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Wednesday, July 5, 2006
Audio Report: three short podcasts from Origins
The Volity team, Brennan Taylor of Indie Press Revolution, and Rob Dougherty of Your Move (publishers of Battlegrounds). I talked to them on the show floor (generally) and the sound is good, unless you try to listen with the in-page widget. So there.
Tuesday, July 4, 2006
Origins 2006 Live: crawling from the wreckage
A few last details:
- Hey, guess what? AT-43 isn’t collectible. Fixed boxes of assembled and painted plastic figs. It will be in your FLGS in December, provided that Rackham communicates anything to retailers at all, which they seem not to enjoy, so who knows.
- People do indeed seem to be making the jump from Fluxx to the Icehouse world as a result of Treehouse. So yay for Looney Labs, there.
- After visiting the Hidden City booth and demoing Clout Fantasy yet again (to get throwing tips), I have decided not to count them out. First, they have preconstructed stacks now. Second, they have a piratey expansion coming out for Gen Con, and the kids, they love them some pirates. Lastly, (and this is total rumor territory) they may have picked up a major superhero license. And the comics fans seem willing to buy anything. But really, every time I play it I have fun but wish I could get things to land where I wanted. The precons will definitely be something I consider.
- Played The Shab-al-Hiri Roach for the first time - ironic, given that my name is on the back cover - and had a blast. The table took things in a sillier direction than I really wanted to take things at first, but that’s collaboration for you. I managed to keep a bit of an edge on things with my degenerate proto-fascist classics prof. Good times.
- Battlegrounds, man. Finally got to demo this and picked up two army decks. They have the dwarf army debuting at Indy, and next year? WWII, baby. I laid down some tape with Rob Dougherty, Your Move’s head (I think) and Battlegrounds’ designer, so Audio Report subscribers will get an earful of that soon.
Saturday, July 1, 2006
2005 Origins Award winners announced
The 2005 Origins Awards winners are announced, now that those in attendance have had time to sleep off the revelry. Items of note: among the winners were Artesia for Best RPG, GURPS Infinite Worlds for Best RPG Supplement, Gloom for Best Traditional Card Game, and Warmachine: Apotheosis for Game of the Year. The Ravnica: City of Guilds expansion for Magic: The Gathering got the nod for Best Collectible Card Game or Expansion, and Miniatures of the Year went to Wargods of Aegyptus. Midnight Syndicate also got some recognition for their great work, as The 13th Hour Roleplaying Soundtrack won Game Accessory of the Year. The entire winner list is copied below. [EDIT: And now the news of Hall of Fame inductees has come in as well. You can’t tell from the Origins website, though.]
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Origins 2006 Live: don’t follow the corsets
- Playtested Slugfest Games’ upcoming expansion for Kung Fu Fighting. I am NDAed on the details but I can tell you I am confident that this set will make an already-screamingly-fun game even more fun.
- I keep meaning to say to any board game fans at the show that Titan Games has some copies of Tenjo at 75% off and if you have enough space in your luggage/vehicle to get it home, then dammit, you need it. I hope they still have some left as I write this.
- Still hoping to get a shot at Days of Wonder’s Cleopatra and the Society of Architects, which is effectively new at the show.
- WizKids is doing nice fixed figure sets for HeroClix and, even more interestingly, for HorrorClix AvP. There’s one for MechWarrior as well, but the others have nice big plastic windows in the boxes that show you everything inside in a nice little tableau. So, at least collectors will probably find that more appealing.
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