Upcoming "Legends of the Fabled Lands" Skirmish Game by 4Ground

[Manchu]

An upcoming fantasy skirmish game from 4Ground ... KS coming in June.



http://www.beastsofwar.com/4ground/legends-fabled-realms-coming-soon/

The Druggoi are the leaders of a band of ravenous monsters infected with a deadly virus known as the Drugoul. These beasts then fall into lesser categories including the Gluttons and the Terrors. Each of them is a fearsome foe ready to rip you limb from limb.

Conversely the Eightfold Path are a religious order of valiant warriors. They are dedicated to the eradication of evil, especially the Druggoi. Made up of two main sections the order is split into the Initiates and the Ascended. The Ascended are those who have consumed the blood of the Druggoi and have not been corrupted. Those who pass the test have shown their strength of will.

Sounds a lot like Dragon Age, no?

Some features:

- active/reactive player structure
- 6-30 figs per side
- custom dice
- there will be standard fantasy races

FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/The-Legends-Of-Fabled-Realms-334856040246872/?ref=ts&fref=ts

[JayOBedlam]

I had a chance to play this at Salute this year, thought I'd post some thoughts here.

- The mini's are gorgeous. Quite chunky, I'd say heroic 28mm at least. They drew me to the table in a big way. The humans have a real old school D&D feel to them, henchmen with axes and spears supporting heavily armed warriors and sneaky halflings. The Druggoi are more interesting than there somewhat generic sounding background makes them seem, and even the generic ghouls looked great on the table.

- There is a deckbuilding element to the game. You build a deck of special abilities before each game and they are drawn each round to boost your warband. This creates an extra layer of strategy and tactics, as you have both dice rolling and cardplay in the battles.

- This is a buckets of dice game. Abilities are rated by how many red, blue and white dice they give a player to roll, and you can roll tons at a time. Fighting and reactive actions involves opposing die rolls, and when the leaders were going up against each other we were literally rolling about 10-15 dice each to resolve combat. There are regular hits, crits, and 'super crits', which cancel each other out in various ways.

I had a lot of fun playtesting this game, but I think it's got quite a bit of bloat at the moment. With tons of dice, special abilities and symbols on the character cards alone, PLUS a whole layer of deckbuilding and card play going on, there is perhaps TOO much happening in each round. However, it was still fun, and that's what matters right? There's a few months until the KS comes out so hopefully intensive playtesting will streamline the game a little more, and hopefully reduce the instances of 30 odd dice needing to be rolled to resolve a combat with a couple of minis a side

[Magos Kasen]

This looks really cool, I'll have to keep an eye on it.

[Elbows]

Watched a few videos on it, and without playing it, my fears are more akin to Jay's observations.  I love the minis (my main interest, anyway), but the game mechanics did not appeal to me much at all.  Looked, as mentioned, rather...finnicky w/ little reason.  I love 4Ground and the products they make so I'm happy to see more miniatures coming from a quality company --- the game will probably get a pass from me though.

[Dentatus]

Same here: I'm quite happy with ASoBH but some of those figs would look great on my table.

[Duncan McDane]

Well, I will pick up a few of those undead/demonlike guys, look pretty good. The game, we'll see... At least it's a skirmish game, so not too much models needed, a pre in my book.

[Gallahad]

The minis look great. I'm not too excited about the game since it doesn't sound like what I like to think of as a good "dad" game. Meaning a game where most of the game play happens at the table, not in list building, and not too much stuff for a sleep deprived brain to remember. SobH is a great "dad" game.

I'll definitely back for the minis, but I'm hoping it isn't crazy successful so I get the stuff faster rather than two years into the future.

[Giger]

Like the minis and the background but will need to watch a gameplay vid or two I think before committing to the KS.

[mweaver]

Looks interesting.  Thanks for posting.

-Michael

[Paboook]

There was very interesting interview with the authors on Beast of War - including pictures of three factions and some talk about the game mechanics. The fluff sounds amazing and I love the visual side of LotFL. It seems lot of effort and enthusiasm was put in this project.

[Paboook]

Overview of The Legends of Fabled Realms posted on dakkadakka by endtransmission:

I got to play a demo with of this at the uk games expo earlier today. I have to admit, this has gone from sorta-interested to must-buy as the mechanics were quite refreshing.

The entire system is reaction based. Each force gets a number of action points (I forget what they were actually called) that have to last your turn and your opponent's. These points are used to activate a character or squad, either as part of your turn, or as a reaction to something.

As an example I had two points to spend. The first was used to declare a move towards the enemy. The enemy spent one of theirs declaring a charge at the point he thought I was going to move into. As these two conflicted, we had an initiative style roll off to see who actually activated first. I won, forcing him to move first and only moving part of the way, causing his charge to fail.

Characters have base stats. That are dice related, for example my hero had a base attack of two d6 and one d8. He also had a heavy sword that added another d8 and a skill that added another d6 and d8. As a character or soldier gains xp, new skills or equipment, these dice will change making them stronger.

The dice are special dice containing blank faces, hit, critical and in the case of the d12, super criticals. Tests are Vs rolls with the symbols cancelling each other out. Critical and super criticals both cause one wound each; one or more unsaved hit symbols equates one wound, regardless of number.

Each force has a deck of cards that they get to draw from that include events, spells or special effects for use. Some of these are generic, others are force or character specific. There was one that was a suicide attack that, if successful, outright kills the enemy model... at the expense of your character's life as well.... so rarely used!

When someone reach a 0 wounds you roll to see if they are out of action or dead. In most cases they are just out of action and will heal up over time. Dead is dead and the winner gets to loot the bodies. We didn't get to talk more about the rest of the between-game bits sadly.

Model wise they have lots of plans for figures and terrain to add as stretch goals. Terrain will be included in the campaign at roughly 20% discount. They are still working the numbers. He did say there will be one level that includes about £1800 worth of terrain for about £1200-ish for the uber rich. There are also new terrain sets for this, including a neat fort with four multi floor buildings and walls.

There is a lower level that includes the starter set (two forces, rules, cards, tokens and enough terrain for a 4x4 table for about £200. What they consider enough terrain is about 4 or 5 ruins and a tree or two. Again, this isn't final and they keep adding more in.

Video battle reports will be going up on BoW in the next week or so to show off more of the rules

I hope there will also a pledge just for a starter with rules, miniatures and dice. I have plenty of terrain already.

[orc]

  :-*This minis truly look great, i'm agree with Manchu, they remind me Dragon Age,I really like the men-at-arms models,but I hope they go with metal... 

[Elbows]

EDIT: I asked them on facebook and they were a little cagey but essentially said "resin type", so I'm not 100% sure what that means.  Zealot Miniatures (resin company) has been doing the masters for them.  I tried to find my facebook post and I can't, but sadly they're not metal (and yes this will impact me buying the whole range, sadly)

Did some more searching on Facebook and I see a different response saying "they will be plastic"...and now my post is missing.  So, maybe they don't even know?   They did mention pre-assembled, so I'm leaning towards something like Dust Tactics figures maybe?

[Dentatus]

Not metal? Shame. They'll drop waaaay down on the 'To Get' list then. Best of luck to 4 Ground tho.

[Elbows]

I'm waiting to see what the final material is.  4Ground is not about cheap gaming, so I don't think we need to worry about Mantic levels of mediocre quasi-plastic, but I'm suspicious.

Pre-assembled plastic doesn't bode exceptionally well, but it's about 148% higher than resin for me (with metal clearly at the top).  I suspect this will be answered and made very clear during the Kickstarter and we'll probably see promo figures as well.