"Disappointed with Fantasy Flight and Mutant Chronicles..." Topic

I was really excited about these figs, preordered a bunch from the Warstore, Fantasy Flight appeared to be gearing up for the release with previews of the figs every week, and then the format changes. Okay fine, it's no longer a CMG, I can live with that. But the catch is the game is delayed further. All of sudden the previews stop, I found a schedule of releases on some other site, there are no images of the new boxsets anywhere. Needless to say, I have canceled my backorders and I am in wait and see mode. It seems to me they have really killed the momentum of this game with so many setbacks and so little information. How can such a high profile company mismanage a game so badly from the beginning? This is what they do right? Market and release games?

Have you been on TGN they seem to have updates about this game every week.

I've heard they've had all sorts of issues with production from China. The story goes that just before ORIGINS, the shipment was so badly damaged that they were only able to salvage a few minis to use for demos…they rest were a total loss…..

hmmm, problems with production from china. that sounds vaguely familiar…..

I don't much like the figs anyway

Thanks Craig, I think I've seen everything that's out there, there hasn't been any new information released in a while. I guess I'm used to Rackham who clearly shows the release schedule for AT-43 and Confrontation and what is going to be in each of the boxes. I can understand they have been doling out the information slowly to build excitement but at this point just show us what coming out and when it is really going to be available.

Why not just use the old metal figures? They're probably cheaper than the new stuff (and just as ugly).

Bad luck seems to follow this game in whatever form it comes out in.

Brian

The Dark Symmetry…………

Have you been to FFG's site lately? They started the previews back up several days ago, and there are images of the first six or so boxed sets.

I feel your pain. I have been waiting on this for, what, a year and a half? Numerous delays, not too bad when it's "months away", worse in the last few months, when the "any day now" promises have worn thin.

I, too, had placed an order through TWS, but they cancelled it and refunded me when the format changed. So I spent that money on something else, and now my would-be MC funds are going to DragonCon, where I may buy some (the "firm" release date, if it is to be trusted is just before the Con, and the Steve Jackson/Somebody Else booth stocked hot-off-the-presses FFG games last year). But they may not have them, or I may find sme thing I want more. Either way, I'm irritated, my interest is diminished, and my disposable income will be at low ebb for the next few months.

And FYI, I have loads of the old Warzone minis, and it is my favorite sc-fi world and system. I was just looking foreward to a different take on the world and game, handled well.

Fantasy Flight Games is notoriously bad at meeting their own release dates. Mutant Chronicles was originally announced in February or March of 2006 for release September of that year. It is now about 2 years behind schedule. Another delay comes as no surprise. I do wonder how much more time they have left on the license for the game.

Thanks Rabban, I somehow missed the images of the boxsets that are supposed be released at the end of August. We'll see….

It "think" the official release for product is next week, but don't know for sure.

I played my first game this week. I haven't been following this at all, came out of the blue to me, but I think the wait for this might have been worth it.

It would probably be easier for me to list the things I didn't like about this game, than to list all the things I like about it….but frankly, I'm not sure what I don't alike about it. The map, maybe. It's a nice map, don't get me wrong, but flat. I love playing on 3-D terrain. That's not the map's fault. As maps go, these are good….maybe too many walls……

Anyway. The short review: Mutant Chronicles is fantastically fun to play, easy to learn, beautiful to look at, and going to be hard to master!

For a long, rambling fan-fest, see below:

Let me begin my school-girl gush by attempting to formulate my thoughts into a semi-coherent assemblage of continuity.

Figures

Wow. Mega-wow. They are big. Even the ‘normals' are big. And the freak-mutants…they're even Bigger. KANkaKEE these are gy-normous figures. Monstrous. Big. Did I mention they are big?

I love ‘em. I love the fact that I'll be able to find dollhouse bits to create 3-D scenery to throw them against, not to mention 1:32/1:35 scale stuff will probably look just fine on the table with them, which means Tamiya sandbag and oil drum sets I've had for three decades will finally find a use.

The figs are soft plastic, which means they ain't gonna break on you for the most part. It also means conversions are going to be a piece of cake. I'm already thinking ahead to butchering some of these fellows to re-position hands, heads, gear, etc., to make they distinct from their neighbors of the same unit-type.

The paint jobs are not terrible on any of them and on the bigger pieces, they're down right good. With some quick touch up in the drybrushing and inking department, they'll easily be customized on paintjob, which will distinguish between figs and add variety, if so desired. I'm guessing one could easily prime these fellows, too, and start from scratch on the paint job with little trouble, if so inclined.*

Box Set

The starter comes with a ton of stuff for the price, packaged in a see-through box, so you can view the figs (awesome feature) and it's a sturdy package, reminiscent of FFG's DOOM box sets.

You get all the punch out stuff – command counters, wound counters, victory counters (points on the map you can fight for control of). You get all unit cards (even though all the figs aren't yet available) and a bunch of command cards. You get the special dice that make the game a bit unique and refreshing in terms of game play. You get a two-sided hex map, as well. All typical great quality stuff you're used to with FFG boardgames.

For me, for the price, this is very impressive. The fact that all the unit cards are there alone is a great boon, as it allows you to proxy figures in – from your own collection of whatever, to try out units before you decide to buy them. Love it.

Gameplay

I'll assume the rules as-read are known to folks here, since you can download the rules for free and read how they are supposed to work.

My good buddy, we'll call him Gunthyr, picked up a starter set and two supplemental packs – Kuarak the Cursed (sp?) and the Ice Golem. He grabbed up just about one of everything available for the most part, for his own collection, so on my first foray into The Zone, I put together a skirmish group from his figures.

I put together a group of Capitol Rangers. They work well together – giving each other movement bonuses, or enabling units to move after command cards are played, etc.

I did a straight up 3/3/3 set up to get a feel for the game, but one of the coolest elements of this game's mechanic is the customization of the options available to you: Take more troops, less command tokens; take more command cards, less troops, etc. Very ingenious and slightly maddening, as you fret over the manifold avenues to destruction (your opponent's, you hope).

But for my first fight, I went Gold-Silver-Bronze down the line with units, cards, tokens.

One thing that is very enjoyable about this game is the innovated mechanics. I like this command card/token set up. There's not a lot of resource management going on to slow the game down.

I like that, instead of abilities being assigned to a unit (though some do have special abilities, of course) there's the element of the unknown that the command cards bring to the table, that keeps you guessing about what your opponent has up his sleeve. One round you're bashing it out with a Ranger with fixed stats and the next turn you give him the ability to make three attacks, instead of one, and he's hammering your Kuarak the Cursed into oblivion. Sweet. (your actual Ranger vs. Kuarak encounter may vary).

I ended up losing the first skirmish by a tiny bit, but that was because we misinterpreted the rule regarding the Communications Station (we weren't playing for victory points, but we did use the victory tokens to spice up the game). Had I been able to use the free Gold Command Token granted by the ComStat (had we bothered to read the FAQ, that is), I'd have won most likely. Very close game, either way.

Who cares, though – it was big fun.

Others arrived and set up a bigger game 6/6/6 on a side for four players and winged a multi-player game. The Capital troops managed to drop both Kuarak the Cursed and his Ice Golem (who is wikked ahsum as the kids say), but ultimately fell to the might of Alakai the Cunning and the Technomutants (they never even really got the Immasculator into the mix….our troopers were, indeed, doomed).

Our biggest mistake in this game was not attempting to capture the reserves victory token. Not sure of the name of this token, but I believe if you hold it, you can bring defeated units back into play, which would have given us a chance to whittle the demons down.

I'm guessing there will be cries of lopsidedness early on regarding the might of the Algeroth versus the puny Captial forces…Let me tell you this: I know it can be done. The humans have to work for it, but it can be done.

I have to say, I really enjoyed this game and look forward to playing it again and again. There's a uniqueness to it that is functional, not frivolous. It's refreshing to not have a to-hit/to-wound/to-save dynamic in play. The way the dice work to set the range and the way the damage works – along with the way the cards and abilities can affect those outcomes – is pretty novel and fluid.

I like the cards' influence in the game – it takes away the all-knowing aspect of a set game piece. Sure, you know that a figure may have X life and Y dice, but your opponent has cards that might shift those values in ways you couldn't have predicted, which can turn the game around in one fell swoop. Very cool.

*Just as a matter the sake of argument or full disclosure or point of clarification: I've been in the gaming hobby as it relates to miniatures and wargaming since 1977 (Metagaming Melee with Heritage Lord of the Rings figures). I love the hobby and its many aspects. I love painting figures. I love constructing terrain. I love converting figures. I love playing the games. I love home ruling games. In 1994, I won first place at GenCon for a diorama I entered with a figure I sculpted. Why do you care? You probably don't (why would you?): I only mention it because as a life-long hobbyist I LOVE pre-painted figures in general (big fan of AT-43 & Confrontation: Age of Ragnorak), and really like these MC figures. I see all sorts of potential in customizing them, but think they're more than ready for table play.

Sure, there was a time in the past when the hobby end of the gaming hobby wasn't an issue. That was before a real job, family, life in general got more complex. I love that I can pop open MC and hit the ground running. It's friggin' awesome. The fact it works so well and looks so good is icing on the cake.

Sorry for being such a wind bag, but I'm actually pretty excited by this game.

link

Thanks for your input, KenKong. Maybe I will pick up some at DragonCon this weekend.

Thanks, Beast!

We're going to play again, tomorrow night, and we MIGHT try playing without hexes. The bases are 1 5/8" (I think) so we're thinking we round up to ranges of 2" and measure, so we can add 3-D terrain to our hearts content.

The nice thing about the range mechanic is you could "convert" it to any range increment you wanted and just do the math. Multiplying by 2 is easy enough, even I can do it!

We'll see.

Anyway, I hope to have a report of some sort on Friday.

We played a three-way game at skirmish level last night on fully 3-D terrain.

We rounded our Hex value to 2", just to keep it simple and rounded up to the nearest even number when measuring.

We gave a 2" distance between figures to serve as "adjacency" and allowed for cover against terrain obstacles when in actual base contact with the base of a terrain feature.

Like an utter bonehead, I neglected to capture any of this photographically, so I have nothing to show for this little endeavor, but my big mouth (fingers? Typeset? Font?…ahem….).

So, for instance, if a target measured 9" away, it became 10" away, which was equivalent to 5 hexes away.

It worked really well and the game was great fun.

I played Kuarak the Keeper and took a sliver Necromutant and a bronze Technomancer. I took Shadow Cloak, Soul Possession, and Demonic Aura (I think that was the names on the cards) to beef up Kuarak on a two-front battle. Once I got them into play these command cards gave Big K (4) life (bringing his total to 8!), allowed him to move without triggering guard actions, and gave him an extra action with each activation.

My opponents were Capital Rangers and Demons (Alakai, the Emasculator, and a Necromutant). I'm not sure what they all were packing, command card-wise. I do know that the Emasculator used the Beastial Speed card to great advantage and Alakai had a sword-enchaning card (GenCon promo?) that he never really needed to use.

The Capital Rangers used the Call In Coordinates card on my, to nuke my Necromutie from the Sniper Post, but, as we learned from the special ability of the Necro, sometimes they come back: the Necromutant comes back in his next lower form – Gold returns as Silver; silver returns as Bronze. Sweet. I'm going to get some more of those guys, for sure. Neat little sponges, they are.

Kuarak managed to kill the Emasculator, but once the Rangers took the sniper roost, and the fact that he towers over just about everything, even the large terrain I set out, he became a magnet for enemy abuse. He took out the sniper, but not before Alakai nailed him.

The game came down to a Capital Ranger leader and Alakai. The Ranger used the card that allows him to flee in a straight line as far away as he wants, grabbing cover in what turned out to be Deep Cover, and taking his guard shots at Alakai, who had to run across the board to catch up.

Didn't help. Alakai's armor kept bouncing hits until he closed in tight and slaughtered the Ranger.

All in all, it was a pretty evenly matched game and a lot of fun to play off the hex map, in and around "real" terrain. Can't wait to play it again!!!!

Thanks for the battle report, KK.

I picked up the starter and three boosters from the Steve Jackson/Adventure Games booth at DragonCon this weekend. I'd hoped to get in a game there, but ran out of time.

It sounds promising. I have touched up the minis a bit (and pretty much repainted the emasculator, he is my fave), and will get the map laminated tomorrow. I plan to break it in this weekend.

I bought the starter and all but one of the boosters (ran out of $). I like this game a lot. The minis are relaxing to paint compared to LotR figures. I'm almost finished the Gommorian Emasculator and he looks sweeeet!.

You can even play the game using any minis you want because the stat cards come with the starter set. I can't wait to see more.

My son and I are in the middle of our first 10/10/10 game. It's kind of chess-like. It's crucial to put together a working army, one that uses your resources to the fullest. A thinking person's game, really.