Middara

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gardenninja ( 34 )
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Middara

Post by gardenninja »

A friend of mine got in on the Middara Kickstarter, but he moved across the country shortly before it delivered. Lucky for us, another one of our friends was able to grab a copy with the KS exclusives.


- For our final test- we got through most of the dungeon without much trouble- but in the last room, we encountered a very dangerous looking monster that looked ready to ruin our test scores. One of our characters used all of his mobility to charge past him (since we only needed to escape the dungeon, we didn't actually need to defeat him). Unfortunately, the rest of the party was facing down the huge piles of damage that he promised to deal out.

After suffering a round of bashing from him, the other three decided "what the hell" and combined their attacks at the big guy. It turns out that he was much scarier for the amount of damage he dealt out than the amount he could take.






Since I'm sure a lot of you haven't played Middara yet, here are my thoughts:

- The game is probably the most story heavy dungeon crawler my group has played. In between scenarios, we basically listen to an audio book (and snark about the what a chain smoker Zeke is).
So far, the story and characters have been very good.




- This game is VERY anime inspired. The first set of scenarios are a final exam from some sort of monster bashing school (graduation is required for citizenship in Middara). So far, the setting reminds me of Black Clover, and the miniatures style is something in between Relic Knights and Kingdom Death.



- The gameplay is very tactical. Action points can be saved (some) between rounds, or spent for a number of very useful things. The AI is a flowchart for each monster, so we often consider how much damage we're likely to do vs. how much damage we'll take if we stand in space X. And most monsters won't approach you if they can't hit you right away, which makes it difficult to get an alpha strike most of the time.



Terrain matters quite a bit, but thee are a number of effects that give you a square or two of extra movement. In addition, any character can jump across rough terrain, water or death pits with an agility check (you can even be thrown by a strong character). Positioning is very important (the game has breakaway attacks and a big bonus for flanking if you can pull it off).

Monsters designs have been really strong- several monsters have required some very different approaches to deal with them.

- The game uses a 2D6 system (using custom dice- each face has a number and some symbols. The worst die type is just a D6, and the better they get, the higher the numbers are. The numbers are used to hit the target's defense, while the symbols are used to trigger effects (most often causing extra damage if you managed a hit). Re-roll abilities are fairly common.

- Overall, I'm definitely enjoying the game. I just wish that I had my own copy so that I could paint up all of those nice miniatures.
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