Devil in the Wilderness-Playtest

Over the last couple of weeks I have been making terrain, reading and re-reading and painting figures for this new game set late in the 17th century in New England. It combines both historical and supernatural elements so I was quite interested. It is card driven which is great and the game appears to be quite nuanced. Essentially, the Puritan Witch-hunters are fighting the Witches.

I had some trouble interpreting the play sequence especially in respect to the utilisation of the cards, of which there are I believe 7 different types for each faction. I asked some questions on the FB page, there are over a 100 members in the FB group but I get a sense most of these are lurkers as only the rules writer responded to my questions. This is quite a new ruleset so I am sure the numbers of players will increase. I believe that some of the difficulties I have are related to the fact that the game is really set up to be played with an online proprietry app and half the rulebook is devoted to discussing how to use the app. Not withstanding though the game comes with a beautiful set of cards, which is certainly my preference. I also realised that if you have a look at the all the cards and read what is on them before you play the game you will get a lot of your questions answered. Anyway, I sorted through things, and was ready to have a go this morning. I am still missing a couple of buildings as well as only partially painted my 6 main figures, but it is always good to bash on. I also had to remove the terrain setup today to set up for a CoC command game I am playing tomorrow night. A little bit of pressure!

The Terrain

Initial Setup

The Antagonists

Card Deck Setup

The Protagonists

The Game

First Hand of Cards for the sides, with the Objectives revealed

Some Witch Hunter friendly militia and witches

John Alden searching for an item, lucky this time

Not so lucky a Dire Wolf appears

On no.... a Werewolf!

Position end of Turn 2

Position end of turn 3

Well, I think I am really going to enjoy this game. It plays very quickly and the action starts almost immediately. There are a lot of options each turn and the movement, shooting and melee mechanisms are quite simple. I still have quite a few questions about the rules but I am sure I can get them sorted. Looking forward to my next game.