Dwarf Kings Hold - Gameplay

So I had yesterday off work and spent a good chunk of the afternoon playing Dwarf Kings Hold by mantic games, if you read my last post you'll know I was generally happy with the quality of the game, but had a couple of small niggles.  So how do I feel now I've played it?

This game is brilliant, the niggles no longer matter, go buy this now!!

Seriously it was one of the most fun afternoons I've spent gaming in a long while.  The basic gameplay is similar to Space Hulk, although it is not simply Space Hulk in a dungeon as I've heard some people say, I actually think there's a surprising tactical depth to this simple little game. The rules are incredibly easy to pick up and we were thinking tactically from about turn 3 on game 1. The major difference between this and Space Hulk is that actions are generated by the action tokens, which you can hold a certain number of at once, this adds a sort of basic deck management as another tactical layer to the game.  It also makes the two sides feel very different to play, the dwarves normally get a lot more action tokens per turn than the undead, this means the dwarves feel alive and you can normally activate each dwarf each turn, with the undead it actually feels like your a necromancer bending your focus to a small section of your shambling horde and when the dwarves beat them or die switching your focus to another minion to try and get your objective.  It's a neat trick pulled off by a simple mechanic.

The other main thing that makes this game so good is the quality of the scenarios, the game contains 6 scenarios and each is a corker.  They each add a simple special rule that really changes the way the game plays and really makes you think.  So far we've found them very balanced as well, which is rare for this kind of game.

What really gets me excited though is the potential I can see in this, I can't wait for the expansions and hope mantic post some extra sceanrios using other models from their range on their website.

All in all I can't recommend this enough, we played all afternoon and only stopped because my mate had to go to work and loved every minute of it.

If anyone has started devising their own scenarios or disagrees with what I've said drop me a comment below.