Continuing the Rohan campaign Link played as Good vs Bear as Evil.
In this scenario Eomer arrives and attacks a group of Uruk and Orcs camped outside of Fangorn. Meanwhile Merry and Pippin are trying to escape from a hungry Grishnakh.
Lots of fun as the Rohirrim crash into the Evil forces in a mighty charge. Ugluk uses heroic Strength and kills his own Orc to kill the Rohan Captain in one round whilst on the western side Eomer kills Snaga in one round himself.
The Cavalry charge again with Eomer and Ugluk both calling heroic moves. This allows Eomer’s flank to charge first on the west but on the east the cavalry are pinned. Heavy losses ensue and Merry breaks free as Grishnakh closes in.
More fighting. Eomer’s heroic combat fails on the East but his cavalry hold their own and Ugluk is doing well on the west. Merry survives against Grishnakh when caught trying to free Pippin. He survives his fate roll and cost the Orc his last point of Might too.
Then Eomer comes crashing through the centre and rides over poor Grishnakh, probably not even noticing in the dark! Merry and Pippin make for the woods and the cavalry from the West tear through the remaining Orcs whilst Ugluk kills more riders.
Then Eomer and his band surround the foul creature and soon defeat the remaining Uruk Hai and Orcs.
P foolishly set up an Epic game in co-op mode in Challenging mode with him D and M against the 3 bots. Team got slaughtered!
Next day P and L gave it a go in standard mode which was much more fun and victory was achieved! Frodo defeated Gollum in the final round to win at the Crack of Doom! Meanwhile Gandalf the White saved Lorien.
I’ll start off by doing what I liked about this game. It had very indepth tactics and fun play styles right from when you drew your template card. Drawing the rolling the dice I found very fun and I enjoyed how theres a benefit to going last, first or somewhere in the middle every turn. The tool cards really shook up the play of the game and the boards felt very immersive. Towards the end of the game is where things get very tactical and difficult, with lots of people backstabbing each other and the tool cards really coming in to play. But the end is sort of what I didn’t like about the game. It got very technical and all previous decisions you ended up regretting. You ended up kicking yourself multiple times and the game grew frustrating. But that’s whats also made the game very interesting, and I liked the forward-thinking aspect.
In the balance of luck and skill to make a great board-game, this was slightly too much skill for my liking. It was like azul but with an added layer of complexity in the numbers and not being able to place anything similar next to something of the same number or colour. We found that if there was a bad tool card draw then the game became very difficult. I liked the use of objectives that added another layer of thought but again, they just bumped up the complexity even further.
I would definitely recommend this game to more experienced gamers over newer gamers, as it acts a bit like an expansion to Azul. Overall I give this game an 8/10 for very interesting game gameplay
Links new figures from the Armageddon box and more made it at last to the table . Almost done now . Blood angels completed and the orks need some finishing off but we had enough for 1000 points each .
Link played orks vs bear as angels.
So the battle began with the space marines keeping in cover whilst the orks advanced in the centre with koptas. The marines got lots of early vp and the orks held more in reserves too .
Then the blood angels were tempted out and Dante attacked the boyz on the left flank striking and charging out of reserves whilst the chaplain and his squad did the same on the right.
Soon enough the Gretchen and war track on the right were down and home objective captured . On the left the sanguinary guard and Dante did the same to the Boyz.
Meanwhile intercessors and captain accrued victory points on the right . they also took out the koptas who had destroyed the land speeder in the middle.
But then on turn 3 the tides were turning as Gutzmek arrived and destroyed the sanguinary guard and Dante aided by his sqiggbuggy and the Big Mek in the middle took out the chaplains guard too on the other flank.
The Stormboyz arrived to annoy the eradicators hitting with grenades but failed to charge and suffered for it . But then gutzmek arrived too and it was all over for the eradicators who had been hampered by terrain blocking line of sight throughout the battle .
Soon enough the orks were looking good and had all the objectives in hand . So we decided to call it there ! Well done Link.
P, M , D, A and L played two games with the higher difficulty of almost always being a traitor.
First game quickly went to P as the traitor but the second was an epic struggle with only A alive at the end vs M as an exposed traitor. victory again to the traitor!
This game really has great potential. The play system follows battle lore and memoir in the card and activation system. It’s a great introduction to the system for newer players. It has fun mechanics and (mostly) clearly laid out rules. The units for both sides are fun and interesting. At At’s provide different tactics and the quick movement of snow speeders enhances the game play and give the rebels a counter to hit AT Ats. Terrain played a big role in the game but did provide some slow situations. The small map encourages fast and furious action that lasts constantly. The downside of having this map was that the land speeders could traverse the whole map in just a few turns. Also the ATats were very strong at range three taking three dice and often wiped out the rebel units of infantry in just one turn.
Overall I enjoyed the campaign booklets and the skirmishes although I felt that the empire had a very big advantage over the rebels although the rebels had the more tactical cards. Still though the imperials took the victory more often than not. I liked it though and ended up playing for seven hours straight with a friend
Overall this was a light and fun game that would recommend to newer players who enjoy Star Wars and want to play. Overall 8/10
Post script: hello fellow gamers; I, link, will be trying to write a fortnightly/weekly game please leave a comment on which games you want reviewed next.
