05 December 2021

Devil in the Wilderness



I finally got in a real game of DiW yesterday with an actual opponent. Also got introduced to a new gaming store which was about an hour away in New Hampshire. Midgard Hobbies and Games is quite a nice place, with an excellent and large gaming area and a good stock of gaming accessories, such as mats paints, terrain etc. Maybe a little less in respect to rulesets than the Hobby Bunker in Wakefield, MA. 

Myself and Adam met up there with Dave Valentine the rules writer to have an instructional game. I was pretty familiar with the rules but Adam had not played with the final version before. Notwithstanding, Adam picks up ruleset extremely quickly and this did not slow the game. I had several questions about the game, mostly in respect to the card play as the mechanics are quite straight forward.

I played the Witches with Adam playing the Witch Hunters. The game has an excellent narrative and each player gets 3 main characters with the ability to add several extra characters to your posse or to add unnatural characters to the game which essentially act as automatons, they are best avoided. Dave has a beautiful set up as you will see below. 

We got in several turns in 3 hours, and although there was no clear winner, I did get what would reasonably called a marginal victory and I had pushed the game clock towards Evil rather than Good! There are several different objectives that can be set up in any one game, Dave had set up a trap/treasure scenario for this scenario. At the beginning of the game we were more focused on building up our rosters as well as engaging in several melees. We also were able to place several unnatural creatures on the table which we both spent quite a bit of time dodging. As the game progressed, we started to focus on finding the treasure. I was able to find 2 of the 3 treasures, while we both killed one of the other's main characters. Finding treasures and killing main characters are the path to victory.

Here are some photos from the game, I had a great time and many thanks to Dave for putting on the game. I will really look forward to playing more games as it clearly has a lot of replay-ability. I also understand that there is a Victorian Horror variation coming out in the new year. I may finally get to field my Empire of the Dead figures.

Dave explain the rules, you can see the excellent character cards in the left foreground. 

The game set up, there 7 named locations on the table.

A gallows which I suspect Dave constructed from scratch

Treasure or Trap, six of these well crafted markers were placed on the table.

My early set up with my 3 characters, as well as an Indian Zombie and 3 French Milice, unfortunately the malice immediatedly betrayed me by going over to the Witch Hunters.


Some of the Witch Hunters posse, town folk and a militia sergeant.

I was able to trigger 2 treasure traps in my last turn.

No comments:

Post a Comment