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Steve Berger
United Kingdom
Borough Green
Kent
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I find games that use dice for combat infuriating. I can position my troops perfectly, have the odds firmly stacked in my favour, and be on the brink of a decisive game winning move. Then I roll my 10 attack dice, needing a 4, 5, or 6 to hit. I roll 4 1’s, 3 2’s and 3 3’s. Crap. My opponent, with his three defending units, rolls 3 6’s. OK, so this is a made up situation for a made up game, but when I play, I can feel this frustration building inside me – the certain knowledge that this is going to occur in a manner that is relevant to that game. It happened to me first in Risk, and ever since has followed me around with glee. Memoir ’44, Last Night On Earth, Claustrophobia, I’m looking at you, and you are looking back at me and taunting me with your constantly game crippling spite.
The Boardgameguru newsletter dropped into my inbox a few weeks back, and two games grabbed my attention – Fortune And Glory, and Gears Of War. FaG looked really impressive. The demo video wetted my appetite, and with trembling hands I made the decision to place an order. Then I saw the price, and closed the session down. I couldn’t justify that kind of purchase without being sure this was the game for me. What would be the point of buying it to only play it once? OK – it plays solo, it looks great, and more importantly it has a Zeppelin that spits out Nazis. But some of the comments were so-so, and there were some concerns over replayability, so I stalled. One for the Christmas list maybe, but not for now – I wanted to see some objective reviews once the initial hype had subsided.
Gears Of War held only passing interest for me. I’d played and beaten the first game, enjoying the particular pov style the game used, and had got maybe a third of the way through the second game and lost interest, finding it all to similar to the first. The third – couldn’t care less really. A friend had picked this up on release (the boardgame, not the video game) and had been tweeting about how good it was. The early comments looked good as well, although slightly fanboy based. I could resist this one – it seemed similar to a couple of games in my collection I wasn’t really playing anyway.
Then GoW came along one night to the gaming club, and was played whilst I was in a game of Discworld. Maybe 15 minutes in, a player uttered the words ‘Right, I’ll go get him with my chainsaw’ and my curiosity peaked. The next week, I had a quick peak online, but to no avail – again it seemed too expensive for something I just didn’t feel like I knew enough about. However, the twitch had started.
By now, the twitch was developing to a shiver – I felt like I needed to find something to fulfil that obsession, that desire to buy, so I dropped onto a few retailer sites, and browsed through their deals – maybe something in there I was after for a good price. I am well aware how this sounds, but I know I’m not the only one. Whilst just browsing, with no intention of really making a big purchase (I had my mind set to getting the Railways Card Game expansion) I spotted that IGUK had a Gears Of War listed as damaged for £34. I clicked ‘add to basket’ and checked out before I could persuade myself otherwise. A week later the box arrived on my office desk, and with a dink in the underside maybe 2cm long. All the contents were perfect and undamaged, and after a couple of minutes work at home with some gaffer tape and elbow grease, the box looked, well, slightly less damaged than it had before. I folded out the insert to lay flat around the bottom and the sides of the box, and felt ready.
After making the purchase, I had checked out a couple of reviews, and had doubts, but also a couple of session reports, and felt more positive. I’d read through the rules which seemed fairly straight-forward. The mechanic seemed ordinary, but workable – play a card, and do one of three things, being either the card action, combat, or movement. Spend other cards to take other actions, like recovering a teammate, or using equipment. Cards are your health, well that is easy enough, and have a secondary ability (get in a response attack, add to your defence, or allow you to move). As an additional note, it is a good thing that the game is quite simple to play, because the rulebook is a mess. As an example, I want to know about how I pick up a weapon. I flick through the rulebook from the front and on page 9, find a turn summary that tells me to find out more about how I do this, I should turn to page 10. I turn the page, only to get told no – if I want to know about that I shouldn’t be on page 10, I should be on page 20. You lied to me, rulebook. This never fails to make me groan, although GoW isn’t the worst example of this, for a game with such high production values, this is a letdown.
So at home, with a quiet house (a rarity) I set the game up for solo play, picked Marcus as the hero, and played the first scenario. The pieces and boards looked great on the table, with easily distinguishable enemies, and fantastic artwork. Initially my turns were quite slow as I gained familiarity with the hero cards, checked the rules a few times for clarification, and just gained the confidence that the game was going well, so I seemed to be doing the right thing. Once or twice the AI cards made me sit tight and heal up before pushing on, and it felt to me like a good representation of the video game. At no point did the AI cards make the enemies do anything really stupid, and I was starting to realise the importance of good hand management, having been cornered with no defensive bonus cards.
The final objective was to blow an emergence hole with a grenade. The final board had a few figures on it, but I reckoned if I could dash in, throw the grenade, and then hold for 1 turn I’d be fine – I could run back for cover next turn, and then pick off the remaining enemies. This, with GoW, is a mistake. You can never do the crazy hero thing and survive to tell the tale. The AI card made two adjacent enemies attack. I only had follow orders as responses through poor hand management. I rolled, had no shields, and instead got a bunch of hits on me. Twice. All cards gone, plus a few I didn’t have, and that was game over.
What was different though, very different from the games mentioned earlier, was that it really felt like I’d let myself down – I’d put myself in a position where the dice could beat me when I didn’t have to. I could have, should have, picked each enemy off, and then thrown the grenade. I panicked when I didn’t have to. I had lost because I was tactically inept. I packed the game away with a smile on my face. It had beaten me fair and square.
Second session I played with my son. The box had been on our dining table since the previous evening, and he had been eyeing it with some relish, so we set up. My frustration here was that we decided to play Marcus and Dom, but realised the figures looked VERY similar indeed, so we swapped Dom out for Cole. I can see myself painting the edge of the bases different colours to help distinguish between them. I explained my previous evening’s error. We wouldn’t make the same mistake, would we? Well, we did. With him low on health, 1 had a chance to drop in the grenade on the final room, and did so. The door blew, and in piled the meanest looking bunch of beasts I’d seen since my last family get-together. I got picked off really quickly, and he barely got to his feet before he was destroyed to. Again, bad decision. Patience is a virtue.
Four more solo sessions came and went over the next week and a half, some going to the wire, and some where I hardly made it out of the first room. I had developed my play considerably – I was holding cards for combos, keeping response cards and using them wisely, and making the most of cover and equipment. I knew what was in the AI deck, and what had been played. In my seventh game, I registered my first success. It was a fairly simple game, with only 1 Boomer appearing. I made good use of the secondary card abilities, having more of a feel for the odds, and played a fairly astute game.
For me the biggest compliment I can pay is in the immersion you feel. Video games are immersive experiences, escapist fun, and this recreates that very well. The narrative takes over, and the drama plays out on the boards with the figures. Playing an ambush or picking off a Locust from distance feels like an achievement, like a kill rather then a card, some dice, and removing a piece from the board. Clever play is rewarded, not irrelevant. Losing is mostly as the result of over eager play and being exposed for failing to make use of the cover, or not holding and playing the right cards. And victory is sweet, feels earned and deserved. When I finish playing, I suddenly realise that I’m sat at home and notice the room around me – for the last however long (and I couldn’t tell you – 30 minutes? An hour? I’m too immersed to notice or care) I’ve been transported on to those boards, and in to the game.
It isn’t without fault – the AI deck is reshuffled and you start on it again, so feasibly you could draw a really nasty card, like a spawn, and then next turn draw the same card all over again. You can roll badly. You can draw a couple of really awful guns from the weapons deck. Some of the boards are a little ambiguous on line of sight and cover, and as the enemies have no range limitations, sometimes the layout can put you at the end of a really long corridor where you can’t hit them, but they can hit you. The rulebook is, as I’ve said, poor. Really well illustrated, but poorly laid out. There is already a substantial list of rules questions building up, but with these types of games that is always the case. Just go look at the faq for Last Night On Earth.
It isn’t for everybody, either, being a pure co-op. The game time on some of the scenarios can be quite substantial with a larger group, and I’m not sure how I would feel about playing this on some of the longer levels with the full compliment of Players. But it is evident that this has been created by an experienced designer. The scaling for players is neatly dealt with, the AI often has 2 or 3 options, the game is smooth to play, the pace is right, and the theme shines through without complexity to trip it up.
I’ve now played Fortune And Glory twice, and my feeling is, well, it’s ok. Just ok. I know if I’d got these the other way around – purchased FaG, and let GoW go, I’d be pretty peeved about it. I know – I purchased Marvel Heroes and not Battlelore when last I had an option like this.
Death Angel was a complete disaster for me. I played it once, beat it, and traded it, and I don’t miss it at all. I never felt for a second that I was commanding a group of Marines under pressure. This is so much stronger, more intense, yet so easy to play. A triumph of design simplicity and theme whilst retaining the need for tactical consideration, or put slightly more simply, FUN.
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