Unbelievable! A clap of thunder in the clear blue sky of “project Groundhog”. We submitted this name, selected on very strict quality criteria, to several of our numerous international consulting groups – we have about ten of those working for us, give or take ten. We also set up a worldwide survey among roughly 2.3 million individuals – give or take 2,299,990… And 100% of the answers were: that’s a stupid name. Find another one or we’ll sack you.
Well, it was a stupid name all right. That’s the whole reason we’d gone for it. So we had to gather a think tank of world-renowned experts, selected on the following criterion: they were the ten best specialists of this game. Wasn’t so hard: all of them work for Rackham Entertainment.
We occupied the meeting room for far too long and set our brains on “overheat” until everything smelled like bacon. We then entered the results of our brainstorming in the latest high-power calculator. If you really have to know, it’s a Papersheet 21,297 calculator with Pentel processor, running the best decision support app there is, “show of hands 3.5”. We selected relevant criteria like “I don’t like it”, “that name sucks”, “doesn’t mean anything”, “I liked the other better”, “I think it sounds better with an S”.
And from this intense brainstorming came…
Aarklash Warpack.
Awesome or what?
Why Aarklash? Because it’s not a fifth Confrontation game. It’s another game set in Confrontation’s universe, Aarklash. In this game, you play a small band of fighters, Incarnates and their retinue of soldiers. Some sort of pack, only suited for war. A Warpack. That’s right, you’ve got it.
Aarklash Warpack (awesome or what?) is our answer to all the young players who want to play faster, with even less rules, and only have a few coins of pocket money. We also thought of those people who just met their lifemate, and selflessly decided to educate a new generation of gamers in their beloved children. Beloved children take a lot of time – which makes it hard to organize a serious battle lasting two or three bloody and intense hours (of course you’re right darling, more like four, now can you please put down that rolling pin?). To make things even worse, it’ll be a long time before those lovely kids are old enough to talk mummy into buying them an army box or two.
We made Aarklash Warpack (awesome or what?) for all those reasons. A game that’s even faster and just as deadly… A new game, set in Confrontation’s universe, for those who lack time, for those young who could only drool on our miniatures and those not-so-young who didn’t have time any more to unpack them. New rules, new miniatures, new cards… And that’s all for this week, I’m not showing you anything. That’s my sadistic side coming through.
To be continued…
I look forward to a new game too, but the "new miniatures" line frightens me. I will be greatly disappointed if there aren't profiles created for EVERY METAL MINIATURE I OWN... or at least most of them ;) I'll even help!
It is prepainted ready to play minis that got me into this game. Only by landing a bunch of metal minis to prep for the game did I get into miniature painting.
I'm just thrilled on how Aarklash Warpack sounds.
I do have one question on it thru that I didn't see anyone else ask. We'll be getting new minis for this game which sounds exciting but I'm wondering if these minis can be put into CAOTR? And visa versa with the minis already out.
that game already exists and is called:... WARMACHINNE...jejejejejej
I like the name: Aarklash Warpack
I hope that the miniatures have high quality (metal or plastic),NEVER PRE-PAINT......
regards
the name is fine it will likely be calld "A W" or "warpacks" alot but that is fine...
as for the skirmish game... i love the idea and have always been a fan of that scale. I would prefer to be able to use the existing model range though... making it completely compatible with Confrontation
I don't mind having a quick, easy, and fun game. It's a niche that isn't overly full - at least outside the collectible arena.
I just miss that there's also no desire to revive the hobby aspect of things. The hobby side was as much about painting and assembling as it was about drooling over the new stuff and eagerly anticipating what was coming. Currently none of those items are happening.
I'd like to hear more about Warpacks: Aarklash - and this blog is very well written. Keep it coming!
I'll just point out, that what drives most skirmish games is not a downtick in complexity AND model-count - it's precisely the lower model count that allows for that personalization and complexity without the game taking too long. Maybe you could go in a kind of Heroscape direction, and have a game engine that works without point values, abilities, scenarios, or model interactions for playing with the kiddies - and have all those things further back in the downloadable rulebook for those whose cerebellum is as developed as its going to get.
My 'show of hands 3.5' is itching for a 3.75....(unless I'm uncorrectly intuiting that C3 reference...)
Please- give us some nice miniatures - no matter metal, resin or hard plastic - just not prepainted and if preassembled- not glued! Thanks!
you can always unglue some parts, prime all out and paint the existing range of models
take a look at:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qMlkG8fKO6Q/STb8uYhfjfI/AAAAAAAAACI/w9gBUm41Qq...
Yes, I've done it already, but I'm not happy with the result! Too thick layers of paint and spilled glue, which hides the details and are very difficult to remove! Here are my attempts:
http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/7939/fussilier1.jpg
http://img505.imageshack.us/img505/1281/sravnenie1xe6.jpg
http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/9346/sravnenie2aq7.jpg
Impressive!
You are the proof that prepainted can have a bright hobby aspect. Try with some of the new release (Lion and Ram), you will be surprised how the miniatures doesn't have any of the old problems you mentioned
...and posts some other pictures too!
Thanks! I really like some of the new Lion and Ram characters and will try them if they are of better quality!
Not awesome to me! I would have suggested something like Confrontation: Evolution (ConfEv sounds great!)
To all of you hoping for C3.5 reborn, I must say your optimism flies in the face of all that has been revealed thus far. If you want the complexity or the metal, I very strongly suspect that you will be disappointed.
My advice would be don't try to judge this new game on anything other than its own terms.
On that note, I for one am very much looking forward to testing out this new game--and I will always think of it as Project Groundhog (not a huge fan of the new name, myself).
I was undecided between two names:
1) Mercenaries Marmott'Ogres (M&M)
2) Aarklash Arena
can't wait to see the game, and to read some other post from JBL
Maybe something like "AArklash Adventures", or something like that? But I prefer "Project GRoundhog". Maybe I was the only :-P
Ok, some of this is starting to worry me greatly, but "new miniatures" got my interest back immediately... Is it too much to hope for metal, or resin, or something painter/hobby friendly? However, not sharing anything really concrete about this beyond the name is indeed vexingly sadistic.
I think there's nothing , nor in the previous post, not even now, that hint for a change of production.
Those who lack time, doesn't have any for assembling and painting.
Thank you to login or register to comment on this article (click on My Account at the top of the page).