On Thursday I had several games of "Okko" with my regular opponent Julian. This is a board game based on a series of adventure comic magazines as per below:
Okko is a comic book published in a series of mini-series, or cycles. Originally published in France by Delcourt, Archaia Studios Press started reprinting the series in English in 2006. This series is intended for Mature Readers; it contains adult content, graphic violence, and nudity.
Written and illustrated by Hub with colors done by Hub (Humbert Chabuel) and Stephan Pecayo. The English translation was provided by Edward Gauvin.
Premise
The action of the first cycle of Okko takes place at the far end of the known lands of the Empire of Pajan. Pajan itself is a vast and diversified island, surrounded by a multitude of archipelagoes. Its name is derived from that of its Imperial Family. Though the Pajans have reigned for a millennium, in the last few decades three major families—the Ataku, the Bashimon, and the Yommo—have called into question their legitimacy and now refuse to cease their batles against the Imperial Family. These power struggles have destabilized the Empire, and famine and catastrophes follow one another. This period of chaos is commonly called the Era of Asagiri (the Time of Mists). The Okko series begins in the middle of this tumultuous period, in the year 1108 of the official calendar. The way of life and various habits of the inhabitants of the Empire of Pajan are rather close to those of medieval Japan.
The game is played with individual Samurai type figures, each with a card describing their attributes, 4 "special" dice with symbols on them that you role to gain extra powers or skills listed on the characters cards, and one normal D6 for deciding combats etc. The playing surface is made up of four base tiles, approximately 12" square each, giving a gaming area of 2' x 2' - or 300mm x 300mm.
I had a very successful night with the dice and ended up winning all three games we played - sorry Julian!
The games only take about 20-30 minutes each so I did not take lots of pictures and the narrative will be quite minimal on the games we played
Above is the only photo of game one - an introductory skirmish we played so I could get a hang of the rules - Julian's last demon figure is in the foreground with my two figures behind it
Two of the character cards with the special attributes and their ability stats listed
A couple more of the figures Julian has collected for this game - both of these were from his warband
The rule book that came with the game
A card telling the players the outcome of combat rolls
Above and below are the two new characters I had in my war band for the second game we played
I started on the nearest base line - the only way to win this game was to kill the opponents main "leader" figure. My leader was Setzuka, a one armed female samurai. She is in the picture above nearest the camera. Of to the left is Julian's Ninja who tried to sneek around the flank - in the move after this pic was taken, Setzuka dispatched him with her mighty Katana!
A couple of moves later - two of my band take on two of Julian's....note in the top left my leader Setzuka has caught Julian's leader figure
Setzuka killed the opposing leader and that was game two done and dusted
Game three and my team had to get an imperial messenger from one side of the table to the other - card above was the messenger figure
The last three photos show the action from the last game - again, I had LOTS of luck here with the dice. At one point, Julian's demon used a power to "float" across intervening figures and through walls to end up behind the Samurai messenger. Even though he was 2 or 3 up on me in the combat, he rolled a 1 and the Samurai a 6; he lost by 4 and the demon was killed!
At the end of this game, I still had all four figures on the table and Julian had none - so the messenger got through and we live to fight another day!
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