Games that currently intrigue me: Dark Age

Before I start prattling on about this game I need to inform you all that when I contacted the guys at Dark Age Miniatures to ask some questions about the game they decided they wanted to send me some mini's and the rulebooks. So as always keep that in mind as you read this 'first look' at the game. I personally don't think I'm that easily bribed, but you might have differing opinions. Right I'm going to be honest with you here, the whole post apocalypse road warrior thing has been done to death in many walks of life. Be it comic books, films, novels or indeed wargames. The dark, destroyed, dystopian future where humanity has descended into a mass of unruly, brutal sects hell bent on clubbing each other to death, with whatever household implements, or piece of masonry they have to hand... and then probably eating their victim. We've all seen it and we're all I'm sure familiar with many of the themes. Sometimes it's done really well, and other times it's done not so well. Part of me loves the whole genre, and another part of me detests that many don't try to do anything new with it or spin it in a different way.

Concept art mutilation Juggernaut

So for me Dark Age sat of to the side along with two other skirmish level games, Eden and Urban War, amongst others, as products that were potentially a bit samey and covering similar ground, certainly in terms of broad brush strokes and a few visual ques and themes with the miniatures. So when it came to looking at them for these articles I knew I'd have to decide on one and just run with it. This was because I couldn't really muster the will to go out and learn the differences between the three products to decide if any of these post apocalypse skirmish games were for me or not. In short I benched them all, this despite many of the miniatures from the ranges looking cool and appealing to me personally. I decided I'd stick with games I could distinguish from others easily and shoot for them first. Then I started getting into the swing of things with this series of articles on 'games that intrigue me'... and I started getting requests from readers to cover certain games. A few raised my eyebrows, as quite frankly I wasn't expecting them to be of much interest to many people.

Amongst that list, nay, right at the top of that list was Dark Age, while none of its post apocalyptic competitors have received any requests at all. It was almost a two pronged assault actually, what happened was I got a lot of people asking me if I had looked at Dark Age as they were interested in playing it and would appreciate my thoughts on it... and the second group were a very small (but vocal) handful of readers who played the game and told me I should cover it because it's a great game. Now I'll be honest, had that small group of devotees sounded like slavering poltroons with barely a brain cell between them I might have skipped over the game again, but they didn't. They actually sound like grizzled wargaming veterans, like me, and the more I prodded away at who they were and their gaming experience, the more they started to sound like me. They told me I'd enjoy the game and that I should at least get myself a copy of the free quickstart rules. So yeah I became intrigued...
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