Saturday, September 21, 2013

Mantic Games: Mars Attacks Preview and Gameplay


Mantic Games: As you’ve all probably seen, we’re launching a new Kickstarter on the 4th October. This is for Mars Attacks, and marks our first foray into working with licenses. I’m designing and building the Kickstarter and last night we got chance to do some more playtesting ahead of filming the gameplay video. Here are my thoughts! Firstly, the basics. Mars Attacks is a tabletop skirmish game played on a gridded mat, with modular plastic scenery, Martians, US soldiers and civilian characters. It’s really quite simple: the mat means that unlike a lot of tabletop wargames there’s no need to use a tape measure for range or movement. Instead, in your turn your models can move up to 2 squares in any direction, or move one square and shoot. Simple!


Provided one of your models can “see” a target (determined by bending down for a model’s-eye-view of the battlefield!) they can shoot it. If any part of the target model – that’s the whole model including its base – is obscured by something, then the model counts as being in cover. If this isn’t the case and you can see the whole model, you get some bonus dice for your shooting roll. Players take it in turns to activate two of their models until the whole force has moved. And in a nutshell, that’s it! Or is it? Not on your nelly.


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