Tag: Warhammer

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Space Marine Adventures: Labyrinth of the Necrons

The DorkWeb got some time to play Space Marine Adventures: Labyrinth of the Necrons. AKA squad of genetically altered monster men vs an army of T800 terminator robots.

How it plays:

Space Marine Adventures: Labyrinth of the Necrons is a cooperative board game that can be played with as few as 2 players or as many as 4. An average game can last, in our experience, anywhere from 15-30 minutes. Surprisingly Labyrinth of the Necrons has more in common with a puzzle or logic game than Warhammer 40,000 proper, but more on that later. You can have the same game experience with any number of players, but we’re all for having more brains to get out of tough situations.

Every game will start with players choosing one of three available missions and then their team of Space Marines. There are five different Space Marines, each with their own stat card and unique abilities. Each marine may also draw two and keep one card from a deck of equipment and additional abilities. Once the team has been created and equipped you’ll load them up onto one of the four-square stairs pieces and a randomly chosen game board (three double-sided pieces offer many board layouts). The goal of almost every mission is to get to and activate the computer terminal tile, which will reveal the exit, and escape. Players can decide the order they’ll stack up but an initiative deck controls who goes and in what order.

The initiative deck is also loaded with with Necron cards, drawing these calls for revealing the next card at the top of the Necron deck. The Necron deck controls how the enemy forces react. Typically this means more enemies will be spawning but it can also change how difficult enemies are to defeat. On the subject of spawning and defeating enemies, Labyrinth of the Necrons adds a little chaos when it comes to it’s spawning mechanics. Enemies spawn on the green numbered tiles on the board, if there is already an enemy there then an enemy spawns on EVERY adjacent square. This means the board will fill up with enemies fast! An area with one or two enemies can become a blocked off hallway full of enemy robots in the matter of a turn if left unchecked. To defeat Necrons, the player Space Marine rolls a dice and compares that to the target number on the enemy’s card (adding or subtracting for any modifiers) if the result ties or is greater than the target’s toughness they are destroyed and removed from the board.

What We Thought:

Space Marine Adventures: Labyrinth of the Necrons is a fun and fast dip into the 41st Millennium. New players and teaching players don’t need to worry about lengthy explanations or example turns. Nearly everything a player needs to know about how to use their Space Marine can be found on their character’s card, and it even has a handy reverse side if your character becomes wounded. In all our cases of teaching a new player, they were ready to go after just a couple minutes of explanation. All of the item, character, and enemy cards have the same great art fans of Warhammer 40,000 will be familiar with and the space marine character cards actually depict that character as a fully painted model (you know, like the ones you got with the game could be). I do wish the enemy necrons were models, like the Space Marines, but I assume the decision to use tokens instead was to keep this game affordable.

The real thing that makes this game shine is the feeling of well-earned accomplishment after a clean evac despite the growing hordes of enemies. In a way, this game almost feels better played with all players giving input on how to use their collective team and items to complete their objective as opposed to playing as four individuals. There are no solo or personal objectives, just the one goal of the group. Managing whether it’s the right time for the heavy weapons expert to clear a path for the group or if the fastest Space Marine should try to dash to the terminal before the next wave of enemies, these are the decision that will spell victory or defeat for your team and they are best made together.

There are a variety of different enemies that increase in their difficulty to defeat, but you won’t encounter any of those badasses until mission two and on. On the shallower end of its difficulty (mission one) it can sometimes even feel a little too easy, but difficulty ramps up with missions two and three. The missions control what will be found in the Necron deck and also what will already be on the board when the mission starts. There are even special rules for an ‘Epic Campaign’ which consists of doing missions 1-3 back to back and taking any wounds or deaths with you into the next mission. Honestly, I feel that this is the desired way to play the game once all players find their footing. 

I know there’s already another Space Marine Adventures game in the works, and I can say that I’m definitely looking forward to it! Labyrinth of the Necrons is a great way for fans of Warhammer 40,000 to introduce the universe to their friends while still keeping game night concise and fun. Even for those with no prior knowledge about the franchise this game still provides a fun tactical experience. I do wish there were more options to tweak difficulty or allow for additional character options as you could very easily buy any “expansion” pieces right off the shelf at your local hobby shop. Purchase here

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Doomseeker, Megaland, and Thunderstone

Over this week, The DorkWeb had a chance to get together with some like minded friends and crack into some of the board/card games we’d gotten our hands on since GenCon.



 

We started out playing Megaland. This Target exclusive lands somewhere between a “city builder” and a Russian roulette style dungeon delver.

 

 

How It Plays:
Each turn characters try their luck collecting resources from the dungeon; a randomized deck of encounters. The longer your character stays in the dungeon, the greater the chance they’ll meet their doom and leave empty handed.

The resources that you collect are used as currency to purchase buildings, growing your settlement and providing valuable bonuses to your character. Some buildings are there just to generate more currency, while others can actively make you tougher.

What We Thought:

Megaland can be a lot of fun, its definitely one of those games that’s easier to get a grasp of after you’ve seen a round or two played. Megaland’s art  just bleeds whacky silly fun; from the potential city buildings, to the design of the dungeon cards, and characters. One thing we did notice is that it is very easy to succeed in this game by playing it safe. One of our players never remained in the dungeon after the initial encounter, and they ended up winning the round! Aside from a shortage of incentive to put your character in increasing danger, Megaland is a whacky and dynamic ‘test-your-luck’ style builder that would be welcome at nearly anyone’s game night. Purchase here

Next up, we took a crack at Warhammer: Doomseeker. The DorkWeb had a chance to play this, albeit small-scale, while at GenCon. We couldn’t resist picking up our own copy once we got back home.

How It Plays:

Doomseeker is all about building up your Dwarf and slaying as many baddies as possible. Each player is randomly assigned a hero character and a grudge, each hero has their own unique ability and grudges serve as a special rule or objective that is meant to be kept hidden from other players. On the board you’ll find: a randomized deck of monsters increasing in difficulty and the number of players, a deck of treasures to help increase the power of your Slayer, and a ‘fate’ deck the players draw from and use these cards to influence their own or other player battles. Even after a Slayer is killed in battle, there’s a whole mechanic that allows you to bet on the other Slayer’s battles in the afterlife.

An average turn starts with the active player choosing to attack a monster. It’s at this point that every other player may try to alter the outcome of the battle in some way by playing a ‘fate’ card. These ‘fate’ cards can do anything from substantially decreasing the attacking slayers strength, to pushing them out of the way and taking the kill for yourself. A dice roll, modified by stats, will ultimately determine whether the Dwarf kills his mark or not. Additionally some enemies have special effects when they enter the battle or when they’re killed, offering incentive to kill one thing faster or just leave it be.

What We Thought:

In Doomseeker you are cast as a Slayer; slayers are Dwarves who have taken the slayer oath, much like taking the black in Game of Thrones. It means that a Dwarf is expected to go out into the world and do one thing, fight. It’s not ever a question about if the slayer falls, that’s inevitable, the question is ‘Did he die honorably?’ Now, for those unfamiliar with Warhammer this little bit of prelude information really helps frame the game up for new players. In our group we have two familiar with Warhammer lore and two who aren’t.

We’ve had the chance to play Doomseeker twice since our time with it at GenCon. The biggest difference between those two sessions were the players involvement in what was happening on the game board. Even just a quick explanation really goes a long way in getting players feeling involved and even roleplaying their characters a bit. We found Doomseeker extremely easy to pick up and play. There’s enough there to play multiple times and have a different experience each time,  but it may not have as much turn-by-turn depth as some players might want. Purchase here

And that brings us to the last game of the night, Thunderstone! A friend brought this over and ensured that our night would be dominated by card games.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How It Plays:

Thunderstone is a deck and roster building dungeon delver all played out through cards. A dungeon deck is created and three monsters start on the board, this represents the three ‘levels’ in the dungeon. Somewhere in the dungeon deck there is a powerful guardian, the game comes to its end when the guardian is defeated or makes it to the first level of the dungeon.

Players are dolled out hands of basic weapons, fighters, and items that are used to make purchases or trades each turn. Characters can be upgraded or ranked up, and you’re able to supplement any weaknesses your roster has with purchased spells or items as well. Every round players will have the choice between heading into the dungeon to defeat a monster, or heading into town and making additional changes to their hand. Victory points are earned from monster kills in addition to holding certain cards when the game concludes.

What We Thought:

I think we were actually fortunate to play Thunderstone and Doomseeker back to back, because in a lot of ways they’re two distinct takes on the same kind of game. Both games offer the player a character and a horde of monsters waiting beneath a dungeon deck. Both games allow the player to customize their character by visiting a store/town and increase their ability to defeat these monsters, and both have players racing against each other to rack up the most kills.

Their differences are really where a player will prefer one game or the other. Thunderstone absolutely has more complexity to it. You’re building a roster that’s delving into the dungeon, not just one character. Now whether that means you start recruiting thieves, clerics, and supplement them with a strong armory of weapons, or maybe (like me) you prefer a small team of elite wizards bringing along a couple novice mage cronies, the choice is all yours.

This is where some of the downsides can rear their head. For instance, a new player may have a hard time grasping the different leveling paths for characters and the costs associated. Not to mention without prior knowledge of a deck builder like this, getting a ‘good enough’ hand to go into the dungeon can feel random. Despite these criticisms it’s important to note, we played this game for three and a half hours straight and almost couldn’t believe the time that’d passed when we finished our first game. We were all having a blast. Purchase here