Everyone's off at GenCon this weekend, and after a long league and then a quick few weeks of helping to prep both Bill and Dixon for the Masters of Malifaux tournament in Indy, I was ready for a day of something other than Malifaux. Perfect time to pull out the new book I picked up and try out a few games of Hell Dorado.
I managed to get in my second and third games earlier today, playing my Demons both times. I don't have a ton of models, just the base set, so I ended up proxying what I was missing.
Overall, I enjoy the game. I'm glad Cipher ended up picking it up and doing something with the line. The miniatures, I think, look fantastic, and some of the rules and mechanics are quite cool.
I like the way casting spells works - that you cast the spell into a small model called a Lemure and that model then rushes out to the target. If your opponent takes down the Lemure before it's able to reach its target, the spell doesn't go off. But the spells tend to be pretty powerful.
I also like how if your opponent outnumbers you in models, you can pass when it's your activation and force your opponent to keep activating until you have the same number of models left. So the Malifaux tactic of out-activate your opponent isn't as devastating.
Terrain works in an interesting way. At the beginning of the game, you divide the board into nine different sections and bid secretly on each section. Each player reveals their bids and whoever bid the highest gets to place the terrain in that section. If there's a tie, no terrain is placed. It's a very interesting way to set up the board, but in both my games I found it very easy to heavily limit my opponents' ranged attacks by putting up huge areas of smoke and clouds.
I think the game might be weak on scenarios and the rules for them. I've only played two games with actual scenarios, though, so I could just be mistaken on how they work. But it's hard to, coming from Malifaux which I feel has done the best with scenarios of any game out there, see this game as having a nice and advanced system.
In the end, I don't think Hell Dorado has got a shot of replacing Malifaux as my game of choice. But it does slip in nice to the spot that's been vacated by Firestorm Armada for almost a year. It's a nice game to pull out when I need a break from Malifaux, and makes for a nice diversion from time to time. Looking forward to getting more games in with it.
