Its quite
cool and very tactical game. Scenarios are constructed in a way that you have
to play scenario and some bands could be handicapped.
I played
Untamed beasts and had to decide which of my models carries a treasure chest.
My opponent had to kill him and take the treasure. But I had to nominate a
model at the start of 2 nd turn when reinforcements arrived and the scenario
had only 3 turns.
So to catch
potential campy treasure keeper my opponents would have to plan accordingly and
wait. He decided to smash my starting guys and had very small chance to get the
treasure guy. Anyway again he went for carnage and killed my leader
unnecessarily and I won easily.
Its hard to
not want to kill everybody with bunch of bloodthirsty chaos cultists :P
First turn brawl in the centre
I've killed his
leader and 3 lesser guys and grunt and i lost my beast herder leader and some
grunts.
Most
definitely MVP was big wildcat thingy with 8 of movement and ability to be
forced by beastmaster for and extra attack and survived the game.
Kitty attack
If I
understand it correctly there is one building miniatures decision in the
starter box. You can built Iron golem standard bearer with an iron gong or
Preceptor (?) with huge hammer.
Gong or hammer - tough choice to made...
I cant say
anything about the terrain as we used pre painted Garden of Morr shop had on
hand.
Golem leader fall
The cards
for creating the missions can have big impact or almost non existent. We had a
card that asked for drafting another pair of cards and using both from which
one was +1 to movement for everyone (meh) but the second one gave the both
bands extra die for activation rolls (we rolled 7 dice each turn - and this was
huge - my opponent managed to use pair of quadruple results in one turn- that
would let him win the scenario most probably but he went for max carnage of
Ogre model.)
They were
bragging about 30 millions of combinations of cards during creation of
battlefields but lets be honest - those options are quite cosmetic sometimes.
Most
important thing is that you have to split your forces between 3 detachments
Dagger, shield and hammer (each one need at least 1 model and no more than 1/3
or 50% and biggest one (shield?) need minimum 33%)
But you
dont know how they will deploy and If they will deploy turn one or turn 2+ from
reserves - this is dictated by card drawn after splinting.
You can see hammer, dagger and shield icons and deployment zones. They are symmetrical
on all cards I saw. Here - Dagger and Hammer deploy in second turn.
This is major factor creating friction and fog of war on the battlefield and its the tool for making games different.
This is major factor creating friction and fog of war on the battlefield and its the tool for making games different.
Abilities card example
Second factor is roll for initiative/abilities - they can change course of the game allowing extra attacks, more devastating attacks, extra movement and even one heals - but its hardly useful IMHO in such low turn games. Those again are quite few and will be repetitive but combination of dice rolls should make game unpredictable.
Overall great game. I loved it. And preordered a copy.
Just don't expect to play deep campaign with it.
It will be perfect for pick up games though (and probably tournaments and such which interest me less). Its less time consuming and tough decision game as Underworlds but its much
easier to get into and don’t need great investment in cards ( you only need
your model cards and your faction and shared activated abilities so one box of
a miniatures and you are playing the game.
It won't be for everyone but I will have great time with it.
