The game I had was between the Warrior Nation and the Union army. We played with slightly cut down versions of the starter boxes, as some of the minis from the stores demo sets were still off getting painted. In the end we played with $400 of miniatures per side (they use $ as points in the game, the minis didn't cost that much!).
As a brief overview of the rules (from my 1 game), you make up your gang, and even though the trooper card has multiple wounds scores on one card (up to 5), they all act as individuals, not as a unit. Players then take turns activating up to 3 figs at a time (your choice, but you must activate 1). All rolls are d10, Rolling over the stat, with modifiers. Not rocket science. Each fig has a number of action points, which can be spent to move, fire, aim, charge (and a couple others which I didn't get round to using). The basic troopers are pretty dull by themselves, but the presence of the special characters (bosses and underbosses) who are named/limited characters really boost the abilities of the basic gangers (at least this is the case with the Union, not surprising as they are the army faction)
Overall, I found it to be a fast game, easy to pick up, and both players are always involved through rolling to save rather than damage rolls, that and the fact you only ever have to wait a max of three activations before you get to respond. there is also an interrupt action, but I won't say much on this as we didn't use it (seems to be better for snipers).
The minis are nearer 32mm in scale (close to Dystopian Legions I think), and are plastic. They seem to hold a little less detail than the DL metal sculpts, although I didn't hold them side by side to compare. I saw a similar effect on some of the other plastic minis I have seen come out of recent kickstarters, and it may be due to having to over use the molds to fill orders fast, so it could be that this improves with time. The minis also come with a guide on how to put them together, almost unknown in a minis game.
They are also supplied with unique bases. These bases are a little more than 30mm (they may be 32mm) and instead if having the recess in the centre like common 30mm bases, which is great for basing detail, they area actually raised in the centre. This means they make the individual minis more like centrepiece models.
One nice thing about the way the game is being marketed, if you go to the store on the WWE web site, you can get the stats for each mini, so you know exactly what they do and what they cost without having to buy anything first. I like that openness.
Here are some pics from my phone of the Union troops I put in the field:
...and the opponents, the Warrior Nation, quick piece of advice, don't get into melee with the Werewolf, it won't end well.
Overall, I really liked it for its speed of play, and interaction between the players at all times. I'm not completely sold on the softness of the plastic for the minis, and the price isn't bad for all that you get in the box, but I think I'll hold off to see how it takes off in the local store before buying into it, as there isn't one faction that I'm completely sold on yet stylistically.
WWX does look like a fun game. I like that the rules look simple and fast yet there seems to be a large amount of tactical depth in the activation flexibility, influence points, and character abilities.
ReplyDeleteI really do like the look of the henchmen models but the characters bug me and I really think the bikes and vehicles just look atrocious... At least from pictures. The characters annoy me because they all look much bigger than the other models and their arms and guns always seem so overemphasized that the proportions look off.
But I have been toying around with the idea of using my DL Federated States army to try out the WWX rules if my friends ever want to play the game.
What are your impressions and thoughts of the actual gameplay compared with Dystopian Legions though? Knowing that the DL rules could substantially change with the full rulebook in just a few weeks.
Yeah, I get what you mean on the minis. They're not drawing the cash from my wallet either yet (with one or two exceptions).
DeleteI don't think you can really compare DL and WWX directly, as they seem to scale differently. WWX is very much a skirmish game, and DL based at the platoon level. I think that was one place where DL weren't sure where they were aiming at the start, but seems to be one of the things they want to fix with 2ed.
One thing I can say is that games against the same opponent are twice as long with DL than the WWX game we had at the starter box level.
I know that when WWX was being released they were talking about games being between 30-40 henchmen with a couple of officers. That appealed to me although I know that the game still largely activates model by model so it is still more of a skirmish... But it'd be a platoon skirmish.
DeleteI also have to say that I think that my 100-150 point DL games take longer then my 250-300 point ones... There's just so many more killy models and the ability to take more costly ones like artillery can speed up the game IMO.
That said, I guess my question more is are you a bigger fan of larger scale skirmish games (as opposed to small skirmishes like Malifaux, Infinity, or Anima Tactics) or squad based platoon-company games like DL.
My main game for the longest time was Warmachine, which is on the larger end of the skirmish scale, so I think it fits in at the lower end of the WM battle size in numbers and speed, which I like.
ReplyDeleteI find DL to run much slower, even with the same number of figs on the table, but like you say, we'll have to wait till 2ed to see how that improves.
WWX is certainly a fast game, with room for depth, which we didn't really touch on in or demo.