There were so many great games I saw at Kingdom Con X. I'll just give a quick coverage of each.)
First up: Zone Raiders - By Fractal Basilisk Studios (Tony Xiao)
(From the Kickstarter website)
Zone Raiders is a fast-paced tabletop skirmish game where small groups of hardened survivors battle against each other in an unforgiving post-technological world called the Matroshka. Within an unending world of inscrutable science, radiation storms and machines dedicated to exterminating life, players create narrative stories and rewarding tactical gameplay in an open-model skirmish ruleset.
Distinct in our design is an emphasis on mobility, vertical space, and accomplishing asymmetrical objectives before escaping to safety. Your tactical decisions and smart positioning will decide every encounter with the enemy. The world itself is lethal, but can you adapt your strategy, characters and exotic weapons to meet the challenge against both other players, and solo/cooperative scenarios?
THE FREEBLADES GAMING EXPERIENCE
There are a lot of cool things about being a Freeblades player…
You get to play with great models
You have many ways to play the game
The tiered dice system provides for epic game play possibilities
The World of Faelon is a super deep and rich background with a faction for every preference and play style
We love our customers and take great care of them
You can get directly involved in the background and rules
It is very affordable – two players can get into the game for under $100 total
We have a ton of projects in the works and are adding more all the time
Do you want to know more? Read on…
AWESOME MODELS
We want to give you great models. Ultimately, you will tell us if they are great or not. We want you to collect them, paint them and most of all enjoy owning and playing games with them. If they are not everything you want them to be, tell us and we will strive to make them even better.
You should be able to buy a model from us and always be able to use it in our games. We do intend to make even cooler things for you to acquire as time goes on. The Haradelan High Questor of Tahnar will always be able to lead your freeband. It’s just that you may also want the High Questor of Glareyn model as well…
Our models will also be useable across all our games set in Faelon. As we expand our line of games from skirmish into roleplaying and battle, your models will have a home in those as well.
MANY WAYS TO PLAY
The Freeblades rules permit a variety of ways to play the game. You can play one on one using one of our many scenarios, either included in our rulebook or available online. Most of these scenarios will also permit multiplayer play and we provide you notes on how to make our scenarios work when more than two players want to get in on the action.
You can choose to play Freeblades as part of a Freeblades campaign. In a campaign, you track your freeband’s progress through a series of adventures against other opponents in the campaign. Some of its members will gain experience, some will lose their lives. New recruits will be added and old veterans retired as your freeband gains fame – or infamy. A campaign provides a whole different set of challenges than one off scenario gaming. First, there is no guarantee from game to game that the opposing freeband will be the same value as yours, and you may be playing with an overall advantage or disadvantage. If you are at a disadvantage, you can make use of the handicap system to help you close the gap and set your freeband up for future success. Second, win or lose, your freeblades increase their attributes, talents and skills as they gain experience and become more powerful with every game they play – and survive. This makes every campaign freeband unique and provides the player with new and exciting tactical possibilities. It’s also fun to play a one on one campaign with a friend with each of you tracking your freeband’s story over a set number of games.
You can also choose to play Freeblades cooperatively using Freeblades Encounters – a series of campaign games where all the players are part of the same freeband. This is be done by one player acting as a game master and creating a series of connected situations for one or more other players to encounter. Freeblades Encounters is currently in playtest, ask Jon for a copy on our Facebook page or at design@dgsgames.com.
We are also developing a roleplaying game, BrightSword, which will be fully compatible with Freeblades. BrightSword game masters will be able to easily use Freeblades rules to handle their larger encounters and Freeblades players will be able to convert their favorite freeblades into BrightSword adventurers.
EPIC GAME PLAY
The Tiered Dice System provides you a unique way to play your fantasy games. No, it’s not the first game system to explode a die or use more than one die type. What is special about Tiered Dice is how it helps you tell the story of what happens in your games. The combination of spikes – exploding dice – increasing die sizes due to talents and game effects, exciting new die types (d14, d16, d18, d22, d24, d26, d28 and d30) and the rules for talents, skills and attributes combine to give you the feel something special is happening and plenty of epic results to fill your tales of accomplishment and woe during and after the game.
A WORLD TO EXPLORE
The World of Faelon is a deep and broad background providing endless gaming and storytelling possibilities.
It is deep, with histories and relationships, cultures and languages, flora and fauna all describing a place you want to explore, live and die in and battle over. It is broad, with dozens of factions and nearly limitless locales and personalities. There’s room for everyone in Faelon. There’s a faction here for you. Quite possibly more than one!
YOU ARE VERY IMPORTANT TO US
Game companies are a hard business. To be truly successful, you need people who know how to run a business and keep it in the black and growing. But that is not enough. We don’t want to be a company where profit is the only bottom line. We are gamers and we are very familiar with what makes a gamer happy. And we intend to give it to you.
We’re going to give you great customer service. If you find there’s a problem with one of our products, we will do our best to fix it. If there’s something you don’t like, we’re going to listen. We might not choose to act on every suggestion, especially in those tough situations where some customers want things one way and some want it the opposite way. We’ll make the hard call. What we won’t do is ignore you.
We’re going to answer your questions. Every game leaves some gamer somewhere with a question. Our online presence is the place to ask it. We will answer, and we will answer in a timely manner. We also intend to get these rules right for you and not make it your problem when we get them wrong. We at DGS recognize that there are no perfect rules books and even less perfect game designers. Although we will endeavor mightily to get everything right the first time, we will make mistakes. But when we do, we will fix them and provide you those fixes quickly.
We’d like to be able to just give you every model, rulebook and accessory for free, but obviously we can’t. What we can do, however, is make maximum use of free downloads to get you as much support as possible.
We also publish the Freeblades Living Rulelbook as a low-cost download that contains everything you need to play the game. Even better, once you purchase it, you get all the updates to it for free.
YOU GET TO BE INVOLVED
We want you to be part of the making of our games and the growth of our background. You can be a DGS playtester, getting an early look at what is next and helping us find problems and suggesting fixes so that our games become the ones you want to play. You can write fiction for the World of Faelon. It’s a big place, and we are always looking for people to help tell its story. Speaking of the story of the World of Faelon, we at DGS have a vision for how that story will play out. But we have not filled in every blank or chosen every path. Some of our fans will be chosen to help set that direction. The more involved in our games you are, the more likely you’ll get a chance to put yourself right into the story and help chart its course!
A HIGHLY AFFORDABLE OPTION
Getting into Freeblades could not be easier. A starter 150 gold freeband of six models is $36.99, and a Living Rulebook is $10. If your friend gets in with you and also picks up a starter freeband, that is two players in the game for a little over $80. That is less than the price of some models in other skirmish game systems.
MUCH MORE TO COME!
First, we are always expanding the Freeblades game line and story. More factions, campaigns, reinforcements, enemies and allies, etc. are always in the pipeline.
Second, we are going to add more ways to play in the World of Faelon. We have, in various stages of development, a roleplaying game, a battle game, and an arena combat game. All will be fully cross compatible with each other. Your Apprentice Knight of Tahnar will be able to move between helping her freeband leader hunt for loot, acting as your roleplaying adventurer, leading a group of Muster Archers into battle and fighting for her life in the arena – all with the same model, and if you like, all with the same character and stats!
See you around the gaming table. Gamers rule!
DGS Team
First up: Zone Raiders - By Fractal Basilisk Studios (Tony Xiao)
(From the Kickstarter website)
Zone Raiders is a fast-paced tabletop skirmish game where small groups of hardened survivors battle against each other in an unforgiving post-technological world called the Matroshka. Within an unending world of inscrutable science, radiation storms and machines dedicated to exterminating life, players create narrative stories and rewarding tactical gameplay in an open-model skirmish ruleset.
Distinct in our design is an emphasis on mobility, vertical space, and accomplishing asymmetrical objectives before escaping to safety. Your tactical decisions and smart positioning will decide every encounter with the enemy. The world itself is lethal, but can you adapt your strategy, characters and exotic weapons to meet the challenge against both other players, and solo/cooperative scenarios?
One of the best parts of this game is the fact it is model-neutral. You can use whatever models make sense. The game is very dynamic and I really look forward to playing this game. I got lucky as well, On Saturday, Tony put one of his two preview copies in the Treasure room, I happened to be in there just after the book was put in there, and I had enough tokens to grab it.
zoneraiders.com
Secondly: Freeblades by DGS Games
(From the Freeblades website)
There are a lot of cool things about being a Freeblades player…
You get to play with great models
You have many ways to play the game
The tiered dice system provides for epic game play possibilities
The World of Faelon is a super deep and rich background with a faction for every preference and play style
We love our customers and take great care of them
You can get directly involved in the background and rules
It is very affordable – two players can get into the game for under $100 total
We have a ton of projects in the works and are adding more all the time
Do you want to know more? Read on…
AWESOME MODELS
We want to give you great models. Ultimately, you will tell us if they are great or not. We want you to collect them, paint them and most of all enjoy owning and playing games with them. If they are not everything you want them to be, tell us and we will strive to make them even better.
You should be able to buy a model from us and always be able to use it in our games. We do intend to make even cooler things for you to acquire as time goes on. The Haradelan High Questor of Tahnar will always be able to lead your freeband. It’s just that you may also want the High Questor of Glareyn model as well…
Our models will also be useable across all our games set in Faelon. As we expand our line of games from skirmish into roleplaying and battle, your models will have a home in those as well.
MANY WAYS TO PLAY
The Freeblades rules permit a variety of ways to play the game. You can play one on one using one of our many scenarios, either included in our rulebook or available online. Most of these scenarios will also permit multiplayer play and we provide you notes on how to make our scenarios work when more than two players want to get in on the action.
You can choose to play Freeblades as part of a Freeblades campaign. In a campaign, you track your freeband’s progress through a series of adventures against other opponents in the campaign. Some of its members will gain experience, some will lose their lives. New recruits will be added and old veterans retired as your freeband gains fame – or infamy. A campaign provides a whole different set of challenges than one off scenario gaming. First, there is no guarantee from game to game that the opposing freeband will be the same value as yours, and you may be playing with an overall advantage or disadvantage. If you are at a disadvantage, you can make use of the handicap system to help you close the gap and set your freeband up for future success. Second, win or lose, your freeblades increase their attributes, talents and skills as they gain experience and become more powerful with every game they play – and survive. This makes every campaign freeband unique and provides the player with new and exciting tactical possibilities. It’s also fun to play a one on one campaign with a friend with each of you tracking your freeband’s story over a set number of games.
You can also choose to play Freeblades cooperatively using Freeblades Encounters – a series of campaign games where all the players are part of the same freeband. This is be done by one player acting as a game master and creating a series of connected situations for one or more other players to encounter. Freeblades Encounters is currently in playtest, ask Jon for a copy on our Facebook page or at design@dgsgames.com.
We are also developing a roleplaying game, BrightSword, which will be fully compatible with Freeblades. BrightSword game masters will be able to easily use Freeblades rules to handle their larger encounters and Freeblades players will be able to convert their favorite freeblades into BrightSword adventurers.
EPIC GAME PLAY
The Tiered Dice System provides you a unique way to play your fantasy games. No, it’s not the first game system to explode a die or use more than one die type. What is special about Tiered Dice is how it helps you tell the story of what happens in your games. The combination of spikes – exploding dice – increasing die sizes due to talents and game effects, exciting new die types (d14, d16, d18, d22, d24, d26, d28 and d30) and the rules for talents, skills and attributes combine to give you the feel something special is happening and plenty of epic results to fill your tales of accomplishment and woe during and after the game.
A WORLD TO EXPLORE
The World of Faelon is a deep and broad background providing endless gaming and storytelling possibilities.
It is deep, with histories and relationships, cultures and languages, flora and fauna all describing a place you want to explore, live and die in and battle over. It is broad, with dozens of factions and nearly limitless locales and personalities. There’s room for everyone in Faelon. There’s a faction here for you. Quite possibly more than one!
YOU ARE VERY IMPORTANT TO US
Game companies are a hard business. To be truly successful, you need people who know how to run a business and keep it in the black and growing. But that is not enough. We don’t want to be a company where profit is the only bottom line. We are gamers and we are very familiar with what makes a gamer happy. And we intend to give it to you.
We’re going to give you great customer service. If you find there’s a problem with one of our products, we will do our best to fix it. If there’s something you don’t like, we’re going to listen. We might not choose to act on every suggestion, especially in those tough situations where some customers want things one way and some want it the opposite way. We’ll make the hard call. What we won’t do is ignore you.
We’re going to answer your questions. Every game leaves some gamer somewhere with a question. Our online presence is the place to ask it. We will answer, and we will answer in a timely manner. We also intend to get these rules right for you and not make it your problem when we get them wrong. We at DGS recognize that there are no perfect rules books and even less perfect game designers. Although we will endeavor mightily to get everything right the first time, we will make mistakes. But when we do, we will fix them and provide you those fixes quickly.
We’d like to be able to just give you every model, rulebook and accessory for free, but obviously we can’t. What we can do, however, is make maximum use of free downloads to get you as much support as possible.
We also publish the Freeblades Living Rulelbook as a low-cost download that contains everything you need to play the game. Even better, once you purchase it, you get all the updates to it for free.
YOU GET TO BE INVOLVED
We want you to be part of the making of our games and the growth of our background. You can be a DGS playtester, getting an early look at what is next and helping us find problems and suggesting fixes so that our games become the ones you want to play. You can write fiction for the World of Faelon. It’s a big place, and we are always looking for people to help tell its story. Speaking of the story of the World of Faelon, we at DGS have a vision for how that story will play out. But we have not filled in every blank or chosen every path. Some of our fans will be chosen to help set that direction. The more involved in our games you are, the more likely you’ll get a chance to put yourself right into the story and help chart its course!
A HIGHLY AFFORDABLE OPTION
Getting into Freeblades could not be easier. A starter 150 gold freeband of six models is $36.99, and a Living Rulebook is $10. If your friend gets in with you and also picks up a starter freeband, that is two players in the game for a little over $80. That is less than the price of some models in other skirmish game systems.
MUCH MORE TO COME!
First, we are always expanding the Freeblades game line and story. More factions, campaigns, reinforcements, enemies and allies, etc. are always in the pipeline.
Second, we are going to add more ways to play in the World of Faelon. We have, in various stages of development, a roleplaying game, a battle game, and an arena combat game. All will be fully cross compatible with each other. Your Apprentice Knight of Tahnar will be able to move between helping her freeband leader hunt for loot, acting as your roleplaying adventurer, leading a group of Muster Archers into battle and fighting for her life in the arena – all with the same model, and if you like, all with the same character and stats!
See you around the gaming table. Gamers rule!
DGS Team
If you act quickly, email me for the coupon code for living rule book. epicrpgblog@gmail.com; if not the cost is only $10, and it is a living rulebook. Again, I know we will be covering this game in our house.
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