D&D Onslaught: First Impressions
I got a chance to play the upcoming D&D: Onslaught competitive skirmish game. Here’s some first impressions.
If you’re a fan of tabletop and board game skirmish sized games then Wizkids has an upcoming game you might want to keep an eye out for. Dungeons & Dragons: Onslaught is a competitive skirmish game set in the fantastical lands of the Forgotten Realms. It’s basically a Player vs Environment vs Player (PvEvP) style arena skirmish game where two players run their team of characters against each other in order to complete objectives and score points. But it’s also a whole lot more interesting that just that.
I got a chance to take a hands on look at the game this past weekend at PAX Unplugged. I went there incognito and was snapping pics and trying out demos — I had a blast. But back to Onslaught. Sitting down for this game felt a lot like meeting and old friend for the first time. It’s D&D…but with a PvP twist.
The demo that was setup at the convention was a truncated version of the game and was staged for two players with two characters each along with two goblins (who were about to have a bad time). In the demo, the basic objective was simple: open the treasure chests, kill goblins, and defeat the other players to score points. If at any point one player lost all their characters the lost the game. The scenario was supposed to run for 6 turns and if both teams still had characters up then it came down to who scored more victory points.
Obviously that’s just the demo though. The “full game” is has a lot more going on. There are monsters you have to contend with and other objectives to score — that’s where the “E” in the PvEvP comes in. The full game gives each team a roster of 5 characters to play based on their faction boxes (more on that later). Once the board is setup based on the scenario the players draw initiative cards to determine what order the characters will activate. In the full game it’s initiative steps 1 through 10 and the monsters go at initiative 10.5 (or after the players — although that might have just been for the demo).
Each character comes with a handy character card that helps you track all the various stuff you’d need — health, abilities, and XP. Yes, there is an XP element to this game and character can level up once to unlock an ability once per game. It’s actually a nice little nod and gives your characters a little bit of customization on the fly.
As you can see from the cards each character is different and it’s also got their stats for attacking and various dials. Those dials were hand for keeping track for abilities and recharge timers — it’s a pretty smart tracking system. The attacks themselves are based on a D20 roll (naturally). Just add your attack modifiers and your D20 roll vs the target’s AC. Meet or beat it to score a hit. And you can crit with a natural 20.
The Monsters play slightly different. First up, they auto hit with their attacks so they are a constant threat. They also play based on some rudimentary AI rules based on distances and initiatives. They can’t be ignored by either player but also don’t take a ton of brain power to run which makes them perfect antagonizers to both players.
On a player turn they get to activate a character and then those characters get 1 standard, 1 move, and 1 bonus action. You can always “downgrade” and action to the next lower step but you can’t upgrade. So you can use your standard action as a move, or a move as a bonus, but you can use a bonus as a standard. If you’ve played D&D this should sound really familiar to you.
That’s kind of what I mean when I say it felt like meeting an old friend for the first time. Onslaught feels like a “just the combat” form of D&D — and that’s not a bad thing! It uses the same scaled Wizkids minis and those are all fully interchangeable. So if you’re playing the bard Chloe Amashodel but you want to use a different bard mini from Wizkids (or really anything else in scale) than that should work. In fact, there’s going to be some cross-miniature sculpts eventually.
The characters are chosen from a pool of heroes from various faction packs. Each pack is planned to have 6 characters and you can swap out the heroes based on the game/scenario. The core set comes with two factions to start and there are more factions planned in the future. It doesn’t seem like you’re supposed to swap characters between faction packs either.
Again, this is a competitive skirmish game so it’s designed to be played in a competitive environment. That said, it’s also really easy to pick-up and play and a great intro to D&D combat in general.
There’s not really a “Campaign” where you’re tracking your characters between scenarios. The XP and levels reset between scenarios. However, the scenarios feel like they are somewhat connective narratively. Even if it’s just a loose connection. That said, between the boards and minis included in the box, you’ve got enough “stuff” to really add to any D&D collection. This seems like a nice purchase for a group just for the minis and board — who doesn’t like a nice gaming board with 1″ squares already on it for your next dungeon dive?
Dungeons & Dragons: Onslaught was easy to learn, quick to play, and is a fun skirmish game. There’s enough tactical depth and choice to keep things interesting and the PvEvP style gameplay adds an extra layer to your typical PvP skirmish game. I’m sure I’ve missed some stuff in my brief run down here but the main point is that it was fun, fast, and easy to get into. I’m looking forward to playing again!
Coming early 2023!
