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Does anyone play this new miniature game? If so please tell me your opinions of the minis and the rules.
Heres a link to the site
http://arcanelegions.com

Some figs, compared to Warhammer stuff, are rather subpar. However, you are do get a full 123 in a $35 starter. Common stuff comes bare, rare stuff comes prepainted to a fair level, minus the horrible faces.

The rules are pretty solid so far and really fun. Still working out the finesse of the tactics and what not.

For a $35, it's really worth at least getting into it.

I played a test game with a friend, it's a very fun game and fills my need for a fantasy mass battle game. It has quite a bit of tactical nuance, but doesn't suffer as much from the CMG-itis as other CMGs do, this is in part due to its scale.

Some won't like the combat resolution, which may seem simplistic and it is. But, it also quickly resolves combats with just a roll from each player that's compared, highest to lowest. This does mean that if you attack someone with a lot of defense dice, you're more likely to hurt yourself, or a bad roll can end up being really bad. However, it's the same way in WHFB, so with AL at least the resolution is quick so you can move on.

Where the real depth of the game comes in using the limited number of orders you have a turn and deciding what positions you want your models in their formations to give you the right mix of special abilities, movement, ranged, close combat, and defense dice. You have to pick and choose what units to use in what order, when to regroup them into different positions.

Go to their website and watch the tutorial videos, they're campy but do a good job of explaining everything.

So far I've picked up a starter box, played a game with that and enjoyed it. Then I picked up a special booster (ones with prepaints in them) for each faction along with a Roman Cavalry box. The Boosters are more random, however, the Infantry and Cavalry boxes I'm not sure are random or not, but their purpose helps to fill out your army with the more common troops.

Ok thanks guys,
the game looked like the game my friends and I would be playing on a friday night after 40k, cod4, or WoW. This seems like one of those games you play every so often like Family Business or Risk. I was wondering, how does the Egyptian Rezzurection work? Is it like We'll Be Back for Necrons? Overall who is the most balanced of the factions?

The Infantry and Cavalry boosters are not random at all, you always get the same thing in them, and it even lists exactly what you get on the back of the box.

Egyptian Resurrection is a flat one guy back at the beginning of the turn, but only maybe two units have it out of all their stuff. However they also have a commander fig, the one that comes in the starter, called Amenhotep the III who can bring back d6 guys a turn to an adjacent unit (or his own) with Resurrection. He is SEVERELY annoying, mostly because my friend always seems to roll a five or six.

Thanks for the info about the Infantry and Cavalry boxes. It looks like you buy those to get your basic units, then you buy the really randomized boosters for specialty models and specialty unit cards. Some special unit cards use pretty much all basic troops, but in different amounts with different icons for each slot. It's a nice way of handling things.

Each faction has its own specialty and they seem pretty balanced.

Almost all Roman units get the Discipline ability, that basically means they can use the regroup (I think that's what it's called) order to shuffle models around on the unit card more than once a turn without Pushing. Pushing is when you use the same order twice, you have to kill a model from the unit. This allows Roman players to have their units setup to meet whatever threats they face, so long as they're willing to use up some orders to do so.

Egypt has the egyptian troops, undead, and greek troops. Their main thing are the combination of the specialized undead troops who can do nasty damage, but don't have much in the way of defense, alongside the very versitile greek troops.

I haven't played around with the Han troops, but they're based more on synergies, units supporting one another, alongside what looks like some more plentiful healing and ranged attacks.

The good news is they all play differently from each other.

One weird thing was I can't find any mention in the rulebook saying you can't use units from different factions together. In fact, I saw something saying you can use any units of any factions together, but that some units/abilities are affected by this. The only thing I saw affected by faction choices was a single unit of elite cavalry that got more attack and defense dice when you have all units from one faction. This might have been a mistake though, a rule meant for mercenary factions (such as Slavic) rather than mixing Romans with Egyptians or Han.

If I were to compare the factions to 40k, I would say Romans are Space Marines, Han are Imperial Guard, and Egyptians are Eldar. Romans are uber tough, Han have the best ranged, and Egyptians are glass cannons.

There is no rule in casual play limiting mixing factions to any extent at all, though some unit rules only work with pure faction forces. In tournament play however, they've said you'll suffer -1 order point a turn as long as you have more than one faction, other than mercs, in your army as they argue over the chain of command.

Oh, and another note about the random rare boosters. If you buy a packaged "brick" of them,which includes 8 boosters, then you'll get at least one of every rare/uncommon fig for your faction.

I'm gonna try it out this weekend. A friend bought 2 starters and all 3 cav packs.

I'm gonna try my luck with the egyptians, and lord blackfang please tell me your opinion of the game.

The game is really good times and the price is just right. Myself and friend split the main box set and then set about buying the infantry and cav boxs for the armies we wanted to play.

I'm curious about their expansion plans. I'm not sold on their "exclusives".

The exclusives are cool, and not broken rules wise at least from the cards I saw for the green dragon. Depends on how honestly they stick to not re-releasing ones they've done before. I do know I'll be keeping CC membership at least long enough to get a set of the dragons.

As for expansions, we can get an idea of what they have planned next month, as they've said they're going to be sending out demo units from the next set to play test in FLGSs. Personally, I would make the first expansion to just make more figs and units for the current factions. Second set they could add a new faction or two. With the whole concept of magic, they could easily pull stuff in from outside the current time line as well. I just wonder how long they can keep it earth bound.

My biggest dubiousness comes down to their custom card creator. You can do some pretty neat units with it, but it's currently very open for abuse and making really broken cheesy stuff. I don't know if they will be able to plug all the holes in that system to make something I would want to allow in tournaments like they have stated as their intention.

Otherwise, I'm currently working on fleshing out a second smaller army, so I clearly love the game.

I'm so not sold on any one army, unfortunately.

Do you paint your stuff? How do they turn out?

I've only painted 16 of my Terracotta so far, though I also washed one commander fig cause I didn't like how light the skin was originally. The Terracotta are in my gallery here.

Could you run down the elites from the factions?

I did not know about the game until I listened to the D6 Generation Podcast that talked about this game. It piqued my interest and I picked up a starter set when one of my friends got into it. I also picked up a cavalry set for the Han.

The rules are simple but it is quite innovative in its mechanics. For a regular size game you have 8 command points. You spend points to move units, attack with units, shoot with units or reform units. The innovative part of this game is the way models are placed on their stands. Each player can organize their units to alter the number of attack dice, defense dice, range attack dice, movement and special abilities. So, in a turn you can reorganize for maximum movement for 1 command point, move the unit for 1 or 2 command points (depending on unit base size), attack with the unit with more command points, then reform into a defensive by pushing to reorganize. You can only push the same action once more in each turn. As you can see from the example above by doing all of that the player has used most of his 8 command points and now that unit may be overextended and unsupported. There is a lot of tactical planning involved in this game.

Currently the main concern for the game developers is that range attacks seem to dominate the game at this time. This makes the Han the most powerful faction right now due to the large number of range units they have.

There is no rule that disallow multiple factions. I think most players just stick to one faction. There are unit rules called Xenophobic that will give bonus to that unit if you play only one faction.

I think it's a great game system and the collectible part does not distract from the game itself.

Yeah, but picking up out of faction elites will easily double/triple costs or
make you go through hoops to pick them up.

Can you think of multi-faction forces that would work well togther?

I think the most effective factions that should work well is mixing up the Han with Romans. Han will provide really nice range attacks while the Roman units protect them from close combat.


This website has all the unit cards. http://massactionminis.com/index.php/unit-gallery

Han archer units behind Roman shield wall units would be sickening. There will be a penalty of -1 Order Point per turn for mixing non-merc factions into your base faction during tournament play however.

As far as what elites are in what factions, they roughly follow the same themes as the commons. Romans get some really tough units, Egyptians get more damaging melee units, and Han get more ranged units. There are exceptions to this however, but those are the dominate traits in my experience.

I just know many/most of our 40Kers at the FLGS have already converted to this game. We'll see how long it keeps up, but awesome start so far.

I played a trial game this week and I liked it a lot. But it has to be said - the figures are absolutely atrocious. I've seen 6mm figs with better detail. And the soft army men plastic... urgh. I think they chose a smaller scale just so we couldn't mount WHFB minis on those movement trays.

Eh, for your basic romans you could possibly use that roman plastic set that came out a year or two ago. But the only reason I will be picking up this game is that the Romans get Bear Cavalry. Yeah, your pretty muched gakked.

Looked at the miniatures. They don't look good enough for me to play the game, to be honest. Hope it does well anyway though- more variety is always good.

I don't mind the fig quality really. It lets them keep the thing dirt cheap. When was the last time WHFB figs came 40 for $15?

And they arn't way worse than the LotR models from GW either. Maybe a bit worse buty then again they are like 2 and a half times cheaper.

What? They're faaaaaar worse than LOTR minis!
I agree that the price is good, but I like things to look nice too.