Apps are just not Evil

Being an evil overlord is a thankless job. More accurately it must be viewed as a vocation and certainly not one for the faint of heart. It requires dedication, single mindedness and a deep love of others misfortunes. You must be true to yourself and always false to your enemies. i.e. Everyone, maybe even yourself if the situation calls for it.
I grant you It’s not for everyone. If watching gallant heroes crawl over piss soaked broken glass to ALMOST make it doesn’t beep your jeep than maybe you need to look elsewhere for your jollys buddy. An app will never replace an evil overlord. Never. Never. Never. Enjoy the practice but when you want a real game. I’ll be waiting…. /manic laughter /thunder and lightning

Level 7 omega protocol Is a game that demands an evil mind to run it properly. A team of tooled up marines are trying to achieve some get to the end of the tech dungeon style mission. Along the way the evil overlord (whatever they’re called) is throwing stingers in front of them trying to slow and hopefully kill them. Lose enough guys and it’s game over.
If you’ve ever played any dungeon crawler ever you’ll be in familiar territory. It plays like any other but with more ranged and explosive weapons.

What’s different and interesting with this one is the adrenaline mechanic. Marines start with a certain amount of adrenaline (action points) they can spend each turn. So moving, firing, opening doors and so on takes points. The cool bit is, at the start of the next round you hand over all the action points you spent. So if you’ve really gone for it this round old evil dude really gets to party next round. It works extremely well. It also scales very well for more or less players.
The overlord has a set of evil options he can power with adrenaline. These vary from scenario to scenario with better monsters and more screw yous opening up as the scenarios progress. Each of the evil powers have a cool down period after they get used which prevents spamming of just one option.
Another neat feature is choosing a stance at the start of each round. So you might plant your feet and increase your defence and aim or go reckless advance and reduce aim and armour for speed. Choose carefully
Classes come in the form of leaders who buff other players. Medics. Heavy weapons guys (I liked him), demolition and recon dudes. Pre mission purchases allow you to trick out your boys with grenades, extra armour, medic packs and so on. Then it’s off to certain doom (if I’m the evil overlord)
Rules are clear and concise. Production quality is good but not exceptional. Some of the minis on the version I played were warped and they’re not the most exciting models in the world. The marines models are mostly feature few swat dudes and the aliens you face are a rum bunch of pretty dull, different sized greys with scuba gear.
Setup is pretty quick. Somewhere in between Heroquest and Mansions of Madness. I particularly like the overlord control panel that clips together all your tools of torture for that scenario into one big happy kit.
There’s theme in here and a back story too but it doesn’t matter. You’re here to do a job, chew gum and kick ass.
It’s a lot of fun to play. Games can suddenly go from easy to rock and making it to the end can be a challenge.

It’s a pricey game but it comes with a lot of models and a good selection of scenarios so you’ve quite a bit of to get through if you stick with it. Which let’s be honest you won’t… Come on did you finish any other dungeon crawl? No you did not. But have fun while you play this one. It’s good