Necromolds

It’s odd that I would ever utter the phrase, “this should have been more mainstream,” equally I have been trying to make my reviews a little more concise but I am fully aware this one if lengthy but I have a lot to say about “Necromolds.” So here we go…

Today, we are going to be looking at “Necromolds,” a family-friendly skirmish wargame marketed as an introduction to “Warhammer”-like games for families. First released on Kickstarter back in 2019 to great reviews and a current 8.2 rating on BGG, I was keen to get in when the reprint happened last year. So, I was super excited when it landed on my doorstep a week or so ago.

I played with Jack (.8.).

The marketing for “Necromolds” openly pushes the fact that this is an introductory wargame similar to the likes of “Warhammer” for a younger family audience. In that, it exceeds to a certain extent. But, it has got a number of issues that we are about to dissect.

The base box comes with three different monster moulds (more on that in a minute), clay for two people, along with dice and cards.

You start the game by selecting 2-3 moulds (which is kind of chosen for you in the base set) and then manufacturing your army from the clay that you have available. Generally speaking, stronger units need more clay, so therefore you have a conundrum: do you go for lots of cheap units or a handful of beefy strong units? As I’m writing this, there doesn’t seem to be too much online about a “Necromolds” meta. My very unscientific few games I played lead me to suspect that due to the general random nature of the dice rolls, lots of little guys are generally stronger than a handful of beefy ones.

It is worth noting that the setup phase at the start of the match takes quite a long time. This could easily be very off-putting for certain children.

Each unit has its own movement and attack range properties, and on your turn, you roll the dice which allow you to either move, attack, or perform an action on your cards. It’s equally worth noting that in the base blocks, only one of the moulds has an action, so you invariably most of the time end up using the action dice roll to give you two extra cubes that can be used to buy more dice in the combat phase.

When you move, you can move either a short, medium, or long distance as per the measuring tool, and then you can attack from either a short, medium, or long distance, dependent on your character. When you attack from range, you both roll your available dice, with you rolling attack and the opponent rolling shields. If you roll more attack than they roll shields, the monster is defeated. One thing that is worth noticing is that none of the monsters have any health as such, and therefore, a monster is either defeated or not defeated, and nothing carries over. Some of the monsters also come with extra abilities, but at least in the starter box this does not do all that much, to be honest.

The other type of combat is if you physically touch one another (which massively induces the anxiety of the two colours of your clay mixing). Then both of you roll your available dice, and the person with the most attack symbols wins.

When you defeat a monster, you can use the special battle rings that come with the game to squish the monster and leave a symbol of you on it.

This all continues until one army is defeated, and the winner is declared. From a component Point of view, everything is really high quality. The clay itself feels really high-end, definitely above what you would see in Play-Doh. The moulds themselves work extremely well, giving very high-quality moulds, again much higher than you would see with more. Equally, the colours of the clay are strong, and the game has an extremely strong neon aesthetic, reminding me of the “Monsters in Your Pocket” series of toys from the early 90s.

The board that you play on is really peculiar. It has a load of artwork resembling a neon “Where’s Wally” picture. However, you just place your monsters over all of the picture, which doesn’t make much sense personally. I would have preferred if this board had some kind of actual terrain-style picture on it, which would have made a lot more sense. Equally, this could easily have been double-sided, giving you two slightly different terrain options.

Everything else is of good quality, and there aren’t really any complaints here.

So, why am I giving this a fairly middling review as opposed to giving it my utmost? Firstly, the game itself is quite simplistic and while the boys had quite a lot of fun and the tactility of the clay and squishing your opponents is cool, it could do with a few more rules. There is an expansion that adds weapons that I believe makes it into slightly more of a game, but I am a firm believer that a game should not require an expansion in order to be a good game. Maybe I’m being a little bit picky, but definitely, in terms of mechanics, at least what is available in this base version is a little bit lacking.

And that’s where we come to the main overall issue of the whole thing and that’s the fact that this is a base version. Currently, this is priced at $60.00 with the expansion at $45 and if you want to get an extra two monster moulds, it’s going to cost you $25 apiece. Although if you want everything available for “Necromolds”, it’s going to cost you $300 and the value proposition just isn’t there.

The Battle Box Starter Pack itself should have come with a lot more stuff, especially as it even includes things on the box itself that you don’t get. This needed to come with essentially double the amount of everything. Partly because these extra sets are currently online without strong market penetration. Obviously, the publisher would likely want to change that, but that’s the situation we find ourselves in. It forces you to buy these online, having to also pay for shipping, upping the cost even more.

It pains me to say it, but this whole product would definitely be better if it was slightly more mainstream, even if we were losing a bit of the clay quality in the process. Cross-branded with something like Play-Doh or Plasticine, having everything retail for less than the extra monsters being available, even in the dreaded blind bags, would be something that I think would be really cool if marketed correctly and stocked centrally.

Going out on a massive limb here and say this is even something that could be marketed by industry Warhammer juggernauts, Games Workshop, with a Warhammer theme and a way of trying to introduce people to the board games hobby at an early age.

It’s an unfortunate Catch-22. This is obviously a niche product, which therefore is going to be more expensive in order to be able to up their scale productions. But in order for it to have and work as this kind of expandable system, you need to have the market penetration and availability, but this just doesn’t have.

I’m going to conclude this review by saying that if you happen to see “Necromolds” on sale somewhere and can pick up a set on the cheap, then it’s good fun. But it’s definitely not worth paying all the money that is currently needed to obtain this at home. But I really hope that it finds a larger publisher’s reach, that we could see “Necromolds” blind bags in Smyth Toys or at the Entertainer, which is what this needs to be able to be a hit.