Author:  Created:  Rating: JOHN LOPIENSKI Aug. 31, 2001, 03:47PM   12 Ratings     12345     I just received my copy of "Gothic Horror, Vampire Wars" and I thought I would provide you a brief synopsis of the rules and my opinion of them. Not that my opinion means a hill of beans. My gaming experience is extremely limited, I think I have played 10 to 15 games in 3 years, but I do enjoy the idea of Miniature gaming so here it goes. First, let me start by saying that I love the idea of the game, Vampires, Werewolves and things that go bump in the night have always intrigued me and a desperate band of heroes trying to defeat them is right up my alley. That is why when I saw the preview of the rules on this site, Voidgamer.com, I bought them without seeing or hearing a review anywhere. This is totally out of character for me. I usually wait to see someone else with the game, figures or at least a review of how the game is played first before I jump and spend my limited hobby funds. Luckily, this time I was pleasantly surprised. The Game showed up last week and at first I thought to myself "Hey, where is all the pictures of the beautifully painted miniatures and how come there is no color." Then I realized that I have been conditioned to expect that the color pictures and fluff is what makes a game good and that is why I haven't really found to many rule sets that I have liked. In fact the only rules that I have played consistently were for the American Revolution, which I down loaded from a site on the Internet. The reason I think I liked those rules so much is because they are simple to read and understand. 5 or 6 pages, a few charts and away you go. Vampire Wars is the same way. The how the rules work section of the book is only 13 pages long (I wonder if this was done on purpose?) and the rules are pretty straightforward. The initiative system and dice system is different than any other game I have played before but are simple to understand. Initiative is card based and gives more powerful troop types more cards, so more chances to move and kill. Using several reshuffle cards in the deck adds an element of surprise to the game because when they show up the entire deck is mixed up even if your group didn't get their action yet. The dicing system is different in that different size dice are used for different levels of figures. Therefore a more powerful figure would role a d20 to make an attack or save while a weaker figure might use a d6 for the same thing. This gives higher probabilities to the more powerful characters. This makes total sense to me and now I get to use all those different sized dice I have from D&D, which I haven't used in years. The rulebook is broken up into 3 sections. The 1st section was the how the game is played section, the 2nd is the fluff on the specific races and war band types in this world and the 3rd section is filled with campaign and scenario ideas. The Fluff section is really good. It gives you all the back ground you need, on each of the races and bands, to spark your imagination and not to much that it tries to dominate your fantasy world. I hate the way some companies do that. I want to write my own book so to speak. The charts on each of the groups are easy to understand and the special abilities of each are kept to a minimal so that they are not hard to remember. There is also a sub section on weapon and equipment costs so you can customize your bands to face different foes. The 3rd section is a listing of 20 different scenarios, which can be linked together into a campaign or played as one off games. Each scenario has a suggested size and specific listing of the bands opposing each other, including special weapons and members, victory conditions, description of the circumstances surrounding the scenario and a reference to a map. The maps are listed in an atlas section behind the scenarios. There is no ground scale on the drawings just a rough outline of the area in question. Experienced gamers will not find this section helpful but I do because it will help me organize my terrain building and figure painting priorities. There is also a subsection included which gives you which figure packs to buy for each group listed in the scenario. This was great for me because as soon as I decided to keep the rules I went to this section, called Old Glory and ordered the figures referenced. As I said before more experienced gamers will not appreciate this section but for me it was very helpful. Like the rest of the rules it keeps thing simple. I do have several criticisms of the book. The major one being editing or more precisely the lack of it. There where several areas in the rules that have misprints that really changes the way the game would play. For example the movement chart for a vampire says one thing and the example of movement shown says something else which significantly changes the way the creature moves. There are several of these types of mistakes, which are evident to even someone as unschooled in the gaming world as myself. That being said when I e-mailed my questions to the "Librarian" on the Gothic Horror site he responded really quickly and he was very helpful. He also told me that and errata form would be posted to Old Glory’s site soon. My second criticism of the rules is that the hand-to-hand combat section seems a little incomplete or maybe ambiguous is a better term. The answers to my questions are probably right in the book somewhere and I have read right over them so I will play a few games first before I complain to loudly. I am also sure that if I still can't figure it out an e-mail will clear it up quickly. A note to you Game sellers out there Good customer support can gloss over many problems. My last minor criticism is in regards to the atlas section of the book. They spent all that time drawing the maps; they might as well have given us the board size that they were using. This way we don't have to guess what size makes for a balanced game with the war band sizes suggested in the scenario section. Those criticisms aside I am looking forward to playing some games with these rules. Needless to say I would recommend the rules to anybody. The different initiative and dicing systems make it very playable and the figures look very cool. I should receive my 1st batch hopefully today (UPS ground is so slow!!!!!). I went with the Zendarian Vampire Hunters (Prussians for you historical types) and some Vampires. I chose these for no other reason than they were the first groups listed in the scenario section and the figure look pretty nice. I will let you know what condition they come in. Please post any comments that you have in regards to my synopsis of the game or my thoughts. I would truly appreciate them. Heck, I wouldn't have spent the time typing this if I didn't want them. I hope the review helps you to make a decision either way on whether or not to pick up the game or start a collection the figures. Thanks  Public Comments Please log in to post a comment    You must be a registered member to post comments. You may sign-in Here.

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