The tagline for Portal Games is “Board games That Tell Stories”, and in my experience, they do a good job in delivering a story to tell during game night. Neuroshima Hex spins a tale of a standoff, each side getting stronger and stronger with each passing turn, until a climatic battle takes place and razes both sides. Robinson Crusoe is a story of a couple of shipwrecked survivors and how Mother Nature is just going to take their day from bad, to worse, and Stronghold 2nd Edition is basically Helms Deep in a box. Invaders are crashing against the stronghold walls, and if they get through, it’s game over for the defenders.
Otter has owned Stronghold 2nd Edition for years, and has failed to get it to the table until now. Between the dearth of 2 player game nights and the challenging rule book, it’s been a bit of a joke that he’s been enthusiastic to play it, but just hasn’t been able to actually carve out the time to do so.
Well, it’s finally happened. Otter and I gathered on a random Friday and finally broke out Stronghold. And here’s my story.
Leading up to game night, both Otter and I watched the 41-minute-long Watch it Played How to Play video, which was extremely helpful in getting us up and running. Otter had also printed out several additional player aids, a FAQ and Errata from the Esoteric Order of Gamers, which were helpful to reference while we were playing.
Rules for days, baby
So let’s set the stage. Stronghold, designed by Ignacy Trzewiczek and Published by Portal Games in 2015 is a 2 player game about invaders attempting to breach the stronghold walls. One player takes on the role of the invaders, orcs, goblins, and trolls as they flow onto the map and crash against the castle walls, while the other player takes on the role of the defenders. The Marksmen, soldiers, and Heroes attempt to shore up their defences and thwart the invaders plots.
I took on the role of the defenders, who start in a very good position. With marksmen and soldiers lining the walls, and nary a chink in their defence, things start out looking pretty good for the defenders.
The gameplay of Stronghold involves the invading army choosing actions from their row of cards, spending their resources to build siege weapons, deploy equipment, train specialists, preform rituals to cast spells, and finally, manoeuvre their troops into space. Each action they take may cost them units, representing taking a unit out of combat to play the role of support. For every action the invader takes, the defender gets some hourglass tokens that they can spend to shuffle their units around, train troops, forage defensive weapons like cannons and cauldrons, send scouts to sabotage the invader’s plans, and visit the cathedral to deploy tactics that will change the course of battle.
The invaders can’t even reach the walls until the end of the second turn, making the defender feel powerful for the first few rounds. Some invaders move in, and you fill them up with your arrows, felling 3 or 4 invading units. It’s pretty satisfying to have 5 invading units move into a rampart, only for 3 of them to immediately perish.
They need to be close to get to the walls, but that’s when they’re the most vulnerable
The ramparts serve as staging areas where the invaders muster their forces before making their push to the wall. Any invaders that push up to the wall are safe from arrows, but then engage in melee combat, where the defenders have an advantage. Each wall section provides a single point of persistent strength, along with some heroes serving as backup, and some towers providing further persistent strength. When melee combat is assessed, both sides tally up their strength value, and the difference between those strength values is called ‘the advantage’. The player who won the battle gets to remove units from the other side equal to the advantage. If the invaders’ advantage is more than the strength of the units on that wall segment, they breach the stronghold and win the game.
While the invaders have a lot to overcome, they only need to penetrate the wall at a single point to claim victory. The defenders have 7 wall sections to protect and if any of them fall, it’s game over. Almost every staging area can reach two separate wall sections, and the invaders have some significant movement available to them. A minor movement lets them move 5 units from every space, while only giving the defenders 3 time tokens.
As I said before, the first two rounds felt good as a defender. I erected a cannon and blasted a red troll out of the rampart. My arrows softened up the march of the invaders, knocking them down to two orcs in each spot. The Invaders had a card where if they had a green orc in every rampart, they got to spawn a single cube in every section, suddenly dumping another 9 units onto the field. In the 3rd round, a few melee combats happened, two orcs self detonated to blast two wall sections away, removing their persistent benefit, while on the other side of the castle, the marauders were dodging my pole towers and bringing the melee combat to a draw. A draw at the wall is dangerous for the defender, as the invaders have a much stronger ability to push more units up to the wall to top the scales of balance.
This battle could go either way
By the end of the 4th round, there were 3 potential breach points. Two ballistas and a catapult with a ritual token threatened my units, and at this point, any unit falling prior to melee combat would end me. Two of the three wall sections held, but the catapult and wall-less section gave away the victory to the invaders.
Stronghold 2nd Edition delivers on Portal Games moniker. We played with the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers soundtrack on in the background, and somehow, the music would swell during pivotal moments in the battle. Unfortunately, I failed to hold out to the dawn of the fifth day, and neglected to use the unearthly glare to swing the tide of battle.
The balance of Stronghold feels balanced on a knifes edge. If one player suffers more misses than average, while the other player does better, that’s what will swing the game. I would be very interested to see a heatmap of which wall sections break most often for the invaders, or even talk to someone who has played Stronghold in depth and pick their brains. I lost at the end of round 4, I imagine I would have lost in each of the subsequent rounds had my demise held off for a round.
So many things to do, so little time
Both sides of the conflict have several ways to thwart the other. Defends have traps, invaders can build bridges. Defenders have marksmen, invaders can build mantalets. Invaders have orders, the defender can thwart one plot. Siege weapons can be built, but the defender can sabotage the siege weapons. Both sides have lots of options available to them, which makes for great variety.
The tempo of the game is almost entirely controlled by the invaders. The defenders’ role is almost entirely reactionary. As the defender, there was a lot that I really wanted to do, but the amount of time I have to do things is dictated entirely by the attacker, and while building another cannon would be really nice, I need to prioritize a cauldron on a wall segment right now.
Otter and I will be playing Stronghold again soon, but with the roles reversed. I’m very curious to see if he’ll be successful in stopping the invading horde, or, if the defenders lose twice in a row, if we’ll broadly proclaim that role is simply the harder side to run.
Do you have control issues? Does the idea of relying on others to achieve your goals make your skin crawl? Are you the type of person who detests group projects and ends up doing everything because your teammates won’t do their portion of the work up to your level of expectations? Well, have I got a game for you!
Quirky Circuits by designer Nikki Valens and published by Plaid Hat Games is a cooperative action programming game for 2 – 4 players, and each mission plays in about 15 to 30 minutes. Quirky Circuits boasts 21 scenarios across 4 different characters to test your mental mettle and optimization skills. Each scenario will offer different objectives, from cleaning house while avoiding vases, to preparing and delivering sushi to hungry customers.
Released in 2019, Quirky Circuits sports an adorable calico on the box atop a roomba, chasing down a dust bunny as chaos reigns in the background. The cover and art by Danalyn Reyes is bright and colourful through the production. With 4 different characters, each sporting their own deck of action cards, depicting how the character is performing the action on the card. There’s charm and cuteness throughout the entire production that is sure to attract anyone passing by your table.
To play Quirky Circuits, all players told the only communications allowed are ‘BEEP BOOP”, and then are dealt an equal number of action cards. Players play their cards face down into a queue along the bottom of the board and after each player has played at least one card, they can indicate their intention of being ‘done’ by placing their hands flat on the table and passive-aggressively spew beeps and boops at the players who are needlessly pushing fate.
Once all players have agreed to end the round, the queue of actions is flipped up and executed. Once the command has been entered, there is no going back! After the queue has been exhausted, the cards are swept up, shuffled, and redistributed. The battery marker that acts as the game timer depletes by a single stage, and players continue on their quest.
Quirky Circuits is the kind of game that makes you assess why you’re coming to the gaming table. If the goal of the game is to win, making sure everyone is on the same page with priorities and strategies prior to playing is essential, as conflicting priorities will literally spin your character around in circles. If your goal is to have fun, then removing that fog of war also leaks the fun out of the game. I’d argue a perfectly played game is just an exercise in sorting cards. Yes, winning feels good, but overcoming the puzzle against all odds is immensely satisfying, and even losing in a spectacular fashion is more fun than following a pre-determined strategy and winning every-time.
The chaos and silliness is the beating heart of Quirky Circuits. We played a game where we were on the precipice of winning. It was the final turn possible, everyone played all their cards. By some stroke of luck, we sucked up the final dust bunny and were headed for home. We narrowly made it back to the spot adjacent to the final square. All that was left was to turn left, then move forward a single space. We flipped the second last card, it was a turn right. With dejected and heavy hearts, we flipped the final card, which was a move backwards. Elated, we threw our hands in the air, celebrating and laughing at our stroke of luck! The joy and full bellied laughter was an experience that most games can’t even come close to.
I’ve played a few other limited communication cooperative games, The Mind by Wolfgang Warsch, Magic Maze by Kasper Lapp, and The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine by Thomas Sing are all games that I’ve enjoyed in the past. All feature limited communication, and share the same core joy of overcoming the puzzle through telekinesis, or pure luck. Where Quirky Circuits stands above these other titans is in its emergent narrative. Like, one time we had Gizmo move past a post that held a vase, leaving it unscathed. The next few cards had Gizmo backup, turn to face the vase, backed up a square, and RAN at the pillar, sending the vase crashing to the floor. Then, turning and continue on it’s original path. The story in our heads became Gizmo waltzed by the unscathed vase, then backed up saying “NOT ON MY WATCH, BUCKO!”. And it’s these stories and experiences that will stick in our minds and hearts, not an immaculate win rate.
Age of Steam (2002) by John Bohrer and Martin Wallace has a long and storied history, but I’m not privy to the details. The game has been reimplemented by Railways of the World and by Steam: Rails to Riches. There was also a lengthy legal battle between Martin Wallace and John Bohrer as to who owned the trademark for Age of Steam that seems to be resolved now to both Bohrer’s and Marin’s satisfaction.
But let’s not talk about that part of history, let’s talk about the actual game. Age of Steam is a train game in which you and your opponents are trying to develop your train company and delivering goods in the longest way possible. Efficiency will not be rewarded on the free market.
Gameplay begins with players selling shares of their company into the ether. You earn $5 per share you sell, but you’ll need to pay one $1 for every share you’ve sold per round for the rest of the game. You can sell as many or as few shares as you want, but just be aware that you’ll be paying for it every round.
After selling shares, players bid for turn order. It’s a classic rotating bid where players either up the ante, or pass. The first player to pass doesn’t have to pay anything, they get the privilege of going last for free. The final two players will need to pay their full bid, regardless of who actually wins the bid, and all other players will need to pay half their bid rounded up. Around and around players bid until the player order is decided. This is the first point where you’ll regret the number of shares you sold. You lost first place because you ran out of cash, why didn’t you sell more shares??
Once player order has been chosen, players then choose a special bonus for the round. Only one player can choose each action, which makes the player order fairly consequential. The actions are as follows:
First move – the player who chooses first move will get to move a good first, regardless of player order
First build – just like first move, but with the build action
Engineer – Allows the player to build 4 items instead of the usual 3
Locomotive – Moves the player’s link disk up the engine track one space. This allows goods to travel over more stops, and will earn more money in the end.
Urbanization – Allows the player to place a new city on the board, creating a new hub for goods to be delivered to, and possibly spawn from
Production – Allows the player to put two goods cubes back onto the production board, which may have them be placed onto a city during the production phase
Turn Order (pass) – Allows the player to pass once during the next bidding phase.
Every action has the potential to be useless, or, extremely important, depending on the current state of the game. If only you sold more shares, so you could go first and get your pick of the actions
Once all the actions have been selected, the build phase begins. Players can build up to 3 railway tiles leading out from any city. If they connect to another town or city, they own that rail link for the rest of the game. If the rail link just ends in the middle of nowhere, they’ll need to progress it during the next round, or they’ll forfeit ownership of that line, possibly letting someone else claim ownership. This is the second step where you’ll regret the number of shares you sold. You don’t have enough money to build what you want to build! Why didn’t you sell more shares??
After everyone has built, the move goods phase starts. Players take a turn moving a cube from a city, over rail links, until the cube arrives at a city of the matching colour. Every town or city the cube moves through is a new link, and when the cube is delivered, the player earns perpetual income based on how many rail links the cube passed over. Players are limited by their Engine track, which at the start of the game, is only 1, so direct sales only. But as the game goes on and players improve their engines to 5 or 6, a cube can snake through the entire board before landing at its destination, netting the player 5 or 6 income points. And here’s the hook, players don’t have to use their own rail links, you can move a cube over someone else’s rail line. But the player who owns the line will earn the money for that stretch of the journey. For example, if I move a cube over two of my links, then over two of Bigfoot’s rail links, and finally, over one of my own to deliver the cube to a city, I’ll earn 3 income, and Bigfoot will earn 2.
After the goods have been delivered, all players collect their income, based on their location on the income track, then debts come due. For every share you’ve sold, pay $1. For every space on the engine track, pay another $1. This is the third time this round you’ll regret the number of shares you sold. Why did you have to sell so many??
Then, taxes show up. If your income is over 10, it gets pulled back 2 spaces. If the income is over 20, it gets pulled back 4 spaces. This forces players to be cognizant of the growth of their company. It can also lead to a player giving another player a single income space to put them over the threshold of the next tax bracket, pushing them further down the income track.
Finally, dice a rolled and goods are re-seeded onto the board. At the start of the game, goods will be flying out, but by the end, if no one took the production action, players will be scrapping to deliver the last few, possibly unprofitable goods.
And that’s the game! Play continues round after round, regret after regret until after a specific number of rounds (depends on the player count), the game comes to an end. Players earn 3 points per space on the income track, plus one point for every track tile they’ve placed. Players also lose 3 points per share they sold throughout the game.
I quite enjoyed playing Age of Steam, it was tense, interactive, and at times, cutthroat. This was all of our first time playing, so we definitely missed out on some efficiencies. There were a couple of times when we were scratching our heads wondering why someone would ever do something, like take the pass action. Then a few rounds later, had a lightbulb moment where we realized just how powerful that action can be. I think Age of Steam would really shine if we played a few more times, the nuance of track design and understanding how to utilize the towns wasn’t obvious during our first play, I can absolutely see the potential for mastery here.
The first two rounds are tense and tricky as you’re playing with a deficit. You don’t have the ability to increase your income track to break even, let alone earn a profit, forcing you to sell shares next round. Around turn 4 things pivot where suddenly cash is flowing in, and skipping a move good phase to increase your locomotive starts to make sense. It’s mildly painful to make that choice though, do you deliver a 2 link good now, or upgrade, so you can deliver 3 link goods next round? Taking the low-hanging fruit is tempting, but as soon as you see someone deliver a 5 link good and leave you in the dust, the regret in your stomach will double.
I haven’t played any 18xx games, but after playing Age of Steam, I find myself wanting to explore those as well. During this play of Age of Steam, I found myself wishing I could buy other players stock, so they’d have to pay me at the end of the round, instead of buying and selling to the bank. Then I realized, that’s kind of the whole thing with 18xx games. Players generally don’t own a rail line, but they can invest and make decisions based on how many shares they have. I know each game is different and has their own nuance, but I find myself more intrigued by the genre than ever before.
The copy we played was the third edition, published by Eagle Games in 2009 I think? Some things were great, I loved that each player got little plastic locomotives to play with. The map was functional, with plain colours and very little texture to confuse the eyes. My big gripe came from the side boards. The Goods Display and Selected Actions board, and the income track and score board were on good quality cardboard, but were completely grey-scale! The colourful cubes and player disks quickly covered most of the boards, but still, what an eye-sore.
In the days that followed our Age of Steam play, our group chat was pretty enamoured with the game and expressing interest to go back and play it some more. I realized that I owned the Android app version of Steam: Rails to Riches, developed by Acram Digital, so I gave that a play to satisfy my Age of Steam cravings. If you’re interested in the app, you can find it on Android and Steam (and yes, I do appreciate the irony of searching for Steam on Steam).
I’m looking forward to returning to Age of Steam. There’s a level of mastery to be achieved, and a plethora of fan-made maps to explore. I enjoy the anguish of needing to sell shares at the top of the round, then regretting it for the rest of the game. The cat and mouse of bidding for player order, egging on two players locked in a game of locomotive chicken.
Slay the Spire: The Board Game, designed by Gary Dworetsky, Anthony Giovannetti, and Casey Yano and published by Contention Games is currently running a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. As a fan of the video game it’s based on, I have been eagerly anticipating this game since it was announced nearly a year ago.
To start, here’s my Slay the Spire credentials. I’ve played Slay the Spire for about 71 hours on Steam, and an additional 60 hours on Android. My favourite character to play is The Defect, with which I’ve reached Ascension level 8. Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to even just beat the game with The Watcher. After 16 runs I’ve just today finally managed to do. I think I’ve reached the 3rd act boss half a dozen times, but I kept on losing to that final hurdle. While I’d never call myself a Slay the Spire expert, I’d definitely class myself as an enthusiast.
When the Kickstarter campaign finally launched, my heart dropped. $135 CAD for the base game, plus $16 for shipping. $150 is firmly out of the impulse buy category for me. The campaign itself had extremely few details on what the board game did differently from the video game. I knew a straight port wouldn’t be possible, there’s much too much math involved to make it enjoyable or playable. Over the next few days, more details came out, and various creators who got preview copies published their content. While helpful, the lack of information on the actual pledge page is disappointing. What was helpful was the release of the Prototype rulebook, and a playable version of the game on Tabletop Simulator.
I roped in Bigfoot, who, like me, is an avid board gamer and has significant experience playing the Slay the Spire video game. This made teaching a breeze, he already knew the flow of the game, the iconography, and some of the strategy (like how important defence is, and why we should focus on tackling elites). He assumed the role of the ironclad while I took on The Silent.
How to play
Slay the Spire is a deck building dungeon crawl where the goal is to defeat enemies to earn rewards to acquire better cards and relics with special abilities until you finally defeat the boss. When normal combat starts, an enemy is placed into a row, one for each player. Enemy cards may also summon minions into their row.
Players have 3 energy each turn to play cards from their hands, and by default, draw 5 cards. A die is rolled which will affect everything that has a die ability. Some monsters will have different attacks based off the die roll, while others will simply do the same thing every time, while others will work through a series of static effects.
Players play their cards, generating block to shield themselves from damage, and swords, which do damage to the enemies. Players can target any enemy on any row with their attacks, enabling some great collaborative play. After all players have finished playing cards, any unplayed cards are discarded, and the monsters take their turn. Starting from the top left and moving to the bottom right, monsters attack. Any damage is negated by shields, but should those run out, then hp is reduced. If anyone’s hp drops to 0, the team has lost.
Should the players be victorious, they acquire rewards. Coins that can be spent at shops, potions offering clutch 1 time effects, and new cards they can add into their deck. Each character starts with a basic 10 card deck, and has a pool of 60 cards from which they can add from. Each character also have 20 rare cards which are very powerful, but harder to obtain.
First Impressions
A key component of Slay the Spire is upgrading your cards. At a rest site, you can choose to either heal hp, or, upgrade a single card. This can reduce the cost, or increase the ability of the card itself. The board game handles this by utilizing double-sided cards in sleeves. When you upgrade a card, just pull it out of its sleeve, flip it around, and put it back into it’s sleeve for the remainder of the game.
So what’s different from the video game? Well, the math has been reduced. All the strikes and defends generate 1 hit or shield respectively. Weakness now just reduces the number of hits generated by 1, and vulnerable doubles the damage the next time the target takes damage. Stats effects have been turned into cards that either effectively reduce your draw then disappear, or a card that goes into your discard pile that will cause trouble when it appears in your hand. Burns, which do damage if they’re in your hand at the end of your turn, or green spirals, which will sap your energy when drawn. The Silent’s poison is now persistent, it doesn’t tick down at the end of a round. Shivs offer a 1 damage attack, but can be saved from round to round, allowing you to build up for a big combo. The Defects orbs don’t cycle in order any more, you can choose to evoke any orb of your choice. As I mentioned before, a lot of items and monsters are controlled via a single die roll at the start of the round turning a lot of the encounters and relics from deterministic effects that can be planned around, into a more random experience. I suspect this was done to reduce the already significant upkeep this game requires.
Slay the Spire: The Board Game is a very faithful adaption of the video game. Halfway through the first act of the game I put on the Slay the Spire OST, and suddenly everything just felt right in the world. It really feels like Slay the Spire, even with all the difference I mentioned above. The relics seem to be much less useful in the board game. In the video game, the relics are the lynchpin of your engine. Here, they seem to offer minor rewards. I haven’t explored enough to say for sure, but I think a large part of what makes Slay the Spie (and other roguelikes) special and what brings people back again and again, is finding those crazed combos.
Let’s talk about the $15 elephant in the room. Just who is this game really for? I have a hard time imagining board gamers dropping $135 on this crate of cards when so many other deck builders already exist for much less cash. And anyone who wants to play solo can just buy the video game for as low as $10. Some will argue Slay the Spire: The Board Game is cooperative, you can use this a tool to introduce others to the game, but at it’s current price, you can buy 15 copies of the video game to give away as gifts. And for people who are already attuned to the video game, there isn’t much new for them to discover here, other than the ability to play with friends.
I understand the joy of tactile play. I adore board games, but I am not willing to drop that kind of money when I can play the video game on the go. That said, if you’re a board gamer who loves Slay the Spire, and/or loves cooperative games, this is a slam dunk. I do think the video game is the superior version, there’s no upkeep to track, no chance of missed rules, and the gameplay loop of building a deck, racing up the spire, dying, and just restarting from scratch is so fast and so fun. The physical production is super cool, but I shudder at the thought of tearing down after a game. Flipping all the upgraded cards, breaking down the cards back into their appropriate decks, etc. I think Slay the Spire: The Board Game is more of a luxury piece of merchandise for those who really love Slay the Spire. A beautiful and lovingly crafted game that is less meant to be played for hundreds of hours and more of a physical object for fans to own and showcase, much like the dozen steelbook video games I’ve purchased in the past.
Rogue Angels: Legacy of the Burning Suns was pitched to me as if Mass Effect had a board game baby. What a hook! My interest was immediately roused, but I was also skeptical. Comparing your game to a critical juggernaut like Mass Effect is quite the gamble; if it fails to deliver on the rich narrative that made Bioware’s space opera such a beloved experience among millions of players, myself included, then you’re setting everyone up for disappointment.
The longer, more technical description of Rogue Angels is that it’s a cooperative sci-fi legacy game containing a strong narrative with multiple paths, tactical combat with fluent turns, action management and asymmetric abilities. If that description catches your attention, read on as I detail my experience with the first couple missions.
The preview box I received contained 3 characters to whet my appetize (over 20 characters are promised to be included in the full game). Players assume the role of a rag-tag crew of freelancers or mercenaries as they traverse the stars and interact with various characters and factions. Missions can vary from gun blazing all-out battles, to stealthy subterfuges. As each mission progresses, players may be forced to make choices that directly impacts how their story develops.
The introductory mission has players escaping a hanger as they’re being hunted by guards of the Hellfire faction. The mission is broken into small chunks, giving players room to explore each of the main mechanics of Rogue Angels one-at-a-time before submerging themselves into the system. This method offers the person tasked with teaching the rules a very easy on-ramp to the system. The introduction goes as far as to take away all the players equipment at the start so no one gets overwhelmed by the myriad of options their cards present.
The mission begins by simply moving a single character adjacent to a point-of-interest, and continues by having other players interact with a door and a console. Interacting with objects, like trying to pick the lock on a door, or hack into a console, is achieved by drawing tokens out of a bag, and trying to match 3 colours together. This may take several actions as tokens of the wrong colour are returned to the bag. Finally, the mission gives you all your equipment back, and introduces enemies. This has players managing interacting, attacking, and moving simultaneously. At the same time, players are managing the scripted behaviour of enemies. Finally, players have arrived at the full Rogue Angels experience.
The core of Rogue Angels gameplay is the card action system; each card has a cost, and when you play a card for the action, you slot it into the appropriate spot under your player board. At the end of each of your turns, you ‘rest’, which slides all your action cards one slot to the left. Any cards that happen to fall off the track are returned to your hand and are able to be used again.
In addition to playing cards to the action row, most cards allow you to roll dice to accent your action. The die can boost the listed effect of the card, regenerate your shields, or offer you extra movement. Initially I was worried about the potential for bad die rolls to screw me out of achieving victory, but in Rouge Angels, dice are only ever positive; they always enhance your card actions. In some situations you may be really hoping to get a specific benefit, but the base effect(s) of your card will always trigger, and that’s a really nice feeling. No critical misses here!
One more aspect to the card play is some cards can gain even further benefits based on the personality of the one the wields it. As your characters go through the campaign and make choices, they’ll gain personality tokens. These personality tokens can be played to enhance a card action, and can change how a card functions significantly.
Rogue Angels is quite forgiving. Should you have multiple potential targets during an action, you get to roll any applicable die, see exactly how well you did, then get to decide who you want to target. The gameplay is very flexible.
The Rogue Angels rulebook is extremely intimating, clocking in at 44 pages long. I found that there are several pages of examples, walking you through how every action works and covering many of the edge cases that we experienced during the first few games. It was a lot of pages to get through, but I found a fairly straightforward rule-set underneath.
The other (massive) book involved is the Campaign book. At the time of writing the campaign has 8 missions, and is already over 100 pages long. Every mission has several checkpoints and updates where the stated goal may suddenly change, or you and your players are forced to react to an unexpected event. It makes for a lot of reading, but once you get past the initial shock factor of just how many pages exist for this game, there’s a well executed system for progressing the mission without interrupting gameplay too dramatically.
My initial impressions of Rogue Angels: Legacy of the Burning Sun is that it’s a deep game – much deeper than I initially expected. I can tell that designer Emil Larson LOVES the universe that he has created, going as far as to create a Wiki to aid the players in submerging themselves in the lore. The campaign book is already over 100 pages long and filled with story and dialogue. The full version of Rogue Angels is advertised to have a spiral bound book containing a large number of maps, making the game fast to set up.
While playing Rogue Angels I kept thinking about Gloomhaven. While I’m not proclaiming that this is going to be the next Gloomhaven, the best way I can describe Rogue Angels is if Gloomhaven and Mass Effect had a board game baby, this would be it. If you know either (or even better, both) of these games, you’ll know that this is high praise.
It’s difficult to tell just from the demo missions I played, but I do have very high hopes for the story and legacy aspects. All the groundwork has been laid for the consequences and call-backs that made Mass Effect so popular. I would love to see the decisions we made early in the campaign return and affect players later in the game. The systems seems to be in place for this to happen, but I didn’t experience any payoffs during my short playthrough. That being said, I have only scratched the surface of what Rogue Angels has in store for it’s players.
I played Rogue Angels solo. While there is a lot of reading, the action stays on the table for the bulk of the playtime. It’s quite easy to manage three different characters when playing solo, and I would recommend playing multiple characters, as each one is quite different and has wildly different strengths and weaknesses. The enemy AI is straightforward, and I enjoyed seeing the different stratagems or rules to control the enemies in simulating different situations, such as patrolling, a disorganized attack, or tactical retreat.
I am excited to see where this project goes and what Emil Larson has in store for players. I eagerly anticipate seeing the project grow and evolve, and cannot wait until I get my hands on the full-fledged product. I’m sure I can easily sell this experience to a couple of my sci-fi loving friends to form a crew and dive deeply into this excellent system. The gameplay is smooth, and the story has hooks that will have you and your friends eager to play again.
