Yesterday I’d gone exploring the wilds of Whitley Bay, visiting a games club I’d just discovered was only a short distance away. I returned to an inbox full of people telling me that Lost Patrol had resurfaced, and did I know any more about it. That was a bit of a surprise.
The short answer is “no”.
Yes I did design the original version, as part of a project to reuse existing plastic figures in new products. This was an intriguing challenge as I couldn’t get any new models made at all, and had a very limited budget for the rest of the components. Even so, I came up with a total of 6 finished games before the whole thing was canned. Sadly, only Gobbo’s Banquet (by Gav) and Lost Patrol made it out of there alive. I suspect that none of the other ones will never appear, which is a special shame for the waste of Ralph Horsley’s lovely board art for my version of Formula Waaagh! Ah well.
Now I like a lot about Lost Patrol, but it isn’t without its faults. Frankly, they irk me a little more every time I play (probably that’s because I think I could do better now, with an extra 16 years’ experience as a designer). Over the years I have asked both GW and FFG whether anyone was interested in a second edition as I’ve got some definite ideas about what I’d do to finesse it. From these queries I knew that FFG didn’t have that license, and as GW specifically kept it I guessed that it might resurface someday.
What looks like a press release has turned up on a number of sites (eg. ICV2, ACD Distribution), and doesn’t tell us much. But I’ll be keeping an eye on the news and I have to get myself a copy when it does come out, if only to see whether they’ve changed what I thought needed improving.
It’s a little bit of a shame not to be able to have any input myself, though to be honest as soon as I found out it was something GW were keeping for themselves I knew it would be that way.
Overall though, I’m excited about the prospect of getting my paws on a new copy to see what they’ve done with it 🙂
Quirkworthy 
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Dollars to doughnuts that it’s less hard to win as the scouts.
Very likely.
is legit…
in gama2016
Goodbye lurkers I see
Starts to seem like everything in 40K universe that is deadly and non-intelligent is of Tyranid origin.
Weird, eh?
Unfortunately, it’s the nature of the beast in an ever-more-competitive gaming market. Making them Genestealers means the game can be an entry-level piece to the 40K hobby for both Space Marines *and* Tyranids. Games Workshop is losing its stranglehold on the fantasy/sci-fi tabletop gaming market, so they have to compete more. Back when the original game came out, they pretty much owned the space. Leaving the counters as generic “lurkers” is just a lost opportunity to promote their product.
As a concept, I take the opposite view. There are any number of games where the sides are both piles of models, and far fewer where they work entirely differently (as they do in the original LP). I’d say that it was a step towards mediocrity rather than something that made it stand out more in a crowded market place. That’s theory though, and you can make a great game with either set of components.
As it stands, I would have been far more surprised if they had kept the lurkers as counters than I am with their replacement as models. We’ll see how it works in practice when we have something real to judge 🙂