Trying 7TV

Introduction 

T'Other One has been busy painting and modelling his 7TV 'Beneath the Mountains of Madness' kickstarter stuff. As a keen fan of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos and his story At the Mountains of Madness,  this was sure to appeal to him. He's currently covering his terrain builds on his blog, I recommend you give it a read. 

The minis and accessories look great, but we'd never tried the actual game,  so we tried a quick game using Star Wars minis and Deadzone terrain. How does it play,  and do we like it?

The cast of the show (do you really need me to name them?)

What is 7TV?

7TV is produced by Crooked Dice. It's currently in it's second edition. At it's heart,  the game is a skirmish game that can be set in just about any background, from real world history to fantasy or science fiction.  But the game's conceit is that the players are directing casts of actors performing in an action packed TV show of the sort that seemed to fill the screens back in my youth. 

So the game has two aims; to provide a good skirmish system (otherwise it would be no fun to play) and to feel like TV show (otherwise why not just play any one of several excellent rule sets?). 

Skirmish in the Deadzone 

For a first game we both had small casts,  as a players' minis are known.  I dug out some of my WotC pre-painted Star Wars minis and we used the generic stats from the main rules,  although there are Star Wars specific cast cards available. We each had a Star,  a Co-Star and a bunch of Extras. 

The studio set ready for filming

T'Other One played the Rebels, he had Han Solo (a Loveable  Scoundrel), Chewy (Loyal Sidekick), Leia (Commander ) and four rebel troopers (Freedom Fighters). As the Imperial player I had Darth Vader (Dark Overlord, but we ignored his magic for our first game and gave him the light sabre from the unofficial cards), IG-86 (Ruthless Nemesis) and five Stormtroopers (Imperial Troopers).

The Rebel cast assemble

and the Imperials face them

This was a Pitched Battle, victory points were gained by taking objectives as well as by wiping out the opposition.

I'll not give a blow by blow account, but here are a few pictures followed by comments regarding how the game plays.

The Stormtroopers and Han in a firefight. Chewy is just beneath the gantry.

The Imperial view down towards the wookie.

Leia and IG-86 battle it out. Despite Leia being a mere extra, it ended badly for the droid.

Leia and Vader fight it out. The Sith was triumphant.

The last shot of the game. Fittingly the stormtrooper missed Han hiding behind the girders.

The action can quite rightly be described as cinematic. High points included IG-86 using a Grappling Hook to reach the objective on the highest tower. But he didn't have the action required to claim it. Then next turn the script allowed T'Other One to swap two minis positions. Of course, he swapped the droid for one of his Rebel fighters who duly claimed the objective.

Imperial shooting was better than expected, by the time the credits rolled, I'd lost IG-86 and two Stormtroopers, only Han survived out of the Rebels cast.

The Rebels won a minor victory, down to them claiming four out of five objectives. I'll admit that I hadn't appreciated how important they were. 

Thoughts about 7TV

Firstly, I have to say that the game played very well. Despite us being new to it, we quickly got the hang of things. Play is smooth, and various mechanics, like using Plot Points as an overall currency to activate minis, gain extra Stretch Dice and power certain abilities, are first rate. Script Cards regulate the pace of the game and add extra events. It was such a card, Script Editing, that allowed T'Other One to swap a rebel trooper with IG-86, denying me an objective. Set Change allowed me to move one entire piece of scenery, and I was able to use Action Packed in the final turn giving three of my cast bonus activations, which allowed Vader to take out Leia. Many of these can be rationalised as part of the skirmish, some, however, such as the aforementioned swapping of minis and shifting scenery belong squarely in the TV show 'meta'.

We noticed that Strikes (combat) can be pretty swift, as befits action TV shows, and deciding how to spend Plot Points is an interesting tactical challenge. 

Strikes covers three forms of combat, shooting, melee and 'Presence' attacks.  The latter are the quips, puns, put-downs and one liners that you would expect for the cinematic feel (we actually used very few of these in our first game) these add Status conditions such as Immobilised, Dominated or On Fire,  rather than damage Health (although one of the script cards we drew, 18 Certificate, meant all 0 damage strikes did one health for that turn), any mini taking two of the same condition loses 1 Health. 

Plot points can be spent to add Stretch Dice. These are rolled along the one defence or attack dice, but the way they work is nicely done. The highest die is added to a stat such as defence or strike, any remaining dice scoring 4+ add +1 to this rather than their actual score. This gives the players a chance to improve a score rather than a guaranteed bonus and the potential improvement is never so great as to make their use a no brainer.  And yes, we did forget to begin with, and add the score on the Stretch Dice, but we soon go the hang of it.

Conclusions?

This was a great fun game. The rules flow well, so my first point from earlier, is it a good skirmish system, is well answered. It certainly is.

I think Crooked Dice have done a great job capturing the feel of a certain sort of TV show. So that's a tick for my second point as well.

And yet, the game, fun though it was, felt like a fun game of 7TV, it didn't feel like a fun game of Star Wars.

Now this is partly due to the naming conventions, one could easily swap Hero, Champion and Soldier for Star, Co-star and Extra. Some things are harder to obscure, such as Script Cards moving terrain or transposing models. I can't see a place for them in, say a game set in Middle Earth or even, despite the fun I had, in the Star Wars universe. I appreciate this is a very personal matter, YVMV. There's no right or wrong answer here, it depends on the individual.

There are many changes that could be made to 'de-TV' 7TV, but I think this is being dishonest to the game. Play it because you want to play a game where you play a TV show of a skirmish, not because you are looking for a good universal skirmish system (although it is very good). 

Personally, I'd absolutely play 7TV again, and we discussed further potential games for the future, quite apart from the Beneath the Mountains of Madness. I've even been thinking about a few Sherwood Forest games, with Robin Hood and his Merry Men battling the Sheriff of Nottingham, Guy of Gisborne and numerous soldiery. I think 7TV would nicely fit for the style of TV programmes I remember as a kid, or even the lower budget Hollywood attempts at English history. 

Ambushing the tax collector, archery contests, rescuing Maid Marion, the inevitable capture and the final showdown all seem like great episodes, I'd even suggest deliberately stopping the final game part way through to be finished the following week.

Now should I craft castle walls from cardboard with the lines obviously painted on? Perhaps this could be another use for some of my Rangers, or should I look for some of the old Airfix Robin Hood and Sheriff of Nottingham minis?

Final Notes

I should mention that the production values are very high.  The rulebook is nicely illustrated with full colour diagrams an photos of Crooked Dice's own range of (excellent) minis.  A special mention to the index.  It never once let us down, despite frequent recourse to it.

The various tokens and templates are nicely colour printed on MDF.

If you want to take a look at the rules, Crooked Dice have a Download what you need to play section on their website.  It's free.  Go on, you won't regret just looking.  And while your there, check out their minis range.

Now where's my megaphone?

"ACTION!!!"