Thursday 27 August 2015

Otherworld Skirmish Game Review

I have to admit that when I read the eagerly anticipated fantasy skirmish rules from Otherworld Miniatures I was a little disappointed. The rules seemed just a little bland and I couldn't see the hook. After playing it last night, I can say that it's a fantastic game to play and I'm really excited about giving it another go.

Since I'm not very good a learning rules from a book,  I was lucky enough to play against one of my regular D&D'ers, Jon, who has always had a keen I for the minutiae of rules and that certainly helped speed up our understanding. I brought to the HATE Club a set of pig faced orcs, some undead and four really old Games Workshop Disciples of Red Redemption to use a cultists.

I quickly made up two very basic 120gp factions, using a companion in each, with 4 orcs with halberds, 3 with crossbows and a shame for the orc faction and 3 cultists, 3 ghouls, a wight and a shadow for undead faction.


Undead Faction
I'd set up some dungeon terrain - parts of which I been given on the night (did I mention, I love the generosity and spirit of HATErs?). Then we got started. The shadow needed to be summoned, so I gave the Wretched Priest undead leader magic(2) and +1 Intelligence to ensure he/she got it off. My Monstrous Myrmidon had +1 hits, for 3, light armour and leader(1) for extra activation - which I kept forgetting.

Pig Faced Faction

I think we pretty much misinterpreted a least one rule a round, which is great because it meant we were definitely learning and discovering. It quickly became apparent that the damned status of undead is very nasty, and is something we need to dig into more online as it's very easy to lock down a faction using it. Weakened is also vicious, but since ghouls aren't too tough it didn't feel unbalanced in the end. I think I felt for awhile completely outgunned, but actually a few lucky armour saves kept me in the game and meant we ended on a draw, one model each both of who fled after failing morale checks.
Initial setup

Orcs turn one

My lone Orc crossbow man tempts the ghouls from their lair. 

He actually survives the charge attacks.

All undead cause fear, and orcs have a 50% chance of being scared.

More undead and their cultists emerge

A couple of rounds later, there isn't much left in the forgotten chamber.

The activation system, which means that generally you can only use half you models a turn is brilliant at creating internal tension, forcing you to really think about what it is you want to achieve each round. The statuses are a little brutal, in a fun way. I did think that a gentleman's agreement to tell your opponent what types you're taking i.e. men, monster, humanoids, undead, demons, etc, might be in order because I can see that a undead list with lots of ghouls would be very nasty.  The luck and fate systems definitely help give you a just a little more tactical ability, and stop the game being solely about dice arbitration.

I think £25 for the rules is a decent price. It's full colour scenic pictures of their model range is glorious, and works as intended, as you definitely want to go a buy so more of them. The tokens and cards aren't essential, but I think to you'll want them to make things easier. I suspect I'd use glass beads for activation in future though. I suspect, and hope, that they'll produce a monster manual for the creatures not covered - carrion crawlers for example. I'm also looking forward to trying a game with the adventure cards, which we didn't use to help speed things up.

So the game goes into my mainline game systems, to play repeatedly and so I hope a few more people at the club give it a try.



    


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