New Warhammer 40K game from FFG

I like what I'm seeing so far but my continued enthusiasm hinges entirely on how the combat is handled. Because let's face it, the Starcraft combat may have been a well-designed implementation of the video game's asymmetry, but teaching and learning it is an unintuitive clusterfuck at worst, or an "acquired taste" at best.

Vasel talks about it in his preview. You roll dice and you get hits and morale. Highest morale wins after 3 rounds. After the dice are rolled you get play cards which as far as I can tell resemble the starcraft deck build thing and alter the dice results.

Gary Sax wrote: Vasel talks about it in his preview. You roll dice and you get hits and morale. Highest morale wins after 3 rounds. After the dice are rolled you get play cards which as far as I can tell resemble the starcraft deck build thing and alter the dice results.

Thanks. I probably could have handled just the deck-building aspect of Starcraft combat, but then they had to go and add that attacking/defending/support minigame on top of it, as well as presupposing an intimate knowledge of how different units match up with each other, and it was a step too far. This solution sounds streamlined while hopefully still complex enough to be interesting.

From his description, it did sound simpler than Starcraft's combat.

www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/05/12/forbidden-stars-review/

All aboard the hype train

Very excited for this game. But generally don't find my tastes aligning with Robert Florence so I'm not sure this review pushes me any farther in... still, always good signs to hear positive things from legit reviewers.

My interest is waning. After Runewars, that map looks so boring to me.

Sevej wrote: My interest is waning. After Runewars, that map looks so boring to me.

I know what you mean about the map... it looks way too mathy, like some kind of program made it. Runewars is great for that, the game looks exciting and you can sort of tell what's happening just from the board/map. Which looks organic on the table thanks to it's inability to conform to a conventionally recognizable geometric shape.

But I hold out high hopes for this anyway. I can handle a shit board with abstracted space movement in this kind of game. Runewars needs a cool map because it takes place on one planet, not across a galaxy.

The game pieces and other artwork on the cards do look great, but, I have to agree with the previous posters that the board is boring. It just doesn't have the glow of the Astronomican. They should have sacrificed more Psykers to make the ink.

I only read a couple of chapters of that novel-length review...disregarding Rab's GW/40k boner, it sounds alright. I might check it out if I can sell some things to finance. It still looks way too expensive for what it is though. I'm mostly interested in seeing how it reflects changes in the FFG design style from StarCraft to today, seven years on.

Personally I'm really digging the map. It has this high level abstraction where strategic points of interest for each star system are detailed. And it also has this Gothic Touch-Screen vibe where I feel like I could touch a star system and drill down to get more information as needed.

All signs point to this being the kind of game I'd really like. Now I've got to see if I can convince someone else in my group to actually drop the cash!

I see very few reason for this game to not utilize some equidistant system (unless the game is on corridor or room-to-room urban combat), such as hex or point-to-point movements. It's just when combined with Starcraft order system, they need a way to group several areas together and still keeping movements simple. Hence, the boring map tiles. Hey, if it works, it's fine by me

I'm mostly interested in seeing how it reflects changes in the FFG design style from StarCraft to today, seven years on.

.

I thought it was pretty plain for all too see. It should be a pretty simple but extravagant game. The usual production, upgrade, attack, with card usage to influence dice-based combat. Seeing the component, I see very little additional layers, which is good. Obviously other than cards and units difference, each side will has its own unique traits.

The twist that I really like is the inclusion of the space ship, enabling orbital bombardment/support and deployment/abstracted transport. The last time we had this kind of stuff was on the Dust board game.

What I don't see is how the game will make players go around (i.e. winning condition, turtling prevention, etc). And what are those dials?

I wish there were a 40k DoaM on a single planet, but with map of the planet's orbit. Moving your ships to bombard a certain part of the planet, transporting units, etc.

I'm encouraged by his response to a couple commenters in that not only do the factions play differently but each faction plays very differently depending on upgrade paths. That's the one very minor flaw with CitOW, in that there are some upgrades that are just obvious and others that you'd simply never take. If there truly are all good choices then that's a huge upside to this.

I could have lived without the defined border on the map tiles, but I'm not as deterred by the map as others seem to be. A little more warpspace/John Blanche-style artwork would have been appreciated, but it's not a dealkiller.

Sevej wrote:
I wish there were a 40k DoaM on a single planet, but with map of the planet's orbit. Moving your ships to bombard a certain part of the planet, transporting units, etc.

Isn't that kinda what Horus Heresy does though?