RelicBlade Expansion announced – Volgelands

Sean Sutter announced that the next update for RelicBlade from Metal King Studio is The Volgelands Adventure Campaign setting. This will be going to Kickstarter November 23rd, 2018. Hopefully in there we will see not just a new campaign book but an addition to the factions that are currently available. Some of the factions could be inferred from the art to the the Battle Pigs (a personal favorite), the Lone Guard, and The Bone and Darkness factions. We might also see an expansion of Temple of Justice as they have recently been formalized as an additional faction and the Knight is included in the art as well.

We will be sitting down and chatting with Sean for our podcast so look for that upcoming episode soon.

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Treasure Island! A Blood & Plunder Multiplayer Intro Scenario

 

Over the past weekend, Nick and I attended the Siege of Augusta Wargaming convention in Augusta, GA to help out the Firelock Games crew. During the event Nick was testing out a new scenario that we will be using at our FLGS Giga-Bites Cafe on February 10th and I had the opportunity to run a multiplayer teaching scenario called Treasure Island using my new Caribbean Island board.

There has been quite a bit of demand for me to post the rules for others to use so here you go!

TREASURE ISLAND
Treasure Island is a fun, light-hearted scenario designed to teach up to six people the basics of Blood & Plunder in a single sitting. Each player will be given a 4-man unit of long guns and a 4-man unit of sailors. Here is what is recommended:

Spanish: 4 Corsairos, 4 Marineros
English: 4 Freebooters, 4 Sea Dogs
French: 4 Filibustiers, 4 Marins

For this scenario, there will be no commanders or Force specialty rules, just what is listed in the model entry.

Game Materials Needed
1:  4×4 Water/Ocean Mat.
2:  Multiple island or hill terrain pieces that can act as islands that will fill up approximately 50% of the board.
3:  Jungle/woods terrain and appropriate scatter terrain to help fill in the board.
4:  One longboat with a Swivel Gun
5:  Enough dice to pass around the table. 12 is enough to cover most players.
6:  One single deck of cards.
7:  8 Milicianos Indios models for the hostile locals.
8:  8 Treasure Markers. These should be approximately 25mm to 30mm. A standard figure base will work for these.

Set Up
Place the longboat in the center of the board. Place the island pieces on the board, leaving approximately 6-8 inches of water between each island piece. Place the terrain on the island pieces as you see fit. Place the 8 Treasure Markers on the island pieces at least 8 inches away from a board edge and try to leave at least 6 inches between each Treasure Marker. Do your best to spread them out. Deal each player one card per unit (2 cards).

Deployment
Each player will spread out around the four sides of the table and deploy their units one card length in on the board (approximately 4 inches). Try to make sure that they are appropriately spaced out. Game play will then continue as normal.

Special Scenario Rules
Unknown Lagoon: Models will move through the water and treat it as difficult terrain. They will be able to make standard Shoot Saves. If a unit ever becomes Shaken while in the water, the unit drowns and is removed from the table. While in the water, units cannot fire muskets. Bows and Pistols can fire normally.
Digging Up The Treasure: any unit may spend one action while at least one model is in base contact with a Treasure Marker to dig it up and carry it. Any unit that carries the Treasure Marker will be moving at -1 inch per action point unless the unit with the Treasure Marker is in the longboat. The moment they dig it up, roll 1d10 and consult the chart below.

Roll:  Result
1-3:  Angry Locals: Place a 4 model unit of Milicianos Indios approximately 10 inches away from the unit that just dug up the Treasure Marker and make one Shooting Attack against that unit.
If there are 2 units of Milicianos Indios on the board then nothing happens.
5-8:  Small Treasure Pile: Getting this Treasure Marker to the board edge will score 5 Points.
9-10:  Large Treasure Pile: Getting this Treasure Marker to the board edge will score 10 Points.

Any unit may choose to drop a Treasure Marker at any time to move normally. If a unit is removed from the table while holding a Treasure Marker it will be placed in the center of where the unit was. If a Treasure Marker is dropped in the water then it will take 2 Actions to pick it up.
Angry Locals: Once the Milicianos Indios are deployed on the board they will receive one card per unit for initiative and activation. When they activate, they will focus on attacking the closest unit holding a Treasure Marker. If there are no units holding a Treasure Marker then they will attack the closest unit.
Reinforcements: When a unit is removed from the board it will re-deploy on any board edge of the player’s choosing at the beginning of the following round before initiative cards are handed out.

Scoring
Removing an enemy model from the board with a Fight or Shoot action: 1 point/model.
Getting a Small Treasure Pile to the board edge: 5 Points.
Getting a Large Treasure Pile to the board edge: 10 Points.
The player with the highest score at the end of the game wins.

Ending The Game
This will be up to the organizer but it is recommended that the game last 6 to 8 rounds in total.

 

And there you have it!  One pirate-filled scenario ready to be run at any convention or game store!

Until next time,

-Tim

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DIY Cube Tracker

I love gaming accessories. The little doodads that fulfill some sort of niche of a niche market. That token, measuring gauge, dial, all of it. The best part is seeing what other folks come up with to meet their own personal needs. Occasionally, someone comes up with an idea that the rest of the gaming community finds wonderfully useful. Today, I wanted to look at one of those things. Namely, the ModCube.

Back in 2015, ModCube found its way onto Kickstarter and had a successful launch. They quickly found their way into the hearts and minds of various users. Even to the point of being nominated for Best Gaming Accessory of 2015 from Beasts of War.

ModCube Size Comparison

Unfortunately, if you are interested in getting your hands on some of these things, you’re going to have to wait until they get around to launching their second iteration via Kickstarter sometime in 2018.

So let’s do something many gamers enjoy. We’ll make our own.

Step 01: Get some art

Vector art laid out in software

Luckily for us, ModCube recommends a good place to start. Game-Icons.net, http://game-icons.net/, offers free vector graphics that are explicitly meant to be used for gaming tokens. You can also dig around online and find other icons or items to be used. If you are feeling adventurous, you can use something like Vector Magic to convert some raster images to vector images that we can use. I did this for the tokens below that are from the game Confrontation.

I wanted to use vector graphics so that I could scale them as necessary without distorting the image. It also helps when you send it to whatever cutting tool you use.

Step 02: Cut it all out

acrylic tokens

I went down to my local makerspace to do the heavy lifting here. I used a Carvey CNC Router available in the space to make my cuts. I chose some acrylic because it will allow me to do a shallow cut and give some different texture or color to the tokens.

Here, you can see the tokens after they have been cut, just after I’ve given them a quick rinse in some water, and before I’ve really cleaned them up.

Step 03: Make them pop

acrylic tiles with paint

This step might not be necessary depending on your material and cutting method. For example, my next attempt at this, I’ll use some material that is two-tone and wouldn’t require a filler.

To help make the icons stand out and be distinct, I applied some white paint. This was important for this set since the Confrontation tokens have some very minor differences. In addition, I made my cuts a little too deep, which ate away at some of the detail unnecessarily. That’ll teach me to program the wrong bit.

Step 04: Design the cube

Now I needed a thing to put the tokens into. I verified my measurements and spent an afternoon designing one in OnShape.com’s online design platform. Since I’m modeling this off of the ModCube platform, I made it a cube. This isn’t going to be modular and hot-swappable like the official system, that’s a feature for another day.

Step 05: Print the cube and put it together

3d printed cube with token insert

I use a FDM 3D printer in my local makerspace to print off the cube in ABS plastic. I could have used PLA, but the ABS was already loaded and ready to go. Always count on gamer laziness.

You can see some bad areas. I wouldn’t consider this a great print. Acceptable for a test print, but I would definitely do this again for a final product.

Conclusions:

finished 3d cube with token inserts

Overall, I think this could work for my needs. It’s a little larger than I wanted it to be. I think I might scale it down a bit on the next run. Also, I would definitely use a laser to cut it. It would require less cleanup and effort that way. Lastly, some two-tone acrylic would remove the paint requirement.

Or I could wait patiently until the official product comes back. I don’t need the fancy magnet swap aspect on the v2 ModCube, but the time (3-4 hours) and money ($10USD) spent making my own might outweigh the cost of the official product. Not to mention I didn’t make my modular, if you like that kind of thing. Not all things are meant to be DIY.

 

*A link to the cube file I made will be made available later. Right now my browser isn’t playing nicely for me to get a fresh copy.

 

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