Warlords II Scenario Review

MARS.ZIP 115,584 Cloudkings of Mars; 5 players, 52 cities, 12 ruins (NO
temples at all).  Author: Will Michael (same author as Norse Mythology).

Rating summary, scale of 1 to 10:
Wt Area          Score Comments
10 Army set          7 (reasonable, but needs some more balancing)
 7 Map design        6 (pretty good Mars scenery)
 5 Army pics         7 (pretty good, some drawbacks)
 5 City pics         7 (one really great city, duplicated 8 times)
 3 Background info   7 (explains items, army units, "skygems" etc)
 2 Cities/ruins      5 (half well named, half randomness)
 2 Items/heroes      4 (mundane items, hero names mostly untouched)
   OVERALL RATING  221

Will Michael created this Mars scenario three months before his Norse
Mythology scenario that I reviewed earlier and awarded top honors.  He did a
better job on Norse, though Mars is still quite good, and definitely fun to
play.  It's set in a fantasy "Mars" with such a mixture of stuff it's hard
to see any consistent theme.  There are rockets, horses, muskets, plate mail
and swords, hot air balloons, and sail-driven "cloudships" that rule the
skies.  I guess this is based on the popular "pulp novels" about Mars.

As in the Norse scenario, he designed his army set to have lower movement
speeds than the armies in the default set.  I like it this way, since it
makes the game last longer and gives you more chances to use strategy.  The
army capabilities are fairly well balanced, though there are quite a few
unit types not worth the wait or cost.  The army images are sometimes hard
to make out in a city or in forest, since they either match the color of
their own cities, or have too much green.  On a plain background they look
fine.

The one city in the city set is nicely done, and when you see it you'll
like it.  But when you find enemy cities, you'll see they're all the same
design, only in a different color.  Pretty, but not very interesting.

He's done a very good job of creating a map of Mars, complete with the
"canals" of popular legend.  He used the "mud" terrain to get a red planet
effect, then decided to eliminate all the temples in order to get rid of the
PIGS that Warlords II uses for temples in that terrain set.  (I agree with
his complaint.)  With no temples at all, the game strategy is different than
most other scenarios.  You're stuck with whatever unit strength you get, so
speed is not as important as it normally is, and you have to be much more
cautious about sacking cities.  The cities are all named for real Martian
features, but they're all random descriptions.  The ruins are the opposite:
random names, but with customized descriptions.

Overall, a very solid scenario.  Turn off quests, since there aren't any
temples anyway.  With quests On, Warlords hides strongholds, and there are
only 12 ruins, so don't waste 'em.

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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