Being a big fan of VOR The Maelstrom, Dark Age looked interesting from day one since loads of the people creating VOR The Maelstrom now works on Dark Age.
It has a similar rules system although it is more close combat oriented.
Dark Age is based on the twisted fetish artwork of Brom, which some might know from a Card Game by the same name, Dark Age.
This makes the game an adult game, due to the high fetish-level in both artwork and the minis. Not a bad thing though, a game for grown-ups.
The Background
I am not all that familiar with the background yet, but what I gather is that humans expanded out in the galaxy and colonized planets for them suddenly fall into a great civil war. All the colonized planets were abandoned and left to rot.
Now is several 100 years later on a planet called ATTR. During the last centuries, humans on this planet have become a twisted shadow of Christianity with self-proclaimed saints, bishops and crusaders. They are called The Forsaken.
After years fighting each other and turning once large cities into fortresses they are now looking towards the horizon of the planet they live on, they know, but have forgotten about.
They are not alone, so far there is The Skarrd, which I don’t know much about, but many of The Skarrd are warped humans.
And on the Planet there is also an alien warrior race called Dragyri, it is effectively two races, a slave race and a master race, but they consider themselves as one race.
More races are coming but these are the current races.
I like this background as much as the VOR The Maelstrom background, it is much much more narrow since everything takes place on one planet, but this makes your mind wonder how the rest of humanity is doing I think it is great.
Rules
The core rules are free and can be downloaded from the Dark Age site. Specialist rules are on the cards that come with the minis.
I have just read through them once, but they look similar to VOR The Maelstrom just much more Close Combat oriented since the Dark Age world doesn’t have access to much range weaponry.
Each mini comes with a rule card, which I think is a very good idea.
The minis
They are just brilliant, some of the best I have ever seen, and they are definitely up there with Games workshop minis. They are however not for kids 😉
All in all
Rules, fluff, artwork, minis all is brilliant truly making this a Roles Royce among war games.
The level of online support from the official Dark Age site has been incredible and makes the game flexible for new troop types, new stories, new campaigns etc etc.
I think it looks like a brilliant game, period!