Some Games I'll Never Play

There are a lot of games out there these days, and I mean a lot. Some companies have handfuls of games by themselves, not including the smaller studios and the likes. And while I've made unbearably clear that I've played a lot of games in one capacity or another, there's just no way to play them all. 

Sometimes there are games I really want to try, that capture my attention and have pondering how to make it work. There are plenty of games that fall into this category, but I ultimately simply can't play them. Sometimes it's a space concern, sometimes it's a concern of spreading myself too thin, sometimes it's a concern of simply not being convinced I could get people to try it with me and other times it's simply a cost issue.

Today I want to talk about three games that fall into that last category. Both of these games look great and have things that really appeal to me, but are simply just not really viable for a lower middle class dude in Utah to justify the expense that comes with them.

EISENFRONT

Eisenfront is the brain child of Centerfire Hobbies, a company out of Singapore, and more specifically designer Sean Suchanya. And it panders almost directly to nerds like me.

Much like how Endless Fantasy Tactics aimed to bring Final Fantasy Tactics to the tabletop, Eisenfront unashamedly aims to bring a similar treatment to one of the best video game series ever made: Front Mission. Front Mission is a series of tactical mech centric strategy RPGs (because fuck whatever Left Alive was) that first premiered in 1995 on the SNES, and eventually moved to the Playstation in the third installment. The big selling point of the games was the customization of the mechs, able to mix and match body parts and weapons to build the machine you needed most in your squad. Eisenfront emulates this game design pretty much perfectly.

Two player starter set

It's a 15mm game where each player controls a squad of mechs, customizing them from a variety of bodies, arms, legs, backpacks and weapons. Each part has a points value, with the body having a power stat that determines how much weight it can hold. The various limbs and weapons all have a weight stat that can't exceed the body's power output, so you have to be careful how you build your mechs. I love this sort of freedom, and it means you can make some pretty mean builds.

The core mechanics of Eisenfront are pretty solid, adding in skill cards that players can add to their mechs to give them extra abilities which is a nice touch. Some weapons can have you rolling buckets of dice, but sometimes that's not a bad thing. When I'm firing a mech sized rotary cannon rolling 12 dice just feels right. 

I'm a sucker for a quad-bot

What helps it stand out, aside from the premise, is that instead of models having a flat wounds value or what have you, different parts all have their own HP, and damage is randomized to different parts of the mechs so it's entirely possible to blow off someone's arm and leave them without a gun, or cripple their legs and leave them moving at a snail's pace. It puts me in mind of Battletech, but smoother. You aren't tracking armor and structure, just a solid HP stat for the body part. Don't get me wrong, I love Battletech, but this does go faster and stays true to the spirit of the game it's emulating.

The models for the game are also pretty brilliant, from what I can tell. They're a good size, decent enough detail and really capture that blocky, utilitarian charm that Front Mission had. To top it all off, they're built more like proper model kits than wargaming miniatures. These are static figures locked into a pose, they're posable with articulated joints abound like a Gundam kit. These things are basically awesome action figures you can paint up and swap parts around on. They pull double duty as gaming pieces and awesome toys, which is a win in my book.

It puts me in mind of other action figure games like Xevoz or that one Marvel series of action figures that doubled as pieces to a skirmish game (does anyone know what I'm talking about here? Because Google sure as shit doesn't).

Some people will probably complain about them being resin, but given that this is a one man operation I'm not expecting plastic here. Besides, when a model looks as cool as these I'm pretty forgiving on material (also I don't mind resin).

Robot go brrrrrrrrrrrrt

Sadly, as stated at the start of this post, Eisenfront is simply not cost effective for someone like me. The rules are free, which is great, and there is a two player starter set, but the problem is that it's a one man operation out of Singapore. That two player starter comes with four mechs, rules, stat cards, skill cards, some terrain and dice. That's a good amount of stuff for $76, right? Until you realize that shipping is a further $27.

Now you might say "all told that's not terrible for a two player starter set in this hobby" and you'd be right. The problem is expanding from there. Each additional mech or vehicle is somewhere between $30-40, so suddenly the shipping cost alone is almost as much as a single model. And this sucks, because this game looks good and fun but as it stands it simply isn't feasible. Maybe I could justify grabbing the starter set sometime down the road, but everything else is currently too far out of reach and that makes it a tough sell.

I want to be clear that I don't blame Mr. Suchanya for this, shipping costs are what they are. It just sucks that a great game like this will likely never see major distribution and might end up fading away with people never getting to know what it is. And that applies to all the games here, including our next entry.

ALKEMY

Alkemy is one of those weird ones to talk about because it's been hanging around and doing it's thing since 2008. It's gone through three different companies in that time, but it's still kicking despite some ups and downs. I got a very brief demo of it back in 2009 when I went to GenCon, and by that I mean a guy walked me through how some stuff worked but I didn't actually get to sit down and try the game proper.

Alkemy is a fantasy skirmish game currently being produced by French company Alchemist Miniatures. It seems like the change to the current, second, edition changed the game size? I'm not entirely sure, but the rulebook and some posts by Alchemist Miniatures mention changing the standard to the new Blitz play model. 

A two player starter with cat people fighting east Asian proxies? Cool.

The rules are free to download, so I took a look at them and they do seem pretty decent. I'm not a fan of the stats all being different colored triangles, but mechanically it looks like it would work fairly well. It would seem the big selling point/gimmick of this game is the combat system. The game uses color coded proprietary dice, and as models take damage their damage track changes colors to match the dice. So as a model loses health the dice they get to roll gradually get worse. I actually really like this sort of mechanic, and while I feel like it maybe could have worked without a proprietary dice it's still pretty cool. The only other games I've seen do something similar are Warlord and Heroclix, and even then it's not exactly the same.

The other rules mechanic that sets the game apart is the use of combat cards. You have a selection of these and when a model engages in combat each player chooses one to play, and these will grant bonuses or possibly counter other cards. This adds a nice bluffing mechanic, although it does seem a little unintuitive on first read (probably because they keep using the acronym CC and my brain is conditioned to read that as close combat).

Honestly, after a quick peruse of the rules and glance at some of the models this game sort of caught my attention. The models are quite nice, have been for a while, and that earned the game some fame back in the day before things went all sideways and it seemed nobody knew what the hell was happening with it.

Kitties!

The sculpts are characterful and have good detail, it seems they aren't too many parts and you get some nice dynamic poses out of some of them. Add in that some of the factions, like the above cat folk of the Khaliman Republic, just look absolutely dope and it seems a winning combination. And honestly, the models don't seem too bad, price wise, compared to most skirmish games.

That is until you realize that nobody, at least so far as I can find, stocks the new stuff here in the States. I can find some of the older models, but I don't know if those are compatible with the current rules. If I wanted to grab the two player starter set the only place I can seemingly get it is direct from Alchemist Miniatures themselves.

No, I didn't need to sleep tonight, thanks.

And much like Eisenfront we hit a snag. That starter set is 79 Euros, and based on the graphic on their webstore it would be a further 10 Euros to have it shipped internationally. Now, again this might not seem too bad as that's only around $97 based on the conversion rate at time of writing. And hey, $97 is actually kind of a steal for 11 models, rules, dice, battlemat, all the cards you need, terrain and so forth. It's a solid amount of stuff, but again the problem becomes expanding. This isn't as bad as Eisenfront, but the shipping can start adding up when you just want to buy a single guy or a two pack of guys to expand a little bit.

I'm also always hesitant about international, especially trans-oceanic, shipping because there's just so many things that are completely out of your hands. Maybe I'm just overreacting, but it worries me.

World of Twilight

So I'm going to be a bit cheeky here, because I have, technically, played this one. I had to test out the mechanics to do a review for it way back in the day, but it was largely just me with a small handful of proxies trying to get a vague approximation of how it was all supposed to work. I've never played a proper game of Twilight, not even a legit demo.

Despite that, I will sing this game's praises to the heavens. Twilight is one of the best games I've ever messed with. It oozes with charm and character, and it's entirely inhabited by dinosaur people which makes the dino nerd in me very happy.

Gaze upon their glory!

This game has some really innovative and interesting mechanics. It uses a random activation system with each player having six activation tokens in a bag, drawing randomly much in the same vein as Bolt Action or Test of Honor. Where it mixes things up in this regard is that most models can't fight on their own, there are two combat tokens in the bag which, when drawn, start a combat round for models able to fight. Now, some models do have special abilities that let them initiate a combat during their turn, but most guys have to sort of jockey for position and hope they're in the right spot when a combat token is drawn.

The other big thing this does different is the combat. When combat starts players choose which engaged models will fight. Each engagement will have the primary combatants, and then can also have a single supporting model each that is in base contact with another model involved in the combat. This is a nice touch that I really like seeing show up in games. But Twilight doesn't stop there, it's also diceless. Kind of. To actually fight models use combat stones, and build a pool of these using the primary combatant's combat stat and the supporting models support stat. There are two types of combat stone: attack and defend, and you choose how you want to fight. You can go all in on the attack to try get a killing shot, you can go all defense to keep someone alive, or split it and try to do both. I'm a big fan of this sort of blind bluff combat, it pops up in Bushido as well and while there it feels more like a duel between two combatants this captures that while allowing more models to participate in a single fight. Players then take their stone pool, shake them up and place them on the table to see the results. Each stone has a success side and a blank side. If you get more successful attacks than your target does defends, you score hits and the opponent takes a tough roll (I told you it was only kind of diceless), rolling a d6 and needing to roll equal to or better than their tough stat to survive. If they pass they live, if they fail they die. 

God, I love this model

Which is another thing this game does that's kind of interesting. Every model has a single wound, no matter how big and mean they are. The strongest guys will have really good tough values and special rules to let them modify the roll or just re-roll the die, but they still only have one wound. It was a bit odd to me at first, and I thought it sort of an oversight, but I've come to really respect it.

It also does a bunch of other stuff like models having stamina points to spend on certain abilities, leaders being able to do group activations so even if you have more than six guys on the table you can still activate them all and some other fun ideas.

This is up there with Relic Blade for me. Much like that game it's so clearly a passion project for designer Mike Thorp, and he's put a lot of effort and love into making the game he wants to make. The fact that it's a fucking awesome game full of dinosaur people is just all the better.

Sadly, if you're outside the UK then it can be tough to get ahold of. There's no US distributor for this one man project, and the only way to get the models, that I know of, is direct from the webstore. For a lowly pleb here in the US the prices quickly become too much to handle. The small starter comes with two starter forces, the rulebook, a ability reference sheet and the game set with the tokens and stones. That's just shy of $110, and that's without shipping. The large starter that comes with stat cards and lets you pick the starter forces you get is nearly $150 before shipping. It's just too hard to justify, sadly.

Again, I don't blame this on Mr. Thorp. Conversion rates are all over the place, and international shipping prices are what they are, that's all beyond his control. But it just means that as much as I'd love to build up a couple of forces and obnoxiously pitch this brilliant game to every person I know, I simply can't afford to.

Maybe one day I'll strike it rich and be able to justify any gaming purchases that tickle my fancy, or end up in the UK, or France or Singapore and be able to find a way to get my hands on some of this stuff at the source. As it currently stands, though, these are three rather excellent and intriguing games that I'd love to give more love to, but my wallet simply says nay. So I hope this little spot on the internet can at least expose someone to some cool games they can maybe get easier, maybe something they never knew was there and I can give these games their moment in the spotlight that they deserve.

Pouring One Out: Endless Fantasy Tactics

 Another one of these so soon? Yeah, because this game was way better than how it got treated.

Let's indeed go.

Endless Fantasy Tactics is one of those games that I stumbled upon by chance when it launched on Kickstarter back in 2012-2013. And when it first came out, it hit a very specific spot in my heart and scratched an itch with a sandblaster.

It's no secret, or surprise, that the folks at On The Lamb Games sought to emulate the glory of the best Final Fantasy series to ever exist: Final Fantasy Tactics. Hell, the name alone gives that away. But the art style, gameplay and lore all felt very familiar to fans of FFT who were being left behind as Square Enix jerked off to whatever the fuck Final Fantasy was becoming back in those days (although I guess 14 is still chugging?). But that's also part of the draw. The whole point was to give us a tabletop version of FFT, and Endless delivered pretty flawlessly on that part.

The rules were pretty straight forward, with some neat touches to mix things up. Characters could select an assortment of special abilities based on their cost in crystals, with one crystal models being able to select two abilities, two crystal models getting four, and three crystal models just getting all the abilities on their cards. This was a fun way to add some variety to the game, even with a small pool of models at your disposal. Some abilities certainly seemed like auto-includes like the Dragoon's "On the Bounce" passive ability that let them make an extra move after a basic attack, but it never really felt broken or "only ever run this one build." 

God damn bards.

Combat was easy enough, too. The attacker rolled as many d6's as their attack or magic stat depending on the type of attack, needing 4+ to hit. The defender rolled a number of d6's equal to their defense of magic stat needing 5+ to block. Each hit that got through did one damage. It got interesting when status effects got added to the mix, and some attack abilities would let characters combine their attack and magic stats together for big attacks. Many of these abilities required the use of mana points, though, which added some resource management to the game as well.

It kept things streamlined without feeling too simple, or like it had zero depth. Setting up combos, lining up attacks that could hit multiple enemies, picking the right abilities to suit the purpose you wanted a model to fill that game all added to a fun and varied experience. Not to mention all the shenanigans that were unlocked by adding item cards to the mix. 

Another thing it did well was the activation mechanic. You laid out the cards of your warband in front of you in the order you wanted them to activate, left to right. Then at the start of each new turn you could shift one card up or down the activation order, so you could change things up but still had to be careful how you set things up to start with. Add in alternating activations and you had a great system on your hands.

The models, admittedly, were a bit hit or miss. I loved most of them, really echoing that FFT homage and having quite a bit of charm to them. Some, though, were absolutely weak. Their Dwarfs were like some nightmare creature, looking like if Kirby inhaled Gimli and gained beard powers.

It feeds on your discomfort.

I especially liked that a fair number of the classes had both a male and female model to add a little diversity, even if they played exactly the same. And some of the monsters, like the Deep Troll and the Behemoth, are just absolutely sick. 

Yeah they aren't as "detailed" as most models from someone like GW, but this was also a small team with limited resources emulating an art style that doesn't always translate well to 3D. The fact they pulled it off with any degree of success is a win in my book.

So what happened to Endless Fantasy Tactics? It put out one expansion, the Miasma War, which added a bunch of new characters and a single player system, and a handful of smaller "DLC" packs before dying off. On The Lamb disbanded and a great game died. 

Yes, there were slime versions of a handful of classes and it was brilliant.

But did it deserve to? No, not at all. Obviously the dissolution of On The Lamb Games was the final nail in the coffin, but I was always bugged that this game didn't get talked about enough. New models came out, a whole second Kickstarter was done for Miasma War, new stuff was being released and it got zero coverage by the websites that proport to be gaming news. This disappointing, and fucking obnoxious, trend continues to this day with games putting out new releases or news and these outlets ignoring them in favor of "what 40K army won at this random ass tournament?" But Endless Fantasy Tactics, like so many others, got ignored and ultimately never got the exposure it needed to survive.

All is not lost, however, as there's a small glimmer of hope. While no new material is coming out for the game, it's still playable. The rules and cards are all on DriveThruRPG and Wargames Vault, and the models are available through the glory of 3D printing. Yes, it seems someone out there is still making the models for the game as STLs over at Isekai Heavy Industries. 

Hallelujah!

I don't know if the people being Isekai were involved in On The Lamb Games, or if they just got their hands on the greens and went to town, but it doesn't matter because it means that you can still play this amazing little game (if you or someone you know has a 3D printer, at least).

So while Endless Fantasy Tactics got the shaft from the gaming "journalists" out there, it lives on and that makes me happy. I mean, it still qualifies for this post because the game proper is out of production, but it's not beyond reach like some other dead games where scalpers demand absurd prices for the models on eBay (seriously, fuck you people). 

And so we reach the end. Endless Fantasy Tactics proved to ironically be fairly short lived, but it was a damn fun game with tons of heart and charm and was made with love. If you can, grab a pdf of the rules and give it a look. Especially if you're a fan of Final Fantasy Tactics.

So let's pour one out for the pixel inspired brilliance that was Endless Fantasy Tactics.

In Defense of Simpler Models

 Alright, I've been threatening to write this post long enough. It's time to discuss why "simple" models aren't actually as bad as people make them out to be.

First thing is actually establishing what a "simple" model is. For many this refers to a level of detail, but then they often use GW models as examples that are covered in so much greebly bullshit that you can barely make out what they're supposed to be. Necessary detail is more important than extra nonsense and a billion skulls on everything, and I think most miniature manufacturers actually do that to a similar degree. 

But here I mostly want to talk about construction, and ease of build. Because what detail is good and what detail is lying to you is largely subjective, I won't really be focusing on that too much. It'll be part of the equation, yes, but it won't be my main focus. My main focus is simple:

Why are models getting so complex?

It seems like miniatures just keep becoming more and more parts, and fiddly parts, and I just don't understand why sometimes. I've had this discussion with people before and they bring up posing and making your army more unique and so and and so forth, and I just don't get it.

Perhaps it's because I'm old? My very first miniatures were single piece, metal models.

Some of these beautiful bastards, to be exact.

12 year old me loved these god damn things. And I realize that was a long time ago, 1998 was not recent. But I've had people say to me "monopose models suck because then if someone else plays that same faction your guys will be in the same poses."

Is that really such a big deal to people? I mean, I guess for a skirmish game I could kind of understand it, but even then it's a stretch. At no point in my seeing these models, going to the game store, buying them, getting them home, cleaning them and painting them did I ever think "Oh man, if someone else plays Bauhaus we'll have the same models." All 12 year old Spencer was able to think was "These things look fucking awesome!"

And now, as I creep ever closer to 40, I find myself missing that design mentality. Obviously with new tech we can get more varied poses out of monopose models (see the new Venusian Rangers coming for Warzone Eternal), and probably some better detail, but the idea remains the same. I was able to get my first Rangers out of their blister, scrape off some excess and get to painting in no time flat. Now it sometimes takes nearly 20 minutes to build a single model (looking at you, Peace River). How is that better?

Maybe it's just me. I don't particularly care that my guy can have his arm tilted 10 degrees further up than someone else's guy. It's not important to me in the slightest. And it's certainly not important enough to make models frustrating and time consuming to build.

Take for example the Forge Fathers from Mantic Games. I'm using these space Dwarfs in Grimdark Future because I thought they looked really cool. I wish I had seen the infantry sprue before I bought them, though, as I maybe would have made very different decisions.

Not shown: legs, backpacks and some more guns.

Each of these stumpy little assholes clocks in at around ten parts. Now that's not terrible, really. The first run of Heavy Gear plastics were around ten parts each as well. The issue is in the execution.

The torsos? Two parts, split between front and back. And for what? So you can have a slightly different chest plate on a couple guys? I would have been happy with the torso being a single cast piece, hell, they could have cast them together with the legs and that would have been fine. The whole customization thing adds little of value when you consider those torsos will be obscured by various guns anyway.

But it gets worse. Giving them weapons is a hell of an ordeal. For a rifle that's three parts: two arms and the gun (with hands attached). Now, this might not seem too bad, but then the arms are ball jointed at the shoulders which accomplishes nothing since it's not like you can have them swing out at a wild angle because they have to be able to connect in the middle with the gun! Dry-fitting these guys is a huge pain in the ass, and again for something that doesn't add anything of value. I'd rather the arms be a single assembly, gun and all, that attaches via a flat surface than a ball joint that doesn't do anything.

But that's still not the worse part. You see those tiny little bits across the top of that sprue? Those are the shoulder pads that could have been part of the torso if they hadn't split the torso in half for no fucking reason. Those things are an absolute nightmare to get on, and I'm at the point where I'm just going to rip off the ones I did get connected because trying to get them attached to all my infantry will have me throwing the whole damn box in the dumpster.

Not as fancy, but way less stressful.

I also have some of the old, first run, Forge Father sprues and honestly? I like them better. The new design I think looks better overall, but the old ones go together easily and still look good on the table. 

And it's not even like you can't have more complex models without making the construction more complex. Look no further than none other than Games Workshop. They make a bunch of stuff that's push-fit and still looks great. The entire Warhammer Underworlds line is push-fit, and those models have every bit of detail and cool poses as you could expect. 

Even looking at a regular Space Marine and a push-fit Marine side by side, I can't really see any appreciable difference in design or detail.

Basically the same.

So what real value is there in not doing them all push-fit? I guess not having to listen to angry grogs bitch endlessly about it is a big one.

But practically? There's no real difference between those two models aside from one can look left or right.

"But what about arm posing?" I hear someone cry. Well, Games Workshop (and other companies including Mantic) have that covered too: peg and post system.

I was going to use the superior forces of Rohan, but they're all single piece.

These Warriors of Minas Tirith from the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game (god I hate how clunky that title is) are a great example. Those spearmen have their arms separate, and the arm has a little hole that goes over the little pegs I've pointed out with the bright red arrows. Not only does this make dry fitting easier, not that it's a big problem in that game, but it allows the arm to move on the axis just like an arm would with two flat surfaces like most of GW's other mainline models.

Why not just do this for all of them? It would make assembly quicker, easier and still offer the same range of motion. It's a win-win. Mantic's Elves do the same thing, with the arms being a peg and hole system that made building a regiment of 20 dudes a breeze. Yeah, the fact that the legs, body and other arm were all a single piece didn't hurt in that regard, but compared to building old GW High Elf spearmen it was like a whole new world. 

And little, if anything, is lost by doing it this way. But I also don't recall any fans of MESBG bitching about their posing options.

The insistence on fiddly designs especially bothers me in games were the models are basically monopose anyway, but are still designed in such a way as to be stupid. Such as Malifaux.

Look, Malifaux is a good game with some cool looking models and solid, if complex, gameplay. I love the setting, the characters and the visuals of it. What keeps me from diving in head first, however, is that the idea of assembling the models gives me fucking panic attacks.

This is one character.

Look at that madness, and that's not even the worst one (Yan Lo's beard didn't become a meme for nothing). There's zero reason this model needs to be so complex, absolutely none. Her hair is two separate parts, the sword blade is separate from the hilt, her legs are split for no real reason.

And you can't even use the weak ass "my posing!" argument here. The model is cut and designed to be one pose. She can't turn her head, the hair will bang against her body and wings. The arms don't have much in the way of posing again because everything is cut to be in a specific pose.

So why is Nekima here so complex? No reason, really. Just some hateful designer at Wyrd, I guess. Malifaux stuff could be single piece, or push-fit, or at the very least made way simpler to assemble with no negative repercussions to the game. These aren't big chunky models, Malifaux stuff is often skinny and closer to true-scale than something like a 40K model.

I'm not inherently against multi-part models, not at all. I don't mind if they give us some posing options, as long as it's sensible. The first run of Heavy Gear plastics were great, they gave a good variety of posing options without being obnoxious to assemble or a billion parts with weird cuts. I don't even mind multi-part metal models, again as long as it's kept reasonable. Some Relic Blade stuff is multiple parts, but it's usually a hand or arm is separate berceuse it has a deferent weapon option, or the model is bigger so casting it as a single piece isn't possible.

I know some metals can be a real pain in the ass to assemble (hi Battletech Celestial Series mechs!), but some plastics are just as bad with their choices. 

So why the hell do we never say anything about this? Why do we insist on multi-part models when a lot of the time it doesn't do anything practical? I've had people say they would play stuff like Relic Blade, Bushido, Wargods and the likes if only they had multi-part plastic models. Even though that material is way mor expensive to get started with, and following the GW design philosophy wouldn't really do anything. 

I guess what I'm getting at here is that miniature designers and manufacturers really should take our time into consideration. I'm fine with models being plastic, or metal, or resin or siocast or whatever. I just don't want them to drive me insane when I'm just trying to get them to the point where I can start trying to use them. Multi-part is fine if you have weapon options, but keep the parts count as low as physically possible, for the love of god. The less time it takes to get a model from box to table the better, which means assembly needs to be as easy as you can make it. And as we've seen you don't have to sacrifice detail or some posing options (which again aren't entirely necessary) to make that happen.

I know the hobby aspect is a big part of this...hobby, but when people ask why it seems to take me forever to get some of the armies to the table I just point to the convoluted sprues and piles of parts needed to build one guy in a squad of five and go "that." 

So yeah, there's my big long whine about models getting needlessly complex over the years. I probably could have just said "keep it simple, stupid" and saved you all a read. Sorry.

From the Tabletop to the Small Screen

 So last time we talked about the upcoming Warhammer 40K show, and I gave some opinions on what I think would make a good series. It did get me wondering, however, if there are other wargaming properties that could make for good TV. And I think there are a few between miniatures, RPGs and card games.

Buckle up, folks, this might be a bit of a long one.

So let's start off with a franchise near and dear to my heart.

The more astute of you may recall that there was already a Heavy Gear show back in the good old days of 2001 (because nothing bad happened in 2001). And it was...god awful. It tried, bless it, but the animation style was ugly and the story was made so kid friendly that it sort of felt odd seeing how it was about mech gladiators.

I've had a handful on conversations with the head of Dream Pod 9, Robert DuBois, about this show, and basically what happened was that Sony took control and made a bunch of changes and decided it was a cartoon so it must be marketed to kids. I also know that Mr. DuBois is not keen to let a new show happen without him basically being at the helm so nobody cocks it up again.

And I think this could be a good time. We're seeing a rise in more serious adult oriented animation with things like Invincible and Arcane being smash hits. A Heavy Gear animated series in a similar art style to either of those I think could work quite well. 

The Heavy Gear setting offers up lots of story hooks that don't all have to do with war. The idea of arena fighters like the old show can be engaging, a series about a rally racing team in the spirit of something like IGPX would be fucking dope, or even doing a show about one of the wars in the setting. You can go grand and cover The War of the Alliance, or go smaller scale and follow a specific Black Talons team. There's lots of flex there which is great for telling stories without everything having to be super high stakes end of the world type shit.

Plus Gear combat would be fast paced and exciting, and possibly offer up a new view of fighting mecha that we don't see much here in the west.

And then in the opposite corner we have this behemoth. And yes, Battletech also had a TV show back in the day. And it, like the Heavy Gear one, was a pretty weird bastardization of a great setting that fans now look back on with fondness and laugh.

But Battletech offers up some great storytelling options as well. Between the wide open setting, major events and characters you have a lot of options. As I mentioned talking about the 40K show, I really would prefer a show not just be a straight rehash of a story we can already get somewhere else. And a setting like Battletech does let you expand beyond the things we've already been told. I know people would probably love to see the Grey Death Legion, but they've got their time in the spotlight already.

Battletech also offers two interesting options. You can go live action, in which case I think the focus of the show would be the human element and the politics. Or, you can go animated and still have that while also being able to more easily toss in some bitchin' giant robot slug fests. You could do mech battles in live action, but they'd be pretty costly and probably way more infrequent if that were the case. 

Battletech also has all sorts of time periods to cover. You can do stuff in the Succession Wars, you can do the tried and true Clan Invasion, or go earlier and give us a show about the Amaris Coup! I would love to say "go later" and demand a show set during the best Battletech era, the FedCom Civil War, but then you have to explain who the hell the clans are in a way that doesn't feel clunky and I think that would be harder to pull off.  

Legend of the Five Rings is one of my all time favorite RPG settings, although I've heard less than favorable things about the latest edition so I'm just going to ignore that for the sake of this discussion. It's 100% weeabo fantasy bullshit, and I can't get enough of it. 

This is another one of those settings open enough to offer lots of stories to be told without everything having to be world changing, but also sort of small enough to not feel too overwhelming. Between the court intrigue, political nonsense and cool samurai duels with magic tossed into the mix you can get a pretty varied amount of ideas and eclectic cast of characters without too much effort.

Of course, being inspired by Japanese culture one needs to be careful to not be stupidly offensive. This is absolutely a show where you want Japanese actors, and probably someone on staff to make sure you don't do something dumb and piss off an entire nation or get too deep into wank territory.

Still, I think L5R could be a great setting for a show, and also be fairly cost effective. You don't need a huge effects budget for something like this, although costuming would probably not be cheap.

In all honesty, I don't remember a whole of of Skytear's lore. Not that it was bad, or uninteresting, but I really dove into it before hitting a wall and going into a gaming slump for a while and it just got pushed out in favor of Heavy Gear since I was working on stuff for that at the time.

What I do remember was pretty good. Plenty of characters and story opportunities, and a setting that feels like it's always growing. And with the release of the card game Skytear Horde it seems like that lore was expanded on even more which opens up more doors.

This is absolutely a game that would benefit from the same treatment League of Legends got (considering Skytear is pretty much a tabletop MOBA) with Arcane. Focus on a couple of the characters and their stories, setting them up to become who we see in the game. Give us the story of how Akimo comes to possess the sword that is slowly turning him into a demon. Or maybe something about some of the characters from the Nupten faction with their dope ass mix of classical Greek and Persian styles.

A bright and colorful setting would make for a very visually appealing product, and some well written stories with interesting characters could go a long way.

Carnevale is, first off, a really solid game with a great premise: what if a giant magical hole opened in the sky and drowned most of the world leaving 18th century Venice as one of the last major bastions of mankind? Oh, and also said magical hole unleashed Lovecraftian abominations upon the world.

How is that not a great set up for a TV show? And with the game's focus on movement you can get all sorts of parkour shit in there for some cool scenes of guys running across rooftops in Venice while fighting monsters. Just writing that out gives me all sorts of cool mental pictures.

And Carnevale isn't super character driven, I mean there are some, which means way more creative liberty. And with the variety of factions vying for control of Venice you have a good cast of characters to work with, from lowly street thugs in the Guild to some crazed noble in the Patricians and or a plague doctor who makes animal monsters (yes, that's a faction in the game) all the way to actual god damn knights being sent from the Vatican to eradicate giant fish monsters.

Budget wise you would need to be careful because the costumes, sets and SFX could get out of control. I mean, as cool as it would be to see a scene involving a Morgraur that shit wouldn't be cheap.

Infinity is basically an anime already, why not just go all in and make an anime of it?

Yeah, I suppose you could go live action but I feel like costuming and SFX alone would make it a budgeting nightmare. Animating it might not be the cheapest option, but the moment a TAG or Morats have to be on screen you'll be damn glad you went animated.

Like the other IPs I've talked about, Infinity is open enough to give you some wiggle room. You can do a straight action series, you can go all philosophical or even campy and it'll all fit the tone of Infinity. And while many of the characters in the game are either clones of famous people or references to Reign of Fire of all fucking things, a series following the adventures of Mirage Team 5 would be pretty spectacular. I mean, it's a human woman and a giant werewolf being a special operations team. What about that isn't awesome?

The only issue I could really see with doing an Infinity series is that because it draws so much inspiration from so many anime series (Appleseed and Ghost in the Shell being the two big ones), it might feel slightly derivative. It would require a really solid story and writing to get people to see beyond the homages littered throughout the setting. It can be done, but it would be tricky.

Sticking to sci-fi skirmish games, I think MERCS would offer up a great chance to do some gritty sci-fi fun.

The setting is near future enough that it's not as outlandish as Infinity, while also offering a closer look at mankind and the issues that can arise when corporations are left unchecked. Do a show about a FCC cell working to take down one of the megacons, or focus on a MERCS team from one of the megacons fighting against another megacon. Hell, give us a show about someone in the GCC, the court system of the setting, working to uncover the corruption that was exposed by Sefadu.

The setting offers up not only action set pieces with cool armor designs and gunfights, but also political intrigue and suspense. And considering there's an entire boardgame in the setting about storming an office building you have a great season or series finale baked right in with a team of MERCS duking it out in an office building and giving us fond memories of the lobby scene from the Matrix.

And by being near future the budget doesn't need to be obscene to make it happen. Some CGI would be needed for air transports and the likes, and I imagine if a USCR Behemoth made an appearance that would be CGI because them bastards are big, but a lot of the armor and weapons can be done entirely practically.

Mainly I just want to see a GCC Tribunal smash shit with his giant hammer on my TV screen.

I may not talk about them much, but I do really quite enjoy a good card game. Problem is, most good card games are, in my experience, ruined by hyper competitive assholes who start stupid arms races until you can't even play a casual game without dropping a grand on a single deck.

That being said, one game I really like but never get to play anymore is Flesh and Blood. Mechanically solid, and the setting and art are pretty god damn great.

Flesh and Blood, much like Skytear, would benefit from an Arcane style show. Since the characters mostly just have small blurbs on the cards or short fiction pieces on the game's website there's some room to work with them without things feeling like a "oh god, we know already!" Set the show in the techno-fantasy city of Metrix, make my main girl Dash the lead character, weave in some other characters coming from other locales and bam, you go yourself a solid little series that can mix the magical with the technological in a fun way.

If you don't love Dash, you're a monster.

It would offer up high octane action, while still being able to do character drama. And having a ninja show up in this high tech city and fight someone in an exo-suit with a katana would be eight kinds of awesome and you know it.

There is perhaps a chance of people calling it an Arcane knock-off, which is a risk you run, but it's just right there waiting to be written. Get a good crew behind it and you could have a hit.

We're going to close out this hypothetical ramble by discussing Malifaux, if you don't mind.

Malifaux has an amazing setting, with plenty of depth and interesting stuff to see. It could work as either animated or live action, but I think live action might actually work better despite being more expensive because the SFX budget would need to be pretty high. You can a great blend of wild west with supernatural elements like redneck goblins, giant ice golems and literal demons. 

The thing to avoid with Malifaux is focusing too much on already established characters. Their stories have been playing out, and you don't want to either just retread those or get in the way of those. Thankfully, Malifaux is open enough to lend itself to new stories and characters with big names from the game making cameos. 

Plus, this blend of old west and horror fantasy hasn't ever, to my knowledge, really been done on TV before. It would be fresh in an of itself, and while the western may not be a popular film genre these days (god knows why, some of them are a blast) the extra fantastical stuff would really help to make it stand out. Plus the style is still well loved, with people in dusters blasting away with colt revolvers, only now there's also Oni and and steam robots hunting people down.

It would be one of the trickier to do well and right, seeing how the game is very character driven, but I think a Malifaux show would be quite the spectacle.

And those are the various tabletop properties I think would make good silver screen series. I'm sure there are others. D&D has enough different settings to give you a billion options (and a Spelljammer show would be amazing), you could maybe swap Malifaux for Deadlands, some Magic: The Gathering settings (OG Ravnica, Lorwyn, Theros, Innistrad) could be fun if the writers can resist the urge to masturbate about planeswalkers for five bloody minutes. Will any of these happen? Probably not. Even if the 40K show does really well, few other game studios can probably negotiate the type of deal that GW can, or have so ardent a supporter as 40K does in Henry Cavil to get it the clout it needs. 

Sorry for the long one, but I figured doing three posts about tabletop TV shows would feel a little cheeky. Hope you enjoyed, and I'll see you around.

Speculating on the Amazon 40K TV show

 Time to talk about something that I have little knowledge in, but I feel like this will give me a pretty good excuse to address one of my major gripes with so much of what we're seeing in TV these days and keep it relevant to the whole wargaming thing.

That's right, we're going to talk about the Warhammer 40K show that is in the works with Amazon Studios.

What could possibly go wrong?

Right off the bat I gotta say: I'm not super interested in this show. I don't really care for the 40K setting and think the lore is actually kind of shallow and uninspiring (who would have guessed guys going by the name World Eaters would turn out to be evil?!). That being said, this is a big thing in this industry and this is sort of a monumental event. Not because it's the first TV show based on a tabletop gaming property (Battletech, Dungeons & Dragons and even Heavy Gear beat them to that punch), but because it's the first Warhammer show that's not fan content (well, to an extent).

So, what will this show even be about? Frankly, we haven't the damn clue just yet. Obviously there are speculations aplenty, but nothing is known as the contract was only just recently actually signed and there has been no word from Amazon, Games Workshop or show frontrunner Henry Cavil as to what exactly we're going to be seeing on the screen. But I thought we could talk about a couple of the major speculations/hopes I've been seeing from the internet at large.

Gaunt's Ghosts

Once again, for the sake of full disclosure, I've not read the Gaunt's Ghosts books. People always tell me they're good, but as I said the 40K setting as a whole just doesn't grab me. But people swear by these books as some of the best to come out of Black Library and offer a humanizing look at the universe of the 41st millennium.

And yeah, it could work. A largely human cast, recognizable, to fans, characters that might be easy to get potential new fans on board with. It has the makings of a possible success.

And in much the same vein we have...

Eisenhorn

Another wildly popular series among the 40k fandom, the Eisenhorn books follow the titular Inquisitor as he does inquisitorial things and presumably kills some aliens.

This also offers a pretty decent entry, I imagine, with a human main lead and what can be set up as fairly straightforward plot for a season: go to world, snuff out heresy, toss in some Chaos cultists and maybe end with a fight against a Chaos Marine. Nice, easy and lets you explore some elements of the setting without being so dense and off-putting to casual viewers who have no prior knowledge of 40K lore.

And then there's this fucking thing...

The Horus Heresy

aka, Daddy Issues Destroys the Universe

Not. A. Chance. 

I know people would cream their pants for a high budget Horus Heresy series, but it's never fucking happening. Do you know why? Because that budget would have to be astronomical. An entire show about Space Marines, in live action, is so insanely cost prohibitive that unless they make the show about some Solar Auxilia goons with the occasional Space Marine cameo it just isn't logical. 

And people will go "but the show Astartes was so successful!" It was also animated. A Horus Heresy animated show could work, but depending on the animation style could still get expensive. But in live action, where the characters would basically all be CGI anyway? What's the damn point?

The other issue is that what story do you tell? Do you try and cover the whole thing? Good luck with that, the book series has 63 god damned books. Do you just cover a specific event? If so, which one? How much detail do you give to cover this stupidly absurdly huge conflict that's going on? 

I know this is the one people want the most, but it just isn't feasible without the entire budget of the EU behind it.

But this brings me to a point I want to make: does this show need to cover an existing story? We've been seeing a lot of stuff based on popular franchises lately, such as The Witcher and Halo getting shows that break off from the established lore pretty hard while still trying to claim to be adaptations.

And there's the problem: why make an adaptation? Gaunt's Ghosts and Eisenhorn? Already been told, they've been done and if you want to know those stories go read the books. This is a chance to do something new, something in a popular IP without being a direct adaptation that will only piss people off when it's even slightly different. Because we don't need the same story over and over, especially in big settings like 40K's, but rather something fresh.

Personally, I would make the show about a Rogue Trader and their crew. Then you can have different locales pretty easily, expand the cast with new characters and introduce people to stuff like the Eldar and Tau without having to do the whole "hurr suffer not the xeno durr!" bullshit that makes 40K so tiresome. Having human characters who are able to interact with aliens in a way other than sheer pointless violence opens up a lot of doors for storytelling. And then when you do want an alien to gun down you can toss in some Orks because the more of those stupid fucking comic relief shitheads that get brutally killed the better. 

Or set it in a hive city. Have it be about a couple of gangs a la Necromunda and then you can even toss in some Arbites if you can avoid getting sued for the blatant Judge Dredd rip-off. This lets you have an all human cast, but work in some impressive set pieces, have a fight involving one of the big old mining droids or something and steer well clear of possibly messing up the lore in any major way. It would take a fair bit more exposition to get non-fans into the whole concept of hive cities and gangs and how they fit into the greater 40K narrative, but it could be done.

Basically: no more adaptations. Give us something new that we can't get from some other form of media. Don't risk pissing fans off with bad adaptations, do something adjacent to major events if you must and maybe have someone lore famous make a cameo. 

Makes me wonder, though, if other wargaming IPs could make for good television...  
 

Pouring One Out: AT-43

 I was going to write a long, possibly rambling. diatribe about how a certain "new" game that everyone is busy jizzing their pants over is little more than a soulless, nostalgia bait cash grab by being little more than a warts and all rehash of a game that got shit canned over a decade ago. But then I decided, no, I want to write about something I actually care about. And thus, I shall, and I won't even give a certain game company the satisfaction of feeding into the Google algorithm by mentioning them or their blatant dick move to their customers by name.

So welcome to the first in what may become a regular staple here: Pouring One Out. In these posts I'm gonna wax nostalgic for a moment and talk about dead games that mean something to me, and maybe deserve a little more respect than they got or currently get.

But already we've come to a problem. What is a dead game? If you ask some braindead troglodytes, they'll tell you any game that isn't immediately as popular and widespread as the biggest game in the industry is dead. Those people, however, are stupider than a rock, so their definition can fuck right off. In this context, a dead game is any game that is simply no longer in production. I'm going to try and avoid things like discussing out of print editions of games for the most part, because even if the game has changed drastically it's still available on the market under the same name. 

And where better to start than the game that got me back into gaming, and got me my first published work, the gem that is AT-43.

Roll up, bitches.

AT-43 was the brainchild of Jean Bey, and produced by legendary French game company Rackham Entertainment. Rackham was already pretty well established, at least in Europe, with their fantasy game Confrontation. Thus in 2007 they decided to throw their hat into the ring of sci-fi games, and AT-43 was born.

The origins of the game are a bit muddy, and my memory isn't what it used to be, so forgive me if some of my details are a bit off. I believe the game originally started as a weird war 2 game, with the title being Alternate Timeline '43. At some point it was changed to AT-43, and moved to sci-fi (with the AT referring to the in universe timeline of After Trauma), hence why two of the factions, the UNA and Red Blok, scream weird war 2 minis. The game also featured art from several noted artists, but top among them was the one and only Palo Parente, who would then go on to make a game in his weird war 2 setting DUST which only adds to the mystery.

So instead of fighting Nazi zombies, thank god, we got to fight freaky ass aliens like the Therians and my beloved army the Cogs.

Still some of the best aliens in any game.

The game was pretty slick, even if not totally without sin these days. But as I said, it got me back into gaming. It used a fun card based activation system where you basically had to plan out your activations in advance, and the combat resolution mechanic was pretty fun if perhaps a tad clunky as times. it used what it dubbed the Universal Table of Resolutions. How it worked, basically, was that you took one stat, subtracted another stat or modifier (such as range) and checked the table for the result and it would tell you what you needed to roll. Sometimes you could auto-pass, sometimes you could auto-fail (a pistol ain't doing jack shit to a tank). Looking back at it it probably could have been handled a little better, but it never felt as bad as some other games.

One thing that it did that doesn't sit so close my heart anymore was the range ruler. The game used a specialized tape measure, with centimeters on one side, and dedicated range bands on the other. In theory this could work pretty well, but the ranges weren't an exact science, which meant if you tried to play without the proprietary tape measure you were sort of boned. I'm sure someone, at some point, figured out the exact ranges, but it still just feels wrong to me now.

In my experience, those guys are fucked.

AT-43's biggest gimmick, however, wasn't related to the game play at all. No, it was the miniatures. See, AT-43 used pre-painted miniatures. This caused no shortages of uproars and bitchfests from neckbeards who decried it as "not respecting the hobby" and just being "cheap toys instead of real miniatures." I could get it when Confrontation went pre-painted, as the original models were beautiful, true works of art, and the plastics that came out for the Ragnarok edition...weren't.

But AT-43 was pre-painted from the word go, so the whining seemed far less genuine and more of a "I'm never going to try this game, so I can't comment on the gameplay, but I must bash it somehow!" The thing is, though, that I liked it being pre-painted. I'm no great painter, and I admit to sometimes finding the hobby aspect of wargaming to be tedious, aggravating and needlessly cruel. Things were different when I jumped into AT-43, though. At that time I was living with a buddy of mine and his mom after having moved back to Maryland, and my entire life in the house we were in was confined to what I estimated to be a 10x12 bedroom. I had nowhere to set up to build and paint minis, every inch of surface space was already spoken for. Finding a game where that wasn't an issue was a godsend. Sure I still needed to store the models, but I could fit a box or two in my closet way easier than I could clear off a large swath of my dresser to set up to build and paint. And the models were durable, so just tossing them in a box I didn't really worry about them breaking. Hell, between the two armies I collected I had one, maybe two breakages the whole time.

Okay, yes, the paintjobs weren't exactly the best, but they were totally acceptable as gaming pieces. And it wasn't even hard to paint over them as many people did, or add extra details as some did, or even just hit them with a wash and make some of the sculpting pop a little more. Of course, being pre-painted they were a little more costly than some of their contemporaries, but not enough to be a deterrent.

At least, not for me.

SMG vs. anti-tank cannon. Wonder who wins?

I took a risk on AT-43. I bought the Operation Damocles starter box for somewhere around $80ish back in 2008, and fell absolutely in love with the game and it's setting. 

The setting of AT-43 was a real treat. It took some of the tired tropes of sci-fi and turned them on their heads. The humans weren't really humans as we know them, the big bads, the Therians were the actual humans from Earth who had uploaded themselves to a digital world and were making dyson spheres while seeding life on other planets to continue to make new dyson spheres in some insane attempted to stop entropy, there's an entire god damned faction of hyper intelligent gorillas in power armor. How isn't this fucking awesome?

This is at least eight years before Overwatch blatantly stole the design.

It was a nice combination of WW2, cold war, retro future sci-fi and transhumanism nightmares mixed together in a fairly cohesive way. And it wasn't presented as grimdark, there was still hope in the universe and not everything was so bloody miserable.

As I said, I had two fairly decent sized armies. I had a UNA army, my regular human dudes with their cool utilitarian walkers and laser guns a plenty. I also had my Cogs, those tall, freaky, cloned weirdos with quantum weapons and zero fucks to give. These two armies played very different, offered different feels and looks and I just adored them. Sadly, my models are in a box sitting in a house 2,000 miles away. If I could I would love to get them back, should they not be destroyed, and stat them up for use in Grimdark Future. The styles just hold so much appeal to me, and the Cogs are still some of the weirdest shit I've seen in terms of aliens.

I will not apologize for Monke.

The game had a decent run, ending in 2010 when Rackham went out of business. It sold well enough, but people were put off by the changes to Confrontation, and wouldn't even give AT-43 a fair shake as being it's own thing. Still, in that time the game expanded from the original four factions (UNA, Red Blok, Therians and Karmans) to add the Cogs and ONI Corp, and the expansion book Operation Frostbite that released in 2008 gave the original four factions new toys and added a small campaign for people to play.

But I will always remember AT-43 fondly for the good things it did. Alternating activations, no bullshit phase system that says I can't move after shooting, fairly slick resolution that only required basic math skills (good for me since I'm a dumbass), a fun setting with all sorts of wild stuff and a creative streak that I don't think we've really seen since in sci-fi wargaming. 

Was it perfect? Of course not, no game is. But was it fun? You're damn right it was. And it got me to where I am today as a gamer, so I will always have fond memories of it. 

But that brings us to a question: do I want AT-43 back? To be honest, I don't know. There was rumor some time back of someone buying the rights and making a new game with it, and when I heard that I was beyond excited. I still maintain that AT-43 was a fantastic game, regardless of people's gripes about the pre-painted nature of the models, but now, as I near 40, I wonder if I want it back. Having seen what's happened to Warzone so many times, do I want to see another game I love go through that? 

Yes, I'd love to see a new range of models using the old designs. I'd love to be able to buy more Cogs for reasonable prices (fuck you eBay scalpers), or grab the handful of units I lacked for my UNA army. But I don't know that I want AT-43 as a whole back. Maybe it being dead is part of why it means so much to me. It's part of my history, as I am part of it's. I got to see the game grow, I got to meet and work with the people behind it, AT-43 is the reason I went to my first, and only thus far, GenCon. As I said, it got me my first paid writing gig. All those find memories would somehow feel lessened if it came back, I think.

This art makes me nostalgic.

But it's impossible to give a straight answer because I simply do not know. If it came back I'd probably follow it intently like I am with Warzone Eternal. Maybe I would be elated and rush to buy in, maybe not. 

What I do know for certain, though, is that I owe a lot to AT-43 and the folks who made it happen. Even if it never exists outside those few years, those were some of the best years of my wargaming life and I am immensely grateful for everything this game did for me.

So, let's pour one out for the greatness that was AT-43.