Slugfest Playtest

Hi all, I’m here with something a bit unusual. Scott Pyle, the creator of my favourite superhero minis games, Super Mission Force, has a new superhero game in the works called Slugfest! This is a bit of a departure from his previous efforts in that it’s built from the ground up to be a solo play experience reminiscent of Rangers of Shadowdeep. It’s also a D20 system, which brings its own wrinkles to the mix.

Cover art for Slugfest by Jay Piscopo.

Scott was keen to get extra sets of eyes on the game before it was released, so I offered to put it through its paces. I love building characters, so I put together a team from Invincible to give the game a test run. Team creation involves selecting one character to be your Headline Hero, who is the star of the story, and a group of teammates to accompany them.

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The Teen Team is together again! Atom Eve, Invincible, Robot, and Rex Splode.

One of the first things I will say is that the game strikes a nice balance between a traditional tabletop minis game and a narrative role playing experience. I played the first game of one the campaigns, The Heist, which represented a group of villains attempting to steal an important device from a bank as part of a larger plot. Slugfest is single player or cooperative, and the super foes are controlled by a simple AI system, which is supplemented by a card-driven event system which is unique for each scenario.

Here are some of the highlights of the game. Note that the game I played was using the unreleased playtest version, so some changes may be implemented in the final release.

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The villains of the piece, Titan (Brick), Klaw (Blaster) and Quicksilver (Speedster). They start off the board and inside the bank, and will come out to play when the event deck dictates it. In the meantime, a group of Deathbots are also on the table to give them support.

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Chaos at First National Bank, as the villains begin their attack, knocking out half a dozen police as they searched for the widget. Civilians mill around, in danger of being taken hostage, which would allow the villains to escape with impunity, so encouraging them to flee was the team’s first priority.

Intrepid reporter April O’Neill is also on the scene, knocked unconscious, but Robot uses the speed of his jet bike to get her to safety.

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Invincible gets a little overconfident as he speeds towards the Deathbots. Klaw reveals himself from a nearby building, and the trio blasts Invincible into unconsciousness with some extremely lucky rolls. Thankfully, Invincible passes his Surival check to stay on his feet with a single hit point.

He makes a strategic withdrawal to the safety of Atom Eve’s force field, and Eve manages to neutralise Klaw.

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Quicksilver emerges from the bank with the widget in his hands. It’s now a race against time as he prepares to make off for the table edge. Once per game, speedsters can make an extremely long move, so Invincible needs to act quickly to tie him up. The ensuing combat is swift and decisive, with Quicksilver taken out in short order.

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Reinforcements arrive in the form of another Deathbot, who knocks out Rex Splode, and Titan, who attempts to engage Invincible and regain the dropped widget. Invincible lives up to his name this time and manages to defeat Titan, as Atom Eve moves to secure the widget, and another Deathbot arrives on the scene…

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Panic, as Atom Eve is blasted into unconsciousness by the Deathbot, but she manages to pass her Survival check. Invincible ranges out to deal with the new threat as Robot exchanges metallic blows with another Deathbot. The widget is secure and it’s all over bar the punching.

So in the end, the heroes are successful in defending the bank and saving the civilians and police officers. It was a true slugfest in the end, with combats swinging each way.

My closing thoughts are that I really enjoyed the narrative aspect of the game. The deck incorporates negative effects as well as a couple of positive boosts which gave characters a second wind, and these added a lot of tension to the proceedings. The bad guys hit pretty hard and there was little respite for the heroes as one thing after another kept them on their toes.

One of the big takeaways from a character creation stance is not to neglect the Fight stat. Initially, I had thought this wasn’t useful for ranged characters and so I focused on improving their Blast stat, but this was a big mistake, as Fight is used offensively in close combat but defensively against ranged attacks. This made it an interesting mix of attack and dodge.

The D20 system lent itself to some predictable swings in fortunes, but I really liked the Fate ability, which allowed the Headline Hero to swap their dice roll with an opponent’s once per game. Invincible got swamped pretty quickly and I needed to use his Fate ability early, so that left things very tense for the rest of the game, as he was on death’s door for much of it. Luckily, Fate can be purchased multiple times in character creation, so I would take it again next time and try to incorporate a little more healing into the group.

The other thing I really liked was the power system. Each power has an ongoing or standard effect, and a once per game ability which allowed some kind of power stunt or feat. I think this is a great way to balance the system, especially with Speedsters, for instance, who have very respectable movement normally, but can only make ludicrously long moves once per game. It also allowed Blasters to have one shot per game which was really effective.

Lastly, the skill system was also great, as it gave characters opportunities to interact with the environment and scenario and influence things in ways other than combat. Trying to revive the unconscious police was tricky, but telling civilians to get out of here before they were in serious danger was much easier! Early in the scenario, there wasn’t a lot of combat so this gave the characters much more to do in the early stages. This gave the action a real comic book feel, with the heroes arriving on the scene, assessing the situation and prioritising getting bystanders to safety versus attacking villains.

I hope that future releases incorporate more scenarios like this. At the time of printing, the rulebook includes two linked campaigns and a standalone scenario, as well as guidelines on creating your own stories. I will definitely be spending more time painting up villains and bystanders, as these have been notably missing from my collection until now.

So keep an eye out for Slugfest if you are looking for a narrative solo play experience. It should be available on Drive Thru RPG in the next month or so.

Happy Gaming!