Centaurs vs. Zergs

The Centaur city of Medda is being swarmed by voracious Skreels, and it's up to you to organize the defense in Firesiege, provided you decide to back the ongoing Kickstarter for the game, that is. Note that the game is set in the same universe as Feralis, a dueling card game which, not being soloable, remained under our radar.

Image from BGG

So, besides the mind-shattering innovation that players embody Centaur heroes instead of your traditional Fantasy fare, what is the game about and is it exciting?

The game is a city defense: a horde tries to invade through one of the three spiraling arms leading to the core citadel, where they would mercilessly murder your leader, and you need to keep it at bay while fulfilling some key objectives. One such objective is to destroy the nests from which the horde spawns, and if you do so, you win the game. But you also randomly draw two additional objectives at the beginning of the game. They are not meant to be all fulfilled: each objective, including burning down one of the three nests, grants you a number of banners once fulfilled, and you win the game when you achieve six banners. So, the victory conditions change from game to game, and within a game, you can revise your strategy to pursue an alternating goal.

Image from BGG

As for losing, there are also multiple paths to defeat: if the horde track reaches its end (so a timer, basically), if the enemy troops reach the central citadel, if there are no enemy tokens left in the supply and you need to spawn one too many.

Image from BGG

The core gameplay loop is pretty simple: you have three tiles in front of you, some on the "good" side, some on the "bad" side, and you can only see one of the sides. You need to pick one tile, and you can apply the actions listed on the good side, and you must apply the effects on the bad side. Then you flip it, and can/must apply the listed actions or effects. That's basically it.

Image from BGG

Your actions include attacking enemy troops, recruiting basic soldiers, moving them or your hero around, or advancing on some tracks that upgrade your troops' stats (increasing their movement, their attack value, the number of troops that you get in a recruit action, etc.). You can also activate your hero's skills and, if you fulfill some special activation, "awaken" it to its true potential for the remainder of the game. Combat is easily resolved by summing up strengths and rolling a modifier die to slightly alter the outcome.

Image from BGG

Note that the game also features a campaign mode, and may be expanded with the Ballad of Fire expansion, which adds a few mechanics, including archers besides your soldiers and new goals to fulfill.

Personal opinion: This is not the game's first attempt at crowdfunding. The previous version, on Gamefound, turned unsuccessful, and they canceled it just before reaching their funding goal. It also featured different SKUs to get miniatures for the Centaur soldiers and the Kreels, while the Centaur heroes came as miniatures on a default basis. Now, it's meeples for everything and everyone. I must say, I like that. The price of the basic game has also significantly dropped, from 125€ to 88€. Nice. As a result, their new campaign got more backers (418>466) but also raised less money (48k€ > 29k€). This does not bode well for the company.

Image from Gamefound

Even though 88€ is a hefty sum, I'm tempted to back it. I really like that they went with Centaurs (even though they are stupidly called "Valkan" instead of Centaur, making the rules harder to process for no reason). The meeples look good, and the Dark Fantasy art is fine. I find the varying win conditions especially appealing: I would have found it tedious if they had all piled up, but since they provide you alternatives to the basic goal, it makes the game more flexible and more interesting, with no real complexity added. I also appreciate that the core loop is so simple, and doesn't go through the hurdle of multiple phases and the like.

Image from Kickstarter

Still, it's missing something, and I don't know what. It doesn't grip me in. It doesn't haunt me when I close the page. I don't randomly think about it during the day. It seems streamlined, well-designed, the production is neat, the graphic design is readable, but there is nothing that keeps my attention for too long. I may not be alone since I haven't seen the game triggering too much discussion. Why is that, though? I have no clue. The game seems excellent, but somehow it fails to break the bubble of numbness that an over-abundance of releases has slowly inflated.

#Firesiege #Chiacchiera #Granocchia #DeerGamesStudio