Rivet Wars!

My gaming has taken a huge hit when baby Esmee was born but she’s worth it!

However time for a blog update and this is focused on Rivet Wars. This entry will cover the unboxing and a little of the game. I hope to write another entry soon with a game run through but no promises!

So I backed this game in Kickstarter during Feb 2013 and it was due for delivery in September. That slipped, a few changes were made and finally on Monday this week the core box game arrived! A second shipment in Q1 of 2014 will add the other bits which I will discuss later. This is more a descriptive run through of what’s in the box with a lot of pics rather than a review. A review is pointless because 1) I love the game already! 2) I’m not that structured/objective to write a good review!

Without hesitation, once the baby was asleep, I took the box lid off and was greeted with snug cardboard boxes, the card deck and the rulebook. Box quality is great and on par with Zombicide as is the rulebook. Glorious colour print throughout with quick reference sheets at the back and 10 scenarios to play. There is already another scenario on the main Rivet Wars website. The rules are pretty straight forward and easy to pick up. A PDF of the rulebook you get in the box is available to download here:

http://www.rivetwars.com/gamestuff.html

The deck of cards has three types:

1)      Secret Missions – for gaining extra victory points during games

2)      Action Cards – instant play cards with unique effects

3)      Stat Cards – once per unit with that units stats

There’s not too many Action and Mission cards but hopefully in the future to add more variety they  can release a deck of new action and secret mission cards. They add great variety into the missions and can really swing gameplay – reacting to these will be a decider of the winner as much as lucky dice rolling. The game comes with D6’s – typically you roll a varying number in attacks and any 5 or 6 means a single hit! 3 dice at a time is probably the most you will roll at the moment.

And now the figures. The art was the real attention grabber of this game world and the miniatures do not disappoint! I have added “Kintaru” from the Bushido range to each shot so that you can get a good scale idea. The figures are all preassembled and based – the bases have little slots to place wound markers in which is a nice touch!

One small box has the two tanks and the other has one tray of Blight and one of Allies:

One of the awesome features of this game are the “plugs”! You can upgrade tanks with characters or additional guns – just pay your rivets or deployment points and plug ‘em in! They bring buffs and abilities that upgrade whatever they are plugged into. Here are shots of each sides plugs in the box – a general type and a gun – along with a picture of each general mounted in their respective tanks. Awesome!

There are two sheets with pressout card tokens for bunkers, strategic points, barbed wire, mines etc. This was one of the causes of delays as the first print of these had inaccuracies in the cuts. Attention to detail has been high in the production of this game!

There are another two sheets with all the core box model stats on them. These are double sided so the two players have got easy reference. Different units are better at killing some things than other so know your enemy!

The map tiles are double sided and sturdy. The print is great – not a massive variety but this is a warzone in a muddy field so limited options! Mine were perfect, but some people found slight warping which is dealt with by putting the tiles under something heavy for a couple of days.

There is a tracker tile for putting the card decks, tracking victory points and also the number of rivets each general has. Each turn each general will usually get 4 deployment points (dependant on scenario) worth of troops to deploy, but sometimes  rivets as well and the rivets can be spent or saved to the next turn – the key to deploying the characters!

And that’s it for the box! For the future of the game it’s a very bright place already! The core box is headed for retail at the moment and there are four expansions coming through the year:

Battle of Blighton – awesome looking planes!

Heavy Metal – Big ass tanks!

Second Wave – New mechs and vehicles

War Room – even more awesome heroes!

Spearheads – turrets, troops, canine units!

The rulebook lists about 8 factions in the Rivet world of which we are getting two here – so I would hope that more will be coming along with different terrain to fight over. Additional Secret Mission and Action cards are an easy upgrade to add more variety to the game as well.

Ted Terranova has created marvellous world here and this game is a great starter into it. With the known expansions there will be some fantastic variety in the game and I can’t wait! I’ll try and run through a game later with a battle report to follow soon.