OK—I promise this is the last Cracked LCD about WAR FOR EDADH. Tune in next week and I’ll likely be griping about the state of game affairs or lamenting the fact that nobody seems to be able to make a game as good as THE LEGEND OF ROBIN HOOD anymore. Or I might be reviewing some Eurogame just to irritate this guy who wrote in to tell me that my AGRICOLA review (which was very positive) revealed me to be an “unpleasant man”. (Guy has a point, Mike...-ed) But this week, it’s one last round with Warrior Elite and it’s time for a final reckoning. Does this small-press, practically DIY game have what it takes to share shelf space with the big-box blockbusters from the majors? I absolutely think that it does.

I have to admit that my first impression of WAR FOR EDADH was not a good one at all, though. I roundly criticized the images I saw that were being used to promote the game; I thought they looked amateurish, crude, and unprofessional. It also appeared to me that the game was making an awful lot of hyperbolic statements, what with ad copy claiming that it was an “alternative” tactical combat game and the promise of expansions ranging from a full role-playing system to a quest-based adventure game all using the game’s core combat mechanics. I sort of dismissed it out of hand even when it was receiving good notices from early adopters. On the surface, it looked too much like any number of small-press also-rans that come and go every year with perhaps a flurry of post-convention interest that eventually and inevitably dissipates into obscurity.

However, a couple of months after WAR FOR EDADH was released I found myself at an interesting point in my hobby cycle. Even though Fantasy Flight Games had an amazing end-of-year slate with BATTLESTAR GALACTICA easily representing the best game of 2008 (and likely the best game FFG has yet published), I felt that most of the games that they and the other top publishing firms put out in 2008 and scheduling for 2009 were lacking. Oh, component quality is higher than ever and there were and will be some good games no doubt. But there just wasn’t anything that had the often subtle, intangible quality of heart or any real design sense of doing something other than recapitulating the themes and mechanics of predecessors.

Games like the truly wretched TOMB made me seriously question if fantasy-themed games had completely hit a wall, continually retreading the same post-Tolkien, post-D&D tropes. I was in a position where I really wanted to play a new fantasy game, and not just new in terms of gameplay, but new in that the game I wanted to play would create a wholly new fantasy world that didn’t have a damn thing to do with orcs, elves, undead, dwarves, or any of the other typical fantasy races.

WAR FOR EDADH, it turns out, was exactly what I was looking for. I visited Warrior Elite’s website and was really impressed by the coherency and comprehensiveness of the world of EDADH. Between the strange names, the unusual character illustrations, and the graphic design- right down to the fonts and the icons- everything is completely idiosyncratic and provides a lot of alien atmosphere- something you don’t see much in fantasy anymore. Don’t expect to find fey elves in green jerkins or red-bearded alcoholic dwarves in Edadh, though. And there are no goblins, kobolds, or dragons to be found. The effect is that WAR FOR EDADH comes across as a game that occurs in the context of a fresh new fantasy world and I think anyone burned out on fantasy clichés will find races of warring peoples such as the Angueth and the Hzuoo-Daa a lot more interesting than another “orcs versus elves” game. Everything in the game has a history or legend attached it.

But all that backstory needs a game to exist in to work or else we have the opposite problem of DOMINION, with its great gameplay and epic fail in the theme department. Upon reviewing the PDF rules for the most basic version of the game, I was struck by how the game wasn’t at all what I expected. I thought it would either be some slimmed-down CCG with Euro trappings such as BLUE MOON at best, a sloppy card game with stock mechanics at worst. It turns out that I was wrong- WAR FOR EDADH, even from reading just the basic rules, turns out to be a fairly serious attempt at a tactical, squad-based wargame much closer in a lot of ways to the innovative Avalon Hill classic UP FRONT than MAGIC: THE GATHERING. If that’s what you want it to be.

WAR FOR EDADH is a tactical game depicting skirmishes and larger scale battles between armies comprised of different types of soldiers fighting across different types of terrain. The core mechanics are devoid of any element of chance or luck and all resolutions are handled by simply comparing numbers between battling units. The rules are almost completely modular so it is possible to play a very basic skirmish game with limited forces and little or no movement or you can add rules that add the potential for more complex games including army building, scouting, maneuvering, flanking, psychology, and an overall increase in realism and detail. The game ships with two rulebooks, “The Way of the Apprentice” which is really kind of the core rules and “The Way of the Warrior” which provides the more complex and expanded options.

Describing the actual gameplay is difficult because it could be anything from a Euro-simple, deterministic card game to a very detailed and dramatic battle involving many troop types and tactical considerations more along the lines of a tabletop wargame. Players can really tailor the game to suit their tastes, but I suspect that most will find ample satisfaction in the game as described in the simpler rulebook. WAR FOR EDADH offers an awful lot of game for the money—if you want it. The advanced rules are challenging and require a little work to really get the most out of but the Apprentice-level game is good enough; it’s worth the sub-$30 retail price on its own. It’s amazing that it all works and on different levels. The common thread that ties the whole game together and sort of binds it all together into something cohesive is the conflict resolutions system, a finely tuned and surprisingly compelling set of rules not quite like anything else out there right now.