Hirelings, a Review

So while we were at GenCon Indy this year (for the first time) we met John Harris, an awesome fellow with a board game to kickstart. That board game was Hirelings: the Ascent, and its family friendly, putting you and your companions in the shoes of level-less hirelings who's adventurers are dead. You're carrying their backpacks, stuck in the bottom of a dungeon (in this case a dragon's cave), and the dragon is about to breath a roaring cone of fire through all the tunnels and scorch you alive.

Sound like an amazing game premise? It is. Being level 0 stuffhaulers and bodymen, you come into the dungeon with a backpack full of stuff that belonged to the (now dead) adventuring party. However, as it isn't your pack you don't really know what's packed in there. Magical items, generally helpful, fill it to the brim. You have a limited supply of these and they may help you to get out... but you don't get to decide what you're grabbing, you simply dip your hand in and pull out something that may (or may not) be worthwhile to you.

But don't be fooled! Those items are ALSO your health! If the fireball catches up to you, you need to lighten your load to put on some extra speed, thus throwing off one of your treasures from the backpack. If you have none left to ditch, you're done, mate: fried, cooked, annihilated! No more running for you. This simple game design manages to capture the frantic frenetic pace of a real escape very well.

GenCon Digestion, the Report

We set off for GenCon a merry crew, three travelers in a tub-sized ship with naught but the endless stretches of I-80 before us and nothing behind save the lives that we had lived. We had stocked ourselves with provisions and then made off into the wild blue; our GPS told us where to go and we had no other thought but than to follow it to the ends of the earth or Indiana: whichever came first.

We found ourselves rather quickly entering Pennsylvania hill country along the great stretch of the trucking route I-80. On either side rose the wooded climbs, wild and mountainous. Occasionally a dell or little vale would be visible, the hills drawing back for a brief moment to reveal a steep fold in the land populated by pines and hardy oaks. The cocooning webs of spiders were everywhere, lending the endless forest a sinister aspect and the settlements of man were thin and far between. There were lonesome farmsteads and isolated cottages but it was a long way between the coal-mining villages that were speckled across the hills.

From Pennsylvania to Ohio we came, barreling out of the high hills and into the great level lowlands of the plain. Forbidding wilderness was replaced with girdles of tamed land: farms, acres and acres of them in all directions. Trucks along the great arterial road were now seen to be carrying massive blades, as of wind-farms that must reside somewhere in the state. We stopped but once at Grandpa's Cheesebarn along the road to stock up on delicious delicacies before we shipped out once more towards Indiana.

Crossing the border, we encountered more churches than I have ever seen before in my life. Billboards proclaiming the religious epiphanies of Christ and Tom Raper were everywhere. I don't think I've ever felt so uncomfortable before, or so much like an East Coast Librul.