Mark Latham created an excellent game. I get that a lot of you are angry that you will never receive your plastic toys, but it's not fair to him to only give this game a 1 star review. For those of you that are curious the game supports leveling, gear, a persistent campaign, and has a bestiary comprised of easy to find models. This is currently the best RPG-lite co-op miniature skirmish game out there.

Be aware though, if you purchase this game, the funds will go to a person/company with a less than stellar reputation. However, as a Kickstarter backer, you certainly have my blessing to purchase this game if it is something you think will bring you joy and happiness. As a game it deserves time on your table.

This is very underwhelming (as is to be expected from Blacklist Games these days, sadly). There are so many similar and more importantly better games out there, too many to list really.

This game is fantastic. It's extremely irritating when bitter kickstarter backers give 1 star ratings because the publisher dropped the ball. I am a backer as well and yes, I'm upset that Black List screwed this one up but that doesnt mean Mark Latham designed a bad game.

Btw, if you were a backer, you have a free pdf waiting for you here. Thats far more than you get from most failed kickstarters.

Since they have not released this to the backers of the kickstarter campaign, how can they be selling it on here? what a farce... No one should buy this book until the kickstarter backers have thier books in hand..

Glad to see this miniature skirmish game finally available!

This game has most features I'm looking for in a miniature skirmish game.

• Miniature agnostic. Characters and enemies are conventional generic fantasy miniatures. No buying of special or IP miniatures. If you've backed bulk miniature KS campaigns, such as Reaper Bones or CMON's Massive Darkness, or own several dungeoncrawler boardgames, you should have enough miniatures for this game (although your miniatures may not match the specific weapon loadouts of your Lasting Tales character).

• Flexible terrain: More than 20 scenarios are divided into dungeon, wilderness, and settlement. You won't need some unsual terrain just for a single scenario. I will say that RPG game tiles didn't work as well as dungeon terrain for miniature skirmish games. Myself, I use Terra Tiles from Ravenkeep to generate a random wilderness game board for wilderness and settlements, then use Archon's "Dungeons and Lasers: Elven Woods" for trees and rocks, and Battle System's "Village Set" for settlements. I will use Battle System's "Dungeon Terrain" for a huge multi-level dungeon/cavern. I did find it annoying that Lasting Tales gives little guidance on making a challenging terrain setup, although this is a common problem for solo miniature skirmish games. The game board is 3x3.

• Casual miniature skirmish rules. Basic combat rules are mostly easy to pick up. Roll 2d6 + ability score > 10 is a success. Various modifiers and exceptions will mean looking up rules as you learn the game, of course. Armor is odd in that the heaviest armor doesn't really stop much damage, and that crossbows can shoot across the entire board most of the time, with their 2' range, and do much damage.

• Solo/Coop: Scenario design is that monsters return to the game while players have a limited time to fulfill their objective. The game AI is pretty easy to follow and you can later tweak it or run the enemies with a GM. You should be able to hack the game into a standard multiplayer game of two warbands fighting each other.

• Characters: Melee characters are pretty limited, as scenario objectives often do not stress melee combat. Spellcasters have enough variety to try out different play styles. Pretty much every generic fantasy race and class are covered. This range of complexity benefits the game by allowing players to play multiple characters, new players to play simpler characters, etc. Simpler characters lend themselves to remote play. (We play a two-player campaign, with my friend remotely playing a Paladin and Rogue, while I play a Wizard.) Character progress is unsual in that character stats increase and new skills are gained, rather than the more conventional "levelling up".

• Campaigns: Lasting Tales contains both the "Nethering Lord" campaign and a random campaign generator. The "Netherling Lord" campaign is actually a good way to learn the campaign system, as the campaign takes care of the random generation for you. The random campaign generation doesn't create an overarching story, but it's not hard to improvise some sort of story explanation.

• Campaign Events: Between scenarios, the party will have various road encounters, and encounters within settlements.

• Settlement locations: Villages, Towns, and Cities have plenty of locations to visit, although some are better than others. (I houserule that a settlement event of "No Event" means the characters end up at a random location.)

• Treasure: Lasting Tales has an extensive variety of treasure, although you only have a few chests you will open in a scenario, and it's probably going to be some sort of potion.

Five Leagues from the Borderlands may be the closest miniature skirmish and narrative campaign ruleset to Lasting Tales, although I haven't played Five Leagues yet.

The Best Part of the Game is in the Actual Rulebook

This review will include some impressions of the core rulebook. And the short answer to Lasting Tales is that it's a standard coop "IGO/UGO" miniature skirmish game for newer gamers, and those who want a flexible campaign system. In contrast to "simultaneous combat", "IGO/UGO" is a miniature skirmish game term for one side taking its turn (eg. Move, Attack, miscellaneous Action), then the other side doing the same. Combat typically has the attacking model making some sort of die roll with modifiers against a target number and missing and taking no damage if it fails. In contrast, in "simultaneous combat" typically the attacking model initiates combat (preferably to their advantage!), both sides roll a die with modifiers, and the higher number wins, meaning that the attacker may suffer some sort of damage if it fails. By standard, I mean that the movement and combat rules alone don't really make the game stand out from other game sets. (However, for magic-users, the magic system has ten levels of spells, plus cantrips, six spells each. Priests have three levels of miracles.)

As for coop, the game uses an unending supply of enemies as a timer. Each turn, so many enemies appear (up to a limit), so you typically need to fulfill the scenario objective sooner than later. The game AI is pretty basic -- most of the time the enemy just goes after the nearest opponent. You could easily replace the enemy AI with a gamemaster playing enemy forces. (The terrain setup rules are pretty broad, so it's up to the players to make a fair or challenging setup.) Like many miniature skirmish games, the Lasting Tales core rulebook has an extensive beastiary of stat blocks for generic fantasy miniatures. (Song of Blades and Heroes, btw, allows you to make your own stat blocks for miniatures in your collection.)

The core rulebook comes with 20 scenarios, and a 10+ scenario campaign. The game is designed so that you can mix and match enemy types with scenarios, as well as the level of your heroes. (The campaign scenarios can also be played outside the campaign.) The scenario rules scale for both number of heroes and their levels. Additionally, between scenarios, both the party and individual heroes can have encounters and visit locations in the local settlement. New skills are gained randomly, or players can spend their experience points to select a skill. Players dropping into the game are awarded enough experience points to match current heroes and follow the character creation and levelling up rules. It's the bestiary, scenarios, and between-campaign content that separates Lasting Tales from non-campaign miniature skirmish games. However, most of these features are in the core book, not the demo. The demo comes with one scenarios and some first-level pregenerated characters. You'll want four buildings and several undead miniatures for the game.

I would recommend the PDF over the hardback. With the PDF, you can print out the rules and character generation for each player, and have one player print out the scenario and beastiary statistics for the day's game. Print out the between-scenario and level advancement content before the next game, and go throught it while waiting for everyone to show up. Some between-scenario content can even be played over email.

I should mention that the Lasting Tales rating may be artificially low because of negative backer reaction to the long delays Blacklist Games had with fulfilling their Fantasy Series Miniatures. This line of miniatures can be used with the Lasting Tales rules system. As a backer myself, I hope that situation is resolved reasonably so I can better enjoy this game.