Let’s Play: The Drowned Earth
April 10, 2017 by dignity
Today we dive head first into the depths of The Drowned Earth which will be on Kickstarter very soon!
Justin's playing as The Firm who are trained mercenaries on a strategic legitimate business adventure, pfft, he wishes Tom, from the game's team is in opposition and will be playing the Artifactors in this washed up world of The Drowned Earth.
Will you be diving into The Drowned Earth?
Looking forward to watching this
Looks like cool game. The Beta rules are tight and the miniatures look great. The background to the world is looking like it has serious depth. Hoping the Kickstarter is reasonably priced.
I think you’ll be satisfied :). Certainly in line with the price of most other skirmish games on the market nowadays.
But as always, big kickstarter discounts for multiple purchases!
For filming and scenario purposes, the line of trees in the foreground were totally unnecessary and blocked the view of the action. And please, use a dice tray which could have been placed in the proposed empty foreground. The terrain is way too busy for rolling dice amidst the trees and ruins.
pretty vs practical. i’m more of a visual guy myself and thought the atmosphere of the setting was brought to life with all those trees. I see what you mean though.
Looks like a really good game. Really enjoyed the mechanics since it seems like both players are always playing.
Yep, that’s one of the important features of the game as far as I’m concerned- that constant exchange between players makes it feel like you’re both crafting a story together, not taking turns to move the action forward.
Nice cinematic feeling, I´ll pledge at Sunday ^^
Looking forward to having you on board!
Could not see any of the figures…!!!! stealth indeed
I cannot wait for this kickstarter! Very nice board as well.
The board was heaps of fun to play on 😀
Love games that use a lot of terrain. This one seems alright.
Just me or does the shooting from the firm seem a little op?
Round our way we call those “Tom Dice” :D. The Firm are definitely better at shooting than the Artifacters. I wouldn’t describe it as OP personally, but one of the jobs we need to do after the KS is give the profiles a thorough balancing and playtest. The core mechanics are fairly final, excepting a few minor tweaks here and there, but I’ll be happy when we’ve put the profiles in the hands of a much larger play testing group than current. That’s one of the beauties of Kick-starter IMO: backers can get properly involved in the development process if… Read more »
Nice game, I will have a look at the Kickstarter when it goes live
I like the crowded look of the table. However, there is a risk that players overlook a model in the heat of the battle. Also, while the action looks really dynamic, the actual mechanics seem clunky due to a ton of special rules (you need to know what happens with a superfail, fail, pass and nailed it for every single action) plus there seems to be a fair amount of bookkeeping.
In fact pass and nail it results are the same for everything- you use the pass stat, or the nailed it stat (either movement or weapon). Failing is also fairly straightforward- you just don’t succeed! The critical fails are different for everything though, but they happen rarely enough that I felt looking it up in the book wasn’t such a chore. You’ll find you remember them easily enough anyway.
In terms of book keeping, yes, you do need to keep track of wounds and action points. That’s true of most skirmish games though I think. 🙂
Thanks for watching!
Considering it is just 5 miniatures and they have stat cards I’d be surprised if I missed activating a miniature! I agree it isn’t the smoothest system, but it does seem fun. 🙂
Well, I am certainly open to see more playthroughs etc. once the KS hits.
Will definately give it a look, aside from anything else the minis are stunning. Mechanics seem interesting, not overly sold on the reaction system. That could just be me, I prefer reactions to be counter play rather than outright denial, it’s an issue I have with infinity and doesn’t generally sit well with my usual group.
I was wondering about this too.. but it seems like the Reaction system here is a lot more limited in that the models need AP to use the Reactions… and then they don’t get them during their turn (or didn’t use them when they did activate so they could use them as Reactions)… vs say Infinity where you ALWAYS get a Reaction… the other interesting bit is how the Leader can move AP around once during their turn to boost or provide Reaction AP to other models… The only issue I’d wonder about is needing LOS with your Leader… and… Read more »
TBH I like the “AP to react”. It means you can catch minis out and both players have tough decisions on which model to use first – which they can get away with moving first.
placing action tokens on the stat cards would solve any confusion. personally I prefer more rules heavy systems for RPG style skirmish games. I think that type of system is harder to become familiar with but ultimately gives you a greater depth of game play and tactical options. draughts vs chess springs to mind. a lot of folks like infinity for its depth and wealth of options. I would be tempted to make things like the guy jumping down a climb down on a fail though as it seemed a bit odd to have him stood there constantly panicking about… Read more »
also worth mentioning that in order to keep the objectives relevant and not have people ignore them and go for the kill you may need to make it less killy, infinity gets round this issue with retreat but i’m sure there are other ways of getting that balance.
@dags mate we posted at the same time. my mention of infinity wasn’t a defensive response to your comments. gutted you guys aren’t fans of the ARO mechanic, something I dig myself.
@emptynessisform, I don’t take stuff as defensive, and I want to like infinity as I feel it has it good points, I feel I am missing something. The issue I have with it is I have won the few games we have played in my opponents turn, and we it happened a few times in other games in the group. Which means a) I haven’t done anything other than position minis, and roll better b) my opponents opportunity to do cool stuff has ended up with dead models. I appreciate that could be match up or us missing something within… Read more »
Have to go to work in the morning, so I’ll finish watching this later, but at about halfway through I’d have to day that the “hidden/reveal” mechanic may have swung me toward this KS.