Sci-Fi
The Best Games Not Yet Published – 2011
Another new year and new games and miniatures to lust after! Once again we present our annual look at the games and miniatures we are most anxiously awaiting in 2011. Our 2010 prognostications did well. As always, there is no guarantee any of these titles will be published in 2011, nor that they will be any good if they are, but we are always optimistic.
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Spartan Games Interview
The D6 Generation has a great follow-up to their excellent Dystopian Wars review. They have an engaging interview with Neil Fawcett, owner of Spartan Games. Unfortunately, Neil has a cold and his audio is not very good for the interview but it is well worth the effort to listen. The D6G gang get Neil to spill the beans on a wide range of topics including the production process for the creation of the fantastic Spartan Games’ miniatures as well as news on upcoming products. Neil mentions, among other things:
- That there will be 40 new ship miniatures for Firestorm Armada in 2011 along with a host of new alliance races.
- They have 168 miniatures already designed for their upcoming Invasion ground combat game — but gave no release date.
- He said that they have a full 2011 release plan already in place for Dystopian Wars and if you like what you’ve seen so far you’ll be ecstatic about what they will have later in the year.
- Spartan will also release new tank combat rules for DW as a free download.
- Lastly, he even mentions they have scaled down some Firestorm Armada minis to about 50% their normal size for testing with a large fleet level combat game.
Forward to 1:30 into the show to get right to the interview.
On a different note, the guys from The D6 Generation also announced they will be producing ‘less for more’ soon. This is a great idea they have to produce additional paid content downloads in between their normal shows. The new downloads will be shorter segments at a cost of just .99 cents. These guys do a great job and deserve some financial support so hopefully folks will grab these even just as a token of appreciation to the guys for all of their hard work. The main show will remain free.
Firestorm Armada — Kurak Alliance
Spartan Games released a preview of the Kurak, a new race for Firestorm Armada, who are located in and around the planetary systems of Fathoms Reach. It is unknown if this will be a complete seventh race or more of an alliance fleet for use with other fleets. The two ships previewed look really nice. The Ganak Class BB is certainly Tau inspired from the Battlefleet Gothic days. We really like the Sulan Cruiser. Spartan also announced they will be releasing 40 new ships for FA in 2011 along with some expansion books. Looks like it will be a good year for sci-fi ship combat fans.
Dystopian Wars — Review
Imagine a world similar to our own, but subtly different. Now imagine the year is 1870 and the Industrial Revolution occurred decades earlier than in our own world. Technology is far advanced, and in many cases, unrecognizable, which has led to the development of fantastic naval vessels, hulking land ships and terror from the skies in the form of airships and war balloons.
The Dystopian Wars game is set in a Victorian Steampunk world and we have designed the rules to ensure a fun game with a large selection of high quality models in a couple of hours. The rules support Naval, Aerial and Land models from the outset, so that you can set up battles and scenarios in any combat setting.
Well the D6 Generation boys have outdid themselves once again. They have done a mammoth review of Dystopian Wars, the new miniatures game from Spartan Games. Craig outdoes himself with a wonderful dramatic Dystopian Wars introduction. The review is in fact so big they had to split it into two segments (1st at 1:12 and 2nd at 2:32). This is by far their best review yet. They go into exacting detail on the game’s background, the rules, the miniatures as well as the actual game play. It is also one of their best reviews in terms of overall listening entertainment and general flow.
You can download very well done ship/vehicle stat cards from the Spartan Forums.
Also don’t miss the D6G’s excellent interview with Spartan Games’ owner Neil Fawcett.
We have bought a number of games that we never would have based on input from the D6 Generation and Dystopian Wars will probably be yet another. While the miniatures are of the same high quality and detail as Spartan’s Firestorm Armada miniatures, they do not particularly appeal to us, but the rules sound so good we will probably pick some minis up anyway or may proxy in FA ships or even WW2 ship minis.
Also see the Spartan Games Interview. Also see Dystopian Wars — Getting Started Week.
On a related note, I picked up Boneshaker after hearing Craig praise it a few times. I have never read any Steampunk titles before and only a few zombie titles. Boneshaker is rather light on both but is a very well written and interesting adventure story with an evocative world and some strong female characters. If you want a good read give it a shot.
[Updated: 18NOV11]
Black Library — Digital Editions
The Black Library has started producing digital editions of many of their publications. This includes not only audio books, as they have done on CD for a few years now, but also fulltext eBooks and unabridged audio. The audio books are now available in downloadable .mp3 format and the books are available as .ePub and .mobi (you get both). Surprisingly all of the formats are provided without copy protection and are licensed so you can load them on multiple personal devices.
All of the publications are in industry standard formats. The .mp3 format is of course playable on just about any audio device at this point including any computer. There are a number of reader options for .ePub and .mobi as well. .mobi is more popular on small form factor devices such as the iPhone or Android phone. .ePub is probably the preferred format for eReaders and computers but with text-only novels either format works just fine. On Apple’s iPad there are numerous .ePub reader apps including Apple’s own iBooks app. For the computer, Adobe’s Adobe Digital Editions is probably one of the better reader applications. The new Barnes&Noble NookColor — a great device for $250 by the way — also reads the .ePub format. There is also a Nook app for the iPad (the Windows Nook app is not so great). The books look great on all of the devices we tried. [Note: The NookColor seems to have a slight bug where random text gets rendered it a slightly larger font. B&N we hopefully fix this with an update.]
Unfortunately, the Black Library eCommerce site only has prices in UK pounds. Most books are ~£6.50 — that works out to about $10.00 at current conversion rates. On Amazon.com you can get most Black Library publications for around $8.99 but if you add in shipping and/or sales tax you are at least breaking even. On the plus side most of the books are ~£6.50 where some cost more on Amazon. The full audio books are probably where the conversion pricing hurts the most. For example, the unabridged audio version of Prospero Burns is £20.00 (~$31) but it is 16 hours of audio.
We grabbed a handful of titles including some audio books. We were very impressed with the audio books. We got Fireborn and Heart of Rage both of which are somewhat older publications having been released on CD previously. Both are audio dramas and include dramatic story telling with sound effects and music. They are only about an hour long but are very well done. We liked Fireborn better but that is probably personal taste.
Overall this is an interesting development for fans of Warhammer 40,000 and epublications. The ability to carry multiple titles and read them on multiple devices is a nice convenience. The audio books are a nice diversion and make for some interesting listening while modeling. Hopefully Black Library will continue to publish in electronic formats.
Ultramarines the Movie — Comments
Well I won’t bother with a review of Ultramarines: The Movie considering how many are already out there — John Regal’s of DakkaDakka is a useful one. One thing I have not seen are many comments on the DVD extras. The set includes a second DVD full of extra stuff. Some of it is rather simple weapon database type stuff but it also includes some 40K background, information on the actors, as well as a 25min making-of piece that is very good. Overall there is probably another 40mins of material on the second DVD. You will need to go to the Thunderhawk and some of the other sections to unlock access to many of the other extras. Also included is a 36-page full-color comic that is only mildly interesting and probably more useful for those new to 40K in general. All components are of high quality.
I have now seen the new Warhammer 40,000 movie a couple of times. I rate it a 6 out of 10 if you are a WH40K fan. If you are just a sci-fi fan in general it is probably a 5 out of 10. That may not sound very good but I think the movie is in fact worth buying and worth watching. Considering this was the first WH40K movie ever done and the limits of the budget I think they did a respectable job. Considering Dan Abnett wrote the screenplay I was a bit disappointed in the story. But if 40K fans want to see bigger and better movies done in the future they need to support this release or that will surely be the end of that.
- Animation Quality: Ranges from good to very good. It is nowhere near the level of a Pixar film but is sufficient for the job. In many of the scenes the characters seem to be walking on smoke. In addition, the figure animations are somewhat off and there is a general lack of mass and gravity. Having said that, the Land Speeder animation is very good and it makes you wonder why they did not do a vehicle heavy story instead that would have helped mitigate a lot of the issues they seemed to have had.
- Model Design: Ranges from good to excellent. They had to modify the look of the Space Marines a tad to actually make them work. The ironic thing is I think one major fault is that they tried to stay too true to WH40K. For example, the weapons are ridiculously huge and in some shots just seem silly. The main complaint really is that there simply are not enough models in the movie (no Rhinos, Terminators, Dreadnoughts, frigates, fighters, etc). But of course this goes back to the limited budget.
- Set Design: Generally good. Here I think personal preference will rule. They stayed very true to the fluff of 40K and even used the designs of existing 40K building models in the sets. Sometimes the sets look like game boards more than actual environments. Like many video games, many of the sets were very vacant, which just seems odd. Inside the Strike Cruiser are these vast open areas of nothing. I think the movie would have been better off being in a Space Hulk instead of where they did it for both visual and budget reasons. I also think making the environments a bit less literal Gothic would have helped. Sometimes you would think they were making a vampire movie or something.
- Sound: Generally very good. I would have preferred different sounds for many things but that is just personal taste.
- Story: Good. More like a 50-100 page short story than a true feature length film (it is, after all, only 70mins long). The story is a bit slow, predictable and somewhat disappointing overall. But even though the movie was certainly made for the hardcore fan I think they were trying to open it up a bit to a more general audience as well. This duality may have thrown things off a bit. The story will probably annoy the hardcore fan more than the casual fan.
- Voice Acting: Outstanding. Without a doubt the highlight of the film is the voice acting. The actors did a fantastic job and were well cast.
Overall the sum is probably greater than the parts and it was fun to see 40K come to life, even if imperfectly. With luck we will see a bigger, better film next time around.
[Updated: 20DEC10]
Ultramarines the Movie — Now Shipping
Well after a two week delay the first Warhammer 40,000 movie is shipping to customers at last. Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40,000 movie is a 3D animated film set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. The screenplay was written by Dan Abnett, of Gaunt’s Ghosts and Horus Heresy fame. The movie was previewed to a number of folks all of whom have given it good marks. The movie is a DVD-only release and will not appear in theaters. 40K Radio has a nice interview with the primary producer of the film from Codex Pictures and discuss their private screening of the movie. Bell of Lost Souls also has an interview with Bob Thompson of Codex Pictures and a preview of the movie. Episode #12 of 40K Radio also has a very good interview with Producer Bob Thompson (forward to 1:23:30 to get right to it).
Read our comments on the film.
[Updated: 19DEC10]
New Firestorm Armada Ships Available
Spartan Games has released a number of new ships for Firestorm Armada. Each race gets a new specialty ship and a new faction, the Marauder Fleet, is available now (but no rules/stats yet). There are 
stats for the other new ships.
The new ships are the first to come from Spartan’s new tooling where they have reduced the parts count for each ship. Most are now single piece castings or only two or three pieces at most. The large Marauder ship, the Buccaneer, is resin with a metal ring and the small Corvettes are all metal. The other ships are all single piece resin. They are all extremely well cast, very detailed and are basically the best sci-fi ship miniatures currently available.
Also see Firestorm Armada Kurak Alliance.
[Updated: 8NOV10]
Epic: Armageddon — Review
The D6 Generation gang have done a great review of the classic Epic: Armageddon. We agree with their review and Russ’ conclusion that Epic: Armageddon is a great game marred by lack of support and a lack of miniatures. But if you don’t mind doing some work you will find Epic: Armageddon worth the effort. It is still one of the best games for a sci-fi invasion or larger grand-tactical conflict. Fast forward to 2hr 38min into the show to get right to the review.
Craig mentions the excellent Epic: Armageddon Handbook 2008 from the TacticalWargames.net site. It is essentially the official rulebook with all errata (as of 2008) integrated into it. Also the original Epic: Armageddon rules and army lists are available, for free, from GW directly. NetEpic is the fan produced version of the early Epic V2 rules (this is basically a different game from Epic: Armageddon).
The World’s End Radio podcast also has an excellent review of Epic in their Episode #48 – Epic WIN. Forward to 0:47:31 to get right to it.
We like to use Litko Aero’s Small Artillery Strike Markers and Blast Markers for blast markers and the Mini Smoke Markers or Small Flaming Wreckage as destroyed markers.
[Updated: 23JAN11]
Colonial Battlefleet Core Rules — Now Available
Steel Dreadnought Games, makers of the fine Naval Thunder WW2 naval rules, has released a new set of sci-fi spaceship combat rules entitled Colonial Battlefleet. We have not seen them yet but they sound interesting. SDG provides some nice details of the game. Like all of their products the rules are available as a downloadable PDF.
Colonial Battlefleet features easy to learn rules and exciting game play with minimal time spent waiting between turns. Shooting and damage resolution is easy and yields plenty of carnage. Best of all, Colonial Battlefleet is not a “luck of the dice” game. Although the rules are very straightforward, the game offers tremendous tactical depth and your command skills will be put to the test! There are no cumbersome or complicated systems to slow down play. All your attention will be focused on outmaneuvering and outwitting your opponent – not trying to remember rules.
The View from the Turret 
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