Neuroshima Hex!

This game makes me giddy.

Really. This game builds up this pressure, bursting at the seams to get out. Then BLAM.

The board is a pitiful looking tiny thing. How great can a battle be on such a tiny area?

It's a nice enough made thing, it just seems so... inadequate.

But it's the tight quarters that matter.

Each player gets a stack of his mighty hexes. Really nice feeling pieces. They make your draw "deck". Or tile bag, or however you're going to randomize.

One hex is your base. That's it. You. In that hex. That base goes, you lose. 20 hit points.

Now, while the game is a more fun than a barrel of vikings, you have to keep your eye on the prize. Defend your base, destroy others. It's real easy to get bogged down in other stuff going on. Defend your base, destroy others. Doesn't matter how clever your play is if the base is slag.

So barring some initial warm up turns, a turn is pretty much draw 3 hexes randomly from your supply and discard one. Already, you are presented with the most annoying and agonizing of choices. What do you want to not do?

Now, these hexes may as well be runic prophecies of the Gods. They're covered in strange icons and symbols.

Fear not. I swear, they are so stunningly easy to remember and play once you plop that first tile down.

Hexes come in a few flavors. The Guys are your warriors. They shoot and hurt and stuff. The Actions are your special orders to like actually do things and much with the other players. The Modules are modifier type things to help you set up evil combos.

But nothing happens.

See, you're just placing tiles now. Patience.

Place a guy. He has 6 sides, being a hex and all, and out some of the sides there's some triangle pointy things printed on him. Its either a melee or ranged attack. Intuitive to anyone who ever played anything remotely wargame or miniatures like. Great. And a number. This is how fast that particular guy is. See, he might have the enemy base dead in his site, but if some dude is blowing his skull off the second before he fires, well, it doesn't much matter, does it?

So, to make sure he gets his shot off, you put a modifier module next to him to make him faster.

But your opponent sees this, and uses a special action tile he drew to literally shove your guy over a space. What a bum.

So you get your turn and execute a Move tile which moves him back and doesn't go on the board. And you set up some huge hulking brawler to kill the sniper that's about to get your guy.

But the other guy puts a guy in place to throw a net around your brawler, so he doesn't do anything.

So you get a guy ready to take out the netter.

waitwaitwait. Defend your base, destroy others. Remember? All this little petty duelling isn't worth it if during all this you could have been kicking the other base in the shins.

And all this time, nothing happens.

Forces grow. Tweak. Turn. Enhance. Evade.

A room full of mousetraps, all set and carefully placed.

My son is learning about potential energy in school. This game has megatons of it.

Until someone plays it.

A battle tile.

Who has anyone with a speed 4 on the board? Him and him? Wait, this guy has a 5 because of the modifier module, and him to, but he doesn't get it because of that net guy. So he hits him - no score, that's his armored side. Next phase, 4s. This guys shoots here, that guys gone, this guy has no target now. Any 3s? OK, he attacks him but they kill each other, oops, medic. The medic takes the hit for him, that guys goes down. Phase 2, here's 2 hits on that base and that guy shoots that guy. Anyone lower? OK, this guy goes again because he's next to that star modifier. And let's see...

...and the smoke clears.

Some battles result in a tiny firefight. A wound. A tile removed. Others are a cascade of carnage on toasted rye, wiping out many of your cardboard warriors.

Then it's time to rebuild. Move. Re think. Re jig. And hope you have the upper hand at the next battle.

The game has builds of tension then explosions of energy. It very much has the roller coaster feel of real combat. It has a strange time released logic problem maze feel to it.

And it doth rock.

The four included teams are great, each quite different, including the bizarro guys who hurt their allies. I don't have expansions, but certainly would gladly introduce them.

The symbols seem daunting at first but are definitely not. They are simplistic and you really only need to know them as you draw them and can see them on the great reference cards. Once you've played twice, you'll remember. Next year, when you break out the game again, you won't be confused at all.

A masterfully executed game.

Highly recommended to minis gamers, wargamers, those who like carnage and those who like strategy. And hand management. And well, pretty much any serious gamer. 

Bravo.

TLDR: Timing based tile placement wargame