Monday, 3 March 2014

Unboxing Warzone Resurrection - Bauhaus

With six (soon to be seven) awesome factions that each has their own unique character it's difficult to decide which Mutant Chronicles Warzone Resurrection force is the one for you.

I'm therefore going to do an unboxing (technically an 'unbagging' until they get packaging) on each of those aforementioned factions in order to enable you to come to a (relatively) informed decision. We'll look at the stat, strategy, tactical and gear cards as well as looking at the models in both their unassembled and assembled forms. If there should be any minor assembly issues encountered along the way then we'll cover those as well...

I'm sure you've all seen pictures of things in a bag so we'll skip that bit...

The Bauhaus 'Starter Set' contains enough parts to make one Angelica Drachen, ten Hussars and a Vulkan Battlesuit in various configurations. All Starter sets give you a legal army of one Warlord and two units of five 'troops' as well as additionally giving you some kind of Support unit or Light Vehicle as well.

First we'll show you what you get in 'army list' form as well as the minimum and maximum potential unit values that you can make from your starter set. Obviously some units can be increased in size at a later point and there maximum value will increase accordingly.

Warlord (Close Combat)- Angelica Drachen (170)
No upgrade options though the Combat Doctrines options of other units are based on the Warlord 'type' in this case 'Close Combat'.
Troops - Hussars x5 (80 Min) (170 Max)
This unit can take up to two Combat Doctrines (55 points total for the most expensive two)

This unit has three upgrade options (35 points total for the most expensive two)

Troops - Hussars x5 (80 Min) (170 Max)
This unit can take up to two Combat Doctrines (55 points total for the most expensive two)
This unit has three upgrade options (35 points total for the most expensive two)
Light Vehicle - Vulkan Battlesuit (115 Min) (170 Max)
This unit can take up to two Combat Doctrines (55 points total for the most expensive two)

This gives us a points range of 330 points (Minimum OOC of Warlord and two troops) up to 680 for this starter set though your actual figure will most likely be somewhere in the middle.

Onto the actual bits and pieces then...

Unassembled.
We'll look at both sides of the parts 'as they come' without any clean-up in order to give you a complete picture of what you get and what work they need.

Angelica Drachen.

The Hussars.

You get two lots of the pictured parts...

A Vulkan.

We also get a number of resource cards which vary in appearance from faction to faction...

...as well as stat cards for the units in the starter set and a number of 'Strategy', 'Tactical' and 'Gear' cards for use with the advanced rules. Some of these cards are only available with certain models but this is helpfully labelled on each card. Where there are multiple quantities of each card I'll just show one of each type.

Stat Cards.

Tactical, Strategy and Gear cards.
There are often more than one of each card and sometimes as many as three or four but showing the same cards multiple times seemed a bit redundant.

Angelica Drachen.

Hussars.

Vulkan.

Starter.

Strategy.

Tactical.

Gear.

I suppose we should look at them assembled as well.

The models come with appropriate bases but unfortunately they have slots in them but this can be easily rectified. Personally I fill them with hobby store matchsticks then base over them though there's any number of other methods. I haven't based these yet.....

Angelica Drachen.

The arm join enables you to pose her in a number of ways. I went with whip up and gun down but the opposite is just as easy or anything in between.

Hussars.

The Hussars come with five bodies with shoulder pads and one without so you could distinguish one model as the leader or use him as the special weapon user (there's a selection of heads for the same reason) and both of the weapon upgrades are also available.

In effect this means that you can use the Hussar set as a basis for a new squad or as an expansion for an existing one.

The kit comes with four sets of standing legs and a single set of crouching ones.

Weapon upgrades.

Vulkan Battlesuit.

I used the sealed compartment but the kit comes with a Hussar head if you wish to show the 'pilot'.

A Group Shot.

If this article interested you then you may might want to look at some of the other articles in this series.

Unboxing - The Brotherhood 'Starter Set'.
Unboxing - Capitol 'Starter Set'.
Unboxing - Cybertronic 'Starter Set'.
Unboxing - Dark Legion 'Starter Set'.
Unboxing - Mishima 'Starter Set'.

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.

Forge World Blog #7

Here's another one,

This time featuring the Mechanicum, a new Realm of Battle board and a renegade Imperial Guard army...

Our latest Blog is available now.

Sunday, 2 March 2014

Sunday - In Case You Missed It...

I've decided to do a brief overview of blog posts and updated pages from the previous week that you may have missed. I don't really expect that every-one checks every day but you may miss something that would have interested you...

Or you could read a book instead I suppose...

Hobby Newsletters.
Forge World Blog and Wyrd Miniatures have been added to the Hobby Newsletter tab and there are new Newsletters from both the aforementioned Forge World Blog and Wyrd Miniatures as well as new ones from Forge World and Mantic Games.

The Newsletter page can be found here.

C.o.S.I.S.
There's five new entries and four updated ones in the Mantic Encyclopaedia this week mainly on the subject of Dreadball Xtreme though there's some new Dreadball stuff in there as well.

The C.o.S.I.S. page can be found here.

An Introduction To...
There's a new Introduction article this week on Malifaux as well as some new links to useful resources.

The 'Introduction to..' page can be found here.

Other Points of Interest.
There's a rather interesting interview with the guys responsible for the new Guild Ball here, the Malifaux unboxing page has also been made significantly more user friendly (in my opinion at least) with the entries now colour-coded and subdivided by faction and is here if you wish a look.

There's also a new gallery featuring the original Sonnia Criid crew that you might like, here.

The rest of the stuff is my usual hobby related ramblings that I'm sure you can find on your own if you look hard enough...

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.

Saturday, 1 March 2014

Guild Wars Kickstarter - An Interview

So I mentioned that I'd become intrigued by a Kickstarter that I'd stumbled across called Guild Ball...

Both the art-style and game concept caught my eye and I thought I'd try and get in touch with the two gentlemen responsible and see if they'd answer a few questions. As luck would have it they turned out to be the kind of wonderful people ready to give up their time to chat with annoying bloggers such as myself...

My questions are in bold and their answers are in italics and links are included where appropriate.

Can you give us a brief overview of both your backgrounds in the hobby world on a personal and professional level?
So I (Rich) have a big competitive background in the Hordes/Warmachine community. I was the #1 Ranked player in the UK for some time along with being the first UK Hardcore Champion. Most recently I have been best in faction at both the UK Masters and UK Nationals with Circle. Along with this I have done a lot of high level organising of tournaments - the two big ones would be the European Team Championship and one of the initial organisers of SmogCon.

Mat has had great success in the painting arena - having placed highly at Salute and won various trophies throughout the years. He is a long time gamer of many systems - from RPGs to board games. He also has a professional background in computer games - being the production manager on games like Remember Me, DMC and Heavenly sword. He is use to AAA budgets and making sure products are delivered on time.

For the more lazy amongst my readers can you give a brief summary of the world of Guild Ball?
Guild Ball is set is a medieval football game set in a pseudo historical world. It is steeped in conflict and intrigue along with a unique flavour in the Guilds that make up a lot of the warring parties. Think 'Game of Thrones' with footballs and your half way there.

and the game itself?
The game is played on a 3x3 tabletop and comprises of 2, 6 man teams (3 normal guys, a captain, a big guy and a mascot). The first to 3 goals wins, or the first to wipe out the opposing team. It is asynchronous model activations in play and is all about combinations and synergy that take your team to victory.

There's a lot of interesting and original game-play concepts you've come up with but what aspect of the Guild Ball game-play are you particularly proud of?
Its a hard question to answer - a lot of our systems meld together so nicely. Personally my favourite is the momentum system. This is an ongoing resource that is generated throughout the turn - when something goes good you most likely will get a momentum point for it. This can be spent to counter enemy actions or to boost your own plays. Its pretty versatile and knowing when to keep or when to use your momentum is the key to victory.

There's at least three other 'ball' games with Kickstarter projects on at the moment...what makes yours different?
Ours isn't a board game. Its played on a 3x3 as mentioned before and plays far more like a skirmish game. It allows a lot more freedom to the mechanics and we are sure traditional board game players will love it once they have the hang of it. We are also based in the medieval setting, compared to sci fi for the other two. The big one is that we are based around 'real' football (soccer) - a fact that gets forgotten sometimes So we are pretty different.

Game balance is a big issue for me and though I'm mostly in it for the 'fun' there's nothing fun about knowing you've lost before you started. How have you gone about (or are going about) testing the game so the more competitive amongst us don't ruin it for everyone else, lol?
We have spent a huge amount of time play-testing this game with some of the best gamers in other systems around. Due to my background I am fortunate to have a great play-testing group of incredibly talented individuals I have met over the years - this has led to an extremely balanced game with beautifully simple mechanics at the base. try it yourself, the quick play rules are out now via our Kickstarter page!

I best put those links here then now you've mentioned them...

Quick Play Rules Available Now

Butchers Guild Cards

Fisherman Guild Cards

Most games in the 'sports' genre also have campaign or league rules. Is this an aspect of the game you've given much thought to?
We will have a basic league system out of the blocks. However we would LOVE to reach some of our further stretch goals post 100k. One of the ideas for this is to release a set of 'bodies' that would enable you to make 4 team members (generic grunts). You could then add a mascot and star player from a guild and do a complete campaign. Its a lofty goal but we want to do league/campaign properly when we attempt it - whether we reach it in the kickstarter or not remains to be seen.

Were there always just 4 primary guilds you were planning as the 'starter' ones, or were there some teams which ended up on the cutting room floor?
There are so many guilds we are losing count. We wanted the initial 4 to be highly contrasting and broad in their coverage of game styles. The butchers represent your beat sticks, your fisherman represent movement tricks and speed. The Masons are all about buffs and synergy and the morticians are about enemy manipulation and positioning. You get a great flavour from the initial 4.

Here seems like an ideal place for a brief interlude to show you all the aforementioned 'Initial 4'.
The Butchers, Fisherman, Mason and (my personal favourite) the Morticians Guilds...

These concepts are amazing but we've seen through various Kickstarter updates that they're still developing and improving the models in question as this recently posted update to the Mason's Captain render shows us...

The early resin models look delicious. Will we get to see any early shots of the metals for those of us who have had an overall bad experience with resin?
Metals and production resins are literally being produced as I type this interview - expect to see them sometime this week.

Here's some shots of a few of the resin versions to keep you going...

The artwork is really nice, would you ever consider a hard-copy art-book as a stretch goal/add-on?
We would love to put an art book in as a hard copy - stretch goal for sure and we are currently talking to a printers about this.

I'll leave this last bit open for you guys...anything in particular you'd like to add?
Check us out at Kickstarter - we are a pair of indie developers bringing our idea of what war-gaming should be like to the masses. The initial response has been incredible and we can't wait to see where we end up! Thanks again for the interview!

It was great to talk to you...I suppose I should link to the actual Kickstarter at this point...

Here's the all important Kickstarter link to Guild Ball.

and here's the promo video...

This is an amazing looking project and is well deserving of as much support as we as a community can muster up. There's are (after all) the sort of projects that Kickstarter was designed for ;-)

Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.

Wyrd Games - March Newsletter

Well that's going to be another expensive month for my Malifaux collection...

NEW RELEASES

Back In Stock

WYR20009 - M2E Rule Book - $40.00

Out Now

WYR20103 - Perdita Box Set - The Latigo Posse - $45.00
WYR20202 - Nicodem Box Set - Open Graves - $40.00
WYR20203 - McMourning Box - Body of Evidence - $45.00
WYR20105 - Witchling Stalker - $18.00
WYR20208 - Nurse - $15.00

Coming Soon

Next month we have 6 new plastic sets for Malifaux 2nd Edition, including 3 sets of never released before models the Monks of Low River, the Lone Marshal and Fuhatsu.