Spectre ops boardgame series#

The front of the book is a big chunk of lore describing the situation, giving anyone who may have missed the first volume of the new graphic novel a lowdown on the situation. Each mission lets you take a selection of Cold Harbour operators and send them against the local insurgents and their Hongbin mercenary handlers. Set in the Awbari storyline, BPRE 28mm is a skirmish wargame focused on one thing – night raids by the Cold Harbour team Scorch against enemy positions in the border clades. I think this is a game I’m going to keep coming back to. So, coming from that I must really dislike the game, right?

Spectre ops boardgame series#

I am cautiously hopeful for the latest series Awbari – the first issue already shows a dramatically improved amount of recognisable characters and less focus on the gore/spectacle of the action over actually delivering a plot. Where I think the series falls down, in my opinion personally, is that while the world sticks with me, it fails to grab hold quite so much with the more specific drama – the focal characters mostly merge into one of two archetypes (grizzled operator or suit wearing leader), while the story seeming to meander it’s way through the first three books before rushing to the inevitable “Book 4 Big Dramatic Twist” (that usually leaves everyone you might have liked dead). The broad strokes of the story and the setting, the dedication to showing the real world (with all it’s shades of grey) and showing the tactical operations done right. I do enjoy the artwork and the world building each issue includes. Okay, I can already see the comments being written and the tabs closing. With the baseline information aside, I should probably say the first controversial thing – I’m not actually the biggest fan of the graphic novels. And all the way through, the setting is presented in a way that is gripping and interesting to read – as I’ve said in the past, the thing that pushed me into making my own setting is seeing what Echelon has done with this series, in it’s graphic novels, video games and sourcebooks. The tone is similarly realistic – technological advantages may help Cold Harbor stack some bodies but a lot of the guys in red still go down during the numerous firefights. Each book is filled with incredibly striking and stylistic artwork of operators operating operationally – gear and tactics are intricately researched, helped by some of their close contacts and partnerships with companies like BCM, as well as Mr Chang having been a co-founder of Hayley Strategic, and all with this aggressive colour scheme, the visuals almost searing themselves into your eyes. Split over several arcs each set in a different hot-spot (Iraq, Syria, Yemen and the North African fictional state of Awbari), the stories are all action thrillers involving Cold Harbor, a US PMC that is hired by various government and private entities to provide training and direct action capabilities.

More commonly abbreviated to BPRE, Black Powder Red Earth is a series of graphic novels and games from Jon Chang, with illustration work done by Josh Taylor and funded in part by an ongoing Patreon. The Background Image from BPRE websiteįor a bit of context, I should probably go into just what Black Powder Red Earth is. There was also a board game prototype that they had been working on and that has evolved into the subject of today’s Impression piece, Black Powder Red Earth 28mm.Īlso before we get started, slight disclosure – I am a backer of Black Powder Red Earth on patreon at the lowest level, enough to give me access to the piles of PDFs they have. Keen eyed readers may remember the Spectre models that were made to represent Ember team from the graphic novels and I am continued to be annoyed we didn’t get any further sets.

So why not kick it off with something that has been eagerly awaited?įor a long time, there has been a lot of discussion about a tabletop game from Black Powder Red Earth. It’s been a long time since I’ve looked at rulesets, even longer since I’ve written my impressions on them.