Trinity Battleground is the first venture for White Wolf into the realms of tabletop wargames and is intended to be used to simulate combat on a larger scale than the rpg can handle. The main difference between Trinity Battleground and other tabletop games is that Trinity Battleground is more of a character driven system, than others and relies on these rather than rank and file squads.

So what do you get for your money? Well at £40.00 (around $60US) you get a standard sized A3 box (same size as used by many other games companies) which contains, a full colour rulebook, 2 foam hills, a couple of buildings, an introductory quick play rules for the rpg and 20 plastic miniatures, plus the usual templates and a neat felt bag with 10 D10, and some full colour character sheets.

The main strength and selling point of most Table Top systems is the range of miniatures that you either get with the system or are available to buy separately. The first thing I looked at after tearing off the shrink wrap was the small bag of miniatures, placing all else to one side till later.

Sculpted by veteran designer Bob Naismith (Games Workshop, Heartbreaker, Pinnacle, and many more!) we find 20 plastic miniatures in a variety of forms. Consisting of 6 Trinity Psions and 5 Trinity Psion Support Troops and 6 Aberrant and 5 Aberrant Support Troops. These miniatures are cast in plastic that needs to be cleaned up before painting, and this is where the big problem starts. A lot of plastic miniatures are cast from a hard styrene that is tough and not that easy to break, the only problem with this styrene is that detail is lost in some cases. The plastics that have been used for the miniatures from Trinity Battleground are quite brittle and cleaning the flash could cause some problems for younger gamers as great care needs to be taken to clean them up. To be honest with you I broke the arm off one of the Psions myself and had to glue it back in place, and I have over 20 years experience with these things! So take care.

Looking at the miniatures in a little more detail now and starting with the Psion. The 5-man support squad consists of five identically posed miniatures. The animation of the basic trooper is pretty simple and the miniature is seen as if advancing , with rifle at the ready. As with all the miniatures in the game, the support squad are fitted with plastic slota bases which to my surprise mated up snugly to the miniatures without any bending or filing. The only miniature in the game that needs any assembly at all is McGowen, one of the characters that is equipped with a Spider Harness, that fits neatly into a hole at the back of the miniature. Detail on McGowen is perhaps the best in the entire box and the miniature is excellently animated and is posed as if to leap into flight at any moment. The facial detail is superb as is the overall detail in general. The other Psion characters are also posed in fairly dramatic stances, but the Cameron and Batya miniatures are let down by the addition of flames coming from Cameron's weapon and a very unconvincing ice weapon in the case of Batya. The other Psions are Jameson (holding a pistol with his hand in the air) Somers (carrying a heavy weapon) and T.Williams (a bad ass looking hombre!) and all are average rather than highly impressive. Given that Bob Naismith is one of the best sculptors in the whole of the hobby, I was rather dissapointed when I saw the miniatures in the box, but once painted they do look great!

The Abberants are a strange mixture of creatures, with the squad of the Krikquill looking more like Tyranids from Games Workshop than anything else. Each of the Krikquill is posed in a strange coiled position and looks like what can only be described as an 'C' with lots of teeth. The larger characters consist of Nazul a huge four armed beast that is around 1 1/2 inches tall and looks quite mean. The other characters include Gomorrah a hulk like creature (again very big) and Fhata Khan (snakelike beast with lots of tentacles) and finally Caul Fein a dramatically posed creature with its arms raised high. Again the detail is good but nothing that stands out from the many other miniatures that are around at the moment. On another note while speaking of miniatures. I saw some of the metal miniatures for Trinity Battleground while I was at Gen Con a week or so ago and although they look great I was shocked at the extremely high price on them. I only hope that White Wolf can bring the costs down a little in future, if not I can foresee problems with sales of the miniatures as they are quite expensive.

The miniatures out of the way and now onto the rules. I must admit something to you here and now. Although I am a great fan of White Wolf and have played (and own) many of their excellent games, I haven't had the chance to play the Trinity roleplaying game as of yet (even though I have had it since it was released!) and this review is coming to you fresh and raw so to speak. So with that in mind

Contained in the box is a very nice looking poster which serves two purposes. Firstly it is a poster that would look great on any wall of any gamer, with the cover artwork by Chris Moeller reproduced. But it also is contains a basic overview of the system and a battle map on the reverse. According to the rule book, this is the easiest way to get your friends used to the rules, by lending them the poster they can get a feel of the game and learn to play quickly. Of course this isn't the main rulebook and you will need that to get the full benefit of the system.

Gameplay is as follows:

Each character or squad has the following statistics that determine attacks, Psionics, etc during the game.

Each of these statistics come into play in the game and all dice checks are done using the 10sided dice provided in the box.

Action Points.

Not the first system to use an Action Point based system and certainly it wont be the last. In Trinity Battleground AP's are used to take an action such as moving, shooting, using a skill, etc. Once a character has used all of its AP's its turn ends and it may do nothing else.

Phases

The game is as with most Table Top systems split into a number of phases that work in a progressive order, these being. Command Phase, (units are assigned the actions that they will carry out for that turn) Initiative Phase, ( determines who goes first!) and Action Phase ( Charge, move, shoot, use skill, etc). With each phase of the game being repeated till the game is over.

Each Command Phase, players place counters face down by the side of their units/characters to determine what that will do during that turn. Each of these counters has a AP value , that determine how many points it takes to do that set action. For example if a character wishes to Fire and move it will cost 5 AP's ( the average number of AP's being 6 per character) so you can only use as many AP's as your model has. The counters are always revealed in the same order and must be resolved that way. So a character that is routing will always move away first, and so on.

Combat of course is what makes a Table Top game and Trinity uses a very much simplified version of the combat system that appears in the White Wolf Storytelling system. Too hit you look at your weapon card (more on which in a moment) and roll the equivalent number of dice. Taking into account both range and cover modifiers and other things that may affect once you have rolled your dice you consult the table for the weapon and if you get below or equal to the target number you have hit and then all that is left is to work out damage. If you roll any ones they are critical hits and zeros (10) are critical misses. The target then must roll a save under its Soak score, once a model reaches zero it is considered dead and removed from play.

PSIONICS

One of the main elements of both the rpg and the table top game is that of the use of Psionics or Mutations. The humans in the Trinity universe have now got the ability to wield the very power of their mind and use it to attack, conceal or even heal themselves or others. Of course the Aberrant player has something similar, in the form of Mutations. All of these powers cost a number of AP's to use and can only be used if your players have enough AP's left to cast them. Some of these special powers are pretty simple and have effects that will affect weapons or play, but some of them are deadly if used right and can very easily wipe out an enemy before they have had the chance to react. As with the weapon card, all of the Psionic and Mutation cards in the game are in full colour with some excellent artwork, and are placed on the players rooster sheet in the boxes provided.

Overall.

Well I had a few of the basic games and found that the basic system was a little to basic. However once we added some of the expanded rules the game seemed to pick up a lot and it made a change playing a game such as this after playing, Warzone and Warhammer for so long. The interior artwork is first class and some of the best that have I have seen in a White Wolf game, and the layout is second to none.

One of the best things about Trinity Battleground is that you can create your own characters and use them in the game. This allows for some excellent characters and really gives you a feeling that your characters are really your own. On the down side however I can see some power gamers using this to their own advantage and creating killer characters and squads. The terrain pieces are nice and it was good to see hills included in a game. As for the buildings! Well unlike the terrain enhancers that came out from Target Games, White Wolf have learned from Games Workshop and all the card stock buildings are pre-cut and scored and can be assembled in a matter of moments. Rules are also given for converting your character from the Trinity rpg to the combat game, and it will perhaps become an invaluable tool for Trinity GM's everywhere.

Marc

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