Knights of the Dinner Table #202
$5.99 SRP
This multiple award-winning comic magazine features the hilarious misadventures of a group of gamers (the ‘Knights’) and their friends, along with useful role-playing and other articles for gamers, from a gamer’s perspective. It’s a slice of (fantasy) life in strips, articles, reviews and features, and a wonderful celebration of the gaming culture!
Firefly: The Game
$49.99 SRP
In Firefly: The Game, players captain their own Firefly-class transport ship, traveling the ‘Verse with a handpicked crew of fighters, mechanics and other travelers. As a captain desperate for work, players are compelled to take on any job: so long as it pays. Double-dealing employers, heavy handed Alliance patrols and marauding Reavers are all in a day’s work for a ship’s captain at the edge of the ‘Verse.
Firefly: The Game is a high-end, thematic tabletop board game from Gale Force Nine (GF9). It will be the first in a series of tabletop hobby board games and miniatures games from GF9 set in the Firefly Universe.
2-4 players
Ages 13+
Savage Worlds: Steamscapes: North America
$19.99 SRP
North America in 1871 is a land of adventure, opportunity, and conflict. Inventors from the American Consolidated Union supply automatons and steam-powered machinery to the oil fields of Texas and the mines of the Rocky Mountain Republic. Wells Fargo airships and steam carts compete with the Southern Pacific’s monopoly on transcontinental rail travel. Native saboteurs raid across the borders from their home in the Plains Tribal Federation to destroy the technology that threatens their land.
Steamscapes: North America is the first setting book for Steamscapes. It includes extensive alternative historical backgrounds for the four most prominent nations of North America and offers six new professions with associated skills and edge trees, as well as the automaton racial template. It provides several introductory scenarios and a variety of character templates so GMs and players can jump right in and start playing.
Steamscapes: North America requires the Savage Worlds core rulebook to play.
WAW: Eisenbach Gap Deluxe
$54.99 SRP
One game that includes all the components of both the original Eisenbach Gap and Death of First Panzer. Better still, the maps are mounted and the rules and player aid cards are full color. This is a great chance to dive into the popular World at War system with the first two modules packed in one box!
For those new to World at War, the game simulates, on a platoon-level, the war which began May 14, 1985 when Junior Lieutenant Yuri Andromnivitch’s T-72 sent a 125mm HE round screaming into the guard tower on the ridge at Dankmarshausen, ripping mortar from rebar, and sending head-sized chunks of concrete tumbling into the red-roofed houses below.
Units activate by chit draw and formation, fire in a flurry of dice, and look good doing it. The rules cover self-propelled mortars, thin-skinned vehicles, support weapons, ranged combat, opportunity fire, ATGM depletion, assault, and overrun combat. Better still, World at War is not just a game, but also a game system. Learn Eisenbach Gap Deluxe, and you can play any of the follow-on modules.
Contains:
One hundred seventy-six (176) gorgeous die-cut 5/8’’ counters
Two, professionally drawn, printed, and MOUNTED maps
Twelve scenarios, 2 players’ aid cards, and 4 dice
A full-color, 16-page rule, scenario, and chart book
KerFlip!
$30.00 SRP
KerFlip! is a “fast-thinking” word game that rewards you for making anagrams from a group of letter tiles faster than your opponents can. At the beginning of each round, players simultaneously drop a predetermined number of tiles onto the board and quickly flip them all ivory-side up (the fronts of the tiles are ivory, the backs are orange). At this point the round is a free-for-all, as players race to call out one word each. If the last player is taking too long to call a word, any of his opponents can hurry him by starting the timer, he’ll have 15 seconds to call a word or he’ll bust. Once every player has called a word for the round, they’re scored in the order they called, so the first player who called scores first, and so on. The first time a tile is used (its ivory side), it’s worth 10 points. Once it’s been scored, flip (or “KerFlip”) it to its orange side. Now it’s worth only 5 points to other players in the same round. Some tiles, identified by a small number in the bottom right corner, are premium tiles that award players cards with bonus point values. At the end of each round, recycle any remaining unused (ivory) tiles back to the draw pouch and sweep all used (orange) tiles into the collection chutes.
Games last 15-20 minutes (about 10-12 rounds) depending on the number of players (2-4). To cleanup at the end of the game, just pick up the game box and gently shake to funnel the tiles into a collection cup under the board. Voila! It’s fliptastic!
The Three Little Pigs
$29.99 SRP
As a little pig, your dearest wish is to build a strong and beautiful house in which you can spend your long winter evenings. But you won’t need trowels nor scaffoldings, as only dice will allow you to construct your dream home. Beware the wolf prowling around, whose only thought is to literally blow away your comfy house!
The Three Little Pigs is an easy and fun dice game for the whole family. At your turn, try to get the better combination with the 5 special dice and build the most lovely and sturdy houses, by adding doors, floors and roofs. And if you accidentaly bring the wolf out of the wood, just take a deep breath and shatter other players’ buildings by blowing on the wheel!
This original game comes with an illustrated version of the famous tale it is based on.
2-5 players
Ages: 7+
Play time: 20 minutes
Contents:
5 special dice
1 Wolf wheel
36 House tiles
6 Goal cards
1 Tale Booklet
1 Rule Booklet
The Supreme Commander: WWII in Europe, 1939-1945
$65.00 SRP
SDI
The Supreme Commander is a game designed for 2-5 players covering the entirety of World War II in the European Theater of Operations (ETO), from September 1939 to the end of the war. While there are plenty of other ETO games out there, The Supreme Commander effectively models all of the primary aspects of the war in a simple, straight-forward manner.
All of these elements and more are included in a surprisingly easy-to-learn game: Murmansk convoy, Lend-Lease, diplomacy, the strategic U-Boat campaign, technological advancement, strategic bombing campaigns, naval invasions, the economy and military production, partisans.
That is not to say that The Supreme Commander is some sort of compromise, surrendering historical accuracy for simplicity. The game delivers a detailed order of battle and meticulously researched economic and diplomatic system which allows players to play out the historical military campaigns of the war as well as the “what ifs” that may have happened. It is entirely up to the players, the system is open-ended and does not restrict players to the exact decisions of the past.
Contains:
Rules Booklet, Play Booklet
Two Counter Sheets
Two Player Aid Cards
Diplomatic Track
Six Force Pool Cards
22 x 34 inch Map
Two ten-sided dice
There won’t be new ships or the Captain’s Box at Gen Con. Still trying to work out a new process in production that will finally allow the line to move forward in a way that will be both profitable for Catalyst and a regular release schedule for players.
In the mean time, we’re trying to see if we can’t get something to Gen Con for Leviathans players. I’ve talked about this concept before. That we’ve been working on and off on these things forever, but we’re pushing to see if we can’t have a deck of Ship Quirks and Crew Abilities for sell; they won’t be for sell in stores anytime in the near future, but we’ll look at putting them on sell online after Gen Con.
So…what would these cards entail? Why would we want these in the game? Well…as any good miniatures game progresses…well, you add to it. Simply the nature of the beast. And for me, right from the get go as I was designing the game and then polishing it up through endless playtests, a slew of fun rules would come into my head and I’d jot them down. Ultimately, however, any of these rules do not work as “standard” rules…in fact, they won’t even work within the Captain’s Manual “enchanced rules”. Instead, they’re perfect for players to add some unique flavor to a ship in a given scenario to mix up game play.
Taking directly from the rules text that introduces both the Ship Quirks and the Crew Abilities:
Not every ship is the same, even among ships of the same class and Type. Anyone that has served on board a vessel knows the complexity of their construction creates unique design quirks that bring a flavor all their own to each ship. This is all the more true for leviathans that are still relatively nascent technologies.
The following is a series of positive and negative quirks, each with a numerical value that determines the relative strength or weakness of a given quirk. It is strongly recommended that if a player chooses a positive quirk for his ship, he or she should give it a negative quirk of equal as well. However, each playing group can decide if negative quirks must balanced positive quirks.
CREW ABILITIES
A ship is far more than the nuts and bolts and electroid that holds it together in the sky. The men and women that bring their skills, passions and blood are what elevate each ship to be far more than the sum of its parts, turning a ship into a legend. The following rules allow players to bring the crew of a ship to life.
“Just show me some of the rules!” I can hear you saying…so here here we go.
First up, the current look of the Ship Quirks and two of many, many cards that’ll be apart of deck.
Right out of the gate, note that these were test layouts done…well…a good while ago, so the rules have progressed in playtesting since then. For example, the current final rules for “Superior Armor” are:
A particularly superlative batch of materials results in superior armor.
All Armor Slots on the ship provide an additional +1 modifier to any Slot Numbers in its Location.
The value for this quirk is based upon the total +1 Breach modifiers provided by all Armor Slots on the ship. For example, the HML Raven has five +1 Armor Slots and so the value of this quirk assigned to that ship would be 5. However, the HML Beagle has five +1 Armor Slots and a +2 Armor Slot, so the value of this quirk assigned to that ship would be 7.
As for “Accurate Weapon”, the final text will have a point value of “+2, +2, +3, +4, +4? to reflect the fact that this helps smaller dice more than larger dice, while it also won’t be able to be used with Bracketing Fire (just too sick).
Next up, the Crew Abilities. You’ll notice no point values on either of these cards…that’s because when these were given a test layout, the points were not yet assigned.
All-Weather is pretty much as is, still, just getting a 1 point cost added.
As for Lady Luck…it’s one of the most powerful of the Crew Abilities, and so will be priced at 5 points. Even then, we’ll be folding in a change to curb it down..a “own ship only” text will keep it from being too sick…but it’s still a great ability.
Anyways…there ya have it! Please note, we are ‘trying’ to have this at Gen Con, but no promises. Regardless, after Gen Con, we’ll move to get these released in PDF format for purchase. They’ll add a wonderful variety of play to any style of game.
For those attending Gen Con, see ya then!
Randall
From Catalyst Game Labs
Hey all,
Sigh…once again, have to start with an apology. The launch of Shadowrun, Fifth Edition has been an all consuming project that has sucked up most of Catalyst’s bandwidth and all of mine almost across the board. For those that don’t follow such things, the PDF & Print Preorders went on sale yesterday. Still a ton of SR-retaled stuff to do moving forward, of course, but SR monopilizing so much of my time is finally near an end.
Course, as an aside, the more fantastic Shadowrun does, the better it is for Leviathans as it gives us a better war chest to deal with the production issues still nagging at this game’s heels.
Nevertheless, I will be getting a swath of my time mostly back, which means more regular updates of various things, including getting PDF releases back on line.
As an apology for the dry spell of the last month or so, thought I’d give you the German SMS Wolveto play, along with the rules for the two new slots on this dangerous destroyer.
You can click here to download the PDF for this destroyer.
And the rules:
CHAFF SLOT
On a result of 8-10 the torpedo is shot down, causing no further damage or effects; on a result of 7 or less the chaff does not shoot it down and a standard Breach Roll is now made by the attacker to determine if the torpedo strikes the target.
SCREENING CREW SLOT
A Crew Slot with a white diamond icon is known as a Screening Crew Slot.
A ship containing a Screening Crew Slot need only spend 1 MP to either Defensive or Offensive Screen (as opposed to the standard 3 MP).
***
To get a sense of the German vibe, feel free to field the Wolve with the HML Leviathans or HMLMedusa.
See ya next duty shift!
Randall
EN World.org, one of the premier online sites for news and reviews for tabletop games, is launching an “RPG Spotlight” program next Monday. Each week will feature a different RPG, where publishers/designers will interact with the EN World community, answer questions, and more.
With the wildly successful launch of Shadowrun, Fifth Edition PDF & Print Preorders yesterday, Catalyst Game Labs is pleased to see Shadowrun first up in this great new program.
“I’m very excited to have the chance to interact with the EN World community!” said Jason M. Hardy, Shadowrun Line Developer. “They are a passionate, knowledgeable group, and I’ll do my best to be ready for whatever questions and thoughts they fire off.”
The Shadowrun RPG Spotlight will run from July 15th to July 21. One participant from next week’s Spotlight will be chosen to win a free Shadowrun, Fifth Edition Limited Edition book!
“I’m really excited to launch our weekly spotlights with Shadowrun, a game which has so much history,” said Russ Morrissey, of EN World,” and which was voted by EN World members into the Top 10 Most Anticipated Games of 2013.”
Check out shadowruntabletop.com andwww.shadowrun.com to learn more about all that’s happening in the Year of Shadowrun, as well aswww.enworld.org for the spotlight program and great news and reviews for all things gaming.
EN World?
EN World (www.enworld.org) has been reporting tabletop gaming news for over a decade. Originally the world’s largest Dungeons & Dragons fan site, it has evolved into one of the world’s leading tabletop gaming new sources and covers the whole gamut of roleplaying and board games. EN World also maintains the premier RPG awards program, the ENnies, at Gen Con every August. The SPOTLIGHT GAME program is a new initiative to highlight game systems and for fans to discuss their favourite games with the publishers, designers and creators to make them.
Catalyst Game Labs?
Catalyst Game Labs is dedicated to producing high-quality games and fiction that mesh sophisticated game mechanics with dynamic universes, all presented in a form that allows beginning players and long-time veterans to easily jump into our games, while helping fiction readers enjoy our stories even if they don’t know the games.
Catalyst Game Labs is an imprint of InMediaRes Productions, LLC, which specializes in electronic publishing of professional fiction. This allows Catalyst to participate in a synergy that melds printed gaming material and fiction with all the benefits of electronic interfaces and online communities, creating a whole-package experience for any type of player or reader. Find Catalyst Game Labs online at www.catalystgamelabs.com.
