I naturally had West Wind as one of the "must go to" stands on my list. It was great to finally be able to meet Andy and Wendy Cooper after all these years. I've been in touch with them since they launched Secrets of the Third Reich. These two are great and very kind, I'm very happy for their Kickstarter success. I didn't get to talk too much with Wendy as she was busy attending to customers so I did not want to interrupt, but I talked quite a bit with Andy and Ian who is writing the rules for the new Empire of the Dead additions from the Kickstarter campaign and who is also working on the Secrets of the third Reich version 2 rules.Andy said he still had some 50 miniatures to sculpt for the Requiem range but but he also stated that he will not compromise on the quality of the new sculpts and so he will keep us posted on how thins are coming along. I suppose we have to bear in mind folks that lots of factions were added in at the end, and the June date was worked out only on the Requiem Miniatures, not all the additional minis too. However, he says he is making very good progress and will keep us posted. I asked about the Clickers faction and Andy told me that the box would contain 3 types of robots, though each would have a different pose. At least one variety is a flying robot.
At the moment West Wind focuses on delivering Empire of the Dead and then on their 2nd edition of the Secrets of the third Reich rules.I could of course not pass on the opportunity to compliment West Wind on the Forged in Battle miniatures, and did my best sales pitch for them to sculpt a Polish Vickers E tank for Early War - since the Forged in Battle range already has the 10th motorized division miniatures in place. Andy told me to email him pictures and he was going to talk to the vehicle sculptor at FiB for me, so fingers crossed that we will see one in the future!!
Andy then introduced me to Ian Hill who is editing together the rules with writers Sam Caterall and Nigel Atkinson for the Requiem miniatures and new factions. I talked with him for quite a bit. Ian told me about his design philosophy of trying to utilize the special rules already in place in the core ruleset (with minor tweaks) instead of just adding a million special rules (we found common ground stating Malifaux as an example of special rules overload). He mentioned that the order of the Dragon main character (Dracula) will be quite expensive in points and powerful while the minions will be mainly unarmed (as you have seen on the concept art), the Bedlam Brotherhood could be interesting and Ian was thinking of using the "unhinged" chart for their rules somehow, but not make the members of that faction completely random and uncontrollable.
Ian also let me know that he is reading all the ideas and suggestions on the West Wind forum and is very thankful for any help we could provide on finding quirks in the rules which could be fixed. So that is a good incentive to post on the West Wind forums. He is also reading the thread I started about the PDF of the rulebook, so guys keep posting whatever typo and weird wording you're finding!We then talked a bit about how Secrets of the Third Reich version 2 is coming along and about the changes. At the moment there is no intention of altering the points cost of units in the game (I mentioned I thought that x10 of the points cost would make easier tweaking of upgrade values). However there may be a limitation to unit upgrades and how you build your units in the game. Other changes mentioned were the Soviet camo rules and Soviet's in general which will most
likely end up having to buy their camo while retaining their other special rule. There will be a big overhaul of how you call in Drop Troopers, and the whole German Drop trooper list will be overhauled as it is over powered. The mech design chart will also most likely see some revision as it is easy to exploit with cheap light drop mechs with flamethrowers. Woods wil also no longer burn down completely from flamethrower attacks, but fire will instead make clearings - this is because forest heavy tournament games showed situations where the entire table was burning and made it unplayable.
Andy who was with us also mentioned that the version 2 will include Japanese and US Marine Corps, and how the Japanese rules will be different from the other factions - most likely there will be a "mech design chart" for demons/ghosts, and while it will be based on the old ideas written by John Bailey back a few years ago the Japanese will be less divided in sub-factions and instead have wider variety within the same unified army. Andy also said that the Temple will be fleshed out with additional troops. And we will finally see a Tesla cannon armed tank which he was working on.I actually look forward to seeing how version 2 turns out after the chat with Ian and Andy.
After that I picked up two blisters of Polish dismounted cavalry from FiB for my Polish Flames of War Early War army and then headed over to the Secrets of the third Reich demo game and talked with fellow West Wind forum member James, who was running a great looking demo with his son - and there I also met fellow West Wind moderator Alistair and chatted both about the stuff I had been told by Andy and Ian, but also a bit about the By Fire and Sword game which Al brought up. The Secrets demo was very impressive with a lot of mechas fighting it out, smoke and fire effects added to the sensation.
I had a great time talking to everyone over at the West Wind stand, made me wish I could go to more shows and see them more often - alas I live in boring and isolated Sweden... I hope I remembered everything written here correctly, did not make any notes and wrote it all from memory.
And here are a few more pictures from Salute:
South London Warlords running their Jason and the Argonauts with huge action models:
More games:
Stay tuned for part 3 which will cover the Wargamer.pl guys over at the By Fire & Sword stand, and more pictures from the show including some of the new 4Ground buldings.
No comments:
Post a Comment