Welcome back to Hell

The city that sprawls around you is NEW JERUSALEM. You will find men (and a few women) from many nations across Europe here, all doing the Lord’s work here in our new home, the new frontier, the Underworld. You’ll also find thousands of the Damned; try to ignore them. They’re used to being beaten and trod upon, so they won’t give you any trouble.

Of course it is not only the Europeans who have a foothold here in Hell. In time you will meet all of them – and they will try and kill you, and if you want to survive, you’ll try to kill them first.

Why You SHOULD Be Playing...

Since my first article on Hell Dorado was well received, I thought I’d spend some time talking about why you should try out this game.

1. The Characters - Many of the personalities in Hell Dorado are real-life historical personalities (including Vincenzo Maculani, Andre de Montbard, and Gilles de Rais), or biblical entities (Samael, Lilith) or just historical fiction (Don Quixote, the Golem) – the characters in Hell Dorado have rich and deep backstory, above and beyond the game.

2. The Setting – it’s not often you get to play battles in Hell. Hell, being a construct to host the hordes of hell as well as a setting to punish the Damned, can look like nearly anything. It is a terrain maker’s paradise in its variety. You can do red-sanded deserts, boiling swamps of blood (or worse), frozen wastelands, or even battlefields that look like the set of a 1980s Heavy Metal video. The limits are really only those of your imagination.

3. It’s a Skirmish Game - and it’s easy to play a complete, satisfying game in an hour. Hell Dorado table sizes are 30” squares, small enough to get into action on the very first turn of the game.

4. The Models are Oozing (nearly literally!) with Character - From the weirdly disturbing Demons like Eurynome and Foulques the Black to the Immortals such as Li Tsu Tsin. These are models unlike those you’re going to find almost anywhere else.

5. You can Issue Challenges to your Friends - with the phrase: “I WILL SEE YOU IN HELL!”

6. It’s Fun!

STILL not sold? Alright. Let’s try another tact then. How about a demo game?

We’ll take a look at a starter box versus starter box. Let’s say Demons versus Saracens.

This is going to be a multi-part series so let’s get it rolling. First we will take a look at what you get in the Demons starter.

The Demons!

Asaliah, Rebel Angel and your Officer. Asaliah is primarily going to be giving out bonuses to your forces and penalties to your enemies – a buffer/debuffer in other words. She’s got a lot of abilities on her card, in addition to a lot of order options, so we’re going to go over a few of them to discuss all of what she can do for you.

Charisma - Allied units within 4" get +1 to their Combat Dice. This is a good reason to keep your models close to Asaliah as much as possible.

Concentrated – This aids Asaliah in her spellcasting. Normally casting a spell – which in Hell Dorado summons a lemure, which we’ll go into shortly – requires a FOCUS action, which means in close-combat that your foes get a One-Sided Attack. Basically they beat on you and you don’t get to fight back. Concentrated makes a FOCUS action for Asaliah count as a CONCENTRATE action which is much less of a penalty.

Expertise - This makes any Exhausting Action count only as a Focus action, like Concentrated, above.

Evasive – This ability makes it so that if you have Asaliah and another friendly model in contact with an enemy model, the enemy model can only choose to attack the other friendly model and not Asaliah. This greatly helps her survivability, so long as you can keep her paired with a friendly model of course.

Levitation – Through this ability, Asaliah floats over all terrain, and never suffers any hindrance.

Terror – Rebel Angels are scary! Enemy models in base-contact with Asaliah suffer -1 to their Combat stat.

Let’s look at her orders...

Angelic Inspiration: One use per game, at a cost of 3 Permanent Command, Asaliah and her allies all heal 8 life points. If cast at the right time, this could be HUGE, but it does demolish half of your available Permanent Command. So time it right!

Vae Soli: Lets Asaliah boost the Combat stat of her active follower by 1 or 2 Combat at the cost of 1 or 2 Command, respectively!
Vae Victis: Lets you activate two models in a row, at the cost of 1 Command.

She also has a magical aura...

Regeneration: Satanist units within this 6” regain 1 Life Points during each Upkeep phase. Another great reason to keep her close to friendly models (like her Charisma ability above!).

Finally, her three spells. Asaliah carries enough lemurs to only cast three spells (any combination of her available spells) for the entire game. Lucky for her (and you!) her spells are all solid.

Plague of the Believers - Targets a single unit in contact with the lemure. The target of this spell takes an amount of damage equal to twice its Faith stat. Any Protection score is ignored. This is a very useful attack against models with high Faith scores, like Westerners and Saracens.

Nauseating Cloud - This spell creates a 3” radius scenery element centered on the lemure that lasts for 3 turns. The element causes 2 Life Points over 5 turns of damage to any model in contact with it. Great area denial, or, an easy way to put a hurt on slow models.

Possession Targets -  A single unit in contact with the lemure. The target of this spell becomes controlled. The target can cancel this effect by rolling a number of dice equal to its Faith stat and scoring at least one 5 or 6. If the target’s Faith stat is zero then a single dice is rolled and only a 6 is a success. I don’t think I have to tell you how good it is to have a spell that takes over an enemy and makes them fight for you. Great in any game!

You also get two Damned Ones of Sloth. Damned Ones of Sloth have their drawbacks. They are not great fighters, even with the buffs that Asaliah can give them. They are painfully slow, and even when they get places they struggle to get results for you. What DO they give you? They’re really solid tarpits. They have the Attraction ability – forcing units that come within 4” of them of coming to attack them, or just standing still where they are. A no-win situation for your foes.

For striking power, you have one Damned One of Wrath. He’s a combat monster,  but he’s very fragile. 9 Life Points; half as many as your Damned Ones of Sloth. No Protection and only Defense 4 means that you are going to need to be very careful in getting him out of any fights alive. Sure, he’ll put a hurt on your enemy, but he’s likely to go down fighting.

That’s the Demon box. Next time around we’re going to look at the Saracen box, and then it’s time to fight!

I’ll see you in Hell! (I told you, that’s just fun to say!)

Robert Allen

Co-Host of Combat Phase Podcast. The best part of the game – COMBAT PHASE!

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