Unheard in the Deluge: Cry Havoc

I was surprised again (as with Abyss)...

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Great article! I have the base game, although it's on the sell pile. I like it, but it never set my group on fire enough to make it hit the table much. For that reason, I had never picked up the expansion, although I was curious about it. I didn't know that it totally changed the clock of the game.

I always found myself wishing they would have fully themed the game in the Neuroshima world. That change would have made me much more interested.

Thanks! That's a fair point about the setting. I think they might have gone with a more generic approach because the rights do belong to Grant and not to Portal. That way, there's no confusion if/when he decides to re-release it and people might keep tying its existence to Neuroshima, which would be kind of a marketing snafu.

I think Grant/Portal had some issues working together. I believe he had no hand in the expansion and was not happy with Portal overall.

I liked this game quite a bit. Unique battle system too.

I played this game faaaar too early one morning on the last day of a 3 day gaming con. IIRC it was a lot of fun but me and another player fell into a serious dispute about the timing or legality of playing that reverse initiative order card (or some effect like it). It would have won the game for me with my interpretation, for them with theirs. We parted ways having decided on mutual victory

charlest wrote: I think Grant/Portal had some issues working together. I believe he had no hand in the expansion and was not happy with Portal overall.

You know, I kind of suspected that based on the overall tone of his replies to questions on BGG. He's been perfectly diplomatic and hasn't directly said anything negative, but he also hasn't said anything positive about working with them. Portal can be kind of weird sometimes (see: the utter lack of information on releases for the US that sometimes appear and sometimes don't.)

I have been *really* enjoying your articles lately, Jackwraith.

Thanks! I went on kind of a run where I'd be tossing things to Uba every couple days and they involved a lot of games that I really enjoy, so I think that confluence panned out well. There was less enthusiasm for the Villainous stuff, but I know that game has a pretty divided response in the general community. I, uh, also haven't written anything for the site in a couple weeks (still have a couple things in the queue) so I hope I'm swinging back around...

This game was easy to write about, though. Every time I've introduced it to someone, they've really enjoyed it and have expressed some degree of surprise about either that or the fact that they've usually never heard of it before. The one time I did with someone who is decidedly not a DoaM player was probably the best. Her husband used to play 40K with me, so I knew he'd be into it, but she's very much a Eurogamer. But she was totally into Cry Havoc and I think it's the puzzle of the combat system that really hooked her, since it's really more of a high risk worker placement system than anything else.

Agree with the above sentiment. It's a DoaM:, there are dudes, there is a map, but it plays so much differently than most of them. Very puzzly. I like it a lot and wish I could play it more often. Strikes me like CitOW, which rewards multiple plays with the same group.