throwing wrenches in mixes. In solo play, however, these generic statblocks are not used (unless they’re generated by an objective), but their AI/reaction tables still are.

     It goes something like this: you make a warband to serve as the AI team, and rather than giving each model a chit for activation you instead give each “role” a chit (or, more commonly, a few chits, depending on their role). When that role’s chit is drawn, all AI models that have been assigned to it take a single action, which is decided by a roll on the relevant role table. Say, for example, I decide to make an AI force which includes a couple of Warriors, a couple of Rogues, and a handful of Minions. I’ve decided that all of the bow-armed models (regardless of their archetype/class) have the “shooter” NPC role, meaning that every time one of the two shooter chits placed in the bag is drawn any model that was assigned to this role takes a randomly generated action.

     Basically, unlike player-controlled models, the enemy force in a solo game doesn’t act on a “one chit activates one model that then takes two actions” basis, and instead activates in groups based on broadly assigned roles. This seems intuitive (NPC models activate in swarms, which makes up for the fact that they don’t take two actions at a time and are, as AI-controlled models, sort of prone to some degree of “stupid play”), but I found it to be a headache at times. In the game featured as part of this review, I had five Minion-archetype goblins with bows all assigned to the shooter role, and it was tiring to roll and interpret five separate role table rolls (that’s a mouthful to say) every time their chit came out of the bag (the “shooter” role adds two chits to the bag, by the way). In the early turns of the game, before any goblins had fallen, I essentially had to make ten role table rolls a turn (one for each of the five goblins each time one of the two chits came up).

In the end, the party triumphed without any casualties. The mage basically arrived in time to see his fellows finishing off the ogre, who died to a sneaky backstab by the halfling rogue. I found the action to be at its best when the goblin chaff had fled/been slain, lessening the number of NPC reaction rolls I needed to make. 

     I can certainly appreciate that the role tables add some randomness to AI activations, and also account for circumstances like “was this model shot at since its last activation?”, but on the whole things got a little clunky. Not unbearably so, but Fantastic Scuffles is clearly a PvP game with a solo system stapled on, not a game which treats playing solo as a serious, fully developed part of the rules.

     Ah, but if the solo rules were a little clunky, the campaign “rules” were downright disappointing. You see, I don’t really think the campaign section of the Fantastic Scuffles rulebook actually has rules for a campaign. What it has are post-battle injuries (including long-term injury rolls), a basic experience/advancement system (which, I remind you, is basically meaningless if your model already has four traits) and a “pay this many coins to keep your warband fed, gain this many coins for winning/losing games” way of handling a warband’s wealth.

     Look, I get it: not every wargame wants to have post-game activities, travel rules, out-of-combat encounter rolls, whatever. But I don’t think it’s unfair to expect a campaign system to have campaign rules. You know, the sort of rules that give your long-term play an objective, or outline conditions for campaign victory/defeat beyond “well, the warbands have become absolutely massive: let’s call it there, shall we?”

     Upkeep rules alone do not make campaign rules. You don’t get to call dinner a “three-course meal” if it doesn’t have dessert. Failing to provide objectives, even suggested ones, for a campaign is failing to provide a campaign, plain and simple. Consider my finger waggled.

Flawed Fun

     So, we’ve reached the point of the review where you are going “bud, I’m not reading the preceding 2700 words” and are looking for a summary. Thus, in summary, Fantastic Scuffles is a decent, surprisingly detailed set of wargaming rules with considerably more granularity than many of the rules-light skirmish systems flooding the market nowadays. Generating warbands for one-off PvP games between friends—giving you a chance to avoid its clunky solo rules, head-scratching approach to advancement, and “campaign rules”—seems to be what Fantastic Scuffles does best.

     It’s basically Song of Blades and Heroes with some mechanical weight on its bones! If you can bear some odd limitations in terms of designing your characters and have no intention of running a campaign (or don’t feel like putting in the work to design one from scratch), this is a decent title for those looking to play a medium-crunch fantasy skirmish wargame. If you want real warband progression, strong solo rules, mechanical support for narrative campaigns, or believe that a dwarf should probably not have less health than an elf by default, you might find Fantastic Scuffles a little fantastically scuffed. 7/10.