Guild Ball - An Overall Sort-Of Review, Part 1: Team Lineups

Last year we mentioned a new tabletop system we were backing on Kickstarter, named Guild Ball, and a couple of weeks back we posted a brief article showing off the contents of our pledge after they'd arrived.  To summarise, we were extremely impressed with the components, and were left feeling excited about our impending first games.

Now in that article we mentioned that we wouldn't be reviewing the gameplay of Guild Ball, wanting to keep the focus of Games & Tea on out-the-box games, but frankly we were so enamoured with the gameplay that we couldn't resist putting together another article giving it our overall thoughts.

The reason we've never been interested in reviewing full tabletop systems over board/card games is that there are too many variables to go into - we like to talk about turn sequences, game components and so on, but when there's an infinite possibility of actions to choose from each turn, and the components are determined by the shopping habits and play style of each individual hobbyist, it can be a struggle to keep the article at a decent length!  As such this will be slightly different from our usual review format, and we hope you bare with us and still find it an enjoyable and educational read.

So for those who missed the Kickstarter, and missed our fanboy gushings over the game, and haven't seen it at the UK Games Expo (and so on and so on...), Guild Ball is a tabletop miniatures game which is half way between a sports game and a skirmish game.  It's set in the fictional Empire of the Free Cities, where the great guilds all play each other at the titular game - a medieval mob football style game.
The guilds are all based on areas of industry, and at the time of Season 1 there are 7 guilds to choose from; Butchers, Fishermen, Brewers, Masons (the Teamaster's personal favourites), Alchemists (the Tea Boy's personal favourites), Morticians and Engineers.  While not a guild, there is also the Union, which can be fielded as a team, but who's members are also free to play for a selection of the other guilds.

Each team consists of 6 players.  The captain and the mascot are both mandatory, and whilst we expect that later seasons will give us a selection, at this early stage in Guild Ball's life each guild only has one to choose from.  The remaining 4 places are where players get to customise their teams, and tweak them to match their preferred style of gameplay as they start to build up experience.
This is where Guild Ball stands out from the only other major sports-based game on the market right now - Dreadball.  It isn't simply a case of "These are your strikers, they kick the ball," and "These are your defenders, they stop your opponent from kicking the ball", each player has unique stats and abilities.  So instead you have "This is Harmony, she can do all of these wonderful things", and "This is Mist, he's basically Batman".  While the Union players are free agents and as such work as individuals, the guild-specific players all tend to have abilities to work off eachother.  In the Masons Guild, for example, the team starlet - Harmony - gets an armour bonus when close to their heavy hitter - Brick - as he's protective over her.  The team captain - Honour - gets an attack bonus when going after the same player as the mascot - Marbles.  Now this does mean that it will take a few games before any new players even begin to squeeze the maximum potential out of their lineup, but the trade off for this is that the team rosters have an incredible degree of flexibility, helping players to become invested in their chosen guild rather than having to go down the route of collecting multiple teams to get any kind of replay value from the game.

Just to give an example, here are two of the starting lineups for the Teamaster's Masons Guild.  The top team is pure Masons, and so there's a lot of synergy going on there.  In the bottom team, 3 of the players have been dropped out in favour of Masons-compatible Union players, so while the team no longer gels quite so well, it's now much quicker and favoured towards fast strikes.

At the point of Season 1, most guilds have 7 players on their own roster, with 4 compatible Union players to choose from as well.  So with the captain and mascot slots filled, this leaves 9 choices to fill the 4 remaining spaces, giving the players plenty of freedom to build a team to suit their style of play.
And speaking of style of play, how do they work?  Each player comes with a stat card, which tells players what they can do whilst at the same time allowing them to keep track of the damage done to that player...

The top bar of each card gives the player's stats, which come under 6 categories:

• MOV determines their base and maximum move distance, so for example 6"/8" means they can jog 6" or sprint/charge 8".  The higher this number, the quicker the player.
• TAC is the number of dice in their dice pool when attacking another player, so a higher TAC means a stronger attack.
• KICK is the size of their kicking dice pool and the maximum kick distance, so 3/8" would mean an 8" kick range and 3 dice to try and succeed in that kick.  The higher these numbers, the better chance of scoring goals and successful passes.
• DEF is the player's base defense, and is the target number an attacker must roll in order to hit the player.
• ARM is the player's armour, and dictates how much damage is deflected before getting through to the soft and squishy player underneath.
• INF determines how much influence the player generates, and how much they can be allocated.  So 2/4 means they'll generate 2 influence, but can be allocated up to 4.  We'll go into influence in detail in the second part of the review, but in a nutshell it's the currency used to perform almost any action.  Attacking, sprinting, passing, shooting - all of these require influence.

The Character Traits on the front of the card address any passive abilities the players possess, such as DEF boosts in the presence of other player, MOV bonuses, and so forth.  The bottom of the card shows the players damage boxes - once these have been depleted then the player is knocked out.

The rear of the card tells you their base size and melee range, the details of any activated abilities, and explains how they cause damage in combat.  Again, this will be further addressed in the next article.

Before we wrap this article up, we should also take a moment to talk about the quality of the miniatures, as this is a tabletop system and so the hobby element is a key part.

First of all, the sculpts themselves.  Long gone are the days of hunched-over Space Marines, shuffling awkwardly around the battlefields of the 41st Millennium.  These days, most miniature-based games do provide nicely detailed and dynamic models for hobbyists to enjoy.  Guild Ball is no exception, and in fact has left us salivating over some of the nicest models we've ever had the pleasure of owning.  The poses are incredibly dynamic for the best part, and even the ones which aren't don't feel disappointing.

In terms of casting quality and assembly, Guild Ball's quality shines through.  There's very little cleanup work required on the miniatures, with mercifully few mold lines and little to no flash on those we've built so far.  They also fit together very nicely, and don't generally require the fine tools of a NASA engineer and the steady hands of a neurosurgeon to assemble them correctly.  The only criticism we'd put forward is that the blisters include character artwork, but not an image of the built miniature, so we have on a couple of occasions found ourselves wondering where pieces go.  In fact one of our Union models - Snakeskin - came with a dagger sheath which ended up in the spare bits box, as it didn't have an obvious place to go and the model seemed complete without it!

So that's all we really have to say on the subject of the teams.  The model quality is astounding, the player lineup happily full of variety, and the synergy throughout the teams works to give Guild Ball an excellent learning curve.

Tune in for the second half of the review, where we'll talk about the gameplay, including how that influence works, gathering momentum, and the consequences of beating an otter into unconsciousness.

Diary of a Roleplay Beginner #4: Taking Charge

Teamaster Rob here!  It's been a while since I last posted an article in the DoaRB series.  When I penned the first article in the series, it was intended as a shared experience to help new players see that taking a step into the big old hobby-world of roleplay needn't be so scary and overwhelming. There are so many systems out there, and so many people who take the hobby so seriously, that to someone starting out it can seem very intimidating, and this series of articles was intended to show the story of my own personal introduction into it all.

Article #1 in the series was an introduction, talking about my initial interest in the hobby, how I fell upon my first roleplay system (Privateer Press' Iron Kingdoms, if you were wondering), and the first session I ever sat in on, despite not participating.  Article #2 told the tale of my first session of active involvement, and how I slowly got to grips with the "Seriously, you can do ANYTHING!" mechanic of roleplays.  With my first session being purely narrative, Article #3 focused on the following session, which was my first taste of roleplay combat, as well as a few comments on my first negative roleplay experiences.

With those basics covered, the series dried up as I quite simply no longer considered myself to be a roleplay beginner.  Not a veteran, by any stretch of the imagination, but at the very least an enthusiastic amateur.

In the following year I had the pleasure of trying out another couple of systems; Firefly and Through the Breach, albeit with just a single session in each.  Again, I enjoyed the systems, and it was great to experience different rulesets, different GMs and different settings, not to mention the opportunity to play radically different characters.  But there was one feather left to add to my roleplay hat, and that's the topic of this article...

Enter the GM

That's right, the Teamaster is now the Gamemaster.  I've always enjoyed writing, and since getting started in the roleplay hobby I've been aching for a chance to get behind the wheel and run my own session, but - just like my entry into RP - the question of where to start reared its ugly head.
In terms of system, Iron Kingdoms seemed the logical choice - it was, after all, the system I was most experienced with.  From what I've gathered from my limited experience of the various systems, it does seem to be fairly standard practice to provide an example scenario with the rules, and Iron Kingdoms was no different.  There's a decent-length one shot session available to download from the Privateer Press website, providing a multiple-ended scenario, and all player characters, NPCs, and encounters laid out to take the bulk of the work off a new GM.  As I started to assemble a team of players, this scenario was the one I planned to use for the evening.

But, fortunately, my brain never ceases to run with new possibilities.  As tempting as the easy option was, it's always seemed like it would be more fulfilling to be capturing the imagination of your players and holding their attentions with a story of your own making, and so the Iron Kingdoms plan began to slip away in favour of something a little more ambitious, a little more exciting... a little more spacey...

Just because I adore board and card games, doesn't mean I don't enjoy my share of video games as well, and none more so than Bioware's Mass Effect trilogy.  Not only do I love the story of the games and the characters, but it's an incredible universe in which the games are set, and so I decided it would be a wonderful setting for my first roleplay.
This then moved me on to a brand new problem: which system should I use?
Iron Kingdoms may have been my most familiar, but it's not exactly compatible with a futuristic space adventure.  Storyweaver's High Space was a logical option, but would have required a fair chunk of reading and it wasn't a familiar system to any of my prospective players, so would have been slow going.  So I did the smartest thing any geek with a problem can do in this day and age: I threw it out to the internet!
Within 24 hours, @N20Games on Twitter threw back a suggestion of Fate - a name which vaguely rang a bell with my limited roleplay experience, but which I'd never looked into.  And ye gods, I was grateful for the suggestion!

Fate, from Evil Hat Productions.  For those unfamiliar with Fate, it's a rules-light, narrative-heavy roleplay system, designed to be generic enough to fit into any genre.  Unlike other systems which have their own established universes, Fate is meant for gamers who may want to run a roleplay set in their favourite franchise (Star Wars, Marvel, Game of Thrones etc), or simply based upon their own original concept.
For those who are absolute beginners to the GM world, there's also Fate Accelerated Edition (or FAE for short), which is effectively a set of quick-start rules for the system.  They're quick to learn, quick to teach, and seem quite fluid to play, so FAE ended up being the template upon which my Mass Effect one shot would be based.

So that left the small matter of the story!  At the time of posting this article the session is still a week away (and I will be uploading a follow-up article to talk about the results after the event), so I'm being cautious not to issue spoilers just in case any of my players may be reading!
Being good friends with The Hobbynomicon's Caustic Triton, we very often talk about roleplays, and some advice he gave me a while back about writing a session came back to me very quickly.  With a notepad and pen handy, and a decent knowledge of the background material already rattling around my grey matter, I started to write.
One of the worst things a GM can do to their players is make them feel railroaded.  A roleplay should feel like an open world to players, and if the GM is clearly funneling them down a narrow pathway then nothing they do will make the experience a good one.  With this in mind, I wrote out a nice, descriptive opening scene to set the tone, and then proceeded to set out a series of bullet-points, with branches off a number of them to account for player decisions.  To start with it seemed difficult, but once I'd got a very basic overall plot in my head, additional ideas started coming every hour or two, no matter where I was.  Within the space of a week I'd got a pile of maps drawn up, NPC details, and a list of key events.  I was pretty much ready to go on the story front, although more ideas continue to get added to the list of possible events for the session!

With a week and a half until the session, this left me with just enough time to indulge one of my favourite elements of the gaming hobby in general: miniature painting.
As much as I'd love for it to be the case, no one has released a series of Mass Effect miniatures to this date.  Mantic Games, however, have done some pretty damn good proxies in their Deadzone game.  Seeing as many of my Deadzone miniatures were assembled but unpainted from my release-day purchase of the game back in 2013, I dug out the box and began to paint.  With a week still to go, the lineup of player characters is starting to look pretty sweet...

Two humans, an asari, a quarian, a salarian and a turian are ready to report for duty, with a krogan next in line on the painting table.  A handful of NPCs are also lined up in case I have time to paint them, but if not then I'll be happy with each player having a painted miniature to use.

The Fate system (and FAE in particular) is quite easygoing when it comes to combat, so most of the session's going to be descriptive, but I am planning a couple of epic moments for the toys to come out and shine!


So I think that's all I can say for the moment without risking spoiler posts!  The session will be taking place next weekend, so hopefully I'll be able to come back with another update shortly afterwards, and talk about how well (or otherwise) it went!  So for now, keep rolling, and may the dice be ever in your favour.

Guild Ball: An Unboxing (...sort of)

Those of you with more impressive memories may remember us mentioning last year that we were backing a new tabletop game called Guild Ball.  Games & Tea always has been and always will be a card and board game blog first and foremost, but we are still tabletop hobbyists as well and couldn't resist sharing our enthusiasm about the whole thing when it first hit Kickstarter.

At the time we backed it we had the feeling it was going to be something special - everything from the overall aesthetic to the gameplay seemed beautiful - but we didn't realise just how much it was going to attract the attention of the hobby community.  Now, with the retail release date just weeks away (April 27th) and introduction days cropping up all over the country, our Kickstarter pledge has arrived and we just felt compelled to show you all some photos of our shiney new toys!

Guild Ball is primarily a sportsball game with a bit of combat thrown in, and is based very much on grass-roots medieval English football.  For our pledge level we went in for two teams (6 miniatures per team) all in metal, and resin base inserts were included for both teams.  Once the game passed its funding goal and stretch goals became unlocked, we were also eligible for two additional "Union" models, which are affiliated with a couple of teams, so can hop around and give a bit of flexibility to the rosters.

We also threw in a little extra for some additional bits and pieces - a printed rulebook (the standard pledge just came with a PDF), some Guild Ball dice, and templates and markers.

The rulebook was at the top of the box when we opened it up, so it was the first thing we noticed.  On the original Kickstarter page it was listed as an A5 rulebook, so it was a very pleasant surprise to see a full A4 landscape-oriented book.  Opening it up it's got gorgeous full colour artwork on almost every page, is clearly printed and laid out, and is just basically done to an excellent and professional standard.

Your eyes do not deceive you - this is an otter.

Oh balls...

Once the rulebook had been salivated over it was time to rummage through the packing chips and fish out the miniatures (fairly appropriate, as one of our teams is the Fisherman's Guild).  We had the option of going with metal miniatures or resin, and we ended up going for metal.  Throughout our hobby years we've simply had overall bad experiences with resin, whereas we've always been comfortable working with metal, so it seemed the logical option.  Now the advantage of resin is that it does allow for finer detail, which left us wondering if we'd slightly regret our metal decision, but after having a look at the models today we can assure you we don't in the slightest!  Obviously as with all miniatures of any material there is some flash to trim back and some mold lines to remove, but the casting quality is absolutely amazing, the detailing is going to be a painter's dream, and the dynamic poses of the miniatures will give them pride of place in the display cabinet.

It's all about the base.

The goals and the base inserts for the models were only available in resin, so we had to bite the bullet and hope for the best with these, and we weren't disappointed.  Normally we make our own bases, but the inserts are cast to a great quality, and it'll be nice to have consistency across both teams.

A lot of tabletop systems these days utilise character cards, both as a quick-reference of their abilites and to keep track of their health.  Guild Ball is the latest system to take this approach, and the character cards are printed onto good quality card stock, with nice clear print and more beautiful character illustrations throughout.

And then that just leaves those last few odds and ends.  The dice - embossed with the Guild Ball logo - and templates keep up with the manufacturing quality evident throughout the rest of the components.

To sum things up, there isn't a damn thing in this box which we've found fault with.  Now we just need to assemble our pretty toys and play a few games!

We probably won't be putting up a gameplay review, simply because there starts the slippery slope away from being a board/card game review blog, but if any of our readers were thinking about giving Guild Ball a closer look then we hope this unboxing has helped!  And once we've got some painting on the go then we'll upload some completed models into our miniatures gallery as well for your enjoyment.

Creating a Warmachine BioShock Army, Episode IV: Elizabeth Comstock

Welcome back to the ongoing WarmaShock project!  Okay I just thought of that on the fly, but it's kind of catchy, so I think I might stick with it!

With my BioShock Warmachine army now standing at a warcaster and one solo, I decided to press on with one more solo.  Granted it'll feel like serious progress is being made once the force starts to bulk out with units and warjacks, but before I moved into that territory there was one more character from the series who I really wanted to bring to life...

Elizabeth Comstock; BioShock Infinite's female lead.  Back when this project was just going to be a small collection of BioShock-looking miniatures, Elizabeth was the first model I set my sights on, but once it became an army list I knew that with Booker DeWitt leading the force, Elizabeth had to be included.  The entire story of BioShock Infinite follows Booker's attempt to rescue her from the city of Columbia - initially as a job, and eventually out of loyalty to her.  A lot of Infinite's players became very invested in the Booker/Elizabeth relationship as the game progressed - myself amongst them - and so I wanted to try my damned hardest to bring justice to the character with her miniature.  All the more so since the Booker model turned out quite tidily!

Elizabeth does wear a number of different outfits throughout the main game and the Burial At Sea expansion, but I've always been a fan of the white corset and blue jacket/skirt look in the image above, so this was the outfit I wanted my Elizabeth to wear.

As per usual, the first order of business was to decide which model was going to be used as her base.  Unusually for this project, however, I was able to use an actual Warmachine miniature instead of having to plunder the dark world of Malifaux!

Madelyn Corbeau, Ordic Courtesan, seemed the perfect starting model for Elizabeth Comstock.  A few alterations to the model would be needed, but the corset was there, the long coat, and the hair was almost perfect.  My initial plan was to just leave the model as it was and just paint it up to look like Elizabeth, but ambition soon got the better of me and I decided to do everything in my power to turn Ms Corbeau into Ms Comstock!

The first thing I did was to start trimming and filing back the parts of the model I didn't need.  The cigarette in Madelyn's left hand was clipped off and filed back down - before any Burial At Sea fans pipe up, yes I know Elizabeth smoked in the expansion.  However, in the main game she didn't, and it's the main game from which I've taken the outfit, so I feel justified in this.  As the image of Elizabeth shows, she wears a short jacket, not long gloves, so I filed down the tops of Madelyn's gloves to make them easier to blend into the jacket when it came to sculpting time.  I also clipped and filed back the ruff around her neck, as again this wasn't part of Elizabeth's outfit.  This just left the jewelry on her forehead, which was a little tricky.  I couldn't get it entirely flat without damaging her hair, so I did my best to scrape it off with a sharp craft knife to give her a bare forehead.

I'd been lucky enough to get a cobblestone 30mm resin base for participating in a local Warmachine steamroller event a week previous, so with this acting as as the streets of Columbia it was time to crack open the green stuff and get sculpting!

To start with I needed to make Madelyn's coat into Elizabeth's skirt, so I rolled a nice thin piece of green stuff and blended it across the front of the coat, and along the slit at the back, making the skirt one complete piece all around.  That was the easy part!  The next part took a few attempts seeing as I'm still learning to use green stuff properly.  I needed to sculpt a short jacket on her upper body, covering her shoulders and blending into her gloves, and then coming to a stop around half way down her back.  As I said, this took a few attempts, but after a week the model had a jacket I could finally be proud of!  Or at least most of a jacket, for it was still missing one element: the cuffs.  Seeing as Madelyn is wearing long gloves, they blend seamlessly into the hands of the model.  With Elizabeth I needed the hands to be bare, which meant adding the cuffs to the miniature to separate the hands from the forearms.  This proved to be much simpler than the rest of the jacket, and I was happy with the result after my first attempt.

I've also been trying to do something a little more interesting with the bases.  With Booker I added a few drops of blood, which seemed fitting seeing as he spends the game rampaging across the city!  For Elizabeth I wanted to do something different.  I didn't want to throw blood all over the base, but I wanted to add something to make it look more like the city of Columbia.  That's when it struck me: flags!  Columbia is a very all-American city, and you can't turn anywhere in the game without seeing red, white and blue flags, banners or bunting.  So I decided to drape a bit of bunting across the base, as if it had fallen down onto the streets during all of the fighting.  This was just a simple matter of creating some green stuff triangles and then tucking them neatly in against the kerb stones.

With the model now assembled and heavily covered in green stuff, it was time for the fun part: painting!  I've never been quite so impatient to start painting a model, in fact I almost didn't leave the green stuff time to set properly before starting, which could have ended badly!  I also can't remember ever being quite so anxious about doing a decent paint job - the fact that Booker was already waiting for her to join him in the display cabinet at Titan Games just piled the pressure on even further.  But with a belly full of tea and the TV on in the background, I managed to steel myself and do a job I was pleased with overall, and here's the result...

So that brings my running total up to three!  I'm currently planning to use Elizabeth as Madelyn Corbeau for obvious reasons, but I may experiment using her as Alexia Ciannor.  This may sound odd, but bringing back Risen each turn could be a nice way to represent the way Elizabeth opens up tears to bring support through from other worlds to help out Booker.  It might work, it might not, but I'm keen to give it a try!

I think Elizabeth will be the last solo for a while.  I want to get Andrew Ryan and the splicers on the go soon, and I have a pile of Big Daddies waiting to be built!  So thanks again for reading, and keep checking back for the next addition to the army!

Creating a Warmachine BioShock Army, Episode III: Eleanor Lamb

For those who may have missed the start of this article series (you can catch up from the Article Archive tab above), I'm currently working my way through a project to create a Mercenary army for Privateer Press' Warmachine tabletop system based on the BioShock videogame series.  Seeing as this is quite an ambitious project, and one which will require a fair amount of conversion and artistic license, I've decided to chronicle this project from start to finish.  In the last article we looked at the creation of Booker DeWitt - the protagonist from BioShock Infinite and the army's warcaster.  In this article we'll be stepping away from the floating city of Columbia and heading beneath the waves to Rapture, the setting of the first two games in the series.

 

"BioShock Harder" ...or something.

 

Before I start to go into the creation of today's miniature, I'll just quickly address something about BioShock 2.  It is, unquestionably, the game that divides fans of the series.  Some think it's terrible, some love it.  At the end of the day, this is a tabletop blog and not a videogame blog, so I won't be delving into the details of whether it was a good game.  All I'll say is I thoroughly enjoyed playing it, and just leave it at that.

 

When this BioShock project first started out, there were just a handful of characters from the games which I wanted to bring to life in 30mm form - ironically Booker DeWitt was not amongst them!  Elizabeth Commstock from BioShock Infinite was one, a Big Daddy and Little Sister from BioShock were two more, and one of the Big Sisters from BioShock 2 was the last.

The Little Sisters from the first game became one of the most iconic images in modern videogame history.  One of the things I loved about the sequel was that it took place a few years after the original, and so we got to see what happened to these little monsters when they grew up.  Being a big fan of the series I had a copy of the artbook on-hand, so had not only plenty of images to work from, but also the designers' notes as well.

The Big Sisters never quite became as iconic as the Big Daddy/Little Sister pairing from the first game, but still I found the idea behind them quite fascinating.  Their design was based upon the idea that these little girls had grown up into young women, and in their own way were trying to emulate their Big Daddies.  Unlike the Big Daddies, however, which were specifically designed during the heights of Rapture, the Big Sisters were left to cobble together their own outfits, effectively attempting to recreate the Big Daddy look with whatever they could scrounge from the now-derelict city.

 

 

Now, whilst Booker was undoubtedly the most important model in the army, he was still a relatively simple build.  His skyhook may have required a bit of finesse, but the Lucas McCabe model at his core already had most of the work done for me.  With the Big Sister, things were going to be a little more of a challenge, as I really couldn't think of a model which came close to fitting the profile!

As usual, it was off to the Malifaux shelves to try and find something to use a starting point.  One of the things about Malifaux models in general is that they're more realistically scaled, as opposed to many systems which have exaggerated heads/hands etc. to emphasise certain elements of the model.  Seeing as the Big Sister is quite an emaciated figure, Malifaux did seem the best bet for a suitably slim female miniature.

After a bit of searching, it seemed that the best model to use as a base was to be Rusty Alyce from the old metal Leviticus crew  (most of the Malifaux box sets have been rereleased as plastics at this point).  I should point out now that if you do a  Google image search for "Malifaux Rusty Alyce" you'll actually find a much better Big Sister conversion than mine!  But I'm still very much a conversion beginner, so I'm happy enough with my outcome... I can always try again in a couple of years!

 

 

It was whilst looking at how to convert her that the idea came up to make her into more than just a regular Big Sister.  In BioShock 2 the player takes on the role of Delta - a Big Daddy who is trying to be reunited with the Little Sister who was taken from him.  It's not as gripping and heart-wrenching as the Booker/Elizabeth relationship from Infinite, but still made for a good gaming experience.  The Little Sister in question was a girl named Eleanor Lamb, and towards the end of the game, circumstances force her to become a Big Sister.  She's the only Big Sister who the player ever sees without her helmet on, so I thought it'd be a nice idea to turn Rusty Alyce into the Big Sister version of Eleanor, rather than a generic Big Sister.  Seeing as the plan was to use her as Dirty Meg on the tabletop anyway this worked quite nicely, as she could jack marshal a warjack which could be modelled after her Delta.

 

With the base model chosen, it was time to start turning her into a Big Sister.  As with the Big Daddies, the most distinctive part of the Big Sister is the helmet.  My original plan was to use an Attunement Servitor from the Convergence of Cyriss faction in Warmachine, but after opening up a blister of these I found them to be far too big.  Fortunately I was able to return these, but on the downside I ended up picking up something much more expensive in its place!

 

 

The M&SU crew from Malifaux contains Arachnid Swarms, which served perfectly as Big Sister helmets.  Seeing as I only needed the one though, the majority of the box set was left in tact, meaning I can still assemble and use it as a Malifaux crew if I so wish!

 

With the helmet chosen, I just wanted to concentrate on the oxygen tank and basket on Eleanor's back, and the large, forearm-mounted syringe on her left arm.  For the syringe I went back to the M&SU box, and took a part from the Joss model - the tank shown on the lower-right part of the sprue below.

 

 

Obviously the cable had to go, so I clipped it off, drilled a small hole in its place, and glued in a shortened sewing pin to finish the weapon.  Then I just filed it down a little to fit more snugly against Rusty Alyce's arm, glued it in place, and then used a little bit of Green Stuff to make it a more seamless fit.

This just left the oxygen tank and basket on her back, so for the oxygen tank it was back to the world of Malifaux, though this time it was for a new release!

 

 

The Flesh Construct had literally just arrived in at Titan Games on the day I was building Eleanor, which was an absolute stroke of luck.  I don't have a sprue photo for this one (as with Booker, Eleanor was done before the idea for this series was suggested), but you can see the syringe-like container on the back of the Construct from the box photo.  Seeing as the Flesh Construct is so much bigger than Rusty Alyce this was actually a very good size, and so with a little bit of trimming it served the purpose of Eleanor's oxygen tank.  The rest of the Flesh Construct won't be going to waste, as he'll be taking on the role of another BioShock character, but I'll leave you to guess which one for now.

This only left the basket, but with no suitable alternatives in any system, this was just built manually using thinly-sliced strips of plasticard.

 

So, here's the result...

 

 

As I said before, she's not the best Rusty Alyce/Eleanor Lamb conversion I've ever seen, but I'm satisfied that she met the designer's goal of "cobbled together Big-Daddy-esque outfit".

Many thanks to Gmorts Chaotica for use of his unboxing photos for The M&SU.  If you enjoyed this rambling insight then please go back and take a look at the Booker DeWitt article!  And of course check back in a couple of days, when I'll hopefully have Elizabeth Commstock ready to join him...

Creating a Warmachine BioShock Army, Episode II: Booker DeWitt

Hello again, lovely readerfolk!  If you had a nose at the last article you'll have seen that there are grand plans in motion to create a BioShock themed army for Privateer Press' Warmachine tabletop system.  In that article I talked about how the idea came about, so here we'll be taking a look at the first model to find its way onto the painting table and get the ball rolling.

 

 

The centre point of any Warmachine army is its warcaster.  With no warcaster there is no army, and generally the entire army will be built around the warcaster's spells and abilities so as to pull off the most effective combos.  This created a bit of a dilemma right off the bat: who should take on the role of the warcaster?  With a universe as rich and well-designed as BioShock's there are no shortage of characters to choose from, so who should get the honour of being the pivotal character when this army finally gets to march to war?

For many, the most central BioShock character is Jack - the protagonist from the very first BioShock game.  The player watched the story unfold through his eyes, and heard the tale of the rise and fall of Rapture through his in-game discoveries, making for quite a personal experience.  However, you never see more than his wrists in the game, and you never hear his voice, so he didn't give me much to work with in terms of fashioning a model in his image!
(EDIT: Having just finished the Burial At Sea DLC from BioShock Infinite I do now have a slightly better image of Jack, so he may well feature in the army at some point...)

In BioShock 2 you take on the role of one of the Big Daddies - a Delta - not as iconic as the classic "Mr Bubbles" Big Daddy, but much more human-looking, and therefore more relatable.  However, in spite of this, there's still an overall lack of the human connection.  His relationship with Eleanor Lamb in the second game was superb, but the lack of a face, a voice, and a real name still severs the human connection somewhat.  Delta will certainly be featuring in the army, but he didn't quite cut it as a pivotal character.

Then we move onto BioShock Infinite, where the player takes on the role of Booker DeWitt.  So straight away we have a full name for our protagonist.  His image dominates the box art.  He's the most vocal character in the game, whether he's muttering to himself or conversing with Elizabeth, so we have a very clear idea of his personality.  In short, he's real.  He's tangible.  He's someone we can connect with.  Booker has a tragic past, he's on a mission of redemption, and the developing relationship between himself and Elizabeth tugs at every heartstring from their initial meeting to the final scene of the game.  If there was ever a character who deserved to be the centre of a BioShock army, it's this man.

 

 

So the BioShock character had been decided, the Warmachine character had been decided in advance as Magnus the Traitor, so that just left the hard part: bringing Booker DeWitt to life in 30mm form!

It was quite obvious from the offset that I wasn't going to find a miniature in the Warmachine range which was even close to resembling Booker, so it was off to the Malifaux shelves to try and find a suitable doppelganger.  After looking through all of the crews on offer at Titan Games and coming up short, it was starting to look like I'd have to start trawling through the more obscure tabletop systems, until someone suggested Lucas McCabe of the Relic Hunters - one of the Malifaux crews not on the shelves at the time of my browsing.  As a stroke of luck, one of the regulars had an unpainted McCabe crew which they no longer wanted, and so a few days later I was able to see if he really had the makings of Booker DeWitt!

 

 

As soon as I had the miniature in my hand I knew I had the base for Booker!  I've always described McCabe as "Indiana Wolverine", and I'm sure I'm not the only one, but in terms of outfit he was pretty much perfect for the role, even down to the neckerchief!  So now came the task of converting him into the hero of BioShock Infinite...

It should be noted at this point that I'd like to post some photos from various stages in the process, but seeing as the suggestion for this article series didn't come up until after Booker was finished this wasn't an option, however GMorts has granted me permission to steal photos from his Malifaux unboxing articles to help ease things along!

 

The first thing I did was clip the whip out of his right hand.  I left the hand on at this point as I wasn't sure how I was planning to use it, but the whip was distracting me and had to go asap.  The second thing that had to go was the "stupid Wolverine hair" as I kept calling it.  This required some very delicate knife-work with a very sharp hobby knife, so I had a more conversion-savvy friend take on this task for me!  With the whip gone and Lucas' new haircut in place, it was time to move onto the weapons.

Now as awesome as Booker is, there's nothing particularly distinctive about his outfit.  Sure, at a convention I can spot a Booker cosplayer a mile away, but at the end of the day it's just a shirt, a waistcoat, a pair of pinstripe trousers and a neckerchief.  When people look at my warcaster I want them to know straight away that this is Booker DeWitt and not just a generic waistcoated character, so he needed something to make him stand out, and if there's one piece of equipment that defines BioShock Infinite, it has to be the skyhook...

 

 

Being a floating city, the best way to travel around Columbia is to ride the skylines, and to do that you need a skyhook!  This became the most iconic piece of Infinite equipment, and so I knew that my Booker had to be equipped with one.

Seeing as skyline riders obviously don't want to fall to their deaths 30 seconds into their journey, the skyhook is designed to fit snugly half way up the user's forearm.  Upon looking at the gun in Lucas McCabe's left hand, it seemed to me that the makings of the skyhook were right there!  The stock nestles in against his forearm, and the way the strap falls against it actually makes it look as though the stock is lashed to his arm.  I clipped the barrel off the gun, just leaving the trigger guard, and stock.  From this point on it was going to be a custom build, so I dived into the bits boxes at Titan and started searching.

For the hooks themselves I had it in my head that the best thing would be to find some meat hooks, and glue them at the centre with the hooks an equal distance apart.  A short distance in, however, I found a Dark Eldar sprue with some very fine hooks which would do the job perfectly.  It took a bit of trimming, dry-fitting, and trimming again to get them to a suitable size (originally they dwarfed the rest of the weapon!), but eventually I had them looking just right, and applied a spot of superglue to fix the formation in place.

At this point, however, my iconic skyhook was nothing more than a trio of hooks glued onto a trimmed back gun barrel.  It certainly looked as though it was heading in the right direction, but didn't yet look like the finished article.  It still needed something at the centre of the hooks, as well as something to hide the point where they attached to the barrel.  I did try a few bits and pieces from the bits boxes, but the thickness of the plastic on even the finest detailed pieces bulked the skyhook out far too much.  Fortunately Games Workshop have released basing packs which contain a selection of brass-etched cogs and gears, which were just what I needed to complete the skyhook without the bulk of plastic alternatives.  With one small gear attached to each side in the centre, and half of a larger gear hiding the joining point on each side, the skyhook was done!

 

This just left Booker's right hand, which needed a period-suitable firearm.  This took a mercifully short search, and I found a hand holding a revolver on World War 2 miniatures sprue (possibly Bolt Action, I can't say for sure).  I have to confess I wanted to give Booker a rocket launcher that was on the same sprue to increase his awesome factor, but a friend reigned in my enthusiasm and suggested the less-is-more approach!

Seeing as the hand with the revolver was the perfect size for the miniature, I clipped off the entire left hand from the Lucas McCabe model and replaced it with the new one.

 

The streets of Columbia are smart, white cobblestone, so I found a suitable resin base to attach Booker to, and all that remained was the painting!  So it's my great pleasure to present to you the first model in my BioShock Warmachine army: Booker DeWitt!

 

 

I hope you've enjoyed this article, and if so then please check back for future entries when I'll be putting together Elizabeth Commstock, Eleanor Lamb, Andrew Ryan, splicers, and of course those iconic Big Daddies!

Creating a Warmachine BioShock Army, Episode I: Conception

Welcome to Games & Tea, good readers, where the great will not be constrained by the small!!!

 

*ahem*

 

Excuse me, channelling Andrew Ryan there for a moment.

 

Good day, ladies and gentlegamers!  I'm afraid this is going to be the start of another one of those pesky tabletop article series which seem to be creeping into the Games & Tea lineup more and more often.  This won't impact upon our board game reviews (in fact our next one is due up in the next couple of days!), but as this is a very special project I've just decided to undertake, it was recommended by Gmorts Chaotica that I record the process.

 

 

So the project (as you really should have figured out from the title) is to create a BioShock army for Privateer Press' Warmachine tabletop system.  I don't play many videogames these days, but in the last few years there are two particular series which have left a major emotional impact and secured themselves a special place in the blackened cavity I call a heart.  The first of these is the Mass Effect series, and the second is BioShock.

My primary army in Warmachine is Khador, and within Khador my favoured warcaster is Karchev the Terrible.  Being mostly a warjack himself, he does favour very warjack-heavy army lists, which usually need to be complemented by a lot of repair crews, which in itself mens recruiting Mercenaries.  In a recent attempt to make his 50 point list even more jack-heavy and ridiculous, I decided to let some of the Mercenary fixers jack marshal their own warjacks, and that meant having to pick up my first Mercenary warjacks!  It only took a few moments on the Privateer Press website to decide which Mercenary warjack was going to be my first, as one glimpse of the Mariner immediately conjured up images of the underwater city of Rapture.  I knew I had to do something special with the model - I didn't want it to just be a Mariner, I wanted it to actually be recognisable as a Big Daddy, so with a bit of customisation, this was born...

 

 

Whilst I never intended for this to be the start of something greater, it did get me thinking.  Surely there must be other BioShock-esque models scattered amongst the many and varied tabletop systems?  Wouldn't it be a nice idea to collect and paint up some of these just to have a BioShock shelf in my display cabinet?  I popped into my FLGS Titan Games and spitballed the idea with the owner (who doubles up as my longest-serving friend and the man who got me into the tabletop hobby!), and he made a counter-suggestion that I build a workable Mercenary army around the BioShock characters.

I have to admit I wasn't instantly sold on the idea, but he always has a way of convincing me, and we were soon sitting down and penning a 50 point list.  Unfortunately there aren't a great deal of Warmachine models that fit the BioShock aesthetic - either for Rapture or BioShock Infinite's Columbia - so we had to start getting creative.  Being a Victorian alternate reality steampunk system, Wyrd Miniatures' Malifaux seemed to be the best place for us to find the characters of the BioShock series, so our list soon came to comprise of three sections:  The BioShock character, the Warmachine character they would be used in place of, and the Malifaux model used to represent them.

 

With many miniatures in need of some serious customisation, and several Malifaux crews required to complete this task, it's going to be quite a long and ongoing process (at this point I've bought 6 crews, totalling at over £150)!  However, I can't wait to see how the final army looks, and I'm looking forward to bringing you all updates as the months progress!

A Project With Balls...

Geddit?  'Cos it's a sportsball game.

...okay, we'll leave now.

A few months ago we posted an article about a trio of projects we'd chosen to back on Kickstarter, and judging by the number of hits on the entry it seemed to be of genuine interest to you lovely folks.  Well with gaming funds running a little dry of late (our FLGS' ongoing Warmachine league has proven a drain on resources!) we haven't been backing too many projects, but a few days ago our fellow hobby blog Gmorts Chaotica pointed us in the direction of a project which just instantly grabbed our attention: Guild Ball

 

 

Guild Ball is a tabletop system with a fantasy take on good old English football (soccer, to our readers across the pond).  The game's creators can put the background into words far better than we ever could (probably on account of the fact that they created it), so here's their description from the Kickstarter page:

 

Guild Ball takes place in a land now known as the Empire of Free Cities; it’s essentially a pseudo-historical setting with strong European flavours. The lands of the empire are made up of a huge variety of climates, cultures and landscapes each controlled by a sovereign City.

 

Mob football is a game generally played between neighbouring towns and villages on feast days (hence the popularity). The game was originally played in the middle of towns and villages where the objective was to take the ball to the opposing side of town. But to prevent the inevitable collateral damage it rapidly evolved into being played in the surrounding countryside, often in a special field set aside for the purpose. At its core, players on opposing teams, clash and struggle to control leather wrapped inflated pig's bladder and attempt to kick it into the opponent’s goal. Over the years, rudimentary leagues and tournaments have sprung up, there have even been some national level games between city states.

 

The Guilds have taken advantage of the huge popularity of the sport and have invested vast sums of money, creating professional teams and structured leagues. The public went crazy as the game was elevated to new heights of spectacle. Guild Ball was born amidst a blaze of interest and publicity and with it, a whole new business and revenue stream for the Guilds. Games are now played out in front of vast crowds of fans, whilst behind the scenes the results can mean fortunes are won or lost on the kick of a ball.

As we mentioned with Mantic's DreadBall, we're not the biggest sports fans here at Games & Tea, but as a tabletop system we do rather enjoy them as an alternative to shooty/smashy skirmish games.  With Guild Ball it's nice to see a game based on soccer, rather than the 'safe option' of American football which other developers seem to flock to.

 

It promises to be a fast and intuitive game which is quick to learn, but rewards players with in-depth gameplay and tactics.  But above all else we were sold by the lavish concept art and beautiful looking miniatures!  The Kickstarter page for the project contains 3D renders of two of the team captains, as well as a shot of an early Fisherman's Guild captain model, and they are looking rather fine.  The miniatures are available in both metal and resin (with a slightly higher cost on the resins), and having looked at the artwork for the teams (also on the KS page) we're really excited about seeing how some of the other characters will turn out (the Masons Guild is our #1 team of choice).

 

In the 2 days since backing Guild Ball we're also realising just how much they value the input of their backers.  Unlike many projects which effectively use Kickstarter as a pre-ordering service, the Guild Ball team genuinely seem to enjoy touching base with the people who have shown their support.  Updates are flowing regularly, they've launched some great competitions on Facebook (the most recent of which gives away an amazing "design a character" prize), and they've already released quick-play rules to the public so that their backers can run through an early version of the game and sent them their feedback.  To sum it up, it seems to be a Kickstarter project done right!

 

Backing for Guild Ball finishes on March 22nd.  £30 will secure you one of the four teams of your choice, £50 will get you two (if you get in before the Early Birds are all taken up!), £82 will get you three, and £105 will get you all four.  We've also thrown in an extra £26 for the hard-copy rulebook, dice and tokens, and there are other add-on rewards to choose from too.

 

 

DreadBall Deluxe, Part 2: Gameplay & Verdict

Last week we stepped back into the world of board game/tabletop system hybrids as we took a look at the box contents for DreadBall; the futuristic sports game from Mantic Games.  Today we're going to run our two teams out onto the pitch and find out just how well it fares as a standalone board game, or if it should be confined to the collections of tabletop hobbyists.

The DreadBall starter box comes with two teams: The Trontek 29ers and The Greenmoon Smackers.  Of course players can paint their miniatures up in the default colour schemes and use these exact teams, but it's always good fun to come up with your own ideas, giving a little more personal investment in the 8 brave warriors of the sport who are being pummelled for your own amusement.  With this in mind our DreadBall Deluxe boxset has given rise to two new giants: The Cybertron Sentinels and The Arkham Outcasts!

The Cybertron Sentinels!

The Arkham Outcasts!  Okay we've only painted one so far, but orange is time-consuming, okay?

Both teams have a very different set of attributes which result in very different gaming experiences (which we'll come to in more detail later), so once players have decided which team they'll be fielding, it's time to set up the board.

Board set-up in DreadBall takes mere seconds, which is very refreshing when you look at many specialist board games on the market.  Once the board is opened up the score marker needs to be placed on the '0' point of the score track (shown along the bottom side of the board above), and the turn marker needs to be placed on '01' on the turn track (shown along the top side).  This concludes board setup!  Doesn't that make a lovely change?

Players must then decide who will be fielding the home team, and who will be the visitors.  This is decided randomly, so can be done either by dice-rolling or by one player randomly selecting the Home Fans or Away Fans card.  The home team will set their team up on the blue side of the board and use the blue dice from the set, with the away team following suit on the red side and with the red dice.  You may notice that the turn track is coloured to match these sides - this is because the home team always takes the first turn in DreadBall, after which play alternates until the final turn is played by the away team (unless one team has romped home with a 7 point clear victory before then).  Both teams also start with one coaching dice (a white dice), and one randomly-dealt card from the deck.  The remaining deck is placed face-down at the side of the board, and the remaining white dice placed to one side as well - these will be used to determine the referee's rolls when she's called upon to settle a dispute!  The number of starting cards and coaching dice varies from one team to the next across the DreadBall hobby, but the two teams in the balanced starter box begin with one of each.  Fair's fair after all!

The two teams each consist of 8 players, but the Deluxe box comes with an added bonus: two more players for each side.  This basically gives the players the options of customising their lineups a little, tailoring to more aggressive gameplay or allowing for speedier hit-and-run style strikes.  For new players though it's best to start with the basic lineup, and the rulebook contains the starting player lists for both of the featured teams.

There are three types of players in DreadBall: Guards, Strikers and Jacks.  All three of these feature in the 29ers, but the Smackers only contain Guards and Jacks.  A Guard is a big bruiser of a player, unable to pick up the ball themselves but good for Slamming (the DreadBall equivalent of a tackle) opposing players and causing some serious injuries.  Strikers are the nimble players who score most of the points.  They can't Slam, but can throw like demons and are great at dodging those hard tackles.  Jacks don't specialise in any one area, being able to Slam and take possession of the ball.  They're not as good as Guards or Strikers in their respective fields, but an all-rounder can be helpful when the time is right!
The Trontek 29ers team is quite Striker-heavy, meaning that it's a good team for making swift runs into the opponent's half to score those vital points.  The Greenmoon Smackers, on the other hand, have much tougher Guards and in greater number, which makes them a team best suited to knocking down your opponent's players, leaving an empty pitch for the Jacks to work their scoring magic on.

Of the 8 players in each team, only 6 are allowed on the pitch at any one time.  These 6 must be set up inside their respective halves before the game begins, with the 2 remaining players starting on the substitutes' bench.  DreadBall is a very physical game, so don't worry, they'll be on the pitch with their chance to shine before you know it!

Steve Batman of The Arkham Outcasts shakes a threatening fist at Megatron and the rest of The Cybertron Sentinels!

Once players have set up their teams and the ref-bot has been placed on her starting space, it's time to launch the ball and begin the game!

Each turn in DreadBall is referred to as a "Rush", and Rushes alternate between players.  This means that you don't have to worry about your opponent messing with your best laid plans during your turn, but it also means that by the end of your turn you need to have your players positioned and prepared for anything your opponent may throw at you during their Rush.

In a player's Rush they may take up to a total of 5 actions, and they can keep track of these using their player tokens.  In addition to this 5 action limit, each individual player on the team may only take up to 2 actions, which is a good way of preventing a player from heaping actions onto a single member of their team and dashing across the field to score easy points!  That said, lucky dice-rolling can reward players with free actions which do not count towards either of these limits, which can allow moments of sporting heroism to creep into the game.  Indeed, in one of our review games we had a player jump off the subs bench and sprint the full length of the pitch to score the game-winning points in a move worthy of any inspirational sporting film!

On top of these, cards can be played to give players further free actions, or can even put an ongoing effect into play which can affect the entire flow of the game.

A player's Rush ends when they have no further action points to spend, or when they lose possession of the ball, either from a missed shot, a failed attempt to pick up the ball, or a fumbled catch.  When this happens the turn immediately moves along to the other player, regardless of how many action points the active player had remaining.

Actions can include the likes of movement, Slamming, picking up the ball, and throwing it as either a pass or attempt to score.  DreadBall mostly operates on an easy-to-remember 3D6 system, so to find out if your action has been a success then you must roll 3 dice against your player's relevant stat (speed/skill/strength) and add up the number of successes.  If you do especially well at that action then it often leads to a free action and the chance to capitalise on your success, whereas a failure at an action can put you on the back foot and leave you having to rethink your entire turn.   This does let the random element play a large role in DreadBall, but both players are in the same boat on this front, and victory will usually go to the player who can best adapt their plans when the dice gods heap them with misfortune!

Whilst the system is usually 3D6, there are various modifiers which can increase or decrease the dice total.  For example a Guard excels at smashing their opponents, so they roll one extra dice when Slamming.  Strikers, on the other hand, are nimble, so they gain an extra dice when throwing, catching, or dodging a Slam.  If the throwing player is adjacent to one of the front 3 sides of an opponent's base then that throw becomes trickier to pull off, so they roll one less dice.  Then there are the coaching dice, mentioned earlier, which are earned through exciting and crowd-pleasing behaviour, and can be added to any dice roll to improve the odds off success.

These modifiers may seem hard to keep track of at first glance, but they do make logical sense when picturing DreadBall as the energetic sport it's meant to be, and after a couple of games the dice-rolling becomes second nature, and the gameplay quickly becomes very fluid.

The Cybertron Sentinels' No.8 Striker - Rumble - goes for a 2 point strike!

In spite of its violent nature, DreadBall is ultimately a sports game, and so victory lies in scoring more points than your opponent.  Each side of the pitch has 3 highlighted scoring zones.  The two zones closest to the half-way line are worth 1 or 2 points each (the higher score for the longer-distance throws), and the zone furthest into each player's half is worth 3 or 4 points.  The scoring system in DreadBall works on a slider, so if your opponent is 2 points ahead and you score a 3 pointer, you go into the lead by 1 point.  If your opponent then scores 1, the score resets to 0.  If one side reaches 7 points then they win the game outright, otherwise the team in the lead by the end of the 14th Rush is declared the victor!

This covers the basics of DreadBall fairly neatly.  There are more subtle nuances and additional rules which we haven't gone into here in order to keep this article at a readable length, so to experience them first hand you'll just have to take a trip to your FLGS and find out what all the fuss is about!

So just how does DreadBall Deluxe work as a board game, rather than an introduction to a gaming system?

Well obviously there is the building and painting element to the game, so this may put off potential players who don't have the tabletop feather in their hobby cap.  However, construction only takes a couple of hours and with a simple colour scheme a fully painted team can be quickly accomplished - whilst we are labouring slowly over Arkham Outcasts, the Cybertron Sentinels took us just one night to paint the entire team.

Unlike some board game/tabletop crossovers, DreadBall does come with everything needed to play the game in the box, although this is where the Kick-Off and Deluxe boxes differ.  Kick-Off contains the two teams of 8 players, the pitch, a basic rulebook, a single ball and two sets of dice.  Deluxe contains those two extra players for each team to add a bit of variety, and a spare ball just in case the first one falls foul of a vacuum cleaner or some similar menace.  It also includes the full rulebook, including rules for running leagues, the ref-bot, the DreadBall cards, and the extra set of dice.  These differing box contents both allow DreadBall to be played as a stand-alone board game straight out of the box, but obviously Deluxe gives a more complete experience, as well as being the better starting point for players wishing to take up DreadBall as a system rather than just a board game.  Mantic have released an expansion kit, however, so if players wish to upgrade from Kick-Off to Deluxe then they can buy this pack to add all of those additional parts to their collection.

As a game, DreadBall is quick to learn and smooth to play, with the 3D6 system taking very little time to get used to.  The different nature of the two teams allows for a bit of variety in gameplay - the speed and scoring prowess of the human team versus the brutal nature of the hard-hitting orcs - which is further added to with the Deluxe sets extra players, giving a degree of customisation to the starting lineups.  The fact that DreadBall is based on dice rolling does mean that random chance plays a role in events, but spread across 14 turns this usually balances out, and with some tactical adjustment and on-the-spot thinking the unluckier moments can be turned around fairly effectively.

One slight criticism of the set is directed firmly at the rulebook.  During the learning process for any game, referring to the rulebook is a frequent occurrence, and so most games come with a quick reference guide, or at the very least an index.  DreadBall comes with neither of these, and so any rules queries during those first couple of games do require some furious flicking back and forth between pages.  Mantic have spotted this shortfall to their credit, and the Season 3 rulebook contains a quick reference card at the back of the book, outlining the modifiers for each dice roll, and the outcome.  Unfortunately we're looking at DreadBall as a standalone game, and so this counts against them in the grand scheme of things.

The other downside to the game is that it's firmly for 2 players, so doesn't work as a group game on large games nights.  Again, Mantic have addressed this with the release of the chaotic DreadBall Ultimate expansion, which allows for up to 6 teams at once, but as a standalone board game Kick-Off/Ultimate doesn't benefit from this.

The Good Points

• DreadBall features a fairly simple mechanic, but which is offset by enough modifiers to allow for a tactical element to the game.
• The starter box comes with everything needed to get going with the game, rather than "almost everything" as some board/tabletop hybrids favour.
• The two featured teams are different enough to create differing tactical challenges, and the additional players in the Deluxe box allow for a nice variety in the team listings.
• Assembly time on the miniatures is mercifully short, and once built it's always fun to come up with names and themes for your very own teams.

The Bad Points

• The DreadBall rulebook really could use a quick reference card, and beginners' games will be slowed considerably by the number of return visits to the rulebook.
• Without investing in the additional Ultimate expansion, DreadBall is for 2 players only, preventing it from being a large, social game.
• The idea of having to build and paint the miniatures may put some potential players off.

Recommended Number of Players: 2

As mentioned, DreadBall can only be played by 2 players, so this is a requirement rather than a recommendation.

Average Game Time: 60 minutes

Whilst some games of DreadBall can flash past in the blink of an eye due to some lucky dice rolls and top-notch player placement, most games run for the better part of an hour.  The 14 Rush cap on the game generally prevents play from going on much longer than this, so DreadBall is one of the games on the market which mercifully does not drag.

Replay Value: High

DreadBall is a fast and furious game, and does leave players wanting more.  Whether it's a desire for revenge against a crushing defeat, or the hope to recreate a dazzling victory, the DreadBall pitch does generally call players back.  The ability to vary the lineup and surprise opponents with cards in the Deluxe set add to the replay factor, and the chance to switch between teams for different tactical challenges help to keep the game from stagnating.

The Future: Bright

Being a tabletop system as well as a board game, there is a lot of DreadBall on the market for players wishing to expand their playing options.  In addition to the two featured in the box, there are 10 other teams which can be purchased seperately, as well as star players which can be used to boost existing teams.  On top of these there's also the DreadBall Ultimate expansion, turning the game into a group event for up to 6 players.

Price: £50 Deluxe (£30 Kick-Off)

The DreadBall Deluxe boxset will set you back roughly £50, which is starting to get towards the top end range as far as board games go.  Kick-Off, on the other hand, is a more pocket-friendly £30.  It should be noted that both sets give good value for money, so it really boils down to how far players want to take the plunge into the world of DreadBall.  Most gaming stores should stock it as a standard item, being a main system from one of the big names in tabletop gaming, but even if they don't keep it on the shelves it should be easy to order in.

OVERALL SCORE (DELUXE): 9/10

OVERALL SCORE (KICK-OFF): 7.5/10

Tea consumed during this review: None! Douwe Egberts caramel coffee with milk and 2 sweeteners. Brew rating 9.5/10

 

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