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A review of the Doomed by one of the posters on the Wargamevault:
"I've bought the book version of this.

I've been a fan of Chris McDowall's RPGs for many years. What I love most about his works is that he takes a specific idea/genre and is able to distil it down to its core.
Many can create a rules-light game, but only few can create a rules-light game that strips all that needs to be stripped and keep everything that needs to be kept.

At a glance The Doomed might seem overly simplified. Units for example have single Quality stat. Yet if you stack everything on top of each other (skills, weapon options, traits, the horror and conflict rules) you see a complete rich picture.
This system not only works very well trough just the right amount of complexity, but through it'simplicity it becomes a breeze to play and encourages hacking the game to your liking.

This isn't a game very competitive in nature. It's a "have fun at the table" game that makes it easy for your miniatures to do cool things and make those "epic" moments happen.

Biggest "weirdness" that this game doesn't require the measuring of distances in any way. (you can still optionally measure if you want). This works as follows. Each mini completes three actions (move, fight, shoot, etc.). The first move action is free, subsequent move actions need to pass a check. Better quality minis or minis that have the Nimble skill have a better chance to pass these Move checks.

A "Move" can be the following:

* Move as far as you can without hitting terrain or the board edge in one direction, or less.
* Hurdle over an obstacle
* Climb up/down
* Leap between buildings/terrain

Thematically, this makes sense to me as well. Considering it likely takes longer to run a distance, turn a tight corner, and run another distance than to run a similar distance in a straight line.

Shooting distance is also that you can shoot as far as your mini can see and has line of sight. Differences in weapons that would impact firing distance in one game are solved differently here. A sniper rifle for example might have "Aim" where the chance to hit are drastialy increased by spending all 3 of your Actions to aim.

Needless to say, not having to measure distances dramatically speeds up the game.

What really brings it home for me is that The Doomed contains many modes of play that all work flawlesly.

The books contains 36 Horrors, beings/monsters where every warband fight against, and 36 Conflicts that change the rules on how warbands interact with each other and twists on the battlefield setup.

* Play with multiple people, each controlling a warband, against each other using a Conflict
* Play with multiple people, each controlling a warband, against a horror. Either as a straight co-op or play against each other and the horror at the same time.
* Play with multiple people, each controlling a warband, against a horror and a conflict combined.
* play alone using a Conflict and using the conflict's solo rules.
* Play alone against a horror.
* Play alone against a horror and conflict.

And play all that in a longer campaign or in a quick on-off where creating a warband takes minutes.

The Doomed is incredibly easy to get to the table. Setting up a warband is simple, picking a scenario (horror and/or conflict) is simple, the rules are simple and there are so many modes of play, so many horrors and so many scenarios, and some many scenario twists to pick from the game will never feel stale.

I do have a couple of complaints.

I wished the warband creation system was a bit more varied/robust enough.
It's not like you wouldn't be able to fit any miniature somewhere in the options provided, it's that there isn't enough variety to distinguish them from other warband that are different, yet would fall under the same faction because of the limited options available.

The layout isn't ideal. I wished the text were formatted perhaps a bit more denely so page breaks would make more sense. The art that's there is great, but there isn't a lot of it.

Biggest complaint is that this book really should have gone through another read through before publishing. Whoever edited this had to do a better job. Through my first reading of the book I spotted several minor formatting mistakes like spaces in headers where there shouldn't be or the last letter of a title that should be in bold but aren't, table columns that weren't properly centred.

None of that is game breaking of course, but there were also actual mistakes like missing a crucial "no" in a rules phrase, missing stat for an enemy in a specific conflict, or the same Mods that is phrased differently in one place than it is in other places.

All in all, I would recommend this book to anyone that can look over (minor) mistakes and wants a simple but fun and quick game that they can play for a really long time.

The book contains so many modes of play, so many horrors, and so many conflicts it's going to take ages to get bored with this one. And even when it does, this is sure to remain in my repertoire to introduce newcomers to the hobby.''

 Tabletop_Magpie wrote:
The bastion land video is excellent, and just 10 minutes long!

BoW/OTT certainly have their own style and approach, so I'm glad to see other channels getting this played.

That is a remarkably effective gameplay video. It reversed my first impression of the game. Now I am tempted.

Yep, I purchased the game after watching that video -- very effective! (YMMV; I was already pretty well convinced.) Although I will say I would now like to see the rest of that batrep!

Do any of you guys know what are the Osprey politics about reprinting books = do they reprint them exactly as they were originally (so the original errors are still there with a possible errata as a PDF file only) or do they include the errata thus fixing all errors found there? I ask because I like my dead tree books as perfect as possible, and would rather wait for the second printing of the Doomed even if now there are only some mirror errors found.

 Shadow Walker wrote:
Do any of you guys know what are the Osprey politics about reprinting books = do they reprint them exactly as they were originally (so the original errors are still there with a possible errata as a PDF file only) or do they include the errata thus fixing all errors found there? I ask because I like my dead tree books as perfect as possible, and would rather wait for the second printing of the Doomed even if now there are only some mirror errors found.

As far as I know, they don't do change anything about the book when reprinting unless it is a new edition of the book.

Most of the book can be seen there

The Doomed - battle report

I love that The Doomed is finding its little niche in the community. I'd been playing so few tabletop wargames lately, mostly burned out of the competitive BS hamster-wheel, but this little game has utterly clicked in my home. My wife and I have probably played twenty-five times by now, part way through our fourth campaign, and it is still an absolute blast!

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
Imostly burned out of the competitive BS hamster-wheel,

Out of curiosity, is that the way the folks in your area play mostly?

 Easy E wrote:

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
Imostly burned out of the competitive BS hamster-wheel,

Out of curiosity, is that the way the folks in your area play mostly?

We're in a part of New York where generally a good/bigger game store always requires a healthy 45-minute drive. As a result the player base is smaller, but sees themselves as terribly "hardcore".

As a game designer I have spent years trying to broaden their game horizons. In an effort to prove how little skill is involved in their super serious "sport" style 40k/AoS, I told them I would come in and play those once a year, for their store championship, and would win. For two years running, I have done exactly that, for both systems. The 20-ish players always write it off as a fluke, and go right back to espousing the virtues of these "perfect" systems... Meanwhile I have run Crisis Protocol, Bloodbowl, and Middle-Earth events, and rarely crack more than five players.

So yeah... I have become very bitter, and it really made me start to resent a hobby I very much love.

Breaking out of the competitive GW bubble has saved my fandom.

Oh that's rough.... And I thought you'd have more clout with gamers. Did you move away from Russ and Raef? I basically play fringe systems like Turnip28 and Forbidden Psalm with 2 other people and semi-fringe like Dystopian Wars and MESBG with maybe 5 people, we get by. There's always friction with the 40k tryhards.

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:

 Easy E wrote:

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
Imostly burned out of the competitive BS hamster-wheel,

Out of curiosity, is that the way the folks in your area play mostly?

We're in a part of New York where generally a good/bigger game store always requires a healthy 45-minute drive. As a result the player base is smaller, but sees themselves as terribly "hardcore".

As a game designer I have spent years trying to broaden their game horizons. In an effort to prove how little skill is involved in their super serious "sport" style 40k/AoS, I told them I would come in and play those once a year, for their store championship, and would win. For two years running, I have done exactly that, for both systems. The 20-ish players always write it off as a fluke, and go right back to espousing the virtues of these "perfect" systems... Meanwhile I have run Crisis Protocol, Bloodbowl, and Middle-Earth events, and rarely crack more than five players.

So yeah... I have become very bitter, and it really made me start to resent a hobby I very much love.

Breaking out of the competitive GW bubble has saved my fandom.

That sounds awful. We have similar issues here in North Jersey, theres a very large group of 40k players in the area who turn up their noses at everything else, as well as a handful of warmachine holdouts that have the same attitude about their game despite it being not relevant anymore. Theres a solid core of guys who play indy games and whatnot but they are scattered and on the fringes of the hobby and congregate at shops off the beaten path, etc. on the most inopportune days at the most inconvenient times and mostly keep to themselves.

> So yeah... I have become very bitter, and it really made me start to resent a hobby I very much love.

Between the pandemic and the iffyness of my fellow gamers, I went directly into solo wargaming. Gets my mini's painted, as well.

Good to hear you and your wife found a wargame you enjoy. Trying to get others out of Plato's cave never ends well.

 ced1106 wrote:


Between the pandemic and the iffyness of my fellow gamers, I went directly into solo wargaming. Gets my mini's painted, as well.

Good to hear you and your wife found a wargame you enjoy. Trying to get others out of Plato's cave never ends well.

I just needed a reminder that the hobby gets better and better the wider a net you cast. As a younger gamer, I got into the hobby through 40k because I was awed by the idea that "my guys" were unlike any other. Through painting, inventing stories, etc... my army was a unique project meant to last ages. Twenty years later, GW has aggressively tried to make that the exact opposite. Units are disposable, pushed by power-creep, and whole armies are meant to be swapped monthly if you're a "serious competitior" (TM). If you had told kid me that I was happier with one thousand point army, than I am with twenty-three, and over 400,000pts spread between 40k and AoS, I wouldn't have believed it.

The Doomed was a perfect curative for me, ironically, because its rules are so intentionally vague and loose. Normally I hate sloppy/vague rules writing, but The Doomed has this overwhelmingly accessible, "permissive" style, where it just feels very ok to fudge things, make it your own, etc. It was exactly what I needed, and now I feel reinvigorated to revisit my drastically underutilized Frostgrave, Stargrave, 5-Parsecs, and other rules.

The Doomed - question for people with the rules:
From the videos it looks like you can activate any Readied Unbound model. It looks very powerful when you play PVP as you can activate the one who is the most dangerous to your opponent at the time. Is it correct?

The rules are very attractive but not hot on the setting. Might get a copy all the same.

 Shadow Walker wrote:
The Doomed - question for people with the rules:
From the videos it looks like you can activate any Readied Unbound model. It looks very powerful when you play PVP as you can activate the one who is the most dangerous to your opponent at the time. Is it correct?

Sure can, but in our experience The Horror's are so deadly that the game is tensely co-op right until you take one out, unless the Mission has other time constraints. It's an interesting dynamic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

SamusDrake wrote:
The rules are very attractive but not hot on the setting. Might get a copy all the same.

For what it is worth, it is essentially setting agnostic. Chris McDowall intentionally never says what year it is, what happened to the world, etc...

Something came, and left anachronistically advanced technology for people, then left. The world is in horrific decline, and the walls of reality are thin and sometimes get punched through. After that you build your own narrative.

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:

 Shadow Walker wrote:
The Doomed - question for people with the rules:
From the videos it looks like you can activate any Readied Unbound model. It looks very powerful when you play PVP as you can activate the one who is the most dangerous to your opponent at the time. Is it correct?

Sure can, but in our experience The Horror's are so deadly that the game is tensely co-op right until you take one out, unless the Mission has other time constraints. It's an interesting dynamic.

And what is your experience with the solo mode? Does it flow well?

So a friend and I played The Doomed today to see how it goes.

We repeated the starting scenario (Devourer+Breakthrough) four times with the same gangs and altering terrain layouts with appropriately dense terrain on a 3x3.

It took about 30 minutes per game, we punked the poor Devourer on round 1 every time so we never saw the minions he's supposed to summon. All games went to the same gang, which I take to mean that despite the streamlining, the game is not obnoxiously swingy and building the gang better pays off.

The rules are super slick but the decisions meaningful. There are, of course, plenty of corner cases where the book doesn't really tell you how to do things.

Will play again once I have more Terrors and Minions built.

 Shadow Walker wrote:

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:

 Shadow Walker wrote:
The Doomed - question for people with the rules:
From the videos it looks like you can activate any Readied Unbound model. It looks very powerful when you play PVP as you can activate the one who is the most dangerous to your opponent at the time. Is it correct?

Sure can, but in our experience The Horror's are so deadly that the game is tensely co-op right until you take one out, unless the Mission has other time constraints. It's an interesting dynamic.

And what is your experience with the solo mode? Does it flow well?

The game is so rules light that it absolutely flows well, and the Conflicts have small solo sections to adjust scenarios to work a bit more smoothly. That said, the AI is rudimentary. You don't notice vs. Horrors as their uniqueness works hand in hand with that simple AI, but enemy warbands end up feeling a bit "basic".

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:

The game is so rules light that it absolutely flows well, and the Conflicts have small solo sections to adjust scenarios to work a bit more smoothly. That said, the AI is rudimentary. You don't notice vs. Horrors as their uniqueness works hand in hand with that simple AI, but enemy warbands end up feeling a bit "basic".

I intend to play solo mostly against Horrors so it should not be a big problem. Thanks

 Shadow Walker wrote:

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:

The game is so rules light that it absolutely flows well, and the Conflicts have small solo sections to adjust scenarios to work a bit more smoothly. That said, the AI is rudimentary. You don't notice vs. Horrors as their uniqueness works hand in hand with that simple AI, but enemy warbands end up feeling a bit "basic".

I intend to play solo mostly against Horrors so it should not be a big problem. Thanks

A LOT of creative situations, cool rewards, etc... come from the Conflicts so I would definitely not limit yourself to just the Horrors. That would cut half the fun out of the game.

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:

 Shadow Walker wrote:

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:

The game is so rules light that it absolutely flows well, and the Conflicts have small solo sections to adjust scenarios to work a bit more smoothly. That said, the AI is rudimentary. You don't notice vs. Horrors as their uniqueness works hand in hand with that simple AI, but enemy warbands end up feeling a bit "basic".

I intend to play solo mostly against Horrors so it should not be a big problem. Thanks

A LOT of creative situations, cool rewards, etc... come from the Conflicts so I would definitely not limit yourself to just the Horrors. That would cut half the fun out of the game.

Thanks for the advice BTW did you get dead tree or PDF? I prefer physical books but if Osprey policy is like pointed above by @NH Gunsmith then I may get PDF rather, with the hope of it being updated and thus free of errors.

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:


For what it is worth, it is essentially setting agnostic. Chris McDowall intentionally never says what year it is, what happened to the world, etc...

Something came, and left anachronistically advanced technology for people, then left. The world is in horrific decline, and the walls of reality are thin and sometimes get punched through. After that you build your own narrative.

Oh, I see. Thanks.

 Shadow Walker wrote:

Thanks for the advice BTW did you get dead tree or PDF? I prefer physical books but if Osprey policy is like pointed above by @NH Gunsmith then I may get PDF rather, with the hope of it being updated and thus free of errors.

Both. My wife is a purist and needs physical books at the table, whereas my physical disability makes it so much easier to use digital books. I wouldn't expect many fixes in future updates though, and to my eyes the errors are 100% of the typo variety. It's suuuuuper obvious no editor even glanced at the book as there are dozens of glaring spelling errors, missing words, etc... but none of it impacts the usability at all.

That said, I expect a future book supplement is already in the works. For people on Chris' mailing list, he loves sharing work-in-progress beta rules, and yesterday he shared rudimentary stuff for not-Dreadnauts, and other mechas/light vehicles.

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:

 Shadow Walker wrote:

Thanks for the advice BTW did you get dead tree or PDF? I prefer physical books but if Osprey policy is like pointed above by @NH Gunsmith then I may get PDF rather, with the hope of it being updated and thus free of errors.

Both. My wife is a purist and needs physical books at the table, whereas my physical disability makes it so much easier to use digital books. I wouldn't expect many fixes in future updates though, and to my eyes the errors are 100% of the typo variety. It's suuuuuper obvious no editor even glanced at the book as there are dozens of glaring spelling errors, missing words, etc... but none of it impacts the usability at all.

That said, I expect a future book supplement is already in the works. For people on Chris' mailing list, he loves sharing work-in-progress beta rules, and yesterday he shared rudimentary stuff for not-Dreadnauts, and other mechas/light vehicles.

Found that mailing list so if anyone is interested https://bastionland.substack.com/

Tell him we meed magic/psionics!

From Chris' blog - new options for the Doomed:

Striders & Riders
Want to use power-walkers or Mech-like units in The Doomed?

How about some cavalry or bikers?

I've got you covered with Striders & Riders.

DISCLAIMER These rules are completely untested and likely broken.

STRIDERS
Great striding machines

Striders can be taken by any Faction and must be assigned to a Pilot, who can be any member of the Warband. When buying equipment, equip it to either the Pilot or the Strider.

Pilot and Strider act as if they were a single unit, receiving 3 actions as normal.

Use the Pilot’s QL and Skills for attacks. Attacks can only use weapons equipped to the Strider.

Use the Strider’s QL and Skills for all other actions.

When inside the Strider the maximum actions for Shooting and Fighting apply to each individual weapon, so a Strider with 3 ranged weapons could Shoot with each of them once per turn, using 3 Actions.

When the unit would be Killed the Pilot ejects safely. The Strider is disabled and now the Pilot can only use their own equipment.

STRIDER CLASSES

Mountain-Class (3+ Tough) [6pts]
Toughened Hull: Ignore any Shock rolls you wish.
Shield (+1 to Saves when Readied)

Raptor-Class (3+ Nimble) [5pts]
Shield (+1 to Saves when Readied)

Factory Class (3+) [4pts]
Tool-Claw (M1x3)

RIDERS
The cavalry of the doomed world

Riders can be taken by any Faction.

Every Rider must have a Mount. They are treated as one unit for all purposes, but each action is assigned to either the rider or mount, each with their own limit for specific actions. The combined unit of Rider and Mount still receive 3 Actions per turn as normal.

So a turn could look like this:

Action 1: The Rider uses Move and the combined unit moves.
Action 2: The Mount uses Move and the combined unit moves without needing to roll, as this is the Mount’s first move.
Action 3: The Mount uses Move, this time requiring a roll using their QL and Skills.
When they take Damage the player decides whether to Save as the Rider or Mount.

The first time the unit would be Wounded the Rider is instead Dismounted and the Mount is removed from the battle. The Rider suffers Shock but ignores any results that would have them die on this roll.

Use common sense when determining which terrain a rider can move through or over, but err on the side of generosity with a creative explanation.

MOUNTS

Steed (Tough 5+) [2pts]
Cannot carry equipment
Ram: Move into contact with an enemy and cause 1 Damage to them.

Beast (Fierce 4+) [5pts]
Cannot carry equipment
Ram: Move into contact with an enemy and cause 1 Damage to them.
Claws (M3x1)

Machine (Nimble 5+) [3pts]
Can be fitted with Ranged Weapons.
Ram: Move into contact with an enemy and cause 1 Damage to them.

Planning to play The Doomed again this afternoon, trying 3 new Terrors. And I'll be demoing it at a mini con at the end of the month.

I've also been pondering a Warcry reskin. I can't think of anything that Warcry rules accomplish that can't be done better and/or easier in The Doomed.