Back from the Derby show. Looked at lots of shiny new toys, talked to many nice people, played some interesting games, snaffled some lovely swag. A grand day out!
Here’s the spoils. I was fairly restrained as I’m supposed to be clearing things out (more for eBay tomorrow). Still…
Firstly there’s the Gates of Antares sprues sitting on top of their Beta rules. I’ve got one each of the Ghar and Concord frames with their basic troops on. These aren’t quite final production shots, though they’re pretty close and they’re looking rather smart already. The beta rules are something to read while I wait for the final rules to be printed, which is where they are now (at the printers). The starter set is looking like an early November release. Not long now then.
The two Plastic Soldier Company packs are WWII tanks for a project I’m playing about with. And just because I’ve always had a soft spot for WWII tanks. I’ll try to put them together properly this time.
On the right is a T-shirt, art card and miniature for SLA, which those of you of a more refined vintage may recall as a dark and dystopian RPG from many moons ago. It’s had a cult following since its heyday, and the IP has gone through many hands, none seemingly able to give it the love it deserves. So far. Fans will hopefully be happier with the current state of affairs which look like bringing it back into the limelight. The chaps behind it (which apparently include the original creator of the game) are really excited about the whole thing and also have a cunning plan for releasing and growing the range that doesn’t involve Kickstarter. At least, nowhere near the start of the process. So that’s very interesting and I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot more from them.
Last, but by no means least, there’s the Macrocosm figures in their blisters. These are some of the latest additions to their range that were Kickstarted only a short while back – more Diggers, and some random alien naughtiness that Chris was kind enough to throw in free. You can never have too many random aliens 🙂
Those will expand my forces for the retro SF game I keep mentioning. I’ll try to remember to take photos next time that gets on the table. And speaking of getting things on the table, I also had two demo games while I was at the show.
The first of these was Gates of Antares. This will all be fairly familiar to those that have played Bolt Action, although it’s not exactly the same. Using D10s instead of 6s is an obvious change, and gives a different range to play with. It also allows for 1s and 10s to have special effects, which starts to add some entertaining subtleties. Also, some units can have 2 activations per turn (and therefore get 2 order dice). Like I said, clearly a relation, but not the same as Bolt Action.
I took the Concord against the Ghar, and even the high quality Concord line infantry struggled against the upgraded Ghar suits. Still, we took some down and shot them up sufficiently to make one unit bug out and precipitate a glorious Concord victory. At least, that’s how I’lll tell the tale. Nathan may recall it slightly differently.
It was a fun little game, and I look forward to getting my paws on a starter set when they’re available.
The second game I played was Open Combat. This was Kickstarted earlier this year, and the book is also currently at the printers. Must be something in the air.
I’d read a very early version months ago, and couldn’t recall much about it. Not that that was an issue because the game is very easy to pick up and plays nice and quickly. It uses a Blood Bowl-esque sort of play-until-you-fail turn sequence, which I really like and have used myself more than once. This forces you to think carefully about the sequence you want to do things in and gives you more to consider than the small amount of rules suggests. Always a good thing.
We played a simple scrap between Vikings and Saxons as a way of learning, and it was a fun little romp that left a number of Saxons rather poorly. Oh, and before you hear any different, I’d just like to say that the incident with the small boy was entirely the fault of his wayward Saxon parents. I’ll be reporting them for reckless child endangerment. Taking young uns onto the battlefield like that. What do they expect? We’re Vikings…
I can see this being quite popular.
Quirkworthy 
Hey Jake-Any chance you’ll comment on Age of Sigmar and the fallout therefrom?
I’ve not played AoS. Read it, just not played. Not sure I can add much more to the discussion than another uninformed voice, and the internet has plenty of those already. The important fallout won’t be visible outside the GW board room for a year or more.
Thanks, Jake. I think you may be mistaken about the fallout, though. Already the US Grand Tournament national committee has chosen Kings of War to replace fantasy, and the Europeans are going with their own “9th Edition”. Which means the bulk of hardcore fantasy players, and ostensibly all their casual friends, have bluntly rejected Age of Sigmar. Guess we will see what else occurs.
Well, as bizarre as it sounds, there seems to be fans for AoS too. I think that at least Canada voted for AoS to be the tournament game for fantasy.
GoA is looking good and bee following that oe since the Dark Space Core Days and the original incarnation. Its a nice grow up Sci-Fi game.
The Slay Industries stuff looks interesting, have the RPG books and always was a fan.
Curious to know what you think of the Open Combat game, and obviously more on the pet project of yours.
I’ll be following these threads up. Just wanted to post a quick summary of what I’d been up to. Lots to talk about 🙂
I backed the Open Combat KS, pretty excited about it….it is good light fun! Also excited to hear more about what may be coming down the pipe from you Jake.
Oh you will 😉
Now this is an ebay account I’d be interested in following. Can we get a link?
There’s nothing left till I post some more tomorrow 🙂
I’ll post a link then if you’re interested.
Yes please, that would be great
So happy SLA is going to be back in print
I think we’ll see a lot of this sentiment 🙂
+1 from me on this as well.
I really loved the flavour of the setting, but the layout of the rulebook was terrible (I have some insider knowledge that suggests some of the layout work was done in an extreme rush). With some love it could be a great game.
I agree.
Brilliant to see some life in SLA industries again
“play-unit-you-fail” sounds like quite pessimistic system 😀
Au contraire. You can play all day if you like. Both positive and generous 🙂
Just don’t fail…
I mean there is this word >unituntil<. Which I assume would mean that whenever I activate an unit, I will fail at it (or am I just missing some finer parts of English language here O_o?)
Okay, that got some weird reformatting thanks to html?
…this word “unit” instead of “until”.
Sorry Teemu, my bad. I’d not spotted the typo (corrected it now). It should say play until you fail, not unit. That’s a combination of my sloppy late night typing, overenthusiastic autocorrect, and not enough proofing before I post.
Does that make better sense?
Yeah it makes more sense now, but isn’t as funny anymore 🙂
Ah well, you can’t have everything.
Mmmmmmm i really made a big hole in your concord. And only lost one Ghar. Its bolt action with a twist. I think its had things added that slow play and take the fast fun that boltaction is away. Maybe things have changed from the Beta. I hope so because its not upto BA standard for me. Jake we will call it a draw 😉
🙂
Only killed one Ghar, but his unit ran away, didn’t it? I can’t remember. It was sitting on 2 Down dice, with 3 pins and only 2 models, so it wasn’t happy. Either way, the game did what it needed to which was show us the basics of how it worked.
I thought that any slowness was down to us learning the rules and other interruptions rather than the game itself. Learning games are seldom slick. Still, you don’t have to like it. That’s the fun of having so many options to pick from 🙂
Maybe we can have another game when I get a starter set.
True each to his own. I’ll wait for a better game to turn up. Maybe its just around the corner who knows. But this game is not for me. I dont like most of the figs so thats not helping. I bet this will only end up on your ebay pile on a year or two 😉 rember bob says you need to finish a project .. blue tac minis dont count jake. 🙂 i did like the macrocosm stuff.
Fair enough.
It’s entirely possible that this will end up on eBay in a few years. Can’t rule that out. But I’ll give it a fair shake first with the full rules and see how that goes.
I like most of the Macrocosm stuff, which is why I’ve bought a bunch of their models 🙂
And as for Bob’s taunts, he’s just had two month’s holiday, so that’s unfair competition. When I don’t have to work then I’ll have some time to paint. Currently I’m still doing 7 days a week.
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