Scrum in Miniature

The Second Saturday Scrum Club met again last weekend in my dining room, with charter member Walt O'Hara organizing an introductory game of Frostgrave for us. I've owned the rules and some of the supplements for Frostgrave for about a year but had yet to play it, so I was especially interested to try what is arguably the hottest miniatures skirmish game on the wargaming circuit these days. Loyal readers will note that I have played Ghost Archipelago , the sequel to Frostgrave, twice in recent weeks, both times in games organized by Chris Palmer and Don Hogge of the HAWKs club ( recap  and  recap ). The core mechanics seemed identical to this untrained eye, though the folks I played Ghost Archipelago with had recently finished a long Frostgrave campaign and claimed that Ghost  seems designed to promote more melee combat. While spell casting seems central to both games,  Ghost's  substitution of a mystically imbued fighter for Frostgrave's wizard protagonist likel