Introducing Death in the Mirrored City

  In case you haven't heard, Nagash is a bit upset and reminding people not to mess with his command of death.  From taking a precocious city and trapping it between the realms of Shadow and Light to sending his undead minions to eternally torment those who try to steal its power from him, the Lord of Death is definitely one to serve up vengeance.  And yes, the dish is very cold...


  This is the board game released by GW not too long ago called Shadespire.  It's a wonderfully tactical game based around very small warbands fighting across the ruins of the once great city, also called the Mirrored City, and plays out very similar to a gladiator arena.  It's not just about bashing your opponents to a pulp but also claiming ground and defeating your enemies using ploys and maneuvering to outsmart and beat them.

  For those that like board games, this is a fun game that takes up less than an hour between two players and only needs as much space as a coffee table (but definitely more than an end-table).  For those that like strategy games, this one fits that bill too.  In fact, it's rather impressive  how much of the game is based on strategy and tactics and less on the statline of your warriors.  And for those that like miniatures, well, this is a GW game, so the miniatures are fantastic as always.  It has it all.

  In fact, the game is so good that my wife and kids actually love it.  It's short, it's not complicated (there's no army books or extensive rules that require a literature degree to translate), and it's actually pretty balanced off the learning curve.  It's so balanced, in fact, that I've had discussions about which warband was the best and there's no consensus between our various areas (remember, I am connected OUTSIDE my gaming area and all across the nation- thanks career!).  I've heard that Chaos has the best (they're my favorite), Undead have the best (especially in the southeast, apparently), and even that Orruks are the best from the bashers I talk to.  Remember, though, even the cheesiest force means nothing without the practice and skill to use it, especially in a game as tactical as this one.

  I definitely drive that point home because my wife, being the lover of the Undead that she is (I even bought her the Legions of Nagash book for AoS as a Valentine's Day gift!), sometimes forgets this and laments the weakness of her skeletons.  You see, we played a couple of games the other night and my Stormcast demolished her.

   The first game saw her winning the roll-off to set up the battlefield and she chose to do a 'bottleneck' setup.  With her objectives centered on capturing objectives, she made it more difficult to get around my hoplite-like Stormcast.  Just like the Pass at Thermopylae, I could clog her up and just gain glory points (objective points) by smashing her to dust at will while she struggled to move anywhere.  The game ended 10-4 with her feeling pretty sad.  

  I took a little time and explained how she should have played.  Remembering that this game is very strategic, I reminded her that it starts with the board setup and continues into placing the objectives.  The bottleneck is a strategy that I would use against her numerical superiority, and placing the objectives in my deployment zone would make it harder for her to capture them.  She made both of those mistakes and was already in an uphill battle before she ever deployed anything.  

  Now, mind you, she'd already learned this stuff a couple months back when I took control of the Undead and completely annihilated my son's Ironjaws.  Using the proper strategy and then playing the right Power Cards and moving the right way makes all the difference.  I showed her the tactics to using the warband after explaining the strategy behind the board setup.  But time passed and she forgot.  That first game was just a good reminder, and we then took the opportunity to play a second game (again, the games are very short, only being 3 turns and 12 total activations!).  

  Unfortunately for her, I won the roll-off for the second game and set up the board in the same way.  After all, it's an advantage to lesser numbers to 'bottleneck' their opponent.  But she was much better prepared this time and actually put up a good fight, despite the struggle presented by the board and setup.   Most importantly, she realized that she needed to quit sending Petitioners (the crappy troop skellies) to fight me because I would always kill them and get the glory points for it (knocking out an opponent's warriors also gets you objective points in this game) and instead use them to chase objectives.  Fight me with the good warriors (who still die, but they cause damage on the way out) and suddenly my Stormcast weren't unstoppable.  By the time the fog cleared, I still won but only by a score 15-10.   If she remembers what I reminded her and what she did in this game, I don't think I'll win the next one...

  In a twisted sense of irony, the Lord of Death won't let us die in the Mirrored City and escape from an eternity of combat and death, meaning that victory or not, the fight will happen again (and again, and again, and again, and... you get the point).  Stormcast killing skeletons means nothing- THEY'RE ALREADY DEAD!  But skeletons killing Stormcast (or Orruks, or Marauders, or soon be Skaven and Berserkers) means that they suffer only to be brought back to life and have to do it all over again!  The Lord of Death doesn't gain victory through defeating his opponents, and definitely isn't defeated when his opponents destroy his forces.  Nagash won't let this game die.  So I guess I'll just have to take joy in giving his Undead forces the same respect they give me- a death followed by yet another death.  I just hope the wife doesn't figure out how to avoid that punishment while giving it back...

  Until next game!!!

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!!!