This simple little mechanic so perfectly mirrors the feeling of sprinting for dear life out of a dangerous situation that was so paramount to my Oblivion and Skyrim playthroughs. Your characters can move 6 inches, but if you spend stamina points (each character’s stamina pool is different) you can boost your move an extra 3 inches per point. The Elder Scrolls: Call To Arms truly captures the feel of its source material, and it does so in a lot of little, interesting ways. Seeing as this is, at its heart, a skirmish game, you’re not rolling a bucketful of tiny dice, and the entire system moves at a tidy pace once you learn what all the symbols mean. If you beat your own score, you hit. Apply the damage pips, your opponent rolls to see if they negate any of that damage, and that’s that. Yellow, red, and black dice show you how much damage you’re dealing, and a custom green die includes negative number modifiers that help you get under your target score. Simultaneously, when attacking, you’ll also roll a set number of custom 6-sided dice as determined by your weapon. When you want to make an attack, or make an ability check (for things like jumping over chasms, shrugging off the effects of a malady, etc.) you roll a custom 20-sided die (with values going up to 10, and other special symbols) and hope to score equal to or under that number. Each character model has 5 stats: Strength, Agility, Endurance, Intelligence, and Wisdom, with values attributed to each. The core mechanic of the game is quite approachable. Imperial Legion officers facing off against a Draugr overlord They serve as the AI adversaries mentioned above that creep out of long-forgotten tombs. One interesting thing to note is that, at least for now, these enemies aren’t a playable faction. But you’ll need some miniatures, and the first offerings include a 2 faction starter sets, Stormcloaks and the Imperial Legion, and a Bleak Falls Barrow Delve starter set, which includes one hero “The Dragonborn” (the only character in this initial release who can use Dragon Shouts), and a smattering of enemies (skeleton archers and Draugr). First, there’s the base box, which includes the core rulebook, a book of quests, and a quick-start guide, along with custom dice, equipment cards, quest, special event cards, character cards, and tokens galore. The first wave of products hitting stores soon is made up of 4 key pieces. The boxes included in the first wave of The Elder Scrolls: Call To Arms Playing The Game Once you wrap your head around the rules and figure out the flow of Delve Mode, it flows naturally and rather quickly (as far as wargames go). In the Delve games I played at home (running a stalwart group of Imperial Soldiers), the Skeleton Archers skittered around finding a good place to hide, the Draugr ran into the thick of the battle with their two-handed greatswords, and the Draugr Overlord was, well, really damn hard to kill. This is really the shining star of this game system, as these adversaries are controlled by a very comprehensive sort of “cardboard AI.” Each time it’s an enemy’s turn to activate, the player rolls a die, consults a small chart, and follows directions on how that enemy should act. The second mode, Delve Mode, is a solo (or co-op) mode where waves of these non-player enemies, called adversaries, spawn and attempt to smite your heroes. And even in this more straightforward mode, there are interesting twists to explore, like hero characters that can level up, treasure that can be pilfered and equipped on the spot, and non-player enemies that spawn and attack both sides of the battle indiscriminately. First, there’s the more traditional Battle Mode, where players take on the role of a faction of heroes, equip them with gear, spells, and abilities based on a point-buy system, and square off against each other. What makes The Elder Scrolls: Call To Arms so interesting, and sets it apart from more traditional wargames, is its two very different game modes. This is The Elder Scrolls: Call To Arms, a new tabletop wargame by Modiphius, based (obviously) on the best selling Elder Scrolls video game series, and it's ushering in a lot of exciting new ideas to the wargaming market. Blades clash, spells fly through the air, tape measurers are unfurled, and custom dice are rolled to determine the fate of the battle. Somewhere else in Tamriel, a group of Imperial Legion officers shoulder their shields and brace against a wave of charging Stormcloak rebels. The Dragonborn sprints through the tall grass, burning their stamina to get close enough to unleash a devastating dragon shout against a shambling skeleton.
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