Preview: Battleground The Risen Kingdom

The rotten smell of corpses old and new foul up the air as the Necromancer's abominations march forward. The necromancers do not care so much for concurring the land they only wish to focus on perfecting their craft. Nothing matters to them other than the Great Work. Today in the third installment of our Battleground Fantasy series we look at The Risen Kingdom form Your Move Games. The Risen Kingdom is part of the March 1st Kickstarter campaign for Battle Ground Fantasy.

The Risen Kingdom comes with all the staples of a necromantic army faction. Skeletons, zombies, ghouls and wights are all there shambling forward under your command. Then there are some more interesting units like abominations, banshees and skeleton trolls. Yea, that’s right skeleton trolls! There is also a Giant Catapult, this is a reanimated giant's corpse attached to a wagon with a pile of boulders to be thrown across the battle field at your enemy.

The post on the Dwarves gave a good overview of the system and the Orcs & goblins post was a close look at the command action system. With the Risen Kingdom we are going to go over specially powers, spells and other unique features. The Risen Kingdom introduces you to spells a mechanic not present in the Dwarves or Orcs & Goblins factions. The Orcs & goblins have warcry and Dwarves have Grudge.

Since we are here to talk about the Risen Kingdom lets start with spells. There are 8 Necromantic spells included in the Risen Kingdom box. You may add one spell card to your army per 500 points of army so you can have 3 spells in a 1500 point army. To play a spell spend one of the two command actions you get a turn. This symbolizes the necromancer's focus needed to cast the spell. The spells are cast on a unit in your command and they offer a buff to the unit. The buff does not happen right away. There is an activation for each spell, for example " The next time an enemy unit makes an attack against this unit". Then that is when the unit gets the benefit. The spells will keep your army shambling forward and hitting the enemy with big hits.

Sometimes holding a grudge is good and gives you bonuses.

The Dwarves have a specialty called Bears the Grudge. The units with this ability mark a "1" in the command circle along with their standing order. Then they mark a 1 on an opposing unit. This marks which unit they have a grudge against. Sometimes holding a grudge is good and gives you bonuses. There are 3 different Rune cards in the command deck for the Dwarves. When a rune card is played on the Dwarven unit with Bears the Grudge then it gets a bonus to hit and to wound the unit rather than the extra attack dice.

Finally we are going to talk cool things the Orcs & Goblins can do. They have War Cry. The War Cry allows you to give bonuses to most of your army (sorry, Crazed Goblins not you). Most units in the army have a symbol on the card and when you activate war cry you will erase 1 of them per 600 points in your army budget (starting points on current value). When you do that you give every unit with the special symbol a +1 to movement and when an engaged unit attacks this turn every roll to wound that is a 1 causes 2 wounds rather than 1.

The risen kingdom has a lot of tricks up their sleeves, that is if the sleeves have not rotten off.

The risen kingdom has a lot of tricks up their sleeves, that is if the sleeves have not rotten off. There are skills that attack an enemy units courage rather than the defensive skill. There are also incorporeal units that you have to use your courage to attack them with. There are half a dozen other skills that deal with fear and courage as well as the skeletal feature that I rather enjoy when an opposition rolls a 1 to hit they have to reroll this makes the skeletons just a little bit harder to hit. I played a lot of Warhammer back in the late 90s and I played the Vampire Counts army and this faction scratches that itch for me. Its a well thought through and interesting faction to play with.

Whether you are new to tabletop war games or wanting to get back into it this system will guide you into it very easily. There is no commitment to paint miniatures or embarrassment of showing up to a game night with a half painted army. Your Move Games has your back and with the well written rule books you will be playing in a fraction of the time of other tabletop mini games. Check out the kickstarter and hit that notify me button, the campaign is launching in March 2022.

Players: 1-4

Year Published: 2022

Recommended Ages: 14+

Time to Play: 60-120

Transparency Statement

A sample pre-production copy of Battleground The Risen Kingdom was provided to Bert's Tabletop Games for review purposes. Final products may vary from what is portrayed in this article.