Vagrant Dash

 

The Game

Vagrant Dash (2018) is a two-player strategy game. You each lead an army and start from opposite sides of the board. You head towards the three relic sites at the middle of the board. It is the control of these sites which determines victory. The game is played over a fixed number of rounds. When time runs out, whoever controls more sites wins. You can also win by sudden death if you manage to kill the opponent's general, but that's quite hard to do. 

You have five troop types, and they have different abilities. On your turn, you either move a unit, or attack using a unit. The different troop types move and attack in different ways. At the start of the game, many of the hex spaces are still black, i.e. unknown terrain. You can't move into unknown terrain. You need to first use your scouts to scan the terrain. When a scout moves into a space adjacent to one or more black spaces, you get to draw terrain tiles from a bag, and then you can decide how to place them over those black spaces. This is how the map is gradually expanded. Eventually you will reach the relic sites.  

Different terrain types affect movement differently. Units entering rough terrain must stop. They can only resume moving next turn. Mountains cannot be entered, unless you are moving flying units. 

You will be heading for the relic sites. You control a site by simply having a unit on it. Now these sites are not exactly safe havens or strongholds. Your units there are just sitting ducks. This is just like chess. There is no concept of defense. If someone attacks you, you just die. 

You have some cards that you can play for various effects. Some can be played in response to your opponent's actions. The cards create some hidden information in this otherwise open information game. You get to draw cards when you capture a relic site. This makes capturing sites early attractive, even though your unit might get killed. 

The Play

Playing Vagrant Dash feels like playing a perfect-information abstract game, despite the variability of the terrain tiles and the hidden information in the cards. You want to think several steps ahead, playing in your mind what your opponent would do and how you would respond to it. There is some luck. If you keep drawing difficult terrain, you will be slower than your opponent in reaching the sites. You need to time the capture of the sites well, so that you have the upper hand when the game ends. You also want to position your units well to prepare for the final scramble to control the sites. 

The copy I played was a special demo copy. The units were all handcrafted and painted. This is not the mass-produced version. You can't buy this version. 

Tiles with red-and-white borders are mountains. Blue-and-white are lakes.

This is the standard version of Vagrant Dash that you can buy.

You can paint the units if you like. 

The Thoughts

Vagrant Dash is one of only two Malaysian games which sold out at this year's Thailand Board Game Show. It is a game developed and produced with a lot of heart. It is quite chess-like, which means this is a thinky strategy game. The terrains introduce some variability and randomness, and the cards introduce surprises. Both inject some luck into the game. If you enjoy this type of strategy game, give it a go!