Fantasy Flight Games’ upcoming collectible miniatures game MUTANT CHRONICLES is based on an established hobby license that has not only brought us the absolute classic 1993 game SIEGE OF THE CITADEL and the promise of a 2008 Thomas Jane/Ron Perlman motion picture but also a failed CCG (DOOMTROOPER) and several lines of miniature products that never seemed to be distinctive or competitive enough to hold the line against the likes of games such as the Games Workshop titles or WARMACHINE. The world of the game was fairly interesting, sort of a baroque dark fantasy/science fiction setting with some Cyberpunk and horror trappings but somehow it was always regarded, at least in my neck of the woods, as kind of a low rent, down-at-heel bootleg version of WARHAMMER 40k- which isn’t really accurate at all.

Given the second string, underdog status that seems to have followed the name around it seemed, to me at least, that FFG’s acquisition of the MUTANT CHRONICLES universe was strange given their track record of securing some of the biggest licenses in genre entertainment from WarCraft to Lord of the Rings—and I have to admit that the announcement that the game would be distributed in a collectible format caused a degree of alarm and it wasn’t long before I was foretelling the doom of the line. The last CMG I put faith (and money) into was the brilliant and but criminally ignored DREAMBLADE, a great game that demonstrated yet again that collectible games live and die by the size of their player base rather than the quality of the game itself.

Collectible games are a tricky, treacherous proposition. On the player’s end, there’s the notion that you are buying a random assortment of product that you may or may not want. You may be trying to build a certain deck or army and the booster pack you’ve bought contains nothing that you want or need. The idea is that you’re supposed to trade, but you’re still essentially gambling your money on getting something you want. It can be frustrating, and ultimately what you’re doing is buying a complete game incrementally with the pieces spread out through what amounts to one of those stapled-shut brown paper grab-bags that might contain a cool squirt gun or another one of those stupid parachute guys that you already have five of. Yet it’s undeniable that there is some fun and excitement in cracking open a booster pack and seeing what surprises you get. On the retailer’s end, there’s the promise of repeated sales as players continue to invest in the game and increased store traffic through in-store play programs and incentives. But there’s also the nasty fact that most collectible games have a very short shelf life and die on the vine with alarming regularity, leaving product to languish on the shelves before being sold off at clearance prices. Through my doom-colored glasses, I could already see MUTANT CHRONICLES resigned to the same fate as DREAMBLADE even if the game were absolutely phenomenal- solely because of the decision to market it as a collectible game.

So my early vote on MUTANT CHRONICLES was one of little confidence, despite the fact that Fantasy Flight is the premiere publisher of hobby games and is very likely the most professional, progressive, and successful firm in the business today. FFG was kind enough to send me an early copy of the MUTANT CHRONICLES starter set for inspection and I think there are definitely some interesting things about the game that will hopefully give it longevity but I do have some lingering concerns—it’s important to note at this point that this preview is based solely on my experience with the starter set and not the full product.

One thing that really impressed me right off the bat is that MUTANT CHRONICLES is definitely a Fantasy Flight game, and that means the production and artwork is absolutely top-of-the-line. Eschewing the cheap, throwaway packaging and shoddy components of many collectible games, Fantasy Flight has graced MUTANT CHRONICLES with a sturdy, standard-issue square box like that which houses most board games these days and the counters are the same high-quality cardboard stock you’d see in any of the company’s other titles. The rulebook is clear and efficiently written with thorough examples and illustrations and I was able to get a pretty complete grasp on how to play with a single read-through. Custom dice are included and the cards provided- which represent special powers for each of the four factions as well as a reference card for every unit in the complete set- are nicely illustrated and linen-finished. It’s a classy, expensive-looking production..

Upon flipping over the box, there is a clear window that gives the potential buyer a full view of the stars of the show- six HUGE fully painted miniatures. These are 54mm figures, meaning they’re roughly twice the size of a standard hobby gaming miniatures. They’re finely detailed with decent Chinese paint jobs and SIEGE OF THE CITADEL players will be delighted to see their old friend the Ezoghoul present- even if he’s much too big to use in that game. They’re great looking figures, no doubt, and sure to impress anyone. If you’ve played TANNHAUSER or MARVEL HEROES, then imagine the quality of those sculpts and paint jobs but on a bigger scale. It’s almost disappointing that FFG decided to include a paper map to push these guys around on rather than a mounted board but that’s fairly standard for a CMG and the double-sided poster does its job, outlining hexes for deployment, cover, objectives, and so forth.

The rules turn out to be a mix of relatively generic, stock-in-trade miniatures conventions for line of sight, cover, movement, and melee/ranged attacks spiced up with key-worded special abilities and faction-specific action cards that provide some thematically fun and often devastating effects; Demonic effects tend to be delightfully demonic indeed. Activations are managed by the distribution of order tokens which afford an assigned unit one, two, or three actions which can be spent on movement, shooting, activating a special ability, or a “guard” action which allows a figure to take a shot at a unit moving into its line of sight. Pretty simple stuff and nothing most gamers haven’t seen before.

It’s hard not to feel let down that the core rules play it fairly safe and emerge as a routine miniatures skirmish not much more complex than HEROSCAPE but missing the contested armor rolls and terrain elevation that added some drama and tactical consideration to that game. Fortunately, there are some more interesting ideas at hand such as the incorporation of a kind of stripped-down version of the die system from DOOM and DESCENT. Each figure gets to roll a specific set of the color-coded dice and the result provides both an accuracy number (which must equal or exceed the range between an attacking figure and its target) and a number of hit icons which translate to bleeding, suffering, and death for an unfortunate miniature.

The army creation system is incredibly smart; an army is composed not only of units but also activation tokens and cards and all components are coded Gold, Silver, or Bronze in relation to their relative power and effectiveness. So if a build-out proscribes a “10/10/10” arrangement, that means a player has to build his army using 10 Gold elements, 10 Silver elements, and 10 Bronze elements. This prevents completely cheesy armies built from the best or rarest units in the game and forces players to accommodate weaker units. It also introduces some interesting resource management into the metagame beyond simply figuring out point costs for everything and maximizing a budget. You could use all of your Gold slots on those 3-action gold orders but then your army is going to be composed of weaker Silver and Bronze units. Or you could go with all 1-action Bronze units and sacrifice mobility and flexibility for power. It seems like the system will support all kinds of play styles while affording a high degree of balance.

The game offers three “modes” of play including a deathmatch-ish skirmish mode, a tournament setup designed for 10/10/10 armies and taking advantage of these double-hex objective counters that confer special abilities to occupants, and an “Epic” mode that suggests a 90/90/90 configuration- the rules are not included but will be available on FFG’s website. Really, you can play any point level you’d like but despite the starter set’s claims that it includes “everything you need to play” you can really only do a sort of pre-set skirmish game using a 3/3/3 setup with the six miniatures included although you get plenty of counters and every card in the first set. Which, given the units’ relatively short lifespan and the overall close quarters of the map, lasts about fifteen minutes. Even the early demos of the game were done with 5/5/5 armies so it’s hard not to feel a little shortchanged by a product that carries a $30 retail price tag but offers a very, very limited précis of what the game has to offer.