Review of Escape: Fighting For Freedom

Blurb from the publisher: ' Discover Escape, the boardgame in the Eden universe! An easy strategic boardgame with 3 different game modes!

"Under the pretext of protecting us, they locked us in golden cages and deprived us of our future, they treated us like weak and ignorant children. The time has come to claim our independence... " - Statement given to Michael Aaron Manhattan on the eve of Operation Prometheus

The International Scientific Council always knew it would happen. The probabilities do not lie. The people of the lower strata eventually revolted and machinery originally created to protect humanity have shed blood. Nothing will remain the same...

Ignored by officers and suffocated by their orders, part of the population of LAB 03 decided to take his destiny on his hands. People took to the corridors and protest murmurs quickly turned into a rumbling and vociferous crowd.

In response to these uprisings, the direction of LAB has taken strict measures and severe repression ensued because nothing, absolutely nothing, must oppose Humanity's Grand Renaissance Project.

But this show of force has only strengthened the determination and conviction of the insurgents, uniting them in pain around a common goal: to be free at last!

Today, resistance fighters are thanklessly combating in the corridors of LAB and the ruins of what was once their home.

For them, the time has come to throw off the yoke of the machine, because the technology should remain a tool in the service of humanity and not a weapon that is brandished against it. Now it's up to you to make a choice. Will you take the side of people who love freedom and are ready to die for it? Or will you join the forces charged with protecting humanity at any cost, even to itself? Whatever your decision, you will write history.

Survive in the depths of LAB 03: Fight on the Resistance side and force your way to the surface to build a new civilization in the ruins of the ancient world. Or control the ruthless ISC drones to prevent the horrors of the Apocalypse aftermath from ruining the efforts of the AI to preserve the last survivors of humanity.

An accessible and easy to play game! In the Campaign Mode unfold the board, grab the resistance or the ISC pre-assembled miniatures and launch yourself into one of the nine thrilling missions. The outcome of each 30-minute game will determine your way towards the next victory...

The rules of the Escape campaign mode fit in 4 pages: simple, basic mechanisms and great tactical depth that both players will discover along the story-driven campaign.

1-6 players! Single player and co- operative! Whether alone or with friends, avoid the AI traps and incessant waves of drones. The Escape game system will automatically manage the ISC robots, while 1-4 human players share the resistance fighters. Further Escape gaming extensions will increase the fun, allowing 2 more players to join the fight (for a total of 6 players around the table).

A gateway to the EDEN universe! The miniatures included in your Escape gamebox are compatible with EDEN the skirmish game. You can use them to push further the Escape gaming experience and live your own adventures in the wild world of EDEN. One of the best miniature wargames is now at your fingertips!'

What you get: Your EUR 69 or equivalent will buy you Escape: Fighting for Freedom, a light miniatures wargame for 1 to 4 players set in the well-established universe of Eden, the post-apocalyptic miniatures game. Upon opening the box you will be greeted by the following: the rulebook in English, the Universe book, miniatures for the Resistance (Alice, Duncan, Ashton, Jimmy and Freedom) and the ISC (Black Ubume, Green Mamushi, Blue Rikishi), 8 Character Profile Cards, Miniatures of the Bots set (6 Flybots, 6 Scarabots and 6 Wormbots), one sturdy, four-panel Board, 4 additional boards, 4 Dice, one Whiteboard Marker, 21 Repression cards, as well as numerous counters (8 Equipment, 4 Broken Walls, 4 Consoles, 4 Hymns to the Revolution, 4 Crates, 29 Open Doors, 29 Fires, 22 Hacks, 3 Cryotubes, 5 Airlocks and 48 AIs).

Gameplay: A bit of background before proceeding with the gameplay. Eden the miniatures game is a post-apocalyptic skirmish game where ten factions fight it out in a ravaged Earth. The wildly different factions include the agile Jokers, the hard-hitting Bamaka, the domineering Matriarchy, the somehow civilized Convoy, the robotic ISC, the undead Horde, the free-thinking Resistance, the rule-breaking Askaris, the alien Nephilim, and the bike-riding Dante's Angels. The series has already hundreds of products and a rich thematic universe to explore. The present game, Escape: Fighting For Freedom takes two of these ten factions, namely the International Scientific Council (the ISC) and the Resistance, presents their history and pits them against one another.

To cut a long story short, a team of brilliant, idealist scientists, under the auspices of the UN, worked in order to maintain peace and arbitrate in case of international conflicts. The technological advances that were achieved were enormous, but could not avert the growing instability and the eventual apocalypse. EDEN was effectively the restarting of humanity in giant, underground complexes, protected from the hostile environment on the surface of the planet. There humanity could continue advancing and would try to shed away its infantile past so that history could not be repeated where it to once again inhabit the surface. As idealist as the ideas, planning and even their execution might have been however, the lack of space, the constant rationing and the adventuring spirit of humans created discontent. The AI created to protect humanity drowned in blood an effort of a part of the enclosed population to leave for the surface… thus was the Resistance born.

A miniature in E: FFF has four values: a Life Gauge (or hit points, if you prefer), Movement (in squares on the board), Combat and Intellect. Movement and Combat are straightforward as to their usage, while Intellect resolves actions like hacking a locked door or calculating Initiative. Each character also has two skills (with the exception of the Green Mamushi that has three). The game overall has 27 skills ranging from Flamethrower (yes, that is a skill) to Medic and from Armour to Locking. A character's rank indicates his position in his faction hierarchy. This will be meaningful when creating a group after additional expansions are released, seeing how a team can only be comprised of a number of individuals in each rank. If you stick with E: FFF in Revolution mode you will in any case use all characters from each faction.

The game is round based, with players alternating activating their faction's characters. It uses simple and opposed roles, depending on whether one tries something against an opponent or against a static number.

Each faction has a couple of specific rules applying to it. The ISC characters ignore locked doors and are essentially immortal. Being robotic, an exact copy will enter the compound the round after they are killed. The Resistance on the other hand has the Hymn to the Revolution. Each time a Resistance character exits the board as per the rules or is killed, the Resistance player gets a Revolution token. This can be used towards either performing one extra action for one character or re-roll a particular die roll.

E: FFF is played on either Revolution or Cooperative mode.

In the former two players are pitted against one another, one playing on the side of the ISC and the other fielding the Revolution. The nine scenarios contained in the game are not random free for alls, but have different goals and styles even though they all end after seven rounds. As an example, Infiltration, the first scenario, is about escaping the map; Breakout, the second scenario, is about achieving objectives on the board for one side and destroying them for the other; When The Hunter Becomes the Prey on the other hand is about the Resistance killing three or more ISC characters, while the ISC wins if it achieves certain objectives on the board. Scenarios are non-linearly linked to form a five scenario campaign according to who wins which. Each scenario has specific rules about the placement of crates and objectives, as well as the random placement of the nine Equipment tokens (from Combat Drugs to Crates and from Nitro Vials to Improvised Shields).

The five phases of a turn are the Initiative Test, the Random Events, Character Activation and the End of Turn. In Turn Initiative players determine initiative by rolling a die and adding all their present characters' Intelligence. The winner will choose which player will activate a character first. Random Events determines the random event for the round (d'oh). These range from a Black out (where in a room designated by the Resistance no Combat actions can be performed during that round) to a Disconnection (ISC characters cannot use their skills for that round). Character activation is the core of the game. Starting from the player designated by the player who won Initiative, players alternate in activating their characters. Each character has as many actions on Movement, Combat and Intellect as his respective stat. As an example, the four-rank Black Ubume has a 6, 3 and 3 respectively, while Alice, its four-rank Resistance equivalent, has 5, 2 and 3. Movement can be also used to drop or pick up Equipment and open doors. Combat is a simple roll of the stat plus the die against the opponent's Combat Value. If the Attack is successful, the opponent suffers in damage the difference between the total of the roll and his Combat value. Intellect is used towards Hacking locked doors as well as Opposed rolls relating to skills that use it. Passive characters can't do much. They can however Dodge when attacked, turning the simple roll into an opposed one by forfeiting one of their Combat actions. They can also respond with counter-measures if they are hacked upon which work in exactly the same way as the Dodge, but with Intellect as the prime stat. In the End of Turn, and always provided that there are still turns remaining for the scenario to end, at least one Resistance character remains alive and the victory conditions have not been met, all characters recover their Movement, Combat and Intelligence stats.

On Cooperative mode on the other hand a number of players (from 1 to 4) are pitted against the ISC which is automatically controlled by the game. Only five scenarios exist for this mode, again with different characteristics and particularities. Difficulty can be set to either Cushy, Free or Wild, influencing the number of Repression cards that will be drawn during the first phase of a Cooperative round. In addition to the three characters that are used in the Revolution mode, the ISC will also have 18 Bots at its disposal. Each scenario however will use a number only of ISC characters and bots, not all. Additionally, each scenario will keep on going as long as there are Repression cards to draw. When none remains it means that the current turn is the last turn of the game. The specific rules per faction are slightly different. The ISC has to always attack, it cannot save its Combat for dodging seeing how it cannot dodge. Also, its characters are nerfed in relation to their Revolution brethren, seeing how they lose some of their skills in this iteration. The Resistance on the other hand in addition to the Hymn to the Revolution also has Hackers: a successfully hacked locked door becomes hacked and opened.

A round in Cooperative mode works slightly different than in Revolution mode. The phases of this mode are Drawing Repression Cards, Random Events, Resistance Character Activation, ISC tokens and Characters Activation, Closing Unhacked Doors and the End of Turn. The 21 Repression cards indicate the entry place of the drones during the turn so that the Resistance player(s) can better plan their actions. Random Events work in the same way, even though the events themselves are slightly different. In Coop the players will activate all their characters first, before the ISC activates any of its own. During ISC activation, first characters and then tokens are activated according to colour. Their rules of operation are simple: head for the closest Resistance character and attack if possible. The Closing Unhacked Doors phase is self-explanatory, as is the End of Turn.

The strong points: The background behind the world of Eden is a great read. I am not talking about a couple of pages here, mind you. The Universe book that contains the scenarios could have worked with a handful of pages only. Instead, it weighs in at 32 pages of well-written fluff to give to players their bearings and explain why what they do matters. The Resistance is the disgruntled humanity that had enough of the patronising AI of the ISC, an AI it created to help itself. The ISC and its robots on the other hand are not the traditional story of protector turned prison guard. They continue working according to the initially set directives, and are following the data at their disposal that contamination from the outer world will lead to the destruction of these bastions of humanity. There is no outright good nor bad here, no epic struggle of good versus evil. Eeach side is doing what it deems right according to what it knows (or believes) at the time.

The plastic miniatures are as gorgeous as they are hard and sturdy. The ISC miniatures are outright terrifying, a mixture of dystopic science fiction and Japanese folklore. The lean Ubume has a perverted sex-appeal that simply shouldn't be there for a robotic creature of death, while the sumo-inspired Rikishi with its peg-like extremities will cause nothing but aversion to any player. The Mamushi is the robotic version of its real-life equivalent, the Japanese pit viper, the most venomous snake in Japan. The slightly smaller Bots are equally well-designed, with the special mention going to the ground-shattering Wormbots. If it weren't for their clear sci-fi nature I would have used them on every single miniature terrain I could irrespective of theme or game. The Resistance on the other hand has a rag-tag feel to it with some 90's stylistic undertones. Even Alice's afro hair appear to be textured, not to mention the drill and machinery of the cigar-smoking Duncan.

A game is however more than the fluff and the miniatures. I found E: FFF's basic mechanic quite creative, namely the possibility of attributing Combat actions to either passive defence or active attack. Dodging an attack is guaranteed to keep your character alive for a longer time, something crucial if you are the Resistance. In this way however the character will have less attacks during his activation. Suddenly you have hard choices to make. The game is not about killing the practically immortal robots of the ISC (at least not in most scenarios), it is about you succeeding on set goals. The factions are clearly asymmetrical. The three ISC robots are clearly outnumbered yet they provide a solid challenge to the numerous ISC fighters. Only a couple of skills are common cross-faction in this product, while the way characters behave on the board create quite a few variables. I wish that the idea behind Combat was also implemented with Movement (using it, for one reason or another, also in a character's passive state). This might have been a missed opportunity.

The rules are extremely easy to explain. It won't take even the greenest newbie more than 5 minutes to understand what is going on. Seeing how few games of this type can actually brag about this, I consider it a job well done. I also fully confirm E: FFF's claim to end within half an hour, even on the first plays when you are still getting the hang of it. This is patently good, seeing how most miniature games take a substantially longer time to resolve.

Finally, a game with a coop mode that does not shy away from stating that it can be played by one person. Of course it can, every single coop game without diverging secondary characters goals can be played by one player only! Don't cheat and you will do just fine.

The cards are laminated and players are supposed to write on them with the erasable marker that is provided, deleting and resetting points. That is an easy way of book-keeping that avoids additional papers, markers around the table etc. Being paranoid about preserving my games I sleeved the cards with standard-sized sleeves anyway. It all works great.

The weak points: As many options as E: FFF appears to give, it does not implement them. From the 27 skills on offer 15 are implemented in the existing miniatures for use in either mode. The weirdest thing of all however is that none of the characters, none whatsoever, has a ranged weapon at his disposal. Pardon me? There are three pieces of Equipment that can be used as such (Crates and two types of Grenades), but apart from that and two Skills which are effectively ranged weapons (the AMX-10 and the Tesla Rifle) and which no character in this product possesses, your characters will be basically participating in fist fights.

Fluffwise this is outright ludicrous. Super advanced policing robots without means of effective, non-deadly crowd control? Revolutionaries who don't know how to even throw a stone? Game design-wise it's like shooting oneself in the foot. The only thing that comes to mind for a mini game without ranged attacks is keeping it simple so that people will move into EDEN, its bigger brother, the soonest possible. E: FFF is a light game. There are no engagement rules with disengagement penalties, no sentry rules, no sides to a mini, no attacks of opportunity, no elevation, nothing of the kind. I fully respect that. Being light however and pretending to provide options is one thing, while being light and implementing them is another. I can understand such a tactic when a game builds upon an engine which is fully used by expansions and later sets. E: FFF however pretends to be a gateway game. Are the available and forthcoming expansions truly exploiting the strengths of the game? A fast look on the company's website is rather disappointing. Only a single figure from the ones relating to E: FFF has ranged weapon capabilities from inception.

Maybe, on the other hand, this rather incredible design choice is a result of the way skills are structured. Simply put, some skills aren't; a better balance should have been found between skills and equipment while keeping the game as easy as it is now. But that would probably mean a rethink of the engine behind E: FFF. Bear in mind that I have never played EDEN even though I have drooled over its miniatures long and hard. I do not know whether E: FFF is in anyway supposed to be an oversimplified EDEN and whether its present design is the outcome of choosing to having it as close to EDEN as possible. Should that be the case, the result is is not optimal.

As much as the rulebook is understood there are quite a few Frenchisms to be found. The rules on AI establishment were not as clear in English as they were in French; I was happy to have both sets of rules for this playtest. Apart from the typos and the Frenchisms, items allege to behave differently between the two modes of play, in reality however they are the same. Let's take Combat Drugs for example. In Revolution mode, 'at any point, this equipment (sic) allows the active character to perform an extra Combat action (melee or ranged)', while in Cooperative mode 'A (sic) anytime, allows to perform an extra combat action (range or melee)'. Ooook… This whole table, and to the extent that the same thing is described, is just wrong. Good rules equals not repeating the same thing in different ways lest you create confusion. In that regard the placement of tables could have been better. What good is a summary of the Skills on pages 19-20 (of 24)? Summaries make sense a) when they summarize and not copy/paste the actual thing they supposedly summarise and b) when they are on an easy to find page. I am not sure why pages 20-21 are easier to find that pages 6-7, I am sure however that none of these two conditions is met. The end result is a waste of space.

Seeing how no character has more than three skills, as well as how small skill descriptions are, the icons on the character cards are counterproductive without the actual text, full or abridged. The less gamers consult the rulebook the more fluid games are.

Considering the game's omissions, I feel that they price is extremely high for what it offers. The only justification that I see behind the EUR 69 price tag is that it's around 15% cheaper than buying the Starter Boxes for the two factions and then using the miniatures along with an EDEN rulebook. The EDEN ISC faction contains three totally different characters, while the Resistance is 4/5ths the same. On the other hand a game has to be compared to other games of its category. Unfortunately in such a comparison E: FFF will lose almost every time. A fast price comparison for example with Super Fantasy: Night of the Badly Dead which is also played by rule issues is really not in its favour. If on the other hand it cost EUR 20 cheaper...

Conclusion: E: FFF is a game about a rich universe with gorgeous miniatures… yet it kind of fumbles on the rules. In theory options abound yet few of them are seen in action without additional purchases. Be it because it wants to make people play the more complex and engaging EDEN, it limits itself to an incredibly small niche: people that have never played anything remotely similar to a dudes-on-a-board game and who will find this level of low difficulty challenging. I am not convinced that this is the right strategy in our time and age. A rewrite of the rules can immediately improve it, provided it is posted free on the internet. No matter its corrigible short-comings, E: FFF deserves to be a solid, independent, light miniatures game.

To find out more about Escape: Fighting For Freedom and Taban Miniatures take a look at http://www.taban-miniatures.com.

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