Wars Across the World: Spain 1936

by

Strategiae

Avalon Digital

 I had reviewed the base game and its scenarios (link will be at the bottom), and I was very impressed with some things about the game. This is the one game where you can play battles from ancient times to nowadays. Scenario designing across such a huge swath of time is a pretty huge undertaking. In games like these, we are used to some scenarios being great whereas some are not so. It is so much in the hands of the designer of the scenario. The one thing that I was not really impressed with in the game was the AI on several of the scenarios I played. I had been assured after the review that work was continually being made on the AI. So I was asked if I wanted to review the scenario Spain 1936. Instead of just a battle, this will be the entire Spanish Civil War. So, if the AI was going to stumble, this was a perfect scenario to test it on. Let us see how much, if any, it has improved and how good WAW does on a large war scenario.

 A quick synopsis of the war is that the Nationalists (Fascist) are fighting the Republicans (Communist, Republicans, and Anarchists etc.). Neither side has a real government at the start and they are both starting from scratch. Both sides do have parts of the Spanish Army, but the Nationalists have a leg up on the Republicans because of Franco's Spanish Moroccan veterans. These will be flown in from Spanish Morocco by JU 52s (Auntie Jus or Iron Annies). Speaking of which, the Spanish Civil War was used as the test bed of almost everything military in World War II. The Nationalists had the support of both Mussolini and Hitler, hence the JU 52s. The Republicans were supplied mostly by the Soviet Union, although they did get recruits from around the globe, along with some very well known authors. Enough of the history, let us go back to the game.

 As I had mentioned, there is a bit of anarchy on both sides in the beginning. The Country is split up into chunks of territory belonging to both sides. Playing as either side, you have to decide which areas you definitely want to keep control of and which you can let go. You are not going to be able to keep it all. Playing as the Republicans, you have to keep the coast so that you can get your supplies from the Soviets. I forgot to mention that the Spanish navy is also split between the two sides. So there is a naval component to the game.

 The game is turn based with area control and movement. It is not a card driven game, but it is augmented by cards that each player has. Some of them can be real game changers, and others just increase odds in battle or movement or some of your forces. The game is not just an Axis and Allies clone and is much deeper than it would seem at first. The rulebook is 116 pages long, so that should give you some idea. The scenarios do not seem 'cookie cutter' in that a tank is just an elephant in the 20th century battles etc. Play is fast and the somewhat small amount of forces (compared to a monster game) enables you to play maybe two scenarios in a gaming session. The price of most of the scenarios is $2.99, with a few larger ones being $4.99. Spain 1936 is the most expensive at $7.99. So you can see a little will go a long way. I was remiss in my first review and did not mention a free scenario about Innsmouth in 1928. Being an alumnus of Miskatonic University, I don't know how I missed it.

 Call me impressed, the game's AI seems to have come a long way, or perhaps just a ton of work was put into this scenario. The AI seems to be much more aware of itself and also of your moves. When I played before, in some scenarios it seemed that the AI was totally oblivious to your moves and its imminent danger. I will be honest and say I played mostly as the Republicans and not very much as the Nationalists. The Republicans are really the underdogs here and I almost always play the underdogs in games. So the scenario is by far the best I have played. I will need to revisit the ones I played earlier and see how much improved they are. There has also been made available a free download of a scenario editor that comes with some preset battles in it. You can now change what you want, and even create your own if you are so inclined. Thank you Strategiae and Avalon Digital for letting me review this very good add on to your game.

My review of Wars Across the World:
https://www.awargamersneedfulthings.co.uk/2019/11/wars-across-world-by-sas-strategiae.html

Robert

BATTLES OF THE BLACK CAVALRY

HILL262 - CHAMBOIS

from

STRATEGEMATA

My experience up to now of this small Polish war games company has been of their Art of War in C19th through reviewing Battles of the Bloody Steppes covering three battles of the Crimean War.  So, I was very pleased to be given this opportunity to explore their series Great Battles of Small Units.

This is the fourth game in the series and I must confess that I hadn't paid too much attention previously because of the relatively obscure nature of the battles covered.  Battles of the Black Cavalry had already involved the earliest days of September 1939, but this second game to feature the Black Cavalry transports us forward to August 1944 and provides four scenarios set in the actions of the Allies to close the Falaise Gap.

As with other Strategemata games the production values don't match the quality of the major publishing companies.  The single, glossy paper map is quite thin, but printed on both sides.  Its size is approximately standard folio.  The counters [of which there are a good few] are very thin and small.  They sit well in the good size of hex, but the very small numbers printed on them, especially Gun/Armour factors and unit designations can be a trial to read.

Their flimsiness also makes picking them up or adding and removing markers delicate and at times frustrating work.  Play aids too, such as the scenario cards and terrain chart, are on barely more than glossy paper.  

Player aid for one of the two introductory scenarios

Finally, the rule book too is fairly light weight with a mere 8 pages of which six cover the rules and the final two contain examples of key rules.  So initial impressions of the physical side of the contents left me with some reservations.

However, reading the rules and playing the scenarios creates a very much more positive impression.   First of all the rules introduce a system containing a number of very interesting concepts.  The first and perhaps most important is the use of a deck of ordinary playing cards [which perfectly acceptably you will have to provide for yourself] to regulate and introduce a mixture of control and randomness into the game.  This is an element not unfamiliar from some miniatures rules and systems.  [An excellent instance being To The Strongest - a superb set for conducting Ancient warfare!] However, I haven't previously encountered this in board wargaming.  Here all court cards count as 1 pt, while all other cards have their face value.

From the outset, these cards govern everything, including who will have the Initiative and play the turn.  This latter rule stands out for me as a leading innovation and one I have certainly never met with before.  There are four Initiative markers, one for each of the four suits in a pack of cards: Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades.  On one side of the marker is a flag to denote the German player, on the other a flag for the Allied player.

Illustration of the Initiative markers and accompanying rules

A pre-game card draw will determine which suits will determine each side's potential starting Initiative.  From then on, each Turn begins with a card being drawn, the suit determines the Initiative player and the Initiative marker for that suit is turned over to the opponent's side.  Thus a rhythm is established that overall evens out, but can throw up surprises and causes each player to focus very carefully on what he/she needs to do when they have got the Initiative.

What is even more novel is that only the player with the Initiative gets to directly activate their units with a choice of actions from Movement/Improving a Position/Fire and Rally.  However, and this is the third original idea, the non-Initiative player's units have a limited reaction ability.  Each unit can either move away one hex when an enemy unit comes adjacent or, at the point when an enemy comes into range and line of sight, can"roll" [i.e. draw a card] to see how many reaction pts the unit gets.  This will allow the unit from 1 to 3 Defensive Fire opportunities. 

This sets up a highly interactive system that benefits defenders well dug-in on good defensive terrain, especially when the Initiative player has to cross open ground.  It also creates a fairly fast flowing pace to each turn, with the opportunity for reaction, but without an overcomplex set of rules and conditions. .

What I like even more about the use of cards instead of dice is that each player starts a Scenario with a a limited hand of cards, with rare Random Event opportunities to refill or exchange some of those cards. In a variety of cases, a player will have the opportunity to play a card rather than randomly draw one.  

Nowhere can this be more crucial than when you have the Initiative, as your first decision is always how many formations you are going to activate.  To activate a single formation is free  and guaranteed.  To activate more than one formation, then each formation costs 2pts and each support weapon costs 1 pt unless it is stacked with a unit from its formation, an Artillery strike costs 2 pts and an Air strike similarly costs 2 pts.  You must first announce what you are attempting to activate.  Obviously then you can use one of your precious cards in your hand to guarantee success, but if you choose to risk a random card draw and don't pull a card that will pay all your costs, then you forfeit all activation!  

Lots of tense moments here, especially if you have a lot of nice court cards in your hand which count as 1 pt - and remember you can only ever play one card.  So, perhaps you'll be saving those high point cards for activation purposes in crucial turns, but they're equally useful in Fire and Close Combat.  

Fire is very straightforward with each unit firing separately.  It involves simply the play or draw of a single card plus double the unit's firepower compared with the defending unit's morale added to its terrain cover.  If the Attacker scores higher, the Defending unit is disorganised and, if twice the Defender's score, then the unit takes a step loss as well.  Gun/Armour factors add a few more twists too,  though their main problem lies in the minute size of the print on the counters!

Close Combat involves a more complex combination of cards, drawn randomly/played from hand, both face down and face up.  This takes a little thoughtful reading, but help is at hand as a substantial amount of the two pages of examples is devoted to a very clear sequence illustrating these particular rules.

By now, you're probably thinking that the many cards in a deck that are only worth one point serve mainly to clutter your hand or are lurking to be drawn randomly just when you don't want them.  Well. at times it does seem just like that, but be assured they can and do play their part.  When you need to remove a disorganised marker by rallying, a score lower than your morale is required - what better time then to play a 1 pt card.

But wait, you'd just had one of those rare random event chances to discard some cards and all those 1 pt cards had been traded in.  Such is the agony and ecstasy of decisions in this game.

Random Events linked to certain cards

Considering that all this, plus chrome such as random events,  mines and destroying objects as well as Air & Artillery strikes is covered in just six pages is a major achievement, especially counting the degree of innovation I've outlined.  You'll need to read the rules carefully as they are close packed and occasionally, in the early stages of learning and playing the game, I was left thinking that's what I've got to do, but where exactly did I read it.

However, the scenarios provide a very good range that help greatly in getting a feel for the rules.  They start with two very short scenarios that introduce basic rules and can be played in about an hour.  Despite their brevity they not only help to embed the rules, but are genuinely fun to play and mirror the situations that you'll meet in the two major scenarios:  namely, taking or holding an objective and getting units across and off map to win. 

Here you see one of the large scenarios and one of my favourites.  Note "large" is a relative term as it can still be played in about 3 hrs.  What you get is a small Polish force defending a hill, but needing to move some of that force to block the advance path of the German units that will be trying to cross the map from south west to north east and exit the map.

Here's the map itself with the hill to the north and the crucial narrow spur of the hill running down the length of the map.  The next image shows the very short, but rewarding small scenario that plays out on part of that map, as a mixed American/Polish force seeks to thwart the exit of a ragtag group of German stragglers.

The well grouped Allies from only two formations are easy to activate, while the strung out German forces from several formations and with unstacked support weapons demand more careful handling.

So, all in all, this is an innovative and accessible system backed by scenarios that play well, but the presentation would be greatly enhanced above all by a physical upgrade to the counters.  That said, Last Vikings, the next Strategemata game that I shall be reviewing at a later date, does exactly that with some gorgeous counters.

As always, a big thank you to Strategemata for kindly providing the review copy.

Wing Leader Eagles 1943-1945

Wing leader Expansion Nr 2

by

GMT Games

 First things first, this is an expansion for Wing Leader Supremacy; it is not a stand alone product. I must confess that I am a late convert to airwar boardgames. I never played Luftwaffe or any other of the tried and true greats. I do remember playing a rather simple game called Dogfight when I was a kid, but that was it. I am, however, a certified airwar simulation and plane nut. I must own almost every computer game involving planes ever produced. That, along with reading every thing I can get my hands on about airwar and planes, you can see I am no neophyte to the genre. I think I had an innate belief that a 2D representation of planes in combat would not be able to convey flight in anyway close to reality. That is until I bought Wing leader Supremacy. I was incredibly surprised at how the game played and showed air combat. So, I am late to the party, but I am fully on board with the concept now. 

 This is what you get with this add on:

1 x Campaign rules and scenario book
1 x 11 x 17” campaign map
1 x countersheet
3 x sheets of Aircraft Data Cards

1 x Campaign player aid sheet

 Here are some of my favorite planes from the new mix:

Ki-100-Ia - This was KI-61-II airframe matched with a radial engine. This adhoc measure was a very good fighter.
Ki-44-IIa Shoki (Tojo) This was designed as a fast bomber interceptor. The Ki-44-IIb carried 40mm cannon.
Ki-45-KAIa Toryu (Nick) Twin engine fighter Toryu  means 'Dragon Slayer'.
P-47N Thunderbolt One of the fastest piston engine fighters.
Me 163B-1 Komet Only rocket engine aircraft to see action.
Hs 129B-2 Heavily armored attack aircraft. Had an armored 'bathtub' around the pilot like attack aircraft use presently.
He 177A-5 Greif Germany's only operational heavy bomber. It had an unusual arrangement of two engines running one propeller.
La-7 Lavockin bureau late war fighter. It was a match for most German planes at low altitude.

 So beyond the new planes, you also get twenty-two scenarios to try them out in, from protecting Japanese factories from the 'duck whales' (Japanese code for B-29s), to ground attacking in the Kuban. The expansion also comes with three Swedish planes. These were supposed to be used in an operation on May 18th 1945. Scenario E10 has German regular fighters and two different 'wunderwaffen' planes. This would be the last sortie of the Me 163 Komets, and added to the mix are some Me 262s. Among the twenty-two scenarios you will find ground pounding from several countries, to Kamikaze attacks against British Carriers. From the air above Tokyo to the plains of Russia, they are spread around the globe. You will get to fly HE 177s along with HS 129Bs for the Germans. The Kamikaze scenario has KI-48-IIa's attacking the carriers and DDs. The scenario is meant to be played solitaire by the British Player. He has Seafires, Hellcats, and Corsairs to try and stop them. One of my favorite scenarios is to go hunting as the Germans in a JU 87G-1; this was the first model I ever built.

 The next part of this add-on is the biggest. This is a full campaign called 'Fortress Rabaul'. The campaign takes place in late 1943 just before and after Bougainville was invaded. Rabaul was considered the 'Gibraltar' of the Japanese Empire. By this time there were few capitol ships in its harbor, but still tons of smaller warships and merchant ones. The rules for the Rabaul campaign take up the first thirteen pages of the rulebook.

 The Allied Player is the attacker and he decides if he will raid, and if he does, what to attack. He can choose to attack either the airfields or the harbor. This of course depends on the weather and if an actual raid can occur at this moment. The American Player starts the ball rolling by declaring a raid. He must decide if he is attacking the port or the airfields. Once he has chosen that, he must decide if he is using medium or heavy bombers. The American Player can choose to have fighter escorts or not on this raid. If the weather is listed as 'poor', then he rolls a die against the 'Poor Weather Table' to see if the raid is aborted, or the fighters abort. The Japanese Player then has to determine if he is going to sortie against the raid. The Japanese Player then sets up the sun marker and cloud cover by die rolls (this follows the sequence that is used for playing all of the separate scenarios also). The Japanese Player then sets up his FLAK (two heavy and one light) on the map. If it is a port raid after November 1st he also sets up two heavy cruiser units. The campaign has some special scenario rules that show the various usage of different aircraft by that time in the war. B-25s can either normally bomb, or skip bomb. They can also carry parafrag bombs. Some B-25s were also equipped as heavily armed strafing planes. The heavy bombers are B-24Ds. The aircraft used in the campaign are as follows:

Japanese - A6M5
American - P-38, B-25, B-24

 It would be nice, and you can make it a house rule, to be able to use other planes that were available at the time. The campaign game lasts a total of twelve turns. These each represent a single day. When the weather allows, the American Player can raid Rabaul. This is approximately a third to a half of those twelve days. The campaign is won by the ability to suppress, or not, the Japanese airfields and fleet. The campaign starts on October 24th. The campaign victory or loss is situated around the date of November 1st. This is the date of the Bougainville invasion. If the Japanese airfields are undamaged or only slightly damaged by that date, the American Player loses a CVP (Campaign Victory Point). On that date, if the Japanese cruisers are undamaged or only slightly damaged the American Player loses 1 CVP for each cruiser. The American Player must amass seven CVP to win. A total of five or six is a draw, below that it is a Japanese victory.

 To me, the campaign game add on is just the icing on the cake. The new planes and scenarios are the main course. I do have to point out one fact. 'Eagles' is listed as an add-on for Wing Leader Supremacy, however, four of the scenarios do require you to have Wing Leader Victories 1940-1942. To compensate for that I will say that there is a good sized online presence for the games, and you can download a good number of other scenarios. I will put the link to them below. All in all, a great add-on to an excellent game. Thank you GMT Games for letting me review it. This is a 'Damn Fine!' production. I am not lying, it says it on the back of the rulebook.

Wing leader Supremacy 1943-1945 link:
https://www.gmtgames.com/p-549-wing-leader-supremacy-1943-1945.aspx

Wing Leader Eagles 1943-1945 link:
https://www.gmtgames.com/p-679-wing-leader-eagles.aspx

Wing Leader Victories 1940-1942 link:
https://www.gmtgames.com/p-673-wing-leader-victories-1940-1942-2nd-ed.aspx

Wing Leader Blitz 1939-1942 link:
https://www.gmtgames.com/p-612-wing-leader-blitz.aspx

This is at the Printers, Win Leader Origins 1936-1942 link:
https://www.gmtgames.com/p-778-wing-leader-origins-1936-42.aspx

Link to tons of planes and scenarios and rules version 2.2 by the designer:
www.airbattle.co.uk/w_downloads.html

Robert

Freeman's Farm 1777

by

Worthington Publishing

 

  This is a game about the battle that sealed the fate of Britain in the American Revolution. After this battle, Burgoyne's surrender was pretty much a done deal. There would be more fighting for sure, but this battle was his last gasp to break through to Albany. The plan to attack from Canada was not a bad one, it would just need much more resources than was allotted to it. For some unknown reason, the people who should have known that dragging an army across this wilderness was next to impossible were unable to sway 'Gentleman Johnny'. The fact that Burgoyne not only made it this far and had taken Fort Ticonderoga is only a tribute to the British and German soldiers' ability to deal with adversity. Unfortunately for Burgoyne, his slow progress allowed the Patriots to build a large army, indeed larger than his own. This battle is also the high point in Benedict Arnold's career as a Patriot (though there seems to be a large rift between historians on Arnold's actual whereabouts during the battle). If not for his insubordination to 'Granny' Gates, the battle could have been lost. So we are placed in the unenviable situation of either winning the Revolution, or breaking through a larger Patriot army, and cutting New England off from the other states. So let us see what the designer and Worthington Publishing has given us to recreate this titanic battle. This is part of the description of the game:

"An innovative card driven board game on the Battle of Freeman's Farm.  1 - 2 players.  Playable in 1 hour.
Freeman's Farm: 1777 is the first game in our new Battle Formations game series. These games are a new game system  centered around battle formations and have been designed for solitaire and two players .  In solitaire mode players can play as either the American or the British against the solitaire player game engine.   
Players decide which formations to activate and how far to push it once it begins attacking. Push it just enough and they can win the day.  Push it too much and failing a morale test will break it." 

 This is what comes with the game:

• Large Mounted Game Board
• American and British Formation Cards 
• American and British Activation Cards
• Tactic Cards
• Rules
• Player Aid Cards
• Game Markers
• American Blue Wooden Formation Markers
• British Red Wooden Formation Markers
• Hessian Green Wooden Formation Markers
• 8 Dice

 The components are all very well done, and very easy to read. As you can see, the map looks almost like a period piece or one from a book about the battle. The first thing that should catch your eye is the absence of hexes or areas for movement. The Battle Formation Games have set places where you or your opponent can move his forces. These are all places of the battlefield where action did actually take place. The rulebook is only twelve pages long and the rules themselves take up less than nine of them. The last pages are a Historical Summary and Designer Notes. There are two Player Aid Cards; one side is for a two-player game, and the other is for playing solitaire. It is nice to see so many publishers and designers adding solo play to their games. The Formation Cards are large and simple to understand. The units for each player are just wooden rectangles and cubes, but they fit very well with the look and feel of the game. The Activation and Tactics Cards are simple looking, but are extremely easy to read for even the most myopic of us grognards.  The components easily pass muster. Now onto game play.

This is the sequence of play:

 Each Player's Turn has the Same Phases:

1. Play Activation Card

   1.A Option  - Countermand Activation with General

2. Pay Activation Cost

3. Optional: Play Tactics Cards

4. If Combat is Selected as a Command, Roll Combat Dice

   4.A Optional: Maintain Momentum

5. Apply Results

6. Optional: Purchase Tactics Cards

7. Draw Activation Card

 The British Player takes the first turn in a round.

Then the American Player takes their turn in a round.

The British Player then begins the second turn.

 Play continues until all Activation cards have been played, ending the game.

 In the Designer Notes, the designer states that what he felt most missing in games was the struggle of generals with keeping command and control of their own forces. He then goes on to state the pedigree of the game, and how he developed a few concepts from many different games to design it. The other two large concepts in the game are morale and momentum. Every time you activate a formation, you must lower its morale by one, or remove a formation marker (wooden rectangle representing your troops). You can use a General Card to countermand the activation, and some Tactics Cards have effects that forego the penalty to morale. Once a formation gets to a morale of five or lower, it incurs a morale test. This is done by rolling a six sided die and comparing it to the morale of the formation. A higher number than the formations morale means that a formation is 'broken'.  Momentum Cubes for each formation are gained by playing the Activation Cards for that formation. Each card has a number of momentum cubes that the player receives (from one to three). One nice touch is that if the player receives the same amount of Momentum Cubes on three Activation Cards in a row, he receives an extra two Momentum Cubes. Momentum Cubes can be used for rerolls, or to purchase Tactic Cards. Skirmishers, which were a large part of the battle, can be used by both sides.  You can download and check out the rules yourself via a link I will post at the end of the review.

 

  The rules seem simple at a glance, but are very nuanced. The designer has succeeded in creating a game where the flow of battle is as changing as a see-saw. I believe he has captured the sword of Damocles that is hanging over every general's head. Do you push your formations one more time and try for victory, only to have the formation collapse in front of your eyes? You will not win the game by 'playing it safe'. That will only allow your opponent to pick and choose exactly what he wants to do. Playing as the British, this is it; you really have this one chance to breakthrough the Americans. Historically, the American Player just needs to pull out a tie to win strategically. The games actual victory conditions show this. The game lasts up to fifteen rounds (fifteen activations by each side). If the British Player has not won by then, it is an American victory. The game ends automatically if either side breaks or destroys  three or more enemy formations. As I have mentioned before, we are now in the 'real Golden Age' of wargaming (gaming in general, but Euro games, eww!). The earlier golden age had more games sold, but nowhere near the innovation that designers are showing us now.   The added touch of an actual fully functioning solitaire mode is a godsend. It is possible to actually play almost every game solo, but it is a very good thing that more companies are adding actual solo forms of play. Thank you very much Worthington Publishing for letting me review this very innovative and great game. It does help that this is one of my favorite battles, and the one that I have spent the most time wandering around the actual ground it was fought on.

 I found this treat going through discussions about the game. If you like what you have read so far, you will really like this. It seems that Worthington Publishing is going to Kickstarter a game about Chancellorsville. It will have most of the same rules, but will also have some new neat twists, such as hidden movement. Here is the link to the preview page:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1040417273/2785622?ref=bggforums&token=b117acc9
 Freeman's Farm 1777 link:

https://www.worthingtonpublishing.com/collection/freemans-farm-1777

Rules:

https://dochub.com/worthingtonpublishing/P9P6WbK/ff77-rules-pdf?dt=BssrRM57TQk9Rsw81gkw

Robert

It's been said that variety is the spice of life. If that's true, then Tales of Maj'Eyal (ToME) might be one the spiciest dishes ever served up. A roguelike that has been around since 2012, but continues to get significant updates and expansions on a regular basis. Like other roguelikes, ToME involves creating a character and then attempting to beat the game. As a feature of the genre, you can expect to fail much more often than you win. Every run is a bit different, though the overall structure remains the same, leading to endless replayability.  Each run of the game begins, of course, with a selection of your character's race and class from an impressively large menu of options. Assuming you have all the DLC, which I'll go ahead and say now you should get if you like this game at all, you will have 16 races and 35 classes to combine as you please.

Interestingly, when you first fire up the game, you'll only have a handful of options to choose from, and must unlock the rest. As you might imagine, the starting choices will be familiar: various types of humans, elves, and halflings for races, and several flavors of warrior, rogue, and mage for the class options. After a few runs at the game, you'll unlock some more choices, each more exotic than the last. It's practically a spoiler to mention what they are here, but suffice to say that they are wildly different from what you start with. Manipulating time and space, harnessing demonic forces, becoming a champion of the light or a bringer of darkness, there's something for everyone here. 

Once you choose a race and class, you'll get a chance to drop a few points into your skills. Every class has more skill tracks than you'll know what to do with. Even within one of those 35 classes, you'll still be looking at building a unique character each time you play. Each track has four skills within it, which are only unlocked by investing points in the earlier skills and investing in the relevant stat (Strength, Dexterity, etc.) and each skill can be upgraded multiple times, increasing effectiveness with each point. Of course, you won't have enough points to get everything, and so you'll have to focus on what you really need. 

ToME gives you so many options, that even if you play the same class several times, you'll want to play around with different builds. There are entire skill categories that you might ignore or invest heavily in, depending on what kind of character you are building. You can also gain new skills from items and quests, allowing you to do things normally impossible for your class, and perhaps opening up a powerful new strategy. After you've gained a few levels and conquered some dungeons, your skill bar will be filled out with tons of options, so many that it can be a bit overwhelming. Fortunately, unlike many other roguelikes, ToME actually has a user friendly UI that makes life easier. For one, you can play the entire game with just the mouse if you want to, no need to memorize a dozen hotkeys just to navigate the menus. Rather, ToME works much like any standard turn based RPG, and even goes a step further by giving you options to automate some of your skills. For example, you can set some of your attack moves to always fire when an enemy is next to you, going off every time its cool down timer ends.  Just like that, you can save yourself hundreds of clicks and button presses.

Like most roguelikes, ToME is light on story and you won't be diving into any deep dialogue trees with the NPC's, but there is a surprising amount of lore to discover throughout the world. Hints and rumors will lead you to secret locations which often lead to the unlocking of a new class or race. In all of the dungeons you will find trails of notes that tell a story, usually in the form of a diary of some adventurer who came before you. These are a clever way of adding to the history of that location, and often give you a heads-up about the dangers you will soon face. And you will face danger after danger. Giant sand worms burrowing in and out of the ground, skeletal mages shooting lightning, massive trolls that can knock you across the screen, and endless other horrors. Unlike most other roguelikes, ToME has a variety of difficulty settings that can take the edge off a sudden death. You can play one-life hardcore permadeath if you like, but you can also play a more forgiving mode where you have a limited number of lives, giving you the chance to respawn outside a dungeon that you aren't ready for, or jump right back in the fight if you think you can win. 

Another neat thing that ToME does is allow you to connect with other players, even though the game is single-player. You can choose to create an account, which tracks all of your runs on the official website, and also puts you online when you play. This lets you see when other players earn achievements (there are hundreds) and when they get killed, sometimes at embarrassingly low levels that give you a chuckle and and at high levels that will make you cringe at the loss of a good run. You can also chat with them as you go, asking for help in real time or congratulating someone else when you see they did something noteworthy.

If you are a veteran roguelike player or thinking about dipping your toes into the pool, or if you've never even heard of them but enjoy action RPG's or turn-based tactical games, you should give ToME a shot. The game can keep you occupied for potentially hundreds of hours, it can run on practically any computer, and you can even play the core game for free! The paid version unlocks a few extra options, and the DLC of course adds a lot of content, but more than anything, spending some money on the game rewards years of ongoing work by the developers.

ToME is available for free from the official website and can be purchased (for additional features and support of the devs) along with the DLC on Steam.

- Joe Beard