Warlords II Scenario Review

LLORD: 5 players, 37 "buildings", 21 ruins (including 4 temples).  Available
only by buying the Warlords II Scenario Builder.  A City Take-Over game:
university vs. army base vs. unions vs. police, proving that you CAN fight
City Hall!  [Doesn't really have anything to do with landlords, contrary to
the name, and the picture associated with the scenario.]

Author: SSG (Rowan and Roger)

Rating summary, scale of 1 to 10:
Wt Area          Score Comments
10 Army set          8 (well balanced, some cool ideas)
 7 Map design        7 (not like any city I ever saw, but ok)
 5 Army pics         8 (excellent, including 8 different heroes)
 5 City pics         7 (excellent, but a lot of duplication)
 3 Background info   2 (short blurb in the scenario info)
 2 Cities/ruins      7 (complete names/descriptions, but too many typos)
 2 Items/heroes      3 (complete set of funny items, but no hero names)
   OVERALL RATING  230

The map purports to be the map of a city, where the "cities" represent the
important major buildings in the city.  It's kinda neat-looking as a map,
but I'd fire any civil engineer who laid out a city this way.  The city
includes major areas for the University, City Hall, Police (in the slums),
the Army Base, and the manufacturing and industry district (Unions).

The city pictures are excellent except that three sides (the three not used
in the scenario) are merely duplicates of others in a different color.  If
you use this city set in a random game, this defect will spoil some of the
fun.  Also, all of the razed cities are identical, instead of matching the
building which was razed.  All encampments are simple flags of different
colors, also not matching the building.

Armies are very well balanced, with different army types representing each
of the five sides in the scenario: protesters, strikers, clerks, prisoners,
and soldiers being the "light infantry" for each side.  There are no game-
breaking units like those that plague other scenarios, so you get to think
about the trade-offs between turns, speed, cost, and strength of all of the
units.  I laughed out loud when I saw the unit type to cancel heroes: the
Journalist.  I guess the heroes are too busy watching what they say, to be
able to lead anyone.

All of the army pictures are well done.  They included eight different
heroes, even though only five are used in this scenario.  There's a flaw
though: the orange side is City Hall, but the hero walks around carrying a
surfboard.  They would have been given the black side instead of orange,
except the black cities are barracks (a copy of the green camoflaged
barracks used by the Army side), instead of a courthouse.  A little more
work was necessary in order to straighten this out before calling the
scenario finished.

Which also goes for the city and ruins descriptions.  They must have spent
quite a bit of time thinking of all these neat things and entering them in
the scenario.  Another ten minutes spent proofreading them would have been
time well spent.  So much for the "qualtiy"!

All the items are nifty and fit the theme of modern warfare between low-
budget sides.  There are no special hero names, so you get Gr'zzt for
the unions, Tree-thrower for the students, Princess Alana for the army...
The problem they had was that politician and army names recognizable in
one country might be meaningless in another country, and this scenario was
created in Australia.

I think the Quick Start option makes this scenario more interesting, as you
then get each side producing the types of units it is supposed to have.  But
if you play without it, it's still a lot of fun.

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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