Jonathan doesn’t do dudes on a map aka miniature heavy games. So when my Kickstarter copy of Final Fantasy oops meant Tiny Epic Tactics (TET) arrived Friday morning I was keen to get it to the table.

So like all good friends I sprung the game on him when we met up at The Luxe that evening. I tried to ease my feelings of guilt by convincing myself that technically it wasn’t a miniatures game, it was a meeples game. There’s a difference, technically!

I think that TET has that table presence. It looks cool on the table. Component quality as usual for the Tiny Epic range is good. Which isn’t surprising because some of the Kickstarter stretch goals are to improve the quality of the various components. I am of the opinion that those sort of stretch goals are cop outs, and that they should be at the higher quality from the start.

The one thing I’m not a fan of are the small sized tactic and solo play cards. I’d prefer they had used the regular 63.5mm by 88mm size. But then that most likely would have meant not fitting everything into the box.

I think I enjoyed the game!

Which is a strange thing to say granted.

Unlike other skirmish/tactical miniature games that I’ve played you can’t use all of your team on a turn. Instead you get three actions to use amongst them. A unit can not repeat the same action on a turn, and if you want the unit to do a second action it basically becomes exhausted while doing that second action. Which unless you spend two health to remove the exhausted token next turn means they are out of action for a turn recovering. At the end of the following turn if the unit has not been used the token gets removed.

The make up of a team is a classic combination of melee based units, ranged attack, and magic attacks. Each game will have some variety because teams are built randomly from each archetype. And each character has a unique ability. So you will need to learn quickly how to utilise each character.

I think the use of the dice to determine range combat success, push backs or extra magic damage seemed a bit fiddly. And probably a mechanism I would remove if possible.

With the dice and not using all the units on a turn I think are the bits that take the shine off the game for me.

I won’t say how many times Jonathan and I missed triggers on our tactic cards. I don’t think we ever played one. Does that make them superfluous? I don’t know. May be remembering the triggers and getting the benefit would increase the enjoyment.

It’s great that a skirmish game can be made this small. It certainly gives that experience. But is it a good skirmish experience? At the moment I think it’s average at best at the moment.

Games played: Tiny Epic Tactics, Jaipur, Hanamikoji