Review - Fireteam Zero: The Europe Cycle

Designed by Mike Langlois and Christian Leonhard
Published by Emergent Games
For 1-4 players, aged 14 to adult

Regulars to my blog may have noticed things have been a bit quiet around here lately. Part of the reason was I needed a bit of time to take stock following what can only be described as a disastrous attempt to carve out a little niche on Patreon. Part of the reason was I needed a bit of time to get my new YouTube channel off the ground. However, the main reason was I simply didn't have any time at all.

The Walking Dead: No Sanctuary - Inane Ramblings About Kickstarter

IPs aren't bullet proof. Miniatures games on Kickstarter aren't guaranteed to generate $1 million in pledges. Sometimes even a Plan B isn't enough.

These are the things that the current Kickstarter campaign for The Walking Dead: No Sanctuary has taught us.

It's been a painful lesson, and much like a bite from a walker, has caused a lot of backers to groan, gnash their teeth, and develop a thirst for human blood.

However, unlike a bite from a zombie, it looks like this little incident doesn't end with a bullet to the head.

In fact, unlike most zombie stories, this one has a happy ending.

Gloom of Kilforth - Inane Ramblings About Kickstarter

To quote a very famous song: "A dream is a wish your heart makes, when you're fast asleep."

True enough. But nobody ever fulfilled their dreams sleeping in on Sunday mornings.

I learned early that in this life, you tend to have to make your own dreams come true while you're wide awake.

I decided I wanted to become a writer when I was 12 years old, and I wrote my first novel (it was terrible) when I was 15 years old.

I don't remember a time when I didn't want to write.

Nova Aetas: Inane Ramblings About Kickstarter

I grew up with Zelda.

I don't mean literally. That would be weird.

But I grew up playing Zelda. However, all that running around and bouncing into people with swords didn't really interest me all that much.

What I really loved was the tactical thrill of crushing enemies on the battlefield in turn-based roleplaying games. I think it's because I was a boardgamer before I was a video gamer, and playing too much Heroquest had ingrained it in my mind that all good games require a little grid of squares for working out movement.

The Shining Force series on the Mega Drive was my favourite. Interesting characters, cool powers and levelling up options, groovy in-fight animations, a challenging campaign, and dynamic music that changes whenever someone attacks. Man, I used to really panic when that music played and one of my healers was in the line of fire.

Best of all, when you look at the battle map where you move your units around, everyone does this little jigging on the spot thing that makes them look like they want to go to the toilet.

It's adorable.

Beyond Shining Force, there was Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem, Valkyrie Profile... You get the idea.

Those games, along with other roleplaying games such as Secret of Mana, Landstalker, and (yes), The Legend of Zelda, sculpted my formative years. It's no wonder that, as an adult, I write children's fantasy adventure stories. You can see the influence of those games in a lot of my work.

So, you can imagine my excitement when I stumbled across the Kickstarter campaign for Nova Aetas.

If you don't know what Kickstarter is, it is basically a crowdfunding system. You give developers some money to make something, and then you usually get a copy of the thing they make.

I pretty much swore off Kickstarter after the unimaginable depths of my disappointment with the game Myth, but then Nova Aetas came along.

It's a pretty tempting proposition. Set in an alternative "Dark Renaissance" populated with famous historical figures and monsters such as fawns and centaurs, it promises tactical combat in a linked campaign.

Leonardo... Not the turtle.

Players select a small group of heroes, and advance through a series of battles, levelling up and progressing through a skill tree that is clearly inspired by many video game roleplaying titles. Part of the evolution of the characters involves hunting for creatures, harvesting the corpses, and then crafting your own fabulous weapons. You also get the chance to meet NPCs, and then hire them, or piss them off and fight them instead.

Choices made by players dictate how the story unfolds, and the available missions, and there are three different endings for one campaign.



The apprentice mage skill tree.

It all sounds pretty interesting, but a campaign means nothing without good mechanisms to back it up, and here I think Nova Aetas offers something special.

Each mission involves opposing forces on a grid, and every character has a certain number of action points. A special device called a horologium marks the passage of time (and the length of the battle). When the minute hand moves around to a space containing character tokens, the associated characters get to activate in speed order. They use action points to move, fight, and use special powers, and for each action point their token moves one space on the horologium. The character is then unable to act again until the minute hand catches up with them.

Now, players of The World of Warcraft: Miniature Game may recognise this as being similar to the u-base system. And it is, but with one massive improvement... No bloody u-bases. Man, those things were crap.



The horologium

Furthermore, the villains in the game run on an AI, so everybody gets to be a hero. I have come to realise that, when it comes to this sort of game, I really prefer a co-operative setup where everyone plays against the game, rather than one person having to command the bad guys. Of course, a good AI system isn't easy to create, but from what we know about Nova Aetas, this one seems pretty solid. Each hero represents a threat level, which gets higher as they do bothersome stuff like bashing in the skulls of the bad guys. While the threat level is low, the heroes get ignored, but as the threat level increases, they suddenly become much more interesting.

So, there is is... Nova Aetas. A "Dark Renaissance" tactical roleplaying skirmish thingy, with some very nice looking plastic miniatures, and what appears to be a good set of game mechanisms. The game has already funded, and the combat rules are available to read. That has to be worth a look right?

I'll stick a link...

HERE

So you can see for yourself.



Look. The link's up there.

Now, before I sign off, I have to throw out the usual warnings and caveats. I am not affiliated with this Kickstarter campaign in any way, it is just a game that I thought looked cool. I do not have any insider information. I do not even know if the final game is going to be any good. If you want to back the game, that's cool. Tell them Kevin sent you.

Just don't blame me if the final product doesn't live up to everything I hope it will be.

Happy gaming, folks.

ADDENDUM (30/03/2015):

Sadly, as the campaign for Nova Aetas progressed, it became apparent that the company had not prepared well. They were translating the rulebook on the fly, and had no adequate gameplay videos to show off all the interesting nuances the game promised. Eventually, backers started to pull out, and even though the game was fully funded, eventually enough people fled the sinking ship to defund the project completely.

It's a shame it happened, and I very much hope Nova Aetas returns in the future. Better videos, the beta rules, and more images of completed miniatures could make all the difference. For now, this is just an example of why it is so important to prepare well before launching on Kickstarter. Sometimes, the promise of awesomeness simply isn't enough to get those backer dollars rolling in (and staying in).


* All photographs are the property of Ludus Magnus Studio LLC. Reproduced here with kind permission.

I Love a Good Bargain

I love a bargain. I'm one of those people who buys an extra bottle of milk he doesn't need, just because it's "buy one, get one half price." There's nothing quite like the satisfaction of kicking back with a long, cool glass of slightly gone-off milk, knowing you got it for marginally less than the usual sticker price.

My love of bargains explains why I spend so much time in charity shops searching for that elusive copy of Heroquest, and an equal amount of time in Poundland, hoping there might be some discontinued card game that has somehow turned up among all the broken toys and blind-packaged oddities.

And my love of bargains is why I bought Coin Age.

Coin Age is one of those games that came into existence following a successful Kickstarter campaign.

(You know, Kickstarter: that site where you pay a load of money and then, at an unspecified time in the future, someone sends you a box of disappointment.)

Normally, when I back something on Kickstarter I am pretty excited about the prospect of receiving it. Coin Age was the exception. I backed it solely because you could get the game delivered to your door for just $3. Okay, I paid $5, which was the suggested minimum amount, but I didn't have to... I love a bargain, but I'm not an asshole.

So, I dropped my $5, and then pretty much forgot all about this game. Which is just as well, because it was delayed by about six months. If I had been waiting expectantly for its arrival, I might have been a bit annoyed.

Then, this Saturday, after I had spent the day painting a garden fence (it was a big fence), I came into the house to find the postman had dropped off a little envelope with Coin Age printed on the front. Which was a nice surprise.

Postman's been.

And it's pretty cool considering what I paid.

Inside the envelope there is a plastic ziplock bag, a rule sheet, two punchboards of tokens (for people who don't want to play the game with real money), four sticker sheets (for people who fancy defacing their pocket change), two double-sided game boards the size of playing cards, and one game board made in plastic so you can slip it in your credit card wallet.

Isle Oyou... Get it?... I'LL OWE YOU! HAHAHAHA!

I admit, I wasn't quite as excited opening this as I was receiving my two Dark Darker Darkest Kickstarter boxes, but that is hardly surprising.

But yeah... It's all really nice. The punchboards are relatively thick, the game boards are good quality and nicely printed, and the rules are clear.

Money money money...

The game itself is a simple area control game, but it looks like it has some good strategy for such a compact title. I'm not going to review the game just yet, because I haven't played it. But I should be able to get some games in with Mrs Never Boring soon.

So, until then, I guess that's all I have to say.

Now, you'll have to excuse me. I left some milk out, and I really should go drink it...

Review - oddball Aeronauts

oddball Aeronauts
Designed by Nigel Pyne
Published by maverick muse
For 2 players, aged 9 to adult

Beautiful box, beautiful art.

Hey, you! Yeah, you... The guy with the cool game launching on Kickstarter. Your game looks fantastic. I love the artwork. The theme is great. The concept seems decent. Over 100 zombie miniatures! Woo hoo. Where do I sign?

Actually, hold on a  minute... Just wait... Can you do me a favour first? You see your rulebook? Yeah, that one. Do me a favour... burn it. Because it's junk. Tear it up, and start again, because you need to.

What do you mean, "how do I know?"

Just a lucky guess...

Okay, okay, hands up. I'm being a little unfair here. I only have limited experience with Kickstarter, and I know there are many campaigns that produce exceptional games with excellent rulebooks. But for the campaigns I have followed, poor rulebooks seem to be a recurring theme. I guess a lot of companies do not employ a technical editor, or fail to run the rules by enough playtesters first. It's a real shame, because sometimes a bad rulebook can really hurt a game.

For example, I backed Dark Darker Darkest, and I love it. Unfortunately, there was not enough attention to detail with the rules, and while they were by no means terrible, they did end up getting rewritten by the designer, with some assistance from me and a group of very cool users from the BoardGameGeek community.

For example, I backed Myth... I think I'll leave that one there.

For example, I nearly backed Fallen City of Karez. (Breathes sigh of relief.)

For example, I backed oddball Aeronauts...

For those of you who don't know, oddball Aeronauts is a two-player card game with an interesting little twist: You do not need a table or playing surface of any kind. When I saw the game on Kickstarter, I was immediately enamoured by the concept of a light, two-player game that I could play sitting on the couch with my wife in the evening, without having to roll out the gaming table. That image fixed in my mind, and was ultimately why I backed. The fact the game has absolutely gorgeous artwork was a nice bonus.

Indeed, when the game arrived, I was very impressed with the overall presentation; although I was disappointed to discover there was a considerable colour difference between cards, with some having white frames, and some having cream frames.

The cards are stunning.

The game actually seemed pretty solid too. Each player has a hand of cards, representing the crew of a fantastical ship. Each turn, the players pick a combat skill (steering, guns, or boarding) to attack with, and then they select one, two, or three of their top cards to commit to the fight. The top card has a primary value in the selected ability, and the other cards provide a secondary bonus value. The players reveal their totals, and the highest score wins.

Most cards also have a special trick (which is a bad choice of word for a card game, where "trick" normally means a round of play). On each turn, players may play one trick, which in most cases is the trick on their top card. These tricks may add extra bonuses, or hinder an opponent in some way; but I'll talk more about them in a while.

Once the players have determined a winner for the round, something happens based on which type of combat ability the winner used. First, both players discard all the cards they played. They do this by turning the cards upside down and placing them at the bottom of their decks. If the winner used steering, he or she may immediately search down the deck for the first two face down cards, and then recover them by turning them face up again. If the winner used guns, the loser has to discard an additional two cards. If the winner used boarding, the winner recovers one card, and the loser discards one extra card.

If, at any point, a player's entire deck is face down, that player loses.

So, that all sounds a little bit like Top Trumps with some extra rules tagged on, right? Sure it does, but I promise you, this is one of those games that is greater than the sum of its parts, and it really doesn't play anything like Top Trumps. In fact, there is a surprising amount of strategy packed into this little game.

A little bit too much, really.

While the basic concept is pick a combat skill, select a number of cards from one to three, and then compare results, there are a lot of other rules that feed into that basic framework and create a startling number of tactical options.

The most obvious thing is the tricks, especially the ones that allow you to reorder the cards in your deck. However, perhaps even more interesting is the way in which the combats play out. For example, you may have a strong hand to win using the steering skill, allowing you to recover two cards; but you know your opponent only has a few cards left, so you really want to attack with guns to force extra discards.

And then there is determining how many cards to play. Is it really worth playing three cards when you use the steering option? You have to discard all the cards you play, and then you would only get to recover two.

Between the use of tricks, the use of special magic tricks that you can use even if they are not on the top of the deck, the decision of how many cards to play (and which ones), the decision of which combat skill to use, and the inclusion of special events that trigger if they turn up in the top three cards of a player's deck, it can all be a bit... overwhelming. You may actually end up looking at the top five or six cards in your deck, working out different permutations, and what would happen based on different outcomes in the current round.

For a light filler game, there is a surprising risk of analysis paralysis setting in, and what should be a quick five-minute game may run a lot longer than that.

It's like Top Trumps and Chess had a baby.

Now, normally I am not one to complain about having too many options; but I'm making an exception for oddball Aeronauts, because I think it is indicative of my main problem with the game: It really doesn't know what it wants to be.

It dresses up like a quick 15-minute War-like game that you can break out with casual gamers in a bus queue; but it is actually a pretty meaty game, with a surprising number of special powers, and unusual combinations. And it comes with a "first player" token. If I'm supposed to play this game in the hand without a table, where do I put this token, exactly?

WHY???

There are even deck-building rules, so you can construct your own personal decks. I have no idea what benefit there is to deck construction. It seems like a lot of effort; and does swapping a card that gives you +1 steering and +2 guns with a card that gives you +2 steering and +1 guns really make a difference? How would you even know in advance which of those cards is the better one to take, when the game is more about tactics than strategy?

I have introduced this game to three different people now, and they have all said the same thing: It's a cool idea, and the way it plays in the hand is nifty (especially discarding cards upside down at the bottom of the deck), but there is a lot of "bloat" and "cludginess" that could have been excised for a smoother game experience.

Ultimately, I think this game has suffered for going through the Kickstarter process. I know, I know... If it wasn't for Kickstarter, this game may never have existed. But, by going through Kickstarter, it seems like there was no-one to step in and say, "You know, you can probably remove that element of the game, or simplify it a bit."

Here's an example of just one of the tricks on one of the cards to illustrate the point:

DEF +4 [boarding] vs [steering][guns]

Now, what that power means is, if you play boarding, and your opponent plays steering or guns, and you have the lowest total score (therefore losing the round), you get to add +4 to your result, and if that means your score is now higher, the result of the round is a draw.

That is a very specific combination of events required in order to trigger the trick, and the result if it does trigger seems a bit strange. It seems complicated for the sake of it. And almost every card has a different trick, a good chunk of which come into effect on the following round, if a certain condition is met in the current round. There are even tricks that you can only use if you happen to be the first player at the time.

And then there are the rules... You didn't think I'd forgotten about the rules, did you?

Rules - they ain't so hot.

For a game that, at its core, is so simple, the rules are terrible. They are in no particularly coherent order, they are poorly worded, and at one point, rather than explaining when a player should play tricks, it just says, "most tricks are obvious when to play during a round." Rulebooks should never assume players are clever enough to figure out that sort of thing without a clear explanation, because one of the players might be me.

Oh, and there isn't a single example of play in the rulebook, although there are several pages on deck-building, several pages of fluff, and some stuff about future faction pack expansions.

Everyone loves dragons, right?

For the first few days with the game, I had to study the cards carefully, constantly referencing the rulebook; and I had to ask multiple questions on BoardGameGeek (which the designer and other helpful people were good enough to answer). It certainly wasn't what I expected from a light game.

And I guess that sums up my review: oddball Aeronauts was not what I expected.

Often, while I am playing, I notice I have started to think too hard about my next play. When this happens, I force myself to make a snap decision; because in my heart I know this is a light filler game that you shouldn't be thinking about too carefully. But my head strongly disagrees.

It is not a bad game. Far from it. It is an incredibly clever game, with a surprising depth of tactical options; and I think a lot of people are going to enjoy it. But it just isn't as lean as I wanted it to be. It needed someone to come in and trim off some of the fat. It needed just a little bit more finesse.

The game is certainly and oddball, and well worth checking out; but I do not think these aeronauts reach the lofty heights of their potential.

The oddballs Have Landed...

The other day I heard the postman desperately attempting to jam a package through my letterbox. I wasn't expecting anything, so it was quite exciting as I opened the package to see what it was. Turns out it was oddball Aeronauts, a little card game that I backed on Kickstarter a while back and then pretty much forgot about. A nice surprise.

Excitedly, I opened the box to check out what my money had bought. My impressions were mixed, which seems to be a running theme with games I Kickstart.

First of all, the box for the game is stunning. It is sturdy and compact, and the artwork is lovely. That artwork continues onto the cards, which have a clean design and look amazing. There was also a very attractive enamel pin, which was one of the Kickstarter stretch goals. I wouldn't ever wear it, and it is quite small; but it looks really good.

Unfortunately, I was not so impressed by anything else, and there were some missed opportunities to make things really shine.

The game includes a "first player" token, which is simply a wooden disc. Why there wasn't a stretch goal for a sticker to put on one side is beyond me. It would have made the token something that you could flip, and would have looked more attractive.

The tin that was available as a stretch goal was also a bit of a fail. I was never particularly excited about the tin anyway, but considering it is not big enough to fit all the cards, it is almost entirely pointless. In addition, it wasn't a printed tin; it came with a sticker to apply by hand. That would be fine if the sticker was the right size and shape.

Finally, I found the rules to be poorly written. There isn't a single example of play to go through, hardly any diagrams, and several sections where I simply could not work out how to play. For a simple two-player card game, that isn't great.

However, the game itself does look like a lot of fun, and the cards truly are beautiful. As it stands at the moment, despite how negative I sound, I am glad I backed the game. Additionally, this game turned up early, complete, and with no manufacturing defects. That right there makes it one of the best Kickstarter games ever.

Once I have played a few times, I will post a review.

Review - Dark Darker Darkest

Dark Darker Darkest
Published by Queen Games
Designed by David Ausloos
For 2-5 players, aged 12 to adult


Okay, before I start this review, I'm going to lay my cards on the table. I backed Dark Darker Darkest on Kickstarter. It was not the first game I backed, but it was the first (and currently only) game that actually arrived at my house. Additionally, I was one of the people who had some involvement in the second edition of the rules book (on a voluntary basis). So, yeah, this game is a little bit special to me. If you feel that either of those things in any way devalues or negates my opinion, better jog on, because there is a big, fat dollop of opinion heading your way... right... now...

Er...

Now...

Anyone who frequents this blog knows I am a sucker for a game that tells a story (yeah, I'm talking about stories again). There is something joyous about sitting at a table with a group of friends, and creating a unique adventure in another world. What that means is Dark Darker Darkest was a very easy sell for me. You see, Dark Darker...

Wait. You know what? I've got to say this first. Dark Darker Darkest is a bloody awful name for a game. It doesn't really mean anything. And if you say it quickly you sound like that guy from Team America: World Police, flailing his arms around in the jeep.

Right. Got that out of the way. I feel better now.

Where was I?

Right. Dark Darker Darkest turned up on the Kickstarter website at a time when I was beginning to despair. I had recently received Zombicide, and had found it a little dull and a little clunky. I was thinking it had reached the point where there was never going to be a good zombie game, despite the industry churning out new games about necrotic fiends on a bi-weekly basis.



"Hey, look! Another game about zombies!"

But then there was Dark Darker Darkest: A game that involved a group of everyday people sneaking into a fortified manor house to hunt down a mad scientist and then steal the antidote for the virus that is ravaging the population.

Yeah. It's Resident Evil, the board game.

Ker-ching!



And these are supposed to be the good guys?

More than just a zombie game, this was a game that promised the thrill of being hunted through cramped hallways by reanimated dogs, undead birds, infected gorillas, and giant snakes. It's like the worst day trip to the zoo ever.

(Please note, I do not believe there is a gorilla or snake in the retail game, they were extras that Kickstarter backers got, and which other gamers might get at some point in an expansion. Sorry, folks!)

So I backed the game. I only backed at the basic pledge level which got me the game and the stretch goals, as I didn't feel the need to buy anything else; and I was incredibly excited when two gigantic boxes arrived at my house. I mean BIG boxes. It's a game about zombies, and I thought there might actually be a real corpse in there.

(Please note, my excitement was slightly dampened by the absence of a whole bunch of stuff that Queen still haven't sent to me, and are unlikely to send to me for some while yet. Never mind, the game's the thing...)

If you were to explain Dark Darker Darkest to someone, the first thing you would do is tell them to ignore the stupid name. Then you would tell them that the game involves a small group of people moving around a mansion which you create from a big stack of nicely illustrated tiles. Some tiles have cameras which you need to try to avoid, and some tiles are locked. Avoid or kill the zombies, unlock the doors, find the antidote, and escape. You'll be back home in time for Scooby Snacks.



Sorry. If I'd known you were coming, I would have cleaned up.

But describing what this game is really doesn't do justice to what this game is.

You see, The Big Ds is a co-operative game. Everyone works together to win against the game system. And it is one of those beautiful co-operative games that genuinely feels co-operative. It achieves this with a fabulous team mechanism. At the start of each turn, you look at where people are in the house. Any people on the same tile form a group. You then create an order in which the groups will activate. Every character within each group gets a set number of actions (moving, searching, attacking), but those characters do not have to take those actions in a strict order. One person could move and shoot, then pass control to someone else in the group who searches, who then passes control back to the first person, and so on. Only once all the characters have exhausted all of their actions does control move to the next group, who then get to take their actions.



The team tracker.

Do you see what I'm saying?

Do you see?

If all of your characters start the turn together, then you just get one big turn for everyone to act in, and there is no strict order for characters to move in, and you can hop back and forth between characters as much as you want. But if you spread your characters out, then they all act independently.

And did I mention that every time a group finishes activating, zombies and creatures in the house might respond to the sound the group has made, and lurch into abnormal life, hunting down survivors to gnaw on their entrails?

I didn't?

They do. And the fire might spread too.

I didn't mention fire?

Man, I suck at reviews. Which is really worrying considering what this blog is all about.

But anyway, do you see? Do you see why Triple D is so cool?

The game encourages you to forge a unit, to stick together and work as a team. It actively encourages you to act like you would bloody well act in a zombie apocalypse.

If you are one of those people who watches horror movies and says, "Why are they splitting up?" Well, this is the game for you.

Or, maybe it isn't.

Because there is another mechanism in this game that is either going to make or break it for you. You see, for all the plastic zombie miniatures, and the brooding artwork, and the fire - oh God, the fire - this whole game revolves around a mechanism which is its most magnificent triumph and its biggest failure.

Unlocking doors.

The whole game is about unlocking doors.

Throughout the mansion there are locked door tokens. When you get close to them, you flip them over to reveal two or three coloured symbols. Every item you start with, and every item you find in the mansion, has a coloured symbol on it. If a bunch of people have items with icons that match all the icons on the door token, you can unlock the door. You then keep the token, and you can cash it in later on a "security panel" to break the code that is sealing the entrance to the mad scientist's laboratory.



The security panel.

(Please note (really? Again?), in the original rules for the game, one person had to have all the items required to unlock a door. This was changed in the revised rules, which you can find over on the BoardGameGeek website.)

This is the game's greatest triumph, because it creates agonising decisions for the players, and gives the game a heavy dose of resource management which is often lacking from other games of this sort. For example, you are out of ammo, and there are zombies closing in; but you really need the icon that appears on your spare ammo clip. If you reload, you lose that icon, and you cannot unlock the door. If you cannot unlock the door, you cannot win. If you don't reload, the zombies eat your brains, and you cannot win.

(Not winning is a really big aspect of this game, by the way.)

But this mechanism for unlocking doors is also the game's biggest failure, because it is so absolutely, totally, unapologetically unthematic.

You know what? I don't care. It is a concession the designer chose to make for the sake of making the game gruelling, tense, and entertaining. And it works. Managing your equipment is like a mini-game. You have to finely balance the useful weapons you want for fighting zombies, with the tat you need for unlocking doors.

And when you do finally unlock the laboratory, the game flips on its head. The group activation mechanism I talked about earlier transforms into this crazy Euro-style worker-placement type thing where the group can "place" six actions at a time, after which the bad guys react. Used actions are then locked out for several turns before being returned to the players, so there is a chance certain characters may have to miss a turn and you never have quite enough actions for what you want to do. And of course, the whole time, the crazy scientist (or one of his relatives) is attempting to set fire to the mansion with you still in it.

It's bat-shit crazy.

And absolutely joyous.

And you might hate it.



Wooden cubes? In a thematic game? Heresy!

You might hate it because, while I think the artwork is incredible and sets the game apart from anything else in my collection, you might think it looks ugly and drab. You might hate it because the miniatures aren't great (a friend of mine said they were like "cheap army men"). You might hate it because the price in the UK makes you want to be a bit sick in your mouth. You might hate it because the iconography on the cards is often difficult to understand, and you will need to reference player aids during every game unless you are really familiar with everything. You might hate it because it is so bloody difficult to win.

And you might hate it because it chucks about a dozen mechanisms into the pot and stirs them together into a stew that some people are going to think is awesome and some people will think is stew.

I guess that's as fair as I can be about the game. I love it. It is the zombie game I wanted all previous zombie games to be. It does that thing where it takes great game mechanisms and dunks them in a vat of theme, and while some of the theme might drip off on your shirt, there is still lots of tasty theme left to enjoy. No, wait. I'm thinking about fondue, aren't I?

But the theme is strong in this one. Even with those idiosyncratic rules that don't quite gel.

Need an example?

Here's an example of something that happened in one of my games:

Towards the end stages of the game, a fire was running rampant through the house, and it looked like the whole place was going to burn down. While Lucy Chang ran to get into the laboratory, Leo and Bunny accessed the sprinkler system, dousing the flames. It was a losing battle, but Leo was keeping the fire at bay just long enough to stop the game ending through the destruction of too many mansion tiles.



Character board.

Lucy opened the laboratory, and the crazy scientist lurched at her through the billowing smoke. She set to him with a baseball bat, and for the next two turns they wrestled with each other as the scientist approached the sprinkler room.

Eventually outpacing Lucy, the scientist entered the sprinkler system room. He thrust Bunny into the adjacent room and attacked Leo. As the scientist tore bloody chunks from Leo, he glanced at Bunny, and nodded. She knew what he meant.

With trembling hands, she pulled the pin from the grenade she had found earlier, and lobbed it into the room, bringing the whole place crashing down on the two combatants.



This icon does not mean throw grenades at the one you love.

You can chalk that up to a win for the good guys, and a climax that rivals any number of horror films.

And that is why I love the D-Meister.

I can't say you will love this game too, but I can say you should definitely try it if you get the chance.

If nothing else, you will have some stories to tell.

Fireteam Zero: Inane Ramblings about Kickstarter

Okay, I don't normally do this sort of thing, but it's Saturday evening, my wife is about to head off to work, and I am bored, so screw it... I'm going to talk about a game I'm backing on Kickstarter. This is not a review, it's just some directionless ramblings about a game I liked the look of and threw some money at. Hell, the game isn't even out yet, and won't be for some time.

(If you don't know how Kickstarter works, it is basically a crowdfunding website: You give someone money, they use the money to make something, and then they usually send you a copy of that something. Or they run off with your money.)

(Oh, and fair warning: Everything that follows is my opinion based only on what I have seen on the Kickstarter campaign. I am not privy to any "behind the scenes" stuff. I may be wrong about everything. Caveat emptor. And so on.)

The game in question is Fireteam Zero, which is based on a series of books. The premise is simple: In World War II, an undercover team of badass soldiers takes on supernatural entities in a series of gruelling close-combat scenarios. The soldiers co-operate to achieve a mission, while grotesque, nightmarish monsters swarm towards them in never-ending waves. It's like being in a pressure cooker.

With teeth.

That right there is a hook to swing on.

So, the theme initially sold me on the game. Alternative history stuff is always interesting, and this game does some interesting things with it. I mean, the box art depicts the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima, except the soldiers are driving that flag into a squirming mass of barely identifiable tentacled things.

However, there are two things I really like about the theme. I'm going to list them. Course I am...

1. It's not Lovecraft. At least, not as far as I am concerned.

I absolutely love the work of H. P. Lovecraft, but I feel his work has been used too often as a source for board games. While some people are comparing Fireteam Zero to Lovecraft, the themes are quite different. Fireteam's theme is a fusion of body horror and the supernatural. Having a few creatures with tentacles does not mean the theme is Lovecraftian. Or, at least, I don't think it does.

2. It's schlocky.

I am a big fan of horror movies, and when I look at the creatures in Fireteam, I see many things that remind me of cool, schlock-horror films I love. I see references to The Thing, Slither, The Devil's Chair, Blood Beach, Night of the Scarecrow, Infestation, Blood Glacier, and many other films. And that's just cool.

So, I was already hooked on the theme, and then I saw the gameplay. One of my favourite board games is Gears of War, which is a co-operative game in which a small group of marines work together against a horde of aliens. It is a superb game that allows you to act on an ally's turn by playing cards from your hand that have different "support" benefits. Unfortunately, Fantasy Flight Games never really ran with it, and apart from a small expansion, the game was pretty much neglected. Furthermore, the game is not without its problems: Namely, an ungodly setup time.

I always felt that someone could take the bare mechanisms from Gears of War and turn the dial up to 11, and I really feel that is was the designers of Fireteam have done.

The game also feels incredibly customisable, offering a wealth of replayability. As an example, consider the first mission:

The mission requires the team to search 12 spots for parts to fix a ferry. All the time, they will be harried by eight corrupted animal minions. Minions respawn every time they die, so the horde is endless. The twist is, over time, the enemies mutate. New abilities are drawn randomly from a deck of cards, and the mutations stack. So, you play the mission once, and you might be facing corrupted animals that spit poison, and swarm together in packs. You play the same mission again, but this time, you are facing corrupted animals that sprout extra legs, bleed acid, and swim. (Note: I just made all those abilities up. I have no idea what the real abilities are.)

Same creatures, different rules, different tactics.

But then you can mix things up, by playing the same mission, but swapping out minions for different types of minions.

And did I mention the non-player characters? You get to take two with you, and anyone who kickstarts the project gets a total of four to choose from. These NPCs provide special abilities, but you have to keep them safe from the enemy.

Basically, the combination of choice of heroes, choice of hero special abilities, choice of NPCs, choice of minions, and the random allocation of mutations throughout the mission mean each game should be quite different.

The last thing to mention is the pledge amount. For $85, you get the base game, an exclusive NPC character (a cute doggy), and all the stretch goals. Sure, there are not as many stretch goals as there are with campaigns from bigger companies, but there are still some nice extra plastic miniatures, and some new twist and hero power cards. Enough to make that $85 pledge look like a very nice deal as far as I am concerned.

In fact, people who care about miniatures should be quite pleased with the plastic loadout for this game. There are 52 plastic figures in total, including five heroes, four NPCs, three "families" of monsters, and some bonus beasties. There are 21 unique sculpts, including three massive boss monsters that tower over everything else. I believe they are all sculpted by someone who used to make miniatures for Heroscape, but don't quote me on that.

The company is actually so proud of the miniatures, they are offering a pledge level that just gets the miniatures.

Frankly, I don't care about that. I want the game.

And that's an important point to stress: I want the game. I am very excited about the game. And that's why this whole post sounds like an infomercial. My enthusiasm is going to have crept into every word, so take those words with a good pinch of salt. Go on. Salt makes everything taste better anyway. Stick some bacon on there too.

But, in the sake of being fair and even-handed, I'm going to mention a list of things that concern me about the project:

First of all, one of the stretch goals is a CD. I couldn't be less thrilled with the prospect of a CD to listen to while I play a board game if I tried. If they swapped that CD out for a copy of the first book in the series, I'd do a little Snoopy dance.

It seems like you only get four dice in the box. There should be six, because it is possible for some attacks to involve rolling six dice. I am not opposed to rerolling sometimes, but with four dice, it seems like rerolling will be required for most attacks. Seriously, put six dice in the box, and six dice in a paid add-on. Hell, put six in as stretch goal. Instead of that damned CD.

And then there is delivery time. The Kickstarter claims the game will be available in October. That's a pretty close deadline. I would like to know if that is at all feasible. Most Kickstarters slide a bit, but this is a smaller project than some others. I would at least like to know if it is realistic to expect the game before Christmas.

And there you have it. That's why I'm backing Fireteam Zero.

Thank you for indulging me. I promise I'll review something soon. Probably Dark Darker Darkest, which is another game I got through Kickstarter...