Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Morbid Adventures Review




Well, I got my copy of Morbid Adventures on Saturday and have had a few days to review the book.

First off, the book itself is made from high quality paper and spiral bound just like the rule book not like the type binding (comic book style) that you would find in Shocking Tales. By far one of the best quality books produced in the hobby industry.

The artwork is of better quality than the books prior with the standard old style photos done along with fantastic artwork that Uncle Mike should post up as screensavers! I would put the more tame ones on my PC at work and at home, well anything goes! Oh, Bob Murch did the cover at and it is amazing…

The revised Basic Scenario table has been a long time in the making since I started into the game as I was worried that the game would get “boring” like Necromunda and Mordheim with limited scenarios and you would have to home brew your own or pray the company releases new ones which is always the best option. The issue is as new ones come available you have to update the charts as well to keep up with the times. Uncle Mike and company did just that!

Variants to your old favorite scenarios puts a nice twist on the game including changing the table size, limiting table edges, the lurker has to complete the objective among great twists and turns that makes each game different even if you are playing the same scenario.

6 new spells from the Necronomicon! Powerful, hard to acquire without achieving quests and could backfire on your team if you continue using them over the long term without removing black marks earned from casting spells.

There are also 23 quests including the 12 new ones covering 1, 2 and 3 Map Piece Quests that you can play. Add that to the 7 basic scenarios and you have 30 possible scenarios to play now and this does not include any variants you use to add twists to your game. What else is nice is in the back there is a handy reference guide telling you the page of each scenario.

The combined Lurker and Weapons table are also very handy to me as I found myself flipping back and forth in my Shocking Tales books that I just acquired. This helps make game play easy. I do hope they put these as printable PDF on the website as I would love to print them and laminate them for easy reference.

Also, don’t be fooled when it says Lurker reference Guide, you get everything in one place to be able to play these fiends that once just haunted the pdfs and pages of Shocking Tales magazines that are out of print. If you want to add more bad guys to your pool and don’t have the Shocking Tales books, this is a must alone.

The solo and multi-player guides are good but may perhaps be the only thing in the book that could have used a little more love. The rules or rather guidelines provided are just that to allow you to flex a game so you can play a game by yourself to try out something or just short on players (I do recommend you do this at home as you would get weird looks in public playing a miniature game against yourself) or the multi-player version that could be great oppertunity for demo games or endings to a campaign with a gaming group of friends.

I found myself in a quandary when I played my solo game and after deploying I was spread out near both short board edges. So, I decided to stick to the one that had one Threshold model on that edge that would force me to activate just him unless I got my character with command near him to activate him along with the others. As it was stated in the rules you have to flex a few things to make it work in your favor. I do think deployment should be more than 5” as that means you could setup right within base to base charge range using a single action or after you crack off a shot at a target. A bit powerful if you ask me if the Lurker has nasty hand to hand, plus if you charge it seems they would not be able to use the Alert rule.

Overall, this book is a must for a Strange Aeons fan to expand their gaming options by adding lurkers to the pool, having a collected weapons list and several new scenarios can make for hours of gaming fun with friends. A recommended buy!

*psssst* Mike, you should bundle this together with Strange Aeons book into a deal now that the Shocking Tales are out of print.



1 comment: