Disclaimer. I'm something of an apostle for the game. I was looking for a generic fantasy game that would be easy to learn and quick to play and SBH satsified.
After playing it with a group of folks here in Chicago over a couple of months, my observations are as follows.
Positives:
1) The game is quick. Typically a game can reach conclusion in less than an hour.
2) The game rewards strategy. This surprised me, as for a 5$ set of quick-play rules, I was expecting to have to think less. The activiation is a variation of
IGOUGO tha requires you to decide how many actions a character will attempt in a turn, with a possibility that the charachter may get no actions, or (if you try for too many actions and fail miserably) play may pass to the other player before you've activated all your charachters. Thus stragegic management of your charachters is a very important aspect of gameplay.
3) It's really easy to learn. I have a heck of a time learning rules, but I had this one pretty solidly down after a game and a half.
4) Allows the use of any figures. It's nice to be able to use whatever figures you want, or to be able to buy that cool figure from a game you don't play and know that it will get to the tabletop via SBH. All those old heroscape, Mage Knight, D&D, etc CMG figs can be reborn into a new game. As a result, almost anyone can immidiately field a painted warband. Our games have had figs from Ral Partha,
GW, D&D, Heroscape, Reaper, Rackham, etc, and we've yet to see an unpainted figure on the board!
5)Affordable and growing. The basic 5 dollar game has everything you need, but the game is constantly growing with supplements (about 8 bucks a piece) that add additional rules, senarios and army lists.
6) Supported. An active yahoo group where the game's designer is really good at answering questions also. While the algorythm for the points system has not been publicly released, they have a free HTML force builder that allow you to stat/point up any figure you might have. Also, for those that like the basic mechanic, Ganesha Games makes Modern, Post
apoc, horror, teddy bear victorian and other games that use the same basic mechanic and many more in production.
Negatives.
1) Lots of abstraction. Each figure only has two stats (Quality and Combat) and additional special rules. The special rules are great for defining the figure and adding abilities, but it means that it might make little difference whether your charachter is wielding a mace or a sword, or a scimitar.
2) Lots of special rules. The special rules are what realy make each figure unique. They are fairly easy to keep track of, but some folks will not appreciate the fact that may charachters will have more special rules than statistics.
3) No Background/Fluff. Some of the expansions provide settings and fluff, but the basic game has no background at all.
4) Limited Role for magic. Magic is present, and is expanded throughout the supplements, but even with the supplements, it doesn't have nearly the potential to be the kind of power that it can be in WFB.
So that's it, I'd like to hear the opinions and experiences of those who've played the game.
If you're in Chicago and want to play, shoot me an email, and we'll see about inclucing you in one of our bi-weekly sessions.
More about the game at
http://www.ganeshagames.net/
