Fast-forward 12 months and Black Scorpion have their own game on Sale that I can use those figure in. I played my first game yesterday so here are my thoughts. Just to say I don't own the rules so all this is from memory.
Firstly, I like the way orders work. You roll on your Authority which appears to be d8 for all starting leaders. This is how many action points you have with the highest roll taking first turn. The number of action points you have is how many models you can activate in that round and once done you drop down to the next level i.e.; You roll a 6, you activate 6 models and then you have 5 points left. You activate 5 models then have 4 points left and so on.
You can be interrupted in your turn, either by your opponent spending an order with a suitable model ( I think it was within 6" of an order being spent) or with a model that is ready, which causes your turn to end and they begin theirs. This did cause me to lose a few turns as I activated the wrong model first allowing my opponent, RobN, to steal the turn. A nice touch but annoying when it happens.
Secondly, I liked the dice mechanic. Each stat has a type of dice attributed to it; d4,d6 and d8 making up my army. Being wounded causes you to drop down to the next lowest dice with a minimum of d4. The other nice touch is that you keep rolling if you get the max roll - you roll a 4 on a d4 and you roll again adding it to the first roll, roll another 4 and roll again until you roll another number. This can allow for some lucky rolls to beat an opponent with a higher dice value.
Combat, ranged and melee, is based on opposing rolls. Range is ACC vs DEX and melee is COM vs COM. Nice and straightforward with the rolls going to a table to see if its a hit, a crit or straight to wounded. Damage is either the DAM of the model in melee or the weapon in range vs CON, again referring to a chart for the result.
I enjoyed the sprint rule which involved a d6 roll of 4,5,6 to achieve which caused one of my Orcs to become stunned on my first turn and he stayed that way the whole game being unable to shake it off in the maintenance phase needing a 1,2,3 to do it.
Post game progression of your gang is based on models you affected during the game and the one thing I would suggest is to make a table with the relevant things in columns and your models down the side so you can keep track. A roll on a table if you increase a level allows for attribute increases or new skills as you would expect.
All in all it was a very enjoyable game. I kept my Orc admiral hidden at the back and really wish I had gotten him stuck in but didn't like the thought of him getting injured as he is my only painted mini so far ;-)
There you go, a brief introduction but I tried to mention the main points (that I remember anyway). I look forward to playing again in the not too distant future. Good luck to Black Scorpion with the venture.
