Review: 'Dwarf Kings Hold: Green Manace'

First things first I owe you lot a bit of an apology, this review should have gone live during early September and I'd just assumed it had. Turns out I'd scheduled it to go live during September of 22,011. Yeah, like I'll still be blogging then!!! Sorry.

It might be a smaller box but it still has stuff in it!

This is the second of the Dwarf Kings Hold games, and is therefore a sort of dungeon crawler... but not... ish... it's not like the co-operative ones you might be used to. I've heard people refer to Dwarf Kings Hold as fantasy Space Hulk and this winds me up no end, as the only similarities are the grided game board and that you play with toy soldiers! But, I guess as a quick, none qualified statement it's not totally lame... although I still don't like it as it's lazy. Jake Thornton didn't like me calling the game adversarial last time around, but I think it is adversarial, because it pits one player against another, and there can be only one winner, although obviously you both win if you're having fun!!! Although obviously the 'actual' winner is the real winner. However, the first game, which I thoroughly enjoyed playing was a fun game to play and easy to pick up, it also had a nice level of tactics hidden away. Dead Rising, had Dwarfs facing off against foul shambling skellies, and this latest version changes that dynamic by putting brutish Orcs and nimbly pimbly Elves together in a Dungeon of doom. To be honest with you I was intrigued to see how the dynamic between Elves and Orcs would be different to that between the Dwarfs and the living dead. Oh yeah did I mention the cave ins...

Product description

Right when I reviewed Dwarf Kings Hold: Dead Rising I had someone PM me a complaint that I hadn't made it clear enough that the miniatures required assembly, even though I said they did... so let me say from the start that the miniatures in Dwarf Kings Hold: Green Menace require the use of clippers to cut them from the spru's, craft knives to clean up mould lines etc. and indeed plastic glue to stick them together. I'm going to assume that beyond that basic information most of you are good to go all by yourselves! However, it is a fair point, most board games come with the miniatures pre-made for you so I guess for some people it is something that does need to be made clear, although I honestly don't think Mantic's miniatures should tax even the most basic modeller. It would though, have been good if they'd included a little assembly guide to help things on their way. You get a host of card tokens, 9 dice, 5 green and 4 blue. There are also 28 floor tiles of varying shapes, sizes and complexity, If you own Dead Rising you'll know what to expect. Last and by no means least there are those miniatures, you get 20 Elves and 8 Orcs, these are wargaming standard miniatures not board game rubbery things.
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