Main Catalogue |  Board Games & Card Games |  Portal Publishing |  Neuroshima Hex! 2nd Edition

Neuroshima Hex! 2nd Edition Price: £39.99 Board Game; 2-4 Players; Ages 10+ by Portal Publishing/Z-Man Games Armies face off over blasted terrain. Battle-worn officers manoeuvre their soldiers into position. Quietly, like a dark tide rising, units are moved into place. Snipers take a bead on their targets from afar. Machines as silent and dangerous as sharks gather. Hardened gangers tighten tehir grip on their homemade flails, chains, and blades they are holding as they hide behind the rubble of some tron down building... Nuroshima HEX is a quick paced, tactical board game for 2-4 players. The Earth lies in the waste of mankind\'s greatest and most destructive war. Each player controls one of the armies struggling for dominance in a dark and gritty future. The Moloch is a terrifying machine intelligence. The Outpost is a guerrilla paramilitary struggling to halt the advance of this deadly and strange intelligence. Borgo is a powerful and brilliant leader who has managed to unite the mutants under his dark will. The hegemony is a land rules by gangs, where might and right are one. Play is fast paced and intelligent, players must think on their feet as well as plan for action with the careful placement of their units. ++++++++++++++++++++ Counter magazine review ++++++++++++++++++++ 2-4 players, 30-45 minutes designed by Michal Oracz reviewed by Greg Schloesser In a post apocalyptic world, man has lost its war against an invading horde of robots. The charred landscape is the site of furious and bloody battles between surviving bands of humans, mutants, robots and gangs. While this sounds like a theme used in countless movies and novels, it is also the theme of the new Polish board game Neuroshima Hex! Based on the designer Michal Oracz\'s role-playing game, Neuroshima Hex is a tactical tile-placement game that is at once a game and a puzzle. Played individually or in two teams, players each represent one of the four surviving races, which include uber-tough robots (think ``Terminator\'\' and you\'ll get the idea), battle-hardened human soldiers, opportunistic gangs and lightning-fast mutants. Players alternate placing tiles to a very small board, which quickly becomes congested, thereby promoting frequent combat. The ultimate objective is to eliminate an opponent\'s headquarters, while protecting your own from your enemies. Each player selects a race and receives its 35 tiles. Most of the tiles depict warriors, which are placed onto the board. A handful are action tiles, which are not placed on the board, but instead allow the player to move and/or rotate a warrior, initiate a battle or perhaps instantly kill an opponent\'s warrior. Each race also has a special tile or two that gives it a specific power, such as the potentially devastating air strike. Tiles depict a various number of vital symbols and numbers. All contain directional arrows, which indicate the direction or directions in which a unit has influence or can fire. Some can only affect adjacent spaces, while others possess ``ranged\'\' weapons and can fire over numerous spaces in a direct line. Most tiles can inflict and take only a single damage point, but others have icons indicating that they can inflict or sustain multiple wounds. Initiative is also critical, and this will range from 0 to 3, as indicated on the tile. Many tiles provide support for adjacent tiles, which can affect that tiles\' firepower, defense, or initiative. Some can even absorb wounds for an adjacent target. The proper placement and positioning of these and, indeed, all tiles is absolutely critical, and arranging them so that various powers properly interact or ``chain\'\' is the key to success in the game. In that sense, the game has a ``puzzle\'\' feel that may be attractive to many folks. After each player places his headquarters tile on the board, players alternate revealing three tiles. One of these tiles must be discarded, while the other two can be placed onto the board or saved for a future turn. Deciding which tile to discard can often be painful, especially when all of them are of immediate use. Warriors are placed onto the board, with the intent being to place them in a manner so that they will potentially inflict maximum damage on one\'s opponents and/or protect one\'s fellow troops and headquarters. As mentioned, properly integrating the powers of the units is critical. Most warriors strictly cause carnage in terms of damage to adjacent units, or in the case of units with ranged weapons, the first enemy unit in their line of sight. Some of these warriors are very powerful and can cause multiple wounds, and it is best to place these units near an opponent\'s headquarters in order to accelerate the process of destroying it. Other units can strike multiple opponents, which can be quite useful when attempting to disrupt the enemy\'s lines. A battle begins either when the board is completely filled with tiles - which doesn\'t take long since the board contains only 19 hexes - or when a player opts to use one of his special battle tiles. Fire is conducted in rounds, with those tiles having a higher initiative striking first. Thus, they may be able to eliminate opposing units before they have a chance to react. The battle progresses through all initiative levels and the damage is assessed. As mentioned, most units can sustain only one hit before being eliminated, so a battle generally results in mass carnage and an emptying of the board. The battle phase is the most difficult to handle, as it can be quite tedious to determine the actual order in which units fire, particularly when considering the affect of all of the support units. Units may have multiple ``attached\'\' units supporting them, creating a chain of effects that can sometimes be difficult to decipher. This process can be somewhat fiddly, but it does get a bit easier with experience. The ultimate objective is to eliminate an opponent\'s headquarters, which can absorb twenty hits before being destroyed. Fortunately, this doesn\'t take long, particularly once a player or team assembles a formidable battle line that can inflict multiple hits on a headquarters during each battle. A typical game takes 30 to 45 minutes to play, which is just about perfect for a game of this type. There is much to like here. The game is filled with important, albeit light decisions, involves relatively quick combat without myriads of charts, modifiers and dice-rolling, plays quickly, and has a decidedly puzzle-solving feel. It can be gratifying to see one\'s placements prove effective, and there is a sense of satisfaction when one\'s tile arrangements prove virtually unassailable. Unfortunately, the order in which the tiles surface can have a dramatic impact upon the game. There have been games when I\'ve been begging for certain tiles to appear, but they fail to surface in a timely fashion. This is the bane of many card and tile games, so one must accept this condition and do the best with the resources at hand. This is easier to stomach when the game is as short and swift as Neuroshima Hex. While I am not as enamored with it as a few folks, I do think it is a fine game with some interesting ideas and mechanisms. It certainly seems equipped to scratch the wargame and puzzle itch that occasionally surfaces, and does so in a reasonable time frame. To my knowledge, this is the first game of Polish origin I\'ve played. I honestly don\'t know much - OK, anything - about the gaming scene in Poland, but if Neuroshima Hex is any indication, I am impressed. More ...     WE ALSO RECOMMEND...   Neuroshima Hex: Duel £25.99 Neuroshima Hex: Steel Police £6.99 Neuroshima Hex: The Dancer £11.99

Main Catalogue |  Board Games & Card Games |  Portal Publishing |  Neuroshima Hex! 2nd Edition