Miniatures Games
Having mastered the MMORPG world and tried its hand at card games, roleplaying games, and board games, World of Warcraft has a new way for you to spend every waking moment immersed in Azeroth. Enter the World of Warcraft Miniatures Game! Announced today at Germany's Spielwarenmesse International Toy Fair, Upper Deck has four WoW Minis on the slate for fall of this year: a two-player WoW Starter Set, a Deluxe WoW Starter Set, randomized WoW booster Packs, and the Onyxia Raid Set featuring a biggie sized Onyxia for your dragon or raid-party slaying pleasure. It also looks like WoW has learned a few lessons from past minis games, offering a few different ways to play, the promise of a robust tournament scene, and some neat conventions in the way thier figures are constructed:
Each premium pre-painted miniature will showcase a detailed version of an iconic World of Warcraft character and be mounted on a uniquely engineered removable base, allowing each figure to serve as both a game piece and a collectible. In the spirit of the action and adventure of the MMO, the World of Warcraft Miniatures Game will offer standalone raid and dungeon scenarios, letting players battle either individually or cooperatively against other teams of players or the game itself.
Already there's a few pages up for World of Warcraft Miniatures, the announcement at Upper Deck and the new WoW Minis page with several other pictures of upcoming figures. Already I'm looking forward to having a waist-deep collection of WoW green skins, cause even if the game's not awesome any roleplayer can tell you that you can never have enough orcs!
The final Confrontation: the Age of Rag'narok (Fantasy Flight Games' upcoming pre-painted battlefield miniatures game) website is up, and in a truly awesome touch, every single figure in the set can be viewed in an interactive 360º sort of way, just like Apple does whenever one of its new products comes out.
If I could ever be sold on starting a miniatures game, this would be just the way to do it—the advantage that miniatures have over cards are their 3-D nature, so good on Fantasy Flight Games for giving us the full-frontal, full-sideal, and full-backal view of their wares.
The question remains, though—Griffin or Wolfen?
The next expansion of WizKids’s DC HeroClix, Crisis, lays on the accelerator with the Flash. Okay, so we all know the Flash, he’s the twitchy dude in red jammies who always gets minis made of him that look like hood ornaments—and who totally ROCKS in Justice League. No more hackneyed plastic poses for DC’s iconic speed demon, though! One of the new sneak peaks of Crisis reveals the Flash bolting along, speeding so fast he takes up multiple bases—even if it does kind of look like he's tripping in the first base. Check out the decisions behind the too-cool and too-fast-for-one-base mini, along with more previews of Crisis, over at WizKids.com.
Making microscopic evil virus-like things cute seems to be all the rage these days. Continuing on this trend is Fantasy Flight Games' new Micro Mutants: Evolution—a card-like/board-like/miniature-battling game (eep where on earth am I going to classify this post?) in which you play a horrid microscopic army and fight it out for supremacy.
The armies of Micro Mutants: Evolution are as follows:
The Usarthopods, noble defenders of the Ameribug Way! The Flyborgs, extra-terrestrial aliens who use their unearthly technology to, you know, do… alien… stuff. Like assimilate your bugs! The Sovietopters, who will probably destroy us for failing to write their name in Cyrillics! The Chitinians, renegade slaves of the Flyborg who use their advanced biology to substitute for advanced technology!
Your bug army is printed on plastic discs that can be fired at one another (along with other kinds of ammunition) using a special plastic shooter (which is really funny, and don't worry, the game is much deeper than it sounds). The different bugs, of course, have different special abilities, and if you play the game with the maximum number of players (four), it's four-way micro-madness!
He’s been around for centuries, always in an eternal state of undying. Hiding with his underlings in the frozen wastes, he prepares for the proper planetary alignment, the time when he can once again roam the earth. Some of you may believe in him, some may not. But all who hear his name know his power, and they fear it. Is he an ancient, eldritch evil, perhaps? Not at all… ‘Tis merely St. Nick!
WizKids Games has begun to release their previews for their upcoming Horrorclix supplement: Nightmares. And the first one is a doozy. A perfect gift for any Horrorclix fan you know, or perhaps anyone at all who have fantasized about a buff Santa Claus (knowing the target audience of this blog, there should be quite a few of them).
So yeah, don't get on his naughty list. Or, perhaps, get on it as quickly as possible. Your call.
Forces of WARMACHINE: Pirates of the Broken Coast is set for release in three days—that is, on December 21st (my my my has this year gone by quickly). If you're itching for some BioShock/PoTC action in your WARMACHINE game, and you want to have some well-needed swashbuckling in your Iron Kingdoms setting inspired by some canon fiction, this is what you should be getting. Plus is has a really, really purdy cover.
I do hope "piratepunk" isn't a term analogous to "cyberpunk" or "steampunk." Because that wouldn't make sense.
*Googles.*
Good.
Of course, Privateer Press doesn't like to call it steampunk—they prefer Full Metal Fantasy™, citing that the term "steampunk" doesn't include the fantastical. Really, though, by now, I think it can and it does. Any thoughts on the matter?
The Rag'narok is imminent—Confrontation: The Age Of The Rag'Narok, a Fantasy Flight game of "breathtaking medieval fantasy battles," is soon to arrive. (Watch the video trailer here!)
Choose your army—the Griffin, god-devoted humans, or the Merkin, ferocious moon-worshipping wolfish humanoids. Then choose a scenario, which determines your win conditions, terrain details, etc. etc. and prepare for battle! The game box comes with everything you need: rulebook, pre-painted terrain, stat cards, the armies, dice and measuring tape.
This looks to be really exciting, and having it all-included manages to avoid the kind of booster-buying madness that put me off collectible games for the last long while.
All you HorrorClix fans who also like to write (and I'm sure there are several of you—a group of my sister's friends have been playing -Clix games every Thursday for the last THREE YEARS), there's a perfect contest going on for you—write your own Scenario!
The rules are here, and they're pretty specific, so read carefully—army builds should be from around 200 to 500 points, the scenario should last around an hour, and you're judged on theme, playability and story telling.
The three most creative and horrific scenarios will win a Freddy Vs. Jason Action Pack and four Nightmares booster packs!
Submissions are due December 22nd, so get writing before you enter your downward spiral into holiday unproductivity! A great example of a previous scenario for inspiration is the Dawn of the Dead scenario here.
Want your queer orc barbarian—Thkrangdor the Fabulous—to come to life in full 3-D glory but aren't sure your glitter-and-macaroni-sculpture skills are up to par? Now's your chance.The latest issue of Game Trade Magazine has announced that their fifth annual "Bring Your Character To Life" contest has begun!
The prize is predictably awesome—Reaper Miniatures will manufacture a glorious pewter figure of your very own character, and it'll be a limited edition entry in Reaper's 2008 Dark Heaven line. And, of course, you get seven copies of the figure—one prepainted—along with the artist's original conceptual rendering of the character.
The winner will be drawn at random. All you need to do is submit an RPG character sheet, plus a brief description of the character here!
Much in the vein of this week's Way-Out Wednesday, Games Workshop has announced its plans for this season, proclaiming it to be "a green winter" for Warhammer 40,000. The reason? Orks!
In January, a new Codex: Orks will finally see release, along with a new Ork army, a gallery of which can be seen here.
For a "veritable WAAAGH!" of information about the Orks, growing each day—what's currently available is apparently "just the tip of the iceberg"—go here!
Games Workshop's free e-zine, Black Gobbo, is now on its 104th issue.
In it, they explore the possibilities of the latest incarnation of Warhammer 40k, Apocalypse allowing you to use any part of your collection and mixtape-them into a super army (which is awesome) . They also give datasheets for various Apocalypse units, almost all of which sound like names of death metal bands: Maelstrom of Gore, Plague of Zombies, and Chaos Terminator Annihilation Force!
Plus eight other articles. Check it out!
Blanket Statement: Rackam's Confrontation miniatures are the best fantasy miniatures in gaming. Period. The French sculptors turn their creativity toward a unique vision of fantasy—thick with flourishes, fine details, and delicate embellishments—that should leave most English speaking minis companies thanking the Gods of Pewter and Lead that they don't do the typical Western Orcs-and-Adventurers fantasy shtick. But as incredible as Rackam's minis are, they're definitely not for beginners. With the tiniest of pieces and incredibly minute details, the prospect of painting one of these minis is daunting, while the thought of squinting my way through a whole army is enough to send me running back the colored wooden chits of Ravensburger games.
Fortunately, Rackham got the hint a few months back and later this month are releasing Confrontation: The Age of Rag'Narok, a Confrontation starter game with—swoon—prepainted minis! ICV2 has the first look at minis from the two included factions: Wolfen (werewolf/gnoll/beastmen) and Griffin (knights). While these are doubtlessly master paints and higher quality that what we should expect from the finished minis, after seeing their incredible prepainted AT-43 figures, I doubt these are far from the mark.
You can check out more pictures and details from The Age of Rag'Narok on the Confrontation website. While you're there, their fantastic gallery of concept art make great desktop wallpapers and are great inspiration for any fantasy RPG. And speaking of which, for all you GMs who like crafty handouts, they also have more than a dozen professional, "realistic-looking" fantasy fonts free for download.
Wine, cheese, and awesome fantasy. A trip to Paris might soon be in order.
[via icv2.com]
And girls who like girls who like breastplates!
Game of the Week
Are you the werewolf?
Links
The VelvetDiceBag Store
- Help support VelvetDiceBag by purchasing your items through our store!
All rights reserved © 2007-2008 FAD Media, Inc.
