Review of Showdown

Anyone who looks at Savage Worlds can tell that it’s a rather miniatures heavy game. This is probably one of the game’s greatest strengths. It’s simple enough to allow the GM to give the players a group of NPCs to ally with them and allow the players to run with them with no real danger of forgetting that they are there (one of my biggest problems as a GM). In fact at its heart Savage Worlds is a minis game (adapted from their highly successful Great Rail Wars game) however the savage world system has a lot of subjective abilities that make it hard to deal with as a competitive minis game, the kind of Rules that are great for an RPG but could cause problems for tournament style play. But rather than go back to the Great Rail Wars for a competitive miniatures game, the boys at pinnacle have decided to make a new generic minis system derived directly from the Savage Worlds game system, and the best part is it’s free.

Showdown is Pinnacle’s new competitive miniatures system. It is completely compatible with the Savage worlds system and will allow you to easily convert between the RPG and the Minis table with ease never before seen (by me at least). Coming in at a svelte 18-page guide Showdown presents a clear and concise universal minis system. The basics of the system are exactly the same as Savage worlds. Same Stats (Agility, Smarts, Spirit, Strength and Vigor) same skill systems, even the same core mechanic (each stat is rated in dice from d4 to d12+ and the basic target number for a success is 4, when doing ranged combat you suffer a +2 to difficulty for each range band and for hand to hand your target number is based off your opponent’s parry (a derived stat of 2 plus a characters Fighting skill die type divided by 2) Dice still explode (meaning that if you roll the highest possible on your die you can roll again and add the results). Just like the core Savage worlds there are two types of characters (called Wild Cards and Extras) Wild Cards (which are what player characters are called in the Savage Worlds RPG) gain a wild die (basically an extra D6) for any action they wish to take (then the player takes the better of the two roll) Wild cards also can take 3 wounds before being seriously hurt (in showdown however 3 wounds simply kill rather than going into the dramatic damage system in the original Savage Worlds book)

How the game differs are in several little details, the first of which is that many options have been removed to speed up play and remove any ambiguous element of the game (transitioning it from an RPG to a truly competitive game) also Raises for damage have been altered from the old +2 damage fore each raise to a +1d6 if you get any raises (a raise is if you get 4 more than you needed to succeed)Also added are the fortune and calamity tables from Great Rail Wars which add a bunch of random but cool effects to the battle.

So why give away a modified version of a game you sell for $30? Well it’s simple, the rules are complete however they do not include army lists or point values or even weapons lists. There are several other documents that you can use all on Pinnacle’s site (including a list of weapons, a point value list and a description list of the special abilities available in the system and what they do) however all of these documents were written with the RPG in mind and may have some conflicting information. The bottom line is this book is a promotion for their upcoming minis books (such as Rippers, Dragon Knights and several other minis core books), which will include these rules, as well as a setting and game specific abilities weapons Army lists and point values. For those who want to try the system and don’t have Savage Worlds they have also included a free demo (called It came from the Flotsam Sea, set in their 50 Fathoms genre, and lots of fun) Some may see this as a quick marketing ploy but really it’s probably one of the more complete looks at what you would be getting in the minis games, and since it is free it gives the consumer a pretty realistic look at how the game will play in it’s commercial release.

Art wise this product also is pretty nice sporting a really cool cover by Cheyenne Wright and plenty of gorgeous minis layout photos that make me severely jealous. All in all this is a really tight product with a great system behind it, and what’s more a system that has been well tested and is a joy to run as and RPG and loses nothing as a minis game. As an advertising strategy it’s made me eagerly look forward to their first book (Rippers a sort of Castlevania like minis game where players play vampire hunters who have the ability to graft parts of the monsters into their arsenals) and as a freebie it’s a pretty solid product. Of course if you hate the Savage Worlds mechanics for some bizarre reason, you won’t like what you see here as very little has changed. But if you liked the original book or just want to try the system out, run over to www.peginc.com and download a copy today. If nothing else the price is right.

PDF Store: Buy This Item from DriveThruRPG

Help support RPGnet by purchasing this item through DriveThruRPG.

Aces & Eights: Showdown