On Saturday night, I had the opportunity to playtest Gamecraft 2.0 with a couple of friends of mine, Tad and Chris. We didn’t use the setting that I am designing with it, but the system’s designed to be flexible enough to accommodate many settings. It was educating, to say the least. The following piece is based on that playtest. Be warned that it’s long; longer than I expected it to be. Everything here is based on what actually happened in the playtest; I used very little artistic license.

Simon had always had bad luck. His grandfather had trained him to be a boxer, and he had made a small name for himself in the amateur circuit before he had become indebted to the wrong people. His life had spiraled out of control as a result, plunging him into an existence of underground street-fighting and petty crime. When he’d witnessed a murder last week, he saw in it a chance to do the right thing, and maybe to haul himself out of the pit of iniquity that he found himself living in. So, he’d called a cop that he met a while back.

Right now, Simon was sitting on a subway train at 4 AM, talking to this cop, Rod. Rod was middle-aged and a little round around the edges, but I looked like he might once have been in excellent shape. Just from talking to him, though, Simon could tell that this was not a guy you could easily fool. He noticed things; he was always noticing things. They had been chatting, just bullshitting, for a few minutes, waiting until the other people on the subway car (three of them: a middle-aged white woman, an old black guy, and a Japanese high school girl) to get out of earshot before they really got down to it. Simon was reasonably sure he could say something safely, and he was about to open his mouth when the subway train came to a sudden, jarring, screeching halt.

Simon found himself standing up from a prone position, realizing that he had just been thrown across the car by the force of its stop. He sat up and rubbed his head, looking around. The Japanese girl had apparently skinned her knee, and was tending to that. The old man was pulling himself up, leaning heavily on his cane. The woman was up and looking out the window of the train. “There are people out there,” she said, her voice curious and a little afraid.

Simon looked out the window cautiously, noting that Rod was avoiding full exposure to the windows; he did the same. The people outside were just outside the light’s limit, standing still, looking at the train.

“I’m going to go talk to the conductor,” came Rod’s voice as he walked to the adjoining door. Simon looked back at the group of people outside and noticed that there were fewer now; he couldn’t have told you if there were three or four of them originally, but there was clearly one fewer now, as one of them was standing right next to the train, looking up at the window. Simon backed up, glad that he had decided to bring his sawed-off with him tonight.

“I think it was a person.” The conductor was sweating, obviously worried and probably feeling somewhat guilty.

“Did you get a good look?” Rod’s detective instincts were kicking in; clearly something unusual was happening here, and his mind was treating it like any other crime scene.

“Half a second or so,” said the conductor, shifting his weight. “All I know is I saw something on the tracks, and it looked like a person. I hit the brakes as soon as I saw, but I felt it when we hit it.”

Rod nodded, thinking. It didn’t make sense to him that someone would just be standing on the subway tracks in the middle of a tunnel at four in the morning. Something was definitely wrong here.

His thoughts were interrupted by a loud cracking noise, and he whipped his head around toward the other train car just in time to see an arm come crashing through the window of the subway car, the hand wrapping itself in the hair of the middle-aged woman. A high, panicked wail came from the other car as her head was pulled through, and Rod found himself already running back to the other car, pistol in hand. How the hell do you punch through safety glass and still have a hand intact enough to grab anything?

He burst through the adjoining door and ran toward the screaming woman; her head was already through the hole in the glass, and the guy on the outside was still pulling. If he kept on pulling hard enough, he’d likely rip her head off; Rod knew that he had to act quickly. He stuck his arm through the hole as he reached it, pressing the muzzle of the pistol against the attacker’s forehead and pulling the trigger. The attacker’s head snapped back and he immediately released his hold on the screaming woman, but something was wrong about the way he reacted to the shot. He was just clinging to the side of the subway car, feet on the outer wall,one hand flat on the glass, just hanging there like some sort of grotesque parody of Spider-Man. Slowly, his head came level and he stared directly into Rod’s face, smoking bullet hole in the center of his forehead. No expression, no reaction; just a vacant look and glassy eyes.

Before Rod could react, the man clinging to the train made a grab for his arm. Rod could feel his touch; there was something unwholesome about it, squamous even. Rod backpedaled, almost falling over, and fired his gun again as he launched himself toward the other side of the train. With some satisfaction, he saw his bullet enter the man’s mouth, causing the top half of his head to be blown off. With some unease, it registered that there wasn’t nearly enough blood for such a wound. The man fell backwards, making a dull thud as he hit the ground outside the train.

Simon saw Rod fall backward, saw the man on the outside of the train blow apart and fall. He was also aware, however, of the fact that the other people who had been standing outside the train were no longer there. He heard a wrenching sound from behind him, and he spun, bringing his shotgun level with the train’s doors. At first he was surprised that they were opening by themselves. Then he noticed that they weren’t, that a figure on the other side of the doors was forcing them open with its bare hands. Without thinking, he aimed and pulled the trigger, sending the figure flying into the darkness as the doors slammed shut again. He looked over his shoulder to the spot where the figures had been, when he heard, once again, the wrenching sound of metal being pried part. He turned in the direction of the noise and saw that the access hatch on the ceiling of the train had been torn completely off, and a figure had dropped through the hole.

The figure made a lunging motion, lashing out with its hand as if it were some sort of claw. Simon dodged backward and swung the butt of his shotgun at the figure’s head, connecting with a fleshy thunk and tearing the figure’s head completely away from its neck. The body stood for a moment, as if in shock, then slumped to the ground, blood oozing slowly from the place where its head once was, like some foul black ichor.

Rod hurriedly tore a strip of clothing from the woman’s dress, using it to staunch the flow of blood from the back of her neck where the window’s glass had torn her flesh. Whether from shock and fatigue or from her injuries, she had lapsed into unconsciousness, and that made the job a little bit easier. Once he had finished, he laid her back down on the floor of the train car and looked up at Simon, who was standing with his shotgun in his hands, muscles tense and eyes moving.

The lights flickered. No. Please no. Then again. Come on. Finally, they went out. Shit Rod pushed his panic down, reciting catechisms in his head in order to calm himself. These people needed him to be calm. He reached into his coat and pulled out a small flashlight, turning it on.

“What the hell? Now the lights are out?” Simon looked down at him. “What did the conductor say? Is someone coming for us?”

“We don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “He was in the middle of transmitting when his radio went dead, so he’s not sure if anyone got the message.”

“And if they didn’t, then what? We walk out of here?”

Rod didn’t say anything.

Simon reminded himself that he was an undefeated street fighter with a sawed-off shotgun as he and Rod circled the train, making sure there wouldn’t be any surprises when they set off with the other passengers down the tunnel toward the next station. They had searched the body inside for identification, and had found some–as well as fifty bucks in cash–but it had raised more questions than it had answered. Initially, Simon had through that the guy looked like a junkie. Rod’s descriptions of people on PCP performing seemingly superhuman feats seemed to back that assessment up. On the other hand, though, this junkie had been carrying fifty dollars cash around with him, as well as car keys, a house key, a driver’s license, and a Visa Platinum card. It didn’t make a lot of sense.

There were seven of them, in all. There was Rod and Simon, the conductor, the Japanese girl, the woman (now awake, though shaken), the old man, another man in a business suit, and a shabby man with tousled hair. They walked through the tunnel slowly, allowing the old man and the injured woman to keep pace, making sure that nobody fell behind. The darkness seemed oppressive–the lights in the tunnel had gone out, as well–and the silence was eerie. Rod kept talking, trying to reassure everyone, to let them know that he was in charge and wasn’t going to let anything happen to them. Simon, for his part, simply tried to look as menacing as possible, even bending down to get some mud to smear on his face, like some sort of warpaint.

A sound came from behind. They had set up a trip line with some twine that they’d found in the train’s emergency kit (along with some flares and a large, heavy-duty flashlight that Rod was now carrying), and the sound that came sounded uncannily like someone tripping in the dark. They hurried their pace, but they knew that whoever was behind was likely moving faster than they were. The panic rose.

Suddenly, Rod brought everyone to a stop. At the end of his cone of light stood a figure, a security guard in uniform. He made no movement; simply stood there looking at them.

Rod stepped forward, gun at the ready. “I’m detective Rod O’Malley of the Richmond City Police Department. Identify yourself.” The security guard was silent. “Identify yourself!”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” The man in the business suit was striding forward, clearly able to take no more. “He told you to identify yourself; why aren’t you–”

The attack came like a thunderbolt, hitting hard and fast and from the side. Something came charging out of the darkness to their left, slamming directly into the man in the business suit and carrying him into the darkness to their right. Screams came from the darkness, as well as wet crunching and tearing sounds. Rod came very close to swinging the flashlight, taking his eyes off of the security guard, but at the last minute he saw the man raise his pistol. Rod didn’t think; he just shot.

Simon shone his flashlight–duct-taped to the barrel of his shotgun–into the darkness where the two had disappeared and caught a glimpse of a human figure hunched over another one, prone, apparently tearing with its teeth. His eyes widened when he saw a third stranger step into the light, then charge forward. Without thinking he fired, hitting the figure squarely in the shoulder. The figure flinched, but didn’t break stride; it simply kept coming. When it got close enough, it lashed out with one hand, raking its fingernails across Simon’s face and drawing blood. Grunting in pain, Simon brought his fist back and then forward, slamming it into the creature’s face, pushing its nose through the back of its skull. It fell to the ground.

Rod fired twice at the security guard, hitting twice but not dropping the man. The security guard simply raised his gun and started firing indiscriminately but, thankfully, with little accuracy. Thinking quickly, Rod placed the flashlight on the ground, still illuminating the security guard, and slipped into the shadows. He moved around behind the man and took careful aim at his head, then fired. Rod was relieved when he saw the guard slump to the ground.

Simon advanced on the third attacker, still tearing at the businessman’s flesh. He raised his shotgun and fired, obliterating the thing’s head and sending its body flying. When he finally got a good look at the corpse below it, he saw that the thing had eaten a hole through the back of the man’s skull and devoured his brain.

A frightened, weary, and slightly smaller group arrived at the next station, climbing up onto the platform. The platform was dark; evidently the power was out here, as well. Even more disturbing, there were corpses here, two or three of them, strewn around the platform. Rod reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone, thanking God that there was a signal now. He dialed.

“Yeah? What?” It was not the response he expected from the precinct.

“Bev? This is Rod. I’m in the subway, and we’ve been attacked. The power’s out, and–”

“You’re not the only one, Rod. Power’s out all over the city, and there’s riots or something breaking out. It’s chaos out there. We’ve barricaded ourselves into the building, and some of the officers have even had to shoot at people trying to get in. They let someone in at first, and the guy tried to kill us.”

Rod didn’t say anything, just stood there dumbstruck.

“Rod?” came the voice on the other end. “Listen, you’d better get over here and hide out at the precinct with us. It’s not safe out there.” No, he thought. It sure isn’t.

My wife and I just got done playing “A Complex Web”, the sixth scenario for BattleLore. My wife took the side with the dwarves and the giant spider, while I played the side with the goblins. I led with my goblins early, trying to capitalize on their speed advantage, and aimed them primarily at non-dwarf units as much as I could while bolstering them with Mass Might. My wife, on the other hand, marched forward with her dwarven infantry and charged her giant spider forward to take its place on a hill near my front lines. My goblins, unfortunately, got routed pretty quickly, and my wife’s spider didn’t really do much throughout the entire fight. Despite this, I did manage to kill the spider toward the end of the game, after at least three failed attacks. A couple of other highlights: I managed to entirely destroy a red cavalry unit with a fireball, while my wife used Greater Portal to very good effect, swapping the places of a blue dwarven infantry with only one figure left and a fully-manned red cavalry unit right at the end of the game. In the end, my wife won the battle, with six victory flags to my four.

Last night my friends Tad and Chris came over and we played some games. Namely, we played BattleLore and Carcassonne.

My friend Chris came over first, and we played the Agincourt scenario of BattleLore. Last time, when I played with my wife, I played the pennant side, with lots of archers and no cavalry. This time I played the standard side, with three cavalry and only one archer. Both times I lost. This time, I can trace my loss to a big mistake on my part. See, Chris was doing the smart thing, hanging back and pumping me full of arrows from a distance and forcing me to come to him on his terms. In my hurry to meet him in melee, I charged forward with my cavalry and didn’t pay enough attention to my infantry or my lone archer. As a result, the first three casualties in the game were–you guessed it–my three cavalry units. I managed to kill one of his archers (if I remember correctly), but he had played the patient game while I had rushed forward to engage too fast. As a result, when our infantry finally met in the middle of the battlefield, none of my units were supported while most of his were. Between his normal attacks and his battle-backs, he wiped out one of my infantry and ended the game. Of course, it didn’t help things that he had gotten a Darken the Skies card early in the game, and had managed to severely cripple two of my three cavalry with that card alone.

Around midnight, Tad came over and we broke out the Carcassonne. This was my first (and second) time playing, and I’ve been curious about this game for quite a while. I must admit, I liked it. The first game we played was the core game (which Chris refers to as the “introduction game”); it lasted about 30 minutes and ended with my victory. Beginner’s luck, I guess. The second added in one of the expansion packs (I forget which), and Chris won that one. For those who haven’t played yet, Carcassonne involves randomly drawing and then playing tiles such that they both match up with tiles already on the table and are advantageous to you and not to your opponents. In addition, you get seven meeples, and you can place them in cities, on roads, in monasteries, or on fields to score points. If you place a meeple in a city or monastery, or on a road, you get it back when the feature is completed and immediately score points for it; otherwise, they remain there until the end of the game and are worth fewer points. If you place a meeple in a field, it stays there until the end of the game, but has the potential to score pretty big.

The expansion pack that we played with added two new terrain features: inns and cathedrals. Inns increase the value of completed roads that they are on (or decrease the value to zero, if the road is incomplete), while cathedrals do the same thing for cities. The expansion pack also gave each of us a “giant meeple”, worth two meeples for breaking ties (this comes into play when you wind up with two players’ meeples on a single feature; if there’s a tie, both players score equally, but if one player dominates, the other player gets nothing).

After the second game of Carcassonne, Tad left to go home and play Dead Rising on his 360, and Chris and I played a second game of BattleLore. We played the second scenario, First Chevauchee, and this time I won (barely). I tried to correct for my mistakes in the previous game this time, advancing with my infantry and making use of my archers (this time I got Darken the Skies) while holding my cavalry back for mop-up battles. There were two main clashes: one on my right wing and one straddling the center and left wing. For a while, it looked like I was going to lose again. Chris had 4 victory flags to my 2, and none of my command cards were really all that useful. However, I drew some section cards that allowed me to use the right units at the right times, and it made a pretty big difference. I wound up scoring two flags in one turn thanks to a well-placed Forward card, and after that Chris was on the retreat to some extent due to the fact that we were tied and his units were somewhat more beat up than mine. In the end, he wound up pulling a blue infantry back (it only had one figure left), and I charged forward with my blue cavalry, using a Leadership card for +1 die to my attack on his heavily damaged unit. I rolled two hits–more than enough–and ended the game with my victory.

At this point it was about 5am, so it was time for me to go to sleep. It was a really good night of gaming, though.

Played the fifth scenario last night, and I thought I’d give a quick report. Lore is awesome. A well-placed fireball or magic missile can really turn the tide of a battle, and it actually softens the blow of a missed die when you roll a lore symbol. It’s good stuff. There’s not a lot to say so far that I haven’t already said before, and I haven’t actually gotten enough experience with lore to really say much more about it. I’ll talk more about lore and other things after I’ve played with it some more.

We played again today, this time the fourth scenario: Deeper in Castile. I, once again, took the side with the goblins, while my wife had the dwarves on her side. I’ve got to say, those dwarves are really something. You get four units of dwarves in that scenario (three blue infantry and one unit of green crossbowmen), and they can really hold that line. I focused most of my attention on knocking those dwarves off of their hills, and I didn’t manage to get a single one to retreat a single step (though I did kill the crossbowmen and two of the units of infantry). I got to use my goblins a little bit more. It’s nice to have blue units that can both move two spaces and battle in the same turn, but their morale problems make them something of a liability. Having them retreat is almost as bad, if not just as bad, as taking a hit, so you’re going to want to make sure they’re supported by allies as often as possible. In the end I won, six flags to four, and all four of my wife’s victory flags were goblin units: both of my hobgoblin cavalry and both of my blue goblin infantry. They’re very tempting targets, apparently.

The battle made me think of how best to use the different mercenary troops. Goblins are at their best as skirmishers; they run in and attack a lone unit, they stick to forests and hills, and you try like hell not to send them up against bold troops. Dwarves, on the other hand, are the ultimate defensive units. Since they’re always bold, they always get to battle back. That makes them very tough nuts to crack, even more so when they’re supported. As such, you probably want to utilize your goblins as much as you can, and get as much mileage out of them as you can before they get killed off or run away. If you have dwarves, on the other hand, your best bet is probably to focus your energies on commanding your other troops and bringing them to bear offensively, while your dwarves just sit in defensible positions and hold off the attackers for as long as they can. A dwarf is really at his best when he’s surrounded by enemies, because (provided he survives), he’ll get to battle each one of them back as they attack him. Really, it doesn’t get much better than a blue dwarven infantry unit sitting on top of a hill; those guys are going to hold out for most of the game, chances are. I think that, if my wife had focused more on bringing her heavy infantry and cavalry into the fray and attacked with them, just leaving the dwarves to ward off attacks from my units, she might have won. Toward the end there, it really could have gone either way; I think I just got lucky.

Well, my wife and I played the second and third scenarios in BattleLore yesterday, and this time I won both battles. Some brief impressions follow:

First Chevauchee: I don’t know if it was the command cards we got or how we played them, but this scenario turned into a massive brawl pretty quickly. After the third or fourth round, seventy percent of the units on the battlefield were involved in an all-consuming melee in the center of the board. Seriously, it was like a meat grinder. Virtually every unit involved was supported by allies, meaning that every time anyone attacked, the opponent got to battle back, and nobody was running away. The scenario only lasted about half an hour before I got enough flags to win.

Burgos, Castile: Goblins. I had the side with the goblins, and I didn’t really get to use them as much as I wanted to. Mainly it was because they were on my right wing, and I had all left wing and center cards. In fact, I think it was on the fifth or sixth round that I actually got to use them for the first time, with a Green Banners card. My goblin light infantry got deflected pretty handily by my wife’s regular infantry and archers (all supported), though my hobgoblin cavalry did take out a few opponents. My regular goblin infantry, on the other hand, sat and watched the whole time, since I never got a card that really allowed me to utilize them. Meanwhile, though, the mass of cavalry and infantry in the center were being made liberal use of, and to good effect. I had managed to pull both of my hobgoblin cavalry into the center, giving me a grand total of three cavalry units in the center (two green and one red). After a while, I had whittled my wife’s troops down to one and two figures each, and my cavalry did a good job of mopping up.

All in all, good scenarios. I wish I had gotten a chance to really fully utilize my goblins, but I don’t see that as a failing of the system, just a quirk of luck.

I went out and spent some of my Christmas gift certificate money on BattleLore the other day, and I got to play it with my wife for the first time today. The game is just too massive for me to do a review of it yet, especially since the Agincourt scenario doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what’s available (no goblins or dwarves, no creatures, no loremasters). At any rate, I’ll probably post session reports from time to time, giving a sort of mini-review on a scenario-by-scenario basis until I can review the whole game. My session report on the Agincourt scenario follows:

My wife and I played the scenario, both of us beginners. She was the French, with their heavy cavalry and well-trained foot soldiers, and I was the English, my side brimming with archers. I opened with a volley from my bowmen, and for quite a few turns it looked like things were going my way. I kept on peppering her soldiers with arrows, picking off figures one at a time, while my side remained relatively unmolested. I even managed to eliminate one of her heavy cavalry before it was able to do any damage, scoring the first victory flag of the battle in the process.

We danced around each other for a while, me lining up my foot soldiers and hitting her with volley after volley, she packing her footmen into tight formations and bringing her cavalry around to outflank me. I attacked with a Foot Onslaught, but her units were well supported and devastated mine with their counter-attacks. The real damage came when she was able to bring her cavalry to bear on my foot soldiers: one blue regular cavalry and her remaining red heavy cavalry. Between the two of them, they must have wiped out three of my units by themselves.

The game seemed fairly close toward the end; we each had three of the four victory flags that we needed. However, her side was made up mostly of blue footmen and her aforementioned cavalry, while I was the proud owner of a number of heavily damaged infantry units and four sets of archers, who were really only picking figures off one at a time, not doing any serious damage.

In the end, her heavy cavalry (now down to a single figure) hammered one of my blue infantry units and sent it running, then hammered it again with a follow-up attack, rolling three (!) bonus strikes, one for each figure left in the unit. And that was game.

But I hear you asking, “Was it fun?” Yes. Yes it was. Despite the fact that there seems to be a lot that I haven’t gotten to use yet, I really enjoyed my first game of BattleLore. Even more impressive, though, was the fact that my wife enjoyed it and expressed her interest in playing again (in the same day, even), and she’s not usually a big board game player. The game seems simple enough that you can pick it up quickly (and the huge number of reference cards that come with the game certainly help), but deep enough that there’s a lot of room for nuance and strategy. I, for one, can’t wait to start playing with goblins, dwarves, giant spiders, and all the various loremasters and their associated powers. Thus far, I can find quite a bit to recommend this game.