Battles, Hills, and Hotness
Visit Your Move Games at www.YourMoveGames.com
Another award winner we caught up with at Origins 2008 was Chad Ellis of Your Move Games. Your Move Games captured the Best Miniatures of 2008 Spewgie for their game Battleground. For the uninformed, Battleground is an update to the whole concepts of miniatures combat.
For those of us who love miniatures but really have trouble justifying the $9,023,423 cost to put together an army, Battleground is right up you alley. Why? Dear God, has no one read our Origins 2007 interview? Fine, we’ll recap.
Battleground is a miniatures game that costs $15 for a starter army with enough units for two people to play. That’s right, $15. For another $15 you can get the reinforcements pack, thus completing the set for whatever army you have. Fifteen dollars? Are we on crack?
Yes and no.
Battlegrounds takes the concept of miniatures and flattens it onto a standard card. Now, if you prefer to assemble and paint and build and transport and yell and scream at your kids when they decide your miniature collection is the perfect thing to use to test out the physics of a bowling ball on an incline, then you will not enjoy battleground.
If, however, you like to actually play a game of miniatures then Battlegrounds can fit the bill and save you just a tiny bit of cash. How? Dude, you can play a game for $15. You what to add more options, add $15. It’s really that simple, and cheap, and easy.
The current lineup of Battleground is:
- Men of Hawkshold
- Elves of Ravenwood
- Undead Army
- Orc Army
- Dwarves of Rungard
- Omenzi Tribesmen
- Lizardmen
- High Elves
- Monsters and Mercenaries (this set includes dragons and rules for flight in the reinforcements pack!)
With several more on the books including historical decks (including the Second Punic War - Fall 2008) that will be compatible with the whole system.
There’s a reason this game won the 2008 Spewgie for Best Miniatures and it’s not merely because it’s cheap to play, it’s also fun and challenging to play and everything you need to play is right in the damn box. If you’ve not checked them out yet, you really should drop $15 and give it a shot. If you don't, don't blame us when you are ostracized by the gamer community for failing to keep up.
Hey, we tried to warn you.
There are a limited amount of accessories as well, including a Terrain pack (highly recommended by us) and a scenario pack. Examples of each can be reviewed, and printed out, on the Your Move Games site. If it’s not apparent, yet, that these folks are gamers creating games for gamers then one of us has an issue.
Switching gears a bit we’ll talk, briefly, about Hill 218, the newest game from Your Move Games. It’s a two (2) player strategy card game that plays, easily, in under 30 minutes. We’ve tested this though around 10 different games this weekend.
The rules are concise, clear, and easy to understand. The premise is simple; you must dominate a piece of real estate through capturing your enemies HQ. To do this you play cards that attack only when played but can support attacks as long as they are alive and as long as their support channels can be directed towards the intended target.
There are supply lines to consider and instant kill cards, and paratroopers who ignore supply lines in their attack or support and even two (2) air-strikes that can be called in at any time in place of one (1) of your two (2) actions per turn.
That’s a quick overview and you’ll be seeing an in depth review of the game because we have had a blast playing it and will give you a turn-by-turn description of a game that will either put you to sleep or cause you to rush to your local hobby store and ask them to load you up with Hill 218 from Your Move Games.
You can also test it out via an on-line Hill 218 game, free. That’s $0 to people who are bad at Math and English.
Now, a few end notes to wrap up:
- The folks at Your Move Games are great to work with
- The terrain pack sold out a scheduled two (2) year print run in 7.5 months
- Their graphic designer, Kale, is, we are told a certified rock star and, we quote: “Hot.”
If you’ve not played a Your Move Games product as of yet, you have only yourself to blame, so crack the wallet and pick up a game and start having some fun dammit!
Now would be a good time.