Playing with Yourself: 'Rangers of Shadow Deep' vs. 'Sellswords & Spellslingers'

As the year crawls to an end, I'm looking through this blog and noticing a couple of posts I started and never finished. This is one of them. Back in July 2019, I placed the photos on the page, jotted down a few bullet-point placeholder notes, and then never actually went back and wrote anything to post.  

The post was meant to be my informal review of Rangers of Shadow Deep after my first game of it with Josh O'Conner, who set it up for us to try in his basement. I think I never finished this post because I was not very impressed with the game but I knew Josh was, and we hadn't been gaming together long enough for me to be sure my candor about the game wouldn't hurt his feelings and sour a budding gaming friendship. I consider Josh more than a gaming friend these days, and so I'll go ahead and post this with some very short notes fleshing out the bullet points I had left as a reminder for myself back in 2019 (at least the one's I can still decipher the intent of 2.5 years later!). 

 

"Bringing more people into miniatures gaming hobby:" I think I wanted to find something to praise about the game, and so intended to start the post by mentioning how it had seemed to really capture the attention of some folks in other gaming spaces (RPGs, board games) and got them try a miniatures game. This is an indisputable good thing that I think Rangers has genuinely accomplished, and I'm thankful for that if nothing else.

"Different activation mechanisms:" I honestly don't remember the game's activation mechanism. I'm guessing I thought it was too orderly by comparison to the other cooperative game I was playing at the time, Sellswords & Spellslingers, which has an activation mechanic that's a lot more fun, in my opinion.

"Sellswords more exciting, unpredictable:" Okay, well this answers my question about the above bullet point.

"Many more models needed for Sellswords:" This is true. The model count for Sellswords is much higher than for Rangers. But the models needed for Sellswords are usually almost all of a certain type (e.g., 20-30 orcs, or skeletons, etc.), and can often be picked up in boxes for fairly cheap. I remember Rangers needed a lot of giant flies, something I don't think I would ever reuse in another game.

"Card decks:" I have no recollection what this note was about...

"Rangers is basically solo Frostgrave:" This is true. The basic mechanics were nearly identical, and I wasn't a huge fan of Frostgrave, though again, I think it garnered enough attention that it pulled some non-wargamers into the hobby for the first time, which is always a good thing. (To be clear, I didn't dislike Frostgrave, but I wasn't as enamored with it as some folks.)

"High lethality in both:" Indeed, both Rangers and Sellswords have high mortality rates. I don't mind this, in general.

"Five Leagues from the Borderlands:" This note suggests I must have felt compelled to point out another co-op fantasy miniatures game that had come out around the same time but had received little attention in most wargaming corners. I liked the system, even though I've come not to love the business model the company Nordic Weasel employed of dribbling out short optional PDF rule packs (5 pages or so) for $2-3 a pop. I'd rather the publisher had just gathered them all together in a single supplement and charged a more reasonable price for what they were. I grew disenchanted with Five Leagues not long afterward because of this approach. I guess Modiphius has picked up the license for it and is now going to launch a new edition, which I'm sure I'll succumb to the temptation to purchase...again.

And those were the extent of my bullet points. I'm guessing I would have found more to say if I had fleshed this out at the time. I do know we posted a video about the two systems on our Scrum Club TV channel not too long after this game.

I don't remember much about our game—photographed below—except that one of our protagonists died drowning while swimming across a pond swatting at a giant fly. I remember that seeming hilariously ridiculous and the most ignominious death for a protagonist I had ever encountered in a skirmish game.

I remember the scenario involved marching our warbands toward a house containing a werewolf or some such.

I think this was my little warband.

A bird's eye view of Josh's really nice set up for the game. I do love playing on tables this well appointed. Thanks so much Josh for setting this up for us to try that afternoon.

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