Post by Gilvan Blight on May 28, 2006 9:46:14 GMT -5
Quicky: really nice looking, great components, clear rules, great co-op, but very long game.
Summary: Up to six players take on the roles of fantasy personas based on the World of Warcraft MMORPG. Players are divided into two teams, one for the Alliance and one for the Horde. A series of quests is drawn from a deck (4 newb and 1 low lvl). The board is populated with wandering (blue) monsters and quest monsters. The players then set forth out in the world to complete quests, gather better equipent and gain experience. There are two potential goals to all this monster bashing. 1) kill the evil overload, who is determined randomly from 4 at the start of the game or 2) defeat the opposing team in a massive PvP battle royale at the end. The character growth system uses a series of talents that are aquired when leveling up that are drawn from a deck for each character type, and a series of powers/abilities from a separate deck. This gives the characters an amazing variety of options and strategies as they grow in strength. Add to this a wide variety of magical and non magical items that can be won or bought and you end up with a game where no two charaters will likely ever be alike (even if both the same class). The combat system is the meat of the game, and is very unique. A set of D8 are included, in three colours. Red for mele damage, Green for defence and Blue for direct damage (spells and arrows). Characters build a dice poll from their talents, abilities and items and then roll to hit a target number (depending on what they are fighting). Characters then use abilities to re-roll or adjust dice. Damage is then worked out using three circles that I think would be impossible to explain here. Direct damge hits first potentially killing the enemy before it hits back, then damage is soaked by the character, then they hit back with mele and attrition damage. If one side isn't dead, you repeat keeping any left over damage. It's a unique system that took a few turns to get a hang of. One last thing worth mentioning here is that as gameplay goes on you get the feel of a persistant world through actions that happen on certain game turns. The markets slowly get more and better gear and there are event cards. These events range from merchants travelling the land, Goblin airships offering rides, chances to re-build your chracters skills and abilities, Wars, event monsters and more.
The Good: the first thing that really impressed me was the amount of stuff you get with this game, and how great that stuff is. This game has the best set of plastic minis I have ever seen in a game. The quality is pretty good, though not the best, but it's the variety. You get multiples of every monster type (and there are like 10, not sure the exact number) and figures for all the potential heroes. There are also probably 1000 other counters and such (life, energy, quest counters, main baddie counter, war counters, event counters, gold counters, etc), and then an insane amount of cards (a deck for each character class, a deck of newb encounters, low level encounters, mid level encounters, high level encounters, low level items, mid level items, unique items, etc). The board is well done and looks more like a military strategy then a Fantasy beat em up. The character classes are all pretty cool, and out of the 6 I saw played none seemed that over or underpowered. I loved the character advancement system. The sheer number of options to customize your character is unparalled in the boardgame world (from what I have played). It reminded me more of a simple rpg then a board game every time I thought about training or going shoping for that new set of armour, or swapping which battle stance I was using (I played Warrior). The combat system takes a bit to get used to but is very elegant once mastered. The best part about combat though is the way the character abilities can affect the dice rolls. This adds a lot of player thought and strategy into what appears to be a totally random system at first. The players ability to 'modify the odds' is an awesome touch. Lastly this is one of the better Team games I have played. Both teams in our game worked well together and the characters definately worked well together. There was the great ability to combo abilities, that I haven't seen in other games. No special rules, just abilities that players could use that would give benifit to others in their group. This really added to the MMO feel.
The Bad: I didn't like the way the quests were all 'go kill this' For a game based on an MMO I expected more variety to the quests. I expected something like "Travel to X and bring Y to Z" The odd part is having played I don't see why a quest like that wouldn't work, the quest card would just have to add some 'wandering' monsters long the paty between X and Z. It is very hard to judge how difficult a certain fight will be. Maybe this can be learned with time, but I found many fights we grouped up for were defeated by one character, and other times when we went solo expecting an easy fight had difficulty. This made it hard to decide what to do and resulted in our 3 players pretty much travelling as a group the entire game. This made attaining lvl 5 nigh impossible. Again, perhaps this is something that can be learned with experience playing. The size. This game is huge, there are so many bits and so much information that has to be out on the table. For me at home this is not a problem (I love my 8*4 table), but I know most people will find difficulty finding somewhere to set this one up. At the KofC where we played this we had an 8*3 table and it was not big enough, we eneded up adding a small table on the end for counters and drinks.
The Ugly: long. Very long game. It's a bad sign when I end up watching another game or going for a smoke during every one of our opponents turns. I will admit I am pretty sure that this is something that will definately improve with more play. We had 4 of 6 players who had never played before, so some delay is expected. Due to the amount of customization that can go into your characters, turn planning can take a long time especially near the end of the game. The combat can also take quite a bit of time as the dice pools get larger and the number of abilities that let you modify that pool increase. The game we played took over 6 hours and we quit four turns before the end. Now I have to admit I don't think this ruins the game. You just have to know what you are getting into. It's like a game of Risk that way, you have to plan to have a World of Warcraft night with your 6 buds, and expect it to go most of that night.
Overall: I liked this more then I expexted. I brought back some fond memories of other fantasy beat 'em ups like Talisman, Warlock of Firetop Mountain and event Dungeon. This game takes all of those to a new level in the areas of player options and customization though. As mentioned this is the best character customization system I have ever seen in a board game. You could play the same character multiple times and do it different every time. The quest system could use some improvment though. For a game based on a MMORPG it seems odd every quest is kill the monster. This is an enjoyable game but due to the amazing customization turns can be long, this makes for a long game. Well worth playing, but I suggest you set a night aside just for this.
Summary: Up to six players take on the roles of fantasy personas based on the World of Warcraft MMORPG. Players are divided into two teams, one for the Alliance and one for the Horde. A series of quests is drawn from a deck (4 newb and 1 low lvl). The board is populated with wandering (blue) monsters and quest monsters. The players then set forth out in the world to complete quests, gather better equipent and gain experience. There are two potential goals to all this monster bashing. 1) kill the evil overload, who is determined randomly from 4 at the start of the game or 2) defeat the opposing team in a massive PvP battle royale at the end. The character growth system uses a series of talents that are aquired when leveling up that are drawn from a deck for each character type, and a series of powers/abilities from a separate deck. This gives the characters an amazing variety of options and strategies as they grow in strength. Add to this a wide variety of magical and non magical items that can be won or bought and you end up with a game where no two charaters will likely ever be alike (even if both the same class). The combat system is the meat of the game, and is very unique. A set of D8 are included, in three colours. Red for mele damage, Green for defence and Blue for direct damage (spells and arrows). Characters build a dice poll from their talents, abilities and items and then roll to hit a target number (depending on what they are fighting). Characters then use abilities to re-roll or adjust dice. Damage is then worked out using three circles that I think would be impossible to explain here. Direct damge hits first potentially killing the enemy before it hits back, then damage is soaked by the character, then they hit back with mele and attrition damage. If one side isn't dead, you repeat keeping any left over damage. It's a unique system that took a few turns to get a hang of. One last thing worth mentioning here is that as gameplay goes on you get the feel of a persistant world through actions that happen on certain game turns. The markets slowly get more and better gear and there are event cards. These events range from merchants travelling the land, Goblin airships offering rides, chances to re-build your chracters skills and abilities, Wars, event monsters and more.
The Good: the first thing that really impressed me was the amount of stuff you get with this game, and how great that stuff is. This game has the best set of plastic minis I have ever seen in a game. The quality is pretty good, though not the best, but it's the variety. You get multiples of every monster type (and there are like 10, not sure the exact number) and figures for all the potential heroes. There are also probably 1000 other counters and such (life, energy, quest counters, main baddie counter, war counters, event counters, gold counters, etc), and then an insane amount of cards (a deck for each character class, a deck of newb encounters, low level encounters, mid level encounters, high level encounters, low level items, mid level items, unique items, etc). The board is well done and looks more like a military strategy then a Fantasy beat em up. The character classes are all pretty cool, and out of the 6 I saw played none seemed that over or underpowered. I loved the character advancement system. The sheer number of options to customize your character is unparalled in the boardgame world (from what I have played). It reminded me more of a simple rpg then a board game every time I thought about training or going shoping for that new set of armour, or swapping which battle stance I was using (I played Warrior). The combat system takes a bit to get used to but is very elegant once mastered. The best part about combat though is the way the character abilities can affect the dice rolls. This adds a lot of player thought and strategy into what appears to be a totally random system at first. The players ability to 'modify the odds' is an awesome touch. Lastly this is one of the better Team games I have played. Both teams in our game worked well together and the characters definately worked well together. There was the great ability to combo abilities, that I haven't seen in other games. No special rules, just abilities that players could use that would give benifit to others in their group. This really added to the MMO feel.
The Bad: I didn't like the way the quests were all 'go kill this' For a game based on an MMO I expected more variety to the quests. I expected something like "Travel to X and bring Y to Z" The odd part is having played I don't see why a quest like that wouldn't work, the quest card would just have to add some 'wandering' monsters long the paty between X and Z. It is very hard to judge how difficult a certain fight will be. Maybe this can be learned with time, but I found many fights we grouped up for were defeated by one character, and other times when we went solo expecting an easy fight had difficulty. This made it hard to decide what to do and resulted in our 3 players pretty much travelling as a group the entire game. This made attaining lvl 5 nigh impossible. Again, perhaps this is something that can be learned with experience playing. The size. This game is huge, there are so many bits and so much information that has to be out on the table. For me at home this is not a problem (I love my 8*4 table), but I know most people will find difficulty finding somewhere to set this one up. At the KofC where we played this we had an 8*3 table and it was not big enough, we eneded up adding a small table on the end for counters and drinks.
The Ugly: long. Very long game. It's a bad sign when I end up watching another game or going for a smoke during every one of our opponents turns. I will admit I am pretty sure that this is something that will definately improve with more play. We had 4 of 6 players who had never played before, so some delay is expected. Due to the amount of customization that can go into your characters, turn planning can take a long time especially near the end of the game. The combat can also take quite a bit of time as the dice pools get larger and the number of abilities that let you modify that pool increase. The game we played took over 6 hours and we quit four turns before the end. Now I have to admit I don't think this ruins the game. You just have to know what you are getting into. It's like a game of Risk that way, you have to plan to have a World of Warcraft night with your 6 buds, and expect it to go most of that night.
Overall: I liked this more then I expexted. I brought back some fond memories of other fantasy beat 'em ups like Talisman, Warlock of Firetop Mountain and event Dungeon. This game takes all of those to a new level in the areas of player options and customization though. As mentioned this is the best character customization system I have ever seen in a board game. You could play the same character multiple times and do it different every time. The quest system could use some improvment though. For a game based on a MMORPG it seems odd every quest is kill the monster. This is an enjoyable game but due to the amazing customization turns can be long, this makes for a long game. Well worth playing, but I suggest you set a night aside just for this.