Let's Review: Dracula's America

What is it?:

Dracula's America is a Gothic horror meets old west 25/28mm scale miniatures game for two or more players published by Osprey Games.

 

 

The setting:

It's 1875 and North America is much different place than the one in our history. President Abraham Lincoln was advised by a mysterious European noble who makes the US Civil War much, much worse. The war grinds to a halt and a group of freedmen fight behind the lines inside the South. After a long and bloody war, the CSA is defeated and starts a guerrilla war against the Union.

Not that things are going well for the Union. In one night, President Lincoln and his cabinet are killed and the mysterious noble takes control and becomes “President For Life” after declaring martial law.

Of course, this nobleman is in fact Count Dracula and is doing all of this to gain and keep control. Now, there's all sorts for terrible and horrible things going on, with magic and nasty creatures bumping around.

Note: there's actually a lot of background covered in a short amount of pages.

 

 

The system:

The game uses several different dice (d6s, d8s, d10s) for actions and decks of playing cards for initiative. And if you roll the top number on one die, you can re-roll another. Honestly, I'm getting some really strong Deadlands vibes. And they only increase as I read.

In a turn, you draw a number of cards equal to half your current posse, plus one if the Boss is still around. Then, when one of your cards comes up (going in descending order from Aces), you can choose to give one model two actions or two models one action each. The actions are about what you would expect; moving, shooting, fighting, as well as an overwatch type action that's becoming common in a lot of skirmish games these days. Once you're out of cards, or everyone standing has gone, it starts all over again.

Combat seems to be pretty straight forward and models can be unaffected by an attack or taken out in one hit. That's right, hits, not damage. There's two states a model can be, before being removed as a casualty, but it's going to come down to making saves when you've lost the original roll.

As much as I can see the Deadlands influence in the game, I'm starting to see some 40k cropping up here. I don't think I've seen too many games with saves besides that one lately...

Models have three ranks: Hero, Veteran, and Novice. If you're familiar with Zona Alfa (which I'll get to, eventually), this might have seen something like this before. Depending on the rank of the model, you roll X amount of the dice you need. Every 5+ is a success and the model with the most successes wins usually. What that boils down to is that the higher the rank, the better the chance of success.

When it comes to building your forces, you have several different ways to do it, and I have to say, I kind of like it. The first way, and probably the way you should start, is you pick a maximum number of models, equipment them with what you can see, and play the game. This is clearly for pick-up games and learning how to play. And I think that's a good thing. Next, you can build a force with a $100 limit, including their equipment. You pay more per model depending on their rank (or Grit as the game calls it), so you can go for the minimum of four if you want an elite force and a maximum of ten if you want to have a bunch of less reliable dudes.

I'll discuss the third way of making a posse in a little bit.

When it comes to equipment, there's a healthy list of guns and a few other things but no melee or hand to hand weapons. I was a little surprised by that however I do understand why they might want to just be like “naw, you all fightin' with shootin' irons.” I'm kind of disappointed by this, as many of the models I'd like to use are carrying swords, axes, or aren't carrying any visible weapons at all.

Now, about that setting... With the stuff above, you can just use this game for some shootouts without magic and monsters, just have a bit of fun. However, if you really want to play the game they've sold you, you'll be sucked into the setting.

There's six main groups in the core book (and it looks like there's more in the expansions) with each representing a different side of the conflict going on. You've got your “good guys” in the Twilight Order, who are monster hunters that can summon a lady gunfighter angel. Opposite them, you have the Red Hand Coven of vampires that appear to associated with President Dracula. When it comes to the South, you've got the Congregation, made up of freedmen, Abolitionists, and Voodoo priests. And opposite them you the Dark Confederacy, who summon their own war dead to keep fighting for the Southern Cause. Finally, you've got the Skinwalker Tribes, who are Native Americans that use lycanthropes to fight against the Palefaces. And on the other side of them, you have a demon summoning railroad baron's group of the Crossroads Cult. Not that you have to play one side or the other in these conflicts, as it looks like none of them get along very well.

When you create a posse for a campaign in the setting, you get a total of six dudes (including a Veteran Boss), two of which get to change depending on the faction you're choosing. The Red Hand Coven, for example, gets some vampires to play with. This is also where you're going to start dealing with the magic and monsters in the game. Of course, even if you're not playing with the Factions and all this, they can pop up, but a lot of the groups have access to something like werewolves, demons, zombies, and the like.

So, there's some “yikes” stuff in this book that makes me a tad uncomfortable. The first one is the Native Americans. Skinwalkers are part of Navajo tradition (if I'm remembering correctly and Wikipedia proves me right) and they ARE NOT GOOD PEOPLE! In addition, the Wendigo is from Canada and kind of... Odd, in terms of history. Throwing these in here feels disrespectful. No one is perfect, and games involving alternative history don't have to be historically accurate, but... Come on, man! Also, the whole Native American thing feels a bit last minute, as they only get bows for weapons. Nevermind the plethora of ranged weapons that the Native Peoples used all over North and South America... I just... It doesn't feel researched at all, you know?

The next “yikes” in the Confederacy. I get that this was released in 2017, but, still... I will grant them that they are clearly suppose to be Black Hats, I'm just not sure if it was a good idea to include them, given the amount of racist pricks involved in gaming. If you've been to a game store, you know what I'm talking about. When you add in the Voodoo of the Congregation, it just gets worse. I think all of this is because the author is from the UK, which might give a different perspective on the whole thing. (Nevermind the fact that the UK was an a kinda, sorta ally of the Confederacy, in case you didn't know.)

I'm not trying to harp on this too much, just think of this as a warning if you've got issues with any of this, okay?

Is it worth it?:

This is a really tough call. On the one hand, it's a fun little game that lets you choose if you want to play with or without horror elements. However, on the other hand, it's not quite filled out as much as I would like because you can turn the horror “on and off.” If it was just a $20 Osprey book, without the horror, I would recommend it right off the bat, as it is, I'm going to give this a real “maybe.”

If the setting sounds interesting to you, I would say go for it. If you want a pure western minis game, you'll have to find something else, unless you can find a copy for cheap.

Having looked through the book several times, I still do don't know how I feel about it. I think the system is interesting, but feels incomplete. I like the idea of the setting (the monsters and stuff) but it also includes some stuff that gives me pause. I'm also not sure how much I like the “bring the miniatures you want BUT there's a ton you're going to want to buy from my friend...” thing that's going on here. I know you can play without them, or use proxies, it's just that I don't feel like the get the whole experience without them, I guess.