AICN TABLETOP: Rackham Army Boxes!!! Pathfinder!!!

Hola all. Massawyrm here. Summer is upon us folks and while for a lot of us that means the heating up of the summer tentpole blockbuster explosion, for gamers it also means GEN CON. Gen Con is THE gaming event in the United States. Anyone who is anyone in the industry is there. And it’s when gaming companies decode to roll out their exciting new releases. What that means is that about now the news begins trickling in as to what much of that might be. Two news stories caught my eye in the last few weeks that you guys should look into. So here we go.
RACKHAM ARMY BOXES! Man, I’m pulling for this so badly that it hurts. As a miniature design studio, Rackham has been the gold standard of excellence in design that every other studio aspires to. Their metal was expensive, but worth every penny. Nothing quite compares to beauty of a perfectly sculpted Rackham mini. Sadly, due to the rising cost of metal worldwide (the advent of an industrial China vomiting up cheaply made, poorly constructed, well, EVERYTHING) led to decreased profitability of metal minis. So they went pre-painted plastic. A good choice. Trouble is, they led with their weakest, most uninteresting armies when rebooting their CONFRONTATION line and then proved too slow at releasing the promised armies. This summer was supposed to see the release of the sixth army before moving onto any number of the other 11 in their original line. Instead, after a corporate restructuring and buyout, they are just getting around to releasing the fourth. Things are pretty bad for Rackham. Hell, you can’t even buy their products off the shelf here in Austin any more. The last of it went during a local 75% off sale. But now the new management is coming out swinging…with Army Boxes. The perfect solution to one of their games biggest hurdles, the buy-in cost, these $70 box sets will come with everything you need to play an average sized game of AT-43 and CONFRONTATION: 2000 points. And from the looks of it they’re not just filling it with their crappy models, but some choice stuff. Take a gander. The AT-43 boxes include

Content of the Cog Army Box:

1 unit of 4 Warmongers: basic super-soldiers 1 unit of 4 Sharpshooters: elite super-soldiers 1 Prowler: basic combat strider 1 Vandal: the most powerful Cog combat strider 3 heroes from the C-Naps line: C-Naps G09, C-Naps G36 and C-Naps G45 3 high walls 1 container Introductory Rules 1 Cog tactical manual 1 game poster 12 dice 1 “Cog” ruler 1 explosion template 8 game cards

Content of the Red Block Army Box:

1 unit of 12 Krasnye Soldaty: regular infantry containing three grenade launchers, two medics and an officer 1 unit of 8 Krasnye Soldaty: regular infantry containing one grenade launcher, two mechanics and an officer 6 Dragonov Kommandos: elite infantry with one sniper rifle, an electronic warfare specialist, a medic and an officer Odin O-1 and Manon O-2: the Red Blok’s two greatest heroes 1 Urod: Odin O-1’s and Manon O-2’s combat strider 1 Dotch Yaga: the most heavily armored combat strider to ever grace the battlefield 6 low walls 1 container Introductory Rules 1 Red Blok revolutionary forces tactical manual 1 game poster 12 dice 1 “Red Blok” ruler 1 explosion template 26 game cards

The above Red Blok list is very close to what I used to run (sans the Dotch Yaga which wasn’t out yet) and cost me $145 + another $90 to fill out the space of the DY. That was to get up to a solid 2000pt game. Now I can get in for $70. All of a sudden $25-$30 troop boxes aren’t out of the realm of possibility. This plus $30 a month will slowly build you a solid, expanding army with a lot of options. The game is a lot of fun, but it was very hard to get people involved because of the massive outlay of cash. These release in July with Confrontation boxes to follow in September. I really want Confrontation to work above all. It’s a great game hamstrung by Rackham’s inability to cross market their minis. Rather than choosing D&D friendly pre-painted armies, like Acheron, Orcs, Goblins or the Sessair Kelts, they led with werewolves and guys in armor who all look the same…and hang out with guys armed with rifles. Yeah. What’s Acheron? Skeletons. Zombies. Ghouls, Necromancers. Shit like that. Sessair Kelts? Druids. Barbarians. Minotaurs. Centaurs. Can’t think of anyone who would want awesome looking pre-painted zombies, skeletons, barbarians and minotaurs…except maybe every other Dungeon Master in the world. Ahem. If you can get those guys to buy starter sets, odds are they’ll play the game. And once they’ve played, odds are they’ll come back for unit boxes. Here’s hoping this marks the beginning of the resurrection of one of my favorite gaming companies.
PATHFINDER GOES TO PRESS! Here’s something I’ve had my eye on for a while. And for those of you asking why I haven’t covered it, all I can say is: what was there to cover? In open Beta for about a year now, PATHFINDER is Paizo’s answer to Wizards of the Coast moving to 4th edition. After a whole mess of backroom, corporate hullaballoo, Paizo made a decision that would make this one of the weirdest edition transitions in the history of gaming. And now it is about to see Hardcover. But first, a little history. It all started back in the late 90’s when Wizards of the Coast acquired the toxic assets of TSR and attempted to breathe life back into the dying Dungeons & Dragons property. On its last legs, D&D was about to expire after a slow, painful death. But due to the love and care of a few faithful and devoted fans, 3rd edition was born. And with it came a grand new idea. Borrowing a page from computer programmers, they made the rules OPEN SOURCE, creating what we in the industry know as the OGL or Open Gaming License. WotC kept the rights to specific names and creatures native to D&D (like Beholders and Illithid), but the rules could be reprinted and used by anyone – with certain stipulations. What this did was allowed ANYONE to make a D&D book of their own. And shops around the world were flooded with new, third party products that allowed anyone to play whatever kind of D&D game they wanted…all while WotC put out a book or two a month at their own clip. An entire new market emerged and entire companies sprung up by putting out third party products. Some were incredible (like Paizo’s) while others, well, not so much. When 4th was announced, the industry went into a tailspin. Book sales dropped almost instantly as people prepared for the coming 4th edition and many companies made tough decisions about whether to continue making content for D&D or whether to fold. But then a funny thing happened. Someone in the upper levels of the Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast corporate structure began dragging their feet. They didn’t understand the whole third party angle. Why should other people be making money off of their game? Someone noted that if they didn’t, the current license allowed anyone that wanted to continue making products for 3rd Edition. After much finagling and discussion, they were convinced. But they’d waited too long. Paizo, needing products on the shelves to keep themselves in business, made the decision to pass up 4th and continue making 3rd edition products. But Paizo knew what we all knew. D&D 3.5 had ISSUES and needed fixing. So they set out to Make PATHFINDER, effectively D&D 3.75. Putting the beta rules online for free and offering an affordably priced softcover version of the playtest, they set out to make their own way with a game that allowed players to keep playing the game they loved with the books they already owned. Thus creating the greatest schism in gaming history. You see, with every other game you had people who liked the new rules and people who didn’t. There are ALWAYS people who don’t like a new edition on principle and they would always scream and rant and piss and moan about the loss of their precious, but invariably would either leave the game for good or simply try the new game and adapt. But now…you don’t have to adapt. You want new product for your old game? You can have it. Paizo’s got it in digital form followed shortly by in store product. Paizo’s selling point has always been their great art and inventive ideas. And they’ve brought both to bear with Pathfinder. The art is fantastic, redefining and rebranding D&D as their own – and meanwhile they’ve come up with some interesting ideas on how to fix the dozens of problems that cropped up in 3.5. Every decade we gamers learn a few important lessons about gaming as it evolves. The 80’s taught us the value of well thought out systems and the difference between realism and acceptable BS when making a system work numerically. The 90’s taught us all about the importance of character individuality, customizability and storytelling. And the 00’s taught us the importance of character balance and a steady, systematic progression of abilities and challenges. Hell, right now 4th Edition is teaching us heaps about the importance of statistical analysis in the creation of random number based systems – just look at the problems we’ve had with Skill Challenges. But Paizo has to solve modern problems with a 10 year old system. And very soon we’ll get to see the fruits of their labor. I’ve thus far withheld judgment because I knew this would take a LOT of work. Their initial Beta was what many referred to as 3.5 ++, using a power ramp up to solve a number of problems. Take for instance the Sorcerer who is functionally the same, but gets a slew of new feats and a direct port of the Dragon Magazine bloodline system giving them access to the non-combat spells sorcerers rarely, if ever, took with their limited spell selection…all while retaining their old spell progression. Im also very curious to see how the new version deals with high level play. 3.5 breaks down around level 13-14, with characters getting so powerful that the only real threats in the game are critters that can kill the PCs just as fast as the PCs could kill them…in an instant. Anyone who has been vaporized before their first at-bat in the initiative order knows what I’m talking about. Many of the key question marks were left as sidebars for the playtesters to mess around with (like how to deal with Hit Points) and I desperately would like to know how it ultimately turns out. The book streets in August preceded no doubt by a small press run available at Gen Con. Looking forward to finally getting my hands on a hardcover.
GEN CON YOU SAY? Do you have a product premiering at Gen Con? Do you have something you’d like to get the word out about before the big weekend? Drop me a line and let me know about it. Okay guys, tomorrow…MONSTER MANUAL 2! The gag comes off!
Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em. Massawyrm
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