Project Pandora: Grim Cargo - Thoughts
I recently purchased Mantic's Project Pandora: Grim Cargo. I love games like this (Games Workshop's "Space Hulk", Privateer Press' "Level 7"), and aspire to create a ship/space station crawler like them. Herein are my thoughts on the game. Would love to see what others have to say about it.
Pros:
Once I learned the rules, the game progressed very quickly. It's very interesting how they use action tiles to determine if your dudes (technical term) move, shoot, or use a special ability for the faction. And while I'm not used to it, the long term strategy of using your action tiles, and deciding when to "Issue New Orders" makes for a very interesting game. Resolving combat is quick, too. Determining damage and death is simple and dudes only have 1 or 2 hits before they die, speeding up the game considerably. While some of the scenarios are wonky (another technical term) and I skipped the very first one, overall the scenarios make for great gameplay and a quick, fun time. Also, at one point I played with my brother and we threw out the scenarios and just played a force-on-force game using one of the set-ups shown in the scenarios. Its just as fun and just as quick and was a very challenging game to see who would survive!
Which overall is the thing I like about the game: its quick. Between life, work, and my Master's Degree, finding time to make a foray into wargaming can be rough. Project Pandora definitely makes for a quick fun game to fill a little bit of that hole. I like quicker tabletop games for the most part, and Project Pandora delivers.
The minis were simple to put together, too. I believe it took me all of an hour to put together the Corporate Marines and the Space Skav-er-I mean Veer-myn...(okay let's not kid ourselves, they're Space Skaven) Although my Veer-myn still need their tails...
Cons:
I don't know if this is a British thing (Silly Brits! Go drink your tea! 'Murica!) but the rules for Project Pandora are lengthy to the point of distracting. The authors beat around the bush on everything, and it takes a war-and-peace-long-time to learn how to shoot or use abilities. A simple copy-edit could cut the booklet down to half and speed up the learning process.
I said above I enjoyed the use of action tiles to force the players to strategerize about what actions they would make when, and that's really part of the flavor of the game, if you will. That said, I, personally, prefer a normal movement-combat turn set-up (though under "Cons" this aspect is not a deal breaker and will not prevent me from playing more Project Pandora).
Final Thoughts:
Overall a great game. I thoroughly enjoy playing it and will continue to play it, although I think I'm going to do so force-on-force rather than using their scenarios.
What does everyone else think that's played it? What are the pros and cons you see in Project Pandora?
