I is for Impact

Picked-up another charity-shop board-game in August, box was shot to pieces but there was enough of the bottom tray to ID the name of the game which meant ID'ing some more 'unknown' figures in the collection, and a pound-fifty got me a reasonable sample for a post!

It's funny, trying to ID game figures ought to be easy, you go to Board Game Geek and search; don't you? Well, yes, and if you're lucky you'll find them, but I spent ages trying to ID the name of the game with the Minimodels conquistadors, and it wasn't until I was searching for something else that I found them under Tri-Ang, while the pirate from Paul Lamond needed Ron Chiasson to help as I'd tried all the obvious things and got nowhere, meanwhile these guys were waiting and the guy on the blue Dredd'esque motorbike is still anonymous!

A board-game needs a board! The main game; 'Impact Episode 1' comes with the card boards (x6) and piles of hills which line-up with holes in the board, the later add-on/follow-on game; 'Ambush at Wolf Ridge' has a formed mountainous moonscape, of which you got only four; with smaller armies.

On one level the whole thing is very much a marketing exercise aimed squarely at getting a slice or slices of the Games Workshop, D&D and Aliens/Predators franchises, being a co-operative venture between Drumond Park (game play and box design - now part of the Vivid group), Idea Shop (characters and imagery) and Seven Towns (gun firing mechanisms) who have been licensing stuff since the 1970's - this game is dated 2002/3

The above opinion is backed up by the juvenile play (always board) of the first two levels and pretty simplistic third level, limited scope and fact it seems to have disappeared quite quickly with only the one extension game issued, strangely the Wolf Ridge seems the commoner of the two?

You follow the paths and shoot the enemy with the missile firing 'guns', playing at level three allows for a simple capture system. An Episode 2 country/urban battlefield was announced on the back of the box but I haven't found one on-line yet?

However, on another level and leaving the criticisms aside, the figures make the set and they are less than shabby! A mid-density PVC, factory painted, Dinosaurs versus Humans, what's not to like! In Episode 1 you get two armies, ten dino's with one static gun (a very neat Gieger'esque, squat piece of pure evil) and eight humans with a 'Walker', tracked-bot and static gun-turret.

The Wolf Ridge sets seem to have smaller numbers of the same human sculpts, but at least one new dinosaur. I'm going on what I can find on Google/feebleBay.

The shtick is that these Dinosaur Raptor scouts have invaded Earth in a mountainous region where the only humans nearby are a bunch of miner's - the Corezec drillers - who then have time (at the start of a hostile invasion!) to fashion weapons from their mining equipment (and undergo military training and the procurement of matching uniforms and PLCE and adopt military rank structures!) in order to fight-back and defend Earth from the vile gatorsaurs!

Those invaders must have taken their time between opening hostilities and firing their first shot! And - let's face it - the sculpting is more deep-space mining-vessel than Earth-side anything . . . Nostromo's acid-etched floors and cocooned-crew!

The 'Guns' - they are classified on the box as field, medium and large, but there are no separate rules for each class I'm aware of, and they all take the same ammunition, a silicon-rubber-capped bolt 'missile'.

Apart from the firing mechanism which rather ruins the lines of the weapons, they are all reasonable, the dino's having GW-style, chunky, man- (or dinosaur-) portable amorphous, bone-like units and the lovely alien 'Pilot' skull type static unit, while the miners have converted drilling and boring machines and an equally evil-looking, squat, automated turret/bunker thing.

The complete Raptor Scout army below, while the upper shot compares them with a Hasbro; Halo figure and figures from both the big shooting games of the 1980/90's Tomy/Pressman (et al)'s Crossbows & Catapults and MB Game's similar Weapons & Warriors (also carried by Pressman at one point?); the smaller blue pirate figure.

The announced Episode 2 was to have included Carbozec tech. warriors for the humans and T.Rex assault troops for the 'saurs, but the only different one I've got is the one in the above comparison which I believe comes from the Wolf Ridge set? I have the larger 'unknown' sample in storage but memory serves that they are all the same as the recent purchase.

Not unknown any more!