Dark Souls The Board Game - Unboxing

Yesterday I heard that people were receiving their Dark Souls TBG Kickstarter pledges, and wondered what had happened to mine. Checking out the Backerkit link and getting the tracking number, I went to Parcel Force's website to see they had apparently tried to deliver it on the 5th May, and had "informed the resident" that the parcel was held in the default PO Hub. Slightly frustrated by the fact I had received no such notification, and even more so because I am generally in my home office all day on a Friday on team calls...and my office is right next to the front door.

Anyway, I set off trying to find my parcel, to eventually track it down to my local Post Office, which is in the local shop about 100 feet away! So for 10 days the game had sat patiently a short distance away, with me unaware of its existence...a sorry state of affairs indeed! Nevertheless, I now had it in my possession, and went on to examine its contents....

The game itself is in a substantial, shrink-wrapped package which is pretty deep, and feels like a good quality, solid box. On opening this, you are greeted with...

This is pretty funny, and a really nice tie-in with the video game. Going beyond that, you start to see the contents underneath....

I'm pretty certain mine is a UK edition? Time to get this to the dining room table and have a closer look....

The main components of the game here are the cards (all contained in a plastic tray in a plastic bag, which stops them finding their way to all corners of the box - a nice logistic touch), two boxes of minis and dice, the thick card boards and components, and the rulebook.

First in the thick card pieces are the boards for the characters, complete with their specific token sets.

Next are the enemy health dials and more general token components.

The final items in this set are the thick cardboard game tiles, which are all double-sided (as are the tokens). All of these items are sturdy, with high-quality printed graphics - it doesn't feel like Steamforged have scrimped on production here at all.

The first set of minis is a stacked vacuum-formed plastic insert, also containing two bags of custom-made dice. Removing these and separating the mini trays, we can see the majority of the figures in the set:

These comprise the heroes (in brown - a nice touch to differentiate them from enemies for those who don't want to paint the minis), the "hollows" (the basic baddies), some larger figures and one of the bosses. Speaking of bosses....

The other box contains the six large boss figures, plus the dial assembly hubs and the markers for tracking health, character progression etc. The figures are protected by a clamshell vacuum-formed plastic outer inside the box, so you really feel Steamforged are serious about these figures. Taking the top plastic cover off, we can have a better look.

OK, so let's take a closer examination of the figures then, before we get too excited by these large plastic lumps! Going back to the heroes, here is the Herald:

You can see this is a nicely made mini, especially for a game component, though it's not quite as crisp as a miniature gaming figure - limitations of the material and casting process most likely (as the shield is very thick - yet the spear is appropriately thin). Anyway, here is the Assassin:

This is a pretty impressive mini, especially considering the medium - the sword is pretty good for this sort of PVC! I also really like the sense of movement in the hero figures, they're very cinematically posed. Next up is the Warrior:

The Warrior is probably my least favourite figure from the heroes, but that doesn't mean he's bad by any stretch of the imagination. His chain shirt I really like, it seems to have a sense of weight about it.

The final hero is the Knight, which I love - it's such a great pose!

Now, onto baddies! Here are the standard Hollows:

Plus the large Hollow;

Silver Knights (with swords and Greatbows firing javelin-sized bolts!);

And then these dudes...which are HUGE! They remind me of Alice through the Looking Glass and the playing-card soldiers:

Now most of my figures were well cast with little, if any, "droop" - the polearms above being excellent examples. Sadly, not all my figures were immune...

We'll have to see if this scimitar-like sword can be coaxed back into straightness or not with a hot water/cold water cycle, but it's not a huge deal.

Next up we have the bosses, starting with the chap who stays with the minions in this first box - Dragonslayer Ornstein:

Then we go through the big guys...this is the Winged Knight

The Gargoyle:

The Boreal Outrider Knight

Executioner Smough - also know as "The big hammer dude"!

The Dancer of the Boreal Valley

and my personal favourite, the Titanite Demon

So first impressions are good - very good. The components are nicely finished and have an air of quality about them, everything is carefully put together and the miniatures are extremely high quality for a board game, and good for a minis game. Looking forward to playing properly after our demo game at Salute, and also to getting some paint on those big beauties!

Mann's Model Moments is launching a Patreon account for The Hub Systems Podcast

Hello everyone!

I've always believed that content such as ours should be free to listeners and followers, and we've put funds into equipment, time into podcasts and effort into both. We want to continue that, and want to ensure that we're producing content you all enjoy. As such, we've decided to launch a Patreon account for people to contribute to what we're doing if they wish. This is completely voluntary, but it's a really easy way for us to ensure we always have relevant things to discuss, and for you to tell us what you want! Here is our "go-live" post;

https://www.patreon.com/posts/11236335

For those of you wantint to contribute, you can find our page on https://www.patreon.com/TheHubSystems or by going to Patreon and searching for "TheHubSystems" or via this link;

https://www.patreon.com/TheHubSystems

We really hope that people will contribute and guide us in the next phase of Mann's Model Moments, and The Hub Systems podcast. Thanks for reading, and see you soon!

Fanstorm Armada - Developing the Game

Spartan are working on FA v3.0 right now, and I could be wrong, but I'm not liking the sound of what I'm hearing in terms of rumours and rumblings. Derek Sinclair, the rules designer who's primarily worked on DW, Planetfall and latterly Halo, is getting in on FA. I can't say this gives me a rosy feel inside. Derek was not involved in the development of the v1 FA, nor v2.0. I don't know about v1.5, but that was a clusterf*ck of copy/paste errors from DW v2 which was written at the same time.

Planetfall for me was a catalogue of how NOT to develop a game, with it evolving faster than The Thing on steroids in front of your eyes. I believe in a living rulebook, but not one where what I buy is invalid by the time it hits the shelves, or by the time the ink has finished drying on the 48 pages of PDF downloads that came out with alarming regularity - to say nothing of the shocking lack of proof reading, leading to more errors and re-writes than most Hollywood C-list films. Halo was much better produced, but I subscribe that this is down to 343s involvement, and not so much Spartan's change of spots. I find HFB a bit bland and far too dominated by boarding and Spartans, but that's understandable because of the Halo franchise - it's still not what I want to see come into FA.

"OK Alex" I hear you say "So you don't like what's happening at SG. So what? Are you just going to sit on your behind and moan about it? You're so negative....blah de blah de blah..." (ok, maybe not that last bit, but I wanted to cover myself!)

Well, I haven't been idle in this regard. Myself and a set of designers from across the world (now named "TheoryMachine") have embarked upon the project of Fanstorm Armada, to continue where the FFG left off, and continue the development of FA in a direction that preserves what we love about the game, strengthens those elements and tones down the ones we don't. As we're not a company and aren't in this to make money, suggestions and alterations from the community are more than welcome, and everything we suggest will be published for free distribution. We don't want to infringe upon what SG is doing, and we're not going after any IP, we're just fans of the game making suggestions about how to make FA a better game.

In a prior post, I mentioned movement. This is one of the largest chunks of time in FA - understanding that FA is a game of strategic and tactical manoeuvring is one of the greatest understandings that any player can discover about the game, and as such it should be preserved in the greater part, but speeded up. I discussed how to do this before, and mentioned some templates. Here is a PDF of those that forum member Ryjak made;

FA Movement Templates PDF

That's great, but we all want better gaming aids, right? As I have a 3D printer, this was something I figured I could cook up, so 15 minutes on Tinkercad and I produced the STL file. Printed at 0.2mm with 15% infill took just under an hour, and here are the finished articles;

They could do with a bit of tweaking on the print settings, and I might cut the longer ones down to 3" as well, to make them easier to get into tight spots (which is one of the issues with the SG 45 degree template). Here they are in use - I've set up a common situation in FA - the knife fight. In this example, the Dindrenzi Dreadnought really doesn't want to be so close, but it's decided to go for it. 

It has a 2" Turn Limit, so we use the Turn Rate 3 template.

So you can see two advantages of this method here straight away - firstly, the template is narrow enough for you to get it into tight spaces - you'll see that in the other pictures too. Secondly, you get an immediate idea of what is possible - where the model is going to end up, which reduces moving and then "backing up", which is one of the big slow-downs in many games. This also has a secondary thought-process speed-up, since you're concentrating more on actions rather than logistics of movement.

So we've moved, and can nicely line up the two Ba'kash cruisers in our dual rail cannon sights. Now let's look at the Ba'kash move (assuming they survive!)

Here the Ba'kash cruiser turn (using the Turn Rate 2 marker) would cause problems with model placement, and not be good for a port broadside shot, so instead the model moves 1" forewards...

and we can see now that a turn will clear the model nicely, and set us up for a nice broadside of drive-by boarding assault...

One more inch of turn...

...and we're aligned.

With 4" moved, there's plenty left to cruise alongside, probably setting the scene for a rear-arc shot next turn!

I hope you can see that this is pretty liberating for FA in a couple of ways, yet preserves a VERY important part of the game, since movement is a central and critical part of Firestorm's feel. Given that Spartan Derek isn't even considering movement mechanics yet, I'll be adopting this movement system and then moving onto other areas first - after all, you don't build a house and THEN work on the foundations, do you?