The Doomed

I think... I've found my game.

I picked up the rulebook for The Doomed (published by Osprey) a couple of weeks ago, and have scoured through it since. I had a few questions as I went along, and have been writing the answers (and any other tidbits I found) into an FAQ that I'll publish here in weeks to come.

Whilst there is a very, very brief background explored in the rulebook, it's clearly lore agnostic, with the intetion of you bringing your narrative and miniatures to a very lovely gameplay mechanism.

The game plays beautifully fast, and succinct. Once you get over losing units quickly and easily, you realise that game play is fast - the boring book-keeping and deck-building doesn't exist, so you're instead playing move after move and fight after fight. It feels more realistic; you're not spending 10 minutes deciding who goes where and who shoots at who. You're making very fast snap decisions in the heat of battle. And those decisions can be quickly outweighed by the abilities of the horrors you face...

The integral solo play is a major attractor - it's also a core factor of the game, rather than being a hacky aside, so it plays enjoyably well in solo play. It entirely delivers on enjoyment. Yes, I'll probably get massacred by the horrors. Yes, dice rolls can go easily in my favour or very badly against. And yes, plans mean very little in the short, medium and, ermm, long term. But within minutes of my first solo game, I was fighting horrors, rolling dice and having fun. I don't need to win a game. I don't need a balanced competition. I'm not going to cheer, jump on the table and do a victory dance - winning is not interesting. Winning is easy. Enjoying yourself is not easy, and that I feel is a problem with many games now (with newer editions of 40K very much in that category). They're made for narcissistic sociopaths obsessed on gaming the system and deckbuilding, not for some fun narrative enjoyment.

Rather than trying to describe the game, there's some great videos that'll bring you up to speed. OTT have also done a series of videos with the game's designer Chris McDowall and some with Ana Polanšćak (discussing the miniatures kitbashed for the rulebook's art).

There are no official resources supplied by Osprey (yet?), but Chris has uploaded a quick reference guide on BoardGameGeek.

There's a few community made character rosters about, and I'll be making my own (including some mini playing card sized quick reference cards).

The game gets a solid 9/10 from me, and will be very much factoring in much of my gaming time this summer.