Ben took to the board with Lady J, I had Seamus and Connor had Pokey Vik.
The mechanics of the game are almost, but not entirely, dissimilar to Malifaux. This is due mainly to the fact you use a fate deck (the Puppet Wars decks, of which you get two in the box) has the most adorable artwork on the cards.
Each game turn has five rounds, or to put it in Malifaux speak five activations. To activate a model (or summon one) you need to have played the right card for initiative to match the action value in the top right corner of the puppet you want to use. Each master has their own ability with activating puppets, Seamus ignores Crows on activations, Lady J ignores Rams and Pokey Vik lowers the value by 2 if they don't have a suit on their card.
The numbers across the middle of the cards are as follows: Movement (the number of hexes they can move), Defense (the card number needed to hit them if they don't dodge), attack (the number of cards you flip when attacking) and Upgrades (the number of upgrades that can be attached to the puppet). The buttons indicate the number of wounds each puppet has.
Dodging works by playing a card to replace the defense of the puppet you're attacking, so you need a certain number and a certain suit (Bette Noir has a suit built into her defense, so dropping in a card makes it need two suits and a number). When you attack you pick one of the cards you have flipped and can then cheat any number of cards from your hand to meet the requirements. So for example, if you needed a 9 with Masks and crows (assuming you're trying to hit Bette and your opponent has dodged with a 9 of Masks) you can take any one of the suits and/or number from what you have flipped as long as it's on the same card (if you've flipped a 9 Crows you can take that and just add in a crows from hand). If you haven't flipped the requirements you could flip in a card for crows, a card for masks and a card for 9 if you needed to.
You lose the game in one of two ways: You either have no workbenches on the board (other players can steal them off you) or your master has the stuffing ripped out of them.
Each non master card has an upgrade printed on the back of them that adds abilities to anyone who attaches it (you can rip up your own puppets to attach their upgrades for free).
The game was really fun, and Ben was the first to fall after Lady J had the stuffing ripped out of her.
The rest of the game after that was a little more fraught and saw Pokey Vik running around the outside of the board while my puppets slowly tried to corner her (she was one hex faster than anything I had on the board). And it eventually came down to Pokey Vik with one wound left facing Seamus (with his high heels, bad attitude and Rad sword upgrades). Seamus relies on the puppets he is attacking to be exhausted (there's a joke in there somewhere about the rotten belles in their cathouse) to be able to hit them as they can't dodge the attack, but Pokey had a free attack at the start of her activation which didn't exhaust her. My hand was quite good, but not good enough as Connor had at least one of each suit plus a load of high numbers, which meant that Pokey Vik was dodging all over the place, and then Seamus got hit and lost his last wound.
All in all this is a great game with absolutely adorable models and a total bargain as for your £50 (or less if you get discount on it) you get two puppet fate decks, all of the tokens and counters you need plus 44 adorable plastic models of the puppets. This is definitely going on my birthday list...
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