Preamble:
Five women, highly trained and highly
motivated, set out to discover the cause of the disappearance of a
archaeological dig team in the deserts of Egypt. What they find may
be one of the greatest threats they've ever faced!
Heroes:
I call this team “The B-Team” using
models from Reaper, the “we closely resemble but are legally
distinct from” the movie SuckerPunch. I'm using different names
but if you want to find them, they're under the Chronoscope line,
listed under “Anime Heroine” and “Survivor.”
Barbie – Leader
Traits: Discretion, Sneaky
Bambi
Trait: Marksman
Becky
Trait: Crackshot
Bai
Trait: Lucky
Bobbi
Trait: Medic
Villain:
The Mummy -
Master: Imhotep
Minion (Unique): High Priest of Karnak
Minions: Cultists of Karnak
Set-up:
The Desert Dig Site -
Quicksand (Unsteady)
Blazing Heat (Creeping Horror)
Sand Storm (Raging Storm)
When it came to setting up the board, I
might have gone overboard (haha, unintentional pun there). I wanted
it to look like something out in the desert with some large holes to
represent the pit that would have been dug to discover the tomb. I
also used some stuff to represent the ruins that would have been
around it as best I could. Next time, maybe a bit less terrain is in
order...
I also rolled Aggressive for the
deployment of the Threat Tokens, which was a little hard with what I had out.
Objectives:
Stop The Ritual – This required an
altar or something like that, so I grabbed the one I got from the
first Bones Kickstarter. I had real trouble placing it as it says
you're suppose to in the rules. With the requirements for both it and
the tokens, it was literally impossible.
Set The Explosives – With how much
terrain I had, this one was going to be easy. Provided I could
actually get to the other side of the board!
Escape – I didn't score a single
point from this one but it is a nice one to have, as you can use it
to score points from wounded models.
The Game:
I deployed the team kind of near the
middle, as my goal was to drive for the middle of the board (for the
Altar), some terrain (for explosives), and get the hell out of Dodge!
As we all know, that was a fools game...
Once the game started, I tried to send
Becky off on her own, down a kind of alley, while the rest of the
team advanced together. Of course, Becky got close enough to trigger
a Cultist and got tied up for the first few rounds. I had to divert
Bobbi to help her out and then heal her.
As I tried to advance, I got screwed.
Hard. Without the lube. I managed to trigger ALL of the environmental
effects, one right after the other, thanks to the successes rolled
during the start of the Villainous phases. Then, I brought out
Imhotep! He thought Barbie was his Dearly Beloved and then started
kicking on Bai, who ended up having to take on another Cultist as
well!
So, I had to throw Bambi in to back up
Bai, and then had Becky and Bobbi run in after they cleared out the
other Cultist. Along the way, I had to have Bobbi heal Becky really
quick, and then try to heal Bai as much as she could, which might not
have been entirely correct in the rules (it doesn't say you can't
heal someone who's Engaged in combat, which might be something to
think about moving forward, I'd say “no” if it were me).
Meanwhile, I had Barbie running around
and trying to score points. Which was the plan from the get-to, but I
didn't like how she was pretty much running around by herself with
the Priest out there somewhere. Given how poorly I rolled, I was very
glad I didn't have him pop up. Then again, since she was the
Princess, she actually would have been fine... Hmm...
By the end of the game, I had a huge
snarl in the middle of the board. Imhotep and the Cultist kept trying
to smack Bai and missing, while Bai and everyone else kept trying to
smack them and kept missing. It was a real comedy of errors, let me
tell you. Even with the high skill of Imhotep, I kept rolling tens on
the Difficulty dice. At one point, I rolled three tens, one on each
die. I still don't know how that should have worked, but since it was
the hero rolling, I counted that as two successes. As the rule states
that the hero needs to “meet or beat” the difficulty. I rolled
two Difficulty dice because I had Advantage, in case you're
wondering.
The fight ended when Barbie came back
from dealing with the Altar and placing some explosives. Then, she
joined the brawl in the middle and whittled Imhotep down. If she had
kept moving around, I would have triggered the last two Threat
Markers and it would have been bad.
Of course, after I killed the Cultist,
I realized that the game should have ended three turns ago...
I do have to say that I'm kind of
confused about some of the rules. Like, how can you get more than two
successes? There's several areas (including the Threat Check Results
table) that goes well past the two you can get on a ten. From what
I've read, it appears that you get a pass/fail results for successful
rules, except when you roll a ten. Should there be a success for each
number better the goal and the roll? I'm not sure...
So, with Imhotep and the two revealed
Cultist dead, the Altar dealt with, and three explosives placed, I
called the game.
Results:
Rank – C
I barely survived, just by the skin of
my teeth. I made a lot of mistakes, which both helped and hurt me,
but I had real feeling that I was screwed no matter what I did. With
the range Markers are activated, and move when you roll the success
on the test at the start of Villainous Phase, you're going to be
swamped really, really fast. Next time around, I'm going to go for
easier objectives and just rush for those.
The one thing that really gets me is
how far things have range on such a small table. Threat Markers can
be triggered 6” away and, when you roll the most common results on
the Threat Check, you're almost always going to have SOMEONE within
10”. When you're racing against the clock, it's like the game is
designed to end up with a mess in the middle of the table, which you
don't even want to bother to escape because the villains are going to
move 6” at a time, towards your heroes, making you choose between
duking it out and just running away until time runs out. It just
feels slightly off.
All of that said, I do plan on playing
it again soon and I'm holding off on a firm verdict until then. So
far, it's not terrible and is fun, but it's a slog, no two ways about
it.
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