Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan. And I'm your favorite space
cadet. And today we're going to be
looking at Fire Drop from Christian Sorrell AKA Meat
Castle Game Wear. This is a game of soldiers
dropped from low orbit to fight the hordes of super fleas
infesting the planet unabashedly.
The hell divers to inspired game.
Absolutely. Yeah, we really get in on the.
Hell, divers craze, did you? No, here's the thing, and this
is that's it's what I was just fixing to say is what I like
about a lot of the video game inspired teach RPGs we review is
you're going to get 2 perspectives a lot of the time.
One from someone who may have never even fucking heard of it,
and two from someone who probably put a ton of hours into
it. Me being the one who is not much
of a video gamer and Hunter being the one who has played
every fucking game under the sun apparently.
Let's see how many hours I put into hell.
Divers, actually. You keep going, I'll tell you.
Or hell, divers light games because then you say there's one
that's like an earth conquest game.
Dude, the Earth. Defense Force is a fantastic
series that I highly recommend. Yeah.
Yeah, so, so so, he says again. I I'm the kind of person who I
don't play 20 hours. Hey, not.
Too many. That's him.
But still, it's 20 more than I have.
I yeah, I'm just not. I don't play a lot of games.
The issue is when I find a game that I do love, I'll put like
10,000 fucking hours into it, right?
Like I put thousands of hours into Skyrim and then I got rid
of all my systems and then I found Destiny so that I put
thousands and thousands of thousands and thousands of hours
into Destiny. Didn't really play a lot of
games on the in between, but I, I am going to try to start
playing more video games soon. I plans to do night, night time
streams maybe here in the future.
Anyway, I digress. We digress.
That is what we do here on the show.
Yeah. So.
So, yeah. So this is this is game we're
going to do. This is what's interesting is I
told Christian that we were going to be doing this one and
he he said, hey, this is going to be the first weekly scroll
review for Christian Terrell, which is crazy because he's been
a lot of bunch. Yeah, and I have been.
On a bunch a. Bunch of his.
Stuff on himself, played a bunch of games with them and then
realized what's because he writes a lot of adventures,
doesn't really write a lot of cellular systems.
So we're going to be going over this one.
It's a it's a little short. It's a little short guy.
It's a nice little Zine. It's about a total, I think it
runs about 2726 pages plus the covers.
So it's tiny little Zine. So so fire drop, full little
intro I got here. Fire drop is a 28 page.
It's 28 page apparently half letter black and white Zine, hex
and dice, war game and fire drop.
You and your friends play as I said, as soldiers dropped from
low orbit to fight the hordes of super fleas infesting the
planet. Fire drop was originally created
for and released for released for free as part of the February
2024 missives from the meat castle that is meat castle
gamers free monthly newsletter that you can find on sub stack.
We'll make sure that the link is down below to this specific one
because you can still get get it free and if you sign up for meat
castles newsletter, there's a freebie and I think just about
every single one and then he collects them all into a an
annual at the end of the year. So you get all the freebies in
one Z and which is super fucking cool.
You can if if what I wrote is correct again, the PDF is free
if you go check out the website. I believe it might be on their
itch as well. I'm not sure, but it is in print
at meat castles web shop, which will make sure the link is below
too. And I also saw it at Spearwitch.
I don't know if it's somewhere else, but I know it's at those
two places. So you can still grab this.
It's a great little Z. It's a it's a fun little game.
I would play the shoot out of this borders more like
definitely leans heavier more towards I think the role-playing
side or the, I'm sorry, the board game side a little bit.
Absolutely agree. It's definitely more of like a
yeah. It's way less of a role-playing
game and closer to yeah, like a board game, pseudo strategy
game. And there's not a lot of like
strategic movement going on, but.
Yeah, but as just like a quick little pickup board game, like
you could bust this out with with a handful of D sixes and a
couple friends and just be like, hey, we're going to play this.
And people that have never played a TTRPG would have a lot
of fun with this just as like a, you know, it's like a drop board
game. So let's, let's, let's hop in
and see fucking see why, why we're right, you know, about,
Yeah, of course, about that. Our correct opinions.
Yeah, as always. Yeah.
So fire drop, quick and dirty drop pod warfare for one to four
players. Great piece of art here on the
cover. I believe that is from PR art
from Perplexing Ruins. And then the inside art I
believe is Thomas Novosel via Patreon.
So I'm going to read the there's not a whole lot.
Most of this book is just rules, so it's very little lower and
it's pretty short minus all of the extra bits and stuff like
that. It's about 20 pages.
So I think we've been doing a damn good job of trimming our
episodes down. Considering that we did 250
pages of Wolf Ald in like 2 hours.
I was very proud of us. But we are going to read the
parts of this because there aren't a part a lot.
So war water is a good no. What purpose would we have in
this life without it? It's been five years.
Yeah, it's been five years since the Siphon Aptarian Scourge was
first encountered on Aptarian 6. In the year since, the Super
fleet Plague has spread across more and more of our great
empire. We still do not know how they
spread, but we do know wherever our ships went after fighting
them last, it would appear as if following us, clearly aiming to
discover our home world and consume it.
Now more than ever we need good and honorable soldiers Capital S
to take the fight directly to the siphon up Tarians and show
them there's nothing a little national pride and a heaping
dose of lead and explosive can't solve.
Urah, yeah. Credits, design and layout from
Christian Sorrell, editing from Jarrett Crater, art is from PR
and Thomas Novosel, and publishing is from Meat Castle
Gamore. What I love about this, and I
hope that our little voices were in the back of Christian said
when they did this. First of all, let's take a peek
for those bookmarks. And they're there.
It's it's 20, it's like 27 pages and they're all bookmarked,
which is great. Not only that, if you Scroll
down a little farther the table of contents.
Hyperlinks. Not only hyperlinked, it's like
literally every page in the little 20s.
This is the size of Zine that we would be like, ah, not a big
deal, it's 27 pages, doesn't matter.
Full fucking table of contents fully hyperlinked.
But if you actually scroll back, what do we say all the time?
If you're going to have a website or something in your
Zine, hyperlink it, right? Right.
Well, listen. So he hyperlinked all of the
credits. So Christian Sorrell will take
you to meet Castle Game where Jarrett Crater takes you to
Space Penguin Inc, PR takes you to PRS Patreon, Thomas Novosel
takes you to the Thomas Novosel Patreon, and then Meat Castle
Gamer takes you to meatcastle.com.
So all of the credits in the page are also hyperlinked out to
their individual websites. Collapse.
Amazing, very cool collapse. Oh, oh, we just someone,
someone, someone real meat castle.
Don't know who that is. Just dropping in the chat and
said, you know, I had to do it to him.
Yes, we, we appreciate, we appreciate all the hyperlink.
So I'm not going to go through all of the table of contents
because it's literally every page.
So we'll just go as we as we go. So as we go, as we go.
So 27 pages in here set up. So in fire drop, you play as a
soldier dropped from low orbit to fight the hordes of super
fleas infesting the planet. Each mission is unique with its
own objectives. Siphon up Tarian nests and
extract point. Your job is to complete the
objective and if you if you can extract with your life intact to
aid you in battle. You have a number of clone
reinforcements available upon your death as well as high
impact firepower like centuries, orbital bombardment and more.
So once again says it is a quick and dirty hex game of drop pod
warfare. What do you need?
Do you need a hex map? On page 26, Boom in line
hyperlink. Take it right there.
Soldier cards on page 27 linked to it. 120 sided die, D20 not
linked, Mini 6 sided dice, D sixes ideally in three colors
and riding utensils. And then not linked on the D20.
Hey, it's in parentheses. And then we got the dice usage,
which I when we get to the the enemy dice, it's so clever.
I'm I really like the mechanic that they use there.
But this basically breaks down how the the dice not like 6 and
after a demons AD 6 now it's just like what it actually does.
So throughout play, we use one color of D6 to act as your
soldier, just playing one through 4 to allow unique
identification per players. Another color of D6 to act as
the enemies just playing one through 6 to match their
strength, and a third color of D6 to act as miscellaneous
ability or objective markers as needed.
Everything else, like objectives nested more, would be written
directly onto the hex map. I like that.
So D6 because you're soldier one.
I'm soldier 2, there's soldier 3, soldier 4.
You could also have, I guess, four additional different colors
and then put like your ammo or your wounds or something as like
a A roll dice for your individual soldier.
That'd be like a home, a home thing.
But at the end of the day, too, this could all be a tokenized
thing pretty pretty easily. I agree, and I think that would
be really dope to make it a like expand this out a little bit and
make some like punch, like pog tokeny things.
That would be really sick. So the steps of play are there's
six of them. Do you create a mission?
And then underneath that are 4 steps, which is choosing a
difficulty, placing objectives, place nests, place an extract
point. That's how you create a mission.
And then #2 you create a soldier #3 is the orbital drop #4 is
drop fight like hell #5 is extract #6 is claims spoils of
war. I'm trying to make sure I
remember at what point I'd have some notes here.
So first thing you do is you create a mission.
So you build this collaboratively with the other
players and the players take turns rolling and placing
objectives, or have a single player or highest ranking player
for a veteran to act as squad leader and roll them all up
together. I like that.
I like the idea of like collaboratively coming up with
the thing together. That's always a fun bit to do
whenever you do something. Like the game I always think of
is I don't know if you ever played it and I'm surprised if
you haven't is Archipelago. Yeah, still no.
We've had this conversation several times.
I I haven't bookmarked to buy. I don't think I've ever
purchased it because it's not drive through RPG.
So. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think it's Jason Morningstar. It's dope.
I've played it before. It's so much fun.
I'm a big Wizard of Earthsea guy, so.
Yeah, it's funny because you've read all of Ursula K Le Guin,
but you've never played Archipelago, and I've never read
any areas like K Le Guin and I have played Archipelago multiple
times, so we should mash those together.
So. So you create a mission.
I already talked about the four steps.
So first is choosing a difficulty.
So as a group, you choose a mission difficulty, and that
determines a lot of things. It determines your objectives,
the number of nests of enemies, the nests of the Cyclon
uptarians, and the number of reinforcements and resupplies
you get. It says new recruits and small
squads recommend start low. So you got easy, medium, hard
and heroic. So for example, we'll do the the
easy you get there's one objective, there's three nests
and you get 5 each of reinforce and resupply.
But if you go all the way to heroic, it's 4 objectives, 12
nests to reinforce and to resupply.
That's rough. Yeah, that is rough.
It's like, man, when he dies, 2 of you die.
That's all the deaths you got, you know.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Crazy.
I think every player gets their own number of reinforced.
Yeah, right. Oh yeah.
Maybe. I think yeah, the next thing you
do is you place objectives. So the way that works is
objectives must be completed to achieve the mission success.
If you extract prior to completing an objective, you
will take a demerit when claiming spoils of war.
Certain objectives, right, require you to locate and kill a
group of enemies. Others require a certain number
of actions to be spent, etcetera, etcetera.
We'll get to those. But the first thing you do is
you roll AD 6 to determine the objective from the list on the
next spread, reroll repeats. And next you roll 1 E 20 and
place the objective on the corresponding hex.
Why don't you pull up a dice roller, buddy?
Because you're going to be rolling all that shit.
We're going to make you. I was like, I do love for all
these. We go through them, you roll AD
20 on where to place them, but if you roll A20 you get to pick.
Look at, there's only 19 hexes. Yeah, yeah, I rolled a.
You want me to roll the objective?
I don't know why I rolled the map.
Yeah, roll the objective. Let's I'm gonna I'm gonna shoot
down to the hex map real quick, just so people know what the
heck I'm talking about. Then we'll go back up and then
we'll we'll talk about this again.
But here's the the hex map. Let me go to zoom to page level
here. So this is the hex map.
It's it's basically as as it's a hex of hexes.
It's a hex flower. Yeah, it's a hex flower, so.
And so it fits 19 and then below it is the movement list.
So all of the six directions have their own number.
So when you roll that, it'll tell you how to go on the hex
flower. So there's nineteen of them,
obviously. And it starts on like that kind
of like, I guess you would say like top left, I guess, and
rolls around to the inside. And then since there is no 20,
that's that's when you get to pick your own.
And I think that's cool. I do think.
That's wow. Very.
Clever use of AD 20 and a hex map, you know.
Yeah. For the objectives, I'll just
read the titles real quick and then we'll go over the one that
I rolled. How about that?
So the objectives are kill everything, recover data, launch
missile, rescue citizen Boo, destroy asset or 6 is Soldiers
choice. And I actually rolled the six.
So while we go over, let's do launch missile.
I'm going to. Do 1 #3 Launch missile.
I complete a successful launch from a Planetary ICBM launch
facility. Spend actions activating on site
terminals and wait for launch. The requirements are three
actions. It takes 5 rounds to complete.
Damn. Yeah, quite a long 1 though.
I think that might be the longest one for rounds until
completion. If well when there are rounds
till completion, yeah it is. I didn't pick rescue citizen
because I played Hell diver too and rescuing citizens is very
annoying in that game. The citizens are annoying.
They they just, yeah, you just to set yourself up and you have
to keep letting them out running from one place to the other.
You have to kind of guard them as they're running into like the
safe room. And also just pick up a gun,
bro. We're in war right now.
Pick up a gun, bro. Everyone's a soldier.
Yeah, I think that that was a fun one.
The kill everything one. Obviously this means kill
everything, which is neat, but I like that the number of rounds
that I think takes and then like the number of actions you have
to do to perform it is really interesting.
It's a cool way to, I don't know, like you can't just like
blast the nest and like run away and then just like kind of chill
and do the thing. Like since everything like we,
we get to the bad guys and how they're going to, you know, come
in like every three rounds and stuff and they can move every
turn. It's interesting how they
something like this. It takes so long.
You have multiple nests spawning coming at you every time, so you
can never really sit still and that's really cool.
I like that a lot. I like the the the art drops in
all the way through like the little spot art pieces like the
one above is you know, a giant ship.
On this one you have a very interesting gun, a very like
space gun looking thing. I would imagine space.
Gun, Yeah. It's dope.
It's a good choice for the arts. So the next thing is placing the
nest. So Siphon Uptarians reproduce
through a network of breeding chambers.
They're fun little tunnels of dirt and stone we call nests.
In little time, a nest can produce a daily amount of
fleece. So nests spawn a new enemy every
third round, starting on round 3.
So round one, round two, and then boom, start around 3, it
says. At the beginning of the round, a
nest spawns with another enemy group and attacks.
And it adds its value to their strength up to a Max of six
strength, after which the remaining strength is added as a
new unit. Mission difficulty denotes NES
sponsoring. So that's the thing that I
really like, and we'll get to it a little bit more later.
There's also a part where, like if, if so, if something's on the
hex and it's two strength and it spawns another thing that's two
strength and it's on the same hex, you just combine it to a
four strength thing. And I think that's so clever
because it cleans up the board. You don't have a million dice.
Yeah, you're you're all occupying like a single hex a
time a lot of the time. Like I guess you can split off
and stuff. That seems against the spirit of
working as a squad, even though I've done that in the actual
game. Hell, divers.
Yeah. I really just help keep the
board clean. I love the rules in here.
It's a very simple game. I love.
It's very like intuitive and like makes a lot of sense that
you read through and you're like, oh, it's very clever.
You know, Yeah, yeah. I mean, because if you have, if
you have, since they're basically all dice or whatever,
like if you have 6-1 strength enemies running around the
board, that's fucking annoying. Yeah.
But one sixth strength enemy as
a giant unit moving together, I don't know.
It's like I said, it's clever, like you said, it's intuitive.
It, it, it's itself. What's the word I just said
previously? Like it self cleans up the
board. Like it, it, it, it, it really
does a good job of, I don't know, self maintenance for the
clutter, which is great. So the enemy spawns are, are the
four difficulties, right? Easy, medium, hard, heroic, easy
as one and then two and then three and then four for the
different types. So.
That's a lot. So on the hard 1 and I was like
there's 12 nests spunning A4 strength bad guy every 3 rounds.
The difficulty is exponential on this.
It's not just that there are more nests, the nests that you
come across like you just sort of like way more difficult.
And I think that's brutal. And some like you're guaranteed
to just be like getting having guys killed off left and right,
you know? Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's
crazy. Even from easy to medium, you're
going from spawning, you're going from spawning, it's 3
nests doing one strength bad guys to six nests spawning 2
strength bad guys. You're right.
Like it's exponential. Like it's not just like a little
bit harder, it's, it's way harder.
So it's it's interesting. It's like because they're going
through, it's like I feel like they like in this, it's very
true to like, I know, I know Christian was playing hell
divers, although we never played together, but I know that he
they were playing hell divers at the time.
And this is very, very true to like the feel of it.
Like they're just those missions where you just get torn up and
you're out of response, you're out of resupplies, and one dude
makes it out at the end and you're like, shit, well that's
technically a success. There you go.
Are there clones in hell? Divers or Yeah.
Yeah, when you die, they you call in like a reinforcement.
It's a clone of yourself. Oh, that's dope.
Cool. All right, so So what you do
with those nests, you roll a you roll A1D20 and you put the nest
on the hex and if it you reroll repeats.
But if it rolls the 20 you decide together far away from
everything is what I would do. So infestation level, we talked
about this already easiest 3 medium 6 hard as 9 and 12 is
heroic as 12 as far as the number of nests you have to do
so then you get the extract point.
This is a pedantic point that I know it's based on held overs,
but I did want to bring up extra military wise.
Extra action versus exfil exfiltration.
Uh, extraction is generally like under forceful means right?
Like with power, you pull something out versus
exfiltration, which is like stealthily leave.
So you said it's called an extraction point.
Not in the hell divers, of course you're going to do hell
divers here. But if they're trying to sneak
out X fill might have been a good X fill point, might have
been a good one too. Anyway, so you place your
extraction points, that's another part of the emission.
So in order to keep the Super fleet menace from following us
from world to world, it is imperative our ships are on the
ground for as little time as possible.
This is why soldiers fire drop and why their only means of
planetary escape is a single shuttle once permission.
That's it. So you roll the 1D20, you put
the extract point in the corresponding hex and on a 20
year squad decides just like everything, the extract point
calls down an evac shuttle and you must and it's a activated
like an objective. The shuttle arrives in three
rounds so we'll get you objectives.
So it is an objective like everything else. 3 rounds later
it'll be there and after placing it, you make up a a mission name
on page 25 which is hyperlinked. Boom, let me click the thing so
you can see the hand. Yep.
After placement, populate each nest objective and extract point
on the map with enemy groups equal to the mission's enemy
spawns. We've talked about that already.
See Place Nest on page 10, hyperlinked To mark an enemy
group's position on the map, place AD six with a number of
the number equal to the unit strength face up.
Be sure to use dice of one color specifically for all the bad
guys. That's great.
Next you move on to creating soldiers.
So that is yes. Oh no, go finish your thing.
I'll do creating soldiers. That is how to create the
mission you. That's literally it is a is AD 6
and D20. Roll kind of like three or four
of those and boom, you got a, you got a mission it.
Is amazingly simple to set this up.
It's funny because you know, recently, like I run the game
every Sunday. I've mentioned several times on
the show, but recently we've had people like not make it on
certain weeks. We're always kind of looking for
something else to do so that we can have everyone for important
story moments and because we don't really care what we're
playing. I'm like, this is, I think the
next one I'm going to drop in and be like, cool, this is what
we're going to do today. Like you don't need to.
You can just show up. You don't have to read it.
It'll be fine, you know. Yeah, yeah, that.
I mean, this is such an easy drop and go game, like anyone
that's ever played any game ever.
You can just be like, here's a handful of D6 for you, you, you,
here's AD 20 in the middle of the board.
We're doing this. It takes 5 minutes to set up.
Yeah, so creating a soldier. Also I love the term fire drop.
Obviously a riff on like instead of Hell Diving Fire Dropping It
might be a little better. It's pretty good.
I like it. Yeah, 'cause you are dropping
and there's fire, 'cause you're, you know, entering the
atmosphere. Yeah.
So create a soldier to be fired. Drop soldier is to be among the
bravest and most elite of all warriors in the Galaxy.
Few are those who would dive into Siphon Neptarian.
Is that what he decided to say? Hell and be expected to survive,
let alone actually accomplish objectives the Galaxy stands
safer with you in it now get out there and kick some super fleece
thorax. So I will continue to talk about
hell divers because I'm very familiar with it the inside hell
divers. This is a lot of the, like, the
same, like, brouhaha, you're the best language that's used, but
it's canonically in the game. You're just a bunch of idiots.
That's why you kill each other so easily.
And you're kind of bad. Like, they just sell you on this
propaganda, like you're the best of the best.
So I wonder if, like, in Christians internal lore, this
is the same thing. Yeah.
Well, 'cause your stats aren't great.
Yeah, 'cause your stats are yeah, that's so true.
You will die. Yeah.
So soldiers have 3 stats. That is armor.
You're the measure of your ability.
Shake off damage before receiving a mortal wound, Speed,
ability to dodge and move quickly, and firepower your
ability to inflict harm on enemies.
We need to augmenting stats or augment stats.
All stats start with the value of three, and then you were
given a + 2 + 1 and -1 to assign as you wish to those stats.
After augmenting, these are your stats for the entirety of the
mission, although you can tweak your stats and abilities in
between missions as desired. Very cool.
That's it. So you, you basically you'll
have one step. That's a five, one step.
That's a four, one step. That's a two.
Yeah, that's cool. I like that one is like no, you
fucking suck at that. One, you're really bad at this
one, so yeah, yeah. So squat abilities.
All soldiers have access to squad abilities.
Each soldiers squad abilities have their own individual
refresh timers after use. Squad ability usage is also
tracked individually and is limited by difficulty.
Meaning on an ease mission each soldier has 5 uses before
reinforce of both sorry reinforce and resupply.
Those abilities being reinforce, you drop a new clone squad
member, it arrives in one round, refreshes instantly.
Pretty nice. Limited like by difficulty like
we just said. Incoming soldiers may roll a
speed test to augment their drop position.
If all soldiers die at the same time, a whole squad wide
reinforce will be called automatically and all soldiers
mark this as one reinforce used. I do like that on the incoming
soldiers part for the drop, it does take you to page 15 where
it talks about dropping in new soldiers.
That's AI mean. If you're going to talk about a
rule that you haven't seen yet, link to that page of that.
Amazing. And yeah, resupply drops in a
cache of supplies, arrives in one round, refresh refreshes in
five rounds. You cannot back-to-back this
one. Limited by difficulty, of
course. Again, any soldier in the same
hex at any time during the round of the resupply's arrival fully
refills their ammo, and after one round the resupply is lost
amid the chaos of battle. Perfect.
This is where I think my only like clarity questions come in a
lot is in both. This is the first time it's
going to come up. And then So what I need to
answer it now. We'll keep going, OK.
And then I think that it's going to keep cropping up.
But like, where does the supply, where does the resupply drop?
It doesn't say like here, like it drops randomly.
You roll AD 20 for a hex drop. There's a drop right on top of
you. Oh.
I guess it doesn't specifically say.
I always interpret this as like if I call a resupply it drops on
me. So that's your interpretation.
Yeah, that is my interpretation of it though.
Yeah, it's because, so it's not in the rules anywhere that it
drops on. There is a line later in the
book where it talks about like how things drop it.
I think the line literally just says like it drops according to
what it says, but it doesn't say anywhere.
So we'll we'll we'll see that as it keeps going.
Maybe I missed it, maybe Kristen will point out to it.
But I kept trying to be like, I want to be sure where it where
some some stuff drops a random hex and it just, and then others
it doesn't specify. That's the first time it pops
up. They're I think one of the one
of the we'll get to the squad abilities.
Good call. Wait, so Christian in chat?
This is one of the reasons we still stream live so we can have
creators in chat and Christian is Christian is a homie a
regular here on the weekly scroll.
They say that the intention would be it drops on the
location you were in when you call it, which is going to
answer my question every time going forward and I'll just
bring it up each time, but but that does answer our question.
So we're on to soldier abilities.
On to soldier abilities. Yeah.
So you start the mission with with one ability.
This is what one of those things that you can swap out in between
missions. But when you start, this is the
ability that you have. There are how many?
I don't even remember actually. 6 Of course, same as.
Same as always on the next. Game.
I'm being a dumb guy, so we'll read them off and then Ryan, you
want to roll or pick one to talk about?
Sure. Yeah.
So we have a sentry gun, orbital bombardment, air strike,
enhanced weaponry, Quartermaster, and the last one
being medic. So I rolled A1 so it's sentry
gun. Perfect.
So sentry gun, an automated machine gun turret acting as
another, excuse me, soldier in Comet.
Fun fact, I always pick the sentry gun because it's just the
type of guy I am. I'm a proxy fighter.
I'm a necromancer as a wizard too.
You know, anything that can do all the work for me and I can
stand behind it. Love it.
Yeah. So your sentry gun does have
stats. They're they're OK.
They're the speed 0. Because it's a stationary gun.
Yeah, it remains in its original hex into the destroyed.
It arrives in one round, refreshes in five rounds.
So it does have character stats. Does you like attack as a
character would? Yeah.
So again, where does it drop, Right.
The confusion on this one would be for me that it acts as a
soldier. So does it drop like a soldier
drops or does it dropping where I call it in at?
That's one of the other parts where I was like, well, that's a
little bit confusing. I do.
I know you said we'd go over one, but I think going over
either orbital bombardment or airstrike would also be dope.
I think both of those are really, really interesting.
I. Love Orbital Bombardment,
another one that I will often pick because once again, it
requires me to stand far away from the things and blow them up
from a distance. Orbital Bombardment, a heavy
bomb dropped from low planetary orbit deals 5 damage to
everything in target. The hex.
Can target own hex or any adjacent hex.
Cool, It says it there explicitly.
Arrives in one round, refreshes in five rounds.
So my question because I know in hell divers people died all the
time, right? If you target your own hex, you
just fucking die. Yeah.
I don't like. I I would accept that as a as
the the thing. Yeah, I mean, that's what I
would definitely do. Like if I targeted my own hex
like there's clones of me and if there's like 6, if there's like
sticks units on me and I could do 5 damage each of them and I
just happened to be in the way, Well, fuck it, I'll just call in
my next person. You know, I would definitely
have like friendly fire on this. Like if, if, if my buddies in
the hex like yeah, fuck yeah, I would do that in a heartbeat.
My. Favorite thing in in the in hell
divers to the game is that I had like a little floating century
that shot a laser that was a straight line like heat laser
beam. And if your friends move in
front of it or if it just turns and it hits your friends, it
does damage them and like you will often accidentally kill
somebody in the middle of combat because they stepped in the way
of the beam. Fucking hilarious.
I like that they build it in with like the clones and stuff
like that to be like, yeah, because every game, like very
few games have friendly fire. Like, for example, like Space
Marine Two, you literally shoot. It doesn't even just stop.
You shoot through your bad guys. We tested it like you would
stand, like be like stand in front of me real quick and I'd
shoot them and it would just be like dinging like pings off the
wall behind them. I'm like, oh, so they're
literally shoot through. But I do like the idea of
friendly fire. That's neat.
And then yeah, there there's other ones that are interesting.
Yeah, orbital drop at the start of your mission, although also
when you reinforce you also do drop in.
You have the ability or you will roll A1D20 to determine your
starting drop position each. Each soldier can then roll a
speed roll for each success. The soldier may alter their drop
position by 1 hex per success before landing.
I like that you can just kind of like aim a little bit, which is
neat. That's cleat that's I like that
a lot. So Next up is fight like hell.
So this is combat. So battle dealing and being
dealt death, the meat and potatoes of astral army life.
If war is hell, then you best be a demon or better yet the devil
himself. This is where all missions, all
fronts and all wars are won and lost.
Get killing soldier. So this is basically the roles
and like combat and stuff like how do things work?
So rounds every third round. So basically I love a game
that's in threes and sixes. You know, anyone that's ever
looked at any of my games, which is like two people knows this
about me. So I like that this game is D
sixes and uses a lot of threes and stuff in it.
So every third round the next spawn new enemies.
We read that already or I don't know if we did.
I know I've read it multiple times.
According to the missions, enemy spawn at the beginning of the
round. Yeah.
Next. Any arriving abilities land and
if relevant deal damage. So in that order.
Bad guy spawn abilities land. Soldiers always act first in
rank order. In case of equal ranks, players
choose the turn order. So I do have a note in my notes
that says what the fuck is rank? Because it's not until I think
we're on page 16 and rank doesn't come up until page 25.
And through the entire game so far, they've done a really good
job of like pointing out, I know we made reference.
Yeah, we made a reference here. I don't remember whatever to
page 15 of like how something worked.
It wouldn't be a bad idea here on rank to just have like page
25 written on there. And and because there's space
for it so that you because I literally was like lost for like
10 pages. I'm like, what the fuck is rank?
So, so rank is the thing we'll get to later.
So after all soldiers have taken a turn, enemies act in order of
their hex map location. Enemy movement attacks may be
resolved by any soldier. So that's the order.
So things spawn, bad guys spawn abilities land, soldiers go
acting first in rank order and then enemies take their turns
and then and then that's it. And you kind of start from the
top. And then, so stat test, we
finally get to how the game works on page 16.
So to your stat, it's a dice pool game.
I love a good dice pool game. So I love it.
This is exactly my dice pool game too.
Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's really great.
So to roll on armor speed or firepower test, you roll a
number of D sixes equal to the relevant stat and every 5 or 6
is a success. That's it.
Easy peasy. So perfect.
Your your Max stat would have been what do we say a
possibility of A5 yeah. And your lowest stat is a 2.
And we have talked many times about the dice percentages of of
rolling AD 65 and six does make it a little bit nicer, but but
yeah, so. If you have A5 dice in your pool
and you want to hit A5 or A6, if you just need one success, there
is an 86% chance of you getting that success.
Although we know that like multiple successes do matter in
this system. Yeah, yeah.
But if you, if you're only trying to hit a six, we've we've
talked about that a little bit too.
When we, when we looked over some your 0 engine stuff, I have
rolled 12 or 13D sixes with no successes.
So it is possible to to fail a bunch.
So ammo, how does ammo work? So soldiers begin the mission
and reinforce with six ammo. This is what I was talking
before. Like if you just had a different
colored dice or a mini, you could just use the six on the
dice and tacked on your ammo. Any soldier in the same HECS as
a resupply in the same turn. It arrived as fully resupplied.
And we've already talked about that.
Resupplies drop where you call it and then on your soldier
turns, will the soldier turns an enemy turn?
So on your turn, you may move and take two actions.
You may move before I like. So basically you can move before
or after. You can split it up.
You do whatever. I like that it's not your.
I hate when people like you have to do all your moves first.
Why? So to move your speed, test and
move a number of hexes up to the number of successes rolled
minimum one. This is the question I had.
Does that mean if you don't roll any successes at all, you still
get to move one? This is minimum one.
That's how I read it. Oh, that is interestingly
worded. I yeah, I guess.
I guess that's how I would say it as well.
Like you, you like you roll a speed test and move a number of
packs up to the number of successes You.
And you roll these. Yeah.
You always get at least one move.
Yeah. Yeah, great.
OK, Yeah, Christian chat said that that was that that's that's
correct and that's how I read it.
So that's good. That's great.
I think there's. A cool rule too because it keeps
you being able to move no matter what.
But if you like, really blow away a speed test, you can just,
like, genuinely really move, you know, Yeah.
Yeah, I like that a lot. Yeah, like you said, like you
basically always have at least one space to move no matter
what. But your role does matter, and
that's cool. I really like it.
So. That is really cool.
That's a really cool movement rule for a dice pool game, you
know? Yeah, yeah, that like again, you
can move a tiny bit, but your dice rolls do matter.
That's neat. It is, it is good.
So actions in combat you get or actions are combat, usability,
advance objective and then clear a nest.
So combat you fire on an enemy in your hex.
So you can only fire on in your hex.
You have to be in a hex. I think the only thing is you
can go outside of your hex are like overall bombardments or air
strikes. At least what I've read so far.
You expend 1 ammo and you roll a firepower test and each success
lowers enemy strength by 1. So 1 ammo gives you a role.
It's not the amount of damage you do, it's the amount of
successes that one role gives you.
I like that a lot. And if you do have like the
sentry gun or whatever, you get 2 attacks, which, yeah, each
success is lowered out or out, or when an enemy strength
reaches 0, they're gone. Great.
You can use an ability, you call it an orbital drop ability,
selecting a target hex in accordance with specific
ability, and you mark usage for squat abilities.
And again, tracking your refresh on your soldier card.
We'll get to the soldier card at the end.
Again, it drops. As we clarified where you'd call
it in at. You can advance an objective, so
you can mark 1 action on a relative on a relevant
objective, and then you can clear a nest.
You can expend 3 ammo and destroy an enemy nest in your
hex automatically, which is great because that means that
every third round they're not coming out to get you, but it is
1/2 your starting ammo. Yeah.
So you better you better call down a resupply kind of probably
right after you finish that. I like that it's clean and easy
set of of movements. I mean, one thing I really enjoy
about this is, I mean, this is our kind of game, right?
The Dice Bowl super clean, like straightforward, you know it it.
And this is very much a a crafted experience, right?
Like this is giving you the hell divers experience.
It's not a framework for you to build your own whole thing on.
I mean, you can, but it's not just supposed to be like an OSR
framework or something. It's it's I do appreciate it
being like it's own like entained experience instead of
trying to catch more than it needs to.
I also think that for abilities, a simple fix to this would be to
put in there like opening like paragraph to soldier abilities
like all abilities target on you unless otherwise specified.
Then you have to go through for. Each one, Yeah, literally it's
like what? It's like 1 super easy sentence.
It's like a really easy little clarification.
Let me turn second up. Tyrians act in a much more
straightforward pattern than soldiers only knowing how to
move and kill. Deadly combination.
So when they move, enemies move one hex per round and if they
begin their turn adjacent to a soldier or a sentry gun, they
always move into the soldier or sentry guns hex.
In the case of multiple adjacent soldiers, they always move
towards the largest group of soldiers.
In the case of a Thai roll on the movement guide to help
determine the occupied hex they enter.
I believe the movement guide would be the the little single
hex with the one through sixes on it.
If they do not begin their turn adjacent to a soldier, they move
randomly based on the hex guide and for each enemy group role
1D6 and move the enemy in the direction denoted reroll.
If movement is not possible, when an enemy moves it in the
same hex as another enemy, they combine, once again tying up the
board. It's so that might be.
Honestly I don't know why sometimes the smallest was my
favorite roles in the game. Like I really love that death
fatigue thing in Wolf Ald. I just thought it was so clever.
I just think this is such a clever thing.
Like if you move hex, if you move them together, just combine
the dice and tidy up the board. It's it's multiple things in
one. It's, it's such a man.
I don't know. It's it's such a the.
Cleverness of a system really comes out in the more subtle
rules, you know. Yeah, I agree.
Maximum strike the six stuff. So if you so if you have like a
four and a four, you would combine that row one to a six
and then roll and then roll one down to A2.
Yeah. So you wouldn't lose any more
dice. But as soon as you drop the two
off the one, then you would, which is great combat for the
bad guys. So enemies attack all soldiers
with. So this is the question I have
enemies attack all soldiers within their heads using their
strength value for the combat test.
Totally get it right. Enemy rolls a strength test.
Each success deals one point of damage.
OK, let's stop there before we get the enemy thing.
The question I have is, is that one, say there's four soldiers
in a hex, is that one strength test?
And then if you say there's one success, is that one point for
each or they run or they rolling a different strength test for
each individual soldier because it says they attack all soldiers
within the heck. So is it one test aimed at all
of them or is it one test for each of them?
I mean, this is another thing where it's just like, I think I
I know what I think or this means, you know, like I would
say like, yeah, it's one test, each person in the heck takes
one damage, but it doesn't explicitly say that.
So right. That's that's what I figured is
it's easier to just do not like just it's one so 1111 and then
you do whatever you do. That's what I and also.
There's supposed to be like hordes.
It's supposed to be like they're scurrying across the land.
I think it really fits into, you know?
Right. Yeah, because if you have 1D6
bad guy, that's not, that's a, that's a unit of bad guys.
Yeah, it's not necessarily 1D6 bad guy.
So what happens when that happens?
Right. So targeted soldiers have two
roles to avoid dying, two different roles.
So they roll a speed test to see how well they dodged the attack,
with each success removing one point of any damage, and then an
armor test to see how much their armor withstands each success
removing one point of any mean damage.
I personally would just have two different colored dice and I
would just throw 2D6 each time and one would do my speed dice
and one would do my armor dice. Right.
And rolling one and then rolling another.
Well, if you had, like you say, just two D6.
Well, I guess two different colors of groups of dice.
I mean like all my blue dice would do a speed dice, all my
red dice would be my my armored ice, you know?
I, I really, I really love, love this use of like going back and
forth on like hits in a dice pool.
I think this is like, we've read a lot of dice pool systems,
especially recently, and I've been like, working on mine kind
of on and off. And this is such a great example
how to cleverly use because a lot of times you're like, oh, it
takes one hit to do a thing. What do you do if you have a
bunch of extra hits? It's like some games have
assignments where it's like, you can do this.
Other games are like, you just need one.
This is a great one. Like more hits is better.
It does something for you actively in several different
situations. Yeah.
Yeah, I completely agree. Yeah, I do.
I do enjoy it. Any remaining any damage deals a
mortal wound to the soldier. You don't have any HP, you have
speed, and you have armor. Those are your stats, right?
And then ammo. So if any damage gets past your
speed test and then your armor test, you're done.
Dead. Like that's that's it.
You die immediately and will need to be reinforced by a
teammate or will be reinforced automatically in case of a full
squad death in order to return to the battle.
That's interesting too, I didn't really think about that.
If you die, you can't call in your.
Reinforcement. Someone has to do it for you and
it takes an action, doesn't it? Yeah, it does.
Yeah, so that's a whole action wasted on your dumb ass Diane.
Listen, we've all been there. Yeah, after all enemies have
moved, interacted around, ends at the end of the round, advance
all trackers by one, etcetera, etcetera, blah, blah, blah.
I like the little flea art there.
There's like two of them here. This one's cool.
I don't mind this one so much. And the one above it is fucking
gross, though. On page 18, that one's grosser.
And then, then we get to extract.
You want to you want to hit us with the extracts?
Yes. Listen, you did the deadly thing
right? Once permission, you know, once.
Once the mission is complete, as what it says, your only job is
to get the fuck out of there. To do so, you'll have to reach
the extract point, activate it, and await rescue.
While you may extract at any time, doing so before all
objectives are clear is an act of light class 3 treason and
will result in severe demerits. It is often better to die of a
warrior's death and be revived ship side from your updated
clone state and to extract before completing a mission.
Extraction points has to be activated.
It takes an action. Once activated, it takes 3
rounds to call and land a shuttle.
After the shuttle arrives, you have 3 rounds to get into the
same hex and extract. The shovel always leaves at the
end of the third round. Once the soldiers have are in
the same hex or after three rounds, whichever comes first,
the shovel leaves and the mission ends.
Keep in mind completing the objectives and extracting our
separate goals. It is possible to complete all
the objectives but fail to extract.
Done that before. Failed extraction incurs
demerits on a per soldier basis when claiming your spoils of
war. My question to this would be
like, all right, you got fucking clones.
Why even send the shuttle down? It's be like right Deuces guys.
I used to assume clones are cost, you know.
That's that was my only thing is it's probably cheaper to send a
shuttle down and collect those than it is to to regrow 3
clones. Yeah.
But at the end of the day, unless you run out of clones,
you literally could just be like, shuttle's not working.
All right, we'll see you in a second, you know, I mean.
I think that's like if you miss the shuttle.
I think the assumed war is that like you gives you still get
back to the ship somehow, which means.
Yeah, you get in trouble, yeah, for wasting wasting government
money on on that like clone, Yeah.
Cool section here. Phases of play.
This is just kind of a a repeat of what we just went through and
just divides everything up through 5 sections of play.
Not 6 this time, 5 the the overarching of those being spawn
phase, ability phase, soldier phase, enemy phase, and clean up
all with your own little separate steps within each of
those phases. Cool little thing right here.
I really like it. Yeah, I'd love to see it as a
flow chart. Yeah, I do really enjoy this
Yeah, I love a good flow chart. Who doesn't?
I do really like this a nice breakdown of of everything
that's and it is hyperlinked back to those places.
You can reference it really easily.
Super nice. Every single one has as as a
good one. And then then we're getting into
spoils of war. Throughout history, great
warriors have routinely said things like the victory go the
spoils, and I'm not going to read the rest of it.
There's a long paragraph here basically saying that good job
Pat on the back, you're going to get ranked doesn't contain
anything. Yeah, good job.
At the end of the mission, after either extraction or after all
soldiers die without reinforcements, each player is
awarded merits and dum merits. So for marriage you get a medal,
You get squad wide medals for completing the objectives and
per every three nests closed. And then the demerits are two
are squad wise -2 metal for for incomplete objectives -1 metal
per on extracted soldier, and then -1 metal per instance of
insubordination individually. And we'll get to insubordination
in a second. The only beef I think I have
with this list at all is if there would be a way to get a
positive metal on an individual basis.
I think that would be neat. That would be cool.
I like because obviously you're doing everything as a squad, but
there is a way to get a demerit as an individual.
I'm curious what it would be to get a merit as an individual.
Like what that would take, like an act of heroism or something,
you know what I mean? Like, I think that would be a
neat little thing to add in. I love the implication here that
you could totally beef your first mission and you could
start. You could get negative medals.
You could just have negative medals, you know?
Yeah. You just start lower than the
lowest rank, which isn't really a thing.
So then we get to ranks, which is referenced previously, and
we'll get to intubordination, which we just referenced now.
So ranks as soldiers are in medals.
They rise through the ranks, gaining more power over inspect
from their fellow soldiers over time.
While ranks do not denote any change of overall procedure or
equipment, ranks and orders from any higher ranked soldier than
yourself must be respected within your squad at all times
during a mission. Any insubordination incurs an
individual demerit of -1 per instance of an intubordination.
So basically the only it only matters within the squad at all.
And it's like, good job, Commodore I Soldier Boy.
Fucking hilarious because that means if we drop in together and
I outrank you and I'm like hey, go do this.
You have to. You have to.
Yeah, or you get demerits to be and you get farther down the
rank. So you like, you know, I think.
That, that is hilarious. I think it's really an
incredibly funny part of this game.
So there are 123456789101112 I'm a guest 20, but like
12131415161818 ranks and the medals go from zero to 400
private all the way up to Supreme Commander.
If you, that's a lot of playing this game to get to 400 medals,
yeah. I don't know.
I definitely see this. I would love to see I'm like,
and this is not a thing I need from this game, but something I
would maybe enact at my own table is like because in you
never played it been held. I was 2.
There's a grand map of planets and like as you're fighting,
there's a meter that's tracking if it's the enemies taking over
the planet or how much have they taken over versus how much you
fought and off and you can clear whole plants then move deeper
into their system. And I would, I would enact that
at my own table and just like keep this track over time, you
know? Yeah.
Well, the other thing too, that would be really cool with a game
like this, because honestly, I, I could, I generally think that
this game could have likes to like do a bunch of really cool
stuff. Yeah, I know, like there's a
what's next thing for like possible future packs of stuff,
new squad abilities and this and that.
Like just, you know, the hex map reminds me of the hex flower
obviously from, from Charlotte Laskowski.
And, and we talked about that a bunch, but you could just,
instead of having the whole like create a mission
collaboratively, you could just have people making hex missions
all the time, like dropping in nests, like have interesting,
like this one's got terrain issue.
This one's not like it would like, and even if it's not like
because it would take 2 seconds to do that, right?
But the lore blurb that you would have for each one could be
fucking hysterical or like super interesting, you know?
And then you could literally like stack those up and just be
like, look at this fucking stack of, of, of, of planets or, or
whatever that you conquered. Or say that like, like this
planet is consisted of like 5 different hexes.
So to wipe the planet, you need to defeat all five.
And then you get some kind of bonus that would be fucking
cool. Like each, each, each continent
is one of these. But anyway, so we're basically
done. So what's next?
The war never ends. War never changes.
You know, there is only war. Yeah, take your surviving
soldiers and head back out into the battle again, restarting the
steps, blah blah blah blah blah. In the future, new soldier
abilities, objectives, map shapes, and more may be
available as part of an official Astral Army Requisition Pack.
As long as the supply lies, hold strong.
In the meantime, keep up the fight and feel free to create
your own options too. Christian do it different shaped
hex maps and stuff. Like that's what I was just
saying. You can have a whole.
You could literally have like a planet map and just be like
hexagon. Hexagon, got it, Hex got it.
Hex got it. That's neat.
Why don't you roll 2D20? I'll run a roll on this one too.
I rolled 810. That's the devastation of
Jupiter TM. Nice.
And then I rolled 17 two. So I rolled the ruination of
Axuron 3. That was there.
Yeah. I thought.
I thought in the ruination of Astron 3.
How many clones did you go through?
All of them. All of them.
Clones that day. There you go and then we have
the mission page, which is the hex map.
It's got the objectives like spots for four objectives and
then boxes to check them off in spawns and boxes to check them
off in and then the the the movement little hex guy here and
then we have the soldier card. I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm not
going to rotate it. It doesn't matter.
The only the only thing that I thought was interesting about
this is I definitely for a second read it is Ferdo Irep and
I was like, what the fuck, instead of fire job, because
it's like across, you know, like the hat instead of side side.
But the soldier guard is cool. It marks all of your your ammo.
You can check your squad abilities.
It's got your refreshes listed at the bottom.
And then you can have you rank your metals and then your stats
off to the side and then a journal here at the bottom.
So it's it's super clean, just like the rest of the game.
I really like it. And then we're at the Backpage.
Did you notice that the neat castle game where logo on the
Backpage is hyperlinked? I didn't.
Clever, clever boy. And that'll take you to meet
castlegamer.com. Listen, this is This is why we
do it. This is why we're really
annoying because then we get things like this and we're like,
this is like, this is my. Great.
More hyperlinks and we see and and many 400 page books in a 28
page scene. So that is that is fire drop
from Christian Terrell AKA Meat Castle Game wire.
So let's review this shit. So this is a Zine.
Oh, I don't know if you noticed that the editor in here was here
at Crater. So I think we're continuing our
run of Jarrett Crater games to start the year.
Incidentally, has every game either been from Space Penguin
or edited by Jarrett Crater? I think it has been right.
I think so. My problem is that like by the
next week I forgot what we did last week so.
Bro I genuinely maybe don't remember they.
Could have been written by anybody, I don't remember.
What they were very true. So we do quantify our terrible
opinions with metrics. For regular books, 40 pages or
more, we usually have 5. This is the Zine and it took us
a while, but we did dial in Zine score.
So it's only three metrics for this.
So zine's got a Max of 30 points.
We have visuals, which is the entire visual of the thing.
It is the art, it is the layout, it's how the damn thing looks,
right? Then we have the rule set.
So if it's an adapted rule set, how well is it adapted?
If it's an original rule set, how well do we like it?
And then the vibes basically is the easy way of saying it is
when we close the back cover, how bad do we want to play it?
The little bit more complex way of saying it is does the the
visuals and the rule set reinforce itself so that the
game feels like the game? And then do you also really want
to play it? And that is vibes.
So starting with visuals, what are your thoughts on visuals for
a Zine? They're good.
I mean, there's there's I I really like the cover shot PR.
I'm actually I realize more and more how big of a fan of perbox
and ruins art that I am every time I see, even though I don't
know it's them, I'm like, I know that's probably PR and I really
like that piece. Love that there's some good spot
art in it. I think, you know, it is a is a
black on white Zine. It's not like overly visually
fantastical or anything, but I think it's very serviceable and
good. Yeah.
Do you like the font choices throughout as far as SO?
On the numbers. The numbers look cool, you know.
Yeah, yeah, you talked to the art, but the layout, because
again, we're a little softer on on Zenes as far as like the
amount and stuff like that of art.
Sometimes you'll get a crazy one, which is really cool, but
the layout on this is really nice.
I you know what I really like about the layout and I don't
know why I like it so much is that is the black box around
every page. It's evenly.
Spaced too. I mean, the last time I think we
saw a black box on the Z and we were just like that.
Is wildly unevenly spaced on the edges, but.
Yeah, but even in the middle it looks like the same amount of
space. It's really, really nice.
The font is super readable. It definitely gives you future,
but also military. Very good choice of font super
readable. It's a nice font.
It's a nice size. It's not 2 column.
The amount of information per page is is extremely readable.
So as far as the layout of layout wise, I think it's really
good. I really like it.
The art again, some spot art and pieces, stuff like that.
What what are you? What are you thinking?
Let me, let me, let me, let me take a look.
He's looking for context right now, y'all.
Yeah, I think it's really good. I'm probably sitting around like
I'm sitting probably around a 7:00-ish.
What are you? What are you thinking?
I'm, I'm probably right at like a 6.9.
So yeah, I'm probably right about 7:00.
Yeah. So we'll go 7 for that.
I do like it. I think the layout, the arts
great, you know, there's just not a ton.
I also can you stop doing this? I can't stop.
Hey, what's going on with you, buddy?
Can't. Stop won't stop.
I keep open in the folder instead of the individual thing.
So I do think the layout carries this a little bit, which is fun,
which is great in a Zeem. You could have a Zeem IS0 art
except for on the cover and that would be totally fun.
And I think this is a really good example of making the
layout still feel like the game and reinforce the game.
So rule set. A great rule set, really.
I mean, I love D6 size pull hit on five or six.
I really especially appreciate the fact that in most
circumstances, getting more than one hit adds to it in in a
meaningful and like laid out way instead of just being like,
yeah, makes things better. They get the fuck out.
It's like, no, it specifically gives you certain things.
And I've, I've read several dice pool games now and sometimes a
little frustrated by the fact it's like, well, if you get a
bunch of fucking hits, bro, it's like a lot of times it doesn't
matter. It doesn't miss.
I think it's fairly intuitive. You know, I I really find these
like kind of small scenes that these contained experiences that
are only supposed to do a thing. Or really the games that I have
an easier time kind of falling in love with because they just
do a thing and I don't need a game that advertises itself as a
massive game that can do fucking everything.
Yeah. So yeah, I guess it's fine.
I guess. Yeah.
I really enjoyed the rule set for this.
Yeah, I like it a lot. I mean, again, my only critique
is a couple points of clarification, right?
And that's, that's pretty much it.
So what? So what number are you, What are
your number? Are you thinking about this?
Oh dude, I don't. I don't know, I, I kind of am am
broaching on like great. I'm broaching on.
I'm like, about like an 8:00-ish, you know?
Yeah, I think, I think 8 is where 8 is what was, what was
exactly the number that I was thinking.
Oh, sorry, hold on, there's an ad I'm watching real quick.
Give me a second. No, we're back.
Bro I can't believe you're not subbed to our fucking.
Channel. I don't even need to be subbed
because I run the fucking channel.
So yeah, I think AID is really good for this.
And this is exactly the thing with Zenes is that like, if you
have just like a really clean, clever system that makes sense
and gives you an experience, that's going to be points, you
know what I mean? Yeah.
So that's that's it. And then vibes.
Great vibe. I laughed through this.
I really want to play it like I I think it still has that like
sense of humor that that is in hell divers.
But this is definitely no much to I'd love to see a second run
of this that adds a couple things and like I hope leans
even more into that like, like nationalistic, overly patriotic
idiot, you know, satirical humor.
Yeah, vibes are good. Vibes are great.
Yeah, I do. I do really like this lot.
And again, what's interesting is you got a lot out of this
because you played Hell Divers and this is clearly an homage,
right? But I still got a lot out of it
having never played it. Even the humor still hits and
everything. Again, I honestly even just like
the cover color this like burnt orange.
It's really. Good.
It's really I mean the hook em orange, you know, but it it's
it's nice. The art.
The art again, reinforces everything, reinforces the the
rules reinforce the experience, the visuals reinforce the
experience. I do think that this is really
good to great. What are you thinking?
I think I'm thinking about A7. Yeah, I think 7 is good for
this. I do.
Pretty strong rating, you know, for.
Yeah, just a thing that Christian put out at some point
in time while they're working on a.
Million freebie a freebie in their fucking in their fucking
misses from the meat cow. So we get a little freebie here.
So that is going to be a 22 which it out of 30.
So that's that's great. So I did want to I think I, I
did. I close that fucking thing like
a Jackass. I did.
I did want to. I don't even need to.
So misses from the meat castle. They say it was basically a 72
hour game and then you get a print run.
So it's great. You can pick this up again.
If you go to Substack, you can find misses from the meat
castle. We'll we'll drop the link below.
You can Scroll down to the February 2024 read the entire
thing. There's some interesting stuff
in there and also get to the freebie at the bottom and and
again, you can pick this up. We don't do value for Zenes, but
I think it's only like 15 bucks. Yeah, for the print and PDF, and
the PDF is free on the website so you can grab that.
This is great. I also think that, you know, if
you've ever checked out the Meat Castle annuals, can you still
get those? Can you still buy them?
You should. There's a lot of really great
stuff in there, so. Yeah, I can't find my second
one, so I hope I didn't send you the only one I had.
I'll have to try to get another one.
But yeah, it's a great little scene, really fun, really
enjoyable little game. And I can't believe that's the
first, that's the first review we've done.
But again, Christian does a lot of adventures.
It's cool to do a game. This is a fun one.
I would play this in a heartbeat.
It would be so easy to play this in like Foundry or something
too. So yeah.
Absolutely. Yeah, that's it.
So we got, we have some fun stuff coming up on Sunday and on
Monday, I don't know if this episode will be out before that.
So we'll see. I work the next couple of days,
but if not then expect 3 episodes during the week
sometime. And that's it Christian, thanks
for making a fun game. Thanks for being chat with us to
clarify some things and we will see all of you later.
Have a good day. Bye.