Fantasy Flight's making a miniatures game, apparently!

[Spevna]

The big strike against Runewars will be that it's the first attempt at such a game that isn't aimed squarely at people with big WFB armies and begging them to use the minis they have with whatever new rules people are cooking up.

I hope it does well as i do think the FFG produce good stuff and they deserve success, but it does seem like a lot of people are looking for rules that'll let them use the armies they already have.

I've seen a lot of people jumping on Dragon Rampant because of that. If FFG have some means of allowing people to use the minis they already have, it'd be very persuasive.

[me_in_japan]

Looking at this from the perspective of someone who doesn't have a prior investment in any other fantasy system, what intrigues me is the FF name. Pretty much everything o theirs that I've played has been an excellent gaming experience, particularly X-wing, so to have that kind of game design in a mass-battles mini game really makes me perk up my ears and pay attention. For me to take the plunge and commit, however, would require either an extensive range of well-sculpted minis, or sufficient flexibility (=genericness) in their minis/fluff/lists to allow me to use minis from other manufacturers. I mean, if I already had an Orc/human/elf/dwarf army I would hope to be able to use it.

I say all that simply as a representative gamer with no prior investment to worry about.

Something like skaven or lizardman would be more difficult to accommodate, but a smart game designer should be able to accommodate the generic stuff from the generic armies. FF has no shortage of smart designers, so whether other games' minis can be used will be a deliberate design point, I would think. I daresay they've done their research, though. I shall continue to watch this space...

[Lovejoy]

The rank and file look pretty attractive to me, skellies etc, are ok. What I respond less well too are the bigger gribblies. Do not like. The Warcraft cartoon aesthetic is a bit much, is all over Age of Sigmar like a rash and I'm tired of seeing it.
I'll follow developments on this though. There's definitely a fantasy gap waiting to be plugged, this will probably plug it for some.

[The Other Dave]

A quick video of the rules demo from gencon. Lots to like in there, in my opinion - although it does look like there's a lot of moving parts, both figuratively and literally, but that's to be expected from FFG.

I think there'd be a couple issues with using existing armies. One is the unit order tools and cards, which are unique to each unit and presumably will come bundled with the unit boxes. The other (since the Internet exists and physical components can be worked around) is basing, since base sizes are fixed and uniform for all armies. But then again generic fantasy means generic fantasy - their game universe has the standard array of humans, dwarves, orcs, elves and so on, so presumably with a bit of homework you could bodge things in. We'll see!

@Lovejoy, they certainly do have an aesthetic. I don't mind it personally, and the same thing that makes it nice for computer games (namely, being able to easily distinguish things at a glance from their silhouette) makes it nice for the tabletop, but the unit upgrade hero they released pictures of has some serious Warcraft-face going on:

[YellowStreak]

@Lovejoy, they certainly do have an aesthetic. I don't mind it personally, and the same thing that makes it nice for computer games (namely, being able to easily distinguish things at a glance from their silhouette) makes it nice for the tabletop, but the unit upgrade hero they released pictures of has some serious Warcraft-face going on:

I don't mind that aesthetic either. Most 'heroic' minis are exaggerated anyway..some more than others (e.g. Orcs).

[The Other Dave]

A longer demo, with some nice close-ups of cards for people (like me) who are into component porn. (I promise I'll stop spamming the thread up after the post-gencon buzz dies down, heh.)

Looks like they're definitely planning more than just the two factions at launch, too, although there's no word on what those might be.

[AndrewGPaul]

There's some interesting ideas there, and the designs of the minis is good enough, but it looks like it's doing the same "loads of crap on the tabletop that isn't miniatures" thing that puts me off Armada.

[The Other Dave]

There's some interesting ideas there, and the designs of the minis is good enough, but it looks like it's doing the same "loads of crap on the tabletop that isn't miniatures" thing that puts me off Armada.

Yeah, that's FFG for you. Personally I have a bit of hope that keeping the unit cards on the sideboard, and being able to put tokens on them instead of on the table, will help mitigate a bit, but it's still certain to be a pretty component-heavy game.

[The Other Dave]

Huh. In an unusually subdued move in this age of Kickstarters and hype wagons, it looks like Runewars has quietly gone off to the printers, and retailers have been informed that they can start accepting pre-orders and expect release in the February - March range.

I kind of think FFG should be trumpeting this a bit more if they really want it to take off, but then again I suppose there's still time.

[The Other Dave]

So this is being released this week, and it does look pretty cool - the two starter factions and expansions for them will be available by early May. Apparently, unlike X-Wing, it'll be possible to get all the upgrade cards by sticking to a single faction, which shows they've learned some lessons. Being FFG, though, shipping to Japan will be exorbitant (and the starter box is too heavy for Firestorm to ship it for free), which may be the big obstacle against me picking up a starter just for giggles.

I may just, though. I'm liking what I see the more they show.