Arcane Legions Could Be a Game Changer
There will be dice.
Every ten years or so, a game comes along that changes everything. Magic essentially created the collectible gaming industry, while Mage Knight made miniature gaming accessible to the tabletop masses. Now, I’m trying to avoid hyperbole here, so I won’t say that Arcane Legions is that kind of a game. But it might be.
There are many hurdles any game has to clear to become a success in the gaming marketplace today. Bad economy, saturated market, production problems, lack of retailer support and a dozen other potential issues can cripple a game. But my quick demo of Arcane Legions at Origins last weekend revealed a large-scale miniature combat system so elegant and simple that I think it has a real shot. The game seemed to be generating a fair amount of interest in the exhibit hall, especially considering it’s a new game still in development (they had nothing to sell) from an unknown publisher (although former FASA and Wizkids! employees are involved, and the word on the streets is that Jordan Weisman himself had a hand in the design). I guess all that means I should just let the system speak for itself.
The idea behind this game is mass combat in a fictional ancient era. Roman, Egyptian and Chinese troops face each other on the battlefield using conventional and magical attacks. However, instead of using tons of individual figures to form armies, you use a plastic base as the basis for a unit. On that base is a series of holes where individual figures can be placed, building out the unit. Near each hole in the base is a symbol: either an attack die, a defense die, a movement chevron or a special ability. 
A given symbol only has an effect if a figure is currently in that hole. So if you have all your movement chevrons filled with figures, you’ll move faster but have to leave some attack and defense spaces empty. If you reposition the figures for an attack, they’ll be vulnerable to counterattack since some defense spaces will be empty.
You use one action out of an eight action turn to “reform” a unit. The result is an array of interesting, yet easy to grasp tactical choices. It also wonderfully simulates the control and behavior of large armies on a battlefield. If you’re in a movement formation, you can’t easily make attacks. An army on the attack isn’t taking careful defensive positions. Units also lose their strength as they take damage – as figures are removed due to attrition, you have fewer figures to fill the holes. Yet there’s no record-keeping required! All of a unit’s abilities are represented on the base itself, along with a single card that explains any special abilities a unit may have. For example, my Han Expert Archers could fire over friendly units without taking an attack penalty.
Combat is fast and simple. The attacker rolls a d6 per figure in an attack hole, the defender does the same for each figure in a defense position. Match highest to highest, and each “win” results in a figure being removed from the base. If an unequal number of dice are rolled (because one side has fewer figures in the applicable combat locations), all the null rolls are assumed to be 2. So it isn’t an auto-hit, but an attacker with a numerical advantage doesn’t have to roll terribly high to do some serious damage. Movement is also easy – all movement is based on base lengths, and apparently the starter set will have a nice measuring tool that has a turn summary and other helpful information printed on it. Turns use a plastic template to rotate a unit either 45 or 90 degrees. 
Special units and heroes will come pre-painted, while common figures will ship unpainted (a few commons seemed to have some parts painted, such as insignias on shields, but I’m not sure if that’s just because they were prototype pieces). Speaking of prototypes, you may notice in some of the photos that the figures look a bit wobbly, as though they don’t stay in the holes too well. Keep in mind this a prototype set – the production pieces will fit securely into their bases.
Victory is achieved through gaining victory points. You get points for destroying enemy units, but you also get points each turn you control either of two objective locations placed on the game board. I love this territory control aspect (I’ve always thought one of the strong points when Mage Knight switched to 2.0 was the emphasis on turf battles rather than simple last player standing deathmatches).
The distribution method for Arcane Legions is a bit of an eye-opener. While there is a collectible aspect to the game, they seem to have minimized a lot of the worst problems with CCGs and CMGs. First, there’s the starter pack. In it, you get the rules, measuring templates and 110 figures from all three factions, plus some bases. For $34.99. It’s enough for two players to play a full battle.
From there, let’s say you want to fill your army out with some good commons. Do you just buy boosters and hope you get the faction you want? Nope. You can buy army and cavalry packs specific to each faction. These packs, which will sell for $14.99, will contain 40 and 15 common figures, respectively. And only commons. When you’ve got the commons you need, you can move to the booster packs. These are $11.99 and are, again, faction specific. In each one you get a rare painted leader, plus two rare or uncommon units with three painted figures on them, as well as some army bases to use with your commons. But no common figures are in the booster packs. That means when you get to the point when you’re just trying to collect a few rares, you aren’t forced to buy a ton of commons you don’t need to get them. Plus, if you buy a “Legion Bundle” of eight boosters, you’ll get one of every figure and base card for your faction.
I hate to sound like I’m on the company payroll here; I do have some reservations. I’m worried that ranged units may be overpowered, but keep in mind that I played exactly three turns, so most likely there are other units that can counteract the devastation of the Han Expert Archers and provide ample opportunities for players to grimly intone, “Then we will fight in the shade.” There’s also an online club that gives you access to limited edition figures and a custom base creator that will let you design your own tournament legal bases. Cool, but you’ll have to pay to subscribe to it, which severely limits the cool. So the guys who pay to subscribe get special figures and design their own bases? Doesn’t sound like a level playing field to me.
In any case, cruise over to the official site and check things out for yourself. When the game comes out, we should have a more in-depth review (and perhaps some strategy guides) here on Robot Viking.
Related posts:
June 29th, 2009 2:30 PM
Wow, I’m not a big fan of game that use unit trays, but I could get in on this. Making the shape of the unit on the base matter is a birlliant way to get around the “we march in squares” aspect of other unit tray games, and actually gives a reason why the unit could be made of inividual models instead of one guy with clixish stat degeneration. That and moving in formations reminds me of of the muzzle loading era. I want a Civil War equivalent to be the next update!
June 29th, 2009 2:47 PM
Yeah, this would be amazing for some Napoleonic warfare.
June 29th, 2009 2:47 PM
Oh, one more question, can you move and attack with the same unit in one turn? If you can’t, I don’t care how good it is, I don’t want to play Turret Wars again.
June 29th, 2009 3:05 PM
If this is “generic” enough to be easily adaptable? I could see it having some real opportunities; I myself would want “hero” slots in there too– the better to handle the “big war” part of a DnD campaign, for example. (I really liked the MechWarrior/BattleTech dichotomy…)
June 29th, 2009 3:17 PM
heh, Speaking of Mechwarrior, I was refferring to Dark Age when I said Turret Wars. “Ok, the enemy is on the other side of the field, what do you do?” If you answered charge gloriously, you and your friends are dead. You just wasted your turn moving into your opponent’s range and he just spent his turn SHREDDING YOU. The rest of the game will consist of no movement while both sides proceed to attack constantly because moving=death.
June 29th, 2009 3:20 PM
“So the guys who pay to subscribe get special figures and design their own bases? Doesn’t sound like a level playing field to me.”
This doesn’t bother me. The guys who pay to buy more figures will have more figures. If the base-design rules were in a book-and-kit form, and only the guys who paid to buy the book got to design bases, would that be a problem?
But then, I’m a laid-off content producer, so I’m firmly in the camp that supports people getting paid for what they produce, even on the Internet.
June 29th, 2009 3:27 PM
You get 8 actions per turn. It takes two actions to move a big (rectangle) unit, 1 to move a small unit. Attacking is one action. Reorganizing a unit is one action. Units can do two different things per turn without pushing, if they do the same thing twice (ie double move, attack twice), one figure gets removed.
That might be slightly off (don’t have a rulebook, just going on memory), but the general idea is, yes, unit actions are very flexible within a given turn.
June 29th, 2009 3:43 PM
I’m really looking forward to Arcane Legions. I have a demo kit inbound and look forward to sharing it around the local shops.
June 29th, 2009 4:58 PM
Hi, Ed! Some input from one of the volunteer demo-ers from Origins:
Each turn a player has 8 order pts to spend.
Units can be ordered to:
- move (2pts for the large/1pt for the small)
- attack (2pts for the large/1pt for the small)
- regroup (1pt to rearrange the figures on the base and/or rotate the facing of the base)
- use a special ability (1pt)
These can be done in any order and, unlike other table top games, you’re not restricted to activating only one unit at a time!
For example, you can order your archers to fire at an enemy unit to soften them up, then move up a melee unit and attack to finish them off and then move your archers into the now vacant spot and then give the archers to regroup into a defensive stance.
You can “push” a unit once to make an additional move, attack, or regroup at the cost of a figure on that unit.
Ranged combat did seem a little overpowered, but it can be shut down by engaging them in hand-to-hand (ranged can’t fire at an adjacent target) and if they try to disengage you get a free attack!
There were no cavalry units in the demo sets so I haven’t seen their effect on battlefield control. (Roman soldiers on bears!? Want!)
I’d also like to add that the three factions that will be available for go-live all play differently:
The Egyptians hit very hard in melee and the leader had a wicked ability to return destroyed figures on one of her undead units (pictured at the very top).
The Chinese army excels at ranged combat. They ignore the penalty for firing through friendly units and the special unit pictured above with the stone lion, has a trait that allows them to hit on tied dice rolls.
The Romans had good defensive stats, traits, and abilities to increase their survivability (like “shield wall”).
Hope that helps!
June 29th, 2009 5:20 PM
I’m totally building a Han army. Thanks for the clarification Patricula!
June 29th, 2009 7:45 PM
I’m easy. I’m in.
June 30th, 2009 1:20 AM
You know, I just realized now that the guy who ran the demo for my wife and I was Jordan Weisman’s son. I was paying so much attention to the game I never looked at his nametag. [forehead slap]
July 1st, 2009 1:59 PM
Good, moving and fighting on one turn is a must for me, Mechwarrior Dark Age put me off Miniature games for quite a while because of that.
July 13th, 2009 2:30 PM
The demo rules for Arcane Legions have been poted here:
http://www.arcanelegions.com/news1.html
Mark
August 29th, 2009 12:43 PM
I’ve been trying to work out how the booster packs on this game are going to work.
I believe you can buy then singularly and in a booster bundle (as you, Ed, also state).
If this is the case and, there are 8 boosters in a bundle, then I am assuming that there is a Roman Booster A, Roman Booster B etc… up to Roman Booster H.
Or is it the case that all the individual boosters in a bundle look identical (with different contents), so once broken up you can’t tell what is in each.
Does any one know?
Thanks
August 31st, 2009 11:54 AM
In case anyone was interested in my question about the how the boosters work, I got an answer on the Arcane Legions forum.
It’s a moderately lengthy explanation but basically the model mix in each booster is random and cannot be discerned by the outside of the box once a bundle is broken up.
Cheers