Finally doomed
PLANET APOCALYPSE
Designer: Sandy Petersen | Publisher: Petersen Games
This might be an entirely unnecessary review – Sandy Petersen fans know what they’re getting in this trove of demons already. But for the rest of us, I’ll start you with two questions – 'do you enjoy rolling dice?' And, 'do you like monsters?' If the answer is yes, you can happily give your local friendly game store a ring and see if they can get this massive box in for you.
Hell is coming for us, and our rag-tag bunch of orthogonally ordained heroes are the only way to stop it. You will pick at least a couple of heroes (even for solo play) and begin pushing back against the tide of demons. And it does feel like a tide, or even just trying to walk upstream in a particularly nasty river. Each turn invasion markers will move down the track, and when your heroes meet this marker, you’ll be asked to roll some dice. These custom dice tell you to put out a demon of a certain tier when you match a pair, plus a grub (the most swattable minions) per pair. You start the game massively under-equipped and it’s only through collecting courage by bashing demons, laying ambushes with troops cards, and carefully planning your advancement that you’ve got any chance of finally meeting the boss monster – Baphomet, a kind of goatish body trapped in a hell-wall.
You’ll need to level up by buying cards from the market and adding them to your character. These might be special skills, an upgrade to your dice, or a new way to spend courage. Bashing monsters works by rolling whatever dice you’re currently equipped with, and helping each other out by upgrading the dice rolled – at the cost of courage. Eventually you’ll meet Baphomet, who you’ll fight in helltime, a separate combat instance.
At its best you’ll be throwing huge handfuls of dice, and praying that you’re going to wipe out the current horror facing you. At its worst… the rulebook is a bit fiddly and over complicated for what is a game about having some very silly and straightforward fun. That’s not to say it doesn’t have dramatic swings – going from the back foot to pushing back the menace is a real fists-in-theair- moment – it’s just you might want to go horns up with your hands while you’re doing it.
Of course, that all sounds too simple. A circular despair track keeps ticking per the number of players each turn, and a dice is added each time it reaches the start again, making the threat worse every time you uncover an invasion token. This ticks another track on which advances the boss demon and make them spawn a nearly as awful fourth circle monster.
Literally every demon has too many faces and is horrific in its own way, the heroes are elegantly sculpted and modelled. The dice are just… very nice. Everything here is just about having huge handfuls of luck and going for it. Your biggest problem is that there’s three expansions out too with even more fourth circle demons – and they’re hard to not recommend as well.
CHRISTOPHER JOHN EGGETT
WE SAY
Huge, nasty, and stupid in all the right ways. There’s not much more you could ask for from a top-tier dice-chucking hell-beast-bothering game. If you’re going to drop some cash on your first Petersen game, this isn’t a bad place to start.
WHATS IN THE BOX
► 42 Dice
► 66 Gift cards
► 28 Trooper cards
► 4 Legion cards
► 1 Double-sided map
► 6 Heroes
► 10 Limbo minions
► 6 First circle demon miniatures
► 4 Second circle demon miniatures
► 2 Third circle demon miniatures
► 2 Fourth circle demon miniatures
► 1 Baphomet miniature
► 6 Hero mats
► 1 Hell time zone
► 60+ Tokens
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED BLOOD RAGE…
If you thought the Blood Rage monsters were a little tame, the conflict a little too elegant, and you’d prefer to be throwing dice around, Planet Apocalypse is your bag.