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Hey y'all, I was browsing my FLGS and came across the rulebook, had myself a quick flip-through and found the artwork/minis to be very nice, and the background/rules seemed interesting as well. Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to really get in depth, so I have a very basic understanding of the setting (Thirty Year War ish time period where humans find a gateway to hell is about the extent of my knowledge) and the rules (really all that I got out of it was that the game actually stresses the importance of terrain,etc.)

I was wondering if any of my fellow Dakkites/Dakkanauts had any more insight into the game or could direct me to some good info sources. I tried searching, etc. but it seems my google-fu is week and I couldn't really dig up all that much other than the fact that the game was around for a while in French but the company went under and was bought out by Cipher, and that apparently there was a piece of artwork of a Conquistador raping an angel...

The fluff for the game is absolutley awesome! I have been a big fan of this game since it came out in French years ago. The game is your standard skirmish game with no more than 12-15 models per side. It plays fast (most games are around an hour. We played a 3 round torney at Gencon in around 4-5 hours and that included a lot of time for playing around.

The combat mechanic involves rolling a number of dice and trying to hit a target number, each one that makes it causes more damage. You can get more combat dice from a command pool and abilities similar to Focus in Warmachine only if you do certian "cool things" it costs you command points permanenetly. What is cool about the combat is depending on how things go both sides could kill each other off at the same time.

It has an interesting Magic system as "spells" are imbued into these creatures which can be killed or are killed when they cast the spell. Think Pokemon and you got an idea.

To build your force you pick a faction, your general and then troops, named characters, and independents equal to your point cost. Every model has life points so while models can die in one hit, others might stay around for a while depending on the damage they take.

The game is senario driven and it uses the idea of minor victory, victory, and slaughter to see who wins.

The models are feaking awesome!

beowulfhunter wrote:The models are feaking awesome!

QFT. that's what picqued my interest in the game. Sadly there aren't HD players that I know of in my area. But if there were I'd be playing the oriental faction all the way. I think they're called the immortals. Still, I might just pick up a few to paint.

Beowulf, thanks for the review. Do you know if the rules being published by Cipher are the same ones originally published in French, or did they rework the game for whatever reason?

I went into the tourney at Gencon with the Rules Translations that were published back in 2008-2009. Those rules seemed very similair to what everyone else with the rulebook was using. There was a change in the stats of the models called 1635 which brought some of the models up to being more competative and those are the ones in the book and used from now on. Things were laid out for a better read. I never saw the French rulebook from back in the day, but from what I understand it is the same rules, same fluff, with one or two of the questionable pieces of art missing from the book such as an angel getting "rear ended" from a priest. I can deal with images like that missing from my rulebook.

chaos0xomega wrote:Beowulf, thanks for the review. Do you know if the rules being published by Cipher are the same ones originally published in French, or did they rework the game for whatever reason?

Cool, good to know. I guess I'll pick the book up when the wallet isn't so thin. Can you give a quick rundown of the factions playstyles, etc?

Also, quick question (again, I could only browse the book very briefly) does the terrain change during the course of the game? I saw something towards the back about terrain zones, etc. and about terrain setup, etc. And it seemed like it was a game within itself. I tried to absorb as much info as I could, but I didn't get very much. Can you give any commentary about how the terrain system works, how it effects the game, your thoughts, and such?

The terrain in this game is very flavorful and is more then just Hills, Fences, and Forests. The terrian rules care called terraforming. You split the field into 9 quadrants. Each player places a counter with a number on them. So you will have 9 for you, and 9 for your opponent. You then flip the counters and put down terrian equal to the value of the two counters. So lets say I put down a 3 and he puts down a 1 we have 4 points to spend on terrian. Perhaps a large hill (4), 2 small hills (2 each), or a Pit (1) and a small carin stone (1). I am not a fan of this, it seems clunky and most tourneys I have been in ignore this and just put out a fair amount of terrian.


Factions:

Westerners, they are considered to be the weakest of factions as thier guns hit hard, but are slow to reload. I did take 2nd with them at Gencon, so your milage may very. The models in a vacume (factoring out synergy which all factions) hit weakly and are easy to kill. Lost of explosion weapons and spells.

Sarrasins. Hit hard, have awesome synergy, are very much a CC army.

Deamons and Damned. Have some very powerful models that are hard to defend against. Depending on the models chosen, they can be very un fun to play against.

Lost. One of the hardest hitting factions in the game.

Mercs. Lots of toys and fun models.

Immortals. No clue never played against them.