The World of SMOG takes place in an alternate history Victorian London. The British Empire has stretched far and wide and Queen Victoria rules with an iron fist. On the streets of the city, vendors look to hawk their wares in the Shadow Market, while the Gentlemen of the Unicorn Club set off on another adventure. It is a steampunk setting where magic, mystery, and danger abounds, and you can never tell where the next story will take you. The World of SMOG is the stage for two CMON games, On Her Majesty’s Service and Rise of Moloch.
In Rise of Moloch, players assume the roles of different members of the legendary Unicorn Club, sworn to protect the Queen from her enemies. It is a one-against-many campaign, with one player becoming the Nemesis, the head of an underground cult with nefarious plans on their mind. Rise of Moloch is played over six Chapters with an intermission between each where players can upgrade their characters and prepare for the next round. Will the Gentlemen of the Unicorn Club be able to stop the evil plot, or will the Nemesis succeed in bringing Moloch to London?
The game is Julians, but Andrew originally backed its production via Kickstarter - and he is the expert when it comes to how the game runs - so, he got to play the "baddies" as Nemesis!
This was one of Andrews Nemesis "agents"
The game board that defines which character goes first, the cards can be placed in a different order each turn.
The main Nemesis figure on the table - the aim of the good guys (and gals!) was to kill "it"
Chris on the left, me on the right - I bet NO ONE would have guessed that, eh?!
The board at the start; the "Gentlemen" had to get to the "thing" and kill it. The Nemesis minions were killer clowns on unipeds so moved one square further each action than we did - plus, they constantly recycled and came back into the game, regardless of how many of them we killed!
Julian played "Sutherland" - the white, ghostlike figure, and John was "The Major"
Emma taking on a couple of Killer Clowns.
Sutherland and Emma Swanson
Sutherland taking on three Killer Clowns - she ended up being knocked down, gaining Andrew one VP - he required three to win
Chris' character Cavendish, known to us as "Electroboy", had a great ability that allowed him to target anything on the table, with or without line of sight!
Close up of the major and one of the very annoying Killer Clowns
Emma Swanson in all her glory
In the end, we managed to win the game purely due to the fact Chris (Cavendish) was able to inflict hits on our target virtually every turn, and Andrew did not really have an answer to it. Andrew still had a reasonable chance of winning the game, by knocking down three of our characters, and he came very close to knocking Emma down more than once - fortunately, The Major had a healing skill and was able to restore Emma to near full health two or three times during the game.
Some really nice figures and Julian has done a great job painting them up, but I have to say, not really my kind of game - there are far too many special abilities and skills to keep track off and I really could not get to grips with them all - but nice to catch up at the end of the week, have a couple of red wines and some dinner, and shoot the breeze with the guys. Hopefully, next time will be a REAL wargame 😉
