Here in Nottinghamshire at the moment we are trapped in an ever-tightening set of isolation regulations worthy of the Sheriff himself, so play-testing has been a solo affair, and rather haphazard at that. I don’t trust that sort of test, so, if you are so inclined, I invite you to send your ideas on the following to the Paperboys page on Facebook. There is no limit to the number of evolving ‘editions’ that can replace each other on the website, so don’t hold back.
I’m always struck by how valiantly the Good Guys fight in fantasies.
Maybe it’s the absolute desperate nature of the conflict, or perhaps they’re heroes to a man. Whatever it is, there’s not much room for complicated morale decisions. They’re there to fight, and that’s what they do, so this is a fighting game.
However, some horrors are too much even for Heroes, and the approach of a scythe-swinging giant, or even worse critters from my twisted imagination, will trigger a very strong fight-or-flight response. We’ll come to that.
This little set is driven along by Wally Simon’s three-card trick, which keeps a bit of tension in who does what and when, particularly during a fight, and the combat system is similar to Andy Callan’s starter game in ‘The Wars of the Roses’ which uses, without knowing it, a version of the ‘king dice’ system. Fighting is stand versus stand. A stand throws a number of dice, always looking for a 5 or 6. It’s very simple, so I like it.
Stand versus stand also means you can play a skirmish game or a ‘big unit’ game using the same factors etc. Indeed, one type of game can turn into the other, without too much complication, I hope, although they are played a bit differently with the skirmish ‘Wild Fight’ being very simple indeed.
You can play this with two or more players, one being the Mutants, but there’s a solo section at the end to give you an idea of how to have the Mutants running themselves, so you can play it in isolation.
All the information, almost, is on the CHART. Keep that by you until you remember it. There are special rules for White- Ant fighting juice, Bison charges and Giants, naturally. There’s also room to add to it if you keep forgetting something.
So let’s go!
Once downloaded, the rules can be printed as often as you like, there are 8 pages.