From: njs@allegra.tempo.att.com (Nicholas Sauer) Subject: Lionheart Review Lionheart is a Parker Brothers game from the people who designed Risk (at least that's what the box claimed). This one will only be distributed through specialty hobby shops however (i.e. Toys R Us will not get to carry it). I think this is a good thing, personally (anything to help break the Toys R Us mass market game choke-hold works for me). Anyway, onto the game itself. The best description of the game was from one of the Chessex people themselves. Lionheart is to minatures games what Axis and Allies was to wargames. The game basically has a chess like board (no terrain features). You get a bunch of bases that can hold 1 to 4 figures each (max of four footman or two knights on horseback). You basically agree to starting forces with your opponent and set up hidden from one another (you place the box lid between the two of you as you can only set up on the last two rows on your side). There is a standard set-up for those who don't like this idea. There is no point system for the pieces (for those more familiar with actual minis rules) according to the guy I asked. Once the pieces are set-up you remove the box lid and start playing (randomly determine who goes first). The four dice that come with the game are specialty dice that you have to attach stickers to (like Groo, for example). Each die has three axes, two bows and a panic side. You get two actions on your turn. An action is moving a stand or attacking with a stand of figures. Moving is simple in that pieces can only move into the square in front of them or turn to face any square they like (one or the other not both in the same action). Oh yeah, knights move like rooks in that one move can be any number of squares straight ahead (but, they still have to turn as a seperate move like everyone else). Attacking is pretty simple as well. For foot units you basically roll a number of dice equal to the number of figures on the stand. Footman can only attack a base directly in front of them and hit on axes. Bowmen can fire at any of the nine squares directly in front of them and hit on a bow (note that given the die configuration this is slightly less likely than axes). The only exception to this is if you roll all panics. If this happens (and I saw it happen with a four figure stand once during the demoes) the unit retreats one space and is turned 180 degrees (i.e. they really run away). Mounted units (your knights and king) roll two dice per figure and take two hits to kill. There is one special rule here for single figure footman stands attacking a mounted figure. If they roll an axe on their first attack roll they can immediately make a second roll to see if they get another axe and kill the mounted piece. Note, however, that the odds of rolling a panic under such conditions is noticably higher. The panic idea was the one aspect of the design that I thought was the most clever in that your units will be more likely to panic as their numbers get whittled away. So, you alternate turns with your opponent taking two actions each turn. The object of the game is to kill your opponent's king or all of his other pieces. So, what did I think of the game? The jury is basically still out for me. A guy named Mike Cox that I know locally tried it also and made the observation that the manuever element of the game was kind of swamped by the randomness of the die rolling. I would tend to agree with this based upon what happened in my game. I had basically openned up my opponent's right flank (we used the standard set-up) and was preparing to attack his king from this position. I had a big bowman advantage on him in that I had one stand of three and one stand of four left to his one stand of four (he had accidentally marched one stand of them into the range of my bowmen and lost most of them in my first attack). I ended up losing after all of this careful work anyway. My opponent basically ran a stand of four footmen through my center directly toward my king. My four stand of archers had turned and whittled the poor bastards down to one figure. He finally gets the guy in front of my king with his second action. On my turn I take two actions. First, I attack him with my four archer stand and all miss. Second my king attacks with two dice and misses with both (kings cannot panic and panicking stands push other stands behind them in the direction of panic and, if they are pushed off the edge of the board, you lose them). On his turn he attacks with this clown and manages to roll one axe and then a second to win the game (also, you can only attack once with each stand per turn). Normally, I probably would have been more upset about the completely random nature of the lose than I was at the time. For some reason though, it didn't bother me a great deal in this game. So, whether this is a design feature or flaw I haven't really decided yet. I would have to play a few more games to decide (and would actually like to try some when the mood strikes me). I guess I would want to do this on someone elses copy before I decide to buy it myself or not. The pieces themselves are actually kind of nice to look at. There is also extra pieces than the four described above included for players to use in the non-fixed set-up. The three extra pieces are mercinaries, serfs (complete with pitchforks), and heavy footmen. The heavy footmen are basically dismounted knights (roll two dice in combat and take two hits to kill but move like regular footmen). The mercinaries had some unique advantage (I think they where immune to panic) but, they also had a flag on them that marked them as yours because, if a king ever moved next to them, they automatically convert to that king's side (you change the flag to yours). I forget how the serfs worked. I guess my biggest concern with the game from a popularity perspective is that it really comes across as very chess-like. This might scare potential customers away pretty quickly (I know it didn't exactly encourage me as I sat down to play but, then again, I prefer Go and Shogi to conventional chess). The randomness issue might be a problem for more serious gamers but, it struck me as no more or less irritating than the randomness of Axis and Allies which is pretty successful in spite of this (even though I personally consider it the second weakest of the gamemaster series designs). It will be interesting to see whether Lionheart ultimately finds enough of an audience to really take off or not. Nick Sauer From: tool@MCS.COM (Daniel Blum) Subject: Re: Lionheart Review In rec.games.board Nicholas Sauer wrote: > Lionheart is a Parker Brothers game from the people who designed Risk (at > least that's what the box claimed). This one will only be distributed > through specialty hobby shops however (i.e. Toys R Us will not get to carry > it). I think this is a good thing, personally (anything to help break the > Toys R Us mass market game choke-hold works for me). I was told at GenCon that it was by the designer of Axis and Allies, which seems more likely - but who knows? I was also told that if the game sold well it would eventually be released to the general market. They also have plans for expansions (new units types, etc.) if it sells well. > I forget how the serfs worked. As I recall, they panic if they get ANY panic symbols when they attack. Otherwise they're like normal infantry. > I guess my biggest concern with the game from a popularity perspective is that > it really comes across as very chess-like. This might scare potential > customers away pretty quickly (I know it didn't exactly encourage me as I > sat down to play but, then again, I prefer Go and Shogi to conventional > chess). The randomness issue might be a problem for more serious gamers > but, it struck me as no more or less irritating than the randomness of Axis > and Allies which is pretty successful in spite of this (even though I > personally consider it the second weakest of the gamemaster series designs). > It will be interesting to see whether Lionheart ultimately finds enough of > an audience to really take off or not. > Nick Sauer > It is something of any uneasy mix (the chess-like movement and the random combat), but I think it works fairly well. Also, the fact that miniatures are used rather than counters or whatnot means that you can change the rules very easily (i.e., there are no counters, cards, etc., with numbers or rules on them that you'd have to change or ignore). For example, I'm not thrilled with the ability of the heavy infantry to attack into any neighboring square - since there's nothing about the miniature that indicates this ability, it's easy to change. I also think it might be better to charge an action for each 90-degree rotation (rather than for any amount of rotation), and give each player an extra action each turn. Etc. _______________________________________________________________________ Dan Blum tool@mcs.net "Let it be granted that a controversy may be raised about any question, and at any distance from that question." - Lewis Carroll From: Jason and Vonda Matthews Subject: Re: Lionheart by PB (Review Long) Demian Rose wrote: > > hey folks, > > I was perusing this one at my local game store for a while; looks sorta > like chess with dice and lots of plastic medieval troops. Might be > interesting...anyone tried it yet? comments? > > thanx, > demian Demian, I just tried this one tonight. Although it looks rather chess like, it is really more like De Bellis Antiquitatis (the very simple miniatures game) turned into a board game. The basic game is kind of a rock-scissors-paper event. The Lionheart is played on a field of several rectangles. The objective is to kill your opponent's king or all of his units. Every turn you get two actions. This includes movement, facing changes and attacking. I believe you start with 10 units in the basic game (1 king, 2x4 archers, 2x2 kinghts, 4x4 infantry). The dice are especially made for the game. They are 6 siders with 3 sides dedicated to axes (what infantry & knights/King need to hit), 2 sides for arrows (for the archers, duh), and one panic pip. Each archer and infantryman rolls 1 die, knights & the king roll 2 dice. The way combat works is that a unit may only attack in the direction it is facing. If you are an infantry stand at full value, you roll 4 dice and remove the number of opponents pieces that correspond with the number of axes you rolled. If you are attacking cavalry you need 2 hits to kill one of the stands. Archers may shoot anything within three squares of the forward facing edge of their base. They may shoot over friendly troops. Although cavalry are only 2 to a stand, they are stronger than the other units and are able to roll 2 dice. If a unit rolls all panic pips they do an about face and flee one square. Obviously, as a unit decreases in size, it increases its chances of rolling all panics (essentially rolling all 1's). I thinks this is a rather clever way of dealing with moral. Also fleeing troops can push friendly troops off the board (wrecking your day in this game). Movement is one square/facing change at a time, except cavalry and the king which can move as far as they like in a straight line as long their path is unobstructed. There are also advanced rules which allow you to customize your army with a number of new unit types like mercenaries, peasants, heavy & reinforced infantry. This gives the game high replayability. This is an excellent introductory level game by Parker Brothers. It plays in about 45min. - 1 hr. It is very much in the theme of DBA & more recent German board games which are abstract games with an historical theme. I am sure it will make a terrific entry point into the hobby if it cathces on with kids. I highly recommend it.