Fantasy board/card game Armello was one of my favourite games of 2015. While it remains just as fun to play now as it was then, it’s adding four new fantasy animals to play as in next week’s Usurpers Hero Pack. Watch me play as Sargon, the dirtiest rat ever.
Bringing the playable character total to 12, the Usurpers Hero Pack for Armello will be available next week for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC (sorry mobile players). Each faction, Bear, Wolf, Bunny and Rat will be getting a new addition, along with a series of faction-specific rings that give bonuses in the game.
The wolves get Magna the Unbroken, who shouldn’t be left indoors for too long or an accident is going to happen. Ghor the bear has an unhealthy relationship with trees. The bunny Elyssia has a talent for building and a reputation for getting things done.
And the rats? They get Sargon the Death Teller, AKA “The horror whose trade is secrets from beyond the veil”. He’s who I play in the quick session above. He’s got the wits to survive, the ability to see which card he’s going to draw at the beginning of each round and the fighting ability to kill the arsehole wolf Thane, even if it means dying himself.
Again, not sure why Armello needed new heroes. As a board game it’s a little different every time you play it. Still, it will be nice to have a little more company, even the if they are rat horrors.
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4 responses to “Playing With Armello’s Latest Rat Bastard”
Looking forward to this. The game is really underappreciated by the general public. If they ever figure out how to add local multiplayer (which would be tricky) it will be even better.
I’m hanging out for some kind of narrative campaign. Multi-player board-game type things almost never do anything for me, but those mechanics and that art look too good to waste that I’ve several times nearly bought the thing anyway. 😛
The cards and board spaces themselves provide somewhat of a narrative. The character backgrounds give them each a special motivation for wanting to take down the king. There’s even some NPC interaction. Granted, it’s a bit light in narrative compared to a traditional RPG, but even so I was surprised by what was included. If you’ve ever played Talisman (board game) it is a bit like that in terms of narrative content.
Yeah. That’s what I meant by it being a bit light-on for that. It’s one of those re-roll-your-story type things. ‘Dynamic/User-generated content’ is rarely as good as hand-crafted, especially when each ‘story’ is basically over at the end of a half-hour ‘match’ or whatever. It’s definitely more board-gamey than RPG’ish.
It’s not really what they set out to do, so I’m not expecting it or criticizing them for not doing it, but it’s just not my tastes, either, so I’m not really interested apart from all the other stuff they do so well that tempts me, despite knowing what I do and don’t like.
Kind of like that racing game coming up that’s chock full of Oz. I hate racing games, but the Oz-centric one is pretty tempting for all its really well-crafted stuff.