» Miniatures Games
Sunday, August 8, 2010
This just in from This Just In From Gen Con, Sunday 12PM 2010
Looking forward to the inevitable late-night recap episode, but here are our notes for the supposed last TJI of the year, with guests Monte Cook, Robin Laws, and Eddy Webb.
- The White Wolf party apparently exceeded expectations.
- Again with the Iron Tyrants!
- The 5-2-1 rule, expert mode for the 3-2-1 rule.
- True Dungeon finally gets a mention. It doesn’t seem to be on everyone’s lips as in past years.
- Skulduggery sounds hot.
- Hamlet’s Hit Points
- Mars Colony
- ICONS
- Blood Bowl Team Manager, and acknowledgement that FFG’s announcing things before they have a release date is irritating as all hell.
And that’s Gen Con. Hope you had fun!
Thursday, August 5, 2010
This just in from This Just In From Gen Con, Thursday 5PM 2010
Sorry, I was in the bathroom. Here we go!
- Again, the Adventure Burner and the Parsely Pack.
- gameplaywright.net
- Things We Think About Games, The Bones, and Robin Laws’ Hamlet’s Hit Points.
- Happy Birthday, Robot! (Note to others who want to see what games will come out of Kickstarter: remember Perfect? The new edition text is pretty stellar.)
- Malifaux by Wyrd Miniatures
- Battlestar Galactica, Dominion, and Thunderstone (OgreCave review here)
- IPR and Dresden.
- Apocalypse World by Vincent Baker.
- Apparently there’s WiFi on the show floor, because people are doing things like paying via PayPal on their iPhones and carrying zero cash.
- Steal Away Jordan
- A Taste For Murder
- Trail of Cthulhu (OgreCave review here)
- Skulduggery
- The ENnies
- Iron Tyrants – color me intrigued!
- People still love those BattleTech pods.
- The Smallville team charges the mic.
Can I just say how great it is to not hear Ryan Macklin again after so long? Nah, I’m just kidding. See you tomorrow!
Monday, July 12, 2010
Dust Games Products to Move from AEG to FFG
Alderac Entertainment Group announced on July 9, 2010 that most of the Dust Games design library they have published or were going to publish (excluding The Adventurers) will be moving to Fantasy Flight Games. Some games involved in the transfer include Dust Tactics, City of Thieves, Arcana, and Mad Zeppelin. The increasing number of games on AEG’s release schedule was going to require the company to grow faster than it was prepared to, and may have forced AEG to release multiple titles per month to keep pace with both its own planned releases as well as those of Dust Games. AEG will cut the total number of scheduled releases to provide adequate playtesting and support for each product they do release. The company also plans to focus on its core product lines that are already doing well (such as L5R and Thunderstone), and may push some other new games back to 2011 release dates. GenCon 2010 events that were scheduled for the affected products will go on as planned, only to be run by FFG staff instead of AEG. (Full AEG announcement copied below.)
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
2010 Origins Award winners announced
Though the news trickled out in other ways, the 2010 Origins Award winners have finally been announced. Among the highlights: the rerelease of Space Hulk beat out Small World for Best Board Game; Looney Labs continues its streak with a Best Party Game win for Are You the Traitor?; the return of WizKids and HeroClix gets a nod for Best Miniatures Line; and Eclipse Phase wins for Best RPG. (Click through to read the full list.)
Read More…
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Monsterpocalypse film in the works
Hollywood’s been shopping for games again, and now DreamWorks may be courting Tim Burton to direct a feature film based on the Monsterpocalypse property. DreamWorks picked up the movie rights to Privateer Press’ collectible miniatures game last month, and is working on forming the right team to make big screen kaiju magic. My question: will fans be thrilled or worried by the idea of their city-stomping aliens and monsters potentially getting the Nightmare Before Christmas animation treatment?
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
WizKids/NECA to develop Star Trek Clix game
Though I doubt it will be the final frontier for the game, WizKids/NECA announced today that it will make a Clix game using the Star Trek license. More specifically, the company will create “HeroClix branded miniature games to be sold both physically and digitally, set in the Star Trek universe, including all of the Star Trek television shows and Star Trek feature films.” The interesting bit (other than a new collectible Star Trek game) is the word “digitally” – could this mean a Star Trek Clix iPhone app, maybe? Time will tell. Gamers will get their first opportunity to boldly go where no Clix have gone before this December 2010. I say, tribbles versus borg, aaannnd… fight!
Read More…
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
May a fifth be with you – tequila or something else, doesn’t matter
Catching up with some news:
Green Ronin announces DC Adventures RPG on the Mutants and Masterminds engine. Great for GR, but I’m trying to imagine DC-owned characters I’d want to play with, and the only one coming to mind is the Spirit, which I don’t think really counts. Not feeling drawn to Watchmen, even, unless it had an awesome pirate minigame. Tiny Titans would be fun though.
Looney Labs announces Back to the Future: the Card Game. I’ve played Chrononauts variants that focus on a small set of fictional events, and they’re great – the game can really be a platform for interesting things, in the same way that Fluxx can. Of course, we don’t know yet whether this will be that, exactly.
Some of the LEGO Games line is on Amazon now. I’ve got Lava Dragon and Minotaurus.
That’s right, bring Papa some Roman action. (Link is less dirty than I just made it sound.) As Purple Pawn noted, Arcane Legions has a foot in two worlds but isn’t really finding its footing in either. Pro tip for Wells Expeditions: that booster bundle is pretty pricey. If I could get its contents piecemeal, though, I’d probably have given you that $80 by now. And no, I don’t have a way to give it to you piecemeal.
In other news I’m reading the Dresden Files RPG and it’s hot. If it’s gonna be in Borders (and it is), then it’s mainstream, and this is most of the last ten years of indie innovations in traditionally-structured gaming, brought to the mainstream. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s “indie in mainstream clothing:” as of this book, this stuff is mainstream, simple as that. If I understand correctly, you can now buy the PDF separately from the print preorder, so if an urban-fantasy game is up your street, hit that up.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Clix and other distant rumblings from GTS 2010
Sadly, the OgreCave crew didn’t make it out to the GAMA Trade Show this year, but if we had, we’d probably be talking about the following news trickling out of Vegas right now (other than the Origins Awards nominees, of course):
- HeroClix, now coming to us from NECA/WizKids, is back in a big way at GTS. The Brave & the Bold, with its team-up “duo” figures, arrives next month; Brightest Day is after that, followed by Web of Spider-Man (which will have an Iron Man/WarMachine duo figure), and then DC 75 will celebrate DC’s 75th anniversary and include characters from the White Lantern Corp. The HaloClix game will also get a new set, possibly to coincide with the release of Halo: Reach late this year.
- In other NECA/WizKids news, there are plans for games based on the movie properties of Gremlins and Freddy vs Jason, though according to a forum post by Justin Ziran, VP of Brand Marketing at WizKids, these will not be Clix games. Finally, WizKids plans to introduce three new Euro style boxed games coming this fall, designed by some combination of Reiner Knizia, Vlaada Chvátil, Mike Elliot and Eric Lang. The Euro games will be based on three “HUGE properties” and use pre-painted figures – a WizKids speciality.
- Pirate versus Pirate (Out of the Box Publishing) will have a triangular play area with some loot in the middle, and pit 2-3 teams of pirates against each other. In this board game sequel to Ninja versus Ninja, each Pirate crew can win by capturing the treasure or eliminating his opponents.
- Wizards of the Coast will produce a new D&D “Red Box” Starter set in September, and have a number of 4E products lined up for beginning or returning players. Let’s not forget the big Castle Ravenloft cooperative board game, either – coming in mid-August, the game will be for 1-5 players (solo rules? Interesting…), and include a scenario book, 40 plastic figures, interlocking dungeon tiles, 200 encounter and treasure cards, and more, all for $64.95. I’m trying not to get my hopes up for this to be a D&D take on Space Hulk. I’m trying, but failing. It just sounds sweet!
- James Ernest and Mike Selinker ran demos of their new game Dust & Sin, an appropriately-named game about building Las Vegas, which will be published later this year by Mayfair Games. [EDIT: After a few name changes, this game is now called Lords of Vegas]
- AEG and Dust Games will release Mad Zeppelin in May, and a Thunderstone expansion, Wrath of the Elements will arrive this year as well.
- Super Genius Games (the company founded by R. Hyrum Savage and Stan! that brought us Cthulhu adventures like Murder of Crows) announced the Adventurer’s Handbook, a 96 page softcover compiling some of the best Genius Guides from the company’s Pathfinder line. It ships July 2010 and will cost $19.99.
We’ll add more as we hear it. Game publishers: if you announced products at GTS this year, tell us about ‘em, and I’ll add to the story as I’m able. (You could also put news(at)ogrecave(DOT)com on your PR email list, while you’re at it. Please and thank you.)
Origins Awards 2010 nominees announced
As per the usual pattern, as the GAMA Trade Show ends, this year’s contenders for Origins Awards get sorted out and announced. As per the selections made by the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design, the nominees for 2010 are listed below. In Card Games, The Stars are Right is up against Thunderstone and Martian Fluxx for the award; in Board Games, Castle Panic is fighting to beat Small World and the Space Hulk rerelease; and the Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space RPG is hoping to snatch the RPG award away before Eclipse Phase or A Song of Ice And Fire can grab it. But we won’t know the results until the Origins Game Fair this summer, where the attendees will vote to decide the winners. (By the way, more than a few of the nominees were part of our OgreCave Christmas Gift Guide 2009. I’m just saying.)
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Wizards not planning to renew Star Wars license
Earlier today, Wizards of the Coast made an announcement on the company’s message board confirming what has been rumored for a while now: when the Star Wars license comes up for renewal this May, Wizards will not seek to renew it. In the announcement, Greg Yahn, WotC’s Director of Marketing, states “We had a long and fantastic run, but with the economic downturn, we have made the tough decision to discontinue our Star Wars lines.” WotC products for the Star Wars Miniatures Game and Star Wars Roleplaying Game will be available through August, with multiple new releases scheduled through April. Wizards had first taken over the Star Wars license from Decipher back in 2002, starting with WotC’s version of the Star Wars CCG.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
OgreCave’s Christmas Gift Guide 2009, part 3
If you plan to give gifts this holiday season – or better yet, receive them – you’ve surely been perusing local stores and forming a list. The Cave dwellers have done the same, in the third section of our OgreCave Christmas Gift Guide 2009. This portion, the Twelve Boxes for Christmas, focuses on board games, in the hope of guiding some of your big-ticket expenses toward enjoyable gaming choices.
All that remains is our traditionally last-minute PDF/downloadable product list. We’ll be sure to drop it down your chimney when you’re least expecting it. … No, that’s not a euphemism for anything! Sheesh!
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Beware of lurking ninja
Today is the Day of the Ninja, December 5th, and we nearly failed our Spot check. We didn’t manage to get a Games of the Ninja mini-feature put together this year (feel free to check out last year’s page, though), partly because we couldn’t think of any new ninja-related games we’re dying to play. So, here’s the question: if you were to celebrate the stealthy assassins today – and who wouldn’t? – what game(s) would you be throwing down with?
Friday, December 4, 2009
Can Wormhole make papercraft gaming work in the box?
This might be really dumb or really smart: I honestly can’t tell. Wormhole is a complete starship-combat minis game for $25 MSRP. How has this amazing feat been accomplished, you ask? Well, the models are printed on paper, without so much as a single die cut. Gamers are to assemble and glue their fleets in the time-honored, or at least Boing Boing honored, tradition of papercraft, of which the ships they display are far from the most complex examples.
These cats are doing a bang-up job on their web presence; given the very thorough tutorial videos on the web site, assembling this stuff actually looks easier (but a lot more time-consuming) than some plastic card-model games I’ve messed with. The question is, will hobby gamers accept the “hobby” half of a papercraft game? From what little of the rules are in plain sight, it doesn’t look like Wormhole will draw the casual types, but the risk is there won’t be enough perceived table-candy payoff for hardcore minis fans… and it doesn’t seem as though people attracted to this sort of game are all that recession-conscious. (Me, I would pay $35 for something with a few die cuts.)
Monday, September 14, 2009
NECA Buys WizKids, Clix, and Pirates Properties
The National Entertainment Collectibles Association, Inc. (NECA) website reports that NECA has purchased the majority of the assets of WizKids, Inc. from The Topps Company, Inc., including the award-winning Clix family of games, which includes HeroClix, ActionClix, HorrorClix and SportsClix. NECA will also acquire the WizKids brand, the Pocketmodel Game family of games, including the Pirates of the Crimson Coast, Pirates of the Spanish Main and Pirates of the Cursed Seas games, and the Mage Knight line of games. NECA reports that it will continue the successful HeroClix product line with licensing agreements from DC Comics and Marvel.
Friday, September 11, 2009
PAX 2009: The Northwest really wants to kill you
It turns out that when you get 70,000 gamers together, a couple of them will be sick. It also seems Allan is a robot and therefore impervious to H1N1. Or else my car’s AC doesn’t work very much like an airplane’s.
If it seems like the PAX pox is the only news coming out of the show, that’s because it is – announcements on the digital front typically still happen at E3, and tabletop ones quite naturally happen at Gen Con. Now that I can once again move without groaning, however, I do want to point out some news that hasn’t gotten very big play and might change how some people feel about Arcane Legions.
This is a game that I’m pretty excited about, despite being demonstrably terrible at it and despite its mild but still vexing degree of collectibility. If random sorting is a deal stopper for you, consider these quanta: 1) boosters are sorted by faction, just like the fixed infantry and cavalry boxes. 2) Boosters are also being sold in “booster bundles” – sets of eight boosters that guarantee you one of everything in the faction. (This model was pioneered by our own Lee Valentine in PowerStorm, it should be pointed out.) A bundle isn’t exactly a cheap thrill, but it’s a way better deal than your average small-scale minis game.
Also their website is looking suave, although it still isn’t clear what the Centurion Club is or how to join it.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Preview of Catalyst’s Leviathans at TGN
For those of you whose ears perked up upon hearing of Catalyst Game Labs‘ steampunk airships game Leviathans, you should head over to Tabletop Gaming News for the first of three preview articles on the game. Some general development details and a few pieces of artwork are about it so far, but if they don’t whet your appetite for miniatures combat in the skies with huge battleships, we don’t know what will.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Space Hulk returns to print
Yep, rumors on the internets were true: Games Workshop is bringing beloved boxed game Space Hulk back as a $99 limited edition on September 5th. If you’re into it, you might wanna hop on that preorder.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Warmachine’s next big thing is a video game version under development
Privateer Press announced at a seminar today at Gen Con that developer WhiteMoon Dreams is underway on a digital version of Warmachine for… consoles? PCs? Both? Info is coming in via Twitter and is thus a little thin on the ground. Apparently the game will be first-person strategy of a sort – you’ll be in the warcaster’s perspective, issuing orders to your ‘jacks – and that’s about all I know. Unless the game has a confirmed publisher, this might not really even be an announced product so much as a really awesome plan. But there’s a nice, shiny coming-soon page!
Monday, August 3, 2009
Gamers: helping the forms exhaust their variety since 1971
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the exciting new tabletop miniatures game, Teddy Bears of the Caribbean.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Family Games 100 contributor list announced
Following in the footsteps of the excellent Hobby Games: The 100 Best – which we recommended in our 2007 Christmas Gift Guide – Green Ronin has been hard at work on its follow-up book, Family Games: The 100 Best. Edited once again by James Lowder, the 400 page paperback will offer essays on favorite games from a wide range of game industry luminaries. The contributing authors for the new book have been announced, and include Alan R. Moon (Ticket to Ride), Richard Garfield (Magic: The Gathering), Mike Selinker (Risk: Godstorm), Keith Baker (Eberron), James Ernest (Kill Dr Lucky), Kevin Wilson (Decent), Luke Crane (Mouse Guard), Fred Hicks (Don’t Rest Your Head), Stan!, Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson (co-founders of Games Workshop), a foreword by Senior Director of Product Acquisition for Hasbro Games Mike Gray, and an afterword by author and actor Wil Wheaton. Due to release later this summer, this is sure to be another must-read.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
NECA buys HeroClix, selling exclusive fig at SDCC 2009
Reports are trickling out of San Diego Comic Con of NECA Toys selling an exclusive HeroClix figure at the show. Yes, I said HeroClix – NECA is selling a Marvel HeroClix: Hammer of Thor figure called Thor’s Mighty Chariot, which depicts exactly that. NECA is also offering preorders of the figure through Amazon, where a shipping date of August 15 is listed. The convention exclusive itself isn’t particularly newsworthy – these sorts of big show releases serve to anger retailers on a regular basis – but the fact that NECA seems to have bought HeroClix and still hasn’t officially announced said purchase is certainly worth noting.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Get ready to count the 4E jokes: interview on card-based RPG in development
LivingDice is definitely a blog to keep in the ol’ aggregator – most recently, it’s brought Untold to our attention. It’s still under development – and maybe I’m cynical, but when I see someone developing a full color card-based roleplaying game, I take “coming soon” with a grain of salt – but the free primer PDF is at least an interesting read.
(Also at LivingDice at the moment is copious and depressing evidence of marketing-fail on the part of the upcoming minis-and-iPhone game Ex Illis. If I didn’t already know what it was, I’d look at those banners and think it was some kind of product for the disabled.)
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Privateer plans to Grind this fall
Privateer Press has plans for a new futuristic sports-ish board game called Grind, which at first glance seems like an offshoot of the WarMachine game. The new game will come “with several highly detailed plastic components, including six Runner steamjack figures, four Crusher steamjack figures, 32 interchangeable weapon arms, two spiked pillars, and the Grinder ball” (whatever that is). Along with a full-color gameboard and custom dice, Grind may become a rules-light entry point to the WarMachine universe. We’re promised more info from an official website launching this Friday.
Read More…
Sunday, June 28, 2009
2009 Origins Award winners
We’ve known the nominees for a while now, and resisted judging too harshly for having a t-shirt in the “Game Accessory” category. This year’s winners were awarded in a ceremony overseen by James Ernest last night at Origins. A notable winner was the Mouseguard RPG for Best RPG, despite being up against the Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition Player’s Handbook and Trail of Cthulhu. (I could say it “eeked” out a win, but then I’d feel ashamed.) Serenity Adventures won for Best RPG Supplement, and Magic: The Gathering – Shards of Alara was named Best CCG Supplement. As many expected, Dominion took the title as Best Card Game, while Pandemic got he nod as Best Board Game. Click below for the full list of nominees and winners.
Read More…
Friday, June 26, 2009
Upper Deck Signs Long-Term Deal with Marvel
Today Upper Deck Entertainment signed a multi-year licensing deal to use characters from the Marvel Universe. Covered products will include trading card games (TCGs), miniature games and trading cards. The agreement also includes rights to develop products based on Marvel’s upcoming films. The first products are expected to be released in January of 2010.
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