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Thursday, March 17, 2005

March 17th, 2005: Mike Sugarbaker says...
WARMACHINE builds in new outlet for emissions

When a miniatures game company has no regular release schedule of “codexes” or other such expensive modular books, the resulting buildup of fiction and photographs (what minis fans call “fluff”) can toxify and explode, resulting in a dangerous calamity of molten lead and resin. To avoid such an outcome, Privateer Press has announced

Posted in Miniatures Games | 2 Comments

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

March 16th, 2005: Mike Sugarbaker says...
Paizo readies meals in a box for GMs

That’s right, Doritos and Pepsi shipped to your door every month. No. No, that’s not what they’re doing at all. The GameMastery line “offers GameMasters everything they need to run a complete short encounter - including unique high-quality metal miniatures, four double-sided map cards that join together to form a gridded encounter map, and a complete encounter utilizing the Open Gaming License - all in one package.” I happen to think this is a pretty good idea, and man, Paizo’s sure working hard to repurpose Dungeon content (I don’t know for sure that that’s what the GameMastery adventures are, but it seems reasonable).

Posted in D20, Dungeons & Dragons, Roleplaying Games | 7 Comments

March 16th, 2005: Mike Sugarbaker says...
GTS 05 press wrapup, in which I remember to start putting the year in the post title
  • Scroll your way to the bottom game report on this here page for the skinny on a new cooperative Days of Wonder game called Shadows Over Camelot. That’s right, I said cooperative, so all you Lord of the Rings board game haters can start jerking your knees now. There’s a lot of untapped thematic juice in the whole Camelot thing in my opinion (Tom Jolly aside).
  • Okay: we are long overdue in talking about Clout Fantasy, the first news of which came out a couple weeks ago. We didn’t report it at the time, I think because we were too busy boggling at it. I mean, I figured Adkison would get back into publishing at some point, but with a collectible… poker-chip game? Whatever, Pete, it’s your money. But now actual gameplay has been demoed at the show, and… we are still kind of saying whatever, because it’s apparently Diceland with d2’s. I mean, maybe there are more significant differences in the details, and yeah, maybe it’s fun, but… maybe just playing quarters is fun too, and $2.50 gets you more than two of those.
  • Kenzer announces two card games, neither of which has the Knights of the Dinner Table in them, so that’s progress.

Posted in Industry | 7 Comments

March 16th, 2005: Mike Sugarbaker says...
GTS press wrapup, in which WizKids does not piss me off (much)
  • WizKids announces a new CSG, Rocketmen, for this summer. Good news: Buck-Rogers-meets-Rocketeer stylee is hawtt, plus they’re doing a dynamic-army-building resource-management thing, which has needed to happen in minis gaming for a while in my opinion. Let’s make tabletop minis a better way to RTS than RTS! Bad news: “Rocketmen will be accompanied by both Web- and DVD-based cartoons.” All right! Way to focus.
  • Green Ronin is showing Human Head’s line of Gothica board games, which is actually a line now as of Frankenstein’s Children and Mummy’s Wrath. There is also, of course, Warhammer Fantasy Role-Playing, which is looking sharp and hits at the end of the month. Our spies tell us that, besides Green Ronin, indy RPG companies tend to have a very low profile at the show…
  • I can tell you there are some inaccuracies in this GR summary of Looney Labs’ plans for the year. It’s not true that they aren’t visiting conventions - they’ll have their usual large “experiment” space at Origins, they just won’t have a booth. Also, don’t expect all three of those Icehouse boxed games “soon” - I think they want to get Volcano out soonest, but my money is on Martian Chess or (my favorite) Homeworlds.

Posted in Industry | Comments Off

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

March 15th, 2005: Mike Sugarbaker says...
Um… Origins Awards nominees?

Whatever, I’ve lost track of what they think their process is. Here they are.

Posted in Industry | 1 Comment

March 15th, 2005: Mike Sugarbaker says...
Before you die, you see the pentagon

If only it were true. I mean, if I knew I only had seven days to live, you can be damn sure I’d give ol’ Rumsfeld a little sump’in sump’in when I saw him. But, um, my actual point: I typed in www.wizards.com/hecatomb/ on a whim, and look what I got. Adorable. Every spooky graphic design cliche of the last ten years in one convenient bookmark.

You know, a lot about this game looks dumb so far, but show attendees are actually saying this could be what Wizards needs right now - namely, a fantasy-themed card game that people interested in Magic can get into on the ground floor, without having to study obsessively and/or draft for twelve months before they catch on. So, I’m willing to believe it might be okay. But damn, I’m not optimistic about the graphics so far.

Posted in Card Games | 6 Comments

March 15th, 2005: Mike Sugarbaker says...
GTS press wrapup, part deux
  • Piles of news on smaller companies here - Face2Face is continuing their Sid Sackson revival line with an edition of Can’t Stop that goes back to the classic stop-sign board. Plus, Eagle has a new original(?) big-box combat game called Conquest of the Empire, and we see just how very full indeed is Fantasy Flight’s schedule. It turns out that a couple of those games are old OOP Games Workshop titles (Warrior Knights and Fury of Dracula, specifically).
  • The Magic: the Gathering team has plans for customer outreach this year - bad plans. I mean, seriously, Magic Road Show? Thanks for completely missing the point, guys. The heart of your game right now is drafting, like it or not, and learning to draft in the current environment is too damn hard. Maybe your Road Show should be a traveling school - or maybe you should tweak the DCI to emphasize sealed-deck or Arena-style league play instead of anything Type II.
  • Mongoose announces Paranoia standalone card game, with new B&W art. This could go either way, given the Mongoose “kwality-with-a-K” design department. Or maybe it’s just their RPGs that have that problem. At any rate I have long dreamed of the card-gaming possibilities in the Paranoia universe so I’ll watch this one’s career with great interest, as it were.

Posted in Industry | 6 Comments

March 15th, 2005: Mike Sugarbaker says...
FFG at GTS: perfecting the art of breeding larger and larger boxes

Fantasy Flight is showing boatloads of stuff, including an English edition of Reiner Knizia’s excellent abstract Einfach Genial (under the new title Ingenious), a World of WarCraft boardgame in a mammoth Twilight Imperium-sized box (multiple win conditions: sell gold on eBay without getting caught and banned by Blizzard, or actually find something to do after you hit 45th level), and evidence of their highly questionable decision to work with Marvel Comics. Plenty of original titles too. Oddly, no Arkham Horror box.

Posted in Board Games | Comments Off

March 15th, 2005: Mike Sugarbaker says...
WotC maybe sort of announces Narnia tie-in CCG

Brace yourselves for some actual reporting: a random source at GAMA tells us WotC will be doing a CCG in the second half of the year to tie in with the Chronicles of Narnia movies. According to the same source, this brings WotC’s total for new CCGs coming out this year to a staggering six. This right after WotC told retailers that, out of 157 CCGs made in the history of the hobby, only twelve have lasted longer than four years. (Way to toss more bodies on the pile, Wizards!)

Posted in Card Games | Comments Off

March 15th, 2005: Mike Sugarbaker says...
GTS press wrap-up, part the first

Since we haven’t got a correspondent at GAMA this year, our coverage comes to you live from the OgreCave.com Worldwide Network GTS-CENTERPLEX Coverage Center (which looks suspiciously like the cubicles at our day jobs), where we tap into every GTS news source available to our high technology (which looks suspiciously like reading the same news sites you do) and bring you the highlights. To wit:

  • Wizards’ complete schedule for 2005 features a few surprises, including four Star Sisterz books, all of which have titles that make them sound vaguely like softcore pornography.
  • WotC kills GI JOE TCG effective immediately. Everybody now, along with me: COOOHHHHH-BRRRAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!!!!
  • Despite our increasingly frequent claim that WotC understands and uses market research better than almost anyone else in the industry, market research does indeed have a dark side. You know, 41% of 15-year-olds in focus groups think it’s “edgy” to say “hecka.”
  • The first photograph here (scroll down) suggests that AEG will also be announcing a City of Heroes product. My first guess would be a CCG. [Update: Yup.]
  • Full D&D schedule reveals there will actually be a book called “D&D for Dummies” coming out. Hits in April. That sound you just heard was a thousand asinine morning radio DJs and comedy writers licking their chops in anticipation.

Posted in Industry | 12 Comments

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