The battle report for my first ever game of Dropzone Commander is now available online. We played a four-player game at 1,000 points each, and there were two Shaltari armies, one Posthuman Republic, and one United Colonies of Mankind. The mission type was Recon, which placed Intelligence points within each building and on each hill, and the goal was to grab as many as we possibly could.
Without further ado, here’s the report:
I had a very gaming birthday this year, as not only did my awesome fiancé get me a tonne of Magic cards, he also presented me with a Premium Shaltari Mega Army complete with aluminium case. As I had a 1,000 point game planned to occur over the weekend it was time to get a wiggle on and start putting these babies together!
Not having the time to assemble everything, I decided on my army list first, then only worked on the items I needed for yesterday’s game.
The Braves were ridiculously easy to put together. Snipping them off their sprues was a bit heavy on the clippers, because the sprues were thick and these are the only metal minis in the whole army, but the figures themselves required zero clean-up. The bases had some minor flash and sprue that needed quick pruning.
Spirit gates were more fiddly, but still assembled in a matter of minutes. Some light cleanup with a knife was required, but it was absolutely minimal effort compared to your average Citadel model.
The Eden gates took the most time, largely because some of the resin was slightly warped and needed resetting with hot water. There was a lot of flash that needed scraping away, but this was easy peasy. The main problem was that the tips of the struts were merged in to the sprue joints so much that it was impossible to see where the struts ended and sprue began. As a consequence I cut too much off, and had to go digging among my offcuts to find the matching part, glue it back together, recut it in the right place, prune it down to the right shape, then assemble the gate.
Once I’d done this with one gate, though, I knew what to look out for in the remaining two.
The Coyote and Ocelot were joys to assemble. I really love these little walkers and definitely think they’re the most appealing models in the army.
All in all I assembled:
in the space of two and a half hours, and that’s including time to rectify my snipping error, and be excruciatingly anal about flash-pruning. An entire playable army, ready to roll the same afternoon. The resin’s even a fairly bright white-grey colour, so I didn’t feel quite so bad about playing unpainted minis.
The only thing to be wary of is how soft resin is compared to plastic. If you’re used to carving away at a mini to get it to where you want, you’re going to slice up your resin like a serial killer. Be gentle; that’s all it takes.
Here’s a quick update after my earlier post regarding emergency deckbuilding.
Mr. Troo and I attended the Gatecrash Game Day at our FLGS today with decks we’d hurriedly slapped together at the last minute due to extreme time constraints on our end. I’m happy to say that we both Top-8’d, so both got our full art Firemane Avengers. Even more happily they turned out to be foils, so very pretty, and there were three Zameck Guildmages each for attendance (because while top-8 sounds impressive, actually only 10 people showed up; we had a sudden bout of snow in the morning).
I ran R/B Vampires as follows:
4 x Stromkirk Noble
4 x Mugging
3 x Nightbird’s Clutches
4 x Vampiric Fury
1 x Dreadbore
4 x Stromkirk Captain
3 x Rakish Heir
1 x Olivia Voldaren
2 x Falkenrath Aristocrat
3 x Bloodline Keeper
3 x Havengul Vampire
1 x Rakdos, Lord of Riots
3 x Falkenrath Marauders
1 x Bonfire of the Damned
2 x Rakdos Guildgate
3 x Dragonskull Summit
9 x Mountain
9 x Swamp
2 x Madcap Skills
1 x Dark Imposter
3 x Blasphemous Act
3 x Balustrade Spy
3 x Deviant Glee
3 x Mark for Death
It went pretty well, all told. There was a really nice mixture of decks present, and most match-ups ran pretty close. I think in the past I’ve been underestimating Deviant Glee, and wish I’d maindecked it. I usually swapped out the Rakish Heirs and Havengul Vampires for Deviant Glee and Madcap Skill, but a particularly troublesome opponent made me side in the Dark Imposter too so that I had more creature-thieving ability. In the end, though, it just wasn’t enough. Ah well. I got what I came for!
Firemane Avenger, let’s be friends!
In the wake of Wednesday’s deck-building binge, I thought it might be a terribly good idea to get around to sorting all of my remaining Magic cards.
Now, I’m awful at this. I have a friend who sorts straight from each and every booster, which seems extraordinarily sensible, but me? I enjoy booster-ripping too much, and end up with a pile of 90 cards which I’ll “get around to”. Then another pile. Then a few more piles, until the house is littered with piles of cards, usually numbering 90, which the cats enjoy knocking over.
Of course, spending an entire morning hunched over thousands of cards while I sort them into some semblance of order is totally my idea of fun… Well, maybe not. But It gave me cause to consider how just about everything we gamers consider a hobby is detrimental to our backs. We spend a lot of time leaning forward at keyboards, clutching controllers, squinting at cards, reaching over boardgames, or the ultimate body-punishment: gripping paintbrushes while peering at miniatures and curling over to paint them. And we do all these things for hours on end. At least with roleplaying you either get to lounge comfortably on a sofa or lean against the kitchen table.
Considering I didn’t even start playing Magic until Innistrad, I’ve picked up a ridiculous amount of pre-Innistrad cards; most are from Scars of Mirrodin, but there are some Zendikar and older. It’s possible that Magic cards build up a certain density of gravity beyond which other Magic cards cannot escape, until they begin getting sucked through time and space to join the collective.
I’ve got absolutely no use for either of these, for instance. But I imagine someone out there might. I’ll have to consider eBaying the older stuff, I think.
I should have spent my morning assembling some Dropzone Commander minis instead, but someone decided to block access to the cutting mat.
See? The universe conspired against me. When even the cat thinks I should be sorting the cards, there’s no choice.
Maybe I should take up some sort of sport thing. I understand that sort of hobby is actually good for you?
Very sensibly, I decided to leave it until the 11th hour to make a decklist for a Gatecrash Gameday on Saturday. This likely means what I have in my grubby mutts now is a very sloppy deck which might get me to 4th but is unlikely to get me that lovely Deathpact Angel playmat. Which is a shame, because it’s extremely pretty.
So pretty. I wants it, but I may just end up getting it off eBay for a ridiculous price. Failing that I might buy one of Noah Bradley’s amazing playmats instead. We’ll see!
But the Firemane Avenger? Well, there are a full eight of those on offer. I should be able to top-8, surely! I usually do in Constructed, so I don’t think it’s too far a stretch to hope for one of these babies:
And no. I’m not going to post my decklist. There are people watching, you know! People who might be willing to stay up later than me to get this done! Paranoia Mode Engaged!
Come back on Saturday and I’ll share the full decklist, as well as the results!
Yes, yes, settle down. I know I didn’t post a great deal last week. Oh. This? Well… It’s kind of you to notice. That’ll be the Gatecrash booster box my darling fiancée presented me with for my birthday last Thursday. Mm-hmm, I’m a Valentine’s Baby.
Where have I been? Sir and / or Madam, might I suggest that you try to open, look at, and sort through 36 boosters in one day? Blimey, so demanding!
But for all my hard labour, what did I receive? Well now!
Eight Shocklands.
Seven Primordials.
One Obzedat, Ghost Council.
One Gideon, Champion of Justice.
One Prime Speaker Zegana.
One Lazav, Dimir Mastermind (bringing it up to a full playset now).
One Aurelia’s Fury.
One Lord of the Void.
One Hellkite Tyrant.
There were also some excellent utility cards – Duskmantle Guildmages, Assemble the Legion, and Clan Defiance. Even a Crypt Ghast!
Happy birthday to meeeee…
Sometimes, what you want to be playing is a game filled with explosions and danger, action and adventure. And what you get? Well. Try being stuck in the world of Mills and Boon with your action hero. And then when you want to play a herbalist who wants nothing more than to tend to the flowers and snuggle with a beau or two, what happens? Weird War Three.
What’s going on?
It could be any number of things, but here are the most common causes:
Let’s look at these more closely.
There is a tendency among roleplayers to kinda just assume that everyone wants the same thing from a game as themselves. We like to think of ourselves as a pretty amenable lot, and so when things start to go awry, we are likely to go along with it rather than speak up. But time and again games start with a group of players getting together and deciding what to play, and very rarely does anyone pipe up and say:
“I would like to play an action-oriented game with hints of intrigue and romance. I don’t want investigative stuff, because I don’t enjoy that.”
or
“I’d like to play an investigation-heavy game with occasional peril, but not a huge amount of combat.”
You get the idea.
On the occasions I’ve seen this conversation actually take place, what I’ve then seen is a chorus of agreement from all the other players involved… only for it to become all too apparent once the game is established that the rest of the group doesn’t want the game that they got, even though they agreed to it.
They asked for explosions. You gave them explosions. What did they want?
Apparently they wanted fluff and kindness and I’m not even certain that I can think of too many RPGs which cater to that.
Honesty. Every group will be happier with it, so you must strive to encourage it.
This one is actually staggeringly easy to fix. After being honest, your group has confessed that they would quite like a romantic comedy RPG with amusing mishaps and star-crossed singing teenagers, and you’re still yearning to play Die Hard With A Kick-Ass in the Ghostbusters of Doom. If they are honest, and you are honest, then you have two choices:
Be reasonable. Be fair. But be honest. It really is better to not play at all than it is to play a game which will frustrate you every single session, and upset the rest of the group because they will know that you are unhappy, and they won’t know why, and that will lead to…
I have seen this so many times that it confounds me. Players who would like to play happy-go-lucky actresses to whom nothing bad ever happens, so they find themselves a World of Darkness game to join. Players who really enjoy hanging out in-character in coffee shops making small-talk about the weather day-in, day-out, so they make themselves a housewife in Delta Green and proceed to avoid any storylines with as much dedication as a cat shirking rain. Players who want to play the heroic loner who doesn’t need a group in… well, frankly, just about any game there is.
McClane makes a great action movie character, but a lousy roleplaying one, unless you’re in a single-player game with your GM.
Why people force their concepts into games which do not fit them, I do not know. But I’ve seen it time and again over the past twenty years, and each time it disrupts games and makes not only the player unhappy, but those around him as they struggle to accommodate the sore-thumb PC. They bend over backwards to involve him in the game, introduce him to storylines, help him integrate with the group, but no! He wants nothing to do with the plot, or he’s such a really awesome loner he’s gonna do it all by himself!
So if you are finding yourself struggling, sit down and identify the things you want from a game. Action? Political intrigue? Romance? Superheroes? There are hundreds of games, and somewhere out there is the right one for you.
Find a group, and use honesty when doing so. Either through your FLGS or online, set out a Wanted ad, and outline what you’re looking for. You may end up forming a new group, or joining an existing one, but if you are open about what you want your chances improve dramatically. Just remember that it might still get sunk if they aren’t equally honest with you. All you can do there, my friend, is chalk it up to experience and go hunting again.
And for goodness’ sake, pick the right game. Don’t try to play My Little Shadowrun: Friendship is Magic. It won’t work, unless you are doing it with a very intentional sense of irony and are prepared for your character’s naivety to be shattered IC.
Today, a freebie for you: Six player characters for the one-shot of your choosing. The characters are all interwoven, and have a variety of secrets which are open-ended enough for a wily GM to slot into any modern supernatural or horror system. I have used them as pre-generated characters for World of Darkness one-shots, where they have served well, but they would fit equally neatly into a modern Call of Cthulhu game, Supernatural, d20 Modern, Unknown Armies, Sorcerer, or The Whispering Vault.
They are designed to be on the cusp of discovering the supernatural world, and in the scenario I have involved them in they have been trapped on the Eurostar between London and Paris, heading to Disneyland for a Stag Weekend. Feel free to move them to another country to fit your own intentions.
N.B. In the UK, 16 is the Age of Consent. If you wish to change the country this is set in, be aware of this and alter Diana’s age accordingly.
Without further ado, then, here they are:
Twin brother: Gary, Fireman.
Younger sister: Diana Monahan, student who wants to be a model. 16 years old.
Fiancée: Fiona Samson, Trevor’s sister.
BA in Journalism from the University of Leicester.
Left university with a 2:1 and got a job as a researcher at XYZ Magazine. Has been there since, first promoted to staff writer, then to sub-editor.
Started hanging out with a few of the guys after work, down the pub, then a regular airsofting posse got together, consisting of Trevor (the IT guy), Gary, Phil (met at airsoft), Tom (XYZ Magazine’s resident photographer) and Ian (also met at airsoft).
Personality: Darren can vary from riotous bloke’s bloke to charmer to ladies’ man to aloof all in a day. At his core he’s very passionate, but his passions change on a whim. He can go from loving a film to hating it in a week, or from one girl to another in the same amount of time. That he’s stuck with Fiona for two years must be a sign!
Part of the rush to get married, though – and Darren would never admit this – is to have his brother as his best man before Gary’s testicular cancer kills him.
He knows a lot of really minor crap. Stuff he’s picked up from reading, watching TV, browsing the net, researching for assignments. He’s a consumer of knowledge, and sometimes that sets him apart from his mates. Sometimes he just knows the oddest shit that nobody else has heard of. But that’s OK. He just has to keep a lid on it when down the pub, unless they’re bashing away at one of the quiz machines.
Dirty little secret: Nobody but Darren and Gary’s boss knows Darren’s brother is dying. He’s kept it even from the rest of the family, and asked Darren do the same. Darren’s been able to see the signs, because he knows what he’s looking for, and he knows it’s metastasised to Gary’s liver now. But today… Today Gary looks healthy. Here’s hoping he stays that way until the wedding’s done.
Twin brother: Darren, sub-editor for XYZ Magazine.
Younger sister: Diana Monahan, student who wants to be a model. 16 years old.
Left school at 18 with a couple of A-levels and went straight into the Fire Brigade. Met most of the other guys either because they work with Darren or were at airsoft.
Personality: Gary’s a Man, with a capital M. He’s masculine, he’s proud of his physique, he’s proud of his ability to drink everyone else under the table, he’s proud that he’s self-sufficient, he’s proud that people depend on him. Deep down he genuinely believes in the goodness of people’s hearts, but that’s not exactly something you tell your mates unless you’re really, really bladdered.
Confidence took a real smash when he discovered the lump on his balls last year. It took months for him to bother seeing a doctor about it, by which time it was too late. It had metastasised to his liver. Three months ago he was given one year to live.
He didn’t tell anyone other than his brother and his boss. Putting on a brave face, laughing loud, dying on the inside.
Dirty little secret : Last week, in the oncology department, Gary was talking to another patient. Didn’t catch the guy’s name. Didn’t really catch much, actually. They got chatting about cancer and death, about being so young and helpless, about all their wasted opportunities. And the guy offered him a deal. A cure.
Gary laughed it off, as you do. Sure, he said. Cure me. Go on.
So the stranger did. And sooner or later there will be a price to pay.
GNVQ in motorcycle maintenance from Bournemouth College.
Met Darren and the others at an airsoft game a year or so ago, and have become good mates since.
Phil’s fairly well-known on the semi-pro superbike circuit. He yearns to go fully pro, but that means convincing one of the big teams to take him on, and after last week’s wipeout that may never happen.
Personality: Deep down, Phil wants to go too fast. He’ll push everything aside to go faster, faster, faster. He’s tried cocaine, speed, amphetamines, but nothing does it for him like riding a bike. If only it would go faster.
He can take a little pause now and then, slow down to the rest of the world, but sooner or later he’s got to get going again, get the blood pumping, get the wind pushing at his chest.
He’s a staunch, solid bloke though. A guy you can depend on. Just so long as you’re not asking him to stay off the bike for a few days. In fact, this stag do might be the longest Phil will go without a bike for years…
Dirty little secret: Last week, Phil came off his bike. Badly. Really, really badly. He pushed it too hard, too fast, on a bend. The bike was wrecked, and Phil should’ve been too, but he walked away from a 210Mph slam into the race track’s tirewall without a scratch. There’s only one possible explanation: incredible good luck. Right?
Sister: Fiona, Darren’s Fiancée.
BSc in Computer Science from the University of Hertfordshire
Trevor left uni and returned home to Bournemouth, landing a tech support role at XYZ Magazine. When Barry Johnson, the previous IT guy, left, Trevor was promoted. The downside, though, is they haven’t the money to get a replacement tech support guy, so Trevor now does everything, from managing the servers to fixing Luser problems.
After meeting Darren, one thing led to another, and the guy is now getting hitched to your sister. Obviously there was the initial need to protect her from this journo hack, but he’s a decent bloke, and you’re almost comfortable that he’s had your sister. But only ‘cause he’s marrying her.
Personality: Trevor is a gadget freak. If it’s new, he’s gotta have it. If it’s expensive, he’s gotta have it. He earns a phenomenal disposable income (and lives with his mum still) for a man his age, and he pisses it away on iPhones and SatNavs and PDAs and iPods and Blackberrys. He has a £10,000 stereo system that he can’t turn up loud because he lives in a terraced house. He’s £25,000 in debt after his student loan, but he just keeps buying more and more cool things because he has to have them.
He’s got a strong sense of right and wrong, and a feeling of power when it comes to his servers, Facebook, MySpace, Beebo, Twitter, and the vast number of internet forums he plugs away at, most of which he’s the number one poster on. He will come down hard on those who wrong him or his friends. He will punish hackers and noobs alike.
In the real world, of course… Bah, who’re we kidding? He’s just as opinionated and passionate. He’d just never put his mouth up against a fist. He’ll heckle and denounce from a safe distance. He’d ensure he was safe before condemning someone to their face.
BA in Photography from Southampton Solent University.
After finishing his degree, Tom went freelancing while working in a supermarket to pull in a little cash. After hiring models for portfolio glamour shoots he landed a full-time job at XYZ Magazine, and is more than happy there. He gets access to girls, he gets to put lenses and other gear on expenses, and he’s fallen in with a good bunch of mates.
Personality: Tom is quite frankly a lad’s lad. He spends his days taking photos of the hottest girls around while they’re in the nude, and getting paid for it. Wherever there’s a party he’ll be there. Whereever a girl is a little down and vulnerable, he’ll be there. He’s not a great drinker, preferring a little sobriety to keep control of himself and the and the situation, to make the best out of any opportunities that might come up. All to better to make sure he gets his pick of the ladies. Beyond the ladies he’s quite a loyal friend. He’d never think of hitting on a mate’s girl, that’s against the lads’ code. Family’s out. He tends to get the first round in. Tends to be the one that makes sure everyone gets home safely in the end. All in all probably the most popular of the guys.
Dirty little secret: Like all good glamour photographers he likes to introduce the new models to the real world. Offering to lay a few words in the right ear to help their career along, if of course they’re going to lay in his bed. Yesterday sadly this caused a little bit of a hiccup. He knew that Darren had mentioned the fact that his sister would be around the office. But he hadn’t quite realised who she was until… well one thing led to another and it’s a little awkward. 16’s legal and all, but Diana’s his best mate’s sister; of course Darren doesn’t want to hear about it on his stag do does he? Or… on the honeymoon. Or ever. It’s probably just something to keep to yourself.
Left school at 16 and immediately apprenticed himself with an independent Butcher’s shop in town. It’s a true art, a man in perfect synchronicity with his job. These days, of course, he’s no apprentice.
He met Darren at the others at an airsoft game a year or so back.
Personality: Ian is probably best described as troubled. It started when he was young, like all kids he had imaginary friends, but his were a little more verbose. A little more pushy, making him do things that perhaps weren’t quite right. Play with matches… look in widows where people were doing things a little too adult… skinning the neighbour’s cat. Through it all he kept a measure of sense about him a feeling that it wasn’t quite… right. As he grew up he started to forget such things but there was always a kernel of that influence left, his desire to become a butcher, and not a supermarket kind. The proper kind, the ones that have to feel the life draining from the animals they kill. The need to learn how to defend himself, the Russian martial arts, the love of the feel of a cool blade in his hand. It wasn’t about wanting to hurt others. It was about the knowledge that there were things… Things that would want to hurt him, and that sensation’s been growing stronger again. Try and he might to hide it it’s getting harder and harder to pretend he doesn’t feel those little tingles. The shudder that accompanies some people’s proximity.
Still he’s found some friends at least, true he’s not as close as he might like, everyone keeps him at just a little distance, but that’s okay. It’s better than being alone all the time, his Airsoft games with the guys. Giving them a little extra meat when they come shopping. It’s the little gestures that remind him of his humanity.
Dirty little secret: Ian’s feelings that something’s not right have been getting worse again. It’s like when he was a kid. Little urges to do things he’s not comfortable with. But this time he’s older. Wiser a Territorial Army soldier he can handle anything. Especially with that knife he’s started carrying. He won’t need it, but well it’s just a reassurance, a solidity of purpose that comes with the training.
Worse, though, in spite of having known them for a year or so, something’s suddenly not right with Gary and Phil. They look the same, they act the same, but they just… give off that vibe, the feeling that they’re not right…
Any player or GM participating in a role-playing campaign should strive to know as much about their characters as the character would know about themselves.
If you want to portray a three-dimensional person who has a life all of their own you will need a really good idea of who they are, what events shaped them, how their past informs their outlook on life, and why they want whatever it is they’re after. This goes for PCs and NPCs alike: don’t cheap your hard-working players by giving them transparent NPCs to interact with. A pause while you struggle to make up an answer to an unexpected question can interrupt the flow of a game.
Two-dimensional characters often come about from an outline such as this:
David was born in 1965. He discovered he was a wizard at the age of 13, and since then has been studying really hard. He is now a really powerful wizard. He lives in San Francisco.
What? Is that it? David’s whole life revolves around him being a wizard? Has he no family, friends, rivals, enemies, pets, favourite foods, lovers, overdue books at the library, or any other influence which could turn him from a dull set of facts into a living, breathing person?
You might be making a powerful wizard living in San Francisco, but he’s also a human being. Well, he is for the purposes of this example. Here’s a shortish checklist of things a human being generally knows about himself*:
That is your starting point for a human being. If your character is from another race, he’ll know just as much about himself, as well as facts pertinent to his race’s culture – he may not know what “school” is, but his race might follow a rigid path of indentured servitude or military service, about which he’d know just as much as a human does about their school days.
If your character is an amnesiac, you still need to know these things. Your character may still have enemies, but he is unaware of them. He may be up to his eyeballs in debt, and not know. But you, his creator, must know, unless he’s a PC and your GM is willing to do all the graft for you.
Once you have the bare bones, layer in what makes your character stand out from the crowd. What makes him the hero, the antagonist, the ally, or the Tin Dog? What makes him get his arse off the sofa / rock / grassy knoll and get involved in a story? Much of this comes from the world the game is set in: If your world is contemporary London with Vampires, did a Vampire kill his sister? If your world is a distant planet with spleen-sucking aliens, did he witness a spleen being sucked and get so terrified that he’s acting purely in self-defence? Has he been living a dual life, or has this taken over his life? Is he in contact with his world, or has he been removed (or removed himself) from it?
Since stepping off the path of dull, normal life, who has he met? Has anyone taught him what he now knows? Has he teamed up with others who seek the same goals? Is he still with them? If not, why not? Has his new life utterly changed his personality? Was he an easy-going guy before dog-faced beetles chewed his father’s head off? Have new-found powers made him overconfident, or does the new playing field scare him to death?
I mentioned earlier that your characters are after something. This is vital. Without desire, they won’t move forward.
So let’s look at David the San Francisco wizard. Let’s say we now know what school he attended, what happened to his parents, who mentored him in magic, and all those other great facts. Instead of a couple of lines we now have two or three pages of background (or more – don’t be shy now). With all these facts you’ll have a better idea of the kind of guy he is – trust me, you will. How he’s dealt with enemies in the past will inform how he deals with them in your campaign. Does he hurl fireballs, or does he retreat to the library and research his foe? Is he too prone to losing his temper, or is he such a perfectionist that enemies run unchecked while his nose is in a book?
Why does he do what he does? Does he want to become all-powerful, or does he want revenge? Does he want to protect those unable to defend themselves, or does he want to rule the world? Does he seek to cure his wife from a Lich’s curse, or does he want to become a Lich himself? If he doesn’t want something, he won’t strive for it, much as if you don’t want money you won’t bother turning up to work every day.
Oh yeah. Now we’re down to the guts of it. What is it that your character needs, that he’s unaware of? What would truly solve his problems? He may want revenge, but maybe what he needs is closure, and revenge won’t give it to him. Maybe he wants to find that cure, but what he needs is to recognise and accept that even his power can’t achieve everything. Perhaps he wants to protect the defenceless, but he needs someone to make him feel protected.
What he wants and what he needs should conflict one-another. And the moment you give him either, his story is over, unless you can replace one want or need with another want or need. Remember that if you want a character to last a whole campaign.
In writing terms, this is called The Crucible. To put it simply, what keeps characters together needs to be stronger than what might pull them apart, or your PCs might all spin off into heroic loners and refuse to cooperate with the rest of the group. Like any good crucible, your characters might want to escape it, but the process might fundamentally change them.
GMs, don’t railroad your players. The key is to make your crucible so pervasive that the PCs want to solve the problem: Han Solo doesn’t want to fight the Empire, but he’s getting paid, and develops a soft spot for Leia, so he goes along; Frodo could sit back and decide the One Ring isn’t his problem, but the Shire is in danger, and if he doesn’t join the Fellowship he won’t have anywhere to eat his Second Breakfast; Sarah Connor’s hunter is not going to stop unless she makes it stop, or she will die.
Not all crucibles need to be so life-or-death. It could simply be a character’s day job to be involved, or he might be a decent guy who’d love to help out and is led by his own moral code.
It may seem like a lot of preparation work, but once your character is thrust into the game, you’ll feel ready to put him through the wringer!
*Herself, or any other gender you are making.
I’m down with punching an Elf in the face as much as the next guy, so I had a go at Blood Bowl: Team Manager recently.
Opening the box, everything was as nicely produced as any other Fantasy Flight product. Excellent artwork, good quality cards, and a rules book which makes sense. No nasty surprises in there.
Gameplay is simple. You have a row of pitches, and a hand of cards which represents the players available to you to place either side of a pitch. Pitches offer different rewards for both attending and winning, but only two players can be involved on any single pitch, so you gain an advantage in going first by picking the pitch with the rewards you want to aim for over the next five rounds.
Each player takes a turn in placing one of their team in an available slot, and each turn takes as many cards as you start with that round – first round takes seven turns, second takes six, and so on. Cards have their abilities written clearly on them, so there’s rarely a need to refer back to the rulebook once you’re underway. Common abilities include beating the snot out of an opposing player, grabbing the ball, or cheating.
Cheats are represented by little tokens which you put on a team-member who is cheating, and they aren’t revealed until a match is over. These could include your star player being sent off for said cheating, but more often than not give additional fans or star rating to that player. Star rating’s what you need more of to win a match, but fans are what you need to win the game overall.
Overall I wasn’t really keen on this game. It suffers the problem where if you begin winning early on, you steamroll ahead of the other players and their ability to catch up by the end falls further and further behind. Winning yourself Star Players to add to your team early on vastly seems to be of more use than aiming for Staff or Team Upgrades (certainly from those which came into play during our game, at least), and the theoretically balancing aspect of Cheat Tokens only ever saw two cards sent off for bad behaviour. More often they led to matches which were close suddenly becoming vastly in the cheating team’s favour.
It wasn’t bad, I just wouldn’t choose to play it if another game was on offer.
Troo Grit 