Monday, November 26, 2012

Review of Dark Heaven Apocalypse


Thanks for your email Private wierd, here's a mini-review of DHA for anyone interested.

In DHA every figure has a class, from 1 to 4. Class 1 are the fastest figures, unarmoured flyers. Class 2 is light infantry, and so on to class 4 which is heavy infantry. Every turn you roll for initiative for every player, then the winner moves, shoots and fights with all his class 1 figures, then the player with the second highest initiative does the same and so on for all players, as many players each on their own side as you like. Then of course everybody acts with their class 2 in sequence and so on to class 4's. If your army is mostly class 4 you'll be constantly out-maneuvered by the lighter troops.

All combat and missile fire is an opposed roll, a single d10 is rolled for each figure with stats and a few mods added on to that. In melee the loser is removed, making for very quick battles. You roll for all enemies in base contact until no opposing figures are still touching. Missile fire is a similar opposed roll, if the shooter wins the target is killed, otherwise the shooter misses. Heroes and monsters have a special save factor that lessens the chance they'll be slain from one lucky shot. Another point is this games favour is that there is no record keeping at all. You'll need a sheet to record your stats of course, but once the game starts you won't ever need a pencil or scratch paper.

Spells are also conducted with opposed rolls. Different spells have different penalties to casting depending on how powerful they are. I love this game but the spell system is a bit weak, a lot of the spells are variations on magic missiles, with a few that are more unique.

Where DHA shines is the fact that battles are quick, even with lots of figures. And probably the best part is the simple points system that lets you make stats for any figure you own, meaning anyone with a warhammer army has tons of figures perfectly suited for this game already.

Finding a copy might be hard, DHA was never hugely popular. Reaper Miniatures used to have an earlier version of the game available on their website that was very similar, though I haven't played that version. I can't find it on their site right now, but it must be floating around somewhere.

Anyway, hoped you enjoyed reading this!