There are also a few promo tokens floating around, found mainly at tournaments and conventions. Thus far, these promo pieces are Renegade ______, where the blank is filled with one of the races (Elf, Shazari, etc). Go hunt them down like the dogs that they are.

Some Background
The world of Tyrannia plays host to the Sack Armies game. Tyrannia has two major continents, the Cradle and the Tangle. As their names imply, the Cradle is where the civilized races have their main populations, and the Tangle is a largely-untamed wilderness. Long ago, each civilization of the Cradle began settling parts of the Tangle, shipping valuable resources back home. Life was good.

Then came the Gloom Time (when life was not-so-good). An unknown event caused a vast Fire Wall to spring up between the two continents, cutting them off from each other for 2,000 years. Many civilizations were decimated by earthquakes and tidal waves, further effects of the Fire Wall's appearance.

Now a gap in the Fire Wall has been discovered, and everyone's pouring through it in a massive land grab. In Sack Armies, each player is a General in command of a small army. These armies must be used to conquer new land for the General's race, lest they lose their foothold on the Tangle a second time.

Let the Battle Commence
The goal of Sack Armies is a simple one: win the day. This can be done by either gaining control of all of your opponent's battlefields (thus eliminating him), or by wiping out his forces.

Each player starts by participating in building the Virtual Battleground. One at a time, each player places his Battlefield tokens, adjacent to each other and leaving a single hex space of neutral territory between. This doesn't mean a single line of battlefields facing another line across the way; just that the first token for each player must be exactly one hex space away from those of one of his competitors. Battlefield tokens have a large arrow that points toward the controller of that region, and is rotated to face whichever player has gained control. Should a player lose control of all of his original battlefields, he is out of the game.

Each turn, a player can: draw up to three tokens from his sack (the draw pile, effectively); deploy up to three tokens (even including more battlefields); move up to two units; or attack an enemy unit (with multiple attackers, if desired). This step-by-step, one action per turn style of play emphasizes strategic thought, and gives Sack Armies the feel of a brutal chess variant.

Here's where the armies come into play. Army units are deployed face down, either on a Battlefield controlled by the player or in the neutral zone next to it (a one space zone extends around the outside of all clusters of Battlefields). Units move around at their individual movement rates, and once a unit is next to an enemy, he's in their line-of-sight and flips over. Moving onto an enemy unit initiates a melee attack, and challenges for control of the Battlefield in question.

Certain units can use either Spell tokens or Maneuver tokens (or both!), which are noted by a colored stripe across the front of the Unit. Spells or Maneuvers are placed under the Unit that wants to use them, to a maximum of 3 spells and 3 maneuvers. These can be activated later at the appropriate time, often to tremendous effect.

Combats are resolved in a simple, yet effective, manner. Called the Two-Flip System, the defender and attacker both flip a coin. If a player gets "heads," he flips again, and again, until he finally gets a "tails." He counts the number of heads he got, and multiplies that by his Unit's damage rating, to get the damage dealt to his opponent. For ranged attacks, only one flip of heads is counted. Of course, should either attacker or defender get tails on his first flip, he does no damage, a nasty shock during important battles, and one that tends to be an equal-opportunity problem.

Original Playtest
As an interesting side note, I thought I'd mention a little about the early playtest we were allowed to participate in.

As pre-release playtesters (heck, we were pre-printed product), we got to experience the game in an unusual manner. It was as though Tyranny Games were trailblazers and we were trackers, trying our best to follow their trail. Tyranny Games did their best to leave markers for us pointing the way, but they already knew the trail, and as newcomers, some minor confusion arose from their instructions. However, even a slight amount of confusion couldn't reduce our enjoyment of the combat system, and all those neat little pieces. Our feedback after getting "lost" in the game is exactly what a company wants from a playtest, anyway.

Our greyscale, printed tokens, glued onto manilla folders and cut out by hand, made it hard to read some of the card details. Our main problem was in determining who could use spells, maneuvers, or neither, as those capabilities are marked by color (red, blue, or green). However, the trade off was that we got to see and use a version of every token from the set. At the time, we didn't know which were rare and which were common (we got one of each), but after a bit of playing, it became apparent that certain tokens were death incarnate.

In those first days of playtest sessions, with the aforementioned greyscale cut-out tokens, the combination of any flyer with Stealth or Obscure was popular, as your enchanted flyer could rarely be attacked. The Edge of the World battlefield token, which sends units slain there back into the sack instead of out of the game, was a unanimous favorite after the goblins simply could not be broken because of it ("The Chief is dead. Long live the same Chief!"). The Screening Fronts maneuver is nasty, and I would have loved it if I had used it instead of getting abused by it.

Thoughts on the Full Release
Having seen the early version, the full release of Sack Armies was exciting. Few changes were necessary since when we'd seen it last, the sign of a solid, well-designed system. So when the Landshark from our playtest copy was renamed as Devourer in the final version, we noticed the cosmetic change but were unfazed by it. Similar minor alterations were noted: Saplings became Thornlings, Hounds became Dogs of War, Battle Rage became Death from Above, Knight of the Hunt became Fey Knights, Spitters became Shazari Spitters, and a few others.

Color! Wow, that was nice to finally see, after agonizing over unit colors on our now cheap-looking printouts. Made some of the artwork look even better than before, if that's possible.

I still find it interesting that players can't bluff that they have spells or maneuvers in their hand. Unless the cards are Associated (placed under) a unit, you ain't got no game. Later sets/tokens may include special abilities to get around this. If so, I'm playin' with 'em, just to see how it changes things.

Untangling
Tyrannny Games and Precedence Studios make it exceedingly easy to check out the game before buying in. The full rules can be downloaded, and can be used with the printable trainer set to give you a good sense of whether Sack Armies is the game for you. You've got no excuse not to try it. If you don't have a computer, get yourself to the library, you dolt. With Sack Armies: Colonization coming this December, and Sack Armies: Fortifications following in March 2002, you can get in on the ground floor of this nifty game while it's young.