Wintermute  23/04/2006 - 20:49   
The fear you always have with a new game from a reputable gaming company is how much have they messed with the old rules too make it fit the new game (any one remember WH40K when it first was released?). However, what surprised me about the new HORDES system from Privateer Press was what they had kept the same.

The game system is the same as WARMACHINE, the same rules to hit and the same rules to wound; even the magic system is practically the same. They still manage to convey a sense of a different game, in that half a dozen or so small changes have altered the entire game dynamics.



So what have they changed you cry!
1) Warcaster/Warlock - Not a huge leap of the imagination no longer are you a mage in charge of a hulking great lump of iron, now you control a pack of slavering beasts of war, these creatures are vicious, dangerous and most importantly free thinking.

2) Focus/Fury - In Warmachine your Warcaster has a self replenishing pool of magic points in the shape of Focus however in Hordes the Warlock’s magic has to be reclaimed from your war beasts in the form of Leaching Fury the drawback being the more your beast does the more Fury it builds up. If you don’t leach enough Fury from the beast, you run the risk of it frenzying all over the battlefield hitting friend or foe alike.

3) Animus - All war beasts have a special ability that can now be activated these are always favourable but lead to an increase in Fury (and you can only leach so much Fury in a turn!).



4) The Stat Card - Looks new and funky with a spiral damage chart but really is the same one we know and love!
Still with me good!

Enough with the prattle over the rule changes, how does the game play? For this we enrolled the services of my non-war-gaming, long-suffering wife in attempt to teach the game itself in less than a night. So with beers in hand (one in each because its going to be a long night) lets begin. Over to my wife… (oh help).

I choose the big slavering beastie aka The Legion of Everblight’s Carnivian – because I can (wife’s prerogative), being given three cards with lots of numbers on them. In return hubby gets the Skorne (with a giant elephant – doesn’t sound so hard does it). And to my delight I get dice, lots of dice. In five minutes I have decided the husband is talking in tongues and think its best just to play and not have him explain things.



Turn one
Me (Legion of Everblight)
1. Maintenance – spell removal – cant do, ain't got any in play "doh!" that was easy.
2. Control – leaching fury back from beastie, it ain’t done owt yet so there’s none there to nick.
3. Spend fury to upkeep spells – we ain’t got to spells yet, so can ignore that.
4. Check threshold – I get to roll dice and my beastie doesn’t kick my own butt, yeah.
5. Activation – I advance my Carnivian and warlock up the hill towards the pathetic troop of my husband.

Him (Skorne)
He makes his threshold, spending a fury point on his Titan, he makes it run towards my Carnivian, sneaking his warlock along behind.

Turn two
Legion of Everblight
Threshold easily got I’m still in control of the slobbering beast which will hopefully taste flesh this turn. Forcing my monster to charge at the cost of one fury, the Carnivian lunges forward – and on reaching the titan attempts to bite its face off using Toothy Maw – shame about the dodgy dice roll but on spending an addition fury get to add an extra dice on top – my dice are cursed and the Carnivian bites into fresh air.

Moving my warlock forward and to the side in the hope of getting a clean line of sight of his warlock, but unable to aim because of the movement, I get two shots the first one misses (2d6 + RAT) – 11 fail, since I get to fire twice I decide to spend a fury to increase my second attack by an extra d6 – total 20 hit with Hellslinger –2d6 + POW (23) – the damage caused for ever point I have over his armour he takes a point of damage, so now his Warlock is a bloody mess losing 10 health (out of 15). Claps hands in delight and glee

Skorne
Deciding not to leech fury back to his warlock, and passing his threshold check. He spends a fury to give his Titan an extra attack – using the Titans War Gauntlets he slashes out with 11pts equal to my carnivians defence he belts me for 2d6 + POW + STR = 23 inflicting 5pts damage to my carnivians mind (a d6 is rolled to assign where damage goes) the Carnivian is left with 3 brain cells, second attack with the other claw 16 attack another hit, 23 attack = 7 damage assigned to body, leaving 4. After two successful hits with his War Gauntlets he get a special attack of a head butt of 9 pts but misses with the Glaswegian kiss….I know someone who ain’t getting kissed tonight though. LOL. In a desperate attempt to save his warlock he moves closer to mine???

Turn three
Legion of Everblight
Leeching both fury pts back from the Carnivian, and making threshold. In an attempt to kill his warlock, spend a fury to boost my bow attack 20 hit, 19 attack = 6 damage …yeah I killed his warlock and dance on its bloodied corpse as I again whoop his behind in a new game he thinks I’ll never win. (One day he will learn – it’s a wife’s prerogative to embarrass her husband any way possible.)

Thoughts on the game
OK, thank you wife. My first ever game of Hordes and I lose to a novice in less than three turns, but despite that I enjoy myself (and the wife must be enjoying herself because she hasn’t tried to kill me yet). The game plays as smoothly as Warmachine much to my delight (now if I can just find some war pack that doesn’t get shot to pieces).

The wife’s point of view
It was a short, quick moving little game without to many tedious rules (like certain war games – which last hours on end), which could easily be played before having to go back to non-existent chores, and possibly an easy game for husband to teach the sprog who has a limited attention span (the sprog... not the husband).

The figures
These are up to the usual quality of Privateer Press and even though on first opening the boxes, the amount of parts looked intimidating, I managed to build the Carnivian in an afternoon, with a minimal amount of pinning and green stuff (always a bonus for me), The Skorn Titan may take a little longer as it had a few gaps which needed filling but otherwise a very nicely detailed set of figures and at £30 a war pack seem very good value for money (the Carnivian is the biggest figure in my whole Privateer Press collection… it’s huge!)

I’d like to thank both Nick and Wintermute of Warseer of reviewing this new game, and to all the staff at Privateer for being so obliging in sending out the sample of this game.

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