A friend and I picked up copies of these rules because we like the theme and our group already has most of the models we will need to play the game.
I've read through the rules and figured I would share my thoughts on the game after reading through everything.
I have posted a more complete article of my first impressions on my blog, but below you will find an abbreviated version.
The quality of the book is very high. It has glossy color pages throughout and appears to be bound well. The artwork is fantastic. The tokens are good and should hold up well over time. The cards are alright as well. I will probably sleeve my cards, but I'm sure they will hold up fine even if I didn't.
The book's layout seems to be alright. This is something that you can only really judge after you have tried to look up some rules during a game. There is no index, which is disappointing, but the rules to feel to be laid out in a logical way. There is some interesting character to how the rules (or at least parts of them) are written which adds to the theme and feel of the game.
The book provides rules for 4 factions: the White Men Expeditions, the Sultanate of Zanzibar, the African Kingdoms, and the Forest Tribes. Each has a variety of characters and units and should provide a variety of possible army builds.
The game mechanics are interesting. Units are activated by playing cards. However, the player doesn't draw random cards, but instead chooses 3 cards from a hand of 8 cards to dictate the actions that will be taken during the turn. Each player then chooses a card for the first activation and plays it at the same time as his opponent. The card with the higher initiative acts first. Each card has a mix of different actions so the players have a variety of options available to them.
The game uses stress tokens to represent moral. A unit acquires these stress tokens in a variety of different ways during the game. These can affect the units ability to shoot, combat, or move.
Movement happens when a card is played with a movement activation on it. A unit gets a base move, but can also pick up the pace if no enemy units are close by. They can also use this movement to engage in close combat.
Playing a card with a shooting activation allows a unit to shoot. This is done by rolling dice based on the unit's shoot skill and each success scores a hit. The target then gets a chance to avoid the damage by making a defense roll.
When a unit moves into close combat both units roll attack dice based on their skills and compare the number of success each unit gets to a table to determine the results. It is a short table so shouldn't be too difficult to memorize after a few games.
Totem cards are used to provide special bonuses to players during the game. Each player gets some cards at the beginning of the game and can draw additional cards each turn based upon the details of the scenario. These cards provide a variety of bonuses from extra activations, to extra movement, or bonus dice when making a skill check.
The game comes with 8 scenarios that will provide a good amount of play time. It will also be fairly easy to make additional scenarios if you want more variety.
Overall, I am pleased with what I have seen and look forward actually playing a few games. My group has enjoyed our experiences with SAGA and this appears to be another quality game from the folks at Studio Tomahawk.
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March 10, 2008, 08:34:16 AM