Pandora's Box campaign

  Only a couple weeks ago, the weekend came around and it was time to get some gaming on.  It had been a little while, so we decided to bust out the Mythic Battles again.  Better, I convinced us to play the scenario from the Core Box.  The reasoning was simple- we have too much stuff!!!  With all the expansions and add-ons, the regular draft in the Skirmish mode could be a bit overwhelming.  But the scenarios tell us what to use and whatever special rules, so let's give that a chance.  

  

  The campaign in the Core Box, called "Pandora's Got a Brand New Box", sees three factions attempting to gather a number of crystallized woes from Pandora's Box.  The campaign is for three games, each affecting the overall results.  Whichever faction gathers up the most crystals by the end of the campaign wins.  But there's a couple of cool kicks to it all. 

  

  Most important of the special rules is the one where a faction my spend their crystals to perform certain actions, including healing or even RESURRECTING heroes and monsters.  This can be very useful considering all the parties involved in the campaign and how lethal they can be.  However, it's a balancing act as any crystals used to perform these special actions are removed from the game and decrease that faction's chance of winning.  

  We played the entire campaign in a single day.  My wife, my son, and I took each of the three factions and played all three scenarios in just a few hours.  My wife took the Ithicans, consisting of the Amazons, Centaurs, Odysseus, and the nigh-unkillable Achilles.  My son, being the much tougher one, took the Spartans which included the Hoplites and Spartans, their leader Leonidas, and the mythical Heracles.  I took Hades and his cohort of monsters and infernal troops just to keep the balance of power in the house.  My force changed a bit between scenarios, but the other two forces did not.  

  What was most strange was that I didn't see a balance between the forces.  Mine included a god and multiple monsters, plus troops to round it all out!  Meanwhile, their forces included a couple of heroes and a bunch of joes and pretty much had the same mission as I do.  It seemed weird right from the beginning.  

Ithacan Alliance

Spartan Alliance

Otherworldly Alliance

  So we, of course, started with the first scenario.  In this one, the beasts of each of the forces (literally for Hades, Achilles and Heracles for the other two) were locked up in cages and needed to get free.  With god-like movement, Hades simply ran up, freed his monsters, and collected the gems like a champ.  Both of the other factions freed their heroes as well, but the game ended so quickly that they had little time to do anything else.

  We originally planned on playing each of the scenarios across a few days, but the first mission was over so quickly that we decided to play the rest of the campaign (it's only three missions, after all).  In this one, Hades is stuck on his throne while his forces have to battle the enemies and capture some more gems for their god.  With quick movement, Hades again won the battle before the enemies really had time to do much.  At this point in the campaign, it's obvious that Hades is going to win...

  Finally, the third mission in less than two hours and it was an uphill battle for the Greeks against Hades and his unstoppable forces.  This mission simply a last chance for the 'good guys' to collect more gems.  But just like before, Hades' monsters move so much quicker than the other factions that they collected the gems and quickly dispatched the enemies.  The final score saw Hades with more objective points (those gems) than both of the other forces combined.  

  So we've played our first campaign right from the core set of this game.  All three games took little time at all.  Unfortunately, I think the scenarios were very unbalanced, starting with the forces.  I played with Hades to keep my son and wife from getting too bitter at each other (they don't have the experience with games to understand that sometimes they're just not balanced) and almost felt bad.  But I would have had to play really bad for them to stand a chance.  

 Now, as most veteran gamers do, I should be upset that the game designers didn't include a more balanced campaign.  But I'm not.  Why?  Because the face of the creators, Leo, already explained that Mythic Battles is a skirmish game where they added scenarios just to give more content for gamers.  In other words, the campaign(s) aren't well-thought out for this game because they aren't the point of it.  We've played a couple dozen skirmish battles (draft your own forces and battle it out across the famous areas) and they've all been awesome!  So the campaign being so unbalanced didn't really hurt my feelings.

  Despite the obvious and predictable outcome, the campaign was fun and just reinforces how good our investment in this game was.  I highly suggest that anyone interested in Greek gods and heroes, battles, and awesome miniatures check it out.  The company is going to be doing a re-release on Kickstarter and will be sending people out to demo the game all over the U.S. (they're already doing it in Europe).  Of course I'll post when that happens (and maybe I'll even be one of the demo-monkies for them!).  Great game!!!

My wife made me do it!

  It was a sunny day about a year ago and I was minding my own business in the meanest way when the wife came to bug me about something she thought I would like.  She harassed me with details of her love of mythology as a child and was always crawling the crowdfunding pages just for 'ideas'.  I reluctantly followed her to the office and saw what she was excited about and became instantly intrigued.

  You see, I'm a Games Workshop disciple through-and-through.  I even served in the Emprah's armies for a long time and learned many things.  My teeth were cut on Dungeons & Dragons and I still know more about that game (and have more books) than many of the subjects I have degrees in.  If you even deign to mention Star Trek in  my presence, I have to mindfully keep quiet as I can drone on and on about the technical specifications of the Sabre-class frigate to those that didn't even remember that the first Enterprise's captain was named Pike.  My nerd and gamer knowledge runs deep and wide.  So I may not be as open to the kinds of things that my wife likes (she certainly isn't a fan of much of mine, and who could blame her?), yet she got me.  All my skull-faced Chaplain wielding a Holy Avenger on the bridge of the Excelsior expectations were met in one simple Kickstarter.

  While she gleefully gabbed on and on about how much she thought this was awesome, I was absorbed in soaking up all the details from their page.  I needed to know where this game came from and what it was about and what it included and how it was played and who was making it and all of that fun 'due diligence'.  Because when my attention is grabbed, I begin to nerd out...

  It isn't new.  This game is based on a card game that was released years back.  Collection of it and both expansions are available on eBay and Amazon and one my competitive buddies was really into it (and Spartacus) for a while.  But I'm not totally geeked about card games, despite my extensive collection and a rather unbeatable Fire deck in Pokemon.  So this new version had to be different from that for me to get really excited.  And it was.  This Kickstarter included so many beautiful models that I started drooling.  My wife continued to eagerly point out each of the models she really liked and all I could do was drool...

  I fell into it.  We could afford it (which is rare, especially in the GW world) and the models were the right scale to use in D&D (a huge requirement for me).  Before long, she's whipping out the credit card and ordering me to order it.  I didn't put up a fight.  I didn't even really know what was going on as I was still in complete shock that there was this game for which I was easily drawn.  My overly critical and sometimes irrationally stubborn gamer nerd self was almost instantly seduced because of great models and a bubbling-over wife.  We pledged.  It arrived. 

  We haven't yet received everything as we're still missing the so-called 'stretch goals' (that's additional items promoted to entice more people to pledge money to the project) and RPG for it (that's right, this company even produced a role-playing game for it!), but we got the core game and all of the expansions.  Below are the pictures and I can say that it was worth the wait.  The wife's selling pitch was spot on and the year's wait wasn't too long.  In fact, this game seems to be so amazing that supporters who haven't received theirs yet are throwing fits online!  And it's worth that too.  I don't know if the game will ever be available for retail, but I'm happy to have it for sure.  I'm very proud of the wife. 

  We received all that goodness on Wednesday and we've already played six games of it.  The rules are very simple (despite the way some of the backers get confused about some rules) and there are scenarios by the loads to be able to battle.  The boards are of fantastic quality and even the cardboard terrain adds that 'environment' to the game that keeps me in the miniatures world.  I should note that I do also have the plastic tree and column terrain set, but we're focused on the core set right now and the cardboard stuff doesn't suck (I actually think the cardboard trees will work better for my D&D games that the normal models!).

  My wife isn't usually willing to play my games because they're "too complicated".  She'll dabble with role-playing, but she's more crafty than gamer.  But she learned the rules for this game easily and enjoys playing it so much that we've conquered that beginner scenario and already started drafting.  Let's talk about that...

  So my nerd runs so deep that my Lone Star love of football even sees me competing in Fantasy Football every year.  That's right, I can even make the most 'jock' thing an obsession if it's turned into a game, and anything stolen from that is aces to me.  So to have a game where you 'draft' your forces of miniatures to battle just possessed me.  I mean, WOW!  So if I want to play with a different force or prevent my opponent from getting that powerful one, I use my turn to make that selection.  With the risk, of course, of not getting my favorite pieces because my opponent did the same to me!  With all the other coolness of simple rules and beautiful, tangible elements, now the game includes one of my favorite aspects of another obsession?  Oh yes. 

  To get all this (and the rest that's still coming), we spent much monies.  There was definitely some budgetary considerations that were made.  Especially considering that GW was releasing 40k 8th this year and some of my other hobbies were definitely demanding attention as well.  Normally , I'm the one that's spending way too much on these nerdy games, but this time it wasn't me.  It wasn't one of my games that soaked up those dollars this time.  For once I can say that it was the wife.  She was the cause of this expenditure.  She did it!  And I'm so proud...