Introduction
Last Updated: December 5, 2000
So what's all the hollering about? Well, our new fast-play miniatures game The Hills Rise Wild! is a moonshine jug full of monstrous fun! Here's a rundown on how it plays . . .
The game includes four factions of six characters each: the Marsh Clan, the DeGhoule Clan, the Whateley Clan, and the Cult of Ezekiel. Two to four players choose a faction and start battling it out. The characters are represented as color cardstock figures, illustrated by Delta Green co-creator Dennis Detwiller. Here's a set of stats for one character:
Movement is how many inches this character can move each turn.Defense Modifier is a positive or negative number you add to any attack roll made against this character. All rolls in the game are made with a twenty-sided die.
Melee Attack is an attack you can make on an enemy who is adjacent to you. Attack shows how many melee attacks you have each turn; Modifier is the number you add to your d20 attack roll; Damage is the number you add to your d20 roll on the Damage or Brutal Damage Tables.
Ranged Attack is an attack you can make on an enemy from a distance. These stats are like those of Melee Attacks except for Range, which shows how many inches the character can be from the target on the game board.
Ability is a special set of rules that govern the character. In this case, Captain Marsh can rally his troops to fight better. Other characters can eat dead bodies to heal damage, make better attacks against wounded targets, and many other powers.
Special Ability is an ability that the character can only use once during the entire game. These are very powerful and unusual abilities that give the characters a lot of flavor and that can be used in developing very creative strategies.
The "L" Circles are the number of Life Points the character has. These are lost as a result of combat and other forms of damage, but can be healed by some abilities and Mystery Cards.
The "A" Circles are the number of Ammo Points the character has for the Ranged Attack weapon. Not all characters have Ammo.
The Item Card Box is where you place an Item the character has picked up. Items appear on Mystery Cards and include weapons, magical items, and other odds and ends. Each character may only carry one Item.
You play on a board of sixteen color tiles totaling about 25" square, which is built by the players before the game begins. The board tiles show the buildings and terrain of the town of Dunwich, including its many ramshackle shacks. Here's a board tile at actual size, with an example of how a character can move around:
As you can see, the board tiles are all created in a three-dimensional computer graphics program and then rendered from an overhead perspective. A red bar on the wall of the shack shows you where the door is, while silver bars mark the windows. Furniture within a shack has no effect on game play; it's just for fun. Some shacks are full of sinister goo, bloodstains, or other mysterious Lovecraftian elements.
Each shack includes one of thirty-two Mystery Cards, included in the game, which contain items and events that may help or hurt you.
As the game begins, the players send their characters out to do battle and search the shacks. You're all looking for the Great Whateley Seal, with which you can open the largest building in the game: Whateley Manor. The Manor has its own set of Mystery Cards, one of which will be the notorious book of sinister magic, the Necronomicon.
When you recover the Necronomicon, you better start hustling--because now there's a big target on your back! You need to get the book back to your home base tile and start making rolls to summon your god and win the game, all the while holding off the attacks of your rivals. If you can summon your god before it's too late, you win!
The Hills Rise Wild! is a fun, fast-paced game full of smackdown combat and dramatic reversals. Even in the final minutes of a game, it's not uncommon for an unexpected winner to emerge thanks to a desperate gambit, careful strategy, or a lucky roll of the dice.
Expansion sets are in the works now. The first one is The Reanimated!, which features nine new cemetery board tiles, twenty new Mystery Cards, and a new faction: Herbert West, Reanimator, and his Zombies! A second expansion set is also in development, as is a fully compatible stand-alone game, all coming in 2001.
For more info on THRW!, check out the rest of this site. We've got variant rules, Planned Board Layouts, a message board, and downloadable faction sheets so you can check out all the crazy hillbilly freaks you'll be playing with--and speaking of them, they all appear below. Yee-haa!
