Cry Havoc

GaGarfieldstar2,0

Better games out there. Too complicated area control game. Nice area control game. But I'm not sure if I like the randomness of the fighting. Everyone can play cards and move around the tokens. We played a 4 player game and it was very balanced. [c] Theme: ★★★☆☆ <!-- size 7]Ok --> Gameplay: ★★★★☆ <!-- size 7]Very good amount of choices --> Interaction: ★★★★★ <!-- size 7]Fighting for spots --> Artwork: ★★★★☆ <!-- size 7]Nice sci-fi --> Luck: ★★☆☆☆ <!-- size 7]What others play during a fight --> Strategy: ★★★☆☆ <!-- size 7]More or less obvious ones --> Components: ★★★★☆ <!-- size 7]Very nice minis --> Play duration: ★★★★☆ <!-- size 7]Very good --> Easy to teach: ★★★☆☆ <!-- size 7]Ok --> Rules quality: ★★★★★ <!-- size 7]Very good --> Setup time: ★★★☆☆ <!-- size 7]Ok --> No downtime: ★★★★☆ <!-- size 7]Plays quite fast --> Replay value: ★★★★★ <!-- size 7]Different factions, different strategies --> [/c]

EvEvanstar4,6

This is a perfectly fine dudes on the map game where players have small personal decks of cards they use to battle into areas that have point income tokens. Battles have a layer of interest, as players can assign their units into three different battle categories, that get resolved one at a time top to bottom. There's actually winning and getting points, then there's capture an opponent's guy, then there's kill the opponent's units. This also gets complicated by the further playing of action cards which can reverse the order of resolution, or move an extra guy into battle. I would say the game is competent in it's genre, but I would rather be playing Kemet or Nexus Ops in it's slot. The one big feather in this game's cap that maybe sets it apart from others in it's genre, is that I see this game working just fine with 3 players. When you play with 3, there are monsters that populate the board, not unlike the Ancients in Eclipse: New Dawn for the Galaxy. The way that you then handle 4 players is that the 4th player takes on the role of those monsters, and has slightly different scoring processes as a result of them being everywhere at the start of the game. Maybe the one thing that keeps this good game from being great is that it has the fairly typical trouble of each faction's asymmetry completely defining it's playstyle and also assigning them the job of keeping one other specific faction in check. The excitement of battles wears down quickly as well, as there are only two or three significant card effects that can influence the outcome, and your opportunity to play those cards is somewhat limited as you don't want to pass when you are willing, but once your pass you are out, regardless of what your opponent plays after you pass. ★ Art, Iconography and components functional ★ Clever or interesting mechanisms ★ Reasonably low downtime between turns with mildly AP players ★ Multiple plays stay interesting ★ Low or mitigatable luck elements ★☆☆☆☆ Raw enjoyment