Warlords II Scenario Review

BROKENB.SZP 155,531 bytes: Broken Barriers, 8 players, 70 cities, 18 ruins.
"The idea is for the human to play against 7 computer players that have a
capital producing strong units."  Author: Tony Eccles.

Rating summary, scale of 1 to 10:
Wt Area          Score Comments
10 Army set          8 (excellent, though Familiars wreck it a bit)
 7 Map design        3 (random-looking map with little to say for it)
 5 Army pics         8 (many excellent (Stingers), some goofy (cavalry))
 5 City pics         9 (default)
 3 Background info   1 (not included)
 2 Cities/ruins      3 (almost purely random names and descriptions)
 2 Items/heroes      3 (default)
   OVERALL RATING  201

This is another scenario created with a great set of armies and no good
ideas for the map.  It could be a random map with a little bit of editing.
I give almost no credit for the random city/ruins names and descriptions.
When two temples have the same name, how much work is it to change one of
the names??

What makes this scenario worth playing, however, is the interesting set of
armies the author has created.  The name "Broken Barriers" I guess means
that the barriers between alternate worlds have collapsed, and this world
has been invaded by Beholders, Ents, Trolls, Mind Flayers, and so on -- and
their minions, the Stingers, Slitherers, Pricklers, and so on.  The pictures
for most of these are quite a treat, and the army units' capabilities have
been fairly well balanced, making this an excellent army set for a random
game (which is basically all this scenario is).  You may wish to install the
scenario, then delete it, leaving the army set available but saving the
space used by the map.

My only complaint about the army set is the speed of the Familiars, which
fly at 22, thereby making it too easy to map a hidden world, and far too
easy to capture enemy capital cities in the first few turns of a game.  To
be fair, this flaw isn't as bad in this army set as it is in some others
I've seen.  (More about those in later reviews.)

Note: to install this scenario, the SZP file must be named BROKENB.SZP,
not BROKEN.SZP (which is how it comes when downloaded from a certain
crippled online service I will not name).

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This review is copyrighted by myself, but may be distributed in any
UNMODIFIED form as long as NO CHARGE is made for distribution (such
as a per-minute charge for online time) and it is not included in any
copyrighted "compilation" (such as claimed by certain online services
I will not name).  Dirk Pellett