Tail Feathers Review

He's on my tail... this time literally

Hey-oooooo internet!

So last night Kristy and I got to try out my latest game, Tail Feathers!

This is a beautiful game made by Plaid Hat Games that takes place in the Mice and Mystics world, one that is reminiscent of Mouse Guard. In Tail Feathers you control a force of military mice that are just hell bent on wrecking that pretty tree of yours in the name of cuteness. The way they go about this destruction involves ground forces scurrying on branches and missions as well as piloting small birds that take to the skies to wreak havoc on each other. On the surface this is a cute game that appears to be a re-skinned take on pilot games like X-Wing and D&D Attack Wing, but once you dive deep into the cheese wheel you can see that it's got so much more going for it.

This battle is about to get... bird pun here

Before we got into this game we watched a video describing how to play the game. I highly suggest it because although it's a board game it is heavily influenced by wargame and dogfight mechanics, something that may not always be your cup of tea. Even for me it seemed tough to read through, not due to the instructions being terrible or anything, but because I already had preconceptions of how wargames work and it's like relearning how to ride a bike but you're given a unicycle.

I felt that I got the gist of how the game operates from it and set up the board using the first scenario, which is just a pitched battle with the single goal being to destroy each others' nests. We eliminated almost all the optional rules so that we could get a grip on the core concepts and introduce these rules bit by bit into future games. It's already a bit much to take in with just the core rules, but if you've played any wargames it is actually not difficult to go through, just difficult to put all together for your first turn. After the first turn though we went through it with ease.

In a nutshell the game consists of several phases. The first one involves selecting a mission that your ground forces will take part in. These missions range from infiltrating the enemy tree, shooting down birds in the sky, attacking other missions to keep them from succeeding and even a decoy mission meant to draw resources from your opponent. Once selected you place them close to the center of the board and dedicate a few ground forces to ensure that the mission succeeds.

The next phase involves activating your models. Tail Feathers uses an alternating activation system like Malifaux, with the exception being that if you have a unit with multiple models they all activate at once. This is where the bulk of the game takes place. You'll move around ground units on tree branches to prepare to shoot from them when enemies are in range, or move them close to the trunk to prepare for a possible invasion. Your birds and their pilots are moving around using templates (similar to X-Wing) and are a huge influence on the battlefield. These big guys are capable of attacking missions, ground units and other birds. 

The last phases involve resolving your missions and end of turn cleanup. Once you're done with all of that you restart from the beginning until you have a winner.

This turned into an epic chase to save the nest

At first it felt a bit overwhelming for me to grasp everything just from reading. Although I am a fan of having Intro and Advanced rules sets to introduce new players into a game, I hate the format for how it orders things in a rulebook. This tends to force you to flip back and forth throughout the book even when they are related rules. Tail Feathers tends to do a better job of this but it still made it hard for me to wrap my head around. It's a personal issue I believe as some people can learn the game faster that way, I just prefer to have everything in the order you should be experiencing it on the table. If a rule is involved with movement it should be in the movement section, but because mechanics like the Death Spiral are in optional advanced rules they are not together with the normal movement section. Although the format works to introduce players this makes it annoying to reference in future games sometimes. Like I said earlier, though, Tail Feathers does this much better than some rules I've read, like almost any game made by Fantasy Flight Games. FFG makes some of the most entertaining games, but man their rules love to hide important bits in random places. I'd say that Tail Feathers is definitely easier to learn by diving in rather than trying to understand every rule through reading before you play, and the video we watched helped that out immensely.

So now that I've gotten that bit out of the way, what are some good points? Well for starters this game is dripping with theme. And it's not just superficial to me either, some mechanics are simply brilliant as a game implementation and I get the impression that those mechanics were created to convey the theme rather than the other way around. Take falling leaves, for example. It's an advanced rule, and one we hadn't included yet in our game, but it is a very cool mechanic. The whole game revolves around your home tree, and what cooler way is there for mice to travel from tree to tree other than cutting off leaves and using them to float over the battlefield? The only other cooler way would be to hijack a bird and joust with him, but all the cool rats took those. Well this game took a concept that sounds like two kids are talking about what would be a cool game and made it functional with the tools they include.

This theme permeates the entirety of the game, and although it can be judged as form over function it really is the opposite. In recent discussions it has come up that a game, when wiped away of all its aesthetics, it should function as a fun game still. This game is a good example of aesthetics elevating the gameplay. Yes, the mechanics function well enough without all the shine added and would still be a very deep game without it, but cute little birds and mice fighting over trees while collecting berries and cheese makes it that much better, unlike using wood blocks and meeples or something.

The other great thing about this game is its depth and layers. In our game there was only one true goal, which was to destroy the other nest. How we went about it, though, is what made this a game that was very tense and filled with measures and counter measures. Kristy decided to go for the jugular from the start and chose the Siege mission, which if successful allows for a few of her ground mice to pop up directly on another tree. I decided to start withering away her flyers as soon as possible by using the Patrol mission, which if successful allows you to attack any flyer you want - which was important as she had three flyers to my two. On turn one she was immediately pushing the pace as my home tree was invaded, and the risk I took didn't pay off as it failed to injure my target, and I felt the pressure from the start. From that point I was desperately trying to fend off the birds from getting close by colliding with them and initiating Death Spirals, and ground forces couldn't be dedicated to missions as they needed to defend the home nest. My birds also had to try to stop missions from succeeding by swooping in attacking them, and it ended up being a wasted effort as Kristy used a decoy perfectly.

It felt like you had to stretch your resources to cover as many of your bases as possible, and you can never have enough coverage. This created way more tension than I've felt in an X-Wing game, because there were so many approaches you had to consider. If you considered the three main approaches - Birds, Ground, and Missions - it always felt like you only had enough to deal with two of the three at any time, which is a great thing. There may be some players who suffer from analysis paralysis when confronted with all the options you have, and Kristy was definitely getting a headache from all the decisions you had to consider. I would think that once you get through a few games the better options become more clear, or at least you develop a style you like that doesn't need to engage every option, so that your playing can become more streamlined and easier to think about.

Things are not looking good for these vermin

A lot of the gaps in gameplay get filled with the advanced rules set. Using leaves for transportation solves the issue of moving your models to other trees outside of a mission, and this adds a further wrinkle in what you dedicate your resources to during the turn (do I attack the mission or the rats on a leaf?). Dropped feathers help defend the model from additional ranged attacks, which is something desperately needed as I found ranged attacks to be very powerful and flexible. Action cards are probably a huge addition we need to add next, as they can possibly help balance the scales if things don't go your way.

So, enough glowing about, what are the issues?

For starters there are the flyers. They are beautiful models, and the pilots fit very well with each bird. But the tilting that's necessary for their movement can be cumbersome throughout the game. A few times they came off their stand and had to be reattached, and while tilting them you have to be very careful. When you're getting in a tight bunch there's a guarantee that you won't be able to place them perfectly where they should be, and god forbid you do a Death Spiral in the middle of a bunch of models and stuff.

The movement templates can also get in the way when you move through several other flyers. This issue happens in X-Wing, but in that game there are a few elegant solutions for placing the template accurately. But because they are on round bases it's a little tougher to get around, and they will definitely not be perfectly placed all the time. It's going to be tough to get exactly movements when you're flying between a lot of other models, and you'll have to hope your wings don't tip over other flyers. Between that, physically tilting the model, Death Spirals, etc., you're definitely going to have to be okay with models not being perfectly undisturbed. I don't see this becoming a tournament game or anything, so usually you're playing with friends who don't accuse you of cheating because when a model fell over you weren't facing exactly northeast by 2 degrees or something.

Another issue I had was with a few components. The tokens and templates printed on thick board were excellent and numerous, that's a good thing. The card stock they used for the mission cards is ridiculously thin. I dropped one on the floor and it took me a bit to be able to pick it back up again. These are cards you'll be using every turn of the game, I wish they printed them on the thick board instead. Other components were used with that same stock and it is terrible.

Also they only give you enough for a small two player game, If you're wanting to expand they give you the extra cards that are compatible with models from their other game, Mice and Mystics. As far as I can tell these are all ground units, meaning you are pretty limited on your bird and pilot options. If you're looking for a more grand scale of battle, or even just go beyond the one ground unit you have for one of the factions, you'll not be able to do so out of the box and will definitely have to buy something else. Since there aren't any released expansions for Tail Feathers yet your variety is limited to ground units, and buying another core set doesn't help as your heroes are unique and can't be duplicated from what I can tell.

I can't say anything about other flaws as I've only gotten one game under my belt. These flaws, however, do not detract from how excellent this game is and how much potential it has. It's definitely a brain bender as it gives you plenty of strategy to muck about in. It takes this strategy and wraps it in a clever aesthetic under the guise of a wargame. In our game Kristy didn't let up the pressure and ended up destroying my nest with hers untouched and we both had a blast with it. I highly suggest giving it a try!

Battle Systems Terrain Review!!!

MERCS bounding down the street

YESSSSSSSSS!

So last year in September I pitched in for my first Kickstarter, the amazing terrain from Battle Systems with a post apocalyptic theme. I was floored with their City Block and took the plunge almost immediately. Then they revealed the Shanty Town add on and I was in even further. It was a perfect offering for what I've been looking for in terms of modern/futuristic terrain for several games, most notably MERCS, but also for The Walking Dead Kickstarter that should be coming in soon.

My first attempt at a simple building

I eagerly opened the 20lb box for all the cardboard goodness. I was pretty amazed at how much fit into such a small package, there's plenty of terrain just in the core boxes alone. Then there's all the free stuff, the add ons and scatter terrain they fit on almost all the sheets. It's definitely got value, but most importantly it's an easy way to have great looking terrain for any board without the time and skill needed to devote to either scratch-built or unpainted terrain.

More coverage with experimentation

I began by making very simple builds just to see how the various pieces worked. I didn't pop out a good portion of the pieces as I didn't want to have tons of stuff not built and have to rummage around later to find them. There are so many things that add even more realism to the board like furniture scatter terrain, different types of stairs and crates, and even dilapidated walkways. I hardly touched the Shanty Town stuff as I wanted to make more complex buildings and walkways with it.

I opted to try filling out the regular street mat as it seemed to be the easier one to quickly fill out. It doesn't require as many floor tiles as they are printed on the mat, and the squares provided a quick guide toward my build. The greatest part about this mat is that you can build so many different layouts, an incredible testament to the creators' planning. You can make the floor parts into pavement using their roof squares, you can use a floor panel to cover the roads to make bigger interiors, and if you have enough stuff you can make the entire mat as an internal building! I really want to make a cool mansion using the walkways, as an entirely interior MERCS game seems really unique (not to mention other games, like Zombicide or Walking Dead, to make a Resident Evil type of board!).

Full coverage of the 2x2 mat

Here you can see I added quite a bit more stuff, including a wrecked-out building on the bottom left and a small type of outpost at the top. I probably spent a few hours building it at most, but this included opening, studying and popping out the terrain - I anticipate getting very quick at building these in the future.

So much awesome, it's better than anything I could make and much faster

It's like Legos for terrain and it can get dizzying with the amount of options you have. Once you get into it your imagination runs wild with the possibilities. I kept everything fairly standard, but I already see myself making some really cool stuff now that I know how it works all together. 

The fences provide quick ways of LOS blocking while pieces like the Park Bench and Barricades add tons of flavor you don't normally see on a board

I got a total of 3 different mats, a regular City one, a mat that looks like a Desert landscape and one that is a transition between the two. If I include my Deadzone 2x2 mat I can make a 4x4 table if needed and definitely can fit these on my 3x3 mats. The sets go extremely well together, as their different visuals create a lot of interest together while having several qualities shared between the two.

Air Condition Units provide easy cover on roofs while adding in a realistic touch

Although I don't have any pictures of it I did create a house using their Suburban House add on that fits well enough in games like Malifaux as it has a certain aesthetic that can fit in on Western boards (as long as you don't include the garage). I wasn't fond of it when it was first revealed during the project run, but an image of a fully built house on the desert mat had me sold.

This is an incredible build by the creators to show its versatility, the house easily fits into Malifaux

 Waiting almost a full year for this stuff has been agonizing, but regular updates and nearly daily responses to the comments section gave me full confidence on receiving their product. I had already researched their previous Kickstarter projects and saw that they had a great reputation already built. They always had timely updates, responded to almost every individual question and put out their stuff in a timely fashion - something that not many Kickstarters are able to achieve. This time was no exception and arrived within a few weeks of the projected delivery date. Delays are always expected but this one exceeded my expectations.

These stairs are not only impressive visually but provide great function as you can stand miniatures on every step

I may be performing MERCS demos in October and plan on building up a few layouts for them. This stuff makes it easy to transport and build on arrival with some planning. I'm able to transport this stuff in a small container should I need to, and I'm pretty sure I'm able to get more efficient with it in the future.

Cat for scale

One of the main reasons why I love this stuff is how easily you're able to add elevation into your games with it. Elevation is one of those things that gets ignored when building tables, as in a lot of rules sets it may not be elegantly handled and creates issues while playing (I'm looking at you, Malifaux!). However is a lot of modern to futuristic games, notably shooters, elevation is key to creating an interesting game. A simple slight adjustment to floor levels alone creates visual interest, but also can change how you approach movement in a game. Interiors are another point of contention for gaming, but I love going into buildings for shoot outs as it creates a whole different dynamic to how you attack. One minute you're safe, another a model pops out to shoot you point blank range! And with this stuff you're able to access every single level with ease. This was something I found lacking with TerraClips, a similar product I've talked about a while back, where although you're able to create multi level stuff it's not exactly locked in place and stable. This stuff stays in place very well and is very strong, I have full confidence in my models being on the roof.

Cat for lulz

I hardly touched any scatter items that were included as I concentrated on items that added the most bulk on a table. The ones I did build were pretty incredible in their design considering they're all made on two dimensions. I was particularly surprised at items like the dumpsters and the park bench, they help create a more lived in space for such a small item. My only minor issue with the dumpsters and the big crate are that you will have to use glue if you want their lids to stay on, which I'll eventually do. It's not major at all, and some will want to keep the lids off, but for someone like me who's not planning on keeping them that modular will have to add more work into it. For the most part, however, you're not going to need glue at all. The stairs are really snug when put together, something I worried about when I first saw them. The stairs that came with the TerraClips system were a nightmare for me, as their fit was not good at all and kept coming apart while I was building them. These ones not only look better but fit so well that I just leave them in the box without any glue and have full confidence that they will never come apart.

If you're familiar with making card terrain at all then you'll realize that using a marker or pen on the edges will help enhance the look of the terrain significantly. I had purchased some decent artist markers in preparation of the build for this reason. I've mostly used black and brown, with some maroon and blue for some parts. This greatly improves the look and hides the fact that it's all made of cardboard for the most part. A lot of the parts like walls actually match their edges well enough that it's not entirely necessary to use the markers on. I'm sure that you can make them look even better with it, but I didn't find it to be distracting on the walls or lighter pieces of terrain like the AC Units. On some scatter it was completely necessary to elevate the terrain, like the lookout post (not pictured), crate or the park bench. You'll mostly find that on the darker pieces you'll want to use your marker, as the lightly colored card edges will stand out most with those.

Some decent lanes of fire for the FCC House 9

Of course I had to pose some miniatures on this stuff, it just begs for it.

I love this stuff!

Overall I expected this stuff to be the bee's knees, and it did not disappoint. It should be available for retail purchase on their web store by the end of September, I highly recommend getting some yourself if, like me, you find your terrain priorities getting pushed to the back burner due to time and other hobby needs (like thousands of unpainted minis!). They come from the UK, so shipping may be an issue, but it's one of the few times I find it worth the extra price. Soon they'll have another Kickstarter for their Sci-Fi line, I'm sure it will fit in nicely with the Urban sets. Once I build more layouts I'll post more pics!

Arena Rex Stuff!

Howdy ya'll!

So recently I received the majority of my Arena Rex order. I'm only waiting on the Ludus Magnus starter to be sent after it's been cast. Red Republic Games got hit for tons of orders during Adepticon, both due to their online sale as well as doing very well in their booth for sales there. I emailed one of their representatives, Chelsie, in seeing if it was possible to mail the rest of the order as it was ready and they did! Not only that, when a mistake was sent (in my favor) they were extremely helpful and gave me free expedited shipping when I reordered the miniature! For a company that is relatively small in the table top community, as well as extremely busy in recent months, they have gone above and beyond in service for just one individual customer. I am truly impressed.

Vargr's pose truly gives the impression that he's chopping you down, there's a very good flow of motion that makes it seem much more real than usual sculpts

I ordered quite a bit of stuff during their sale, including almost every single Ludus Magnus model short of Urbicus. I got the Legio XIII and the Zephyri starters as well and one miniature from each to give them four models each. Essentially I got enough for 4 players to have 4 gladiators each from their own ludi. Whether I ever get 4 players together for a game is another story, but essentially even if I never get to play I got my hands on some sweet miniatures.

Gaius Pallidus from Legio XIII

And sweet they are! Man, these casts are great. The detail is phenomenal, the poses are dynamic and it just oozes style. They are so different than the stuff I usually have, it's going to be a fun challenge to paint them all.

Sven, my favorite sculpt, from Zephyri

There are plenty of unboxings and reviews of the miniatures on the web so I won't go into great detail there. I did run into issues of taking models of the sprue, particularly with Viatrix. She has one eety beety teeny contact point on her feet that is supposed to be glued to the base. Due to the way she's cast there is almost no chance you're going to get her off the sprue intact. My very careful attempt still left her without any toes. It's fine, as I can bury it in sand, but it's a shame as she was one of my most anticipated models and she doesn't have toes now. This also led to having a slightly angled flat space to attach to the base, making her lean a lot more than intended.

Viatrix doesn't like it when you stare at her feet

Overall, though, the models weren't tough to deal with. You have to be extra careful when working with them, as they're resin and certain pieces will be brittle. Otho Mentulus' head had a crack from the stress placed on him while removing it from the sprue, but it's not noticeable at all. Frigge has an insanely tiny ponytail with a feather that goes on her head. When I cut it from the sprue it flew away and I didn't find it for a while, but if I didn't find it that would have been extremely tragic.

Hermes from Ludus Magnus. He reminds me of Crixus, but he was a Murmillo rather than Thraex as Hermes is

Only one model needed a soap bath to get rid of the layer of film usually associated with Resin miniatures. A few of the weapons need to be bent back into shape using heat, but not all of them did - surprisingly Iason's spear came out perfectly straight. All the other spears came out bent or extremely bent or hot damn, and Otho's sword was like a cartoon sword from Roger Rabbit. Hermes' sword was bent as well, but I just bent it back without any heat and it stayed straight. These are all things that anyone who's worked with resin should be familiar with, though.

Iason from Ludus Magnus, he uses the awesome Hoplomachus style of fighting

Otho Mentulus of Ludus Magnus, he is huge. I didn't put his tower shield on yet. Notice his sword pointing to the sky.

Having received and built most of my models I had to build a suitable environment for them to spill blood on. This has been something I've pondered for a very long time, since I last mentioned Arena Rex here.

There are a few things to think about, namely its size. The game was designed with a 30" diameter arena in mind, but they deliberately did not put an official size in the game so players could experiment with different arenas and sizes. This was a great move on their part honestly, and this way you have a ton of freedom to explore whatever you want to build.

There are hardly any mats you could buy for the arena. Most games use a square or rectangle play area, and the gladiator games that do use arenas use hexagons for their games. I found a few but none that satisfied me, and the official mat was only available to Kickstarters.

Of course my original plans were very grand, but after a ton of thought I scaled it back to something I knew I could knock out while being passable for demos. I also had to think of transportation, as being the only player I'd definitely have to provide the terrain myself. I knew worst case, though, you could use a 2x2 mat for the play surface and do fine.

In the end I scoured the forums to get inspiration and found this. It was simple and effective, something that can be easily done in a few hours without going insane. It didn't have the desert arena look I wanted but that's easy to do, the stones are what motivated me to follow its footsteps.

I got a 2x2 square sheet of pink insulation foam as the base. I already had it lying around, and it was a good way to give a solid foundation while keeping it light for transport. The only thing I have to worry about is chipping/damage, but it's not something I'll lose sleep over if damaged. I then got some foam bricks for cheap to build the arena walls.

Kristy helped me lay down a circle using a pen and some string. Then we used Tacky Glue and put each brick down one by one. It wasn't hard or time consuming at all, I'd say in an hour it was all done, tops.

Here it is with 3 rows of bricks

Once I got it as high as I liked I made some individual column out of the foam bricks. These things are pretty nifty, you can roll them to create rounded shapes, or you can cut them to fit what you need. I haven't tried pinching them to make shapes like trapezoids but it seems fairly easy to do.

I put columns on the walls in 8 places. This improved the look but it also functions as a deployment reference. For two players you obviously use the North/South orientation, add East/West for 4 players, and for 3 players you can use North for one and the middle of East/Southeast for player two, and middle of West/Southwest pillars for player three.

With the columns, miniature for scale

Up close

So it was extremely easy to build, and super cheap. The bricks were maybe $10, and I didn't use a whole box of them, and the insulation foam was less than $5. 

I plan on painting it up soon, and also using the Vallejo Desert Sand Gel paint to add the desert texture. It's playable for now though, and it's super light. It's not perfect, the bricks aren't uniform in size and resulted in a few bumpy parts, but it does the trick. 

Of course I had to put some minis down for a battle scene.

Hopefully soon I can get this all painted up to show off and demo! Give it a try, the rules are free at arenarex.com and the miniatures are simply stunning.

Deadzone Review and Malifaux

Hiya Folks!

So last weekend I got some great gaming in. I had previously ordered the game Deadzone from miniaturemarket.com purely on impulse. They had it half off for a day sale and figured, "Why not?" It's got some really cool miniatures and some terrain that I could use for Infinity (some day ): ).

I read the rules only once through. They are simple enough and are based on a 3D8 mechanic. All stats are static, meaning that they never decrease or increase with modifiers. When modified it only adds or takes away the number of dice for the test. The majority of these tests are opposed, so if you are shooting someone you roll your shooting stat dice against their survive dice and the one with the most success wins. Sometimes the degree of success can alter the outcome, although for the most part I hardly saw any significant degrees of success other than winning (doubling or tripling was hard to get).

This will lead to my short review of the game, but first some disclaimers to any potential customers.

First, the contents.

Right off the bat I was missing at least 3 models for the plague, all of which were the shooting part of the force and one was a leader, which significantly decreases your command pool (more on that later). Oddly enough I got an extra bag of plague models that was for 1 extra Stage 1A (the big guy) and 3 2As (the medium guys) and 2 3Ds (the doggies). I won't complain for extra models, but you'll never need 2 of the big guys EVER and having 3 of the medium guys is already a lot considering they are 10 points each in a standard 70 point game so I won't ever use the additional 3. Now having 2 extra hounds is great, since they're fast and cheap and count as troop choices. Missing those extra shooting guys hurts something fierce though.

Upon assembly I also found that I was missing a leg for the Enforcer Engineer. Nothing huge, but I couldn't really put him on a base (at least not comfortably, it looks weird) which means I couldn't use the two sentries that came with him (you technically can I believe, but it's not worth it).

I have heard of these stories online and submitted a ticket about these missing models/pieces. I didn't hear anything for two weeks and had to send an email to someone there to get anything done, which led to a prompt package being received a few days later.

Missing those models wasn't the end of the world, and eventually Mantic Games made things right, which I greatly appreciate. However from the sheer amount of complaints I read about in regards to mispackaging it seems like you'd be lucky to get everything intact, and that is indicative of a greater problem.

Also in relation to the contents is the terrain. I've read plenty of reviews stating that you'd need to file the connector parts for a fit so I was prepared for that. It was originally intended for modular terrain on the go, and man did that miss the mark. I don't think anyone could use this as it was intended and build terrain on the fly without it breaking down or pulling out all your hair in the process. I knew before I received it I would be using a fixed build and gluing all the pieces together, but even that was a pain! I used a Dremel to speed up the filing process. At first I was about ready to kill someone. It was taking a lot of time and heartache to build a stinking 3 inch cube that didn't fall apart. Once I got the hang of it I was able to breeze through the build, so maybe it was just me being an idiot. But this leads me to another qualm...

...there are not nearly enough connectors.

I knew before hand that there weren't too many connectors. I used them as sparingly as structurally possible. In fact the building I made seems fiddly because of the fact that I only had one connector used in some places. Despite my efforts I ran out of L shaped connectors after making one 3" cube, an L Cube and one platform to connect them. I had leftovers ready for the sniper tower I wanted to make, but there were no L connectors left and few straight connectors.

At that point I was too worn out to care and just made some containers I bought from the Alien Wars line to use in the game.

Use this as a word of warning in regards to contents, but also with a grain of salt. I am not the world's best modeler, but being that I've been making models all my life and rarely ever get this frustrated should be an indication as to the obstacles you might face. Others have successfully put together this terrain without a hitch, and they are far better men than I.

I believe those are the only warnings I have for contents as everything else is great or has been discussed elsewhere. The rule book is beautiful and written well. I'd suggest looking up online for the quick reference sheet (I found it on BoardGameGeek) for play. The rule book is written simply enough to understand it when you read through it but it isn't great for reference during play as all the rules are kind of scattered throughout (not as badly as GW has in the past, but enough for you to be flipping everywhere). Really it's only because of the nature of the game and the thorough explanations they have made for every rule that makes this so. If you use the QRS you will be fine.

I do wish that they had an explanation in one place referencing what each counter does/represents. They show most of the counters' image in their corresponding rule section, but most board games have a section that explains every counter and that would have been nice for this game, especially since I have a suspicion that not all counters are shown in the rule book (although I am most likely wrong).

Now onto the game play itself...

As expected when reading the rules the set up is the most grueling part of the game, and can be tedious to try to show to a new player. I've demoed a few games in my day and this is one that you'd need to set up before showing someone how to play. Some games are fast with the set up (Warmachine/Hordes comes to mind since terrain isn't terribly intrusive and deployment zones are standard). This one is more akin to Malifaux, considering that every game will randomize deployment and missions, but this one adds random items and mutations to the mix. I had no experience with it so I was explaining the set up as we went along and I could tell I was losing his interest (although he has a short attention span at times so it wasn't a shock). Once all the fiddly bits and terrain and blah blah blah was set up we finally got into the nitty gritty of playing.

It was fun at first. I really enjoy the fact that there is no measuring tape, and I can move within a cube however I like. This flexibility is what drew me in to the game in the first place, along with how it includes everything to play. The 3D8 mechanic is simple enough to grasp and within a few opposed rolls we were getting into a groove and he quickly understood how to play.

But once we got into a groove I noticed something, and it was something that I found only one person said before online.

It is really hard to kill things.

A lot of the times this is what happened:

Him: I'm gonna shoot your guy here.
Me: Okay, I get x dice since I'm in cover and all
H: I'm gonna play x to get another dice and AP
M: I'm gonna play x to get another dice too
H: I rolled 2 successes
M: I rolled 3 successes
H: So what happened?
M: Nothing.

It was like that a lot. I mean, almost all the time. I understood before hand that you need to stack the odds in your favor to really kill something, like get 5+ dice. However if you are going against something with a 3+ survive, even 3 dice will give you a good chance on 3 successes, not counting cards or cover or anything else. On top of that a lot of things had armor, which is negated by AP but was less available than armor was. On top of armor you have rules like tough which ignore the first wound that gets through, and thus far I've only found that further wounds are the only thing that get past that (no negating tough). Then there's REALLY TOUGH. Ugh. Seriously?

So, to sum up, you're going to need to succeed 5 TIMES more than the opponent to get through Armor 2 and Really Tough. Let's say you have AP 2, which would negate the armor 2 for the optimum odds of the attacker. Now you need to have triple the success of the defender to kill him. So that means for every 1 success the defender has for survive you need to have 4 successes to wound (the 1st shooting success is negated by the 1 survive success, which means he takes 3 wounds from the remaining shooting successes, and the first two are ignored by really tough)! He'd be dead, sure, but that took 4 successes to his one. Did I mention that his model has a survive of 4+? Meaning on the base 3d8 alone he has good odds to roll 2 successes, requiring 5 shooting successes to kill! That's gotta be at least 6 dice, and getting a +3 modifier is gonna be difficult, or at least in the sense that it's not gonna be common. What's worse is that there's a similar model with a 3+ survive and high armor! Dear God, seriously?!

It was hard enough getting 2 normal troopers to kill each other in normal circumstances. I get that the way to do this is to gang up and use cards along with open sight to kill things, and on paper that makes sense. But in actuality it usually was resource intensive, requiring either multiple models to be in the same fight (which has a limit based on size) or having other models assist in your shooting, along with a card and/or item. Without all these things it was most likely not gonna have anything happen, short of crap rolls or crap stats.

The starter almost makes this harder as well. The plague shooters will have crap shooting against a highly armored basic Enforcer trooper. The plague has tough and really tough, so they'll be easy to hit but not wound. Now there are always exceptions to these sweeping generalizations, but this was my experience during the game.

This is why models like the Enforcer Sniper are well revered, because they have 5 shooting dice and long range, with their only trade off being the inability to move and fire and such. But this is negated with the command action.

Ah the command action. It is another resource in the game and is considered a long action. It is done on a 3D8 test and succeeds on 6s. I haven't found any modifiers for this test as of yet, but I believe there aren't any. You can either activate your own models (an additional one, mind you), disrupt your opponent by making them count as activated or draw extra cards. Now as an Enforcer, if you have the right set up you can make a Sniper fire twice in a turn, which is pretty sweet. However (using a starter only) this action isn't quite as useful for the Plague.

The commander for the plague is a beast. He has incredible stats. But he is also slow. This means he can only move one cube a turn. You can use a card to speed him up, but it's still a slow crawl. Being that the command action is a long action it takes up your whole turn and only your leader can use them. So you either make this ALL MELEE beast support units through command function and essentially leave him behind (which may work I guess if the opponent has something like infiltration for the mission) or you abandon the command function to keep him moving as fast as possible. I guess you could justify this fluff-wise easily, but it seems like such a waste. Along with this you need to succeed on 6s, and if you only succeed once it's a short range. I used it twice and failed both times. This made me furious.

Another qualm I had was items. Correct me if I'm wrong but I remember that if you had no shooting value you couldn't handle items, or at least use them. Most of the plague have a - Shooting value, which makes sense, but seems to stack the starter in the Enforcer's favor.

Now these are only my criticisms and you should take them with a grain of salt. Overall the game was enjoyable and we both had fun with it. There was a point where it slowed to a crawl because of things I mentioned and models only started to die once he put himself out in the open to perform the mission.

Next time we try it most likely will be better since I know how to stack the odds, but if the resources aren't there then I fear it will go the same way.

After we played that game I demoed Malifaux for him. I set up a quick henchman level game for him and gave him Taelor and 3 ronin against my Ototo and 3 torakage. I knew from previous experience that the crew I made had an uphill battle, but it's of no matter since it's not like I'm being competitive for a demo. Now this was a game he got into easily. The card mechanic is absolutely a blast. Even for something as mundane as a minion on minion duel becomes fun. It's hard to say that dice rolls are nearly as interesting and flipping cards and cheating fate, and it feels like every flip is significant. I also demonstrated to him another differentiating factor to this game in how you may be losing models but you are not always losing the game. I only killed one ronin and he killed one Torakage and Ototo (with a crazy shot from a ronin and Taelor smashing him to bits) but I came extremely close to winning due to moving a Torakage way out into the corner to deploy scheme markers unopposed. If the game ended on turn 5 I would have won by one, but since it got extended he won 7-6. It was an amazing game, and it showcased its ability to create a story even within the context of a small and quick game. He was so impressed by this demo that he and his father are both purchasing crews soon. In the mean time I will have him try out some of my other crews to get more experience with the game.

The game also showed me exactly what torakage can do. On paper they don't seem to do much and I deemed them as only objective grabbers. That is something they can do well, but although their damage spread is unimpressive it's the fact that they can give negative flips for shooting then positive flips on attacking is what makes them a sort of toolkit model. With the smoke and shadows upgrade they can be great at disruption or hit and run tactics.

Outside of that I've been painting a lot more lately. I'll post some pics soon.