I was quite excited when this game was announced and ordered the starter box at or shortly after its release. I painted up most of the Tribal Nations from the box and ordered some more but was distracted by other projects before I finished painting them. Mike got some Maya when they became available and was also distracted in his painting but we both now have enough to play with (admittedly some of mine are not painted as much as I would like) so we played a game this past weekend.
Mike has posted his version of results here
Based on what Mike had painted we went for 737 points (a good round number!). I wanted to try everything I had so I had the Sachmen with body guard, a Medicine Man with a single bodyguard, a unit of warriors, a unit of archers, a unit of eagles, a unit of Sasquatch and the Wendigo. Other than the bodyguard for the Medicine Man I had no points to spare for upgrades.
We decided to play the first scenario, Build Altars for the Gods (build an altar on the enemy side of the table and protect it) and I had the Call the Storm devotion which rewards me for casting a spell on the enemy side of the table and the Maya has Divide and Conquer which rewards them for sticking close to a particular enemy unit. Since we didn't really have much sense of how things would play out we weren't too concerned about the victory conditions and were playing more to learn than to win.
We both cautiously advanced on the first turn (I did use one of my blessings to move my wolves to within striking distance of the Mayan spell caster). I might have been a bit too forward with the Wendigo moving him up with both his activation dice.
Not wanting to lose my Wendigo on the very first combat I charged the Jaguar People (don't remember the proper name) with the Sasquatch unit. That charge went reasonably well killing 2 stands and taking no losses
My Wolves charged into the Mayan spell caster and her bodyguard and that didn't do so well. I did take out a few of the bodyguard (but they came back due to a blessing a little while later ) but I lost most of my wolves.
Later in the second turn the Jaguar People wiped out the Sasquatch only to be killed by the Wendigo who then used his second die to charge into the Mayan Archers. My Eagles tried to drop some rocks on the Mayan warlord and my archers shot at the warlord but they were both ineffective.
The Mayan warriors charged into the eagles and wiped them out, I had hoped that the woods my Medicine Man had created would slow them down so they couldn't reach but that didn't quite work out!
The Wendigo managed to deal with the archers but had only one wound left and the Mayan Spell caster had managed to finally deal the last of my wolves so could cast spells again but my Medicine Man succeeded in dispelling every spell she tried to cast. I moved my Sachmen to the hill to build an altar.
The Wendigo charged the spell caster and wiped out the bodyguard but the Mayan warlord joined the combat and eventually killed the Wendigo but lost his bodyguard. My Warlord charged into his and was defeated. We called the game at that point, there was a turn left but we felt it was mostly a draw -- The Mayans could have created their altar and probably destroyed mine and would be a point ahead if we had played it out.
We will probably play with a bit more finesse next time but this was a fun game. I think we got most of the rules but I will be reading them again in the next few days. Non-charge combat feels a bit odd with only one side attacking and no brave check at the end but that is probably just something we have to get used to. I am certainly inspired to paint up the rest of my Tribal Nations (more warriors and archers) and am planning to pick up either a Inuit or Western Federation force as well
