Review - 40K Assassinorum: Execution Force

Games Workshop are doing something right at the moment, first they released the first part of their new Adeptus Mechanicus range, which although I haven't bought any yet, it is only a matter of time.  Then as I was drooling over the Skitarri they go and drop an unexpected bombshell and release a stand-a-lone new boardgame featuring brand new Assassin minis.  Well I couldn't resist, so lets see what you get for your £75.

The first thing is you notice when you pick up the box is the weight, it was much heavier than I was expecting.  The box has great artwork on as would be expected, but the box itself is a step up for GW, a proper thick board game box, not the flimsy thin card boxes that starter sets come in.

Lets get straight to why you've bought or are considering this game and that is the miniatures.  The game contains 34 hard plastic minis, 15 chaos cultists, 3 chaos space marines, a sorcerer & familiar and of course one each of the four new Assassins.

The new Assassins (a Vindicare, a Callidus, an Eversor and a Culexus) are masterpieces of the miniature makers art.  It's amazing what GW can do with plastic these days, the dynamism that they manage to capture, that would be impossible in old style metal minis, is just outstanding.  I can't gush enough over how great these are.  Quite a bit of assembly is required, these are no 'push-fit' board game pieces, but the end result is well worth the effort.

The Assassins are of course trying to assassinate someone, in this case a Chaos Sorcerer lord who comes with some mates.  All the chaos forces minis are already in the range so no real surprises here.  They are also all generic so can be painted up to match any existing chaos collection that you might have, mine will all be painted up to join my Alpha Legion army.

For the sorcerer they give you the complete terminator lord/sorcerer lord sprue, so you have plenty of options on how to build the guy, and will end up with a load of spares at the end.  I've built this kit up before as a lord, but decided to go the proper sorcerer way this time, staff and all.

The 15 cultists are the same ones that came in the Dark Vengeance boxed set, I liked them then, and I like them now, I'm actually glad they're the same minis as they'll fit right into my units that I got from Dark Vengeance, which have always needed a size bump really.

Finally we have the three Chaos Space Marines, the most disappointing minis by a long way.  There's nothing actually wrong with them, they're just a bit flat a dull compared to all the others.  On another note this is my first experience with the new 32mm bases.  Overall I like them, maybe they're slightly too big and 30mm would have been better, but the marines do fill the space well.  I'm not going to go rebasing all the marines that I already have, but now I've seen them they don't upset either.

The game of course includes a rulebook, it's in full colour and is the same size and format as one of the current White Dwarf weeklies.  As well as clearly written rules the last few pages provide some interesting background on the Assassin temples.

The reason the box was much heavier than I was expecting is the board sections, the game contains 4 large and every thick board sections that join together to create the playing space.  Three of them create the main space where the Assassins have to locate the teleporter and turn it on and the final piece is the inner sanctum of the Chaos Sorcerer where the Assassins mission objective is.  These were much bigger and thicker than I expected, the artwork is of course top notch too.  Very impressive.

You also get a bunch of cards, counters and dice.  All high quality, for all that Games Workshop wind me up at times, they have put out an incredibly high quality product here.

So after all my gushing about the contents how does it play? and is it actually any good as a game?

The game is a co-operative game where the players take the role of the Assassins as they make their way through the Astropathic Sanctum trying to find the teleporter which will take them to the temple of shades where they will attempt to assassinate the Chaos Sorcerer.  The Assassins get two actions each per turn, which include basic stuff such as moving, shooting and attacking.  They all have different stats and different special rules which nicely make the four Assassins play differently, using the different abilities in tandem is one of the keys to victory.

After the Assassins have had their go the game takes it's go, the turn tracker moves on, random events happen and Chaos renegades move around the board in a semi random way until they see an Assassin, upon which they start attacking.  In a nice twist the more renegades that go on alert triggers more events (which are often more renegades) and the game can quickly escalate to impossible once you let one or two alert renegades live.  This provides an interesting challenge, it would be quite easy to slowly walk around taking out one renegade at a time, but there's a 16 turn limit and you don't have the time, but push too quick and you will be overwhelmed.

The board layout will be the same for each game, but cleverly the game comes with a random room mechanic, so you never quite know where the teleporter and the power switch will be.  Once you have found the teleporter you then have access to the final board section, the Sorcerer is always guarded by three Chaos Space Marines who are much tougher than the cultists that you mainly meet in the main board section.  We found our games to last around 45mins to an hour, which is a good length for a game like this.

My only real concern with this is the replayability.  We managed to assassinate the Sorcerer on our first attempt and out of three games in total we only failed once.  However GW have clearly realised this might be a weakness and have added a list of X-box style achievements, all of which will make the game harder to beat, and hence adding to it's longevity.

In conclusion, I reckon it's worth it for minis alone if you already have Imperial and Chaos forces for 40K, it works especially well if you have dark vengeance.  The games not a bad little filler game either, it's not massively in depth, but it is fun.  I think this is a good format for a release like this and I hope they do more like it.

One last thing to be aware of is that whilst all the minis are compatible with Warhammer 40K, none of the rules are included.  The Chaos figures rules are in all their codex, but to get the Assassin rules you'll either need to download the (expensive) dataslate or get your hands on White Dwarf 65 which also features the rules and points for all four Assassins.

As a nice surprise GW threw in a free Adeptus Mechanicus pin with my order!  I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do with it, but free stuff is always welcome.

A Quick Board Game Review - Temple Run Danger Chase

A while back now I made another one of my impulse purchases from The Works, this time coming away with the board game Temple Run, which is based on the popular app for phones/tablets.  I was addicted to the 'temple run 2' app for a while and when I saw this at the bargain price of £4.99 I couldn't resist giving it a go.  That was around 6 months ago, last weekend we finally played a couple of games.

Gameplay is rather simple and your aim is to be the last runner standing and get the other players eaten by the evil monkey daemon who runs after you.  On your turn you first hit the timer and then roll the five dice, this dice will either show a monkey symbol, one or two people or be blank, apart from the monkey symbol any dice may be re-rolled as many times as you like until you either hit the timer, or the monkey screams via the timer.  You then either move to the back of the pack (if you left it to long and heard the monkey) or move forward the total number of people you rolled, any monkey symbols move the monkey forward and closer to the runners.  The dice mechanism is similar to the one in travel risk and works well, I'm not normally a fan of electronic timers, but in this case it adds to the tension without becoming overbearing. 

Apart from that there's only a couple of other features, first you have to be aware of the obstacles in the path ahead as if you hit one that's instant death!  There are some power-ups to collect which can help you get further along, avoid getting killed by an obstacle or steal a power-up from an opponent.  The board is also never ending and simply recycles round.

It's quick as well, our games were taking 15-20 mins to complete.  If (when) you do get eaten by the monkey on your turn you get to roll the dice once to see if you can get the monkey to move forward, this has the effect of speeding up the game as more players die, which is good as nobody likes waiting around for a game to finish after you've been killed.

The components are of OK quality, but aren't great, this is a cheap game, and it shows.  Having said that all the bits do their jobs fine and having high quality components would raise the price to the point were it wouldn't be worth it for the level of gameplay included.

In conclusion, this is actually a pretty good light hearted game suitable for all ages and levels of gaming immersement, it won't keep you occupied all afternoon, but will provide a bit of quick fun.  Recommended at discount price even if probably not at full retail.

Which Risk?

I had a great afternoon gaming yesterday and one of the games we played was my friends new version of Risk, Risk: the Walking Dead, or Risk, with added zombies.  It turned out to be rather good fun.  I'd be surprised if there were many of my readers who hadn't played a game of Risk at some point, and it's been an important part of my gaming life over the last 20 years, and even in my wargaming drought years whilst I was at uni it was the occasional game of Risk that kept me in the gaming fold.

This afternoon's light entertainment led me to the mull over the collection of Risk games that I own, and have played over the years and to pose the obvious question, which one is the best? If you could only play one version of Risk ever again which would it be?

So in reverse order of greatness I present my opinion of the 7 varieties of Risk that I've played;


7.  Risk: Transformers

The worst version of Risk that I've ever played, loosely based on the new transformers movies.  Upto four players, but only two sides (autobots and decepticons).  The gimmick for this version are the transforming territories and leader abilities.  The two sides ruin this game, in every game I've played it's just throw everything at your opponent, and you either win or loose.  The only real positive is that games of this version tend to be quick (we had game end on turn one when the first player effectively wiped out his opponent with his initial attack).

6.  Risk: Balance of Power

Balance of power was the attempt to create a 2-player version of Risk that worked well, centered only on Europe.  It introduced a neutral army that only defends and never attacks, it doesn't quite work, whichever side gains a slight advantage then steamrollered the other.  I played a lot of games of this at one point trying different ways to make it work, but we never quite could, Risk is a game of 3+ players.

5.  Star Wars Risk: The Clone Wars

This is another version with two distinct sides, the republic and the seperatists, but in this version they don't play the same.  As always the game centres around conquering territories and regions (which will give you more men), you do get added starships in this version though which is cool.  The twist is the 'order 66' mechanic;  The game is set up so the republic forces will be in the ascendency during the early game and at some point the separatist players will have to call order 66.  When this happens you roll for each republic territory and on a certain roll (the longer the seperatists managed to wait the better the odds) each republic territory might fall to the seperatists!  The emperor is then also placed on the board and if the republic can kill him they auto-win.  It's an interesting twist and I like the fact that it plays differently for both sides, but the game really does come down to how well you roll when order 66 is called.

4.  Risk: The Lord of the Rings

 

This version also has two sides, but based in middle-earth, it has a whole bunch of special rules about the ring moving across middle-earth and fortresses and leaders.  We normally got rid of most of these keeping only the fortress rules and then played standard Risk on the board.  What makes this version good is the map, it provides a really interesting tactical place to play Risk on.

3.  Risk: The World Conquest Game

The classic and original version of the game, conquering the globe in the age of napoleon.  Get yourself 4-6 players and set aside a whole afternoon and you will get a good game.  Taking whole continents is the key to victory, and against a wily set of players this isn't easy, as everyone else will get a turn to take it off you before you realise the bonus from it.  The real world geography hampers this version somewhat as the map of the world doesn't give a balanced tactical situation and somewhat surreally the key continent is usually Australia.  The game also unfairly favours those that go first, with the last players often being battered before they get a chance to move.  All is not lost however, informal alliances can bring victory, it is rare that any player is in a position to resist the attack of all the others.

2.  Risk: The Walking Dead

 

 

This is the game that inspired this post, and even after only having played a single game it's taken the no. 2 spot, and was very close to hitting no.1  This isn't a game of armies, but a game of ordinary people killing and being killed by zombies.  The basic gameplay is the same as any risk, the first thing to notice is the map has been designed to be balanced, it's not symmetrical, but regions strategic placing really do reflect their worth and there is nowhere really isolated ala australia.  The zombies are a major part of this game, as well as random initial placement, at the start of each round a number of random territories are attacked by zombies, this means the ususal Risk tactic of leaving your back territories with a single man is a risky one, you never know when those zombies will appear.  All this happens before reinforcements are distributed as well, an inconvinient zombie attack can deprive you of a lot of men.  For a bit of light hearted fun this is probably the best Risk, but due to the random zombie attacks it can all go horribly wrong even when you've done everything right.

1.  Risk: 2210 A.D.

Finally this is what I think is the best version of Risk that I've played, Risk: 2210 A.D. this is a grown up serious version of Risk, and if you can only ever own one try and make it this one (annoyingly I don't have this in my collection).  You can use this set to play a full game of classic risk which adds to it's versitillity, but why would you really.  The basic gameplay and map are the same, but this game set in the future also adds new underwater and lunar territories.  The extra territories are great, they add a bit of balance to the map, but to be able to access them you need to invest in extra leaders/space ports which adds a new level of complexity and tactical thought.  The leaders are pretty handy in a fight too and go some way to negating the random dice fluxuations, although not entirely of course, this is still Risk!  This also has a built in turn limit which is good, the last turn is normally a desperate struggle and territory grab, just don't overreach yourself.


In the end though it doesn't really matter, in my experience any afternoon spent playing any version of Risk will almost certainly result in fun, just don't take it to seriously!

Ice Flow - A Boardgame Review

Yet again I've fallen for a cheap board game that I've seen in 'The Works' and thought I'd share my view on it.

This game is called 'Ice Flow' and is I suppose a Euro-Game, with the somewhat inspired theme of trying to cross the bearing straight on foot from Alaska to Russia by clambering over ice, taking short swims and avoiding polar bears.  That's basically all the box said and it was enough to part me with my fiver.

 

Lets start, as always, with the components, which are all really rather good for a cheap board game.  The box is well made, and the board is a standard board game board with nice artwork.  the rules booklet is A4 in size and in full colour, what I did like was that it contained three separate booklets for English, German and French, which allowed me to bin the ones I didn't need and not have to wade through a book looking for the English bit (something I hate).  Game cards keep up the nice artwork, but are oddly square not normal card sized, not a problem as such, but means you can add card protectors to them.  The playing pieces are all coloured wood Meeples, standard stuff, for some reason I find the polar bear ones really quite cool.  And last but not least are the rather nifty hexagonal ice counters made from a clear blue plastic with cuts and cracks moulded into them.

Gameplay is pretty simple, but full of choices.  On each player turn you can take one player action and must take one ice flow action, you may do these in any order you like.  Ice flow actions involve moving or rotating or adding a new ice flow piece, thus allowing you to aid your movement, or, which is often more fun, to impede the movement of other players.  The ice flow pieces can only move in certain directions, which helps planning, but most have one or more cliff edges that you need rope to cross.  Player actions simply allow you to move one of your three pieces as far as you can before being stopped by an obstacle that you don't have the equipment to cross, or when you choose to stop. This is also a resource management game, you can carry up to 3 rope and/or fish in your backpack.  These both do very useful things, fish allow you to distract a polar bear or swim across a hex of open sea, rope allows you to cross ice cliffs, or go fishing for 2 fish (replaces your player action).  The first player to get all 3 of his meeples to different Russian settlements wins.  The game is designed for 2-4 players, and whilst it will work for any of these levels, 3 players probably works best, as you can still plan a bit in advance, but there is enough trying to screw the others over to make it fun.

So in summary we have a nice game here, with tactical depth, yet easy to learn, family friendly and well made and presented, recommended.

Axis & Allies: The Battle Of The Bulge

For the first time really this summer last weekend saw quite a bit of gaming activity, as well as playing a fair bit of Jurassic wars (see two posts back) we also finally got around to playing the Hobbit game from games workshop and my friend brought round a new board game for us to try, Axis and Allies: the Battle of the Bulge.  I've played the original Axis & allies game many times, but this is the first time I've tried many of the 'off-shoot' games that have been released using the same brand.  This one of course sets out to simulate the battle of the bulge at the end of 1944 in Belgium.  It's very different from the original Axis and Allies game.  The objective of the game is for the Germans to capture more territory than they did in the historical campaign and for the allies to stop them.

It started to go wrong on turn one as the Germans fail to push back the whole Allied line 

The board and pieces all look good, they don't scrimp on playing pieces either and we never go close to running out of any of the troop types.  I took the allies and my friend took the Germans.  The Germans start the game getting to attack on turn one without any response from the allies, this push didn't go as well as my opponent hoped, with one group in particular holding out unexpectedly, which critically slowed the Germans down.

By mid-game it looks like the Germans are about to breakthrough

 

 

Reinforcements are fixed and each turn both sides get a set group.  The Germans seem to start off getting the upper hand, but by the mid-game the allied reinforcements and planes (which you get from turn 5-8) swing it back in the other direction.  The other major consideration is supply (fuel, ammo, etc.)  which you also have to manage, the allies get the lions share of this too, but it can be captured.  This is designed well I think, it's not complicated, but does add another tactical layer to the game. 

Mike makes his next move

 

 

I won a convincing victory in the end, with the Germans only having around half the territory they needed to win at the end of turn 8.   I liked the game and in particular it's played at an interesting scale, but I also have a few concerns, I'd never played before, but had no real difficulty in halting the German advance against someone with experience.  Admittedly this is only after a single game, but the allies seem to have a distinct advantage.  My second concern is replayability, I want to have another go, being the Germans next time of course, but then I don't have a desire to play the game for quite a while after that.  The proscribed reinforcements hamper this as inevitably games are going to play in a similar way.

In the end the German attempted breakthrough is insufficient and easily knocked back.

Review - Jurassic Wars

Today I'm having a look at yet another impulse purchase; a cheap travel card game called Jurassic Wars. The game features dinosaur cards which fight each other until one player has no cards left.  It feels like you're playing a more advanced version of Top Trumps.

The game comes in a small, but sturdy box, which is labelled as a 'dice arena', but it's just a box really.  The box contains a rules booklet, 7 dice and 33 cards.  The rules booklet is in black and white and is 8 pages long.  The rules are clearly and concisely written and we had no issues with understanding how it was to work.  You get 7 6-sided dice, 4 green (for the herbivores) and 3 red (for the carnivores), the green ones have 2 faces with stars and the red ones 3 faces with stars.  It's a nice little touch that they did special dice, ordinary D6's would have worked just as well, but simplifies the process a bit and makes the game more accessible.  Then finally what you're really paying for is the cards, they're standard playing card sized and seem to be of reasonable quality.  One thing I'm really impressed with is the artwork on the cards each dinosaur has been brilliantly rendered , if I'd have had these as a kid I've have spent hours just looking at the pictures.

Gameplay is a series of one on one dinosaur combats, which sees players rolling the number and type of dice shown on the dino's card and the player with the most stars wins that round and either reduces the opponents dice or kills him if there are no dice left to remove.  Play keeps going until only one player has no dinosaurs left.  Tactics revolve around which order to play your cards and when to play your limited supply of combat cards (that have various affects on the dice).

I think it works best as a two-player game really, and if you have the full 5 players there's going to be a bit to much waiting for your turn.  There's only so much depth in the basic game, but there's already a bunch of extra rules on the website which add that extra depth to the game and includes a couple of new ways to play too.

In my introduction I labelled this as a travel game, but that's not really fair, whilst it is suitable as a travel game due to its small size, we've been having lots of fun with this at home on the dinning room table.

In conclusion this is a great little game, inexpensive, good mechanics, suitable for players of different levels and with a great theme as well.  Highly recommended!

Ponte Del Diavolo - A Short Boardgame Review

I picked this up a while ago in The Works as a random impulse purchase.  It's a boardgame in what I believe is called the 'eurogame style'  which to my mind (possibly wrong I'm no expert on this) means it has wooden playing pieces, a civilian theme and no dice. (EDIT: I'm reliably informed that eurogames can have dice)

The game is a two player game and the aim of which is to create a series of islands connected by bridges.  You get no points for islands themselves only for connections.  Gameplay is very simple you take it in turns to place either two island squares of your colour or one bridge conecting two of your island pieces.  Bridges can only be placed so that they only cross open spaces.  Thats about it really, the game continues until neither player can play any more, you then total up the scores, the longer the chain of connected islands the more points you get.  It sounds simplistic and well, it is, but it works really well and provides a lot of choices with what to do on your tun.  You often have the choice of attempting to block your opponent or trying to establish your own island chain (essentially to attack or defend).  Playing it feels similar to playing 'Go' but it's a lot smaller in scale and takes a lot less time (we were playing games in around 20-30mins).

The components are all a little basic but do the job absolutely fine.  You get a board (with a nice edge round it which helps keep the pieces in place, wooden tiles and bridges, a bag to put them in and a double sided piece of paper with the rules on.

The other thing of note is the opening mechanic which I absolutely love;  The oldest player places two island tiles and then the other player then choses weather he will play with those pieces as his turn, or plays with the other pieces.  It's fantastic and I'm not sure yet what the best move with the starting pieces is.  Play too well and your opponent gets a head start and play too badly and you harm yourself.

I like this game a lot, it fills a nice 2-player slot that my boardgame collection isn't great on, doesn't take too long and provides real decisions.  If you see this at a good price I reccomend you buy it.

Lego Games - Frog Rush

Another impulse purchase today, and another lego game added to my collection, this cost me the tiny sum of £3 (normal retail price is around the £10 mark).  After I was pleasently surprised with magma monster I thought I'd give it a go.

The contents are pretty much what you would expect, you get a big green flat bit of lego that's the board, two bags of lego pieces, one of the changable lego dice and two booklets, one which contains the assembly instructions and the other contains the rules.  The english rules only take up 3 pages and are very simple, theres then a bit about modifying the game with some optional rules.  No complaints here, a good quality set.

Gameplay is pretty simple, players take it in turns to roll the big lego dice and then either move one of your frogs a certain number of squares, jump a frog over as many frogs as you can or use the stork.  Using the stork is fun as it allows you eat one of your opponents frogs, jumping is also fun and you can sometimes get all the way across the board.  The aim is to get your frogs to the bench opposite, the person with the most frogs wins.  There is some tactics but its pretty basic, blocking opponents frogs and choosing who's frog to eat is about it.

This is a fun enough little game, it doesn't have a huge depth, but I'm not sure that really matters, this is for when you need a quick little game that won't scare anyone with elves or goblins. 

Smart Ass - The Ultimate Trivia Boardgame

I picked this up in a sale a few weeks ago (cost £8) .  I like trivia board games and this claims to be 'the ulitimate trivia boardgame' so even though this is clearly a bold claim at that price it was hard to resist.

The game contents are simple enough, a large folding board, 4 packs of question cards (quite flimsy unfortunately), 8 playing pieces which are card donkeys pushed into little plastic holders and 2 dice, one with numbers for moving and one with colours on to slect category.  Like the cards the dice are lightweight and don't have that quality feel to them.  Nonetheless it all does its job.

The gameplay is very simple, players take it in turn to be the reader and select a card from a randomly determined category.  Each card contains 10 progressivly easier clues to a what? where? or who? and the other players can shout out an answer at any time and if they have it right get to roll a dice and move that many squares forward.  If nobody gets it the reader gets to move forward.  The clever bit is that each player only gets one chance to guess per card.  This means that the smart asses often guess to early and can trip up, leaving less knowlegdable players a chance to win the round.  It can be a art in picking exactly when to guess and knowing your opponents helps!   The first person to make it round the board and get into the donkeys arse wins!  Games take around 30mins, which is a good length and does make this game an alternative to the more serious and lengthy trivia games out there.

The game is described as a 2-8 player game, but this isn't really true, you need at least 3 players and preferably 4 or more.  This is because the game really works when you have poeple competing as you read down the clues.  In a 2 player game one person will always be reading and the other person effectivly gets all the clues before they have to say an answer, which makes it very easy.  In a 3 player game this is better as you normally have two poeple competing with the clues, but missing a round is quite common and you still often revert to someone getting all the clues before having to comit to an answer.

So in conclusion this is good fun, although I doubt it has that much longevity.  The 'ultimate trivia boardgame' it isn't (it will take something special to convince me away from genus edition trivial pursuit), but still worth a look if you like that kind of thing.

Dwarf Kings Hold: Ancient Grudge - A Look Inside

This is my look at the third set in the Dwarf Kings Hold series by Mantic games; Ancient Grudge.  I had a few issues with this, being sent two copies without rulebook (see here), but I then contacted Mantic directly and they sorted it out easily and quickly.  Putting that aside what do we have in this set?  The first thing to be aware of is that unlike the previous two sets this is not a stand alone game and you will need at least one of the sets to be able to use this.  Too get the full use out of this you'll need both sets really and I'd advise you too get both the origanal sets before looking at getting this.

The box is exactly the same shape and size as the box for green menace which is good as it stacks nicely on the shelf with the other games in the series.  Again the box art matches the previous sets and is another great throwback in style to the 1980's dungeon sets I remember so fondly.

Ok time to start looking at what you actually get in the box, forst off the box conatians a single sheet of card which contains two new large board sections and nine counters.  The board sections are both new big pieces with new 'icy' artwork, all very nice.  Most of the counters you will have seen before, with 5 more bloodied tokens and 2 more green rage tokens, which are nessacery for the bigger battles this set enables you to play.  The two new counters have a big 'R' on them and are for showing when dwarf ironwatch are reloading their guns.

The set conatains 12 miniatures in all, 11 plastic and 1 metal, all of which are from the standard mantic kings of war range.  You should have one of the other DKH sets if you're looking at getting this, but just in case, all the plastic models require assembling with glue, no issue here just something to be aware of.

The above 3 pictures show the plastic models you get in the set after I've assembled them.  You get 2 elf scouts, 2 dwarf ironwatch (can be assembled with either guns or crossbows), 4 ghouls and 3 zombies.  The quality varies quite significantly, I'm really not keen on the elves and the dwarves are only average, luckily the ghouls and zombies make up for this by being brilliant. 

The metal Dwarf Berserker Lord you get is shown above (in both painted and unpainted forms).  It's a really nice model, but I liked him enough that I'd bought him some time ago from the Kings of War range and you can't use two in the game, so having a second one is pretty pointless and I'll have to sell or trade it on.  This is the problem with recyling models from other ranges, whilst everyone can use a few more ghouls and zombies I really feel that Mantic should have offered a unique hero scuplt.  Of course if you haven't already bought him then don't worry he's a great fig.

As ususal with the DKH series you don't get any square bases which would enable you to use the miniatures for other wargames as well, as usual I find it a tad annoying, but hardly the end of the world.

The rulebook is the same small black and white format used in the other sets in the series, we get 20 pages of rules this time.  We start off with an introduction and then a reprint of the shooting rules just in case you haven't got green menace where they origanally appeared.  After that we get the new rules, which basically break down into 4 sections; The rules allowing you to use any race in any scenario and the points system, then rules for 20 new adventurers (5 for each race), rules for multiplayer games and finally 2 new scenarios (designed as 3-4 player games but that could be played with 2 players).

This all adds a huge amount of variabilty and replayability to the game.  The multiplayer rules are fine and no doubt useful, but certainly for me its the ability to add different troops and to switch races around in the scenarios are what's so great about this set.  As well as rules for the new troops included in the box there are rules for a number of other troops that you will have to buy (or proxy) to use the rules for.  The whole approach is pretty good as it allows players to add a few bits of pieces here and there to their collections and use them without having to invest in a whole army.  There are some really interesting choices as well, like a large werewolf (hopefully a model will soon be forthcoming), the dwarf driller (see my painted version here), wraiths (who can walk through walls) and even tiny little orclings (hope you didn't throw away the ones that came with green menace).  It also means its very easy for Mantic to add new pieces to the game now that everything has a points value and a new scenario isn't needed each time.  The only slight gripe I have is with the lack of any real background information on the new troop types, whilst experienced gamers will be familiar with most of the troops just by their names, I've always thought DKH would serve as the perfect introduction to miniature gaming and a little bit of background would really help people new to the hobby, but I'm just nit-picking really, it's not a big deal.

I'm also very glad I bought the Mantic crazy christmas bag a couple of months ago, as as well as providing more of many of the new troop types there are enough parts on the sprues to allow me to knock together a few more grander pieces to represent the unique characters in the game such as the dwarf prince and elven lord and captain..

Planet Earth DVD Game

I was round a freinds house the other day and after a game of trivial pursuit he bought this out, Planet Earth: the interactive DVD game, and we gave it a go.

It's superfically very similar to trivial pursuit, you have a board with question squares (no categories, all just planet earth questions), roll again squares and bigger squares that have more specific question areas.  You roll the dice and move your piece answering questions until you get a question wrong or land on one of the specific squares.  You then answer a question on that specific topic, if you get it wrong your turn ends, if you get it right the DVD tells you to get a certain number of pieces of the 'planet earth puzzle', which you are trying to complete and your turn then ends.  The person who puts in the last piece of the puzzle wins.

The questions are on the DVD and are all multiple choice and feature facts and little videos from the planet earth series (I thought I clocked a bit of footage from other BBC series too).  It's all very pretty and well produced, but it's designed as a family game and I found most of the questions rather easy although there was the odd thoughie.  As you get 2-3 answers to pick from anyone can happily guess with a chance of getting it right, but knowlegde will still help you.

The questions being on the easy side isn't the issuse with this game though, the problem is that whoever happens to place the last piece wins.  Which makes basically all the questions before that completely pointless, and winning has no bearing on who has answered the most questions or even who's landed on the best squares.  This might be ok if playing with young children, but we were playing with a bunch of competative adults and it was more than a bit frustrating.  In fact it completely ruined the game, because there was no game.

Not all is lost though, we played again with some ajustments and managed to salvage the game.  It's very simple, put the puzzle pieces away and go and find your trival pursuit set, get out the wedges and the pies.  Basically treat it as a trivial pursuit board with the 6 specific catagories represented by the six coloured wedges, still end the turn on a wrong question or the successful getting of a wedge.  The first player to get all 6 wedges wins.  A simple fix that made the game go from frustrating and pointless to fun and enjoyable.  Of course this will only work if you like trivial pursuit.  The other alternative would be to keep track of puzzule pieces recived and annouce the winner as the player with the most.

If you like trivia games and the natural world and follow my suggested ajustments (or come up with your own of course) it's fun enough (although they essentially turn the game into an alternative card deck for trivial pursuit), although I think the replayability will be limited.  If you don't like trivia games, have no interest in the natural world or can't be bothered to modify the rules so there is actually a game, then really don't bother.