Stargrave

What is Stargrave

Stargrave: Science Fiction Wargames in the Ravaged Galaxy is a sci-fi skirmish game by Joseph A. McCullough, published by Osprey Games in April 2021. It’s the science fiction side of the same d20 family as Frostgrave.

The setting is a galaxy wrecked by the Last War. Pirate fleets roam from system to system, “robbing, extorting, and enslaving,” and anyone who tries to organize resistance gets crushed. What’s left are the independent crews: smugglers, relic hunters, freedom fighters, and mercenaries flying small ships and scraping a living wherever they can.

You play the captain of one of those crews. You pick a background, hire a first mate with skills of their own, and fill out the rest with soldiers, mechanics, hackers, and other specialists. Some captains even recruit alien lifeforms. Then you play a campaign of missions: recovering lost tech, stealing data, freeing slaves, and fighting back against the pirates. The catch, in Osprey’s words, is that “the more they grow, however, the more likely it is that a pirate fleet will take note of their activities and come after them!”

The core book is 176 pages. It’s still the current edition, and Osprey has kept adding to it: the latest supplement, Acceptable Losses, is due in November 2026.

How it plays

Build a captain. There are eight backgrounds: Biomorph, Cyborg, Mystic, Robotics Expert, Rogue, Psionicist, Tekker, and Veteran. Each one changes your stats and gives you a list of core powers to pick from.
Then a first mate and a crew. Your first mate gets a background and four starting powers of their own. You then have 400 credits to recruit up to eight soldiers, and no more than four of them can be specialists. A few soldiers are free, so you can always field a full crew even when you’re broke.
Robots are free too. Any soldier can be declared a robot at no extra cost. Robots are immune to the wounding and toxic rules and to gas and low oxygen, but they have weaknesses of their own, and a lot of powers only work on them (or only on everyone else).
Phases, not sides. Each turn runs Captain phase, First Mate phase, Soldier phase, then Creature phase, with initiative rolled for who goes first. The captain and first mate can each bring up to three soldiers within 3” along when they activate.
Two actions each. Move, fight, shoot, use a power, or try to unlock loot.
Opposed d20 rolls for everything. In a fight, both sides roll a d20 and add their Fight. When shooting, the shooter adds Shoot and the target rolls Fight plus cover. The winner adds damage modifiers and takes off armour. A natural 20 is a critical hit and a natural 1 jams your gun.
Powers cost you. Roll equal to or over a power’s activation number to use it. You can spend Health to push the roll, and a successful power can deal Strain damage to whoever used it.
Loot is the point. Unlocking a loot token takes an action and a Will roll. Physical loot slows the figure carrying it and gives it -1 Fight and -1 Shoot. Data loot has no penalty.
Creatures do their own thing. Monsters nobody controls follow a simple flowchart: fight if they’re in combat, go for the nearest crew member they can see, otherwise wander.
A campaign between games. After each scenario you check for injuries and deaths, gain experience and levels, roll for loot, and spend it.

It’s miniature agnostic. Wargamer describes it as focusing “very heavily on narrative scenarios and campaign systems,” and the rulebook’s own advice is that some players find a miniature they love and build a character around it, while others make the character first.

How to start

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Stargrave Chapter One (free PDF)

The crew creation chapter from the core book, free from Osprey.

Try building a crew first. Osprey gives away the crew creation chapter as a free PDF, so you can put a captain and crew together before you buy anything.
Get the core book. $24.50 for the PDF or $35 for the hardback, from Osprey.
Grab the free downloads. Osprey’s resources page has the quick reference, crew sheet (including a fillable one), power cards, blast templates, and errata.
Pick up minis, or use your own. North Star makes plastic Stargrave kits in 28mm with Osprey, and its Get Me Started deal has the hardback rulebook, a box of Crew and a box of Mercenaries (20 figures each), metal loot tokens, and two d20s. North Star says that’s enough for two complete crews.
Want to play solo? Get Hope Eternal (2022). Osprey describes it as a solo and co-op expansion with full rules for playing that way, plus a campaign of connected scenarios. Dead or Alive (2024) adds random generators for solo bounty-hunting games, and Osprey has a free solo scenario generator for it on the resources page.

Supplements

All from Osprey, all by McCullough:

Quarantine 37 (2021). The first supplement. Crews search an abandoned research station where some of the “experiments” are still loose.
The Last Prospector (2022). An asteroid belt campaign, with rules for winning political backing from the Belt’s factions.
Hope Eternal (2022). The solo and co-op campaign against the pirate fleets.
Side Hustle (2023). A deck of 40 cards with side missions, some open and some secret.
Bold Endeavour (2023). Ships: upgrades, a damage system, crew jobs like piloting and gunnery, and space encounters.
Dead or Alive (2024). Solo bounty hunting.
Death Vector (2025). Eight scenarios in the Outlaw Technology Sector, with cyborg killers and a hacking system called the Network.
Acceptable Losses (November 2026). The first military supplement: mercenary companies, vehicles, heavy weapons, combat armour, airdrops, artillery strikes, minefields, and new solo and co-op scenarios.