Infernal - Kickstarter coming soon

It was the Blood Bowl NAF Champs over the weekend. Normally, I'd have accompanied Husbit but this year I'm preparing for an exam so have used his absence to really knucle down on some study.

And to have another look at a game I mentioned very briefly a while ago: Infernal, by Wartorn Games. One of the guys at Wartorn Games was a member of our local gaming community before abandoning us and moving to London, so we were thrilled when he came back down so we could playtest - and even more pleased when we really enjoyed the game. 

He and another of the guys behind the game came down to run a day at a local gaming store, Entoyment*. I popped in with my baby brother to see how it had progressed. When we played, the models were still at concept stage so we were using models from other games as stand-ins and for me the biggest draw was to see what the finished models looked like. Please excuse the quality of the photos - I was trying to take them without disturbing the games going on at the time.

I got a bit distracted by the finished church

'Spiderbitch' in the foreground. Dr Goodall in the background.

The initial release will be for the Dagger team and the Tortured Souls. Who are they? Well, you're clearly not aware of recent developments! Basically, magic is real and present and the government is working hard to cover it up and keep things running smoothly. Dagger is a branch of the military made up of people who've seen enough to know there's something wrong, and who now lead teams to investigate and resolve mystical issues (there's a rumour of an RPG of this to follow).

There has been a secret magic war going on between witches and wizards (both factions to follow) for hundreds or thousands of years. The Wizards believed they'd won, using the witch hunts to drive the witches underground. The witches, however, are still around and are determined to reclaim their position. They've found a ritual that will open a portal to a realm of power, but they're not so stupid as to try this themselves and trick the wizards into doing so. A portal to Hell appears in the middle of London, causing mass destruction and a wall being put up to contain what exudes from it. London is basically written off and all the Dagger operatives are called in to kill any survivors.

Sound harsh? This is a game with no good guys. I pity Dagger - they're hugely out of their depth, and they're killing survivors to prevent them becoming possessed by the Tortured Souls, the formless beings who're pouring out of Hell. They've been tortured for so long they've forgotten their own forms and take from the minds of the people they inhabit, so Miss Neith, a school teacher terrified of spiders, suddenly starts morphing into a giant spider - and given enough souls (sucked from other survivors) she becomes a giant spider the Dagger team call 'Spiderbitch'.

That's Miss Neith running at the tech specialist

The other Tortured Soul available for play on the day was Dr Goodall, a rare diseases specialist who becomes the embodiment of the bubonic plague - the Black Death.

Black Death looms at the top of the church

There are other factions to come and I've given the briefest overview because I don't want to give too many spoilers- I think the background that's been given to this world is exciting and I'm looking forward to the fiction and fluff as much as the game.

I will briefly mentioned the Thaddeans because when we playtested it was as Dagger vs Thaddeans. They're named for St Jude Thaddeus, patron saint of lost and desperate causes, and are an ancient order of knights who've been preparing for the apocalypse in the year 2000... which didn't happen. Disheartened and largely feeling like they'd wasted their lives, they drank and otherwise started to fall apart, until Hell appeared: the apocalypse, it seemed, was just late. So now they're trying to rescue relics and survivors in London - not to help the survivors, but to convert them to their fanatical cause. Basically, it sucks to be a survivor.

The game play is straightforward. You have a set of tokens on the board and, when you get close enough, you can choose to turn them over. The token might reveal a relic (giving you points if you can hold it), a survivor (for you to kill or use for your nefarious purposes), or a trap (BOOM!). Turn order is decided by drawing a token from the Cup of Destiny, meaning each player gets an equal number of turns going first but the order of this is random. Combat is pretty brutal, and as your team gets injured they can do less so you need to think about what you need them to do! (I can attest that the 'run forward and hope for the best' tactic is a bad idea when you're playing as Dagger).

I mentioned in my previous post that I liked the models because they included female characters who aren't ridiculously posed: I'm cross with myself for not taking a decent photo of the Dagger tech specialist (I really thought I had), because she's a perfect example of this. The model for Miss Neith makes me laugh because they kept having to send the concept back, saying "great, but less boobs, less arse" and the sculptor was saying "but then she won't look like a woman"... She definitely looks like a woman, just not one who (as one of the guys put it) "hasn't been able to see her feet since puberty".

The Kickstarter kicks off on Friday. Please visit their website - they're also on Facebook and Twitter. 

UPDATE: KICKSTARTER IS NOW LIVE! CHECK IT OUT HERE.

*I actually hadn't been in before, but now intend to go back - there was absolutely none of the awkwardness at having a confident female geek in their store I've experienced elsewhere, and they had a good selection of games.

'Infernal' by Wartorn Games

Ok, I'm not allowed to say much at the moment, but I was helping playtest 'Infernal', the new game from Wartorn Games last weekend. I really liked it. I really like the background and the simplicity of the mechanics and I'm excited by the concept art/models I've seen (including female models who aren't suggestively posed!).

More info will follow shortly, but in the meantime if you're free on 25th April and can get to London, they will be at Salute where you will be able to get more info (and see some cool stuff).

RPGaDay Day 7 - Most Intellectual Game

#RPGaDay

Day Seven – Most Intellectual Game Owned

I’ve been really struggling with this one and done a more thorough search of other people’s responses (this one is my favourite, but I’m really intrigued by the game described here) for inspiration.

As discussed before, I don’t own many games so am again going to cheat and go with a game I’ve played/own by proxy (I figure it’s still in keeping with the ethos of #RPGaDAY to do it this way when my answer-pool is otherwise a bit limited and I’d probably have to go with ShadowRun again – cyberpunk settings are as capable of being about intrigue and subterfuge as strength and cyberwear).

Numenara looks like a clever game but I haven’t played it (yet – very, very much want to!) so can’t include it.

Vampire: The Masquerade is definitely a contender here. I’ve played a few different campaigns and mini-campaigns and there is definitely a lot to this game. Personally, I prefer Werewolf; the Werewolf campaign I was in was more intellectual than I understand Werewolf normally is because Werewolf is about that barely-controlled inner rage, which is not particularly intellectual. So back to Vampire. Because it is (usually) about intrigue and deceit and power struggles, it has the scope to be very intellectual, enough to make my head spin in at least one campaign. But vampires are inherently physically powerful, too, which is why I haven’t gone with it as my final choice.

I’ve chosen Call of Cthulu.

I’ve only played the game once and didn’t enjoy it. I don’t like the mythos on which it is based, either, and think H P Lovecraft is probably the most overrated author I’ve ever had the misfortune to read (most of arguments I’ve been given to this can be quenched by reading M R James, a ghost story writer who slightly pre-dates Lovecraft and whose control of the story is much, much tighter). I do love the Arkham Horror board game, though, and have come to the conclusion that the roleplay game is probably very good; I was just a bit unfortunate with the circumstances of the game I was in (little things, like a character who was an experienced war veteran having to make sanity roles when a gun went off and a failed sanity role on a boat leading to a fear of horses because the GM was running to the letter of the rules).

This game is a game of horror and the best horror is that which plays out primarily in the mind. Ambrose Bierce’s The Man and the Snake is a wonderful example of this. For that reason, Call of Cthulu is probably the most intellectual game I (sort-of) own.

With thanks again to Autocratik. His Day 7 is here. I’ve not actually seen it yet because I’m at work without headphones. Having read his bit at the top, I may need to change my mind to Traveller or Rolemaster, but I rather like my answer. 

RPGaDay Day 5 - Most Old School Game Owned

#RPGaDay

Day Five – Most Old School Game Owned

I’m going to cheat here, and write about a game I own by proxy rather than a game I own myself. I own some old World of Darkness; I have a seemingly permanent loan of WFRPs (1^st Edition); and I own/have loan of 3^rd Ed ShadowRun, but none of these are particularly old school (or maybe I’m just older than I think).

I was tempted to cheat using Hero Quest. My Grandada used to run the game for me and my younger siblings – I was always the elf, my brother always the wizard and my sister happy with either barbarian or dwarf – and he used to bring a ‘roleplay-lite’ element to the game. We found a copy in a charity shop and bought it because we loved the game so much, but it was never quite as fun with anyone else in charge. The game sits in my Dad’s board game cupboard now. It’s not necessarily old school, isn't technically an RPG and probably should have been mentioned on Day One instead, but I didn’t think of it then!

Husbit’s brother, an avid gamer, sadly died last year and we inherited all his roleplay books. There’s a fair few, mostly Cthulu and Dungeons & Dragons. Including some pretty old D&D bits and pieces. So that’s my ‘most old school RPG owned’: AD&D – many supplements, 2 players’ handbooks, and I believe the core rule book. I haven’t ever looked through it, though. It still makes me feel a little - not sad, as such; melancholy, maybe? - to see the books because they make me think of Jules and all the sorrow there.

With thanks again to Autocratik. His Day 5 is here.  

PS: trying to catch up! This should have been posted yesterday but was chilling out after an awesome circus session. Made real progress on a move on the silks I'd been struggling with, which was very exciting to me. Annoyingly, didn't have time to go a second time to be filmed, so can't share. And no circus for a fortnight now! 

Lunch Money, Jack the Ripper, Red Dragon Inn and Love Letter

At the Blood Bowl NAF Championships, we didn’t just play Blood Bowl. A proper post about the tournament itself will follow (once I’ve scanned in the pictures) but in the meantime, here’s a breakdown of the other games I was involved in.

LUNCH MONEY 

Husbit took his NAF and usual online name from this game – he introduced it to my friends at uni the first time he visited me there and they couldn’t all remember his name afterwards but they did remember the game. It’s a card game he particularly enjoys, being fairly simple and playable in a much larger group than the rules say. Everyone uses the same draw pile, too: it isn’t a deck-building game (such as Magic: the Gathering), so success doesn’t rely on spending more money than your opponents.

We played it up at Cantaloupe’s on the Friday night. Husbit won all 3 hands – he’s pretty good. I think, also, I’m a bit nice for the game – I tend not to like finishing someone off and would rather start picking on another player for a bit so everyone stays in longer. This is not the way to win the game.*

The idea is that you’re kids in the playground beating each other up. You have a hand of 5 cards drawn from the central pile. At the start of your turn, you play a card (or, occasionally, more) and then draw back up to 5 (you may have used some in other players' turns and can choose to discard other cards instead of having a turn). The cards are mostly attacks, but you also have defences (blocks, dodges, freedoms and hides), health cards (visiting the nurse) and ‘humiliation’ cards (I think one of the expansions renames these ‘horror of horrors’) that can be used to counter anything played before – if you can come up with a clever story. You have 20 health which is reduced as the other players attack you.

In my opinion, this game is best played with story – rather than just slamming down a jab card, I like it when a description of the action is given “I see you on the swing and come over to deliver a sharp jab in your ribs. Take that, coward!” Other people disagree, preferring the faster paced version of just throwing in cards. But humiliation cards, in particular, are just so much more fun when played with story – “as you ran to me, you misjudged my swing and instead of punching me, my foot caught you in the bladder at just the right angle to make you wet yourself. Nananananah, can’t hurt meee”.

MYSTERY RUMMY: JACK THE RIPPER 

This is one of Cantaloupe’s games. We moved onto it after Husbit proved too good at Lunch Money… He also won this.

The game is a variant on Rummy, with the idea being to collect sets of evidence and related suspects, victims and scenes. You can play a scene any time, but no other card can be played until a victim has been played. If the scene in the same colour as the victim has already been played, you can take it. If not and someone else plays that scene later, they can take the victim. Suspects can be played once 3 pieces of evidence against them are down. The suspect with the most evidence played against them scores double points unless the appropriate alibi has been played by someone else. There are also cards that have effects when played – one that forces any victims in hands to be played and others that force players to discard and so on.

My first hand had the special card “Ripper Escapes”. This card scores negative points equal to twice the number of played victims unless all victims have been played, in which case it is worth 35 points. This sounded like a good way to win, but Husbit very quickly discarded his entire hand and I was stuck on negative points… this happened again in the third round, at which point I basically gave up and we went to bed.

I liked this game – I haven’t played any variant of rummy since school so it took me a moment to remember how the hell you played, but this was very similar and brought back fond memories of wasted free periods in the sixth form common room, stealing polos and spending time with friends. The cards are nice, too, because they all have a little bit of information about the various historical victims and suspects, which I found interesting.

THE RED DRAGON INN 

For me, this was the (non-Blood Bowl) game of the weekend. Naz picked it up on Day One of the tournament, and we settled down to play it that evening.

The premise is simple and designed to appeal to geeky roleplayers like me: you are adventurers, back from adventuring and enjoying your hard-earned cash fighting, drinking and gambling at a pub – the Red Dragon Inn. The original game – the version we were playing – gives you the options of a wizard with an insane rabbit familiar, an elven priestess, a warrior and a halfling rogue. The first game saw me as the priestess, Husbit as the wizard, Naz as the halfling and Kare as the warrior. Each character has strengths and weaknesses so as the evening progressed and we played different characters we had a very different game (I think I like the priestess best, followed by the warrior. I didn’t get to play the wizard).

Your turn starts with discarding/drawing cards from your character’s draw pile. You then play an action (if you have one), such as starting a fight of some sort (and reducing another player or players’ fortitude) or beginning a round of gambling. You then buy a drink (which can be given to sit in any player’s drinks pile) and you drink a drink – turning over the top drink of your drink’s pile and taking the effect (usually increasing your alcohol count). If you don’t have a drink to drink, you reduce your alcohol count instead, as you start to sober up.

The idea is to outfight, outdrink and outgamble your other adventurers. If you run out of money, you’re thrown out of the pub and if you pass out you’re also out. This is cleverly worked out: you have a counter from 0-20. You start with your red fortitude marker at 20 and your clear alcohol marker at 0. As you take damage, your red marker moves down and as you drink your clear marker moves up: when the markers meet, you pass out. You can also play cards to make drinks stronger or weaker or to negate other actions or ‘acquire’ money.

As with Lunch Money, I think this is a game where a bit of roleplay/story telling helps – the cards themselves certainly lend themselves to this (one of my favourites is the warrior with her damage-causing action cards “Not another chainmail bikini joke” and “Want to arm wrestle?” It’s fair to say she kinda reminds me of my sister).

What’s nice is that they’ve thought about expansions from the first box set – the drinks include ones that affect trolls or ogres (for example) differently, even though there are no trolls or ogres in the box. There’s at present 4 boxes and a number of individually available characters (including the wizard’s insane rabbit). It worked well with 3/4 players, but I think it would stand up to more players too, because it’s quite fast-paced (even with a roleplay element) so everyone could stay involved.

I definitely want my own copy.

LOVE LETTER 

I was intrigued by this game – it looked simple and is set in a fictional realm called Tempest, my NAF name. Also, the idea of seducing a princess the week after getting engaged to a king entertained me highly.

It is very simple: 16 cards of varying strength. You start with one in hand and each turn you draw a second, consider the two you have and choose which to discard. The effect of the discarded card is then played, and the next player takes their turn. Whoever has the highest valued card at the end of the round (or is the only one left holding a card when the others have been knocked out by card effects) wins the round and a little token – the winner is the first to a number of tokens determined by the number of players.

The idea is that the princess and heir of Tempest has gone into mourning and you are one of the many people trying to get your letter to her in the hopes of winning her heart. The cards represent the person currently holding your letter and go from guards through barons, handmaidens, princes, kings and up to the princess herself.

There are tactics to be brought into play. For instance, the second most powerful card is the countess, the princess’s best friend, but if you are holding this card and draw a king or prince (or are holding a king/prince and draw the countess) you must discard the countess. This means if the countess is discarded, your opponent has 1/3 chance of holding a king and 2/3 chance of holding a prince (there being 1 king and 2 princes in the deck and, of course, depending what has already been discarded) and if you can play a guard and name the correct card being held, that’s them out of the game! Ah, except, what if they’re double-bluffing you?.. and so on.

Yes, I liked this game. Simple, but with lots of opportunity for tactical play at a level I can cope with.

*I have spent many years saying I don’t enjoy non-co-operative board games because I get too competitive. It was during this game that I realised it’s playing them with Husbit that makes me too competitive: in myself, I’m not, but he is and I respond to this with a competitiveness that outmatches his and spoils it for everyone.

Board Games - Smash Up and Last Night on Earth

A dragon slew our internet the other day. We made a Virgin sacrifice and it’s up and running again, but this is why I still haven’t got around to the next Chrissie post. 

The Virgin technician was very nice and fixed the internet for us, but the model will require some more TLC: the rider's lost a horn and both wings came off the dragon.

My brother and I were meant to go climbing last night, but when it got to evening he really wasn’t feeling it and I’m pretty skint so instead he came over for board games.

Husbit recently acquired Smash Up and has been keen to play it since, but (apart from Blood Bowl) I’m not particularly fond of competitive gaming, preferring things more co-op (á la Arkham Horror or Pandemic) so had been reluctant. However, I thought my brother might enjoy it so we started there.

The game is pretty simple: there’s a bunch of different factions such as wizards, ninjas, dinosaurs represented as a small deck of cards: you randomly grab two, shuffle them together and that’s you. Your deck has action cards and minion cards: you can play one of each per turn. Minion cards have different ‘strengths’ and abilities and action cards do things!

You then lay a set of bases (the number down depends on the number of players). These have 4 numbers on them, and a special rule. The small font number in the top left corner is the total number of minion strength needed to ‘score’ the base. The other three large font numbers running across the middle of the card are the points scored: the player with the highest minion strength scores the first, the second the second and the third the third. Any other players don’t score anything and in the event of a tie both players get the points for the highest position they are eligible. The minions are discarded and a new base is drawn. First to 15 wins.

Simple.

Each faction has strengths – ninjas are good at sneaking in extra minions when scoring bases and killing off opponent minions; robots are good for laying down lots of minions; tricksters seem to just be nails; dinosaurs are good for suddenly ramping up their strength to score a base unexpectedly; pirates blow stuff up; wizards have all the actions and zombies keep coming back (I didn’t really notice what aliens did – score extra points, I think). Mashing two factions together gives each game a unique feel.

From playing so far, I like the trickster, ninja and robot decks best, but think trickster wizards would be the most powerful.

For our first game, I drew ninja robots, Husbit trickster (fairy) dinosaurs and brother alien pirates. Brother snatched victory from Husbit with some clever play that left me miles behind. Second round, I drew wizard dinosaurs, Husbit had zombie pirates and Brother had my ninja robots. He thrashed us again!

I am not very good at tactical thinking or paying attention to special effects in play. Despite the seemingly simple nature of the game, that is a disadvantage when not playing with drunk people. However, because the game is very simple and plays well without tactics, it does suit drunken gaming in a way most of our games don’t.

I’d asked Brother to bring Pandemic because I really enjoy it and it’s quicker than Arkham Horror, but he also brought along Last Night onEarth and was very much in the mood for zombies so we got that out. I hadn’t played it before but Husbit had and he begged to be allowed to control the zombies. Haven’t just convincingly lost two hands of Smash Up and having had a long day, I wasn’t really paying that much attention to the rules, so will summarise as best I understood:

There were two people playing heroes, so we both randomly grabbed two characters. I got two male characters and my brother two female. The characters have special rules and health levels depending on age: my priest was the only one with two health, the others were all students. We were playing a scenario where Brother and I had to find 4 townsfolk and keep them alive to morning: Husbit had to kill two heroes or prevent us finding and keeping 4 townsfolk to win.

Heroes can search in buildings. This involves drawing the top card from the deck and (in this scenario) hoping it’s a person. Zombies can walk through walls and smash into heroes, but they only move one square around whilst heroes move D6. Heroes can also change the order in which each goes every round.

When fighting with a zombie, the zombie gets one die and the hero two, but zombies win ties. If the zombie wins, then the hero takes a wound. If the hero wins, the zombie is fended off. If the hero wins and rolled a double, the zombie is killed (there are weapons and cards that mean you get to roll more than two dice and if the die that means you win is not part of the double rolled, you still win and kill the zombie).

It didn’t take long for Husbit to overwhelm the least combat-like heroes, who ran away. We found three weapons, all with a chance to break and all breaking on their first use! We finally found a townsfolk, only for a zombie card to be played that meant he was actually a zombie and then my characters were killed on consecutive turns and the zombies won.