continues:
Over in the Flying Buffalo booth, sharing space with that company's popular Nuclear War card game and Forgotten Worlds book-based combat game, Gorilla Games is demonstrating a rather innovative sci-fi game. Entitled Battlestations, its actually two simultaneous miniatures games. There is a starscape upon which the player and the GM maneuver their spacecraft, but there is also the space ship deckplan itself where the player controls the crew, and the GM any (potentially) hostile robots, humanoids, etc.
The deck plans are modular and are made up of rooms such as bridge, engineering, warp drive, etc. which can be configured to create a yacht or a frigate or a fairly large variety of other vessels. The GM sets up the plot (many are included in the book) and the player has to resolve them. The effect is not unlike a classic Star Trek episode where, for example, the crew has to destroy a rampaging hostile robot that has boarded the ship and damaged the controls while the ship itself is hurtling towards a star on the space map. (I plan on providing a more in-depth review after the convention.)
Another interesting game I came across was not exactly a miniatures game, but a card game. While most miniature gamers would consider this to be something of a surplus item, this game doesn't feature anime cat girls, rare hologram-foil-filligreed chase cards, nor magic or mana points.
Produced by Triking Games in conjunction with the History Channel (yeah, you read that correctly), Anachronist features combat by history's heroes and myths. The History Channel provided the research behind the game. It will launch on March 15 with 20 different warrior decks (of 5 cards each) featuring Norse, Greek, Roman and Japanese heroes and deities. The initial release will be Achilles vs. Spartacus and other Warrior Decks will feature Odin, Loki, Musashi and others. These cards will all be printed on heavy-duty cardstock (about twice as heavy as your average Pokemon card), with varnish and foil.
Their demo deck featured Beowulf vs. Musashi, and it was an enjoyable game of four turns. Each turn, a new card is turned over revealing a weapon or other equipment that enhances the warrior's attack or defense. Combat is determined by dice, and the cards can move on the play surface - something that makes this game sort of a hybrid between TCG's and miniatures. Each warrior card has stats for experience, life, unarmed attack and speed. Furthermore, the position of an opponent in relationship to one's warrior dictates whether an attack will be at a bonus or deficit. In some positions, an opponent could be right in front of your warrior, but cannot be attacked because of position. When more decks are released, each player can field up to four warriors - which moves it from a strictly tactical man-to-man encounter to one requiring a greater level of strategy. Future releases will expand the mythos to include Egyptian, Chinese and Germanic cultures.
One more interesting product is Dundjinni, which is software for creating not only dungeons and buildings, but can also be used to create a terrain map in a variety of scales with either hex and square grids. Previously considered useful only to Dungeonmasters or the like, this product could provide a way for gamers of many genre's to create everything from a map for 6mm Ancients at Marathon to a post-apocalyptic 28mm ruined city. Maps can be created at home (or work), and then saved as a .jpg file and taken to a Kinkos or other print shop with a large format printer for a serviceable playing field. Additionally, the CD is a hybrid and can run on both PC & Mac. It now retails for $40 USD (which is an improvement over its previous price).