So you get more (power/crown) for doing them than just buying them. Buying them DOES seem to make the game go quicker, but they have good powers if you complete the missions. Definitely glad I picked it up, but I'm sure it will be on clearance right after Christmas. Production is really nice, some fun touches like gold embossed crown cities on the board, each set of minis has different sculpts (cheap and crappy but hey), and the little plastic crowns are cool. Sequencing your cards AND reacting to what goes on between your turns makes the choices pretty tough. Which means that another player can actually cut your supply line by interjecting themselves into a weak link territory. You tax an entire area connected to the city you choose. There's a lot of subtlety that isn't apparent at first. Seems like battles tend to build up into larger, more impactful conflicts rather than having a bunch of little scraps over territory. Or intercept attacks by sending a force out to halt an advance. So that is two cardplays' worth of action to maneuver and set up attacks. Then it starts over, battle to the death with no retreat.īut more than that, you only battle at the end of each ROUND. And in this phase, it switches to the classic 3 dice vs. Then there is a GENERAL melee where all involved units participate- this is where your footman that DIDN'T absorb hits get to actually do something. Cavalry does their thing, each 3+ kills somebody. Siege engines shoot first with two dice each, 3+ hits. They did a neat thing thing with the combat. This makes the cities have different values relative to your position, situation and what you want to do. Lots of special benefits, mostly coming from taking over certain cities. There's a weeeeee touch of El Grande in it I noticed, like in the "split expand" action. Each round, you lock down two and each turn you flip one and pick one of the actions on it. Each has two action choices and some have a bonus third thing that you get regardless of the choice you make. The card-driven gameplay is very much like SW Risk, but you start with eight cards. But it also feels heavily influenced by A&A/Nexus Ops and those kinds of games as well. It seems pretty good, and yes, it is one of those Hasbro games where you can tell that whoever worked on it has an awareness of modern hobby games. I just fooled around with this solo, playing all four sides. With a full four, I think it will play better. And our experience was based on a two player game. However, we didn't utilize the Crown Cards which may break the game wide open ( in a good way ). I can see stalemate situations developing over time. I do wonder if it shares Risk's biggest flaw - no time limit. So if you attack but run into trouble, you're doomed and possibly compromised fatally if the odds really go against you. combat is to the death, no retreat by either side. But they are pretty expensive so if you lose them, you are hosed. Siege units are hugely important without them you can't attack enemy castles. simple but effective differentiation of units And it produces some interesting decision making. the order card mechanic works well, as it sort of forces a sequence of play for each player, but of their own making. We basically used them as proxy armies but they were somewhat hard to control because their order cards are drawn randomly. But my first impression is that they'd be better off being more static and passive, yet hostile to players. Granted, after we finished, we each had a better idea of what we'd do differently. We felt they were too active, and slowed the game down a bit. Each turn the players bid to see who controls them. With two player, there are two NPC factions, mercenaries. All in all, blows away SW:Risk for production value. Decent mounted map and a full box molded plastic insert. And you get a ton of them, as well as nice ones for castles, crown markers. Sculpts are a tad small, but pretty well detailed. a lot of production value for a $40 retail game. Played it once yesterday, just a two player game.
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