Ever since this game was announced, I fervently believed that it was not a board game. I might have been wrong, though, because one of my players actually WON the game.
I ran the demo at Rogues Gallery Games in Round Rock, Texas. I'd like to thank FFG for picking Rogues Gallery, and the guys there for letting me run the demo. We had three players.. the roadwarden, the envoy, and the troll slayer. We had a few stumbling points (more on that later) but overall I think everybody had a good time. I know I enjoyed the game tremendously, even though I did feel rather unprepared and had to do a lot of page flipping.
The troll slayer was heavily injured (I think he was at 8 cards and a couple of crits) when he decided to use the "Perform a Stunt" card to attempt a wild bum rush tackle move on the big nasty, who was the only bud guy left alive. He rolled miserably, though, and the little dwarf harmlessly bounced off the beastman. The next round he put in a massive troll-feller strike that almost brought the creature down. The roadwarden moved in and finished off the beastman.... but then I noticed his special deathblow ability. Of course, the creature targeted the troll slayer with it's last ditch attack... and killed him dead. His dept repaid and his oath fulfilled, the little troll slayer left the Old World to join his ancestors in the great beer hall in the sky. In my opinion, he won the game.
Here are my impressions on the game from my first run:
Liked:
- Dice Mechanic. It was just plain fun... selecting the dice, rolling the dice, interpreting the dice. Once we got the symbols down it was fast and fun.
- Wound Cards and Crits. I love how wounds are handled, especially crits. Over the course of our short combat, we had the envoy get a nasty bruise and our dwarf get a bum leg.
- Action Cards. I like how the action cards add variety to the turns... it's not just "I swing".
- Abstract Movement. It worked well for us. I was actually kind of surprised how well it worked.
- Stance Dice. I love this mechanic, even though the players didn't use it much. I think there's a lot of depth to discover here.
- Pretty rulebooks. They look awesome. If there's a warhammer painting you like, it's probably in there somewhere.
- Perform a Stunt card. It's a great way to remind the players to be creative. It spurred a lot of laughs in our session.
- Fortune Pool. It was fun, as a GM, to toss a token into the fortune pool every time somebody did some thing great. It was nice to reward the whole team.
- "Choose a Character" initiative. I liked how the group could discuss who they wanted to act when their turn came up. What's gonna work? Teamwork!
- No pencil. I ran the entire session without once touching a pencil. That's awesome!
Disliked:
- NO INDEX IN THE RULEBOOK! WTF?!? Seriously?!?! FFG, you MUST release a pdf index. Not cool. Not cool at all. Even CitOW had an index!
- Calculations. I had quite a bit of trouble getting the damage calculations down. I think they should have been spelled out clearer, maybe even put on the character sheet as a fill in the blanks calculation
- Confusion on "Target Defense". Is defense only gained from armor? I could have easily figured this out, probably, if there HAD BEEN AN INDEX!
- Confusion on Difficulty of attacks. Is the number of purple dice in an attack always one (listed as the "default" in the rules) or is it based on the two stats on the card
- No monster cards/sheets. Having the monster stats only in the book was annoying. If I'd been using two different types of monsters the flipping back and forth would have driven me mad. Why no loose leaf monster sheets or something?
- Stress/Fatigue. This system seemed fiddly and I'm still not sure if we played it completely right.
Overall it was a positive experience, at least for me. I can't wait to get my own set and start getting a group together. Once again, thanks to FFG, RG, and my three players.
Later,
Cody
