Dungeon Saga: The Return of Valandor - Campaign Review

The 'Return of Valandor' is the first expansion for Mantic games excellent Dungeon Saga game.  Unlike the other expansions this one is a direct follow on to the story in the 'Dwarf Kings Hold' set and uses the same heroes that you use in that first campaign.  As such we carried on using the same heroes each as before and Mike remained as the overlord.  Whilst you play as legendary throughout the whole of this campaign we were very disappointed to learn that we would be losing some of our favourite magic items in the form of the Dwarfs armour and the Wizards staff.  The campaign has six adventures and the heroes have ten attempts to get through them.

SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!

If you plan on playing this as the heroes there might be some stuff here you shouldn't read before you've had a go at the missions, unless of course you don't like surprises......

Adventure 1: It Begins Again

This is a simple little adventure to get you started.  You just have to open a door you can see from the start.  The twist is you need to take wards off of four standing stones to do it, which only the wizard can do.  The heroes are in no danger here from anything, but getting the wizard round all the wards in time is a challenge and if the overlord can manage a small delay he'll win.
Tries to complete: 1
star rating: ****

Adventure 2: A Wicked Surprise

Ba'el the undead demon makes his first appearance to test heroes, but isn't going to stick around forever, only till he gets bored, this is shown by a random disappearance mechanism.  This means this level can vary wildly in difficulty depending on how long he sticks around for.  In our runthrough it came down right to the wire, we only just made the room where you all have to be at the end and we had one hero on only a single wound, our tightest win yet.  We enjoyed this one and Ba'el is one tough cookie.
Tries to complete: 1
Star rating: ****

Adventure 3: Needle In A Haystack

What is it with adventure 3's? in the DKQ's adventure 3 sucked, and it sucked here too.  The objective is to find the amulet of Valandor which is hidden in one of the four chests.  That's all well and good, but opposing you are 5 Zombies and a Revenant, that's it!  We're convinced we've either missed something, or there is a misprint and they missed the rest of the monsters and/or bone piles!

Tries to complete: 1 (under time limit doesn't count)
Star rating: *

Adventure 4: A God In Mortal Flesh Once More

This is a simple little dungeon crawl through to the final door, you have to replace one of the heroes with the spirit of Valandor, and this is about getting used to his abilities really.  The choice of who you're going to replace is an interesting one.  He's a tank, but struggles offensively against anything that isn't a demon.  We plumbed for the Dwarf, but I think anyone except the Wizard will work fine.  The concept is fine, but there just weren't enough baddies to slow the heroes even slightly which led to a disappointing game. 

Tries to complete: 1 (under time limit doesn't count)
Star rating: **

Adventure 5: New Friends, Old Enemies

After the disappointment in the lack of challenge that the last two dungeons provided things finally got back on track here with a confrontation with the mighty Ba'el.  Ba'el is proper scary, he has a feat that curses the heroes, powerful magic, a solid attack, and regenerate.  Although we accomplished this well within the time, Ba'el wasn't far off of crippling a hero and winning for the Overlord.  There's also a collapsing dungeon twist here, but it added nothing to our play through, but the random nature of this part means that sometimes it might.

Tries to complete: 1 (under time limit doesn't count)
Star rating: ****

Adventure 6: Reckoning

The final final battle against Mortibris.  Like the final mission in the DKQ not all the heroes have to survive this one, which means Mortibris must kill them all to win.  Even in his 'legendary' aspect he didn't seem to have much hope, he just doesn't have a high enough damage output and is easy to wound in return.  This was a massive anti-climax, there just weren't enough minions to take down any of the heroes, we think Mortibris can potentially cripple one hero, but there's no way he's going to kill all four.  A shame for the final mission of an arc of 14, even playing the heroes we wanted him to be more of a challenge.

Tries to complete: 1
Star rating: ***

Final Result:  Heroes win in 3 out of 10 possible turns, a crushing victory for the forces of good.

In conclusion this is a bit of a disappointment after the solid first campaign.  The average of my scores comes to 3 out of 5, which is fair enough, but doesn't tell the true story, there are three good missions here, but also three rather poor ones, and I feel a hit rate of 50% isn't really good enough.  It's a shame as well, the concepts and layouts for the three poor missions are fine, but we found the balancing so far off as to take away the fun, they just needed some more baddies in them.  Ultimately this campaign was a disappointing follow-up to the core box campaign.

Dungeon Saga: The Dwarf Kings Quest - Campaign Review

After some epic gaming over the start of the winter myself and my friends Mike & Richard have completed the campaign from the Dungeon Saga core box; The Dwarf Kings Quest.  Mike played as the evil Necromancer Mortibris and me and Richard shared out the heroes between us, I got the Dwarf and the Wizard, which of course left Richard with the Elf and the Barbarian.  The campaign is 8 missions long and the heroes get a total of 15 attempts to complete them all.  If you can do it quickly enough an attempt won't count towards your total (we found that to be VERY rare as most of the missions are very finely balanced) and if you fail you have to do that mission again until you get through.

SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!

If you plan on playing this as the heroes there might be some stuff here you shouldn't read before you've had a go at the missions, unless of course you don't like surprises......

Before the campaign there are two training missions, I'm not going to bother going through these, they are very easy for the heroes and just give you a chance to practice the main rules.

Adventure 1: Well Met

This may be adventure one, but this is no gentle introduction for the heroes, you need to move quickly and kill stuff to win this one and get through the final door before the cards run out.  In our first play of this we were playing as if this was Warhammer Quest, by which I mean to conservatively, trying to secure each area fully before moving on, we all survived, but the timer beat us quite comprehensively.  You can't move too quickly either though, the Wizard and the Elf start separately from the Barbarian and the Dwarf and can be very vulnerable.  Loose one hero and you loose the mission, don't forget it.  Pay attention in this mission and think carefully about every move.
Tries to complete: 2
Star Rating: ****

Adventure 2: Into the Depths

This adventure is another one where you have to open the final door before the time runs outs (there's quite a of these).  This is however where you meet your first Zombie Troll, which at this point are pretty scary things.  We really enjoyed this one, the key is not to get bogged down fighting the troll and try to slip someone through on either side to make a run for the final door. Remember that only one person has to get to the door to win the mission.  Our run through of this one came down to a dice roll to smash the door as the final action of the game! how's that for balance.
Tries to complete: 1
Star Rating: *****

Adventure 3: Restless Guardian

Time for the first boss fight!  Except you don't actually fight the Banshee in a normal fashion, you need to survive her attacks whilst you collect the four fragments of her shattered stone heart and collect them together so she can finally have rest.  This was a walkover for the heroes, the Banshee has some nasty spells, but can't do enough damage on her own to realistically cripple a hero before they collect all the pieces.  There are a few minions about, but with only one Overlord Command per turn they're not going to achieve much as they rarely get to even activate.  This is also the first time that the Overlord gets to use magic and Mike didn't get it at first which helped ease our victory.  We were looking forward to our first boss, but ultimately the speed at which we accomplished the task took away the joy of victory.  We might try this again with two Overlord Commands per turn.
Tries to complete: 1 (Within bonus time limit so doesn't count towards total)
Star Rating:*

Adventure 4: Left or Right

We're back to getting through doors within the time limit now.  The twist this time is a randomly collapsing dungeon.  This is a winding dungeon, with several routes to the final door, wether those routes will still be there next turn is part of the gamble you'll have to take.  We found this one to be incredibly close and like Adventure two it all came down to the last dice roll of the game against the door.
Tries to complete: 1
Star Rating:*****

Adventure 5: Stench of Death

A proper boss fight at last!  This time against the Zombie Troll Shaman Hoggar.  Like the Banshee fight the Overlord is severely limited by a single Command per turn.  The mission is a pretty straightforward romp through some Zombies and Zombie Trolls until you get to Hoggar himself.  He's a pretty tough beastie to kill.  It looked like we were storming it until we got to the boss who then took a lot longer to kill than we were expecting and we only just did it before the time ran out.
Tries to complete: 1
Star Rating:***

Adventure 6: Turned Around

It was going so well upto this point, we'd been a bit lucky on adventures 2 & 4, but basically we'd aced everything!  This was also when your heroes become legendary! But..... This mission really held us up, on the plus side this made the campaign mode interesting again as suddenly it was all there to play for.  The twists here are the two large randomly rotating rooms and a random exit point.  If you can roll sixes when you get to a chest(the exit is hidden in one of them) this one can be over quickly and easily, if however you flunk those rolls and have to do it the hard way by opening all the chests this mission is hard, especially as it's impossible to plan from turn to turn as you never know where your men are going to be!  Having said all that it's still a fun mission, but I'm glad we didn't have to do it for a fifth time.
Tries to complete: 4
Star Rating:****

Adventure 7: The Final Insult

The penultimate level and the penultimate boss.  This is our first, and only true 'fighty' boss, Grund, the Undead Dwarf King.  The first room is full of  monsters, you need to try and clear these quite quickly, but without getting overwhelmed in the process, we found the dwarf stood in the center did a great job of splitting the monsters into two groups.  Once you get through the first room you have a pretty clear run upto Grund himself where you attempt to kill him before the time runs out.  On our first attempt we had Grund down to a single wound when the time ran out, frustrating to say the least, but to be fair it was Mikes turn to pull off a last victory.  The second attempt also failed in the last room, this time the Barbarian had taken too many hits and went down just before Grund would have done.  The third run finally went smoothly and victory was ours.
Tries to complete: 3
Star Rating:****

Adventure 8: Only One Gets Out Alive

The final showdown, we finally get to confront Mortibris himself, even the heroes are expendable here and the game doesn't end if you loose one, the mission is also big containing all the minions in the set to slowly fight through.  I say slowly, actually we smashed trough them with ease, our dice rolling was nuts here, we didn't flunk a single attack, nor had we taken a single wound by the time we entered Mortibris' inner sanctum.  Obviously a lot of luck helped here and I expect that result is unusual.  Even though we were unharmed as we got to the end boss Mortibris soon started knocking wounds off us, he is a tough cookie indeed, he can't stand up to four heroes, but if you loose one on the way to him I think you'll be in trouble.
Tries to complete: 1
Star Rating:****

Final result:  The heroes win on the 13th out of 15 potential tries, although with one 'freebie' we actually had 14 tries; pretty damned close!


In conclusion this is a really good campaign, with different challenges for both sides, and we found it pretty well balanced, which is always tough in games like this.  The limited time mechanism puts a slightly different slant on this than other dungeon crawlers that I'm familiar with, it won't be for everyone, but I found it added a sense of drama and tension to proceedings.  We only found scenario 3 to be horribly unbalanced and 2,4 and 7 in particular where spectacularly close and therefore more enjoyable.  I also like how the heroes get better over time and there's always a new ability or item to learn to use.  The average of my (admittedly subjective) star ratings comes to 3.75, make of that what you will, but I think this is a solid initial campaign for Dungeon Saga.

However Mortibris is not quite dead and may come back yet.........

Star Wars: X-Wing - First Thoughts

I've been keeping my eye on X-Wing by fantasy flight games for some time now and today I finally got the chance to play it.  I love Star Wars (as anyone who has seen my series on my Star Wars Miniatures collection will know) and have long hankered for a good starship battle game.  I have a large collection of starship minis from the Star Wars Miniatures: Starship battles game (coming to a post near you soon), but the game was weak and never became a permanent fixture in our gaming schedule, I was hoping that X-Wing would prove to be a lot better.

My friend turned up with several boxes of ships in little plastic boxes.  I was surprised with the good quality of the pre-paints, but they do look a little fragile, certainly better than my own collection of ships though.  We played two games, an initial intro game in which I fielded two tie-fighters vs an X-wing (a win for me!) and then a larger 100pt game, with me again taking the Imperials (a loss this time, but quite close)

My Ties about to shoot down an X-wing

Our first game was very quick, on the first turn we zoomed across the table, then the second turn I advanced my Ties very slowly as my opponent hair-pinned his X-wing expecting me to overshoot him and leave him shooting at my aft.  Unfortunately it worked the other way round and my ties were now just behind him!  The game didn't last long after that.

We then moved onto a proper battle with 100pts each.  I kept it simple by taking 4 Ties and a Tie advanced piloted by Darth Vader, my opponent fielded an X-wing, piloted by Wedge Antillies, a Y-wing and a HWK-290 piloted by Kyle Katarn.

Initial Posistions

I split my force into two groups with an intent to outflank my outnumbered opponent.  All seemed to be going well at first, my main group of Vader and two ties outflanked the Y-wing and Katarn and the other two ties drew Wedge away from the main group.  It then turned out that Katarn and the Y-wing had turrets that could fire 360 degrees and therefore weren't that bothered by their bad positioning, they also had a lot of hull points to soak up damage with, although they weren't dishing out any real damage in return.  Wedge however made short work of the two ties before coming round and taking out everyone else.  Wedge Antillies is very good and killed all five of my ships!  With hindsight I should have done everything I could to take out wedge first before harrying the other two ships. 

Let battle commence

This is ultimately a game about movement, there is synergy and card play as well, but outmanoeuvre your opponent and you will win.  It's done in such a fantastic way as well.  This is the first game that I've seen that's managed to get simultaneous movement to work well.  At the start of the turn you secretly set your movement wheel on each ship showing at what angle and how far you will be going (different ships can do different manoeuvres), you then flip these wheels over in initiative order and move the ships along the set course.  It's simple but makes the game tactically deep, you have to really think about what move you want to make whilst taking into account what your opponent might or might not do.  Some times you get it spectacularly right and it's great, but inevitably you can make some real screw ups too.

What I liked:

- simple enough to pick in a couple of turns, but.....
- obvious tactical depth
- the movement mechanism is fantastic
- great ship models and star wars theming
- different pilots of the same ship models increases variety

What I didn't like:

- too many tokens clutter the board
- turrets on ships with 360 degree fire which took away the need to manoeuvre on some ships
- too easy to knock something when placement is so vital
- it doesn't come with a mat, my fake pine table didn't have the right ambiance

Overall I think it's a pretty solid little game and I can't wait to play some more.

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.

40K Meets Mordheim - Proof Of Concept

Unfortunatly my large gaming table has recently had to take a move into the garage, and this has worked fine, until this weekend, when it was rather cold, and playing outside was impossible.  Now like any sensible gamer I have some solutions for this evntually, including several board games that will fit on the smaller table I have indoors.  But we didn't play any of them, oh no, we had to go create a brand new game, well maybe not brand new, but a merging of two established games.

We each picked 100pts of 40K figures (just indivual figures no squads as such) and then played a game, but working injuries out like a game of mordheim.  We only made one other major rule change which was swaping I go - you go with an alternating activation (essentially stolen from star wars miniatures).  This meant each figure had a full, move, fire and assault phases and then the other player got to activate and use one of his figures and so on.  I did this to stop one side being able to blow another side away in one turn (something I've seen happen in mordheim a lot)

Essentially it worked, we played a couple of games and had fun.  Some tweeking needs doing, especially around points and army lists, but it works fine.  Also we needed to use more line of sight blocking terrain than we did.  My friend who I played against was also excited about the possibilty of using some of his random models in these games and went home saying he was going to paint up his squad of tau fire warriors that he has lying around and was even muttering ideas for an experience system.  I get the feeling we might be doing a bit more of this over the winter.

Islands In Victory at Sea

I had a game of victory at sea today, but we decided to try something different, the simple change of adding some islands to the sea.  There's no rules for islands in the book, so we simply said that islands blocked line of sight, and the shooting line between the centers of the two ships couldn't cross land (not entirely realistic, but it worked out fine), and that obviously you couldn't sail over them.  I don't actually have any islands, but my warhammer hills stood in nicely.

The battle was set off the Norwegian coast with my Royal Navy facing down the German Kriegsmarine.  The RN had the heavy cruiser HMS Norfolk, the light cruiser HMS Belfast and 4 destroyers, whereas the Germans had the pocket battleship Lutzow, the light cruiser Nurnburg, 2 destroyers and 2 torpedo boats.

Click to enlarge

The deployment:  The Kriegsmarine all deployed as a single squadron in the corner, the RN split itself, with 2 destroyers on the left near the Germans hoping to use the island to pounce on and torpedo one of the bigger German ships and on the right the 2 cruisers with a escort planing to sweep round the top island to get close enough to the pocket battleship so that they could at least return fire when it starts pounding them.

Agian click to enlarge

After a few turns of manoeuvering a British destroyer torpedoes the Lutzow crippling it as the Belfast and Norfolk round one of the islands to bring their guns to bear on the German fleet.  The british lost 3 destroyers, but neither of the cruisers suffered more than a couple of points of damage, the German fleet consisted of a single lone destroyer when the Germans conceeded.

A resounding victory for the British in the end despite the pocket battleship being by far the best ship on the board.  In the post battle analisys it was clear that the Germans where just massively outplayed and had no real plan (the cruiser and pocket battleship barely moved 12" all game), whereas the islands allowed the British to close to torpedo range easier, unfair to the Germans? well not really, after all they have torpedos too, but they made no effort to close with and target the British cruisers and the pocket battleship was never really put to any use.

The islands really helped add more manoeuvre to the game (which is what we were hoping for) and added a pleasing visual aspect as well, next week we're hoping to do something similar, although this time with Japanese and American Battleships somewhere in the pacific,