EN World - Tabletop RPG Newsletter

A weekly newsletter from the 'En World' Tabletop RPG website...it's a somewhat mixed bag this week...
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EN World Weekly Newsletter
News Digest: Warhammer Adventures, Evil Hat Staff Changes, New GURPS Releases, and more Hello everyone, Darryl here with this week’s gaming news! Warhammer for kids, more pre-PaizoCon Pathfinder 2 previews, Evil Hat gets a new Senior Art Director and Fate Line Developer, new GURPS...	The Lawgiver: The Judges' Iconic Sidearm This iconic sidearm is issued to every Judge in Mega-City One. Take a look at how the Lawgiver works in the upcoming Judge Dredd & The Worlds of 2000 AD roleplaying game!
Witness The Mighty And Terrible Face Of War In A World Of Magic! In War of the Burning Sky, you will have the chance to fight in a war of mythic proportions, and determine the fate of many nations in its aftermath. Ever-escalating conflicts, powered by mighty...	Drift Into The Sea Of Leaves With The Summerland RPG Overnight a vast forest sprang up ancient and full grown. It devastated the works of man. Foreboding and somehow alive, the Sea of Leaves is a wild place permeated by the Call, a siren-song that...
New Hobby Releases In Stores & PDF Spotlight: 28th May 2018 We have a host of Paizo releases for Pathfinder and Starfinder hitting stores this week, including the latest Adventure Path #130, City in the Lion's Eye, in the War of the Crown series. We also have...	N.O.W. The Modern Action Roleplaying Game Is Here! I know there's been a bit of a little blitz of EN Publishing stuff the last few days. You wait ages for a bus, and then three turn up at once! Anyhow... for What's OLD is NEW fans, it's a big day,...
We Were All New D&D Players Once As a dungeon master and co-owner of a tabletop game and comic book shop, I meet brand-new players virtually every time I'm behind the counter or the DM screen. D&D’s recent popularity explosion has...	Flipping the Table: Did Removing Miniatures Save D&D? Dungeons & Dragons is doing better than ever, thanks to a wave of nostalgia-fueled shows like Stranger Things and the Old School Renaissance, the rise of actual play video streams, and a broader...
Pathfinder 2 Previews Run The Gauntlet Paizo released a few more teases about Pathfinder 2 on their Friday blog post about the upcoming game. In previous previews we saw some art and actual mechanics, but in this preview we're seeing more...	Big News In The Storytellers Vault In addition to the usual roundup of interesting products available in the program, this month's Storytellers Vault Roundup brings an announcement long awaited by fans of the World of Darkness. ...
Mythological Figures: King Arthur (5E) Today's entry in Mythological Figures is none other than Arthur Pendragon, King of Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table. I’ve been avoiding this character for some time for a simple reason—he...	A Tale Of Two Bestiaries: Looking At The Fiend Folio And Creature Catalog In POD I've talked more than once about my love of bestiaries. They're my favorite part of any fantasy role-playing game. A well-done bestiary can do more to set the tone, and explain the setting, of a game...
Reopening Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes is so packed with material, my first review mainly focused on the lore and race options. Now we'll address the other half of the book – the bestiary. One of the...	RPG Crowdfunding News 098: The Runewild, Interbellum, World of Alessia, The Steel Road, SuperAge, Vikingr, No Thank You, Evil!, Choose Your Own Sci-Fi Stock Art Welcome back to our weekly column exploring some of the tabletop roleplaying games currently available on crowdfunding sites. This week we have a couple of new 5th Edition books - a fey-themed...

Warlord Games Newsletter

Warlord Games's end of week feature round-up...

Welcome to the Warlord Games Friday Newsletter, featuring all this week's releases and other wargaming product news.

FREE: Plastic set when you buy a Rulebook or Starter Set Which Free set will you choose? View Article New: American War Of Independence plastic sets expand your forces. View Article Pre-Order: The Concord Support Force arrives with your first Strategic choice - the C3 X-Howitzer! View Article Pre-Order: The Ghar Support Force lumbers into combat with Command Crawler and Bomber Squads! View Article Video: Ghar Command Crawler Check out the YouTube Video here New: Get your new Digital Bolt Action Theatre books today. View Article New: From Riverhorse, Waterloo – Quelle Affaire! Strategy Board Game warfare at its best. View Article Vacancy: US - Sales AGENT View Article

Upcoming Events January CRUSADE 2016 - Cardiff MgGu Games - Washington MiniCon 5 - Cheltenham Prize Draw Winner Each month, every one of our Newletter subscribers are entered into a prize draw to win a £50 / $80 gift voucher. Find out if you are the lucky one: This Month's Winner  The Warlord Games webstore has thousands of historical and sci-fi miniatures just waiting to be deployed onto your battlefield! You'll also find all the paints and tools you need to get your new models ready for action, plus rulebooks and dice for our various game systems. And don't miss the Deals section if you're on the look out for a bargain! VISIT WEBSTORE If you'd like to contribute an article or promote an event, please get in touch at info@warlordgames.com.

All Warlord Games products are available from our online store or by calling +44 (0)115 978 4495. Our products ship worldwide. Alternatively you can be all retro and actually write to us at: Warlord Games T13/T15 Technology Wing - The Howitt Building Lenton Business Centre - Lenton Boulevard Nottingham, Nottinghamshire NG7 2BD United Kingdom

Mongoose Publishing Newsletter

I'm not sure how interested you all are in such things but I am a fan of both their Paranoia RPG and their Judge Dredd game so here it is...

Global Mongoose - 16th January

The State of the Mongoose has arrived!

State of the Mongoose 2014

The State of the Mongoose, our yearly address covering what is going on behind the scenes at Mongoose Publishing is now live, and you can read the full text here.

Highlights in this year's address include...

* A new way of doing business for us.
* Victory at Sea 2.0 finally has a release date! Plus, new eras for Victory at Sea, including ACW and WWI.
* A new partnership with Victrix, spearheaded by Warriors of Antiquity, a new skirmish/campaign game set in the ancient world.
* A full 3D World War II dogfighting miniatures game!
* A new look for Traveller and an introductory book for the Third Imperium.
* A brand new edition of Paranoia!
* Forthcoming models and forces for Judge Dredd.
* More news on Mongoose computer games.

Sunday Round-Up

Been a fairly quiet week for new releases...well quiet for new releases I actually care about at least*...fortunately there's been plenty of other news that does interest me to keep us occupied...

*I'm sure there's places you can read about Infinity's new box set and get Space Wolf rumours from without me needing to do it, lol.

It was a thrilling read...almost as good as his blog articles in fact...

Before we get into the 'Round-up' itself I have a public service announcement...

I'm going to be away Monday to Friday next week and it's unlikely that I'll have internet access for that time period meaning that any sneak previews that make there way to the internet will most likely be old news by the time I get back to a computer Friday evening, I won't be linking to newsletters as soon as they appear and I won't be in a position to link to articles in the usual places (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Forums and Groups, etc.). Effectively that means if you want to look at new posts (I'll have some scheduled) you'll have to come here and find them yourselves and if I've screwed something up I wont be able to do anything about it till Friday evening. Scheduled posts are due to appear at 5PM GMT and will consist of the following...

Monday - Detailed unboxing and review of the Star Trek : Attack Wing starter set. It's also the first article of it's type that I've done using higher resolution pictures so you'll all have to let me know if it creates any issues.
Tuesday - Due to the delay in the next wave of Malifaux releases I'm going to schedule a couple of unboxings of older models that I was going to leave to post on the same day as the new equivalents but as that apparently isn't happening for another few weeks I'm going to post them anyway. These are the older metal Molemen and the metal Alternate Bete Noire. One of these (Molemen) will appear at the slightly earlier time of 3PM GMT
Wednesday - The usual Wednesday Gallery with an 'outdoors' theme this week to tie-in to the fact that I'll be on holiday.
Thursday - A brief unboxing of the Alternate M2E plastic version of Perdita as well as some comparison pictures and a slightly different from my normal format unboxing of the Governors Proxy for Malifaux utilising pictures and info provided by a gentleman who goes by the name Sean Overton-shadowopal on the Wyrd Place Facebook group who seems to have managed to get hold of one weeks before I'm going to, lol. I'll integrate his info into an unboxing of my own when I get hold of the model myself.
Friday - An unboxing and review of the new Brotherhood starter set for Mutant Chronicles Warzone Resurrection.

Hopefully the post office will have some parcels waiting for me when I get back as my Toughest Girls of the Galaxy stuff hasn't arrived yet...amongst other things I'm expecting...

Onto the usual bits and pieces then.....

Articles.
I've done a few features over the last few weeks that may be of interest to you all that in all the excitement and your undoubtedly busy schedules you may have missed including a report on Warlord Games Open Day, a few articles for the Mantic Games fans covering such a wide variety of topics as the new Strider Models both with pictures of a painted example and a review of the kit itself, Pictures of the Wave 2 Deadzone Cards as well as a review of Deadzones Incursion expansion and a feature on the upcoming Mars Attacks Miniatures Game. There's also a rather interesting article (even if I do say so myself) about using themed army projects as a motivational tool.

Newsletters.
The Newsletter page has been updated and their are new entries from Forge World, Hasslefree Miniatures, Mantic Games and Warlord Games.

The Newsletter tab can be found here.

Unboxings.

We've been a bit starved of new Malifaux products to unbox and review over the last few weeks though we have had some nice reveals for the Wave 2 book that can be found here. Though for the Judge Dredd fans I did an unboxing and review of Mongoose Publishings Judge Dredd Miniatures Game starter set.

On the subject of unboxings, I've been getting asked the same few questions about the articles in general and the Malifaux ones in particular so I thought I'd address them here.....

Q1 - Will you eventually do unboxings on everything Wyrd have done?
A1 - Unlikely...firstly there's some limited edition stuff that's out of my price range and that's unlikely to change any time soon and there's several items that I bought and assembled before I started the unboxing articles and unless some generous person wants to send me them for free I doubt I'll be buying something I don't need just to take it out of a box. At least I can use those models for the comparison pictures as well though.

I will however be keeping up to date with all the new releases (finances permitting).

Q2 - You can't always see the detail with just a front and back view can you do others as well?
A2 - I've already started doing four pictures a model (one of each side) on most of the newer ones as well as close-ups of areas of interest (or that you might have problems with)

Q3 - Can you take higher resolution pictures?
A3 - To be honest the resolution I was using was mainly because I was previously taking a lot of pictures at events and the lower resolution meant that the camera memory held more individual pictures as well as speeding up uploading and transferring information as my old laptop was to be brutally honest quite shit. It also effects the speed that the page loads for those viewers with older or slower computers. I'll start taking higher res pics from this point onwards if people want me to but I really don't see it making that big a difference except when it comes to reading text on sample rulebook pages. So I'll try a higher resolution on pictures for a bit and see if the benefits out weight the disadvantages...

Q4 - How about updating the older ones?
A4 - Eventually I'll get around to adding assembly tips to the ones that don't have them but as with the answer to question 1 I can't see myself buying something I already have just to take another couple of pictures of the models from different angles. However as the older plastic kits that had 1.5 cards in are redone I'll update the posts with pictures of the boxes (If they've changed) and the newer cards. I'll probably also leave the older box and card pictures in there somewhere though for people who might end up picking up an old kit from somewhere and to avoid duplicate entries.

Q5 - Can you label the entries on the unboxing page to indicate the model type as well?
A5 - No, Fuck off...well maybe...I'll have a think about it..

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.

Judge Dredd Miniatures Game - Starter Set Review

I'm somewhat of a Judge Dredd fan so it was a bit embarrassing to find out that there was a miniatures game based around it and even more embarrassing to discover that they'd expanded it via a Kickstarter that I'd also missed.

I decided to minimise my oversight somewhat by acquiring the starter set...

This apparently simple task was complicated by the fact that I'd already acquired the rulebook and both the sets of models from the set in previous transactions but really wanted the limited edition models from the aforementioned starter box. Fortunately a kind gentleman from the Mongoose Games stand at the Warlord Games Open Day offered to swap the two sets of models in the starter set for two different ones and after perusing the models (and being told that ABC Warriors were imminent) my fellow hobbyist Martin of Titan Games decided to buy a couple of sets of models and obviously then needed a rulebook...problem solved...

The box contains a 'Quick Start' Guide, the full Rulebook, 8 Mega City Judges, 8 Street Gangers and a limited edition Ganger and a limited edition Judge.

Lets have a look at each of these in turn...

Quick Start Guide.

This is done as a 'Training Guide' detailing a Judge's first arrest and covers the very basics of the game.

The Rulebook.

Well we aren't going to get very far without access to the rules now are we?

The rulebook contains a number of sections detailing the main rules, some more advanced ones, equipment and force lists, some standard scenarios and a few ones relating to specific historical events from the history of Mega City One as well as a brief background section. It also contains lots of model pictures...here's a few sample pages...

There are force lists for the common factions such as the Judges and the Street Gangs. as well as what Mercenaries they can take to bolster their numbers

As well as some of the other favourites...keep in mind though that these are a tiny sample of the options available...

The equipment section is well laid out and the special abilities are done in a handy flowchart form so you can see what order that abilities need to be gained in when playing a campaign game. The Psi abilities are shown in the same manner.

We also have vehicle rules as well...the unscrupulous man at the Mongoose Games stand showed me a Manta Prowl tank in an underhand attempt to make me want one...he succeeded admirably, lol.

You'll obviously need some scenarios to play through and these come in two types. The main section details a number of generic scenarios while a second lists some famous events from Judge Dredds history that you can replay including Judge Dredd alone Vs. a gang of 30 punks, Judge Dekkers last stand and the fight against the insane Judge Cal amongst others.

The rear of the rulebook also contains a brief but detailed history of Mega City One and it's history as well as that of the world it lives in...

There's also model pictures throughout as well as some nice pieces of artwork by a variety of artists.

Of course we'll also need some models to play with...

When I first spoke of trying out this system some people commented negatively on the quality of the miniatures and though there are significant differences in the level of detail between the newer and older models I think in some cases the painted pictures fail to do the models themselves any justice (whether this is to do with the picture quality or the actual paint-job I couldn't really tell). All I can say is that Me and Martin were pleasantly surprised by the overall quality of the miniatures and he told me today that they were very enjoyable to paint. Here are some front and rear view pictures of the models 'out of the box' and I'll show some of them based and as a group afterwards...

Mega-City Street Gang.

Mega-City Street Gang - Unassembled.

You get a leader model (that's the limited edition one though any model could be the leader really), a Psi, one with a heavy weapon, four with handguns, one with a club and one with both a club and a handgun.

Mega-City Street Gang - Assembled.

Mega-City Judges.

Mega-City Judges - Unassembled.

You get a limited edition Judge with a Lawrod (basically a rifle version of the standard Lawgiver Pistol), a Psi Judge, two Cadets and a variety of other Judges armed in a number of different ways. The 'specialist' weapon Judge gets a choice of two weapons on a separate sprue so needs assembly...if you call gluing one arm onto a model 'assembly' that is, lol.

Mega-City Judges - Assembled.

As far as 'balanced' forces go if you were to field all the models from both forces with their default weaponry then play a game then the Street Gang would certainly lose so you'll most likely use a small selection of Judges against pretty much the whole gang of Street Punks. To be fair though you wouldn't be able to use all nine judges in a standard 500 point game anyway.

It was at this point that I realised there was a slight oversight in the Starter Set in that it didn't contain any dice or measuring aids and as this game uses D10's rather than the more common D6's this might cause some issues for some gamers. It's not a massive issue but I thought it worth mentioning. Overall this kit is still very good value for money as both the 'gangs' and the rulebook would come to £90 overall and the Starter Set is only £75. This means you're effectively getting one of the gangs at half price and the limited edition models for free...and that's a pretty good deal.

The aforementioned Martin at Titan Games bought the Justice Department - Heroes of Mega City One set and I acquired the Justice Department - Lawmaster Patrol and The Dark Judges boxes so I'll more than likely do some articles on those kits as well.

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.