by Jim Owczarski, 15 April 2021 ~ #UnboxingDay
In 1993, Richard Borg — yes, that Richard Borg — released his Mutant Chronicles: Siege of the Citadel via the Pressman Toy Company. With a mythology, look, and feel clearly intended to take a shot at dethroning the mighty Warhammer 40k, it was a simple, mass-market boardgame filled with weird plastic miniatures and garishly-colored geomorphic board sections. I was fond enough of it to purchase several copies, if only to use the miniatures to play the far more complex tabletop miniatures game set in the same universe, Warzone.
To the chagrin of some, 40k endured and now has an edition number nearly as large as the century in which it is set and Warzone is largely a fond memory. Just a few years ago, though, Siege of the Citadel was the subject of a successful Kickstarter that brought in a whole lot of money and smashed through a whole lot of stretch goals. Modiphius, the company producing the new version, experienced some of the challenges faced by wildly-successful Kickstarters and, while the base game shipped months ago, all the stretch goals showed up just a couple weeks ago. This is their story.
Surely there was a time when most games did not come in boxes the size of a foot locker?
click images to enlarge
Opening the above up, one discovers that those skilled in origami likely have a career in boardgame fulfillment?
And under this?
A-ha! At last a couple of brown-box expansions!
And under this we find the first evidence of a big theme in this release: wildly-colored map boards.
At last we arrive at the first two “wrapped” expansions.
All the content of the box on display. Well, the box contents of the box, anyway.
The biggest expansions come with batches of miniatures, more geopmorphic maps, stat cards, new rules, and new missions. This is the Dark Apostles expansion. While some of the smaller figures have been criticized for a perceived lack of quality, the big ones as seen here are nicely done.
This is the Dark Legion bonus set which includes some cool large figures, but also includes improved versions of the Bauhaus characters from the base set including the much-maligned Max Steiner figure (he is one of the yellow bases up at left).
This is the Brotherhood set, one of those about which I was the most excited. Love me some mortificator.
Luna P.D. is, frankly, unfamiliar to me, but I am interested.
Finally, a couple images of the 122 miniatures included in the base game and this expansion.
My family and I have started the introductory campaign and it is already clear that there is enough content to last quite a long time. And, without telling too much, while I have a component quibble or two, it is every bit as enjoyable as I remember.
For the Cardinal!
Thanks for joining this month’s #UnboxingDay with the Armchair Dragoons and we hope you enjoyed our recon of our recent acquisitions.
You can always leave us your feedback in our #UnboxingDay thread, or in the comment area on this article, below.
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