Hadesha Scenario Review


                        Warlords II Scenario Review

Hadesha, Land of Nightmares.  Included with the original Warlords II game.
Author: SSG (makers of Warlords II).  8 players, 80 cities, 40 ruins.

Several people asked me to review some of the scenarios that came with
Warlords, to give them a way to compare my other ratings with a scenario
they've already played.  Sounds like a good idea, so I'm starting with my
favorite scenario, Hadesha, Land of Nightmares.

Rating summary, scale of 1 to 10:
Wt Area          Score Comments
10 Army set          5 (has some balancing problems, but it's playable)
 7 Map design       10 (120 signposts, well-placed cities, roads, ports...)
 5 Army pics         8 (easy on the eyes, makes a nice fantasy world)
 5 City pics        10 (impossible to improve on this!)
 3 Background info   6 (given in the form of signposts and descriptions)
 2 Cities/ruins      9 (ALL cities, ALL ruins nicely named and described)
 2 Items/heroes      9 (SSG thought up 39 items and nearly 800 hero names)
   OVERALL RATING  264

The main point of the rest of my reviews is to help people decide which
scenarios are worth downloading, setting up, and playing.  Since everyone
already has the Hadesha scenario, I'll change the focus, and point out the
techniques SSG used to make this scenario into a world, not just a map.

Strategic Studies Group pays attention to quality, and though I have some
serious complaints about the default army capabilities (which I give the
highest weight, you'll notice), the rest of this scenario shines like the
sun, with two 9s and two perfect 10s.

This scenario uses the default items, default cities, default hero names,
and default army set.  I'm allowing SSG credit for things that other people
don't get.  If another scenario includes all the items and hero names SSG
created, I give it almost no points because that takes no work and shows no
creativity, and usually the result doesn't really fit the new scenario (like
the "modern air warfare" scenario with F-16s and B-2's, but also Spear of
Ank and dwarvish names, yecch!).  But SSG created their own item names,
their own hero names, their own army and city pictures, so they get all the
credit I'd give to someone else doing all that work for another scenario
(like Paul Fields, for example, in the RainWar scenario).

To create this world, they started with a map, well thought out to provide
strategic areas, city productions that make each area of the world unique,
and assigned names to the sides that match both the city pictures and the
hero names.  For example, the Dream Knights have the white dream-like cities
and names like Sir Gregor, the Lord of Greed is a dwarf (everyone knows how
much they hoard gold), with dwarvish names, and so on for the other sides.
The black skull cities are perfect for Nightmare.

To create a good strategic map they considered the placement of ports and
roads and barriers and cities, where to place the temples and ruins (not
just at random).  But a finished map is not a world.  They named every city
with a reasonable name, and used imagination to make the city unique, like
"This city, surrounded by hills, is full of screaming terrors."  They named
every ruin, and described it as a ruin, so the player gets a mental image of
the place: "No searcher has ever found the bottom of this chasm."  THAT'S
NOT ENOUGH.  They added about 120 signposts (I tried to count them) to give
the player the flavor of each of the Lords in the Land of Nightmares.  "This
air belongs to the Lord of Greed.  Cease breathing now."  "The Forest of
Beauty.  Admiration is mandatory!"  Not 4 signposts.  Not just 20 signposts.
They did't stop at 40 signposts...

Hadesha scenario doesn't score a perfect 10 for cities and ruins, only
because the formatting is rather strange on some of the descriptions.  It
doesn't score a perfect 10 for items and heroes because many of the hero
names are duplicated for the green side.  (I am VERY picky when awarding
perfect 10s.)  It scores a perfect 10 for city pictures because they are
a perfect match to this scenario and they're complete, with razed cities
not only matching the original city, but looking like it's been razed
(not disintegrated or slagged), and including matching encampments, not
just towers or flags.  The map scores a perfect 10.  The army pics would
score a perfect 10 if it wasn't so hard to see black wolfriders and black
unicorns against a black castle, among other minor flaws.  I *like* these
army pictures.

This review is already long enough, so I won't go into detail about why
I dislike the default army capabilities or what I would change.  Maybe
in a later review.

When you play the Hadesha scenario, you feel like you *live* in Hadesha,
the Land of Nightmares.  That's what it's all about!

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This review is copyrighted by myself, but may be distributed in any
UNMODIFIED form as long as NO CHARGE is made for distribution (such
as a per-minute charge for online time) and it is not included in any
copyrighted "compilation" (such as claimed by certain online services
I will not name).  Dirk Pellett
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