by: Michael Barnes

NORAD, the good guys in Christophe Boelinger’s epic Earth Reborn, are identified by an insignia that is an American eagle clutching a bundle of arrows and an assault rifle. It’s also crying tears of blood and exploding. These NORAD soldiers are pitted against a bad guy faction that includes a reanimated scientist called Franck Einstein (read it out loud) and a guy with a giant saw for an arm called Jack Saw. In one scenario, the United States Constitution has to be rescued from a facility while a crazy doctor runs back and forth creating zombies in a lab and refilling his syringe of zombie-making serum. And that’s not to mention the jetpacks, tasers, robots, torture, and awesome mechanics that convey a sense of real-time kick-ass action instead of miniatures politely taking turns shooting at each other. If reading this brief made you say “Hell yeah”, then Earth Reborn may very well be your new favorite game.

This late 2010 release from Z-Man Games is a huge production, easily the best the New York-based firm has mustered to date and it puts to shame some of the big, expensive titles their competitors have issued lately. $80 gets you a huge toy box full of building tiles, weapon cards, pre-made tutorial scenarios along with rules for endless random scenarios, and awesome miniatures already primed for paint. It’s refreshing to open the box of a new game and feel that it may actually be underpriced for what it is, let alone to feel overwhelmed instead of disappointed by content and quality for a change.

Fortunately, Earth Reborn more than backs up its epic production with an epic design that stands as one of the very best tactical miniatures packages I’ve ever seen. Many might erroneously argue that with games like Space Hulk and Incursion out in the wild that we don’t need another entry in this genre, but this game is really something far more detailed and narrative than what those esteemed titles offer. It’s not a two actions, move or shoot affair at all. You can also jam communications, set plastic explosives, torture enemies for information, use a character’s scientific skills, or search for items in a room using this crazy dice-based search mechanic.

This level of detail- which translates into vivid stories in every game- comes at a fairly high cost. Earth Reborn is nowhere near as accessible or immediate as the aforementioned games and it is in fact quite complex. At first glance, the huge rulebook and arcane iconography are intimidating and almost off-putting. The included scenarios are designed to build upon layers of the game and teach players a bit more in each subsequent game and it mostly works, but it also means that it takes a while to get into the meat of the package. The first few couple of scenarios don’t even feature guns, and I fear that many players in today’s culture of disposable games will likely never get to the really good stuff this game has to offer.

It doesn’t help that setting this monster up is a time commitment in and of itself. The party line from the designer is that it’s somehow a Tetris-like puzzle to put all of the tiles into the frame, but the truth is that it’s a pain in the ass. Tiles are double sided and of varying sizes and the larger scenarios could take 20 minutes or more in setup time. That doesn’t include sorting through all the door markers to make sure they’re all in place. And then there’s an issue where walls and rooms aren’t always clear due to some dark printing. The degree of variability the modular board allows is huge, but anyone looking for a quick game isn’t going to get it unless it’s laid out before hand.

In my first couple of games, I have to admit that I wasn’t very impressed because I thought it felt overly mechanical and stilted. The core activation mechanic is based on a system of expendable command points and a hand of activation tiles, each featuring four possible actions and a command point limit indicating how many times each action can be taken. Turns generally consist of assigning one of these tiles to a character and supplying them with points to perform tasks. There are some other rules that allow the player to buy tiles from discard and different colored icons in later scenarios increase the tiles’ flexibility. But it just felt like too much coming from those “move or shoot” games.