Let's Play Armageddon Empires.

"In the year 2025 human civilization makes first contact with not one but two alien civilizations. The Machine Empire and the Xenopods have been enemies locked in a death struggle for over 10,000 years. As the battle for control of the solar system and the earth rages with unimaginable fury, neither group pays the insignificant natives of the planet much attention. Within a month of first contact, 99% of the human race is exterminated by thermonuclear fire, kinetic weapons strikes, genetically engineered plague and starvation. The survivors scurry like cockroaches to stay out of the aliens’ way. A little over 20 years later the fighting stops as suddenly as it started. A shift in the tide of battle moves the front to other star systems and all that remains on the devastated planet are scattered groups of human survivors and the abandoned remnants of the aliens’ fighting forces. They have been left to fend for themselves until the system can be reoccupied and the stranded units withdrawn. The earth smolders like an ash heap and the once blue green jewel of the solar system has been transformed into a brown scorched wasteland.

That was 300 years ago…" - Vic Davis, Annals of the Wasteland.

Today a small, isolated outpost of The Empire of Man finds itself caught between the leftovers of the hideous Xenos scum and the relentless, alien Machine. Our only chance of survival is the destruction of the headquarters of both alien hordes.


Welcome to my first-ever LP.

Partly due to the nature of the game, and partly due to my limited experience, interactivity will be sorely limited. Actually, this will be more AAR & game tutorial than LP, except I've only played a couple of rounds ahead and like I said, I'm still an AE n00b.

I'm going to go into a fair amount of detail, because I suspect most of you haven't played the game, and since it's basically a complicated computer-based board game, some explanation is required to make sense of what's going on. I'll try to limit myself to explaining game mechanics in the italicised bits so you can skip them, but consider yourselves warned.

If you want to play along, you can pick up the demo here. Give it a try, it's great fun.


These are the game settings I'll be using:

Max Card Points: 175
Max Tile Points: 5
Map Size: Normal
Resources: Uncommon
Specials: Uncommon
Opponent 1: The Xenopods
Opponent 2: The Machine Empire

Before the game starts, each player lays down his tiles & HQ. When they're done, the game generates the remaining board tiles.


Map Generation:

I lose the roll to place tiles and go 3rd.

This is a low-point, medium-sized game, so the AIs and I are limited to 5 points worth of tiles. That's the price of the obligatory Staging Area tile, so each of us only have that one tile to place, and our HQs on top of it.

I know my enemies are located somewhere on both sides of me, I'm fairly confident I can extend the supply range of my HQ early on (there's a couple of ways), and the victory condition of the game is the destruction of the enemy HQs.

That means that by placing my tile & HQ as close to the centre of the board as possible, I not only maximise my supply range right from the get-go, I'm also keeping my HQ just about as far away from both Xenos and Machines as possible.



The four little coloured circles with the number 1 in them, is the amount of Human, Materials, Energy and Technology resources (respectively) the tile generates each turn. Tiles without those icons don't generate resources, and just to complicate things, you need to build a resource collector to actually get the resources a tile produces.

The vertical rectangle indicates a facility and the horizontal rectangle indicates troops. In this case, the vertical rectangle is my HQ, an Imperial Fortress. As everything else in the game, it has some advantages and some disadvantages. The disadvantages are that it is fairly vulnerable to sabotage, and can't house more than 3 upgrades. The advantages are that it's the only Imperial HQ choice that comes equipped with anti-air and anti-missile defences. Each has posed a thread to my HQ exactly once before, but it cost me the game both times, so.. By the way, all HQs collect 1 of each resource type per turn (if there's any to be collected).

The horizontal rectangle is a bit misleading in this case. Normally it denotes one or more armies, but in cases of bases I control, it may just be the shortcut to an empty garrison (as it is here). Also, different factions use rectangles with different logos & shades.


Turn 1:

Checking my opening hand before I gamble any resources on the initiative roll, I see I have the following cards:

Imperial Recon
The Emperor's Own
MA-32 Grom
Industrial Complex
Vincent Mugde
Sigmund Gordon
Vladimir Kost



Not too bad, and it means I can gamble 1 Energy unit without screwing myself too bad, so that's what I do. Unfortunately I came 2nd on the initiative roll.

Imperial Recon cards are incredibly useful. They're not just cheap enough to play right away, they also have some nifty features and play an important role.

First of all, most cards have a reconnaissance range of 0, so they can only see the hex they're occupying. The Imperial Recon has a 'recce S5 R1' special ability. Recce means reconnaissance, S5 means it adds 5 dice to observation checks and R1 means it can see up to 1 hex beyond the one it occupies.

Secondly, the Imperial Recon has 'stealth S5', which means it is extremely good at hiding, and thus very survivable despite its thoroughly shitty stats.

Observation checks are made whenever cards trying to hide from each other, or when they're in recon range, but not in the same hex. Obviously players aren't shown the observation check, just the effect (or lack of it).

Generally, the observer gets 1 die to make an observation check, minus a number of dice equal to the range (in hexes), minus 0-2 for terrain. The army trying to hide gets 3 dice, minus 1 die for every 3 cards in the army.

If the hiding card has the 'Stealth' special ability, it both halves the dice of observers (rounding up), and adds a number of dice equal to the strenght of its stealth, to its dice pool when observation checks are made against it.

In my case, the Imperial Ranger usually gets 5 against 3 dice to spot aliens (3 against 3 if they're stealthy), and 8 against 1 dice when it's trying to hide from aliens. As always, the one who rolls more success dice wins the roll.

It's also worth mentioning that stealth'ed & otherwise hidden cards & armies don't exert control over the hex they occupy. One the one hand, it means you won't be bothered by anyone in the same hex as you, but on the other, it also means you're not defending anything (like fragile little resource collectors) in the hex.

Thirdly & finally, the Imperial Recon is very fast. Most hero and battle-type cards can move 2 hexes per turn. Most stealth & scout-type cards can move 3. The Imperial Recon can move 4 hexes per turn. Especially early on when there's valuables lying around the board free for the taking, speed is critical.

I pay 1 Action Point, 1 Human, 1 Material and 1 Technology (henceforth AP, H, M, & T) to play the Imperial Recon card, and attach it to the "1st Stealth Recon" army.



Anything not serving garrison duty in a base or facility of some kind, must be attached to an army. It costs 3AP to establish an army. Armies can hold up to 7 cards +1 hero card, and a hex can hold up to 7 armies. You don't need to use an army when you create it, but empty armies have no movement and are automatically destroyed if they meet an enemy.

Most actions an army can perform costs 1AP for each card in the army. Hero cards don't count.

I pay 1AP to engage the Imperial Recon card's stealth, and another 1AP to send it scouting.



Gray-blue army icons denote Independents. According to the manual, the Empire of Man has the best chance of finding allies in the wasteland. Admittedly I haven't played a whole lot of matches yet, but in my experience Independents tend to be Xenos. Case in point, the Independents I just spotted are a couple of Xenos called "Tentacle Beasts". With 4 attack dice and toxin damage, these things are surprisingly nasty. I'm guessing I won't be fighting them for a while.



Turn initiative is important. When there's three players, the one who goes first gets 12 Action points, number two gets 8 Action Points and whomever goes last gets 6 Action points.

If I had won the initiative roll as I hoped, I would have started this turn with 12AP. That would have been enough to create another army and draw a new card. Unfortunately I went second so I only have 2AP left now, just enough to do nothing at all. So that's the end of my first turn.


Turn 2

After another glance at my hand, I decide to gamble 1T (technology resource) on the initiative roll. I can't afford to play any cards this turn, and next turn I think the best card I can play is Vincent Mudge, a hero administrator.



Typical. But I guess this is as good a time as any to mention that dice in AE are six-sided, with 2 possible outcomes. Sides 1-3 equals failure, sides 4-6 success. The size of a dice pool is always between 1 and 10.

This turn I have to decide whether to draw a card or create another army, and send the 1st Stealth Recon army scouting further.

I have the Sigmund Gordon hero card on hand, so I decide to forego drawing a card and create an army for him instead. He's the best scout in my deck, as stealthy as they come, and can capture enemy heroes. Captured heroes gives an AP bonus each turn, so getting him out hunting early is usually a good idea.

The 1st Stealth Recon sniffs around South-West of my HQ and discover...



An Independent base. Specifically, it's a ruined human Mecha Design Lab, leftover from the war 300 years ago. Cool. Even better, it's a level 3 lab (highest level), so if I can buy or capture it, it'll be a great place to research various nifty upgrades.

Unfortunately I failed to spot any defenders, so either my luck is made of finely distilled fail, or there's an especially nasty kind of hero guarding it. But it's an Empire of Man facility and I'm playing Empire of Man, so whatever it is might not be hostile. I think I'll check it out next turn.

Anyway, that's it for my second turn.

Post Script:

Holy shit this is a lot more work than I thought. I really hope you lot enjoy it, otherwise I'm going to feel just a tiny bit retarded. Questions & comments are, of course, welcome.

Turn 3

This turn I can't afford to buy extra initiative dice. Assuming no unanticipated stuff happens, I'll buy an administrator this turn and save up my resources for a facility and a bounty hunter in turn 5 (or if I get paranoid, something to defend my currently wide-open HQ).

Rolls are made, I go 2nd with 8AP.

I immediately buy Vincent Mugde. This guy is a hero character and administrator. He's useless in a fight, but he extends my supply range by 2 hexes and increases the maximum size of my hand by 2 cards. Both are extremely useful, as you'll see shortly.



Wound Points are a different kind of hit points. Hero cards don't participate directly in combat, but they do get blown up, air-raided, assassinated, bounty-hunted & other fun shit. When any of those things happen, you and your opponent each roll a bunch of dice and see who scores highest. If you do, nothing bad happens. If your opponent wins, your hero suffer a number of wounds equal to the difference between your rolls.

Command Rate or CR is the number of cards the hero can command, without incurring penalties. Penalties affect attack, defence, and I think, resistance rolls. Exceding it is suicidal.

Fate points are the number of re-rolls your hero gets when he's involved in a dice roll. That includes dice rolls by troops he's commanding.

Resistance is the number of dice he's allowed to roll to negate points of nasty shit like neuro toxins & psychic powers. In other words, if Vincent Mudge here gets hits with an unconventional weapon, he's toast.

Movement is the number of hexes the card can move in a turn. Light-brown tiles costs 1 movement point, medium-brown (is that even English?) costs 2 points, and dark-brown tiles costs 3 points. Incidentally, tiles add movement cost minus 1 defence dice to defending units, so unlike most games, it frequently makes sense to retreat into difficult terrain in AE.

I pay 1AP to move my scout. Remember the Mecha Lab whose defenders the 1st Stealth Recon army couldn't find? Well.. It's an Empire of Man lab and I'm Empire of Man. On one hand, if I move into the hex, there's a chance something stationed there is hardcore enough to see through my stealth. But on the other, the fuckers might just join me, or at least be open to a bribe. Who dares wins, I say.



And indeed, say hello to Aska's Aces, my new high-powered allies. Aska herself has 3 wounds, a Command Rating of 6, 5 fate points, +4 to combat initiative, and subtracts 2 from the dice of anyone trying to capture or kill her. Lovely.

Better yet, she's commanding a Harbinger Mecha. This early in the game, that's almost a dooms day weapon. It absorbs 2HP damage when hit, Attack rolls that fail against it inflict the difference as wounds on its attacker, it has 8 attack dice, 7 defence dice and 5 resistance. It's a fucking monster.

They asked to join me. No demands or anything. First time that's happened to me, and I'm suddenly feeling pretty optimistic about winning this game.

Anyway, I pay 1AP to cloak the 1st Stealth Recon Army, and another 2AP (1 per card in the army) to send Aska's Aces scouting further West. I'll probably pull her back to guard my completely undefended HQ next turn.



That leaves me 3AP to draw a card. I get an Imperial Guard. Unlike 40K, in AE The Emperor's Own are the cannon fodder, while the Imperial Guard are the power armoured monsters. They're just about the ideal HQ defenders, but unfortunately they're also so fucking expensive I won't be able to afford them for another 10 turns or something. Fuck it, on to turn 4.


Turn 4

Still can't afford to buy initiative dice, so I roll and go 3rd. Fuck. Only 6AP

And then I realise my newly acquired Mecha Lab generates 1E and 1T per turn, so I could have bought 2 dice. Double-fuck.

Anyway, I pay 1AP to take the 1st Stealth Recon army all the way to the South-Western corner of the board, and guess what I just found?



The Slave Pits, a great spot for a base and guarded by an army of weaklings with just 2 attack dice. Remember Aska's Aces? The Harbinger ignores the first 2HP damage done to it, and that's all the damage these fuckers can do. Let the slaughter commence!



Army of The Overlord indeed.. Anyway, if you don't fancy having the battle screen explained, skip ahead now.

The white rectangle on the left has the info on The Overlord's army. He has a Command Rating of 6, and the army consists of 3 units and The Overlord himself (who is a hero and thus won't participate directly in the combat).

They aren't stealthy, but units can't fight while stealthed, so it makes no difference.

The movement range still refers to how many hexes they can move on the board, and has no influence on combat.

The experience rating, however, does matter in combat. The more experienced an army is, the more fate points (re-rolls) it gets.

Battle honours are.. Well, I don't really know. They seem to be a medal that breaks the UI when you play AE windowed, but that's all there seems to be to it. I'm not quite sure how you earn them either, but the last one I got was after taking down two enemy bases in a row without losses.

To the right of that, there's 4 rows of mostly empty squares. The two top rows are for the enemy, the lower two for you. From top to bottom, they're the enemy rear row, the enemy front row, your front row and your rear row.

The first square in the rear row is reserved for a hero card, and not counting heroes, there must always be more units in the front than rear row. Each unit has a reach stat, and that stat refers to these rows. A unit with a reach of 3 can attack any row, no matter where it is placed. A unit with a reach of 1 must be in the front row to attack, and can only attack the enemy's front row.



That's how dice rolls looks. The blue dice (both misses) are an enemy attacking me. The brown dice are me defending. Usually nothing bad happens if an attack fails, but the Harbinger Monster Mecha of Death has the 'counter attack' special ability. It means that if an attack against it fails, then the Harbinger inflicts a number ow wounds on its attacker equal to the difference between their successful dice. In the screenshot, that's 2 wounds. Enough to kill its attacker outright.

As I said, there's no way The Overlord of the pits here can hurt me, so guess who won. Unfortunately Aska isn't capable of capturing enemy heroes, so I settle for killing him.

Moving on, I now have a couple of choices. I could play a MA-32 Grom to defend my HQ. The Grom, however, is an extremely fragile artillery piece, so it's almost as effective a defence as a head of lettuce. Problem is we're on turn 4. Any time now, an enemy scout will come walking right into my base.

Alternatively, I have enough AP to draw a card or create an army.

AE is sequential TB, and I went last this turn. That means I'll have time to re-take my HQ if some bastard scout snags it next turn.

With that in mind, I opt for the card and draw Erik Mai, a commander-type hero. This guy is the best strategist in my deck. Unfortunately I don't have an academy for him to work in right now, so he's useless.

Remember what I said about that Vincent Mudge guy earlier though? If I hadn't played him, the 1st Stealth Recon army and Aska's Aces would be out of supply range now, suffer severe stat penalties and have their movement reduced to 1 hex. Not only that, I'd also have to stop drawing cards until I play some, because I'd only be able to hold one more card & it isn't at all unusual to stumble across a useful one while scouting the wasteland.

Anyway, here's the state of the board at the end of turn 5.



That's it for today's updates I think.

Intresting. The card system of the game sounds a bit too random for my tastes but looks fun.

oscarisaiah said:

Intresting. The card system of the game sounds a bit too random for my tastes but looks fun.

Click to expand...

I've played the demo version and had a similar feeling regarding the amount of random factors in the game.

Still, it's an interesting game and I'm definitely looking forward to more of the LP.

Nice job, but your not doing the games gorgeous looking cards any justice with them shitty low palette gifs, jpgs or pngs ftw.

oscarisaiah said:

Intresting. The card system of the game sounds a bit too random for my tastes but looks fun.

Click to expand...

The randomness grew on me, it makes things a lot more interesting strategically as you rarely have the forces you want and have to make do, creating tactics on the fly. That being said it can be really annoying when it all goes wrong and you get the Recon/Character type cards last and the big uber stuff you can't really afford first -- you tend to lose those games pretty fast though, so you don't spend too long whining.

oscarisaiah said:

Intresting. The card system of the game sounds a bit too random for my tastes but looks fun.

Click to expand...

Heh, the cards are often the least of it. AE is extremely random. If you pay close attention to the minimap in the screenies, you'll notice the NW corner of the map is almost entirely composed of difficult terrain. Whatever AI is sitting up there is pretty fucked, because while the other AI and I scour the lands for junk, seize resource points & so on, he's pretty much stuck.

AE is random enough to fuck you from the outset, but it doesn't happen very often (in my experience anyway). The more usual situation is that circumstances conspire to give one of the players a massive advantage over the others, and most of the time, that adds to both fun & replay value.

The worst two examples I've seen both happened yesterday.

In one game, the luck of the draw and terrain conspired so that the first card I could play was the sabotage expert in the game. In turn 5 I found my first enemy, who evidently hadn't drawn a recon unit. In turn 6 his base was gone. In turn 10 I found my second enemy, who apparently didn't have a recon unit either. In turn 11 I won. They had absolutely 0 chance to defend themselves.

In another, I started with an independent Xenopod base right next to my HQ, which just happened to be defended by the most hardcore Xeno unit there is. In turn 3 one of the Xeno scouts had apparently made contact with the indy base, so the nightmare unit took 1 step into my base and ate me. I had no chance.

But those examples are the exception.

NiM82 said:

Nice job, but your not doing the games gorgeous looking cards any justice with them shitty low palette gifs, jpgs or pngs ftw.

Click to expand...

I'm not happy with them either, but it's a matter of file size. If I keep using this many screenies, the LP could easily top 100 megs by the end if I don't nerf the image quality. But if you have a better compromise than shitty gifs, I'm all ears.

You can match probably match the filesize with JPG's, possibly getting smaller too if you play with the compression slider a bit (~60% quality mebe?).

Thanks NiM82, it'll be similar-sized jpegs from screeny 20-something onwards. Probably in the middle of my next update. Now returning to Let's Play Armageddon Empires, already in progress.


Turn 5

I'm getting a serious case of the paranoias this turn. Aska's Aces is the only army I have capable of defending/re-taking my HQ, and the fastest she can get there is turn 7. The only card I can play to defend my HQ is an MA-32 Grom, but that card only has 2HP and 2 defence dice, so there's no guarantee it can survive an attack by an enemy scout.

After much deliberation (well, not really, but it sounded good right?), I decide the best thing I can do is to send the 1st Stealth Recon scouting for resources and hope it finds enough of a stash for me to buy some proper defenders. Or failing that, trust Aska's Aces can reach my HQ before my enemies find it. Either way, it means I can buy 2 extra initiative dice.



12AP for me, yay!

As mentioned, the 1st Stealth Recon might just get lucky and find the right resource pile, so I wave goodbye to 1AP and send them looking.



No pile of spare resources, but as you can see it did find a material producing tile. Better yet, it's on the way to the HQ for Aska.

As I mentioned in the game set-up phase, you need the right kind of resource collecting facility on the tile, to get the resources produced by the tile. You can get those facilities in two ways, either by adding to your deck of cards before the game begins, or by having an un-stealthed hero card (any kind will do) visit the tile and build a collection facility.



Right now I'm totally deficient in H and M resources, and the Slave Pits Aska is standing in, happens to produce both. Even better, it doesn't cost any movement to build resource collectors. So I'm going to build a Recruiting Post (1H/turn) and a Materials Team (1M/turn), and then move Aska's Aces to the M2 tile my Imperial Recon just found. If nothing terrible happens, I can then build another Materials Team on that tile in Turn 6, before moving her to my HQ.



Notice there's now a vertical rectangle with an unusually tiny, black podium-like squiggle at the bottom? As previously mentioned, a vertical rectangle indicates a facility. If it's got a big podium-squiggle, it's a base or outpost, if it's a small one, it's a resource collector. The difference, basically, is that outposts have structure points, garrisons, can be upgraded, may provide supply, may have fortifications & other nifty stuff. Resource collectors just sit there, and if an enemy wanders into them they're instantly destroyed.

That's leaves me 3AP, enough to create an army or draw a new card. I opt for the card, draw another Imperial Recon, and that's the end of turn 5 for me.


Turn 6

No matter what I decide to do this turn I won't need more than 5T, so I spend a 1T on an extra initiative die and roll.



A winrar is me!

Still hoping for teh phat loot, my first priority is to send the 1st Stealth Recon scouting. Alas, an entirely desolate mountain eats up all my movement, but maybe next turn.



Aska builds a Materials Team in the Rock Desert, then moves next to my HQ.



That leaves me 6AP. I can hold another 2 cards, but it's always a good idea to leave room for the unexpected, so I spend 3AP creating an army for Vladimir Kost (a commander type hero card I'm holding), and draw a card.

It's a boy!! Eh.. no. It's an Imperial Commandos card. It's a good defence card, cheap and an absolute terror against enemy heroes. Just what I needed 3 turn ago, hehe.

Anyway, that's it for turn 6.

Pretty intriguing game. Seems I should start looking for her.

BTW. Great LP, if I ever play AE Ill have the basics covered.

Go on.
Never played it, never will. But looking at it is awrite.

There's a link to the demo in the OP, so you don't have to look very far. And if you have any questions, just ask.
Thanks to NiM82, the quality of the screenshots should improve significantly by the end of this update. I think they're now about as good as they can possibly get, without pissing off my host & accidentally killing slow Codex'er connections.


Turn 7

Every 3 die, the cost of buying initiative dice increases. I have something of a Technology surplus right now, but not an endless one. I settle for buying 2 extra dice.

I win the roll, so 12AP for me this turn.

As usual, what I want to do this turn may well depend on the luck of the 1st Stealth Recon, so I pay 1AP to move them right away. And look, they've found something!



As the screeny implies, if I stay and observe it, I remain stealth'ed. But I claim it of course. Note, I skipped the part of the manual that explained these types of encounters, because I'd rather find out the hard way. But in my experience, there's no risk involved.



Great, 6H for the stockad.. stockpiles. Hmm.. Now I have enough resources to start buying some fun stuff, but what to buy? Decisions, decisions...

Aska's Harbinger deathbot from Hell is one of the hardest defensive units in the game. It was made for HQ garrison duty. The only thing it lacks is the recce ability, which makes my HQ vulnerable to espionage, sabotage and assassinations.

But if I place Aksa's Aces on garrison duty, I give up the only unit I have that's capable of going out & killing stuff.

Furthermore, the 1st Stealth Recon has revealed that those nasty toxic Tentacle Beasts right next to my HQ are sitting on an ideal tile for a base. And they're getting some massive bonuses because of it. To kick them out of there, I ideally need a unit with counter attack, massive resistance, lots of defence dice and damage reduction. In other words, I need Aska's Harbinger.

Fortunately the 6 recruits the 1st Stealth scouts found, along with the cards I'm holding, may just offer the perfect solution.

I have Sigmund Gordon on my hand, and an Imperial Commandos card to protect him. More than that, I have another Imperial Recon card (same as the 1st Stealth Recon army), the ideal card to keep my HQ free from skulking aliens until I can build an Intel centre. Best of all, I have the resources to buy all three and still send Aska to exterminate the tentacles neighbours.

Just in case there's something nasty lurking in my HQ already that the Imperial Commandos can't deal with, I play the Imperial recon card first. For better or worse, it doesn't spot anything.

I play Sigmund and the Commandos, and add all three to the Army I made for him way back when. That's a mistaker, of course. Sigmund needs to go out in the world, while the Imperial Recon needs to stay put and look for spies. It costs AP to detach a unit from an army, so.. Idiot me.



As soon as Aska's Aces can get on garrison duty, Sigmund here is going to be a great asset. He's got Stealth S6 (though an army is only as stealthy as its least stealthy member), and can move 4 hexes. More importantly though, he adds 1 die to his army's observation checks and has a bounty hunter 1 ability, the combination of which makes it much easier to capture enemy heroes.

The Imperial Commandos he's leading are also stealthy, but more importantly, they ignore supply (as do heroes) so they can go anywhere, and they get 5 assassination dice, which is great for killing & weakening commanders, without drawing attention.

Finally, I pay the 2AP to go deal with the toxic neighbours



Take a look at the enemy cards, as well as the detailed info on the left. The enemy cards have a picture and 7 fields with mysterious info. In reading order, the information is #attack dice, #defence dice, #resistance, #movement points, name & special abilities, #movement points (on the game board, not in battle), #hit points and finally, #rows they can reach in battle.

Obviously there's some inconsistency here. The detailed info on the left says they have 2 defence dice. The number on the cards say they have 5. The explanation is the nasty little fuckers are getting +1 defence die because they're on moderately difficult terrain, and +2 defence dice because there's foxholes & tunnels & shit on the tile. Thus 5 defence dice.

Unlike the Slave Pit clowns, these fuckers are pretty dangerous. But not against the Mr. Handy the Harbinger. They'll kill themselves on his counter-attack, and even if they do manage to hit him, there's almost no chance they can injure him, thanks to a combination of damage reduction, and high enough resistance to counter their toxins.

I meant to snap a screeny of the victory, but I fucked up so you'll have to imagine it. Anyway, they killed themselves on the Harbinger's counter-attack, and the tile is now mine.

All that remains now is to play a hero card (because I can) and create a 2nd Stealth Recon army for the Imperial Recon unit I mistakenly paired up with Sigmund Gordon earlier.

Anyway, army created. On to turn 8.


Turn 8

I exchange 2E for +2 initiative dice, and win the roll.



I'm including a screeny of the initiative roll, because it's a good indication of how many resources the enemies have, and consequently, how much they've expanded. I'm guessing the Xenos are West of my staging area, and the Machine to the East, but we'll in a couple of turns.

First I spend 1AP moving the Imperial Recon unit I bought last turn to the 2nd Stealth Recon army I've created, and another AP to stealth it.



I know you can't see a lot of the board, but this screeny shows my supply range. You can just see the top of the tile with my HQ in the lower right. Anyway, I'm including this screeny to illustrate who whomever is stuck up in all the difficult terrain, is fucked. Terrain modifiers lower supply range, and only lone heroes and commando units ignore supply. Everyone else is limited to moving 1 hex per turn, and incurs penalties on various stats.

For me, the layout of the board could be worse. Obviously it'll keep the unlucky AI busy & off my back, and as a secondary benefit it'll increase my chance of capturing lone heroes. Each captured hero provides +2AP per turn, which is critical when you start moving around big armies. And of course, heroes provide unique benefits and abilities, so every one you can kill or capture is a major blow to the enemy. And that's the long explanation for why I'm outfitting my bounty hunter before trying to build an army.

As usual I pay 1AP to stealth the 1st Stealth Recon, and another to send it out scouting. Unfortunately it doesn't find anything.

Finally, I spend half my remaining AP on making Aska build a Materials Team on the Warrens tile she liberated last turn, and the remaining on drawing a card.

Given my limited resources and the lack of obvious threats, it seemed the best solution.

The card I drew is an Imperial FAC, AKA Forward Air Controller. This guy is a Stealth S6 Commando. He can't fight, but he adds 3 attack dice to any air raids I do in the hex he occupies.

Why would I have something like that? Well, my deck holds a sabotage-espionage hero called Mata Boyd, as well as a F-227 Nightwing stealth attack craft. The drawbacks to this trio is that they may be impossible to draw, and if they should be detected, they're very vulnerable. The strength is that this trio can destroy any single card other than air units, with great ease. That includes fully upgraded, reinforced HQs.

Anyway, that's the end of my turn 8. Man, I really need some AP.

I'll try to post another update later today.

Something I'm curious about, is the AI more aggressive in the full version? When I play the demo the only combat consists of fighting neutrals and picking off a few spider bots. I've only had "real" combats in just a few games and then usually on turn 25+.

Nice LP dude, keep it up.

Why this game has no multiplayer mode is beyond me.

Excellent LP by the way, very instructive. Keep up the good work!

LCJr. said:

Something I'm curious about, is the AI more aggressive in the full version? When I play the demo the only combat consists of fighting neutrals and picking off a few spider bots. I've only had "real" combats in just a few games and then usually on turn 25+.

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Yeah, the demo is a bit castrated really. In the full game it's quite variable, sometimes they'll all out rush you (laying siege), other times dig in and be more defensive, just probing about.

Thanks for the LP, I was looking for something like this.

How long does a game typically last, in real time, not turns? I'm really enjoying the LP, thanks!

Mad_Dog said:

How long does a game typically last, in real time, not turns? I'm really enjoying the LP, thanks!

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Varies. Depends on the size of the map, number of points (for cards/tiles), number of enemies (1-2) and whether your using cults of the wasteland (free expansion). Smaller games usually take 1-2 hours, sometimes minutes if your extremely lucky/unlucky (if a stealthy hero happens across a suitcase nuke early on, it's pretty much game over for someone). Larger games can take up to six (in my experience).

LCJr. said:

Something I'm curious about, is the AI more aggressive in the full version? When I play the demo the only combat consists of fighting neutrals and picking off a few spider bots. I've only had "real" combats in just a few games and then usually on turn 25+.

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Like NiM82 said, it depends.

The AI tends to prioritise self-defence, so you're usually safe for a while if it can find any bases closer to it than your HQ, because it'll take those bases first, and it will try not to leave them undefended. But it will rush you if it doesn't have anything better to do, and you can count on it to use every underhanded trick (assassins, saboteurs, spies, missiles, air-raids) against you, as soon as it can.

As for play time, you can usually beat a normal map in about 90 minutes. On a normal map, one of the factions will usually build a monster army and stomp everything in a couple of turns. Large maps can take a while, because on those, all factions may manage to build a super army, resulting in a lot of back & forth.

On to the LP:

Turn 9

I decide I can afford to spend 2E on initiative dice. Everyone else buys 2 extra dice as well, but I win the roll & 12AP. It's not enough. I need MOAR!

As usual, I start by sending the 1st Stealth Recon out scouting. This time a bit more purposeful than usual. I'm pretty sure I can guess where the Machine HQ is located, and if I'm right I can get within recce range now.



See the red arrow over the notification box? It points from the 1st Stealth Recon to the tile I suspect is the Machine HQ. Does this mean I'm faced with the choice of either collecting Human resources and risking swift Machine death, or missing out on the resources and remaining safely hidden?

Yes and no. If I de-stealth now, I give the AI a standard observation check. It's not likely to fail that check. But apart from the AP cost, nothing prevents me from engaging stealth again after picking up the goodies, so at most it'll warn the AI I'm in the neighbourhood. It's probably worth it, so I claim the camp and get 7H. Damn, I'm swimming in human resources. And probably just missed making a great pun or something.

Anyway, after paying for stealth, I realise something is wrong.



The tile above the one with the coordinate box, is where I suspect the Machine HQ is. The tile with the coordinate box on, is a city tile. City tiles produce resources and come equipped with a pile of monsters. Since I'm seeing neither resource collectors nor hideous Xenos, I think it's fairly safe to assume I just failed every last die on my Observation check. Fuck. Ignorance is not bliss in this game, it's something that comes jumping out of a hole in the ground and rips your ass off.

Moving on, I have 10AP

Moving Both Aska's Aces and Sigmund Gordon costs 2AP to move (though I'm not sure Sigmund needs moving right now). That leaves 6-8AP. Alternatively, playing my Industrial Complex card (+1M, +1E per turn) also costs 4AP.

Decisions, decisions... I think my best course of action right now, is to draw 1-2 cards and see what I get.

The first card is a MAA-10 Puma, a great anti-air unit and essential if you're running around in the enemy's supply range with a big fucking army. All of which I'm not, so I draw another card.

And get another The Emperor's Own card.

After searching my soles for a bit, I decide to play the industrial complex now, switch the Commandos for my FAC next turn in Sigmund Gordon's army, and send him off to hunt heroes. I really, really need more AP. I'm half-paralyzed only getting 12 each turn. On to Turn 10.


*** INCOMMING!!! ***

As mentioned, AE uses sequential turns, and the Xeno scum just threw me a nasty surprise after I ended my turn. Remember I said I thought I knew where the Machine HQ was located?



This screeny says I was wrong about the faction, but right about the location. It's a Xenoceptor air raid on my poor, defenceless 1st Stealth Recon. Evidently they've been made...



...Into corpses and smoking wreckage. And that's another thing I was wrong about. Ignorance doesn't jump out of a hole in the ground, it decends from the skies in a storm of hellfire. Same effect though.


Turn 10

I have a surplus of humans this turn, so I buy 2H worth of initiative dice.. And Go second. Man, nothing is going my way right now.

I can't quite decide what to do this turn.

I know (pretty sure anyway) where the Xeno HQ is. 7 hexes from my own HQ, by the shortest possible route.

Aska's Aces might be able to take out the Xeno HQ, but she's many 4-5 turns away from it, and it would leave my HQ fairly defenceless.

Sigmund could head over there and try kill or capture some Xeno heroes, but they just spotted a Stealth S5 unit from a hex away, so it would probably be suicidal.

Sigmund could go simply go scouting/hero-hunting, but he's only backed by a single Commando team, so they'll slow him down more than they'll protect him. In the end I decide to switch out the Commandos with the FAC team and send Sigmund out scouting. He'll have to evade enemy units, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem. And I really do need to find some resources, and if I can, capture some heroes.

Removing the Imperial Commandos costs 3AP, hiring the FAC costs 1AP, stealthing Sigmund Gordon's army costs 2AP, and sending them off costs another 2AP. That's all the AP I had this turn. Damn.



The red dot is, I'm pretty sure, the location of the Xeno HQ. On to turn 11.

NB: Sorry about the delay. I probably can't manage another update today, but I'll post one tomorrow. Oh and, thank for the praise & stuff.

Keep up the good work, enjoying your lets play greatly

I like others played the demo and found it rather uninspiring, this makes me want to pickup the full game.

The game is neat. What I like is how the AI does it's very best not only to fuck you up, but also any other faction that's in the game. It can also be very hard to prevail when you're in a bad starting position.

Key to winning is to maintain a strong defence of your HQ (the enemy WILL strike if it's poorly defended) and to scout rigorous. Sometimes you tend to find shit that will utterly swing the game into your favor (nuclear missile ftw) Building forward firebases to extend supply range is also mucho importante. Using airpower can also make or break a game.

Awesome LP so far, can't wait to see it's next installment!

Fuck, I so want to buy this, but I'm completely broke and only have Visa Electron. And I can't find a way to remove it from inventory either.

Oh, what I forgot to mention and is one of the biggest selling points of this game to me is how finite your forces are. You are after all playing in an utterly apocalyptic gameworld, so while your forces can be powerfull they are also often very limited. One divebomber can make all the difference, same as one artillery piece or finding an old firebase for yourself.

It just feels great as you frantically try to secure resources while trying not to waste your often small force.

Korgan said:

Fuck, I so want to buy this, but I'm completely broke and only have Visa Electron. And I can't find a way to remove it from inventory either.

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Just get yourself a mastercard or a good visa, you worthless bum.
My job does a have a very nice bonus - my salary goes right to a credit card, which is perfect for every payment - and more then suitable for paypal, where I promptly registrered.
I've bought this game, btw, but a bit too busy to play right now (not a very nice bonus of my work, and having to study simultaneously).

Btw, NEVER underestimate the power of tacticians. Coupled with unit's special abilities, it can win you game in no time!
For instance, a good sabotage expert can just walk into HQ, use tactics to massively swing the rollls into your favor, and blow it up - game won.
However, just like with MTG - it requires a combination of cards that may not be avalable.
They also work very good with units that have special abilties - like bounty hunting, double damage, etc.