Games from the Crypt #10 - 20 Years of Neuroshima Hex

There’s a lot that I’m proud of in my life as a game player, seller, and writer. I’ve owned a successful game shop, I’ve interviewed Reiner Knizia, and I was the first person ever banned from Boardgamegeek.com. But one of the things that I am the most proud of – and something that I will likely never be acknowledged for – is that I brought Michael Oracz’s Neuroshima Hex to America. I’ve been recently reminded about this excellent Game From the Crypt because there’s a new edition coming soon, after several years of its third edition and its mountain of army expansions being in kind of a limbo. The new 20^th anniversary take on the game looks great with a Gloomhaven-style spiral bound scenario book and some new additions like leaders and terrain structures added to the mix.

It’s all very nice, but 20 years ago this was a tiny little game from Poland that a few in-the-know game players in the US had gotten a hold of. It sounded awesome- a semi-abstract post-apocalyptic battle game that plays in about 30 minutes, requires no miniatures, and it was all about placement and timing rather than die rolls or card play. At the time there were literally maybe two or three imported copies of the game in the US. I dug around a bit and managed to get ahold of Ignacy Trzewiczek, the chief of Portal Games. They were only publishing in Poland at the time, so I pitched an offer to buy a case of the games to distribute here in the US. I was still retailing, and I was in a position to sell the game to folks here in the states. So one day I got this huge, battered box full of first edition Neuroshima Hex games delivered on my porch.

I sold through them almost right away. I sold to some of the biggest names in board games at the time including a Very Well Known Content Creator that hated me and, ironically enough, the dude that ordered me banned from Boardgamegeek. Virtually everybody in Atlanta bought a copy from me. I felt like such a badass importing this awesome game. This was also back when the rulebook had this hilarious bit of poorly translated lore text littered with profanities, which was just a delight to read. Eventually the game would be picked up by the legendary Zev Shlasinger and released through his imprint, the also legendary Z-Man Games.

The game remains awesome through four editions, and I’m glad to see it coming back from the near-obscurity of the Crypt. Mr. Oracz’s design is still brilliant – you have a big stack of hex-shaped tiles representing the mutants, dogs, cannibals, plant monsters, gangsters, New Yorkers, robots, cops, and what have you roaming the wasteland. Each turn you have three of these in hand, you play two and draw back up. Each of the tiles indicates which hex sides it attacks from in either melee or ranged fashion, along with special abilities keyed to icons. Most importantly, it also has an initiative number that determines when it goes off during a battle You’ve also got an HQ piece that starts on the board and the goal is to keep that tile alive while blowing up those of your opponents.

As the board fills up in kind of a protracted setup, you plan attacks based on your placements and initiative numbers. Because eventually, someone is going to play a battle tile that sets the whole thing off in a glorious chain reaction. You go through the initiative order with all the attacks firing off in sequence, sometimes eliminated, disabling, or moving enemies and changing the outcomes. I’d say it’s chaotic, but it’s almost like you are programming the outcome collectively with the other players until someone hits the “run program” button that is a battle tile.

I prefer the game as a duel, and I think that Mr. Oracz likely intended for the game to be a two player affair. With 3 or 4 the board gets bigger and the action both wilder and somewhat less cerebral. With all the different factions- something like 17 or 18 of them were released- there’s tons of special abilities, advantages, and unique strategies that give the game as a whole tons of depth to explore. The third edition, which had the most army expansions, was the most compelling to me but it is also somewhat sprawling. I’ve yet to try the new edition but I’m looking forward to it.

But I also must say that like last week’s Crypt-kicker, Formula De, I feel like Neuroshima Hex is best played today in the digital realm. There was an outstanding IOS app released years ago and it’s available on Steam as well. All the really great stuff in the game is there, but all the really kind of annoying stuff is handled by the app. You see, sorting out these battles- with 10, 20 tiles on the board at a time- is most of the play time. It usually takes every player going sort of heads-down to work out who goes when, what happens, and to sort out the sequence. As I said, it’s kind of a programmatic mechanic and it’s more fun to me at least to let a computer sort that part of it out.

There was also fantasy version of the game that was released some years ago, Monolith Arena that had terrain features and some other new rules that have likely matriculated into its original form. I liked Monolith Arena a lot too, but for some reason it never quite caught on like Neuroshima Hex did. Perhaps some day it will emerge from the Crypt as well!

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Tags: board games | tabletop | games from the crypt