Archive for Mike’s Reviews

Michael Salsbury | August 8, 2011
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Review: Dust Tactics from Fantasy Flight Games

At both Origins and Gen Con, it has been my pleasure to interact with the staff of Fantasy Flight Games and their demonstration teams.  Their staff have always treated me well, done a great job explaining their games, and provided suggestions on strategy and replayability. 

I try to make it a point to try out at least one of their games at each convention I attend.  At this year’s Gen Con, I sat down to play Dust Tactics.  (And like many Fantasy Flight titles, it can be hard to get an open seat to sit down and play!)

Dust Tactics is set in an alternate Earth history (during World War II).  In this alternate history, a mysterious ore has been discovered which has enabled the creation of giant, walking weapons of mass destruction.  The Axis powers and the Allies are at war in this alternate history, just as they were during World War II… only now they have "mechs" to battle with.

Dust Tactics - Board and Miniatures
Dust Tactics Core Set Game Board and Miniatures

Although Dust Tactics takes place on a game board, it plays much more like a traditional miniatures game.  Combat takes into account features like cover, armor, weapon types, range, and line-of-sight (features we don’t generally see in board games, which tend to "abstract" these elements out). 

Players move their units around the board, getting them into position where they can attack enemy units to their best advantage.  Infantry units try to avoid armored units until they can get in close enough to destroy them.  Armored units will tend to seek out infantry units to quickly destroy them if possible.  Units will move to take advantage of cover and remove that advantage from their enemies.

Special six-sided dice are used to determine hits, misses, and cover saves.  Four of the six sides are blank.  Two contain a "target" icon.  During the firing phase, target icons represent hits on the enemy unit.  During a cover save, depending on the kind of cover (soft vs. hard), either the blank or the target images determine if the unit takes a hit.  For infantry units, a "hit" represents the loss of a miniature.  For armored units, a "hit" removes one more hit points from the unit’s total.  Remove enough hit points, and the armored unit is destroyed.

The miniatures offered by Fantasy Flight are shipped with a basic primer which is gray for Axis units and green for Allied units.  Fantasy Flight encourages players to paint the units to make them more realistic and unique (again, trending toward typical miniatures gaming rather than board gaming).  The core set includes a small number of units, enough to play a variety of scenarios.  Additional units can be purchased from Fantasy Flight to expand the scope of a scenario or campaign.  Keeping track of the capabilities of a given unit is easy, given the printed card provided with each unit.

Since I enjoy both board games and miniatures games, Dust Tactics was a game that I definitely enjoyed playing.  Given the varying capabilities of the infantry and armored units, I can see where a variety of interesting scenarios could be assembled and a challenging campaign put together from those.  

Since the miniatures arrive "semi-painted" (in addition to the base coat of primer, there are a small number of markings to help differentiate the units), it would be easy to setup and play Dust Tactics without the assembly and painting of a fleet of miniatures.  On the other hand, if you wanted to take the time and effort to personally paint and customize your miniatures, they’re ready to go – already primed. 

A Dust Tactics Unit Reference Card
Dust Tactics Unit Reference Card

With the basic reference info printed on the card with each unit, you could probably play a fairly large battle or campaign without referring a lot to the rule book.  That would make for a much more fun experience overall, and minimize the need for "rules lawyering" that some miniatures games are famous for.

Close-up view of a painted Dust Tactics Miniature
Close-up view of a painted, customized Dust Tactics miniature

Like all the Fantasy Flight titles I’ve played, the production values (materials, artwork, etc.) in Dust Tactics are among the best in the business.  The plastic miniatures look good enough to use as-is, but of course can be improved with a bit of painting work.  The core set is a nice starter collection.

Having said all that, Dust Tactics isn’t a game I plan to add to my collection.  That’s more a personal matter than a problem with Dust Tactics itself.  Investing $80-100 in the core set and much more to acquire additional units to use in larger battles or campaigns, Dust Tactics could represent a fairly significant gaming investment.  It’s probably a much lower investment than a miniatures game like Warhammer 40K, but far more than I’m willing to invest given the number of times I get to play a game like this outside the game conventions (maybe once or twice a year).  As I say, this isn’t a reflection on Dust Tactics.  It’s also not a criticism of Fantasy Flight’s pricing (which is competitive with many miniatures games).  It’s just a decision on my part to invest in games I would expect to play more often.

Fantasy Flight's Dust Tactics Demonstration Table at Gen Con
Fantasy Flight’s Gen Con Exhibit Hall Demonstration Table for Dust Tactics

I definitely recommend checking out Dust Tactics if you get a chance.  It’s a nice cross between a traditional board game and a more mainstream miniatures game.

Amazon currently offers the Dust Tactics Core Set for $81.87, which is well below the MSRP of $99.99.  They also offer many (if not all) of the additional miniatures and materials to go with it, most of which are similarly discounted.

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Michael Salsbury | August 7, 2011
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Review: Cargo Noir from Days of Wonder

Days of Wonder’s Cargo Noir is described on their web site as "a game of illicit trading in which players run ‘families’ who traffic in smuggled goods" in a setting of 1950′s film noir. 

Cargo Noir takes place on a multi-piece board, where each piece represents a port.  Each port offers a number of randomly-selected cargos.  The largest port, Macao, is home to a cargo exchange and casino.  Players compete to collect cargos which can be sold for points, which count toward their final score.

At the start of the game, cargos are randomly selected and placed in each slot in each port.  A player is chosen to go first.  Play then goes sequentially through the remaining players. 

Cargo Noir Game Board - Game in Progress

On the initial turn, each player sends ships out to locations on the board.  Sending a ship to a port, combined with one or more coins, represents making a bid to purchase the cargo in that port.  Sending a ship to the black market offers the player the opportunity to trade a cargo in their warehouse for one of the cargos found in the black market or to randomly draw a cargo from the "sack".  Sending a ship to the casino allows the player to collect two coins from the pool.

Cargo Noir Player's Warehouse Card

On each subsequent turn, the player "resolves their ships" first.  For ships at a port where no other player’s ships have a bid, the player collects the cargo at that port and discards their coins in the casino pool.  For ships where another player has placed a bid, the player must decide to either raise the bid or back out.  If the player backs out, they retrieve their coins and ship (to be used later).

After ships are resolved, the player will examine the cargo in his or her warehouse (hand).  If the player has more cargo than will fit in the warehouse, the player must trade or discard the excess.  Trading the cargo in will generate points that can count toward victory.  To trade in cargo, a player must build a "set" which is worth a certain number of points.  For example, a set of five unique cargo tokens will reward the player with 15 points.  A set of five identical cargo tokens will pay 25 points.  Therefore, it’s generally better to collect a large set of identical cargo tokens than a set of unique ones.  However, the number of cargo tokens of a specific type is limited, so collecting them can prove difficult in the later turns.  When a player trades in cargo, he or she receives a card which represents the points they have earned and in some cases provides additional benefits (such as an extra ship or more warehouse slots). 

Once the player has traded or discarded cargo, any ships in their hand may be sent to the black market (where a cargo in their warehouse can be traded for any visible cargo in the market, or a random cargo can be drawn from the sack), the casino (where two coins are earned per ship), or out to any of the ports along with a bid.

When play revolves around to the initial player, the turn counter is advanced.  When the tenth turn is reached, a four or five player game ends.  For larger groups, play continues to the eleventh turn.  At the end of the game, each player’s score is tallied by adding up the blue values printed on each card they have purchased.  The highest total score wins.

That’s really all there is to the mechanics of Cargo Noir.  However, there is a great deal of strategy and thought required to actually play it.  For example, if you’re sitting on a bunch of uranium tokens, is it better to turn them in or try to collect more?  That depends on how many more are out there and on how far behind you may be in the scoring.  Should you spend your points on an extra cargo ship (which may allow you to bid on more cargo or collect more coins, but which is worth fewer victory points at end-game) or on a Villa (which is worth more victory points but doesn’t help you any other way)?

There’s a psychological aspect of play as well.  Should you bid a single coin on a desired cargo and hope no one outbids you, or should you bid high and scare off opponents?  If you bid high, you may overpay and have to send ships to the casino sooner.  Bid too low, and you will tie your ship up at the port longer (as you have to wait for other players to put their bids in and play to return to you). 

The randomness of cargo selection, combined with the psychological and mechanical aspects of gameplay, make for a title that should have quite a lot of replayability.  You’ll want to explore strategies like "turn over lots of small sets early on to build a fleet of ships and a large warehouse" and "go for points early on and don’t worry about more ships". 

The quality of the artwork in the game is excellent (as you can see in the photos), as I’ve come to expect for a Days of Wonder title.  The game board is a sturdy cardboard, with a very high production quality.  The plastic pieces are as well made as any I’ve seen.  The rulebook is printed in full color from cover to cover.  It looks and feels as good as any game I’ve seen from any manufacturer.

CargoNoir-Manual

If you get the opportunity to play Cargo Noir, I definitely recommend it.  If you find that you enjoy it as much as I did, you may want to purchase it.  As of this writing, Amazon.com has it available for approximately $37.  That’s well below Days of Wonder’s $50 list price and even below my convention coupon discount of $45.

Category: Mike's Reviews | Tags: , , ,
Michael Salsbury | August 18, 2008
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Fantasy Flight Games’ “Tannhauser”

While at Gen Con, I had the opportunity to sit down for a 30-45 minute demo of the combat and movement mechanics of Fantasy Flight Games’ “Tannhauser: Operation Novgorod” expansion to its popular “Tannhauser” title.

The setting of Tannhauser is that World War I never ended.  To quote FFG’s web site: “Tannhäuser is a tactical board game of paranormal investigations and Great War combat, pitting the forces of the Reich and the Army of the Union together in a struggle for control of the Obscura Cardinal Cornerstones, magical artifacts of immense power.”  The “Operation Novgorod” expansion is a not-yet-released addition to the game.

Tannhauser takes place on a game board, using pre-painted miniatures, cardboard sheets representing the characters involved, cardboard counters (used to mark the location of debris, ammo, weapons, and the like), and 10-sided dice.  The image below depicts the basic components of the game and some artwork from the Operation Novgorod expansion:

Below is a typical character sheet.  In the bottom right corner, you can see the cardboard counters used to identify the character’s special abilities, weapons, and ammunition he or she might be carrying. 

Just above that is a table of numeric values, to the right of which is another cardboard counter with a star on it.  This counter is used to mark damage to the character, by turning it counter-clockwise so that the star points to the next row down in the table.  Some characters have abilities that improve with damage, while most deteriorate.  Once a character has taken more damage than can be scored on the table, that character is considered dead and removed from play.

Tannhauser may look like a board game, but in play it’s somewhere between a boardgame and a traditional miniatures game. This would make it a good “bridge” game for introducing less “hardcore” gamers to a more complex or traditional miniatures game.

The game board uses circles to indicate positions in the building/terrain where a character might move.  The circles of a matching color are considered to be in weapons range and within a character’s line of sight.  Some circles have multiple colors, corresponding to the fact that they can be seen from different areas.  In the example image below, the two characters share matching colored circles and thus are considered in line of fire and potentially within weapons range. (Melee weapons require adjacent circles. Other weapons require a specific number of circles between the two characters for them to be effective.)

The example below illustrates how various circles may be visible from multiple areas.

When a character dies in Tannhauser, that character’s weapons and ammo are dropped on the map in the circle where the character fell.  Other characters may pick up these weapons and ammunition and use them.

The combat model seems reasonably realistic, based on my 30-45 minute introduction to it.  If you open up with a machine gun at relatively close range on someone, there’s a very good chance that someone is going to die.  Toss an explosive anywhere near them, they’ll take damage. There are modifiers that allow for more damage or more hits.

During my demo with Tannhauser, 5 characters on each side were pitted against each other in an indoor setting.  It was fairly clear that when the number of characters on one side of the battle starts to outnumber those on the other side, the characters on the “losing” side will very likely continue to lose unless some very lucky rolls of the dice occur.  My understanding of the full “non-demo” version of the game is that you can call in replacements or reinforcements for the “non-critical” characters, which would help to even the odds a little.  Otherwise, a slight advantage seems to very quickly become a victory.

I found Tannhauser very simple to learn, easy to play, and (most importantly) fun.  My main concern for Tannhauser, based strictly on a 30-45 minute demonstration and NOT a full game or multiple games, is that there might be an issue of replayability here.  The game board certainly won’t change between sessions.  The main characters, unless I missed something, don’t change between sessions.  The only things I see changing between multiple sessions of the game are the dice rolls and the potential for critical items of equipment to change hands due to a character dying.  I’m not sure that’s enough variation to keep the game interesting.  But again, I want to point out that mine is not a picture of the complete game, and there may indeed be a lot more to it than I’m aware of.  (Those of you who own and play this game regularly, please comment on this article about YOUR experience with it, because I don’t want to sell this game short.)

On the whole, I thought it was an enjoyable game, reasonably quick to pick up (less than 5 minutes), allowing for some decent strategic and tactical thinking, and likely to be an excellent game to “bridge” traditional players into more-serious adult games.

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