The Maelstrom is coming...

It has been a while since I last looked at my old blogging haunt, http://www.Dakkadakka.com, but with the recent AdMech releases for 40k, I've been going back and catching up with some old friends. Poking into the news section is, at the best of times, tempting with all it's new shiny releases to paw over, but last week came with a nice new addition to the gaming circuit.

The owners of Dakka announced that they are just about to step into the gaming market themselves, having spent years running what is arguably one of the biggest gaming sites around. One of the owners has spent a long time producing the INAT tournament rules for 40K, which are apparently highly praised by all who play them... so clearly written rules is going to be a big plus.



They have spent about 5 years working on this behind the scenes with writers, artists, sculptors and painters to produce a complete universe full of plots and warfare with a reason, rather than "because". Here's the official blurb

Maelstrom's Edge is a far future science fiction setting where a golden age of exploration and innovation has been ripped apart and humanity is on the very edge of annihilation. The Maelstrom, a gigantic apocalyptic explosion of dark energy, is rapidly expanding out from the heart of the galaxy, destroying everything it touches. As worlds and stars are obliterated from existence, those who have the means flee towards deep space, while those left behind fight for the chance to escape.

For millennia before this catastrophe, humanity spread across the galaxy at sub-light speed, painstakingly eking out an existence in space and on barely habitable worlds. Then the cybel network was discovered. A gossamer web of dark energy threads stretching between every star, the cybel network allowed humanity to colonise thousands of worlds across the galaxy's spiral arm. All the progress that the cybel network brought, the Maelstrom took away. The Maelstrom erupted from the centre of humanity's worlds a millennium ago, racing down the cybel tunnels, splitting them apart and spilling their destructive energy out into real space.

The Edge is a stormfront, light years wide, where real space meets the Maelstrom’s tide of roiling, coruscating energy. The apocalypse is coming inexorably to every planet on the Edge. In the decades leading up the Maelstrom's arrival, every person is forced to make a choice about how they want to live the remainder of their existence. Unite or divide, give or take, love or hate. Those living on the edge are not bulletproof or elite. They are ordinary people caught up in a bewildering cataclysm, their only goal to survive as best they can.

The destruction wrought by the Maelstrom has led to conflict between many of the remaining organisations and governments. The competing corporations of the Epirian Foundation made their fortunes using advanced robotics and geo-engineering to alter worlds for colonisation. Now as the Maelstrom approaches, the Epirians are forced to abandon these worlds, using their enlisted soldiers and retrofitted robots to defend their interests.

Diametrically opposed to the Epirian Foundation’s interest is the Karist Enclave, a secretive group of religious extremists. They believe that if you are mentally and physically prepared, the Maelstrom will not destroy you, but instead you will ascend to a higher plane of existence. The Karists use vials of altered cybel energy to 'commune' with the Maelstrom, achieving a trance-like state they associate with ascension.

The refugees, revolutionaries, pirates and mercenaries that are left behind on abandoned worlds are collectively known as the Broken. Poor humans team up with abandoned aliens, desperately swarming worlds near the edge as they try to survive as long as they can. Against the implacable onslaught of the Maelstrom, every dockworker, farmer, CEO and mercenary is faced with the same dilemma: what will you do to survive?

 Any painted models you see for this game are actual final production models. They want to try and avoid going down the route of having sketches or renders to sell models. With that in mind, these are two of the publicly shown models so far, with plenty more to come by the end of the month as they ramp up to a kickstarter.

So what size is it? Here's Lego to tell you more

Maelstrom's Edge is a squad-based skirmish scale game in which small units of 3-5 models are used alongside individual models. The turn mechanism features alternate activation (with a twist) so there is no waiting around for someone to move their entire force. The game features a great suppression mechanism through cinematic blast markers. Subtle front and rear firing arc markers are moulded in to the bases of the models making measurements simple. Most importantly, every unit is completely distinct in form and function, so there is no min-maxing as every unit has distinct strengths and weaknesses that complement and counter each other. At the same time, we guarantee that there will be no obsolescence of units and models, so when you invest the time and money in building a force, you'll know that it will be playable in some form forever.

We started this project before Kickstarter took off in the wargaming world and based on the strength of the team alone we were able to secure enough funding to create an entire starter box set in real plastic. As we saw kickstarter deliver huge audiences and secured funding to other wargaming companies out there, we adjusted our release plan to start work on additional plastic models beyond the initial box set contents with a view to running a Kickstarter to raise the funds for the physical production, shipping and marketing elements of the plan. It is safe to say that this will be an incredibly low risk Kickstarter for anyone who wants to get first dibs on the game as the project is about 90% complete at the moment and should ship well before the end of the year. Our only major projected delay will be the printing of the rulebook and related shipping. The models are already 80% complete and have very little work left to be retail ready, with production moving at a great and stable pace.

To show things off in the flesh, we'll be attending Salute 2015 in London's Excel centre on April 26th, so make sure you get tickets and come by our booth located at TE05 - Spiral Arm Studios (our UK spinoff company) to see the models, have a chat with us and see more of the Maelstrom's Edge universe ahead of its in depth release over the course of this year.

 You can follow them on Facebook, Twitter, Dakka Dakka or their website http://www.maelstromsedge.com/ to get more news and pictures.

The Kickstarter page is over at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/medge/maelstroms-edge-a-next-gen-sci-fi-miniatures-warga

In the mean time, they have also released two novels on Amazon to get you into the universe. I've finished both this week, which is a record. The writing is pretty good and the characters are likable and conflicted, which works really well for the universe as there is no "Good" and "Evil", it is all somewhere in between



Dungeon Saga

Well, with 30 hours left on Mantic's Dungeon Saga kickstarter, things are shaping up really nicely,
both for the game in general and the offerings for the main pledge level. Not only are there loads of really nice characters, 3d furniture and great game elements... but there's also a choose your own adventure game book! I can't wait to see what the last few hours unlock...

I've missed having a good, solid dungeon crawl since Warhammer Quest, so it's nice to see Quirkworthy's blog covering his thoughts and plans for the advanced sections of the game. While I remember Warhammer Quest and Advanced Heroquest fondly, Jake's ideas and the rule options that are being promised are really interesting. So far it is ticking all the right boxes for me. Custom character creation rules? Check! Random dungeons, Check! Character evolution, Check! Solo play, check! Lots of monster stats, check!

The character creation rules are going to be interesting to play with and see what can be built, especially if it includes all the different Mantica races. They can also be used to create villains, so I fully expect to start seeing swathes of homemade adventures appear once the game is released.

I'm also really intrigued to see how the Hero AI works as it is going to be fun playing solo adventures as the Necromancer and killing the heroes that come knocking. Jake has been talking about how the between game evolution rules will also apply to the Necromancer (or whichever evil guy you are playing). Hopefully these will allow you to buy extra traps, unlock new monster types, increase number of creatures that can be on the board at one time...

Temporary update

Phew. It's been a while since I last posted anything, so mu apologies there... apathy and life got in the way! I've finally done some painting, so I'll try and do an update on that later on and schedule some more tanks in tonight too.

Not one I'll be backing, but a company called Trench Worxhas succeeded in funding their 28mm WW1 tank campaign (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/610277926/tanks-of-wwi-in-28mm-by-trenchworx). The models look fantastic and I wort of wish I had a use for them, but it's not a period I'll be getting into any time soon. I remember having the 1:72 scale Airfix version of the FT and loving it. There is one at Bovington, but at the moment it is just painted black. I assume this is due to ongoing maintenance...

 In other Kickstarter news. This afternoon Mantic are launching their latest campaign called Dungeon Saga. From what has been said so far this seems to be a cross between Heroquest and Warhammer Quest, but set in the Mantica universe. The game comes with two layers to the box. When you first open it up you get enough models and rules to run through the introductory campaign, including some set character evolution. Once you're done with that, it's time to open up the second layer that includes extra characters, monsters and more advanced rules. These advanced rules apparently contain rpg-lite character development rules, GM rules and stats for lots more creatures. Reports vary on what is in here though. Some teasers mention all the undead models from Mantic, whereas others suggest it covers stats for everything.

I've previously been put off Mantic's fantasy range as 99% of their design work or sculpting rubs me up the wrong way, but so far everything shown for this looks fantastic. The teaser image shows card tokens for funature, but they have also let slip thee will be plastic furniture and scenery to go with the Space Hulk quality board tiles.  Should be a good one to watch

Shadows over Normandie

I meant to post this earlier, along with Thaissa. Memory like a black hole. Everything goes in... nothing comes out. Ever.

Last year there was a fun looking kickstarter for a ww2 strategy game called Heroes of Normandie. Rather than striving to be 100% historically accurate they chose to go down the Hollywood route and make it a fun, explosive game and it appears to be winning over lots of people. I was eyeing it up and wish, much like Zombicide season 1, that I'd backed it instead of some of the other games I gave money to. Ah well.

Anyway. As part of their original campaign, they worked with Modiphius to create an Achtung Cthulhu expansion with some missions and mythos related units. This was so popular that yesterday they launched a new kickstarter to expand this idea out into a full, stand-alone boxed game rather than just a few map tiles and units. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1538673930/shadows-over-normandie.

A day later and it is well past it's initial goal, plus the first few stretch goals that add all the cards and markers to make Deep Ones their own separate playable force. I'm looking forward to the stretch that most definitely is not Hellboy (surely it should be Lobster Johnson in WW2 rather than Hellboy?).

I'm interested by their approach to things. As this is effectively an upgrade to something people in the first campaign have already backed, the previous pledgers will be getting these upgrades for free and only need to pledge for a brand new set of tiles for this campaign. This bodes well for future support as they seem keen to evolve and enhance the community. One of the pledge levels is even to hire the guy that has unofficially been acting as community manager for them so they can better support the growing forums.

Zombicide season 3

Last night the next season of Zombicide started with a bang. The initial funding level was reached in less than 6 minutes and in 12 hours they have reached about half a million dollars! With another 27 days still left to run, I forsee a lot of unlocked goals in our future! So far we've got three new characters (including Leon and Amy Farrah Fowler!), their zombivor counterparts, 36 extra zombies of varying types, a full set of character cards from past campaigns in a neat little box and the obligatory free dice!

With the main box bringing PvP options to the game, we're going to have to find somewhere we can set up for a weekend long game and have a  20-30 board set up where the teams of survivors need to go out, find resources and bring them back to their base, while fending off the zombies and other gangs. Possibly recruiting other survivors as they go to increase their gang size...

Twisted - a Steampunk adventure game

I've not seen too much about this yet, but at Salute last weekend a company called Demented Games were displaying some early prototypes of some models for their new game called Twisted. The game is set in a steampunk inspired London that is secretly controlled by the omnipresent machine called The Engine that aims to make society perfect; by any means necessary. The Engine controls cities through Nodes that are powerful artifacts in their own right, granting whoever controls them immense power. Queue fighting over the nodes with other gangs as well as against The Engine. Besides the steampunk contraptions, there are a number of alchemically enhanced beasts in the world as well as some sci-fi elements.

This game look ever so pretty with it's beautiful boards as you can see below.

The boards represent the sewers, catacombs and tunnels under London as well as various buildings within the city. The one pictured above is apparently one of the larger board pieces, so you can imagine how big a level could become. The game has been designed to do one off games (if you really want to), but they said that it is best suited for campaign play in a league, with the ability to level up and re-equip your party between games. From the descriptions it sounds like Mordheim on a board and should be pretty easy to modify to play on a 3d setup like the new 4Ground fantasy building that were being previewed at Salute too.

Last, but by absolutely no means least are the rather pretty models!

Bill Psykes

Bullseye

Feygin

This will be getting a September launch on Kickstarter, so there is plenty of time for more information to come out about it. There were flyers out at the event offering a bonus model (Bill Psykes) in the kickstarter if you sign up to their mailing list and enter the show name where you saw the game. Certainly worth doing as he is rather nice!

I can see this being rather easy to enhance with Malifaux and IHMN models too.

Qu-Sh-Ug

Here we have a great big beastie from PureEvilMinuatures, a Qu-Sh-Ug. This was funded through their kickstarter last year and is not yet available through their website, sadly, as it's an awesome miniature and I want another one apparently available from the PureEvil ebay store (http://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/pureevilminiatures)! You can see some great versions over on their Kickstarter page.

The kit consists of three major parts, the body and both front legs. In addition to this you get a plethora of different tentacles to customise your nasty however you wish. All of the examples had different numbers of tentacles coming out of the mouth, but I decided to be different and turned one into a tail instead as it seemed to balance out the reaching paw.

 

 

He's not a small creature either. To give you a sense of scale, here's a shot of him towering over poor Sergeant Hopkins

I havn't forgotten the snow article, it's just taking longer than expected to put together. snow bases are hard to photograph in a way you can see them clearly!

Location, Location, Location

Last year I backed the Location Cards kickstarter intending these to be useful tools when I eventually get around to running that RPG session I've been muttering about for the last year. Well, they arrived yesterday and it looks like they will have far more uses than I'd originally thought.

These will be great for adding in some extra flavour, or table setup ideas for any skirmish game.

Say we've rolled the standard face-off style scenario, what do we know about the table layout? At this point... not a lot to be honest. The campaign had three Locations decks (Rural, Urban and Epic) to choose from. I would imagine Epic locations are more suited to large showdowns, so lets take the Rural deck and see if it's of any use in giving our table or game something special.

Here's an example card from the Urban deck that could work just as well in a rural setting

This tells us that our table has a commune full of people wanting to escape from the realities of this world. It's also a fertile area, so there's likely to be lots of trees and crops on the table too.

We've also been told that they have a pack of dogs to keep people away, so this can add a couple of interesting optional rules for the scenario too.

1) As the commune is trying to keep away from the sinful world, they probably boarded up the house as soon as people started to appear, so the building is inaccessible to anyone.
2) They also have a pack of guard dogs that attack anyone going near the building. I'd be tempted to have an NPC pack of dogs that will attack anyone that goes near the barn. Most skirmishes have stats for dogs, so we'll say that the pack is 3 dogs and they will attack anything within 8" of the building
3) The commune is full of Holy scriptures in a lost language. This may be an additional bonus to the winner of the scenario. The bad guys may decide to kill the dogs, kick in the door and steal the treasures, whereas the good guys may be rewarded with a portion of the treasure if they have defended the building and not attacked any dogs.

Alternatively, it could be that one of the two sides in the skirmish is actually from the commune and the other side is specifically attacking it, which would adjust the deployment zones for the game.

While aimed specifically at a fantasy setting, 99% of the cards will spark plenty of ideas for other genres as well

Mutant Chronicles RPG is back

The guys and girls responsible for the brilliantly run Achtung! Cthulhu kickstarter, Modiphius, are back with their next campaign. Chris and co. have picked up the RPG license to the '90's classic, Mutant Chronicles. Mutant Chronicles is a dieselpunk sci-fi setting, where technology is failing due to the invading Dark Legion and the massive corporations that run the solar system are trying to fight each other as well as the incoming hordes of the Legion.

The campaign can be seen: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/modiphius/mutant-chronicles-3rd-ed-rpg

In a great display of support, the campaign reached it's initial goal (and then some) in the first day, which means there are already two books, the Player's guide and the Core Rule/Setting book. If their previous campaign is anything to go by, these books will be very well produced and the PDF Master (all unlocked books in pdf) level will be well worth the buy in. The full print level of Necromagus is, currently, a little on the steep side, bug

Later in the campaign they intend to work with Prodos,  to produce a series of characters that can be used in the RPG and in Prodos' tabletop game.

MI57 recruits

Last week I mentioned that the figures turned up from the Acthung! Cthulhu kickstarter. As I was finishing off the commandos, I decided to paint up the two heroes that would fit nicely into the force.

They are shown here with some of the plastic Bolt Action figures for scale. Corporal Singh (right) is about right for a 28mm force, but Commander Harris (left) is really short. So short that in the bottom picture you can see the kneeling Observer is almost as tall!

Terror rising

I got a nice surprise coming into the office this morning... my rather densely packed  Achtung! Cthulhu kickstarter parcel has arrived. How exciting!

 

 Just under the yellow bags were the floor tiles created by Henning Ludvigsen, the guy who created all the tiles for Descent 2nd Edition and Mansions of Madness... both of which are stunning and should be compatible with these in terms of scale (at least Mansion of Madness will be, not sure about Descent yet).

The tiles cover a number of locations from the forthcoming Assault on the Mountains of Madness campaign, so cover a Nazi underground base, snow covered outpost, Elder City ruins and more. Apparently there will be more sets coming in the future that cover other parts of the campaign as well as other locations. Looking at these tiles makes me wonder if it would be possible to create new stories and plots for Mansion of Madness using these. Each board is double sided and mounted on very thick boardgame style card and are either 10x10 or 5x10. Some of my favourites are the dockside tiles that combine to create a 10x20 square dock with boat.

I've not had time for more than a cursory glance at the figures yet, but the quality is outstanding. The detail and casting quality is flawless, with no visible cleanup needed on the parts, other than clipping any small bits from their sprues. Scale wise they should be perfect sat next to Bolt Action troops. Once I have some stuck together I will get a nice scale photo up. The one downside (if you see it as that) are the sheer number of small parts for some of the models and how delicate they are; we could also do with a parts list for each set as each set of 6 figures lumps all the bits into one bag. I fear for the lives of some of these as time goes on, especially the tentacles on the Cthonian or the rocket being carried by the Nachtwolf Stalker. I've included some examples below with a USB stick as scale guide to how small some of those bits are!

Some of the heroic characters come with some deep, dark secrets. One of them has a small dragon/imp thing sat on her shoulder and Natalya (below) has some sort of spirit riding inside her that comes out and protects her every now and then. The nice thing about both of the models is that neither has to have the mythos element attached as there are no visible markers on the model for where you stick them. This means that it would be possible to get two of each and have one version that is usable in normal pulp games and one for mythos/horror games.

 

Just look at the size of the sword in the second image... then realise that it is about a third as thick... I really don't know how it survived the post as some of the thicker pieces didn't.  

  

We've even got separate horns for the Night Gaunts!

  

And a mass of limbs to attach via very small ball joints... these are going to be as delicate as some of the worst infinity models and probably as nightmarish to glue together. Hopefully these delicate multi-part models will be the first to get the plastic treatment we were promised in the kickstarter.

 

 The only disappointment so far though is the huge scale difference between the two deep ones! There are three different sculpts (not including the special in the bulk box). The left hand model is miles bigger than the other two as you can see from the photo below. Thankfully I've only currently got one of each so he can be an older Deep One, but it would have been nice if they were all the same scale.

 

The rest will make an appearance as they get constructed and painted. I can safely say that I'm over the moon with them all and will be buying lots more as they get released for the skirmish game if the quiality remains at this level. The renders of the current range can be seen on http://www.modiphius.com/miniatures-range.html

Now to see if I can get replacements for the bits that didn't make it in the post!

I also suspect that this has just derailed my Vehicle entry for the sub-challenge this week as I really want to see them all constructed :)

RPG cards

A while back I mentioned that I'd picked up a deck of Character cards, a deck of cards that allow you to create NPC backgrounds quickly by just drawing a few cards to give you a name, career and various background elements. Well, they are back with another campaign, this time they are aiming to find two decks of location cards in a similar manner.

Each location card has some ideas on the treasures the location may contain, the physical environment, dangers, inhabitants and some secrets that may be affecting it. The initial part of the campaign is for a deck of wilderness locations, but if they reach the first stretch goal (which at time of writing is only about £70 away) they will also produce a deck of urban locations to add extra variety. While these are fantasy locations, the majority of the information and ideas will be valid for most settings.

Thinking about it a bit more, these cards are also great for generating small scenarios and characters for skirmish games too.

If you missed out on the character cards, you can add decks of these to your pledge in the Locations campaign.

Shadows of Brimstone

While browsing Kickstarter I came across yet another rather excellent looking product called Shadows of Brimstone from Flying Frog Productions, which means it should get loads of support in terms of expansions, miniature packs and free scenarios. Shadows of Brimstone appears to be a Warhammer Quest-like game set in the wild west... with gribbly cthulhu-like monsters. So far, sounds pretty damn awesome.

There are two core games for sale, each with its own heroes, monsters and tiles, all of which look like they will be brilliant for pulp or western miniature games as well as actually playing the game they are meant for. At 35mm they should fit well with Black Scorpion miniatures.

In terms of the campaign progress... its only a couple of days old and the $150 level currently breached 17 stretch goals totalling an additional 2 sets of adventure cards, 10 extra/alternative heroes, a mutant outlaw gang (6 mutants), 6 serpentmen, 3 large lava monsters and a ton of extra board pieces as well as everything you're supposed to get for the pledge.

I'm kind of on the fence about one of their pledge levels (or set of...). I can't decide if it is a brilliant idea, or not. They keep releasing groups of 50 early bird pledges that net you both boxes, all of the normal stretch goals, another set of all the miniatures from the boxes and every single paid-for add-on for free. Each time they release another batch of early-birds they up the price and announce another round of add-on characters, monsters, quests or tiles. Currently the list of add-ons is looking quite impressive, but the current batch of early-birds is sitting at $475! To be fair, that's still a bargain if you wanted to get everything, but still... it'd be nice to have caught one of the first round that was a mere $325 and gets exactly the same stuff.

There's also the age old issue of them not having sorted a European distribution channel, so there are the hidden costs of import taxes to add onto whatever you buy as well. Shame really as it is looking like a fun game... not if only they would say more about how it actually plays or show more of the models they may get another massive spurt of backers.

I promise I'll get back to some painting posts soon!

Has Cthulhu taken over blogger?

I know a few people are suffering problems with Blogger posts not appearing on blogrolls at the correct time. I'm finding it annoying and I don't have many readers, so I can only imagine the pain that some of you are feeling with the delays.

While I wait for Blogger to catch up with itself, I can kick back with the ipad as Modiphius released the Achtung! Cthulhu Investigator's Guide to the backers tonight. It's looking pretty, oh so pretty. Rather than write two separate books, they have separate character creation chapters for Savage Worlds and Call of Cthulhu which will save on duplicating content, but does lead to a little bit of confusion as it's not immediately clear (IMO) that they have done this when you first encounter these chapters. There look to be a few interesting challenges for the Hero Lab work when it comes to character careers, but hey. That's the fun of it, right?

From a brief flick through the pdf, it's got a good overview of the time period, covering important events leading up to and throughout the war. It also seems to cover more mundane things like best selling films and music of the period to add that extra bit of character.

Character Cards

Every now and then there's an interesting little kickstarter that seems too useful to pass up. Enter Character Cards.

The creators of this decided that it would be good to create a deck of cards that can be used to generate endless characters for RPG sessions. Each card contains a prewritten character with a brief description, their heart's desire, occupation, physical nature, social connections and a secret about the character. You can either use the cards as they are, or use them to make your own NPCs really quickly by drawing random cards for each of the 6 attributes.

My deck arrived recently and I've now had the chance to properly read through them. The cards are really nicely printed and for the price, it's a really neat little tool to add to a GM's toolkit, especially a novice one like me. The characters are written up for a fantasy game, but most of them are easy to convert to any other era or system. The deck does come with some vague rules to play a little game with them, but I can't see me ever trying it...

There was a note tucked into the pack to say that they are starting work on a Fantasy Locations deck. I suspect that one will not be quite so useful for Achtung! Cthulhu though

Frothers' Charity model 2013

The Frother's Charity model(s) have been announced today.

"What now?" I hear you cry. The Frothers Unite forum tends to do a charity model each year where eyou donate some money to one of their two charities (MS Society or Cancer Research UK) and in return a kind sculpter, caster and postage person send out a specially made model to you for free.

Last year we had Judge Minty, which is probably one of my favourite models of recent time. The sculpt and cast quality were brilliantly done and put lots of other companies to shame.

This year they have stepped up their game... this year is... Lori Petty! I mean...

Instead of just the one model, this year they are offering up a selection of choices. For each one, the suggested donations are as follows:

Tank Girl £20
TG, Booga & Camp Koala £35
TG, Booga, Camp Koala and the Tank £70

To donate, go to

  http://www.justgiving.com/TheNextFrothersCharityThingy2  - Donate to Cancer Research
  http://www.justgiving.com/TheNextFrothersCharityThingy1 - Donate to MS Society

And then send an email with your name, address and Just Giving donation number to charitymini@gmail.com to claim your free miniatures. Don't forget to tick the Girt Aid option. For the full set, including Tank, that's an extra £17.50 to charity paid by the tax man.

With Kev White in charge of sculpting Tank Girl, I'm a happy man and can't wait to see what the final models look like.£70 for all of them may seem pricy, but it's all going to a great cause.

More details can be found on the Frothers Unite forum: http://www.frothersunite.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=45070

Wartime photography

As a slight deviation from gaming; Kris at Wargames and Railways just pointed out a really interesting Kickstarter for a photography book being run by a guy called Dean Putney. Dean is currently working his way through the large collection of photographs that his great grandfather, Walter Koessler, took throughout World War 1 and compiling a book to showcase his journey and experiences as part of an artillery company. The photos shown so far are really moving and an interesting insight to what happened from a German soldier's perspective.

So far my favourite photograph is one showing one of the more light hearted moments from Walter's travels.

This kickstarter has caught my emotional, if not financial, attention because I've recently been looking through my Granddad's photos of WW2. Seeing part of someone you know, in a distant life through a camera lense is a weird thing... and very sad when they aren't around to ask what was happening. Apparently my Great Granddad's photos from WW1 are around somewhere too, which relate more to Walter's photos as he was also part of an artillery company. I really need to get all of these together and scan them before time takes it's toll.

Anyway...

You can join the already funded kickstarter, or watch as the photos are scanned and put up on Tumblr

Qu-sh-ug Kickstarter

 Pure Evil miniatures have started an interesting looking Kickstarter to pay for one of their limited models, the Qu-sh-ug, to get a more general release. As you can see, he's a nasty looking thing that looks like he has stepped out of Hellboy.

The tentacles are separate items and can be attached in any number and combination; there are some photos on the kickstarter with one or none that both look fairly good... but I think he looks really neat as he is.

There are also some cultist models (as seen next to the creature) that come with the higher level pledges, or as an add-on. These would work really nicely as stone statues in a graveyard, especially if you added some wings to it's back, or cracked it in two.

In other news, there has been some painting progress, despite all the packing. I still need to varnish and base them before photos are forthcoming, but another 12 zombicide walkers were completed last night... which is leaves 8 more walkers, 8 runners and 4 fatties left to do from the general trays. The quality isn't perfect, but they look good in a horde and were quick to do... so job's a good'un.

Otherworld fantasy skirmish

For those of you already on the 7TV forums, you'll have seen this, but it's certainly made my day. Otherworld Miniatures have teamed up with Karl Perrotton, writer of the Crooked Dice Action engine (7TV, 7ombieTV and 7th Voyage) to create a fantasy skirmish system. It's going to carry on using the Action Engine, which is a great start as it's a nice simple mechanic that flows well, and try to capture the climactic feel to an RPG adventure where you finally face off against the big bad.

The Action Engine was apparently originally written as an RPG-lite system anyway, so fitting in additional things like traps and treasure hunting is apparently not causing any issues. According to Karl on the 7TV forums, the game will be using an Adventure deck to introduce some RPG elements into the skirmish. The deck should include things like Wandering Monsters, Treasure, Traps and other miscellaneous events to spice up the story. From what has been said so far, it isn't intended to recreate the full dungeon crawl experience, but it should be pretty easy to expand the Adventure deck to include enough wandering monsters and NPCs that it could be used to run a Warhammer Quest equivalent.

The rules will be sold via crowd-funding later this year. If past campaigns are anything to go by, Otherworld will probably use Indiegogo.