After a number of weeks here on the Big Table, I think it’s about time to wrap up my thoughts on the subject of the new Horus Heresy. It’s not quite time for the game to go back in the box, but at least it’s time for other games to start to get a little bit of face time on my cyberpages here.

All things considered, I’ve found the game very enjoyable. No game is perfect — as I’ve mentioned before — and Horus Heresy has a few pesky flaws, but really not that much to right home about.

In addition to the few items I’ve pointed out in previous posts, I’ve discovered one other minor aggravation. For me, at least, it’s something that does slow down game play a little bit. I’m wondering, would it have killed the presentation of the game if Fantasy Flight had managed to get a NAME somewhere on those stand-up figures of the ten Heroes?

Angron is a bit unhappy after routing off the spaceport.

Perhaps at full size it’s easy to tell all of the heroes apart. But at ‘normal gaming distance’ under ‘normal gaming light’, sometimes I find it a real PITA to figure out just who might be who. Yes, yes: I know there’s a little color-coded section beneath the portrait that matches the color scheme on the little “legion indicators” — but that’s starting to get into squinty-eyed territory for me when I might be 5 or 6 feet away from the little 2-inch images.

It’s a problem that likely evaporates after you’ve played the game 10 times (I’m not that far along), but in the meantime it IS a wrestling match for me. Heroes are generally always accompanied by units (such as Space Marines) that should help identify them, but sometimes I think graphic designers for games need to take a hint from their compadres in web design and follow the simple mantra of usability: Don’t make me think.

At any rate, again, not a gut-buster by any stretch of the imagination. Just another little weed that needs to get whacked out of the garden.

So. I suppose a few hard-won observations about game play would be in order at this point.

When the game is setup for the first time and the players step back to take a look at their opponent’s stockpile, there are usually a few moments when the Imperial player may despair and the Chaos player may allow himself a little chuckle. There are a LOT of Chaos units in that stockpile. Not so much for the Imperial player.

Chaos has to land more guys than this.

But here’s the trick: Those units are all in the Chaos STOCKPILE. They are NOT on the game board. The challenge for the Chaos player is to get as much of that large force into the game as quickly as possible. The slower the buildup, the more chance an aggressive Imperial player has to defeat arriving forces in detail.

Here’s another common-sense tidbit: The earlier Chaos units land, the more actions they can take before the game is over. Yeah, I know that sounds rock simple stupid, but it’s a point that’s easy to overlook. All of those little circles on the Initiative Track can play mind-tricks. The game is deceptively short. There are only five Refresh phases in the game. That means units in the game will be able to activate a maximum of six times in the course of a game.

Most Chaos units will expend one of those activations just to get onto the map. So there is a built-in “delay” of sorts before they can join in all of the shootin’.  Chaos units that don’t land until after the first Refresh are even more limited — they will essentially miss a third of the game before they can do much of anything. Ouch.

The other day in my post about combat, I wrote a little bit about Rout. When a unit retreats out of combat, the area it retreats into is marked with a “Routed Activation” marker. Rout pretty much puts a unit out of the fight for two Refresh phases. Because of their overall numerical advantage, very often Chaos players may want to “fight to the death” when things swing against them in hopes of taking down a few Imperial units as they go.

For the Imperial player, the situation is nearly the exact opposite. Imperial forces don’t receive a lot of reinforcements as the game rolls on, so they can’t afford to get stuck into drawn out, bloody battles. They should rarely attack without a clear advantage in Total Combat Rank — primarily because they need to expend a good number of cards for their “shields” to soak off battle damage. Chaos can afford to burn a few combat steps in nearly every battle; the Imperial forces cannot.

As a caveat, I’ll note that games can run long — especially if either player has a tendency to over-analyze things. Large battles where each side may have 15-18 Combat Cards in hand might take 5 or 10 minutes to play out if somebody decides to engage in too much head-scratching. Ten minutes times lots of battles can add up pretty fast.

That said, I think both the card-based Orders mechanism and the card-based Combat resolution really serve to make Horus Heresy a very interesting and fresh ‘feeling’ wargame.

Plus, the little figures are pretty cool.

Be Sociable, Share!

•