Er, guys... I think we broke it...

Welcome to what may very well be the penultimate post on our Massive Darkness Campaign.

The reason for this is simple- I think we broke the game...

Last night we played through the fifth (or sixth; I forget) mission- it involved finding a key that would unlock a vault imprisoning a hell-hound. Once the hell-hound was dead, it was back to the tavern for drinks and congratulatory back-slaps courtesy of the local populace.

Now, I've mentioned before that our party is pretty tooled-up with some extremely powerful combinations of skills and equipment. Maybe we have just been extremely lucky, but it feels like we've reached a point where nothing can actually really threaten us that much! We've all been backwards and forwards through the rules to try and see if we've been doing things wrong, but it doesn't look like it- we are now roughly half way through the missions and seem to have hit our power-cap.
By way of example, take Whisper; Aaron's Bloodmoon Nightrunner. He now gets a potential of 5 move Actions per Turn, and can move up to 4 zones in each one- a total of 20 zones of movement if he needs it. However, he also deals automatic wounds to all enemies in a zone whenever he enters it, and further damage when he leaves it (I can't recall the exact amount)- combined with the Slippery ability, he can simply hop in and out of a zone (up to 20 times!!) dealing automatic damage to every enemy there each time! And that's just one of us- the other four characters are equally ridiculous...

*BEFORE: The final phase of last night's game- with two of their number already Activated, the Heroes are surrounded by hordes of minions (so many that we couldn't fit them all on the same zone!) and a huge Spearmaiden Cyclops; while the  dreaded Hell-Hound prepares to burst out of it's prison...

*AFTER: The last three Heroes lay waste to the savage hordes by themselves, while their two comrades sit back and applaud politely. Seriously, this carnage was wrought in a single Turn by only three models!

As intoxicating as this god-like power was at first, I fear that the shine is starting to come off it a bit. And the prospect of another 5 missions of much the same thing suddenly holds less appeal.

So, we have decided to jump straight to the final mission next week, and then draw the Campaign to a close. MD is certainly a fun game with brilliant miniatures, but I think we will be sticking to playing each mission as a standalone in the future!..

Dungeoneering For Fun And Profit.

After a fortnight's hiatus, I returned to the Bentham club last night and got stuck back into the Massive Darkness Campaign!

We are really motoring through the Experience levels now- at first we were worried that the Micro-Experience system of the Campaign rules would slow us down and we'd get overwhelmed by the monsters; but in fact the opposite seems to be true- we are now about four or five missions in (I think!) and the characters are extremely tooled-up! That said, the game does a pretty good job of scaling up the difficulty of the creatures, so it never feels like they don't pose a threat to the Heroes...

Last night we played through two missions- one in which we had to recover two halves of an artefact and get it into the hands of the 'Chosen One'- this Hero had to then promptly leg it out of the Dungeon to secure victory.

*Siegfried and friends take on a big old Troll!

Despite several powerful Roaming Monsters turning up and my character Siegfried biting off more than he could chew and nearly getting taken out by them, we managed to prevail- thanks to some extremely lucky Treasure-card draws, I also ended up finding a Barbarian's Helmet artefact that halves any damage I suffer and gives me a bonus Melee attack action. With this and a combination of weapons and Skills, Siegfried is now quite capable of taking on a Roaming Monster and causing 20-30 wounds in one Turn!

*My new best friend!

The second game saw the Heroes racing through some catacombs as the ceiling began to collapse behind them! Once again Siegfried's eagerness to wade into the enemy almost proved his undoing, as he fell foul of a room full of Level 4 Goblin Warriors. Thankfully he survived with one wound remaining, and was soon patched-up by our resident healer- that would've been embarrassing!

To be honest, we fairly breezed through this mission with plenty of time to spare- most of us are now either unleashing the maximum number of Attack Dice, or cancelling so many of the Monster's Defence Dice, that even 40+ Wound foes only take a Turn or two's concerted effort to take down...

As a result, I forgot to take any photos during this mission- so here's a shot from the first one with Siegfried facing down a multi-armed medusa-like snake lady.

*Trick or Treat?!

 

More from the Darkness next week!

 

Back to the Dungeon.

Last night saw the next instalment of our Massive Darkness Campaign- this time, we had to prevent a gigantic spider escaping the tunnels and causing havoc in the surrounding countryside...

*Mid-way through the game, and Whisper the Assassin (bottom of picture with blue base) uses her Slippery ability to dodge past the spider and activate the Level 3 token- this allows us to start using our Level 3 weapons and armour, and in the end went a long way towards helping us to victory! Meanwhile, Mila the Sorcerer (purple base) lies webbed up and helpless before the arachnid horror, while the rest of us loiter around the corner preparing to make our final assault; seemingly unimpressed by the fire-spewing Hellhound (framed in the doorway on the left) bearing down on us...

Playing a Campaign of MD is very different to the usual one-off games in that you earn Experience much slower- where you would earn an Experience point, you instead earn a 'Micro-Experience point'; with five Micro-EXP earning you one 'full' EXP. This is all tracked by sticking pegs into on a series of holes on your handy hard-plastic 'dashboard'.
This dashboard idea is something I first came across on Zombiecide (another CMON title), and it's a very neat bit of design that keeps all your cards together and does away with the need for a scrap of paper to track your Hit Points and what-have-you.

*My character Siegfried's dashboard, featuring the character's stat-card (top left), body equipment slot (top right), Left and Right hand slots (below left), and Experience track (bottom right). Down the left side is your Health track, and down the right side is your 'Micro EXP' track.

 

 

Experience is spent during the Turn Sequence to purchase skill upgrades for your character- this works like a 'skill-tree' that may be familiar to video game players, and lets you craft your character and specialise them the way you want. Your chosen 'Class' is represented by a more 'old-school' paper record sheet and determines exactly what kind of skills you have access to, and when you first choose your character you also choose their Class.





*This is my chosen Class- the Bonecrusher. You probably can't see from the photo, but I've taken the Mace and Hammer Skill set to Level 2, and have also purchased Level 1 in Charge. Siegfried is not a subtle Dwarf...

 

Anyway, this is rapidly becoming a 'How-To-Play', so here's a quick overview of last night's game:

 

A victory for our merry band! We played this mission once before as a one-off game, and got absolutely hammered- when you encounter a big creature, you draw an equipment card for it. If you kill the creature, you get to loot this item off their twitching corpse- however until it bites the dust, it gets to use said item itself! First time around, we drew some powerful suit of armour that made the spider all-but impervious to our feeble attacks. It ended up trapping us in webs and dragging us all along for the ride as it made it's escape! Very embarrassing.

This time around, we were forewarned (and starting out with all our skills and equipment at Level 2 didn't hurt, either!). Even a Hellhound and Abyssal Demon showing up didn't stop us from running the spider down and crushing it (even with it's 30+ Health). I'm proud to say that Siegfried even managed to deal the killing blow!

*The end of the game- Mila and Whisper lurk around the corner (from where they were making hit-and-run strikes on the spider, I hasten to add!), while Siegfried stands triumphantly amongst the grisly wreckage of the spider, covered in ichor and screaming his victory! Meanwhile, the rest of the Party hold off the raging Hellhound and Abyssal Demon in the distance- just another Monday night. then...

 



For the Darkness is Massive...

Besides skirmish games, my other great table-top passion is the good old Dungeon Crawler. It all started for me with Heroquest and Space Hulk, and I never looked back!

Lately, the humble 'Crawler has seen something of a resurgence (not that it ever really went away to my mind!), with the big companies like CMON flooding the KS market (for good or ill) with minis-heavy 'Crawlers with lavish production values...

One of the lads at my Monday night group went all-in on CMON'S Massive Darkness, and since it turned up we've been playing it a lot to figure out our favourite character/class combinations. Last week they started a Campaign (or story mode, as I think it's called)- I couldn't make it unfortunately, as I was feverishly painting models for a Dracula's America demo game the following night (see my last post for how that went); but they took over duties on Siegfried (my chosen character- a Dwarf berserker-type) the Bonecrusher (my chosen class- basically a barbarian type with a fondness for maces and hammers).

*The mighty Siegfried!

One of the fun things about MD is the freedom to mix characters and classes- so you could choose a wizardly-looking character but have them use the Pit-Fighter class- and the way your character's skills interact with the abilities of your chosen class makes for some interesting meta!

Anyway, this was game two, and involved the intrepid band of heroes crossing a series of bridges in search of artefacts before making their escape. MD is fully-cooperative, with the players competing against the game's card-driven AI system. Mobs of minions spawn as you progress and break down doors into new rooms in search of loot, and the occasional Roaming Monster makes an appearance to kick your teeth in just as you start getting confident- all very familiar stuff, but it is done very well and with great style- love 'em or hate 'em, CMON know how to make a lavish game! The minis are lovely and cry out for a splash of colour, but I doubt my buddy will ever get around to painting them, unfortunately...

*The start of the quest... (the gaming mat we laid the tiles out on is the 'Frostgrave' design by Deep-Cut Studios)

 



It ended in a victory for the forces of good (by the skin of our teeth!), and Siegfried now has some decent gear and skills to take to the next mission- which looks to be featuring Shelob's understudy...

Expect a report on how that goes, plus a bit more about how MD plays, in the near future!