Have you ever had one of those moments where you just slap your forehead and exclaim “Why didn’t I think of that?” That is the reaction that I had when I read the rules and played Catacombs by Sands of Time Games. Catacombs combines the ease of play found in dexterity games with the rich theme and character of a dungeon crawl. Dexterity games are a genre that I do not get excited about since I like to drink a few brews when gaming and over time my skills diminish so the high skill ones like Crokinole, while fun, have been low on my radar. Others like Elk Fest carry a theme that is so paper thin they just don’t sink their talons into me and keep me interested past a few plays. Catacombs though manages to pull from different genres to create a game that is rich in theme and through the theme creates a dexterity game that doesn’t fall back to “who is the more accurate flicker” that many others fall victim to.

The components to Catacombs are pretty straight forward. There are three two sided game boards, a few decks of cards and tons of wooden discs with stickers that need to be applied. A neat little feature to the gameboards are holes that are cut in them to hold large wooden discs that create obstacles for players to flick and maneuver around. The dungeon is setup by taking the dungeon cards and separating them into their different levels. Starting with ‘0′ and ending at ‘2′ they progressively get harder by putting more or stronger enemies on them. Eight cards are placed face down which form the dungeon. Mixed in at specific areas is a merchant, healer and the final dungeon lord who is the big bad guy who the heroes are tasked with killing.

To start the game the first room card is flipped over (which at this point is a Level 0 room), the proper board is picked and the monsters detailed on the cards removed from the monster pool. The heroes setup first along the back edge and then the monsters setup about a third of the way up the board on the opposite end. Heroes get the first turn and can either move/melee or use a special power. Special powers are things like a bow for the Elf, magic for the Wizard and a berserk attack for the barbarian. A move/melee attack is a simple flicking of the hero and if it hits an enemy it is a melee attack and if they don’t then it is considered a move. When a hero hits an enemy that token is flipped over if the monster has multiple wounds or removed if they have only one or are down to one wound left. Monsters work in the same way with some (though not many) having special attacks or they can do a move/melee attack but the heroes are able to take substantially more damage than a monster.

What I really love about the game is the shooting attacks. Say for example the Elf was shooting their bow, a small yellow disc is placed next to the hero and then flicked. I just like the neat little feature of seeing a projectile actually shoot out of heroes or monsters it just feels more thematic instead of rolling a dice and saying “oh I hit” or “oh I missed”. You actually see the arrow bounce off of a stone pillar or just missing the target by a fraction of an inch. I found that when my wizard misses with a fireball it isn’t my fault even though I flicked the disc, it was the wizards poor mastery of the spell that caused the failed shot.

With all this praise though there are a few issues I see with the game. First is there are times where you want to get a little oomph behind the shot perhaps to cause some dramatic ricochets to try to hit two or more targets, or perhaps you want to try to bounce a fireball off a pillar to hit something you don’t have a straight shot to. What happens is the disc moves so fast that it is sometimes hard to tell what hit what. Was it the actual projectile that hit to cause the enemy to move, or did something else bump into it? It is just hard to tell at times. The second issue I have with the game is the boards don’t have rails or a moat to catch discs that may fall off the board. When a disc does come off the board you’re supposed to place it back on at the location that it came off which sometimes is very tricky to do because it might be a two or three inch area that looks like the area where it came off the board. But on the flip-side some sort of rails along the side would mean that a target that was on the edge that you were shooting for and missed could be the victim of a bounce off the wall making it easier to hit targets.

All in all though there is a bonus to these potential areas of vagueness - It keeps the game light. To play the game cutthroat will lead to constant arguments with what hit what and where things may have left the board and to get caught up in that will do little more than kill the fun of the game. It is a light romp that should take no more than an hour or so to complete.

Overall this is a unique game in my collection and one where I don’t think I’ll ever have the desire to get rid of it. I greatly look forward to future expansions and look forward to a day where I can select my party of four from a good size pool of heroes. I look forward to seeing more monsters added to an already diverse selection. And most importantly I look forward to the many, many more times that I anticipate this game to be played.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

‘Til Next Time - Happy Gaming
LvT

Filed under: Catacombs, Games - Board Games by LordVonTush
2 Comments »

Instead of a usual army showcase I will attempt a project blog this time.

After many many years of hiatus (I played back in third edition) I had decided to pick up Warhammer Fantasy again. And since I have always been a fan of the works of Frank Frazetta, Simmon Bisley and Richard Corben I decided to go for a Warriors of Chaos army.

To start the army I got two battalions, two boxes of Marauder Horsemen, one box of Knights (for the mounted characters) and a Giant. I also added some old 3rd Ed. WHFB Chaos Warriors as Characters on foot (that I still had lying around). The idea was to have a big block of warriors with a sorcerer and two units of marauders in a “V” formation as my center. Two units of knights supported by Marauders on horse were to serve as the mobile element with Chaos Hounds to harass the flanks and limit marching moves. The Giant could support either the center or the mobile elements, depending on situation. The mobile elements were to be either set up in a pincer formation or form a refused flank.

I tried to keep the color scheme for the army very simple. The chaos army offered a variety of units and models, but to have a unified look I needed to limit the palette. The main theme of the army was to keep most of the metallic parts in Boltgun Metal and offset that with Gnarloc Green shields, cloaks and banners. The whole theme was inspired by the armies of the black moon in the “chronicles of the black moon” comic. After having painted a few units I realized I should have probably chosen Goblin green instead of the Gnarloc Green, but too late now.

Personally I don’t play with unpainted models (if they are my own). People sometimes ask me “how I find the time” or how I manage to “output so many painted minis”. The trick is to find ways to motivate yourself and to keep the painting going. So over the years I have developed a few tricks to do that, I have listed them at the end of the article.

So I started with building the core choices first. After a bit of research the best option seemed to have the Warriors with shields and halberds. The marauders would have shields and hand weapons.

The Warriors’ halberds came from the official bits pack. Two packs gave me almost enough for the whole unit. With the banner bearer and musician not having a halberd I was still two short. These remaining ones were converted from the axes that come with the warriors as standard. The Champion had his pointing axe arm converted to hold a halberd instead and the arm slightly repositioned. The warrior models are fairly static, so that was the only conversion.

For the Marauders I decided to distinguish the two units by making one “Viking” looking and the other more “chaotic” looking. This was largely done by choosing different styles of heads/helmets on the rank and file and converting the Unit Champion.  The first unit champion was turned into a Viking warrior by adding a mane of hair, adding to the beard and giving him a big fur cloak. His unit got the Viking looking helmets with curved horns and the bare, bearded heads from the marauder sprue.

The second unit champion was converted to have a pig/boar hood. He is based on an illustration of a warrior in an old RPG I played a long time ago. I always wanted to convert a guy like him and this gave me the perfect opportunity. Most of the guys from his unit received heads and helmets from the marauders horsemen sprue. These look very “Chaotic”. I also added 4 guys with mutations from the old mutation sprue, again to emphasize the chaos look. On both units I used left over horns from the warriors to equip the unit musician, since I didn’t like the drums.

Cheers, Lamenter.

Next up: Horses, horses and more horses. And some characters on Horses, too.

————————————————————————–

Lamenters motivational tricks for painting armies:

1. I only ever assemble what I can paint. Having a large mass of unpainted miniatures sitting on my desk seems to somehow make it such a big deal. Keeping them inside the boxes and on the sprue keeps them out of my sight and I “forget” that there is still a lot to do.
2. I start with units of rank-and-file  or cavalry (which nobody seems to like to paint) and intersperse them with the heroes or other unique models as a reward. In addition I try to put small conversions into the rank and file, that no-one will ever notice on a table but they help me to break up the monotony. For 40k armies I do the troop transports (since I don’t like painting tanks) first, then the troops that go in them afterward.
3. Large groups or units get broken up into groups of 5 men, which is a group I can do in one evening. I then try to do the Unit Champion/Leader model last.
4. In addition I find painting rank-and-file models very “meditative”. The constant repetition of colors and techniques makes it very easy. So painting is a way of “winding down” and relaxing for me. (maybe it is also a sign of my increasing madness).
5. And lastly - I think it is important to find a level of painting that is suitable for table top war gaming. That means the models I paint are not perfectly painted. They look good and are shaded and highlighted (and are probably on a high standard for the gaming table). But I wouldn’t enter them in a painting competition. If you try to achieve perfection while painting 100+ models you will never succeed.

Filed under: Galleries - Project Blogs, Lamenters Chaos Warriors by Lamenter
3 Comments »

When Horus Heresy was announced I was filled with excitement since Fantasy Flight Games was giving their treatment to the epic battle in the 40k cannon that set the tone for the grim and dark future that is Warhammer 40,000. As photos started to pop up showing the components and the production quality I frothed even more at the mouth. There was no question that HH was a game that I had to play. The day finally came where Deacon’s copy arrived in the mail and soon after the date was set where we ourselves were going to determine the path of mankind in this landmark battle. But then we started playing…

The first thing I noticed after we started to play was that this game was more FFG than GW. Charm and character are words that I use to describe the boardgames of Games Workshop. Fairly straight forward rules with simple, intuitive and quick gameplay were traits to many of their titles. Outside of the 40k theme, FFG removed these intangibles and instead went in the FFG direction which is intricate and interwoven mechanics and procedures. Which in and of itself isn’t a bad thing, but for me I quickly sensed that my personal peak in terms of interest and enjoyment had already passed during the discovery phase of the game. Now that I had it in front of me and was playing I realized that what I wanted from the game was a GW game updated to modern game design standards through FFG’s resources. What I realized was that HH was a FFG design with a 40k theme and for me that was not what I wanted - It just felt like more of same. The “innovation” that was touted in the promotional material felt very similar to mechanics in their other games like Red November and StarCraft: The Boardgame although some twists had been added.

For me this game was a flop - mentally there was a point where in my head a sound echoed that could only be described as a large-mouth bass slipping off of your hook and hitting the wooden dock creating a thud that was hollow with a hint of a smacking sound from the fish’s slime coat. That sound was my hope and optimism for this game dropping as I realized that the game is not what I was hoping or wanted it to be. With opaque gameplay and layers that I felt were more bloated than Nurgle’s gut, my interest and enthusiasm waned.

Horus Heresy is a fine game and I was expecting it to quickly become one of my favorites and perhaps that is partially to blame for the downfall in my personal opinion. The rules and mechanics work and there are tons of options for players to pursue during the course of the Assault on Terra. And from what I can tell everything functions well and for all practical purposes work. For me though the bloat from things like the strategic map and the piles of piles of cards were just too much. Had the older GW design characteristics like dice and charts and a general lightheartedness been captured it would have fallen more inline with my expectations but as it stands, outside of the 40k theme, there is nothing in the game that really kept my attention or interest. Perhaps with a dozen or more plays this opaque feeling I get from the game would thin out or the cumbersome nature would disappear but even if I committed that much time and effort into this game I just do not think that it would inject any fun into the game which I feel is sorely lacking.

At this point I will admit that I have only played one full game and one partial game so you can take what I said with however many grains of salt you want, but truth be told I just don’t know if I’ll ever summon up the enthusiasm to play the game again. After my first partial play I felt that the only thing pulling me back was the 40k theme and after the full game even that was gone especially when I noticed my mind wandering less than a third of the way through the game to the game we were playing after HH. What I will say about the game is try before you buy as it will likely not meet your expectations if you enjoy the intangible traits that GW games used to have like I do. I wish I had it in me to play the game some more and offer up a full review, but I just don’t.

‘Til Next Time - Happy Gaming
LvT

Filed under: Games - Board Games, Horus Heresy by LordVonTush
5 Comments »