The other day I came across a miniatures game I'd never heard of, by a company I'd never heard of. Having some spare cash, I decided to treat myself. I do love obscure games!
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| There's the cover art. Yes, I know. |
I could find out absolutely nothing about this game. The Miniatures Page mentions the game, but has no information. The store I got it from had a small publishers blurb, but that was it. Even the games companies webpage doesn't mention it.
Let's start with the cover: A beautiful amazon warrior woman wearing plate armour, that provides excellent protection to her whole body, except for her chest. Well...at least it's not a chainmail bikini. In the back ground is a burning castle, and that gets top marks for awesome.
But before I go any further, I want to get something out of the way: I bought this game simply because I'd never heard of it and wanted to check it out. The more obscure the better. I could be a real critic and make a big deal of the spelling mistakes, bad grammar and occasional rule that makes no sense, but if stuff like that bothered me, I wouldn't be buying games like this! So let's move on.
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| Roster/Combat Chart |
The chart in the upper left is used to cross reference the attack vs. defense in combat. You get a number which must be equalled or beaten on a d6. Simple and effective, plus I like charts. There's also a summary of the turn sequence, terrain effects and special rules. Once you fill in the roster portion of the sheet you've got 90% of what you need all on one page, both rules and stats. I like it.
The rules are very straightforward. You move, shoot, fight, all the usual stuff, but with no complications. Champions (i.e. Heroes) add a special ability to the unit they're attached to. They don't fight themselves, and can only be killed by magic. Mages move by teleporting at will. There are chits for every spell that you are supposed to photocopy and cut out. Place them in a container, and pull out one spell chit for every spell you bought. There are a small number of spells, in several random strengths. I don't like chits so I just rolled randomly instead.
Finally there's 8 different armies with stats for four troops types each. The troops are generic, there are no official miniatures and any range of fantasy miniatures provides suitable figures.
After reading the rulebook in about 45 minutes or so, I was ready to play. The rules are so simple that one quick read through was enough to get me through my first game with virtually no time spent looking things up.
I set up a 500 pt game (the rulebook rates this a 'skirmish' sized game) and played.
Orcs: Champion, 9 Archers, 11 Warriors.
Elves: Mage, 8 Archers, 10 Spearmen. The elf Mage bought 3 spells: Kill Champion, Kill Mage and No Attack. The orcs had no Mage so that spell was wasted.
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| Orcs on the left, elves on the right. |
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| Elf archers, spearmen, and mage. |
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| The orc warriors advance. The elf mage in the distance cast Kill Champion, wiping him out. |
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| Big fight brewing. |
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Orcs attack the spearmen, Orc archers and elf archer start shooting at each other. The Elf Mage cast
No Attack on the orc warriors to keep them out of the fight, but they resisted. The mage had cast all his spells so he teleported off to safety. |
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| Causalties mount. |
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| Almost everybody's dead. |
After this last picture the orc archer charged into combat, and in a turn or two the elves were all dead. The game lasted less than an hour.
I enjoyed this game! Very simple rules, simple enough you can easily change things around to your preferred way of playing without unbalancing the whole thing. I'd like to play it again, but with more miniatures. I've certainly got enough! I'd also like to try some of the simple scenarios suggested in the book.
Bottom line: I can't recommend this game to everyone. The production values are low, and it would be just too simple for many. But I like it. I bought it as a little treat for myself, a simple diversion, and it works for that.
Thanks for reading!
