Super Important Author's note: This review is pretty darn indulgent, not to mention long. But I put all this personal crap in at the beginning because I want you to understand that this game's combination of silly theme with amazing skirmish rules has really tugged on my heartstrings. It has quite honestly removed some of the cynicism and sour attitude that I had toward gaming. I am genuinely passionate about this game. Maybe it's the nostalgia or maybe it's the fact that this game's rules rule but I started writing this review and I just couldn't stop. So if you don't want to read through this what-is-in-all-likelihood-way-too-long-of-a-review then please skip to the very last paragraph where I sum it up. If you want to read the borderline gushings of a long-time nerd about a supremely excellent game, keep reading. But don't say I didn't warn you. I probably need to get an editor or something. So, if you're still with me, come with me on a magical journey to the past...
In 1995 I was 19 years old and at the height of my NerdPower(tm). I worked at Software Etc., a now-defunct computer and video-game retail store, as a sales clerk. This basically meant that I had no responsibility to worry about and got to stand around and talk video games with the customers all day (many of whom were actually my friends who came by to visit me at work). Software Etc. also had a "check out" program, where you could check out any piece of media for 2 days in order to keep your product knowledge current. This basically meant that I got an unofficial raise of about 5 bucks an hour, since I never had to buy games. I lived with my parents, went to community college and aced all my classes with zero homework, went to LAN parties (Which were huge events where everyone brought their computers together at a central location to play Doom or Warcraft) and had a blast.
In addition, there was a local game store called All Fun N' Games where some of the funnest, funniest, and all around great guys used to gather for all kinds of gaming. This was back in the halcyon early days of Magic The Gathering and it quite literally dominated 90 percent of the gaming store's floorspace and playtime, with a few miscellaneous roleplaying games running in the back of the store and the occasional board game. The place was a rollicking delight - everyone was having a grand old time, all the time, and the atmosphere was reminiscent of that long-running and loved sitcom, Cheers, with a cast of happy regulars and lots of laughs had by all. And to continue that analogy, I was the frickin' Norm of that game store. Everyone would shout out "Daaaaaave" when I entered the store, I had the Power 9 for Magic, I ran various fun RPG campaigns that everyone liked, and occasionally I would bring in a somewhat obscure game that everyone enjoyed playing (like Dark Tower, HeroQuest, or Blood Bowl - all of which are still sitting in my garage, keeping the spiders company) and we would have a grand old time.
One of the games that got heavy rotation was a store copy of Mutant Chronicles: Siege of the Citadel. At first I thought it was a low-rent Warhammer 40k ripoff, but after I played a few games I started really enjoying it. It was a basic "move-and-shoot" of a rotating Overlord-type "bad guy" player vs. the rest of the "good guy" table with a nice twist: namely, that as a "good guy" you were playing with teams of 2-3 other players who were just as likely to screw you over as to help you! In addition, there was a fun campaign mode where your dudes (called DoomTroopers - to me that always sounded like a StormTrooper got a promotion) got better gear as the campaign progressed. The game's rules weren't spectacular, but it's structure led to a lot of good-natured ribbing and some real "take that!" moments that we all enjoyed.
Another game we all enjoyed was Warhammer Quest, which could be played without a Big Bad by letting the game generate the dungeon with a deck of cards. There was also a campaign system, as well as some sweet-ass scenarios. It was a perfect dungeon stomp when you had two hours to kill and didn't want to play Yet Another Game of Magic.
And so it went...days at community college and homework, nights having nerdfun. Incredible times. About the only thing negative I can say about this point in my life was that (not surprisingly, being a Wizard of Nerd and all) I wasn't getting laid. As far as everything else went, it was perfect....just the sort of way you want to close out your teenage years.
Sadly, by 1997 it was all over. I had transferred to a real college in a different town and was feeling isolated and alone. I had sold my Magic cards (value of them today: over $40,000) for what seemed like good money, to buy a crappy Ford Bronco 2. I had lost my NerdPower(tm) and was instead trying to have a "college experience", which meant going to weak-ass parties with people I didn't really like to do stuff I really didn't enjoy. I was expending a good deal of my energy chasing women who had no romantic interest in me and never would. The Golden Age of Nerditry was over. Cold hard reality had stepped in.
The years rolled by. I dropped out of the gaming scene, or played console games. The game store closed, and the friends I had made there got married, divorced, became lawyers, became fathers. And then in 2007, something magical happened. I walked back into a local game store and I saw a big-ass box on the shelf. The box was covered in fantasy art that wouldn't have been out of place on the side of a van in 70s. And on that box, in big bold custom print, were the words: DESCENT: JOURNEYS IN THE DARK. It looked like Warhammer Quest. I flipped it over and looked at the back of the box. IT WAS WARHAMMER QUEST, ONLY BETTER. HOLY CRAP. I was instantly transported back to 1995.
I bought it. I called all of my old gamer buddies who I didn't get to see much anymore. "Come over and play this awesome board game. It will be just like the old days!" I exclaimed. We played Descent. Some of my older game store buddies came by. I would get them to play Descent. Our first dozen play throughs were a blast and sparked a brief gaming revival, but there was something missing. I guess you can't go back again, I thought. Descent is a fun game but it somehow manages to be bloated, fiddly, and exciting all at the same time. There were always rule issues. Some of us wanted a more epic feel to Descent, so we tried Road to Legend, and after 50 hours realized it was really quite bad and switched over to Dungeons and Dragons - an old standby. Eventually I realized that Descent is a good game, but it was not as great as I had thought when viewed through my 1995-tinged glasses. I bought a few more board games, enjoyed some, didn't enjoy others, started to exit the hobby again. Commitments began catching up with my buddies, too, and we got together less and less.
And then in 2011, something magical happened. I walked back into a game store and I saw a big-ass box on the shelf. The box was covered in sci-fi art that wouldn't have been out of place on a game book in the late 80s. And on that box, in big bold custom print, were the words: EARTH REBORN. It looked like gritty, post-apocalyptic Mutant Chronicles. I flipped it over and looked at the back of the box. IT WAS MUTANT CHRONICLES, ONLY BETTER. HOLY CRAP.
I was out the door with Earth Reborn under my arm and a smile on my face. Checked the game on BoardGameGeek - good reviews and some good tips for getting the most out of the game. Looked like a winner. Called up my old gaming buddy buddy, and drove to his place. "This is going to be just like when we played Mutant Chronicles!" I crowed. "Hardly. Looks like that old video game Bad Dudes meets Mad Max," he retorted. Well he wasn't sold yet. We setup and played the first scenario.
"That was interesting, but no Mutant Chronicles. Way too simple!" he remarked.
"Let's try the second scenario," I replied cheerfully. "Each one adds more rules than the last."
"I dunno, man, I have a feeling that this is going to suck," he replied.
"Come on, dude! Look at all the crap on the cards we didn't use!" I countered.
We tried the second scenario.
"That was a little bit better. Let's try the third scenario," my buddy said.
We tried the third scenario, and once shooting rules were put into the game it opened up like a lotus blossom. We raced through the fourth and fifth scenarios that very night. I called my mate and told her that I was going to be late. His girlfriend was working late at her job, and when she stumbled in at 3:30am we were just finishing up the fifth scenario and seriously considering setting up for the sixth.
It turns out, you CAN go back again...if the game is good enough. Descent wasn't. Earth Reborn, though...that's another matter. This is a game that makes me feel like it's 1995 all over again with a ridonkulous theme, awesome minis, and the tightest skirmish rules in the universe. As with all my reviews, I assume you're a knowledgeable dude or dudette who has read at least a few other "breakdown" reviews and have a passing familiarity with the components and ruleset. Let's DO THIS!
Theme
I watched this French film called Immortal once. It was a science fiction film about a future New York with a giant pyramid hanging over it and pretentious poetry. It was a completely jumbled mess, but it had some awesome imagery in the form of a future New York and cybernetic Egyptian gods and a sexy naked alien chick (the kind Captain Kirk would chase around). I thought it sucked, for the most part, but I liked the fact that the movie's general vibe was that of a colorful, trashy science fiction from the 70s. As I reflected upon Immortal, I realized it reminded me of the (much better) movie The 5th Element, which was another colorful French science fiction film that also straddled the line between being ridiculous and being awesome. And I realized that French people kind of get the whole "RadiDumb" (that's "radical" and "dumb" mashed together) vibe. Now you're probably asking yourself what the heck RadiDumb is, besides a portmanteau that I just made up. Well, it's a sort of trashy aesthetic that you can see in a LOT of American media from the late 80s through the mid 90s, such as Commando (Arnold Swartzenegger cracks one liners while knife-fighting a Australian Freddy-Mercury lookalike in a chain-mail vest), Mortal Kombat (multi-colored, muscly ninjas freeze each other, throw spears into each other and literally rip each others' spines out while gobs of blood fly freely) and, to a lesser degree, Independence Day (all-powerful death-ray wielding alien invaders defeated by Macintosh computer virus and a solitary pilot's suicide attack). RadiDumb basically keeps anything interesting or entertaining in the movie, regardless of how little sense it makes in narrative context. Unfortunately the whole RadiDumb aesthetic sort of petered out in the late 90s (although at the time of this writing, Fast Five, a RadiDumb movie par excellence, is kicking butt at the box office). But if you grew up steeped in RadiDumb (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the RPG Rifts, the movie Speed, etc) then you'll probably appreciate it.
Earth Reborn's theme is RadiDumb. Really RadiDumb. Divisively RadiDumb. The designer of the game and writer of the theme is French and he has tapped into the Plane of RadiDumb to deliver this game. At this point in the review I would like you to take a quiz to see if you or your gaming friends will be able to swing the theme of Earth Reborn.
1) When watching the movie Sniper with Tom Berenger, I felt that the element missing was:
a) I have not seen the movie Sniper with Tom Berenger, or have no opinion.
b) More realism in the sniping sequences.
c) Massive, heaving, sweat-soaked breasts.
2) The famous "Thunderdome" sequence of "Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome" could have been improved by:
a) Nothing, it's a good scene. (or I haven't seen it).
b) Getting rid of those stupid elastic straps, how dumb was that?
c) Zombies.
3) Two robots fighting is...
a) Ok, I guess.
b) Stupid.
c) Are we talking a fist fight here, a la Real Steel? Or a Battletech-style blastathon like in Robot Jox? Because either way, I've got miniatures.
4) Extra credit question: You've just fought your way through a hundred Nazis to the top of an Aztec pyramid to stop an occult rite that will plunge mankind into a thousand-year Reich. As you blast the head Nazi (dressed in full SS leathers overlayed with golden Aztec priest garb) in the chest with a bazooka, rocketing him hundreds of feet into the air where he explodes in a massive fireball, you shout...
a) Nothing. You've put on your shades and are already slo-mo walking back down the pyramid, and you don't even turn around and look at the explosion.
b) "Bazooka for the win!"
c) "Turns out Montezuma's Revenge...was a missile, Goebbels!"
SCORING THE QUIZ
Give yourself 0 points for every A) answer, 1 point for every C) answer, and negative one million points for every B) answer.
0-2 points: You might like the theme of Earth Reborn.
3+ points: You will like the theme of Earth Reborn.
Less than 0: You will not like the theme of Earth Reborn.
This theme is bonkers. There's a global apocalypse caused by global warming, Greenpeace, Google, China, and the United States. You're reading all of this stuff backstory about a super-polluting petroleum substitute (it pollutes 20x worse than gasoline!?!? what does it do, continously shoot a mixture of dog shit and radon out of the vehicle's tailpipe?!?!?!) and Google and Greenpeace (er, "Coogle" and "Greenpiece") inventing floating cities and crap and you're basically thinking to yourself, "What's next?" And what's next is Frankenstein-scientists living in a bomb shelter under Salem and making zombies. What's next is culty religious military leaders with automatic drilling machines and power-armor. What's next is enough wacky ideas to make 20 expansions. The whole vibe is one of cheerful thrown-together insanity, where the designer found a way to keep anything interesting in the game while discarding anything boring.
Special note must be given to the characters, who take RadiDumb concepts and push them to the limit. There's a 500-year old intelligent horny zombie called "Franc Einstein". One of the bad guys wears a gas mask and has Irritable Bowel Syndrome (seriously, he can get victory points for his team by taking a dump during a mission...I guess that's how you spell "relief" after The Bomb). There's Monica Vasquez, a female sniper with enormous tits who dresses like she belongs on the cover of Military Low-Rider Magazine (we call her "McJuggs" at our table, and for the rest of this review.) Jack Saw is an old, homeless-guy-looking zombie with...you guessed it...a huge buzzsaw for an arm. And, my personal favorite, a guy dressed entirely head-to-toe in high-tech ninja garb and dual-wielding two pistols whose name is...James Woo. He could have been anyone under that suit but he's legendary Hong Kong director John Woo...Hong Kong Action Cinema meets Japanese Ninja. Nice.
Earth Reborn's post-apocalyptic world is just an excuse to have a grab-bag of fun concepts mashed together. In this goofy world, nobody has to worry about radiation, starving, or moral quandaries. It's very four-color comic book with just the right amount of quirky, fun touches. The bad guy's zombie serum glows a putrid green. The zombies are dirty creepers. The good guys wear puce-colored armor and are hygienic, except of course for the hint of manly stubble growing on the face of Nick Bolter. The whole game feels like it should have come out in 1993, back when people weren't ashamed to try making stuff this awesome. This is the kind of gonzo comic-book world that I would have enjoyed the hell out when I was a young man. Wait, who I am kidding? I still enjoy the hell out of it.
Components
A big part of the appeal of tabletop board games is the components. I know some of you reading this are ok with terrible-looking games on your table if the gameplay holds up, but not me. If your game looks like ugly garbage I am 100 percent not interested, sorry folks that's just the way I am. So, it was nice to see that for your 80 bucks, Earth Reborn's quality is actually BETTER than the 800 pound gorilla of components, Fantasy Flight. A bold statement, but here's what jumped out at me:
* The mini sculpts are excellent and pre-primed for you.
* The rulebook is expansive, has a ton of examples and a great appendix.
* An actual box insert that is functional and works great! *gasp*
* Tons and tons and tons and tons of tiles to build maps.
* Great player aids - mini-gamemaster screens for each player! A cloth bag for your order tiles! Nice work.
* Cards are standard size so they can be sleeved - and there is extra space in the box to store sleeved cards. Excellent.
So overall the components are great, except for three stinkers:
* The board pieces can be very dark, with a low contrast between the room's floor and a room's walls, so sometimes it's hard to see a room's walls.
* The cards are gaudy and borderline ugly. Don't get me wrong - they are 100 percent perfectly functional, but they have a pukey color scheme.
* They don't actually tell you how to use the insert, you have to go online and get the guide. The rulebooks states that repackaging the game is "the game within the game"...but come on guys, that's a crap excuse. Trying to figure out how to store all the cool stuff you gave me is annoying, not fun.
Of the three stinkers, only the first one is a "real" problem that can effect your enjoyment of the game. The fact that the tiles can be overly dark and force you to miss a wall will get you into a situation where you say, "Oh I'm going to do this and go here" and you can't because there's a wall you didn't see before. That's gotten me a few times. The other two are not bad. The cards being gaudy as all get-out doesn't change the fact that they are well-designed (from a rules standpoint) and have all the information you need. The only reason I'm bringing it up is because I like good-looking components and the cards fail the test. If you can tolerate crappy meeples, though, you can tolerate the cards. The fact that you have to go download the game's storage box solution is a pain, but not too bad because you have to go download a file one time, after that it's no problem.
At the end of the day I am super-satisfied with the components of Earth Reborn, and I am an admitted components snob. So good job here Z-Man and Ludically.
Gameplay
Ok here's where we get down to it. I've been playing games for over 25 years of all types. Video, board, role-playing...it doesn't matter. I like games and I like playing them.
Out of all the games I have experienced, Earth Reborn is the best skirmish board game with the best rules system I have ever played.
See that sentence above? I let it sit on my computer for 3 days, just to make sure it wasn't something that I wrote in a passionate moment. "I'll go back and edit it to something less absolute later," I told myself. Nope. It's going to stand as written. This game is a frickin' marvel of engineering. The rules are thematic, tight, are complex enough to simulate a great deal of situations yet remain understandable by anyone. What's incredible about this game is that the rules work better than skirmish computer games, an amazing feat! If you've played Jagged Alliance 2 or X-Com, you'll know exactly what it "feels" like to play Earth Reborn except there are even more interesting options available!
I am sure some people read about the "44 page rulebook" and feel like the whole game system is just an overcomplicated Rube Goldberg nightmare that's going to run away from them. Maybe they saw the Jack Saw character card with the icons all over it and were like, "This thing must play like garbage and have 40 minute turns." Well it doesn't.
For starters let's talk about the 44 page rulebook. Man, 44 pages. Sound intimidating. I've heard people call it "bloated" but I don't think that's the case. I would call it "stuffed". Every new rule that is introduced in the game has a couple of pages of examples given to it, minimum. There's diagrams and such showing applications of each rule. There are corner cases of rules clearly illustrated. There's a bunch of art all over the place. And there's a 4 page reference in the back that explains all of the iconography on all of the cards for you, in case you get confused or forget something. It's super-helpful. So, even though the rulebook has the same gaudy graphic design as the cards, the actual content is excellent. And it's not really 44 pages, not even close. If it were written like most gaming rulebooks it would probably be 15 pages or so. But the extra pages flesh out concepts, making it a breezy read that shouldn't be intimidating at all.
Secondly, the rules are modular and designed in very discrete chunks. This makes them both easy to memorize and is used to great effect by the game's scenario system. Each scenario introduces 1 or 2 new rules. Now I have to tell you, when first I played the game I thought this was pretty weird. My friend and I were having fun, but it seemed like we had too much of a particular resource or that certain concepts really didn't seem to matter, and there was a bunch of stuff on the board and on the cards that we didn't understand. However, a few scenarios later you would have an "ah-ha!" moment and realize that the whole system meshed together beautifully. For example, in the first scenario my buddy and I were discussing the ridiculous amount of Command Points (the game's primary currency for accomplishing actions) that we had available to us and wondering why we had so much. In the second game, we found out that you can bid away those points to interrupt your opponent's actions. Ah-ha! So that's why you get "more than you need". You are expected to bid them away...but not too many, or you'll not be able to perform critical actions! Cool. There's tons more examples of this as you work through the scenarios.
Thirdly, the rules are very cohesive. Rule systems often relate to each other very easily. For example, shooting and close combat use the same dice and basically even the same steps. However, the rules are done in such a way that you get very different outcomes for each kind of attack. For example, close combat of a wimp vs. a badass will have the wimp taking damage even when it is the wimp who is the attacker. In a straight-up brawl the badass is just going to mop the floor with the wimp based on the way the melee combat works in Earth Reborn. BUT if the wimp sneaks up on the badass they have a much easier time of it. This same basic thing is used for the shooting system with a little tweaking and a step moved around, and it totally simulates the fact that hitting people is tougher when they are far away, but it's never impossible if you can see them. But it's basically the same amount of dice rolls as close combat. It's elegant and gives the results you would expect. Sometimes when I play skirmish games I feel like there's not enough difference between the shooting and the melee. Not in Earth Reborn. Plus, the rules tend to work consistently. If you've ever played a game where each rules subsystem is completely different from the other and experienced all the confusion that can bring, you're going to love Earth Reborn's cohesive rules. If you've played a miniatures game where a bunch of stuff doesn't "make sense", you're going to love Earth Reborn's rules foundation, because 99 percent of the time you'll use the rule and say, "Oh yeah, that's how that would work". Creeping up on a zombie with a buzz-saw for a hand is the way to beat them. Attacking that same zombie from the front, even with an awesome weapon, is going to be a tougher proposition, and the rules model this. Also, the game's interrupt system (which is called Dueling) is frickin' awesome, because it is very flexible and keeps a lot of turn-based weirdness from happening. The classic example of turn-based weirdness in a game is one where on your opponent's turn he attacks your ranged specialist dude in close combat, then moves away to an inaccessible area. It's like, "He up and stabbed me and now he's hiding in a locked room and I didn't get a shot off, how the heck did this happen?" Well in this game you totally get to pop a shot off at him, if you willing to pay for it and have done a little planning.
Another thing I love is the game's use of iconography. For example, you can search rooms in the game. All of the rooms on the board have little symbols on them, and you can retrieve cards from the equipment deck that match the icons on the room. So you're never going to search and find a machine gun in the toilet (unless you attend one of my parties! ska-doosh). It's an easy system that adds complexity without forcing you to memorize gobs of special case rules. In fact, the game constructs a language entirely out of these icons and color-coded sections, letting you know where and when you can use character abilities, equipment, etc. It looks intimidating as hell but after reading like 2 paragraphs in the rules you'll be able to decode any of them at a glance with 90 percent accuracy. And the back of the rulebook has "real English" sentences that explain each icon's effect, so if you are a little unsure of how an icon strip is supposed to be read, you can use the rulebook as a reference. Also, on the player screens, they have an icon decoder. So it's pretty awesome, doesn't take up a lot of space on the board or on the cards, and adds a lot to the game without forcing you to remember a bunch of esoteric rules.
This game has so much chrome it's like they've already included a couple of expansions in the box. I mean, the basic rules of move, melee, shoot, search, and special abilities is great but the main rulebook includes rules for jamming communications, torturing dudes, oversized models, cutting power to a building, etc. Which is totally nuts. As far as I know there's no game made that has rules for taking someone prisoner and torturing them to get information. Unless it's a game called The Bush Presidency.
The last thing I wanted to point out is that this game takes traditional Eurogame themes and uses them in ways that I didn't expect and often with amazing results. There's a worker placement mechanic (in the form of orders), there's auctions (bidding to interrupt your opponent), there's even sort of a simple action queue. I gotta be honest - usually I am not a fan of these mechanics. They can feel very dry. But in Earth Reborn they really work well, because there are so many interesting choices to make on any given turn. This game never just "plays itself", or gives you the "here are 3 choices, but 2 of them aren't really viable". Worker placement and bidding are the CORE of some games, but here they're just another game element that helps tell the story about the time that McJuggs was chased through an abandoned nuclear facility by a horny zombie.
If there's one thing that I can criticize the game for, it's the fact that the modular game board takes a bit to setup. Like 20 minutes. That hurts. But despite this one small flaw, I'm going to go back to my original statement and say that these are the best skirmish rules I've ever played in a skirmish game. Sorry, Mutant Chronicles. Even your double-dealing coolness and awesome campaign system can't touch the buttery goodness of Earth Reborn.
Narrative
A little while back I reviewed Mansions of Madness. At the time I was pretty lukewarm on it, but I liked the scenario system and felt there was a lot of potential there. At the end of the review I said something along the lines of "if they can get their act together for an expansion, they will have the premiere narrative boardgame." Well I'm taking that back. Sorry, Mansions of Madness - you're a punk that gets no love, no matter how good your first expansion, because your core rules just aren't up to snuff. The king of narrative boardgames is Earth Reborn.
I think it's best to show just what kind of awesome nonsense happens during Earth Reborn. So, here are Actual Things That Have Happened during some games of Earth Reborn:
* McJuggs the sniper is unarmed and trapped in a building by Jack Saw, who slowly but implacably cuts through 3 doors and a solid wall to get to her. Luckily she escapes into the wilderness by smashing through a door when Jack Saw was one paltry square away.
* After the bad guy Salemites start a countdown timer to launch a missile that will eradicate NORAD, operative James Woo desperately searches a room for the building's wiring schematics. He finds them and uses them to shut down the power to the missile room for one turn, allowing Commander Nick Bolter to heroically enter the room guns blazing and stop the missile launch.
* Jeff Deeler has to take a crap (which will get his team points) but was blocked by a mine laid in front of the bathroom. "To hell with it," Jeff thinks, steps on the mine to try to get to the crapper, and is blown to pieces. Now that's what I call explosive diarrhea!
More than any other game I've played, every game of Earth Reborn tells a story. And it's not a really boring story, like for example Descent ("Some monsters came out...and were struck down by the heroes. Then more monsters came...and were smashed by the heroes. Then a rock fell on SteelHorn's head.") It's usually pretty darn compelling. The immense flexibility of the system and the wild permutations of characters, equipment, and scenarios, as well as the "quasi-realistic" grounding of the rules makes for fun and interesting tales. This is the kind of game where you're always saying, "Yeah, that was awesome when X did Y!" except you're saying it every few turns about the scenario you're currently playing!
I hate to keep going back to the well on this one, but if you've ever played Jagged Alliance 2 or X-Com or Mutant Chronicles you know exactly what I am talking about. After every battle you can look back and see the clear narrative that emerges from each encounter. Now I am going to break out of a review about Earth Reborn for a second to talk about my favorite narrative moment in a skirmish game, which just so happens to belong to X-Com: UFO Defense (called UFO:Enemy Unknown in Europe). X-Com is a squad based skirmish game and coincidentally, my favorite skirmish game before Earth Reborn. It concerns a quasi-military task force called "X-COM" fighting off an insidious UFO invasion: a sort of X-Files meets Black Hawk Down. This aside is a little long but stay with me. In X-Com, I had a "investigate crashed UFO" mission go really sour on me. My Skyranger transport craft landed near the crash site and the squad disembarked. The squad's Sargent wandered too far away from his men and was surrounded and gunned down. A pitched firefight near the front of the crashed UFO did not go in my men's favor, and I was down to the last of my X-Com operatives, Spencer MacNeil, a rookie trooper. "To hell with it!" I exclaimed, and sent Spencer into the breach. He single-handledly enter an alien UFO and kill 3 alien Snakemen in one turn with a grenade and a pistol shot. Those bastard snakemen tried to shoot back, but the fury of Spencer MacNeil (henceforth known as Spencer MacNeil, The Killing Machine) knew no bounds and he slew them all. Then he rode up an alien elevator to the second floor of the UFO to REALLY get his kill on and assassinate the Snakemen's cowardly leader. And as he rode up the elevator, one of those bastard Snakemen threw a grenade at his feet, which exploded! The evil hiss of the alien Snakemen turned to sibilant terror when, from the smoke and blast of the grenade, emerged Spencer MacNeil, The Killing Machine, who proceeded to gun down 2 more fools before picking up the aliens' own weapon and shooting the crap out of their leader with it! The mission ended one turn before Spencer MacNeil, The Killing Machine, would have collapsed from his wounds. This happened over 15 years ago in X-Com and I still remember it fondly. It has amazing twists and turns and real edge-of-the-seat stuff, like a good movie. And you know what? This is precisely the kind of narrative that you get all the time in Earth Reborn: hair-raising firefights, seat-of-the-pants escapes, and "so crazy it might work" planning that actually works...or at least fails entertainingly. You have all kinds of awesome stuff like a character being totally over-matched by an opponent, running to the armory, getting a bazooka, and then chasing their would-be bully around the board. Unlike Arkham Horror, the narrative emerges organically from the game's rule system rather than being bolted on by cards and systems specifically design to produce narrative results, which makes it all the more impressive. It is for this reason that I award Earth Reborn the Daveboy Award for Best Post-Game Storytime.
So, to sum it up, Earth Reborn supports an amazing, thematic narrative that I haven't seen in any other boardgame.
The Paragraph That You Can Skip To, Also Known as The Summary
I really hope that everyone will give Earth Reborn a try, even people who own a game similar to it (such as Space Hulk or Claustrophobia). This is an absolutely amazing game that feels like it fell through a portal from an alternate 1993, where the best skirmish boardgame ever made was published. The rules are elegant, the components high-quality, and the theme is sublimely ridiculous. I whole-heartedly recommend that you at least download the rulebook and check this bad boy out.
As always, thanks for reading.
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