DriveThruRPG.com

Saturday, August 13, 2011

Song Of Blades And... Death Rays?

Recently Ganesha Games announced that they are working on some changes for their game Mutants And Death Ray Guns (or MDRG for short), a post-apocalyptic miniature game that uses the Song Of Blades system. The game currently uses a random system to generate your warband. You choose the basic types (human, mutant, mutant plant, etc.) but any skill, mutations, and equipment are all rolled randomly. This is not necessarily a bad thing as it really captures the post-apoc "scrounging to survive" kind of feel but with my own WYSIWYG background with 40k I have stayed away from this particular rule set.

Now they have announced that they are working on some construction rules for MDRG so I decided it was time to check it out. From first impressions it looks pretty interesting and the random nature actually doesn't look like it would really cause that much of a problem as few of them are so extreme as to require some vast alterations. Don't get me wrong; I still like the idea of being able to choose just what I'm going to use but I can see doing a random campaign over a couple of evenings just for kicks to see how it plays out. But more on that later...

As for the rules as written in the book they look pretty good. The game includes a simple campaign system that lets you add some flavor to your games instead of just fighting random battles. I can also see ways to expand it using a simple map to track territories that you control and potentially collect resources from which would add an interesting element in my opinion. Gonna have to start working on that 'cause it sounds like a lot of fun....

Overall, I like what I see so far. I haven't given the game a test drive to see just how it all fits together but as the Song Of Blades system is a pretty sound one I can't see there being much wrong with this one. Now I just need to put it through its paces which means more battle reports soon! Until then...

No comments: