Concept
Lasting Tales looks like a procedurally generated skirmish game with a mechanical AI that allows each of the players to control their own character. It’s set in a generic enough fantasy universe to allow players to build a swath of different character types and ideas while balancing them to play together. This is a cooperative game and i get the impression that it’s a dungeon crawler or a wilderness explorer. It’s got a built in campaign mode, a host of other features and sounds like it’s all contained within a single book.
Rules Complexity
For now, it doesn’t look like it’s a super complex rules set. It uses a standard ruler/tape measure and six-sided dice. All the rules (For now) are in the core book of the game, and that lends itself to being a fairly easy to get into project. Now, we don’t know yet, as we haven’t seen the actual rules yet, but I expect this will be a simple pick up and play game, where you grab your character, some dice, and your tape measure and go.
Resource Intensity
This one’s a harder guess. It’s a system agnostic miniatures game which means it doesn’t have its own miniature line and encourages you to use whatever you want. That’s an easy on the pocketbook investment for a new player, as all you need to join a game is your character, but someone has to pick up the monsters and the terrain for this game. We haven’t seen what a table setup looks like yet, but once we get closer to the Kickstarter Launch date on March 30th, we’ll hopefully get a better look.
Support
Blacklist Games is currently gearing up for the Kickstarter of this project on March 30th, but it already has a convenient and easy to access miniature line to go with it as their Fantasy Series. Series 1 fulfillment is slowly trickling out (shipping has been slow everywhere because of the Lunar New Year in China and the worldwide Covid crisis). There is a series 2 in the works, and that should add a pile of new monsters and characters for you to use in Lasting Tales. They also have official terrain being produced by Black Site Studios. My genuine concern is being able to get all the components together in a brick and mortar store to maximize their compatibility, but Lasting Tales doesn’t require the official Fantasy Series minis (but they’re ready to go).
First Impressions
Love the concept. It fills a niche that we don’t really have right now in the miniature gaming sphere. Most of our games are competitive with players vying against each other (and the ambient board) to accomplish objectives and score victories. This is different, and curious minds want to know how well it performs. A mechanically tight game that’s challenging while capturing the brain feels of both a tabletop RPG and a tactical skirmish game is a tall order. I hope they hit this one out of the park.
The setting is possibly the weakest point. It’s intended to let you tell stories with your existing collection of minis (or build one up for it) and that requires a level of broad strokes fantasy that can be very offputting to some fans of the genre. We need a closer look at the setting elements before making any serious conclusions about this, though.
Market Reception:
This one’s always tricky, because the miniatures marketplace is full of things, It has a few factors going for it though. The System Agnostic nature means you literally only need to add this book to your collection of games and you can play with whatever minis you have. That’s a definite plus. The cooperative nature of the game is also a novelty. It’s a shiny new thing in the market, and we’re curious to see if there is a substance underneath that shine that will carry it forward.
It also sounds like it's an entry level game to pull in gamers from a couple of distinctive markets. Since it’s a hybrid of the “Traditional Fantasy RPG” and the “Traditional Tabletop Skirmish Game” it will theoretically be able to draw an audience out of both groups as a crossover product. If it can successfully capitalize players out of both categories, it has a solid chance.
I’m curious about the resource requirements to play because that might be a stumbling block. Sure, a player needs to just have their character, but someone is going to have to provide the monsters and the terrain, and the amount of kit required compared to the price points of readily available parts bears observation.
Bottom Line
Absolutely intrigued by the game’s core concept and definitely will buy the core rules. The miniatures from the Fantasy Series look fantastic (Ash Barker over at GMG got a set, and I’ll include a link to his unboxing so you can see). So, yeah, Blacklist Games has our attention, and in the words of the Meme, our desire to know more intensifies. Hopefully, they’ll keep us in the loop (and we can keep you in the loop), prior to the Kickstarter Launch on March 30th.
Important Links
Blacklist Games: Lasting Tales page can be found here
Fantasy Series 1 Unboxing can be found here
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