I've been a fan of MC/Warzone for many many years.....and have a young son who's starting to show some interest. He was fascinated with my Archives catalog and wanted to know more.

I was thinking of breaking out SotC and seeing if I could find all the pieces....but we may do better just buying a copy of this for Xmas.

How complicated are the basic rules? Would this be a good game to start out a new gamer?
We;re going to start playing Talisman....and think he'll be able to handle that.

The basic rules are quite easy to learn, the thing about the game it's that it gets as complex as you want to make it, as you have infinite posibilities when building your army.

Compared with games like Heroclix, Warhammer (both), SW minis or D&D, I think this is the most easy to learn to play (and probably the less expensive of all too).

Also the army building and dice systme are very intiative, no counting points or trying to add and subtract bonus to see what hits or not.

The armies are built on a tiered scale with the most baisc being labeled 3/3/3. Each figure has a rank in the tier either gold silver or bronze. Each command card (events playable at certain poinjts in the game) are ranked the same and there are Order tokens (which actaviate units) that get better higher up the tier. A 3/3/3 army means you can have no more than 3 of any rank in the teir total so you could have 1 gold unit, 1 gold, command card, and 1 godl order token/ 1 silver unit and 2 silver order tokens/ 2 bronze units and 1 bronze order token for example.

The dice are evry simple, each unit tells you excatly how many and of what color dice they get to roll on attack. the dice tell you if the attack is within range (the number value is the amount of hexes it reaches) and the maount of damage by the 'explosion icons' (1 icon = 1 point of damage, etc). There are 4 colors of dice each representing a different type of attack (though they can all be used simultaneously on one attack) and each color has its strengths and weaknesses.

Agree and agree Mr. Glum.

- The rules easy to digest initially, even for those who normally never play miniature war games. The strategy factor is much higher than other similar "board" miniautre games, however. This is due to a lot of brilliance and hard work on the designers part, but we like the multi-facted element of order tokens as well as variable random objectives the most. We use 2 objectives even in 3/3/3/ games. Wouldn't think of not doing so.

- The army building structure is immensely innovative. Sensible, no calculator, many possibilities without a lot of boring trump you / trump me combos like other games.

- Buy the figs you want, and only those you want -- this is the future of pre painted miniature gaming.

- you can sit down. This is great, both for bringing people in and playing more often.

- awesome univiverse.

Buy a starter and try it at least three times. Then you will know. If you don't like it, $30 is a heck of a lot less than three dissapointing movies isn't it? and you can't turn around and sell some bad nights out to a friend, so what have you got to lose eh?

and remember: "Out of every game to choose from, which is the best? "

"The one you have an opponent for."

Let us know the verdict, and ask rules questions if necessary.

To summarize : yes, it's a perfect first mini game , with very simple rules, but a lot of depth to be found. Hope your son will enjoy it !

I can't wait to get a demo on this game, how is everyone liking it so far? How is the replay value.

Well, I can only say that I'm kind of addicted to it. Building armies is just great once you have some minis to chose from, and with the victory zones, every game it's different, even if you play always with the same armies. Give it a few tries.

sounds interesting! i have to get a testgame going sometime....

Im also looking at this as my first game of this type...It sounds pretty easy to learn and like there is enough to get in depth with it.