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. === 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