GamersCircle

Overview -
Mutant Chronicles by Fantasy Flight Games is a collectible miniatures game pitting humans versus demons in the far future. The starter set comes with everything two people need to get started, figures, unit reference cards, action cards, map, counters and dice.

As a collectible miniatures game each player provides a warband composed of 3 units, 3 Order Tokens, and 3 Command Cards. Each are ordered Bronze, Silver, and Gold. A warband must have three items of each color, though the player is free to choose which combination of components they like as long as there are three of each color spread among the components.

The pre-painted figures represent three human factions and one demon faction, though expansions promise more factions. Boosters are not random: they consist of three figures from a faction. And you can see the figures in the box so you’re not buying them blind. The game comes with the unit reference cards for all the figures out so far so you’ll know what figures you’ll want to collect for your warband. If you’re cheap you can just substitute another figure and you’re set.

The map is a two-sided hex map. There are obstacles, walls, and special hexes that slow/stop movement.

Learning the Game -
My initial thoughts on seeing the map with all its colored hexes was "wow, this looks complicated." If you ever played any kind of wargame then this is nowhere near as complicated as most wargames. As a matter of fact, the colors are the most complicated part of the game with remembering if they block line of sight or not. The rest of the game is simply movement, combat and strategy.

Each takes turns. A turn consists of placing up to two command tokens. A command token allows a unit to perform 1-3 actions based on the token’s color: bronze 1 action, silver 2, gold 3. A unit may move, attack, guard, or use a special ability with one action.

Combat is a matter of rolling colored dice to see if you have the accuracy to hit then counting up the damage. Accuracy equates to range, so you’ll not know if you can hit somebody, even if they’re standing right next to you until you roll the dice. If you have the accuracy to hit somebody, then you add up the damage markers and subtract them from the unit’s hit points. The dice are yellow, blue, green and red and represent differing levels of prowess. For example, green dice have the longest range and red dice the most damage.

It didn’t take long to get the hang of the combat system. Like I said, it’s not as complicated as I first thought.

The Components –
The figures are pretty nifty looking. The cards are all the same size which makes for easy storage. The dice aren’t your average six-siders so don’t lose them.

Playing the Game –
I can see this game taking a back-seat to the WarCraft craze. When you’re wanting to change things up this game could take up some of your time. I think the warband construction rules are fairly nifty in that you can really customize your warband with lesser cards and great (gold color) figures, or mid-line figures that get 3 actions a turn (gold command tokens).

Overall -
The game plays pretty fast. It took us about a half hour to play the first game, and about the same to read through the rules and get set up.

Good -
There is a bit of versatility provided by the inclusion of all the Unit Reference cards so you can play with any unit you like without having to buy the boosters if you don’t want. The rules are relatively simple, despite my first impression of the map.

Bad -
Despite the fact that the rules really aren’t all that complicated the initial pre-constructed game has an issue that blows my mind: some of the cards chosen for the demon army don’t work! What I mean is that it’s recommended each side take certain command cards.

To use a command card a unit has to have a certain rating, shown on the unit card as command icons. If you’ve got 2 command icons on the unit card you can use a card with 1 or 2 command icons. If the card has 3 command icons, a 2 command icon unit cannot use it. So, the demon side has two units with one command icon and one with two. One of the cards has three icons which makes it unplayable by the intro army.

There are other cards that could have been recommended that have the appropriate icons. This mystified me and took me a while to figure out how to use command cards since I couldn’t conceive of a mistake like this being put into the walk-through example.

Reviewed by: Rich Evans

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