Catalyst Game Labs announced the upcoming May 25, 2011, release of the following products:
- Battletech Handbook: House Liao
- Shadowrun: A Fistful of Credsticks – Horizon Adventure 1
Tag Archive for miniatures game
Enduring Freedom Expansion Offer
Ambush Alley Games is currently taking pre-orders for their Enduring Freedom expansion source book for Force on Force. The first 100 people who pre-order Enduring Freedom will reportedly receive a free 20mm Elhiem Coalition sniper figure sculpted specifically for the release.
Category: Miniatures Games | Tags: Ambush Alley Games, Enduring Freedom, Force on Force, miniatures game
Aerodrome 2.0 at Gen Con 2011
According to the Aerodrome web site, Aerodrome 2.0 will be shown at Gen Con for the first time this year. Aerodrome is a World War 2 aerial combat game which is simple, easy to learn, and fun to play. Players use wooden cockpit control panels to determine their maneuvers and telescoping poles to simulate altitude for their miniature aircraft.
Category: Miniatures Games | Tags: aerial combat game, Aerodrome, Aerodrome 2.0, Gen Con 2011, miniatures game, World War II
Privateer Releases New HORDES and WARMACHINE Editions
Seattle WA. February 9, 2009-Privateer Press, Inc. is proud to announce the new Mk II edition rules for its WARMACHINE and HORDES tabletop games.
“In the past six years of WARMACHINE, the game has grown rapidly, and we feel the time has come to reevaluate and retool in preparation for the upcoming years of full metal combat. We have chosen to tighten the bolts on both the general game rules and the individual model rules to make every model as compelling as possible and to perfect the WARMACHINE experience,” stated Jason Soles, Privateer Press lead developer.
The public will get their first look at the WARMACHINE Mk II rules in April through an open field test, allowing players to become familiar with the changes while providing feedback that will assist Privateer Press in making final adjustments to WARMACHINE Mk II before going to press.
The WARMACHINE: Prime Mk II rulebook will be released to the public in early 2010. The new edition of HORDES will follow later in the year. All tournaments, leagues, and release events that make up Privateer Press organized play will adopt the new edition on its release.
More information regarding the WARMACHINE Mk II rules will be announced as it becomes available. This and other news items can be found at www.privateerpress.com and in the pages of No Quarter Magazine.
WARMACHINE Mk II FAQ.
Privateer Releases Monsterpocalypse I Chomp NY Expansion
Seattle WA, January 22, 2009 — Privateer Press announces the first expansion
to its highly successful Monsterpocalypse collectible miniature game, Series 2:
I Chomp NY. The expansion is set to release in March 2009 and contains 52 new
high-quality pre-painted plastic miniatures, available in randomized boosters,
for use with Monsterpocalypse: Rise.
When asked what the new expansion meant for Monsterpocalypse, Privateer Press
playtest coordinator David Carl stated, “I Chomp NY expands the power and
versatility of each Monsterpocalypse faction with all-new monsters and units.
This set also introduces the new monument structures–awesome reproductions of
the world-famous landmarks from the New York City skyline, including the Statue
of Liberty and more!”
I Chomp NY will feature two booster types. The Monster/Structure Booster (PIP
50009, MSRP $12.99) will contain either a random monster’s alpha and hyper forms
or a random monument building and the Insurance Company HQ building. The Unit
Booster (PIP 50010, MSRP $9.99) will contain five randomly assorted units. The
new expansion will have a single production run and will be available at
independent hobby game and comic stores only while supplies last.
To support retailers as they celebrate the release of I Chomp NY, and due to
the overwhelming popularity of the Rise retail launch kit, Privateer Press
announces the Monsterpocalypse: I Chomp NY Retail Launch Kit (PIP 50011). This
new launch kit includes 21 free limited-edition C-Type Shinobi shadow units;
players receive one limited-edition figure for every five boosters they purchase
in one transaction from their local game store. The new program ensures everyone
can participate in the I Chomp NY launch celebration–and possibly even walk away
with a full play set of five shadow C-Type Shinobi.
Privateer Press will also be offering a box-top redemption program for the
first I Chomp NY limited-edition monster mega form. For a limited time, players
who collect 12 I Chomp NY booster box tops, from their local game store only,
will be able to send them (with receipts) to Privateer Press to receive a mega
Pteradax figure. Visit www.monsterpocalypse.com in the
coming weeks for more information on this exciting promotion.
Privateer Press will also continue to offer free Monsterpocalypse organized
play support for I Chomp NY. Retailers can register for their free event support
kits at www.privateerevents.com. Each free
support kit includes a limited-edition shadow figure from I Chomp NY for every
pre-registered player as well as highly sought-after mega forms of various I
Chomp NY monsters. Support kits will become available with the release of I
Chomp NY.
Category: Miniatures Games | Tags: cmg, expansion, i chomp ny, miniatures game, monsterpocalypse, Privateer Press
Dark Realm Miniatures Releases Seeds of War 1.1
From Dark Realm Miniatures comes the following news:
Seeds of War is upon us..
Dark Realm Miniatures proudly presents Seeds of War. This great rule set is the lastest as we start to piece things together to bring this game alive. Much has gone into this new edition of the rules and you can view it here.
The latest SoW 1.1 stats for Kraytonians, Pax and Andrayada are now available here.
Category: Miniatures Games | Tags: dark realm miniatures, miniatures game, seeds of war, war game, wargame
Fantasy Flight Games’ “Tannhauser”
While at Gen Con, I had the opportunity to sit down for a 30-45 minute demo of the combat and movement mechanics of Fantasy Flight Games’ “Tannhauser: Operation Novgorod” expansion to its popular “Tannhauser” title.
The setting of Tannhauser is that World War I never ended. To quote FFG’s web site: “Tannhäuser is a tactical board game of paranormal investigations and Great War combat, pitting the forces of the Reich and the Army of the Union together in a struggle for control of the Obscura Cardinal Cornerstones, magical artifacts of immense power.” The “Operation Novgorod” expansion is a not-yet-released addition to the game.
Tannhauser takes place on a game board, using pre-painted miniatures, cardboard sheets representing the characters involved, cardboard counters (used to mark the location of debris, ammo, weapons, and the like), and 10-sided dice. The image below depicts the basic components of the game and some artwork from the Operation Novgorod expansion:
Below is a typical character sheet. In the bottom right corner, you can see the cardboard counters used to identify the character’s special abilities, weapons, and ammunition he or she might be carrying.
Just above that is a table of numeric values, to the right of which is another cardboard counter with a star on it. This counter is used to mark damage to the character, by turning it counter-clockwise so that the star points to the next row down in the table. Some characters have abilities that improve with damage, while most deteriorate. Once a character has taken more damage than can be scored on the table, that character is considered dead and removed from play.
Tannhauser may look like a board game, but in play it’s somewhere between a boardgame and a traditional miniatures game. This would make it a good “bridge” game for introducing less “hardcore” gamers to a more complex or traditional miniatures game.
The game board uses circles to indicate positions in the building/terrain where a character might move. The circles of a matching color are considered to be in weapons range and within a character’s line of sight. Some circles have multiple colors, corresponding to the fact that they can be seen from different areas. In the example image below, the two characters share matching colored circles and thus are considered in line of fire and potentially within weapons range. (Melee weapons require adjacent circles. Other weapons require a specific number of circles between the two characters for them to be effective.)
The example below illustrates how various circles may be visible from multiple areas.
When a character dies in Tannhauser, that character’s weapons and ammo are dropped on the map in the circle where the character fell. Other characters may pick up these weapons and ammunition and use them.
The combat model seems reasonably realistic, based on my 30-45 minute introduction to it. If you open up with a machine gun at relatively close range on someone, there’s a very good chance that someone is going to die. Toss an explosive anywhere near them, they’ll take damage. There are modifiers that allow for more damage or more hits.
During my demo with Tannhauser, 5 characters on each side were pitted against each other in an indoor setting. It was fairly clear that when the number of characters on one side of the battle starts to outnumber those on the other side, the characters on the “losing” side will very likely continue to lose unless some very lucky rolls of the dice occur. My understanding of the full “non-demo” version of the game is that you can call in replacements or reinforcements for the “non-critical” characters, which would help to even the odds a little. Otherwise, a slight advantage seems to very quickly become a victory.
I found Tannhauser very simple to learn, easy to play, and (most importantly) fun. My main concern for Tannhauser, based strictly on a 30-45 minute demonstration and NOT a full game or multiple games, is that there might be an issue of replayability here. The game board certainly won’t change between sessions. The main characters, unless I missed something, don’t change between sessions. The only things I see changing between multiple sessions of the game are the dice rolls and the potential for critical items of equipment to change hands due to a character dying. I’m not sure that’s enough variation to keep the game interesting. But again, I want to point out that mine is not a picture of the complete game, and there may indeed be a lot more to it than I’m aware of. (Those of you who own and play this game regularly, please comment on this article about YOUR experience with it, because I don’t want to sell this game short.)
On the whole, I thought it was an enjoyable game, reasonably quick to pick up (less than 5 minutes), allowing for some decent strategic and tactical thinking, and likely to be an excellent game to “bridge” traditional players into more-serious adult games.
Category: Board Games, Mike's Reviews, Miniatures Games | Tags: board game, Fantasy Flight Games, miniatures game, operation novgorod, tannhauser
Classic Battletech: Tactical Operations Available
From the Classic Battletech web site comes the following:
The next core rulebook, Tactical Operations, is now available in PDF
format in the BattleShop at BattleCorps.com. Also available is the pre-order
for the print
version and the combo
PDF/print pre-order package. Check it out today!
Wolf & Blake Starterbook On Sale
According to the Classic Battletech web site, the Starterbook: Wolf & Blake PDF is now on sale on the BattleCorps.com Battleshop. You can also pre-order a copy from the Classic Battletech web site. For more information, click here to visit the Classic Battletech web site.
Category: Game Deals, Miniatures Games | Tags: blake, classic battletech, miniatures game, pdf, starter, wolf
Pre-order Legend of the High Seas
The following article was imported from our old content management system on 08/10/2008. It may contain missing links and missing images which we do not plan to go back and correct.We apologize for any inconvenience.
Black Scorpion has announced that you can now pre-order Legends of the High Seas from them. Priced at 20 GBP, they estimate shipping in mid-February. When you order this product from Black Scorpion, you’ll receive a cabin boy miniature not available elsewhere. Click here for more information and ordering.
Category: Miniatures Games | Tags: Black Scorpion Miniatures, cabin boy miniature, Legends of the High Seas, miniatures game
A&A North Africa Map Guide in March
The following article was imported from our old content management system on 08/10/2008. It may contain missing links and missing images which we do not plan to go back and correct.We apologize for any inconvenience.
The Avalon Hill Axis and Allies page announced today that a North Africa Map Guide will be released in March 2008. This product, for ages 12+, is designed for use with North Africa 1939-1943 and contains 3 full-color, double-sided, 21" x 30" hex maps, along with 2 all-new scenarios.
Category: Wargames | Tags: Avalon Hill, Axis and Allies, miniatures game, North Africa, wargame, World War II
The OGRE Board
(The following article comes from John Fleisher…)
I’ve started a project to create a replica of the original Steve Jackson Games “Ogre” map, using Heroscape tiles and a lot of time.
If you are not familiar with the Ogre game, here’s a link…
I was cleaning out the dungeon (I mean the basement gameroom) the other day and found a couple of boxes of Heroscape that I had picked up at a thrift store for a few bucks. Looking at the hex tiles used to make maps for the game, a thought occurred to me.
I dug out my original 1977 Metagaming Ogre game and looked at the map.
Hmmmm…too plain. I dug out my SJG pocket box edition of Ogre and found the color map that I remembered so well. Perfect.
The Heroscape tiles are about 1.5″ across the flats, so all the Ogre minature vehicles would fit, except Ogres of course. Creating this board will be good practice for building my ultimate Ogre board, with 4″ hexes that will completely hold even the largest of the Ogre miniatures. That board has been in the back of my mind ever since I saw the Hexon II products for the first time.
The Hexon stuff looks great, but is very expensive, so I’m still pondering cheaper solutions.
One possibility is some hexagonal ceramic tiles that I have stashed away from a previous project. I found the tiles at a discount building supply store about 20 years ago, when I was playing Star Fleet Battles with the Starline 2200 miniatures. I hated the way the ships took up several hexes on the mapsheets, and decided to do something about it.
The tiles were about 4.25″ across the flats and pure white. So I started by spraying all 400 of them Krylon Ultra Flat Black. As you can imagine this took a while. Once all of them were dry I sprayed them with a clear acrylic coat to keep them from getting scratched up.
After letting them dry again I did a trial setup on the dining room table. They looked good, but I was worried about the rough ceramic on the backs of the tiles scratching my table. So, after a trip to the craft store for a pile of green felt squares, I started hot gluing tiles to felt sheets (4 per sheet) and then when they were cool, I cut around the hexes with scissors.
Perfect. No scratching and I could stack them for storage without worrying about them getting all scratched up. Not sure why I chose green felt though, black would have made more sense, but the green barely shows between the tiles.
I found some cardboard boxes for storage/transport of the tiles and packed them up for my next convention game. When I picked up one of the boxes I realized why ceramic tile hexes had not caught on before, these things are heavy! Each box is probably about 30 pounds, and I have 6 boxes of them.
They look great laid out on a table though, and since they are heavy they don’t move around too much. They are even geomorphic, so if the battle starts to move towards one end of the table, you can move them around.
If I can find some more tiles like these, I may use them for my big Ogre board. If not, I may repaint these or something.
Anyway, back to the Heroscape tile Ogre board.
The original Ogre map is 15 hexes “wide” by 22 hexes “tall”. Duplicating it with the HS tiles makes it about 24″ wide by 36″ tall. Not too huge.
I looked around my garage for something to mount it on and found a hollow core door left by the previous owners of my house. Apparently at some point someone had kicked or punched the door and put a hole through one side. They had replaced the door, but why they kept the old one is beyond me, so I grabbed my circular saw and ripped the door in half, disposing of the broken piece.
I pulled a bunch of the HS tiles out of the box and started fitting them together. The tiles come in several colors (no big deal, I’m painting them anyway) and several shapes including a single hex, 2 hex, 3 hex, 7 hex, and a big 24-hex unit. After some study, I had a hex map the same size as the original Ogre map. All it needed now was some terrain features.
The tiles fit together fairly well, but I was worried about separation issues once I got a few layers of paint on the board. So I brushed some plastic model cement (Ambroid ProWeld) along the seams to connect everything together. There were some gaps between the tiles where the sculpted edges fit together, I filled those with PVA glue. After letting the whole thing dry overnight I discovered that both glues had seeped down the cracks to the base and now the map was solidly mounted to its base. Cool. A side effect I had not planned on.
I had some Sculpey left over from previous projects so I dug that out and started rolling out some pieces to make the craters and hills. I was not sure how to do this so I started by making a test crater on a piece of scrap plastic.
You have to bake Sculpey in an oven at 275 degrees for 15 minutes or so to get it to harden. After baking, the crater looked perfect. I used a razor blade to separate it from the plastic and glued it down to my 7-hex “testbed” with PVA.
After the PVA dried I took the test piece up to the garage and sprayed the whole thing with Krylon gray primer. While it was still wet I sprinkled it liberally with Woodland Scenics fine railroad ballast for texture. After the primer dried I shook off the excess ballast and then sprayed it with clear Krylon acrylic to glue things down.
After another drying session I checked to see how well the ballast was stuck on, scraping my fingernail across the hex did not dislodge any ballast. I was starting to think this might work.
I mixed some tan and orange acrylic craft paint together for a test. It went on fairly well, but I had to scrub a little to get coverage. After that dried I drybrushed the test piece a little to bring out some of the highlights. I painted some details on the crater, nothing fancy, just enough to see what it looked like.
I sanded the flat hexboard lightly to give the paint and Sculpey something to stick to, and then sprayed the board with a light coat of gray primer to see what needed touching up. Then I spent a couple of hours forming walls and craters out of Sculpey, and making the board match up to the map. When I finished I had something similar to this:
I’ve left out a couple of events, let’s just say that the HS tiles and a heatlamp don’t mix well. Since I stuck the Sculpey to the board, it was too big to fit into my oven. So I attempted to harden the Sculpey using a heatlamp. Apparently the HS tiles have a lower melting point than I would have thought. Sorry, no pics of the damage.
After removing the melted section of the board and redoing a few craters and walls I was ready to continue. I rigged up a blow dryer over the board and let it run for a while, pointing it at different areas of the board. I found that the Sculpey hardened in about 15 minutes. WooHoo! Next time I’ll buy a house with a bigger oven.
Well, that’s the current state of things. This weekend I plan to put a coat of latex paint on the board and sprinkle the ballast on the whole board.
Well, for a change I actually accomplished what I planned. I found a leftover can of green latex from the living room, and put a coat on the board. I let it sit overnight with a fan pointed at it so that it would be sure to dry.
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The next day it looked pretty good, with just a couple of spots that needed touch up. My original plan was to coat the board with the green paint, then sprinkle ballast on it. But I noticed the paint was drying really fast, so I would have to do it in sections.
I decided to use some spray acrylic sealer I had instead. I sprayed about 1/3 of the board, then sprinkled ballast on about 1/4 of the board, leaving an area open so that I could blend things together.
This worked well, so I finished up the whole board and let it sit for a few hours to dry. When I came back to it I tilted the board up vertically and let all the excess ballast run off onto my makeshift table. I swept up the excess for reuse. Some areas of the board had not fully covered, so I sprayed and ballasted them again. This process went on for several repetitions, until I ended up with this:
Looks pretty good to me. I’m letting it dry overnight again and then I will brush off some of the loose ballast and clean things up a little, then coat the whole thing with clear acrylic again. The gray ballast has a neat appearance, I might have to do something in the future with it to make a lunar landscape.
My next decision is the base color for the board, I’m thinking I will go a bit lighter than the red-orange used in the Ogre mapsheet above, so it looks more realistic (to my eyes, anyway).
I decided to use tan and brown washes to get the appearance I am looking for. I mixed some tan craft paint with water at 4:1 to get a thin wash and sprayed the board with my airbrush.
I painted heavier around the craters and ridgelines to accentuate them.
After the tan wash dried with the help of my portable fan, I mixed up a much darker brown wash at the same proportions.
I thought it looked pretty good, so I let it dry for a few hours under the fan again. When it was dry I sprayed it with matte acrylic sealer. The next step is drybrushing the craters and ridges to give them character. But first…
I just wanted to set up some miniatures to get a feel for how things would look…
OK, it’s been a while since my last update, but I think it’s looking pretty good. After a few drybrushing sessions (and by a few I mean dozens) the details started showing up pretty well.
I went ahead and painted the edges of the board black to give it a more finished look. I also gave it a couple more light coats of acrylic sealer, and then a dusting of matte sealer to get rid of the shine. Here’s a couple of close up shots of the craters.
I think it turned out rather well. I’m looking forward to playing a few games on it soon. Now I just need to get busy and finish painting my Ogre miniatures… all 600 of them.
I think I’ll do a separate article on that little task….
