Those Black Box nutters are at it again...
One of my favourite games for the last few years, not least because it’s
fun to play, but also because the team behind it keeps on coming up with new
things for me to throw money at, and there’s a new release that’s just come out
following their latest Kickstarter.
Lords of War: Orcs and Dwarves Magic and Monsters Expansion
It can be played by itself, but honestly, it’s not a game in and of
itself. To make the best of it you do need a copy of the original Orcs and
Dwarves set to play it, although if you’re an advanced player, the cards within
can be easily integrated into a multi-race battle force, but more on that
later.
This expansion focuses on the unit types that were introduced in the
most recent army packs and goes back to the original army to bring them up to
speed. It also introduces the concept of
berserkers, magic, and monstrous units to give the game the additional level of
strategy that takes it from an very good game into something that can only be
described as excellent.
The first thing to note is the production values, which, as always, are
spectacular. Good stock card with custom
boxes, excellent artwork in full colour and well presented rules. Normally you get two decks of cards to make
the armies, but with this box, you get thirty six new units, eighteen of each
side, and four push out counter cards to represent the new rules and effects
that can now be played within the game.
The second thing is the level of power involved in the new units, there’s
a sub note in the rules that playing with these card by themselves won’t give
you a balanced game, and in this matter...?
I have to agree...
When you look at cards from previous expansions, you can see that most
cards have a reasonable toughness but not good hitting power, or vice
versa. In this, there’s quite a few that
have both very high toughness and also hit hard in a lot of directions. Previous ranged combat units usually hit up
to nine squares with a power of up to four (In the case of heroes, five), and now compare that to the Dwarf Organ Gun,
which hits thirteen squares with power four, and if you manage to set one up on
either side of the board, will drop almost anything the second it lands on the
board. On the one hand, you’d expect an
Organ gun to do this sort of damage, the problem that I have is that as with
all things that do this level of destruction, you have to balance them against
the enemies out there, and while I haven’t had chance to use this set yet, I do
fear that the power of the new units may prove far more than the existing
armies can handle.
Which leads me to the only concern I have...
Years ago I used to play warhammer 40k, and it was reasonably balanced
on all sides, so much so that most sides could get a reasonably fight out of
the game, but then new army lists started coming out, and with each new army,
you suddenly couldn’t play anything else because they’d made the new army far
to hard...
I’ll be playing these new armies against others, and I’ll report back
when I do, because the new units are lovely, they’re beautifully drawn out and
you can see the idea behind the ways each of them can move or how they fight,
it’s all such a wonderful design, and as long as you can still play any army
against any army, there’ll be a win for this man there.
I’m sure that the team over at Black Box will be dreaming up something
new even as I write, and to them I have to say only this...
Slow down you bleeders, I’m not made of money J
