Geometric Elegance: Neuroshima Hex, Now and Forever (part III)

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Whew. Well, that's over 9000 words on Neuroshima Hex. And I probably could have done twice that, honestly. Hope some more people will be willing to give it a try.

Mephisto sounds really cool! I have Dancer but have only played it like twice. I don't think I've come close to playing Dancer well.

This is my favorite one---seeing where they stretched the system is cool.

That's part of what fascinates me, too. I think they did a good job stretching the system with Sand Runners, as well, since starting a fight by removing a particular hex from the board (either your own or an opponent's) AND blocking LOS is a pretty huge thing. I haven't had enough games with them now to really tell.

But, yeah, Mephisto is simply right in my wheelhouse. There are so many choices to make if you can get a couple Implants on the board early on. I haven't played a ton with Dancer, either, to be honest. Oddly, controlling the three Objects doesn't hold as much appeal to me as figuring out how to maximize the solo Mephisto. It's still a cool challenge and a very different game experience, though.

And then there's this:

What.... is that?

Well, in the lore, 2020 is when Moloch awakens and starts breaking stuff. Someone on BGG said that Portal is planning as many as five releases this year for NH (but only three of them in English...?), including at least one new army, possibly as many as three (presumably, those would be the English releases), and a "deluxe" version of NH. Apparently, the lack of detail was expressed at/in Portal's "keynote", which would be in contrast to their English language announcement page for 2020 which announced not a single thing for Neuroshima this year.

So, I don't know, honestly.

Portal can be such a weird company.

Addendum:

Got a note from someone on the Twitters that asked why I hadn't included Doomsday in this series. Well, I didn't for two reasons:

1. Because a lot of people don't have Doomsday and, consequently, don't really know how it works. I think it's available on Portal's site these days, so it's at least more available than it used to be (as a promo for the base set that had a very limited release outside of Poland.)

2. It's insane. There's a reason that Portal stipulates that Doomsday can't be used in tournaments. It raises too many questions and it's the one faction that might possibly be termed "OP." Just for shits and giggles, we tried a game with it tonight, after I got the DM. My opponent played Outpost, with which he's proficient. That's possibly not the best choice vs Doomsday, considering the level of Armor in the latter, but we thought the movement capability of Outpost might allow it to deal with the multi-angle aspect...

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! No.

My first two turns were putting down an Alpha Shooter, hooking it up to a Scout, followed by a Tripler and a Fireblast. The rest of the game was basically:

"Oh, I'm sorry! Were you trying to... do something? No. No. We won't be having any of that." /Murphy

That was an 18-0 win, folks. It took until the Final Battle to get the last point off his HQ, but it happened and he even Snipered my first Alpha Shooter. I ended up doing most of my damage with a Gamma with an Officer attached. In-sane. Maybe we should try a Borgo game just for theory memes?

And here's a description of the new army: www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/2361748/can...ls-canada-are-coming

There's a little bit of clarity in there, in that there are supposed to be five new releases for the Neuroshima universe, not necessarily just NH. That seems more likely and it's fine with me, since I play 51st State, too.

Just FYI for you NH fans. This is a full description of the new army: Troglodytes.

www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/2439668/troglodytes-new-army

Looks very cool. It's in pre-order on the Polish site and Ignacy has said it will be on the US site for pre-order in the States. They're just not sure when, at the moment. At the bottom of that thread, he mentions the online Portalcon they're doing this year (obvsly), which will have a demo of the new army this weekend.

Hey, Hex fans. Portal announced that they got an early shipment(?) of Troglodytes in, so you can order them from the Portal US store. A whole new army so soon after Sand Runners...

Threadomancy, yo. Details emerging about yet another faction in 2021: Beasts

www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/2586374/article/36834217#36834217

Threadomancy again. Since the last time I posted here, there have been three more factions released after Beasts: Pirates, Merchants Guild, and Desert Tribes. Yesterday, I snagged the latest release: Wiremen. With all of those factions, they've been stretching the system in ways not yet seen (and much better than the "friendly fire" aspect of Beasts...) Wiremen does it again, in that your action tiles (Move, Push Back, etc.) are all also Technology, which can be placed outside the normal playing areas (like Pirates) and affect the connected row, giving abilities to Wireman units. They can also be used as regular action tiles, of course. Thankfully for the upcoming move, I could still fit Wiremen in the original box along with all of the other factions. The game is still rolling along, somehow.