You can see the mist roll by as the train moves a bit shakily along its tracks. This is no ordinary brume, however, as there are faces in the fog! The blare of the whistle jostles you from your idling, and you suddenly realize you have no recollection of buying a ticket, nor even boarding the train. Your mind is… fuzzy. As you look around you can tell others in the same car as you are of similar circumstance. The lights flicker and what you thought was another group suddenly shift form and walk through one of the walls. Welcome to Vagrantsong: it’s going to get interesting.

As long-time fans of Wyrd Miniatures and Malifaux, we were thrilled to see the familiar names of Justin Gibbs, Matt Carter, Kyle Rowan, and Nguyen Mai Diem in the credits for Vagrantsong! Justin Gibbs not only worked on Malifaux but was also part of the design teams for many of Wyrd Games‘ initial releases and some of our favorite games. Matt Carter and Kyle Rowan, however, are newer names in Wyrd’s roster: having mainly worked on third edition Malifaux during their employ. To provide the spooky vibe of Vagrantsong, Nguyen Mai Diem once again joins the team as the illustrator and artist. This 2-4 player board game is a great demonstration of the range this artist has. The usual Gothic horror/dreadpunk vibe used for Malifaux isn’t used here. Instead, the vintage “rubber hose” or “Fleischer animation” style of art from the 1920s-1930s is masterfully utilized by the Wyrd veteran, which we found very fitting considering the theme.

As a campaign game, the story progresses in stages with each scenario presenting a different narrative, setup, and tactical challenge. The basics remain the same from one plot to the next while the game does a great job of remaining fresh and engaging. Fortunately, there is a book to guide players through all of the changes for each session. Contained within those pages will be diagrams of where the tokens and standees are placed, any special rules, and a full breakdown of how to operate the AI. Once the board and bindle, a bag of tokens that helps to determine things such as rummaging for items; random events; and even the AI of the game, are set up, players will decide who goes first for the round and play begins.

The board for Vagrantsong consists of three train cars, the connecting spaces between them, and several trackers for things like the current round, the humanity (health) of the current opponent, and more. It should be noted that there is enough variance from one encounter to the next that sometimes these tracks are used to record something completely different. The train cars themselves are made up of four by six grids upon which standees and tokens are placed and moved. The game comes with six different characters in the box and each of them will contribute differently to play. Some are better at combat; some prefer to handle objectives and tokens, and still, others prefer to play the support or healing role. It is worth mentioning that healing, or restoring humanity in the terms of the game, could also be moving the adversary’s track closer to defeating them. Event markers can also, depending on the scenario, be placed in the bindle on the round tracker, or even on the humanity track. It’s a bit difficult to explain gameplay as each scenario has the players doing such different things to obtain victory. Some situations don’t even have anything to fight and some, even if fighting, have to be resolved with actions outside of combat. In most situations, the players will choose a character who has not yet acted in the current round to take their turn followed by the opponent/scenario/what-have-you taking one of their own. Rinse and repeat until everyone has done so and then a new round begins.

On a player’s turn, they will take a number of actions based on tokens known as coins that they spend to perform them. Certain actions will allow players to spend more than a single coin to improve the effectiveness and/or odds of success for that action. The core actions are movement, rummaging tokens from the bindle, investigating event tokens in their space, busting (attacking without a skill), or attempting to regain some of their lost humanity. They will also be able to use special skills through skill cards attached to their character that are either the character-specific ones they started with at the beginning of the campaign or ones that have been purchased as the story progresses.

One of the most rewarding aspects of this game is the actions taken by the game itself that players will need to resolve by drawing a token from the bindle and cross-referencing that to a list of actions unique to each encounter. Moods can quickly change and, in doing so, can change the actions taken by the game from passive to very dangerous. There is so much variance from one confrontation to the next, and we don’t want to spoil what is coming when you experience Vagrantsong and all of its offerings for yourself. Suffice to say that the imagination and creativity used to create this experience really shines through. Of course, if you do have questions, our readers are always welcome to contact us via any social media we share and we will get back to you. We would love to hear from you.

Another amazing part of the game, and one we immediately immersed ourselves in is the time betwixt the encounters known as the camp phase. During this time the players will have the opportunity to spend rewards earned, heal, interact with a merchant selling their wares, progress certain aspects of campaign play, and perform preparations for their next encounter. The theme is as vibrant in these choices as in all the rest of the game and even introduces a choose your own adventure experience where vagrants are presented with a bit of story they must decide how they each react to and the consequences, for better or for worse, of their choice. This part of the game is as important, if not more so, as the rest of the game during campaign play and, yet, is delivered in such a way as to make it unique and still engaging rather than feeling like nothing more than bookkeeping in some other games in the genre.

Wyrd’s track record combined with the spooky vibes and unique theme instantly drew us in when Vagrantsong was announced in 2021. Upon its arrival, the game immediately hit the table and we dove right in. During our adventures, we discovered that there is a lot to love in Vagrantsong. It is great for train lovers, spooky enthusiasts, storytellers, and board gamers of all kinds. The story itself is solid on its own, yet still leaves room for embellishment for those that want to treat the game similarly to an RPG-in-a-box. Mixing that with a few “choose your own adventure” type aspects, players are in store for a chilling collection of twists that can change significantly if played through again. After our first few scenarios, we were impressed by how differently each adversary played, though the AI mechanics remained the same. Each session was drastically different regardless of replaying an old scenario or starting a new one. Additionally, within the scenarios, the difficulty can (and does) change from moment to moment as things unfold. While this may be a turn-off for some, we really enjoyed not knowing what would happen next and having to adjust our strategies on the fly. The end of each session left us full of excited anticipation for the next time we’d get together to play. That being said, our only real complaint is, though the aspects of Vagrantsong combine to create a terrific overall package, some are a tad underwhelming individually when compared to those same aspects in other games. It is their combination implementation and the way that they flow almost seamlessly at just the right level of combined complexity to still allow for game that doesn’t feel bogged down in bookkeeping or other logistics that is most impressive. It is as such that our complaint is, therefore, minor. In the end Vagrantsong checks so many boxes that we really cannot rave about it enough and find that the more we play it the more we cannot wait for the next session. The true beauty is that even once done there is replay value in the game, as we can go through again with different characters, combinations, and choices to create an experience that will be quite different than the previous.

All photos of Wyrd Games products were taken and edited by Krista.