When Fantasy Flight Games decides to give a game their big box o’plastic stuff treatment, they don’t screw around. The brand-new remake of “Horus Heresy” just landed here in the Swamp (with a hefty ‘thunk’), and I’ll say right off the top that this is the biggest pile of plastic bits and cardboard chunks in one box that I’ve seen since… well, since Fantasy Flight published Tide of Iron a few years ago.

Sometimes, e-commerce is a wonderful thing to behold. Thanks to the folks at Coolstuff Inc., my pre-order of the game somehow managed to arrive on the same day as the ‘official’ product launch by FFG. I don’t think I’ve ever had that happen before. Impressive commercial coordination.

So. Here it is. A large box packed with gaming good and evil from the 31st milennia. For those of you keeping score at home, the box is indeed the same size as a Tide of Iron box.

Big box o' stuff.

Newsflash: There are NO dice in the box. That’s primarily because the game doesn’t use dice. Combat is resolved using an interesting little card-driven mechanism (which I’ll discuss more in a later post). The cards, though, are very nice.

Upon de-boxing the beast, the first thing that I noticed is that the generously-sized, mounted playing board has holes in it. BIG holes in some places.  The idea here is that some of the larger plastic bits — which represent various fortifications, urban areas and factory complexes — go down on the table first, and then the board slips over them so you get a playing surface with something of a 3-D leitmotif.

There are holes in my damn game board!

Of course, what I ended up doing was plopping the board down onto the table and then slipping the plastic bits underneath and running them around under there until they found the right hole. Like I’m coordinated enough to place the bits down on the table exactly where they’re supposed to go? Pfft. Besides, I suspect a fairly gentle placement technique will extend the longevity of the terrain pieces — they’re made of a fairly light-weight vaccuum-formed plastic. Nice paint jobs, though.

Now if you’ve followed along with my Ansel Adams-class game photography over the years, you’ll have noticed by now that I typically shove my game maps / boards/ whatevers underneath plexiglass sheets in order to keep them clean and flat. I even wedged the mounted board for Incursion under plexi.

Obviously, that’s not happening this time – so I’ll have to be extra careful not to sneeze around the gaming surface. I’ll also have to keep the nearby window closed at night so I don’t end up with a future-Terra battlefield that’s covered in an inch and a half of yellowy-green pine pollen. 

An Imperial Titan Legion game piece on the board.

Next? Plastic bits. “Fahsands of ‘em, sah!” Nothing revolutionary going on with the game pieces; in fact, in a way, they’re a little boring. The Chaos player gets black unit bases and four colors of figures — each color matching one of the four Chaos powers. On the other hand, the Imperial player gets gray. Just gray. Gray everything. Gray bases. Gray figures. Gray. The units representing Space Marine Legions get a little splash of color with a ‘legion designator’ that snaps between the figure and the base, but that’s about it.

In Horus Heresy, the bases are more than just weighty chunks that hold the figures from tipping over. Each base has one or more spikey-projection-y-thingies on the front of it that indicate the combat value of the unit. The base also has a holder of sorts mounted on the back where a damage marker can be placed. A single figure (or a twin-mounted figure) snaps onto the base.

The card decks are sturdy quality and well-printed. They come in a couple of different sizes. The order decks (each player has his own) and the bombardment deck are smaller, half-size cards. The event deck and each player’s combat deck are full-sized cards.

The major dramatis personae (“heroes”) are represented by nicely illustrated cardboard stand-ups. These are the seven “primarchs” (leaders of the Space Marine Legions) plus Warmaster Horus, the Fabricator-General of Terra and the Emperor himself.

The lavishly-illustrated rulebook runs to 44 pages. The Scenario Guide runs to 20 pages, half of which is devoted to a narrative of the Siege of Terra.

This is a BIG package, folks. More details over the next few days as I have time to sort through it all.

One of the trends in game design that I appreciate is the movement toward trying to pump up game play by slimming down the rulebook.

There have always been ‘simple’ wargames around, but many of those were considered ‘introductory’ level or were just downright rudimentary. What I’m getting at here are designs that feature fairly deep game play, yet still manage to bring their rules in at somewhere between 8 to 16 pages.

Tactical games, in particular, for years trended toward fairly hefty rules presentations. I suppose the original PanzerBlitz rules folder wasn’t all that heavy-duty – but Avalon Hill soon made up for that with games like Tobruk and Squad Leader. Platoon-level games probably hit their greatest rules weight with titles like SPI’s Mech War 2 and GDW’s Assault series.

Ah, the good ol’ days of ‘process’ design. I’m not saying that it makes for bad games, but as my available gaming time has declined over the years I have to say that I’ve developed an affinity for shorter rulebooks.

In the Trenches: The Lost Generation hits a sweet spot for the moderate complexity that I enjoy. The rulebook clocks in at 28 pages, but it’s a very ‘breezy’ layout. I’m not a word-counter, but I’d say in length it compares favorably to the 16-page rulebook of a game like PanzerGrenadier — and may even be lighter than that.

Everything is pretty straightforward without a lot of clutter. There’s a bit of rules weight associated with the game’s treatment of artillery, but that’s not unusual for a game set during the Great War.

In the course of a game turn, players basically do their thing through alternating series of activations. To establish who acts first – and the number of ‘orders’ available – the players dice-off with 2d6. High-roller acts first, with the difference between the rolls becoming the number of orders available. The “initiative” player uses that many orders first, followed by his opponent – who receives the same number of orders. Orders can be used either to activate platoons individually (not very effcient) or to activate company-sized formations of 2-4 platoons.

Most of the combat units in the game can ‘act’ twice in a game turn. After the first action, they’re marked with an “Engaged” marker. After the second action they’re marked “Spent”. Machinegun sections firing opportunity fire are only marked “Spent” if they roll doubles  – so defending MGs usually get to fire multiple times in a turn.

One thing I’ll note here is that the whole Engaged-Spent cycle does turn the game into a bit of a Marker Farm. Pretty much every unit on the map is destined to receive at least one marker in the course of a typical game turn. It’s difficult to avoid the use of markers, especially in a tactical game — although when a ‘status’ of some sort is going to touch everything on the map at some point in a turn, the more creative the solution, the better.

Just a quick note in a ‘house rules’ direction: When I began assembly of my counters for the game, the Engaged/Spent markers went first as my experimental models. In any game that requires an ubiquitous markers of some sort – Moved/Fired or Engaged/Spent – I typically use a couple of my bags full of cleverly color-coded tile spacers. I can plop one of them on top of a counter to indicate status and still see ‘through’ the marker to view the game piece beneath it.

Alternatively, since there are no facing rules in this game players can just keep track of the basic Engaged/Spent state of each unit by rotating it. Of course, this only works with players who are not “counter slobs” — you know, the guys who can barely keep counters near the correct hexagon and have pieces skewed in helter-skelter directions, sometimes within the same stack. Dammit! I hate that. Buy some tweezers or something.

But I digress.

The game system certainly focuses on ‘play’, rather than on rules lookups, math fiddling and chart-hopping. I truly appreciate that it flows quickly from action to action. In addition to allowing scenarios to be played to completion in a single sitting, the pace of play also helps players (even noobs) keep a running game narrative going without massive pauses or lengthy debates.

A few of the scenarios have some special rules fiddliness – typically something to do with initial prep fires or massive bombardments – but none of it’s too bothersome. I’ve only got a couple of games under my belt, but so far I’ve found it fairly entertaining.