The feeling that the show this year is busier than normal is being confirmed not only by other show attendees and exhibitors but also by the fact that there is almost nowhere on the trade show that is not packed with people. This makes me wonder just how insane the show is going to be on Saturday which is traditionally the busiest day of the show.

The Monsterpocalypse demo area is a zoo and it continues to be utterly impossible to get in to see the game or get a demo. Luckily Bobby from Privateer Press is obliging enough to arrange for me to have a quick look at it after the show closes at 6pm. While wandering around the booth I notice the utterly stunning diorama that they have created for Warmachine: Legends. I can’t see how I missed this on Friday. The video and pictures I took really don’t do the piece justice, especially the city fighting section with the Menoth and Cygnar troops. The streets are filled with chaotic combat and details and it is really a treat to view.

D&D Miniatures
I mange to get a few minutes to talk to some of the people behind the D&D Miniatures game. The conversation starts with a brief discussion of the upcoming Demonweb expansion (expect to see Drow) but quickly moves on to discussing the impact on their game of the increasing cost of materials, labour in China as well as transportation costs. Wizards has managed to float through these cost increases due to what appears to be good projections on the part of their financial staff during their last round of price increases.

One issue that came up was the possibility of using CAD design tools in their development process to not only design and sculpt their figures but also to create virtual paint masters for their manufacturers in China. The development process contains quite a few steps that could be replaced by digital tools but it appears that Wizards hasn’t been looking into this technology as actively as some other companies so it may be a while before we start to see digitally developed D&D minis. One thing I found that was interesting is that each 60 miniature D&D Miniatures set typically starts with 70 to 80 figures in it and these are eventually whittle down to 60 based on game design and visual design issues.

We also talked about the inherent problems of having to develop a game that is used by such divergent market segments. There are the D&D Miniatures skirmish gamers who are a much smaller section of their audience in terms of total numbers but who buy a much larger amount of product per person than the RPG gamers who make up the majority of their audience. The issue of random packaging was core to this discussion especially considering the recent FFG Mutant Chronicles decision and the Legendary Encounters range from Reaper. The consensus appeared to be that Wizards isn’t wedded to the idea of random buys and would be willing to produce non-blind products (much like the Dragon and Wight miniatures they did last year) but aren’t entirely sure that the market is there. I suspect that the mass purchasing on the part of fans of the skirmish game and tournament players is what keeps the game in its current random format. That and the vast secondary market that has come into existence to provide RPG gamers with the bulk of miniatures that they require for their games.

Wizards also appears to be quite sensitive to the number of SKUs that they push into the market. They really do seem to want to avoid having to provide the vast number of individual products that a company like GW does for stores and this is another factor that I think is keeping the game from moving to a non-random purchase system. Providing boxes with orcs, undead, skeletons, daemons, humans, etc would require Wizards to not only keep a large number of SKUs in their own system but provide them on an ongoing basis to retailers and distributors and this seems to be a business model that they are not keen to enter into.

Dark Sword Miniatures
I finally worked my way into the second half of the trade floor and stopped by the Dark Sword Miniatures booth. They had their usual display of painted figures from their various ranges and also had unpainted versions of some of the new George R. R. Martin figures. Six of the new GRR figures are sculpted by Jeff Grace and there were also three new miniatures (two Black Watch figures and one unidentified female figure) by Tom Meier. Jeff’s figures were quite well done and had a nice flow to them but Tom’s Black Watch figures really were incredible, especially the highly detailed chainmail that the figures were wearing. Even the photos I took don’t really do the intricate nature of them any justice.

Pulp City
One of the first places I went to on Friday was the Pulp Monster booth to get a look, in person, at some of their Pulp City miniatures. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get a chance to talk to Morf as he was busy demoing the game. In fact almost very time I saw Morf on Friday he was demoing the game including a large three team participation game he was running in the miniature gaming area upstairs that had a hero, villain and ape team smashing each other, tossing cars and generally creating mayhem. How can you not want to play a game that lets you toss cars at cybernetic monkeys?

The miniatures were very well done and this does look to be a very exciting game. They have the Hero and Villain starters on sale at GenCon as well as some individual figures. The MaxMini bases were also on display and they are great bases especially considering that they are themed for each of the starters and have bases to match each model in the sets. Hopefully I can find some time to get in a quick demo before the AE-WWII/Pulp City cross-over events on Sunday.

Monsterpocalypse
After the show ended Bobby from Privateer arrange for Dave, on of the Press Gangers, to give me a quick demo of Monsterpocalypse. Sadly I am still limited to ten minute videos on YouTube but I think Dave did a great job of trying to condense the game’s core mechanics into a quick overview. The game looks to be a tabletop version of the SNK King of the Monsters video game with giant monsters and their underlings storming through a city, tossing each other into buildings and trying to eat tanks.

The dice mechanic looks interesting and the different coloured dice give better results with each increasing grade of dice. So the white dice have two possible results, the blue three and the red dice four. It appears that you get the red dice from destroying your opponents units, capturing power points and also performing power attacks. So you need to “bring the pain” to your opponent in order to generate the red dice required to really stomp and smash things.

It looks like a fun game but I am not a fan of random buys and I think that the monster boosters may turn some people off considering that they only contain a single monster (two forms of it though) but you can’t argue with the popularity of the game. Any time a company needs to arrange a special demo due to the crowds at the booth it is probably a very good sign in terms of consumer interest in the game.

Malifaux
Perennial game pimp Dan Weber (I joke because its true :-) and Eric from Wyrd Miniatures were able to give me a quick overview of the Malifaux Weird West game system that Wyrd is developing. Erik is one of the developers and Dan is playtesting and demoing the game. The game uses a deck of cards to not only resolve actions in the game but they suits of the deck are used as a limiter in the game so that units can’t always play higher cards. The suits can also have an adverse effect during spell casting.

The game looks like it will not only be fun but also a small-scale skirmish system that should generate some quick and fun games. I will try to talk to Nate and Erik and get some more background on the game setting before the end of the show.

Fantasy Flight Games
Fantasy Flight Games had their yearly “Inflight” report for fans at the Westin hotel. As is usual for events held at the Westin the room the event was in was not the same as the one in the GenCon event listings. I missed the Wizards D&D and Star Wars Miniatures events last year because of this. It was an interesting panel with the staff from FFG who presented some information but mostly took the opportunity to answer questions from the fans and press.

FFG is moving into electronic gaming. Their booth had an alpha version of a Wings of War game that will be available on the XBox and PS3 and they are hoping to have an electronic version of Tide of Iron ready for 2009. They also mentioned that they are working on a version of Citadels for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

The Gears of War game was mentioned but they were hesitant to give any details including whether it will have miniatures, I assume it will, and what size/scale they will be. They did promise a unique gameplay element in the game so it won’t simply be a rehash of Doom or one of their existing games.

They will be the global publisher for the Dust Tactics game and are aiming to have the game ready for a Spring 2009 release. The delay, at the moment, appears to be twofold. They want to ensure that they have a full range of products available in order to keep a steady supply of releases coming for the game and it also appears that they are still working on tweaking the AT-43 system to give them the game results that they want. AT-43 is quite deadly and they want to make sure that the walkers and heroes in Dust Tactics are a little more resilient than they are in AT-43. While they said that the AT-43 system is still being used they also emphasized that they are nor wed to using it and will ultimately use whatever rules system they have to in order to create the type of gameplay that they are looking for.

The Organized Play system for AT-43 and Confrontation was brought up and the lack of communication with and use of the existing Rackham Sentinels was addressed. FFG admitted that there were problems with communicating the new Organized Play plans to fans and Sentinels and blamed this on miscommunication with Rackham regarding the English language website and a lack of control on FFG’s part for the official websites for both games. Despite being the English language distributor for the game FFG does not control or have access to the official English sites for the games and once control of those sites was finalised FFG was able to get information available on their site.

Chris from FFG did state quite clearly that they were not supplied with information about the existing Sentinels from Rackham and it seems that in his opinion the program wasn’t working for Rackham as well as it could. He took pains to emphasize that he didn’t think this was a problem with the Sentinels himself but that the focus of the program wasn’t delivering the sales that Rackham needed. He also said that they didn’t have any intention of continuing that program for those same reasons.

I brought up the issue of Space Hulk and asked if FFG were disappointed with not being able to bring out a new version of the game which generated some amused grumbles from the FFG staff. Chris was very clear that FFG is more than happy with the arrangement that they have with GW regarding the various properties that they now produce games for but I think it was also clear that everyone there would have been happy to release a new copy of the game. But, as Chris said, you can’t get everything. He also hinted at new games and products coming from FFG and GW via this arrangement that would make fans quite happy and so one can only hope that some sort of 40K themed games are in the works.

A Brood War expansion for Starcraft is in the works but Chad Cory, the developer, wasn’t able to give many details of the game.

Unsorted and random comments
Crocodile Games had a very active booth and they had painted samples of their miniatures on display including some new Spartan figures.

The Warstore.com was also at the show and I popped in to their booth to have a look around. They were carrying some 40K and WFB products but also carrying quite a lot of Alkemy, AE-WWII (including the LE Buffalo Pilot mini I wanted), Micro Art bases and other lines. They also had a copy of the Uncharted Seas rulebook and I grabbed that up immediately but they sadly didn’t have any of the ships in stock. I had a chance to talk to they guys there and its nice to see that they are all fans of the hobby but also fans of many of the smaller ranges and games that they stock. Its nice to see larger retailers such as the Warstore promoting and actively supporting a wider range of games.

Miniature Building Authority was at GenCon again this year and once more had an impressive display of terrain in both 28mm and scales. Acheson Creations was at GenCon for the first time and they have a great selection of 28mm and 15mm resin terrain. Craig from Acheson mentioned that they are working on updating their website as they have more than 400 terrain elements available but only a fraction of those on their website. The 28mm ruins sections and Pacfic theatre terrain looked quite impressive.

It was also great to bump into some of the posters here at TGN (oddly many of them at the Pulp City game) including Redstripe, Steeldragon and LarkinVain. Hopefully there will be a few more people at the Burgerfest on Saturday night. :-)