Lots of Catching Up To Do

Posted on February 25, 2012 by Quirkworthy

What with Ancient Grudge coming out, Project Pandora being promoted for a week on the Mantic blog, the Kings of War tournament last week and a Foundry Open Day today (where I’ll be running games of Tribes of Legend), I’ve been rather absent from these pages for a bit.

Things are still running along apace behind the scenes, though you’ll see less publicly for a little while. Then we have Pandora’s release at Salute/Adepticon, which will be another biggie. I’ll be there too, and hope to see a bit more of the rest of the show this year. We’ll see how that plan pans out on the day 😛

I was going to do a photo report for last week’s KOW bash. Sadly my camera decided it was only going to take 5 pictures before it died. I did take a load with Mantic’s snazzy camera, though I think there was a wetware issue there. Anyway, someone a little more competent hopefully took pictures of our slightly cobbled Pandora demo in the evening, which proved rather popular with quite a few of the participants coming back for another go (and another…). Someone described the first scenario from Dwarf King’s Hold Dead Rising as “the heroin for the game”, and I’ve tried to make this equally addictive and replayable.

Pandora is looking very snazzy now. The art has a style of its own, the layout and maps are crisp and the toys are great. I’ve seen all the models in the flesh now and had that weird sensation of thinking they were tiny (which is just a reflection of looking at them as pictures on a big screen for 6 months). They’re not tiny at all in reality. Another oddity was how different the Corporation models looked in green, metal and resin-plastic. Exactly the same models, just a different material and colour picking up the light differently. It makes the grey ones look less detailed than the metals, but when they’re painted they look identical. The eye is easily fooled. When I mentioned this to someone they said that this was why Finecast looked higher detail than metal and that it was just a trick of the light. Spray them both the same colour and the difference goes away. Allegedly. Well it’s not anything I’ll be wasting cash testig for real, but if someone has both and could do then it may be worth posting some pictures.

But I’m distracting myself.

Time to sort out my (considerably better) backup camera and potter off to run ToL all day 🙂

It’s going to be a blast. I’ll see if I can get some pictures for those that can’t make it. Of course, if you can make it then do pop along and say hi.

 

Posted in Events, Kings of War, Project Pandora, Tribes of Legend | 26 Comments

Amusement :)

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Quirkworthy

Someone posted this on Facebook, and I thought it might amuse.

🙂

 

Posted in Random Thoughts | 5 Comments

Legendary Tribes

Posted on February 4, 2012 by Quirkworthy

Foundry continue to support the Tribes of Legend rules with another wave of Greek Mythology figures. I’ve lost track of which ones are yet to come, but I think there’s one more wave left. It’s a big range and that’s only talking about the new ones. Foundry already have loads of Ancient Greek warriors, and lots more Trojan Wars period stuff, much of which you could mix in with the new models to give a huge variety of options. They’ve added a section to their historical site (as well as their fantasy site) so the models in the new range are easier to find. They’re proving really popular too. When I was in the Foundry factory yesterday they were casting like crazy to keep them in stock.

This is the emotional gratification for a project like this. It’s all very well getting my usual brown paper bag full of crumpled fivers when I’ve finished the writing (and I do have to pay my bills), but that’s really just mechanical. It is just to pay my bills. The real payoff is when people like what you’ve been doing and “buy into it”, not in a financial sense, but in a sense that they make it part of their (gaming) life.

It’s also fun to work with people who are as passionate about games and models as I am. I’m really lucky in having a number of different companies to work with, all of which have real gaming fanatics in. We don’t always see eye to eye on the detail, but we are all coming from a sense of passion and commitment to making the best, the most fun game we can. Having spent some time working for companies in what has been called the Real World, where nobody cares tuppence about the quality of the result and most folk are just keeping a chair warm till they can go home, I can tell you it makes a big difference to your work environment.

So what’s next? Well I’ve mentioned God of Battles a few times, and that’s a game I’m really excited about. Having spent a year sitting on my hands and not being able to talk about it, I’m very keen to be able to discuss it openly. It’s still some months away, though I’ve started winding up for it already.

But Tribes of Legend is not forgotten  – quite the contrary. I’ve been playing it quite a bit recently, and look forward to the Foundry Open Day for it on the 24th and 25th of this month. I’ll be running some games of both Tribes of Legend and Ancient Heroes, and they should be great fun. I’ve also written an article about expanding the Amazon army, with a new scenario for them, and Ancient Heroes has a set of expansions about monsters, including a multi-player scenario I might be able to demo at the Open Day if we get enough people who don’t mind being eaten.

If you are able to come along to the Open Day then it would be great to see you, especially if you’ve already played Tribes of Legend and have some questions or comments (good or bad). I expect to be there part of friday and all of saturday. For those of you who live in foreign climes, I’ll do a photo report as I have for other Open Days, so at least you get a little of the flavour.

Posted in Tribes of Legend | 21 Comments

Round-up

Posted on January 28, 2012 by Quirkworthy

As you can tell by my silence, it’s been a busy week one way or another.

On the gaming front, Foundry have released the Tribes of Legend book, and continue to add more to the rather jolly range of miniatures that go with it. The range is, in fact, rather bigger than I originally anticipated and so I’m doing some articles to enable you to include more of it in both the Tribes of Legend mass battle game itself as well as the Ancient Heroes skirmish game that is also included in the book. It seems silly to have all these nice toys and not make the most of them 🙂

Mantic have Dwarf King’s Hold: Ancient Grudge up for pre-order still, but I’ve been contacted by a number of people who have already been sent review copies (and Frontlinegamer has done an unboxing already), so it’s got to be out any day. The webpage also says it’s out in January, and that’s going out of fashion pretty soon too. I look forward to hearing what people make of it.

As always in the land of writing games, what the public at large see as new and shiny is a long-forgotten project by the author. Well, sort of. It’s certainly not in the last 3 or 5 projects I worked on, which can make things a little odd. Great to see them out in the big wide world though. I’ll be putting up a FAQ page for both shortly. Do feel free to post up if you have any queries.

Mantic are also responsible for the beginnings of a tease about Project Pandora with part of the cover being shown recently. The cover is by the talented Mr Springborg who also did the covers for all of the Dwarf King’s Hold series.

The game itself is working rather nicely (if I say so myself), and the counter art is great. It’s got a very distinctive style that sets it apart form the other stuff I’ve seen from Tears Of Envy. It’ll look great when it’s all printed and die-cut nicely for me. Much better than my mock-ups 🙂

 

 

Posted in Dwarf King's Hold, Project Pandora, Tribes of Legend | 16 Comments

Here We Go Again!

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Quirkworthy

The TGN voting pages are now back up, fixed (supposedly) and with all the nominations. Sort of. I did suggest a certain Dragon that’s missing…

Anyway, I’m just reminding you because it’s a fun thing to peruse with lots of stuff you might have missed from the avalanche of new toys over the year. I know I’ve found a gem or two in there.

You can also vote for Dwarf King’s Hold on the Rules/Expansions section, should you feel so inspired 🙂

Happy voting!

Posted in Random Thoughts | 4 Comments

Dreadfleet Salvage Project – Version 1.0

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Quirkworthy

This is the first version of my house rules for Dreadfleet. It’s not a complete rewrite, but a cutting away of what I think of as dead wood that hides the worthwhile game underneath. Or, put another way, murdering some darlings that should have long since been safely hidden away under the turf.

This is only the first cut of these house rules and needs a load more playtesting to call finished. I just thought you might like to have a peek at where it is now, and perhaps play some games yourselves and let me know what you think. That is, after all, why I have comments section 😉

I’ll be saying “I decided this”, and “I came up with that” because I’m writing it (and because I can’t recall who actually thought of every little bit), but this is really a collaborative effort. I particularly have to thank the Jolly Old Tar known as GloatingSwine who did indeed come up with many of the following thoughts – even if I’ve subsequently put them through the mangle…
Continue reading →

Posted in Dreadfleet | 15 Comments

Dreadfleet Salvage Project – Opening Shots

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Quirkworthy

I’ll be putting up the House Rules in their own post so I can track comments better (and after I’ve got them a little more straight). For now, let me run you through the game GloatingSwine and I played.

We were playing scenario 9 in which the Grand Alliance has to charge the length of the table and get off the other side. The only scenario rule we changed was the way you calculate victory. Instead of rolling a dice you tot up VPs. Alliance get VPs for getting ships off and Dreadfleet gets them for sinking Alliance vessels. The Grand Alliance don’t get anything but an easier life for sinking enemy ships.

The first turn was a race for the middle, with only the odd long ranged shot being fired. The first Fate card (yes, we’re still using them, but only one per turn) was the Tsunami. Wot larks! We’d already decided to reduce that to D3 damage, and it did some damage to 4 enemy ships. I should perhaps have waited till some were close to sinking, but I just blurted it out. By the end of turn one we were in among the central line of rocks.
Continue reading →

Posted in Dreadfleet | 8 Comments

Dwarf King’s Hold at TGN’s Readers’ Choice Awards

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Quirkworthy

Tabletop Gaming News (TGN) have an annual Reader’s Choice Award, split into several categories to cover the best in gaming for the past year. They’ve just put up the 2011 voting and Dwarf King’s Hold is in the Rules and Expansions section 🙂

Whilst there are always enough cries of ballot stuffing and vote rigging to satisfy a medium sized dictatorship, I think it’s a bit of fun and encourage you to mosey on over and cast your votes in the various different categories. Naturally I’d like you to vote for the sell out* Dwarf King’s Hold in the rules category because I wrote it, but actually I think the most useful bit is already done: the nominations. Each year these shortlists includes a gem or two that have slipped by me either unnoticed or without garnering the attention they perhaps deserved and this list is a reminder to go back and see if there was something I missed. It’s even worth going back through the searches and looking at previous year’s nominations. You never know what cool stuff you’ll find.

So what are you waiting for? Get out there and vote!

*Don’t panic if you haven’t got one already. It’s back in print now and can be found in your local game store or direct from Mantic Games who have the good manners, taste and charm to publish it 😉

Posted in Dwarf King's Hold | 5 Comments

Dreadfleet Salvage Project – Putting a Toe in the Water

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Quirkworthy

As those of you who have read my reviews of Dreadfleet will know, I wasn’t entirely impressed by the rules. The models are well made, the mat looks great and the rulebook is very pretty, but the game itself? Well, that’s way too random and way too long for my taste.

So, I have a very expensive box of nice models sitting about not likely to do anything but gather dust. I could just stick it on Ebay and have done with it, and I was sorely tempted when I played it. Well I never got round to that, and now I’m curious. Instead of just binning it, can I tweak the rules a bit and get a game I like?

I like naval games, and have quite a few. Individually, most of the rules in Dreadfleet are fine and are often “industry standard” – it’s just the whole ensemble that doesn’t work. I don’t have either the time or the inclination to start from scratch, so I decided on a brief for my project:

  • Don’t change the background – that’s fine already.
  • Keep as many of the original stats and rules as possible.
  • New rules should be kept to a minimum.
  • New rules have to fit with the story and existing rules.

Continue reading →

Posted in Dreadfleet | 11 Comments

Design Theory: To Pre-measure, Or Not Pre-measure…

Posted on January 14, 2012 by Quirkworthy

…that is the question Shakespeare wrote so eloquently about.

Well I’ve been talking to people, soliciting opinions (thanks Richard) and mostly mulling this one over since it blossomed into a big discussion in one of the comment threads. Because I love you all I have selflessly burned whole tens of brain cells to bring you this considered opinion on the matter. Of course, there’s no telling whether this is any more valid than my unconsidered opinion, but I like to feel that those brain cells did not die in vain.

So, what’s it all about?
Continue reading →

Posted in Game Design Theory, Tabletop gaming | 61 Comments