Fantasy Forces
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Reviewed by - The Grave Digger

Intro
~~~~~
Does  anyone remember playing tabletop battles?  You know, little painted
lead  armies  of elves and dwarves marching across fake landscapes to the
tune of rolling dice?

How  we  cheered  when the last Lich fell beneath the swords of the White
Knights, how we scattered in terror when the zombie dragon fell screaming
out  of  the  sun  (table  lamp)  and  ripped my poor dwarf champion to a
million  pieces,  and how everyone laughed when my mate went home because
he lost again!!

This  game  brings back memories very much like those I've mentioned.  It
tries  to recreate the tabletop battle games and in my opinion it does it
quite well.  It's very much like Lords Of Chaos, but less involved.

The Game
~~~~~~~~
It's  for  2-4  players.   Each  player  can  set  up  an army of various
characters ranging from simple soldiers to large red Demons from hell.

Each  player  can have up to 200 points in which to build his army.  Each
character that you choose will take up a few points, for instance, if you
wanted  a  Elf  Ranger  with  a  bow  in  your  army,  it  would cost you
(Elf=3)+(Bow=2)=5  points.   So  you could have an army of 40 Elf Rangers
all running around with bows in their hands.  Spell casters are available
as well with Wizards to Necromancers and the odd Healer there as well.

There  are  two types of scenarios available, Total Slaughter, which is a
kill  everything  in  sight  game or Standard Defender where an army must
capture the others War Standard by killing the character holding it.

The  playing  areas provided range from small to large with a few castles
thrown  in.   Due  to  the  nature  of  the terrain in the game areas the
characters  can only see things in line of sight so your never sure whats
round that next tree!

You can also edit the play areas to suit your gaming needs, anything from
tightly  packed to huge areas.  Also you can configure the terrain, rocks
trees  holes  in  the  ground, rotting graves etc...  so your never stuck
with the same old games.

The  game can also have time limit set up to 100 turns, the game will end
there even if no-one has died!

The Good/Bad Points
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Well  I love it!  It is one of the best games I've played in a long time.
There  is  a good balance of characters to choose from, and the games can
last for a long time if you creep around and try hit and run tactics.

The  ability  to edit the existing map areas or create your own in great,
you  can  have  a  rocky  mountain  pass,  a  heavily packed forest or an
abandoned graveyard filled to the brim with undead!

I  like having one army consisting of all Dwarves against an army of Dark
Elves and seeing who wins!

It  can  become very nail biting when you only have two archers defending
your  standard bearer, while the other player has swamp trolls closing in
fast from all angles!  This is only an early version and the docs say the
author is changing it to run in C so the next version should be better.

Although I do think it could do with a few enhancements.

First  it would be nice for a computer controlled army that way you don't
have  to  have  a  friend to play it with.  A few more weapons like broad
swords,  pikes,  shields  and the ability for a standard bearer to have a
weapon  would  help  as well.  Horses and other transport, like chariots,
dragons characters, Bigger playing areas and more terrain to add as well.

And what I would like is the ability to create a Champion character.

Apart  from  that  I  would  recommend this game to any fantasy gamer who
likes a good sword bashing!!!!!

Cheers....

The Grave Digger

This game is available on these boards:

Channel-X     0181 943 5187
The Graveyard 01708 452284

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An  offline version of this game is being tested on The Graveyard BBS, if
you  are  interested  and want to play against The Grave Digger and win a
reward for coming first then give my BBS a call on 01708 452284.

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