Degenesis: Clan Wars Prototype Review
A stylized, post-apocalyptic one vs. all campaign that currently needs lots of houseruling.
Play through a campaign as the hidden hostile or the operatives in the year 2598! This ameritrash game has lots of hidden information with the scenario booklet, for 2-5 players, at about 1.5-2.5 hrs per mission. Prototype campaign reviewed.
Video published July 31st, 2024
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The hostile bluffs their intentions with secret 'threats'.
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Progress through a scenario with a variety of missions.
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Lots of abilities and items for each operative to work with.
This is a sponsored post. Prototype featured.
The Story
It’s the year 2598, and after asteroids fell from the sky, the world restablized through the Protectorate, a government that is the last beacon of civilization. So, it’s kind of like Mad Max, except now we’re in Europe instead of Australia! That government protectorate is trying to hold against the cockroach clan, a bunch of citizens from outside the realm.
We also got sent the “Operatives Expansion” with 12 more characters, and while we only stuck to the core game characters, we will be covering the expansions a little bit during this review, but our scores at the end won’t reflect them.
Our Plays
5 plays! We’ve played the 1st scenario twice, then every other mission in the preview campaign once.
Need to learn how to play? Or want more reasoning for our points? Our review video’s got you!
World Building Pros
Lots of flavor text throughout game
Scenario booklet
Rulebook
After death (‘In Memoriam’) for each operative
Character backstories and clan descriptions
One liners for each item’s back
Gameplay Pros — Asymmetry of One vs. Many
Hostile Player is secrecy in numbers
Lots of starting facedown units, which can hide intentions well
Traps and decoys throw off operative guessing
Trigger “ambush” but moving facedown unit into space of operative- puts pressure on operatives to scout them
Can spawn more troops
Use “Brood Call” to have a middling unit activate ALL lower tier units within 2 spaces
Rewards clumping accordingly
Use ‘legion’ to remove excess troops and increase die rolls
See ALL mission information, so choose how info is revealed
Just have a lot of options with about 10 units having special abilities, and each category has own ability
e.g. lowest tier can obscure its tile to protect fellow troops
Hostile can pass turn which operatives cannot do
Operatives don’t know anything about mission, only have starting minis
Have 2 super cool passives called potentials aka health
3 starting, fleshed out items
Teamwork in how they should sequence their turns
More passives on focused vs. primal sides to characters
Have to guess what hostile has on board, objectives
Gameplay Pros — Focus vs. Primal Mechanic
2 sides to each character adds tactical commitment in what part of game to focus on
Focus: Better at ranged stuff, can scout facedown enemies
Primal: More dice, can attack with bare hands
Gameplay Pros — Items
Each feel like a real thing with varied effects and backs
Splayer lets you melee attack from afar
Vocoder lets you do an area attack stun
Codex (cool book) that once read, lets you SECURE 3 to help 1 big roll
Each has different back if botch a roll, tells a story
e.g. Fungicide rifle blows up and obscures your tile
e.g. DIY mace when flipped must be thrown away after the mission
Combines with operative potentials + abilities for lots of teamwork potential
Gameplay Pros — Operative Asymmetry
Timur is great allrounder:
Great melee AND ranged attack, can heal himself or ally when unopposed, can buff teammates
Protects allies leaving his tile so they don’t get sucker punched
Echo is utility: +3 his scout rolls when focused, scouts in any stance
Primary attack is an area of attack stun, which hits 2 spaces instead of 1 because of his “white noise” potential (passive)
Pluto: Weapons expert who can flip broken items, and discards items INSTEAD of being wounded
Feuerbach: Cowboy who shoots his musket from 4 range (very far)
Musket never breaks even if normally botch, just needs to be reloaded
“Judge Jury, and Execution” ability to choose an enemy, and have all allies SECURE 1 against them this round
Aviv (1st unlock): Protective Tank
Never gets attacked off ambush
When melee attacking, if he misses, he gets to displace (which causes the free attack sucker punch)
12 Operatives in total with box for way more operative possibility
Gameplay Pros — Push-your-luck Dice System
Always choosing to roll UP to dice pool with (2/3) of dice having 1/6 botch makes you push-your-luck with most rolls
More tension on operative side, since botching attacks flips their valuable weapons (sometimes permanent loss)
Can “overcommit” to roll more dice, but then giving Arcana card to opponent which can do all sorts of strong things
Lots of “Secure” cards to save up for big dice rolls (negate botches)
Gameplay Pros — Decent Scenario Variety
Kill mission, stopping a ritual, escort mission, then preventing hostiles from getting across a trench to an end point
Interact-able terrain too
Component Cons
Operative envelopes don’t seal (but previous prototype’s envelopes did!)
Operative minis need a different colored base to help distinguish them (CMON usually provides this)
Tokens also are hard to differentiate from far away
Threats all look the same on front, and bloat scenario setup effort
Threat symbol is same symbol as botches, which is odd to see the botch symbol on the board constantly
Spaces sometimes hard to differentiate because black line dividing most spaces looks a LOT like black line created when 2 pieces of board are together
Spaces aren’t uniform
Maybe make lines darker?
Some spaces way too small to fit 2 minis, or 1 bigger one
Rulebook is frustrating to grab information from
Glossary doesn’t include a lot of keywords (e.g. sucker punch, hidden, stealth)
Only explained either in action/ability tab, or within a scenario
Glossary should include as many keywords as possible
Needs to be more clear on when a hostile is forced to reveal threats aside from scouted
Assume it must attack when flip, since 1 unit can attack unrevealed
Really matters for Trapper/Cackler unit that can put down secret tokens
Do keywords stack? (e.g. Secure 3 + Secure 1 = Secure 4?)
Mission booklet is structured weirdly
Setup for scenarios is after half the information
Why not have flavor text and initial premise be first, then setup, then objectives all on same page?
Hard to follow objectives/round length, because just giant block of text and should be front and center
Flavor text sometimes thoroughly mixed in with mechanics/setup
What is the hostile supposed to read out to the operatives?
At least suggestions would be useful to reduce hostile lifting
Don’t want to mess up, and re-do a scenario because the operatives already may know the scenario twists
Wording of “Legion” in hostile player aid
Says “sacrifice units to gain dice”… but which dice? 3 different types
Ruled it as just get to add 1 of weakest die per sacrifice
Gameplay Cons — Ridiculously swingy Arcana
Can be used at ANY time, sometimes have infinite range
e.g. do automatic damage, cannot be sucker punched this round, or cannot be attacked outside your tile
There’s even a card to tutor any Arcana to your hand!
IRL EXAMPLE: Displacing an operative during its attack to put it in the same space as 4 hostile units, to sucker punch 4x to immediately kill him
Less broken (but still good) e.g. Flipping an item, +5 defense, 2x each attack
Reduces incentive to let opponent draw arcana when they’re so busted
Possible fixes:
1. Lock certain Arcana cards until later in the campaign where you have stronger operatives that can deal with them
2. Create a designated window for Arcana cards to be played
3. Replace busted Arcana with more incremental ones: +2 an attack, or flip 2 threats facedown.
4. Different Arcana decks for operative/hostile
Gameplay Cons — Sucker Punch Mechanic
Being able to sucker punch a ranged attack in your space with a ranged attack of your own makes no sense thematically
Also means there’s no downside for using ranged weapons to sucker punch?
POTENTIAL FIX: Allow players to sucker punch back at range 0 bare handed (regardless of stance)
ANY displace benefit for hostile becomes ridiculously strong
Doesn’t matter if sucker punch is limited to once per round per mini if have TONS of minis
Can be just stuck as a unit to avoid getting sucker punched
POTENTIAL FIX: Action for operatives to move out of a space w/o getting sucker punched
Gameplay Cons — 3 Starting Operative Weirdness-
Feuerbach: ALWAYS forces hostile to attack him if within range
Unclear wording, can be interpreted as hostile has to spam actions again and again with same mini until Feuerbach dies
Can get stacked with defense (7+) and just run into hostile to lock hostile out of the game
POTENTIAL FIX: Make luring ability an active
Echo: Incredible utility that can’t do weapon damage
All missions had us killing cockroaches at some point
Impractical pick in 2P game where HAVE to team specifically with a mega damage dealer, hope that other doesn’t die
Make his melee weapon do at least some damage
Timur: Too strong of a starting operative, great at everything he wants to do
Base roll pool is best on average (2 black)
Melee weapon lets you poke at high damage from afar, when landing hits he gets +2 defense for round
Can success +2 before a melee attack, which displaces an enemy (which triggers a free sucker punch from you)
Fungicide ranged weapon is an area attack with pretty much no downside (Timur is immune to its explosion)
If takes damage, can just self-heal if alone. Or heal allies for 2 health
Gameplay Cons — Unimportant Hostile Swarmers
Too many swarmers that don’t feel important
“Mauler” barely rolls better than lowest tier, ability to destroy self helps the operative win condition
Compare to a “Cackler” who has 2 range at a slightly worse roll, but is putting down “Decoy” for free
“Stinger” attacks at range 2 w/o revealing self (no secret since no other character can do this)
Since ranged, probably not gonna ambush with him
Attack worse than feeders
Solution: combine many swarmers together
Stinger + Archer: Attack at 6 range w/o reveal self
Ranger + Vanguard: Ignores move penalties and protects others
Currently, just spam trappers and cacklers (give traps/decoys for free), then pick 1 swarmer of your liking to brood call them around
Or spawn Warriors (highest tier unit) because everything costs same to spawn
POTENTIAL FIX: Progression within a scenario to unlock stronger units to spawn? Swarmers do enough of a certain action to progress into warriors?
Gameplay Cons — Not sure what’s the best player count
3-4 operatives only leaves each operative with 1 turn a round, don’t get to do back-to-back turns
1-2 operatives makes it harder for operatives to get the correct abilities to win (always same amount of potentials despite player count)
2 operatives is a bit short handed for more favorable gameplay
Make sure take Timur + Pluto for smoothest gaming
Jankness of some Scenarios (Minimal Spoilers)
Scenario 1 has both sides to kill each other
Operatives at advantage with central high ground, so hostile should just camp in the corner and spawn units until very strong, operatives just wait and do nothing?
Scenario 2 just has operatives sprinting towards 1 goal, while untargetable because start with “stealth”. So hostile just puts down traps on goal (which is unscout-able)
Outcome of scenario just becomes a RNG dice roll to see how much trap damage the operatives take
Timing seems off, scenario should end at round 3 instead of 7
You can “retreat” from scenarios if operatives give up, which is a LOT of work to go all across the board.
Feel free to houserule scenarios to avoid end game states dragging
No exhaustion like in Gloomhaven, so games can easily go 2.5-3 hrs +
Hurts when some operatives get eliminated and do nothing
Campaign Cons — Zero self-balancing
Operatives getting random potentials at end of scenarios, could be anything within their clan pool!
If operatives lose a lot of missions in a row, hostile gets very strong, then operatives lose the game
Hostile “achieving victory int he campaign” by killing every operative isn’t fun for anyone, since then can’t play any more missions
Bad idea for it to be framed as the hostile “should” or “can” win
Tentative Score: 4/10 Below Average
Degenesis: Clan Wars has a LOT of style and ambition, with compelling operatives with their deep toolkits, versus the hostile player who is playing a type of secret chess moving around the cockroaches while revealing information when necessary.
And… well this is just kind of an inherently janky premise, a campaign one-versus all, where both sides can get upgrades, where the operative’s are random, and the operatives can lose characters permanently. I couldn’t help thinking about Descent 2nd edition where the solo player’s job wasn’t that fun and was there to just help the adventurers have a good time- after all, the fun of the group prevails over the person piloting the ‘game’ right?
That’s Degenesis, where actually the best approach is from having a good hostile player who reveals information at an appropriate pace, possibly holding their punches with arcana cards when applicable. But… then the booklets don’t encourage this type of gameplay!
In fact, it kind of just throws you out there, with admittedly confusing rules and scenario booklet. It’s really putting the burden on the hostile player to come up with the mindset themselves of withholding information, and they should ideally prep the mission beforehand in reading the booklet and setting up the map, cause that can take a while- not helped with the component homogeny.
Another slightly disjointed thing is the world and how it meets gameplay- sure this is post apoclayptic so weirdness is bound to happen, but it still doesn’t always align. Like, there’s this heavy handed flavor text for missions at the beginning, and then there’s almost no more flavor during the rest of the mission, where the only other you see are one-liners from items being flipped- which is definitely thematic, but seem more zany as guns blow up in your face or your character shrugs off a flesh wound.
I mean, also, must I remind you, flintlock pistols that are called muskets that are probably from the 18th century or earlier, and sci-fi weapons are on the same team, how does this even work!!!??? I mean, maybe this information will get revealed later as you learn more about the government protectorate, or maybe its all in the TTRPG this game is based on… but there’s nothing in this demo that made me see how this world was constructed or works day to day.
And… that’s kind of the game! That’s Degenesis! It’s a cool world, with cool mechanical ingredients, that doesn’t always make sense, and you just kind of have to fill in the blanks. There’s religion, clans strife, cockroach scouting parties galore, and an evil government protectorate that MUST fall according to the box, that will do anything to maintain order.
Did anything I say there have impact on gameplay, not really, but it can paint a cool scope on what’s going on! See, what I did there to inject some cool in there, this isn’t a game that you’re supposed to try hard ideally, rather you enjoy the cool theme. And can you imagine what type of post-apocalyptic scenarios can get cooked up with all of these new operatives, versus all these new champions, and terrain!
And there’s more giddiness to be had if you BUY the operative expansion, which adds SO many operatives at 12 more, some of which enter when Feuerbach dies, so maybe he’s intentionally supposed to die, or you can even get a new set of characters when you lose a mission and have no other minis to use! So wow, this is injecting more cool into the game to possibly alleviate the Operatives ever falling behind, so if you want tons of new things to play around with no matter what happens in the campaign, get this expansion.
In Degenesis you have to chuckle at rolling a botch so that your fungicide rifle explodes in your hands on the 2nd turn and hurts everyone in your space! Or someone rolls a TON of botches on the ⅙ chance for each die, while the other side gets all integers after a massive broodcall!
Or the hostile says oops, “I misread some information in the scenario so you have to kind of fudge the rules a bit! Or maybe I won’t tell anyone cause its more fun how we accidentally house-ruled it!”
Or that the spider monster champion you were so close to defeating suddenly got healed by an Arcana card! That’s ok, this game isn’t really for min-maxers!
What is trying hard, is the design- it’s going so hard on all these areas, and just falling short! Operatives are really cool with all these ingredients and 2 sides… but aren’t always executed fully. Scenarios set themselves up to throw you in a cool map with flavor text to set the scene… then the spaces are hard to see, we still haven’t used the back of tiles, and when playing, they don’t really have any more flavor text and can botch the landing as operatives die.
A couple more unanswered questions we have: Do missions get extremely long if operatives are getting hitting their 5 potentials max for 10 hp? Does the hostile ever get to unlock more warriors, since 2 seems a bit low, although we know that they get these swarm cards. Will there any more protectorate clan strife narratives throughout the game, I mean it is the name of the game, Clan Wars?
Man, Degenesis, you have my respect for how big of a swing you’re making, like I’d much rather a game throw in all of these things and try to make each side compelling in its own created universe than to play it safe.
The full version might fix a lot of these issues and be YOUR one versus all campaign that you will likely houserule cause one vs. all is REALLY hard to balance anyways! After all, if you love the world, there’s so many champions and operatives to try, and terrain to influence scenarios?
