The version of medieval Europe in indie skirmish wargame 1490 Doom is so gloriously grimdark that it makes Trench Crusade and Warhammer 40k look practically hopeful. Players control tiny “Doom Companies”, trios of wretched mercenaries wearing crude breathing gear, scrabbling up ruins and yeeting rival companies to their doom in a vain attempt to escape from a rising fog of death. If that blend of sinister and slapstick sounds like your kind of dank, good news – a new starter set is going to hit Gamefound later this year.
Publisher Buer Games revealed the contents of ‘The Outpost at Meerbridge’ starter set on Wednesday. It contains four resin Doom Warrior miniatures: a fighter, a scout, a scavenger, and an assassin. Objectively, four models is not many models, but since a full Doom Company only needs three, this gives two players a reasonable proportion of a playable army.
The box also contains a set of three MDF scaffold towers which are scaled to fit alongside the existing, 3D-printable 1490 Doom castle set, and an 18-inch circular cloth battle mat. There’s also a ladder to scrabble up, a resource cache to fight and die for, and a pile of corpses that will provide some tasteful castle decor. Then there’s a learn-to-play booklet, reference cards, MDF measuring stick, and a couple of D6s.
There’s no price yet, but answering questions in the Gamefound preview page, publisher Buer games says “we worked very hard to get this box under $100 without compromising on the components”. Writing in the game’s public Facebook group, they state the crowdfunder will go live in July.
I’ve received review samples of models and the core rulebook for 1490 Doom (and in the interests of full disclosure I should probably tell you that I also got a couple of t-shirts, which I can only describe as ‘sick as hell’). The models are great, assuming you like the designs – and I do. Although they’re monopose figures, they all come with a range of weapon options and usually a few empty hands so you can equip them to match the loadout on your warband roster.
I’ve read through the rulebook – which is beautifully laid out, and filled with black-as-night flavor text detailing the mouldering end of the world – but I’m still building the custom board I intend to playtest it on. My choice of a decommissioned wooden moth breeding box as the framework of a ruined fortress might have been a bad choice, but it does speak to how much the game has captured my imagination.
Are you a 1490 Doom player already, eager to get involved, or a fan of another weird little skirmish game? You’re my kind of people – come and say hi in the Wargamer Discord community!
Source: Wargamer
