Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Activate interlocks! Dyna-therms connected! Infra-cells up!

Form Voltron! "And I'll form...the head!". Ah, Voltron. Yet another icon of mis-spent afternoons in front of that irradiating device we call television. I remember watching Voltron as a young boy and marvelling at the way five robot lions or 15 different vehicles combined to form a giant battle robot that could smite all before it. I preferred the Vehicle Force Voltron over the Lion Force team due mainly to the fact that the Vehicle Force team had planes, helicopters and trucks (the naval force portion were lame). Hell, the robot's feet were a pair of cars! He could skate along on those things (an important consideration in the early '80's). But still, even the Lion Force Voltron was pretty cool.

And now my favourite miniatures company, Privateer Press, have fed my childhood fantasies once more by releasing a Voltron Miniatures game! Based on their Monsterpocalypse system, Voltron: Defender of the Universe pits Voltron and a force of Galactic Garrison cruisers against the evil Prince Lotor's Lo-tron and their force of Skull Ships. The two forces battle it out over one of two maps representing either a supernova remnant or a comet flying through space. Medway and I got to play some games last night and it was fun. They've done a great job with the game and it does play like battle-scene from Voltron. Voltron consists of the 5 Lions in their "Alpha" form and can form up into Voltron while the evil forces have four Ro-beasts and Lotor's Command Ship that can form up into Lo-tron. The Cruisers and Skull Ships can be used to secure resources on the map such as power crystals or satellites or you can throw caution into the wind and have them try and blast the enemy robots or ships.

I lost both of the games I played last night as both Voltron and Lo-tron but it was still great fun. The dice just didn't like me and no matter what I did, I just couldn't hit anything that had a target number of 5. What the hell is it with 5? I also demanded we have a store rule that if whom ever is playing Voltron doesn't call "And I'll form...the head!" when they move into robot-mode they owe everyone in the store a drink. You still owe us all a drink, Medway! But I'll settle for one just for me...

Heh. Lots of fun. Form Blazing Sword!

2 comments:

  1. Heh. That does sound like a bit of fun.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Its fully self-contained. You don't need to own Monsterpocalypse to play it. And $60-$70 for a complete game with pre-painted minis really ain't bad. Plus it really is fun.

    ReplyDelete