An Ode to Obscure Games: Bladestorm UPDATED!

 Hi!

Today sees the first day of my holiday and I'd had high hopes of getting on with my Leviathan project but I'm knackered from work so here's another ode to an obscure game: Bladestorm! (UPDATE: It appears that the Bladestorm is still available from Mirliton in Italy so the link has been added!)

I'm not sure where I originally heard of Bladestorm. Possibly it was in an old wargame magazine but I have a sneaking suspicion I stumbled upon it via The Miniatures Page's arcane list of wargame rules. It was a dark fantasy skirmish game that was published back in 1990 by Iron Crown Enterprises, a company better known for its RPG games.

Set in a far off series of islands known as the Bladelands (the reason for its name will become apparent!) the game never really took of as far as I've been able to find but has more recently been rereleased in a 2nd, updated edition.

The rules are probably somewhat further to the complex end of the scale than some of the other games I've got but ICE did a good job of breaking them down and clearly showing how they work. There is a basic, intermediate and advanced level to the game and it very much feels like a hybrid of a wargame and an rpg.

Setting wise, the islands are constantly at war and many shipwreck survivors are washed ashore adding to the mix. An unknown magical form of weather effects the land in that when battle does break out, strange elemental tornadoes can appear full of swirling blades which unsurprisingly is pretty deadly to all concerned. This leads to conflict being kept to small skirmishes between the assorted kingdoms and powers rather than massive battles.

The original boxed game had a rulebook and separate sourcebook which concentrated on breathing life into the setting and is something I'd like to see more of in skirmish wargames as its nice to have a rulebook that keeps the actual rules of play condensed into a separate book than the background gubbins which makes it easier to find the rules you are looking for.

There are multiple fantasy races, forces and places featured in the sourcebook and its actually a pretty good reference piece for anyone wanting to introduce a new location or organisation to their fantasy games. Some are a bit out there such as flying turtles with hollowed out shells for riders to hide in but they did try, and for the most part succeed in making very different feeling forces than the more typical Tolkeinesque stuff that was around at the time.

There was also a map (pictured!) and a small and rather basic guide to painting miniatures. There is a small range of figures produced by Grenadier back in the day and they're now available from MIRLITON in Italy.

The game itself is aimed at small skirmishes but can be scaled up to larger conflicts but as each character has multiple wounds and abilities, this slows things down considerably and its better at playing probably 4-5 models a side. I've actually played a few games of this back in the day and its rather a neat little system that revolves around your action points and gives a nice level of crunch and detail without being too heavy and is great for showcasing small bands of adventurers duking it out with ravening gangs of baddies.

As with many games that came out in the late 80's and early 90's the artwork varies considerably from the lovely Angus MacBride cover to the line art of the setting guide, right down to the frankly pretty awful, and for some reason massive footed interior:

I have no idea what is going on!

Saying that, if you can get past the dodgy art, the game is actually pretty good and does a good job of building the complexity level to where you are comfortable with and making for a really good narrative based game and its well worth a peek if you can find a copy. The original rules and whatnot is still available for 20 Dollars on Wargame Vault so can be downloaded and it does show up from time to time on Ebay.

Bladestorm is one of those interesting early fantasy wargames, much like D&D's Battlesystem that were an attempt at making a wargame but coming from a RPG perspective and works better as a hybrid of the two rather than one or the other.

I've got a couple more obscure games to cover but now my hols are here, I'm hoping to get some sculpting done so I'll be ending this series in the next couple of days but if you'd like to see more largely forgotten games, do feel free to give me a shout and I'll post more and if theres enough interest, I may even break some of them out to play!

In the meantime, All the best!

Richard

An Ode to Obscure Games: VOR the Maelstrom

 Hi!

I must admit that I was humming and hahing about what I'd post next for my series on obscure games and settled on Vor: The Maelstrom by FASA!

Vor: The Maelstrom was originally released by FASA back in 1999 and for a brief moment could have challenged the might of GW but as with so many games from my collection, vanished into obscurity in 2001 when FASA ceased trading. Over the years there's been attempts to get a new edition, largely from the now dwindling VOR player diehards but also from Mike 'Skuzzy' Nelson, the games creator.

The game revolves around Earth being pulled into a pocket dimension which has consumed many other worlds. This nightmarish realm is inhabited by many other races and all must fight to survive the destructive powers unleashed upon them by the VOR, a malevolent singularity which is slowly consuming every world that is transported into the maelstrom.

The setting is set in the not too distant future with the two superpowers of Earth, the Union and the Neo-Sovs being caught in an ongoing conflict before the world is literally sucked into a different dimension.

Here they mus join the struggle against many foes, both human and alien, be it the crystalline Shard, the space mummies of the Pharon, the weird, multi jointed Zykhee, or the giant rage monsters, the Growlers. Survival is key and the place is determined to kill everything so straight off, theres some really fascinating settings to explore.

Each force is pretty unique but did suffer from balance issues, especially the Pharon who were seen as being extremely overpowered but if you're playing a campaign driven by narrative, the space mummies should be terrifying!

With a plethora of fantastic artists producing some truly stunning covers for the books, weird alien races and for its time, a really original set of rules mechanics. VOR was in a unique position as it seemed to have everything going for it but sadly it wasn't to be and faded away which is a real pity.

Rulewise, the game gave models action points which could be used to move, shoot, activate abilities and a wide variety of other bits and bobs and allowed you to really play in a way that previous big Sci-fi rules (especially GW!) didn't. Coupled with alternating activation and a complete guide to creating your own stats so you could play literally any force you could imagine and a D100 chart for some of the mad environmental conditions one could find in the Maelstrom its a great ruleset.

I remember it took a bit of effort to get the way it worked straight in my head as it was so very different from what I was used to but it worked remarkably well!

While the rules and setting were great, if needing a reworked 2nd edition that would have would have worked out the kinks and at least three new races and a book specifically for designing custom forces in the pipeline, the element that did let down Vor was the miniature line.

FASA got very different sculptors to work on the ranges and while some were really nice for the time, others were decidedly ropy and their tendency to only have a couple of sculpts per unit was a real shame (the Neo-Sov Rad Troopers are particularly unfortunate). Given time, I'd have loved to see the range get properly fleshed out and the setting explored more thoroughly. 

I actually own a boxed set of the game that I picked up for a bargain price on Ebay some years ago with the intention of painting them up (it is the third version of it I've owned!) and the starter set miniatures were all sculpted by GW legend Kev Adams so had loads of character, despite their limited poses and at some point I really need to get them all painted up!

Unlike most of the games I'm covering, Vor was by a large company and could have gone on to do great things but sadly its pretty much a dead game these days. Handily Ral Partha Europe produces the miniatures range and still has lots of the rulebooks and army books so it isn't difficult to pick up and its a great ruleset in its own right and still holds together really well.

Interestingly it was the inspiration behind WARGAMES UNLIMITED free rulesets, No Quarter and No Limits which are still available and would refine the rules, remove the setting and go for a completely generic wargame set that is really good to boot.

Sadly even these haven't been updated in ages but if you're looking to try them out, the game is great fun!

As for Vor: The Maelestrom, its worth picking up if you can find the rulebook as the setting is really interesting and the rules for the ever changing weather conditions are worth the cost of the book themselves, even if you port them over into your own setting (they're particularly good for depicting what worlds within the Eye of Terror would be like!)

Tomorrow will see another addition to the ever growing list of awesome, quirky or odd games I've got in my collection so watch this space.

Until then, All the best!

Richard

An Ode to Obscure Games: Star Mogul

 Hi!

As my Leviathan plans have hit a bit of a snag with the expense of fixing my car and while I'm waiting for some sculpting supplies arriving I thought I'd spend a bit of time looking at some obscure games, either from my own collection or some of the little niche games that appear from time to time. Some stick around and I fully intend to pick up a copy someday while others vanish into obscurity (and I still plan on picking them up someday!)

One such game is Star Mogul.

Released in the States back in 2006, Star Mogul was very much ahead of its time as it involves rival salvage teams exploring abandoned settlements for loot while trying to stop their opponents from doing the same.

Sound familiar? The Osprey game Stargrave is much the same idea but with more powerful characters. Star Mogul is a decidedly blue collar affair with small forces, averaging about a dozen figures a side and the odd small vehicle or stompy robot to aid them looting out on the frontier in the years following an alien plague that decimated the outer worlds. 

Coupled with a somewhat ineffectual central Earth government these small companies operate beyond the law and fights regularly break out between rival teams.

What made the game so great was you had basic stats for your team but depending on how you used your experience points, resulted in a vast variety of options for how you formed your crew. They could be small in number but well equipped, larger numbers but poorly trained, add robots, quirky crew chief options and different skills and you could really play about with bringing pretty much anything to play.

As for the game, it was rather fun and leaned heavily into an ongoing campaign where your salvage crew would fight to grub whatever loot they could, and that was part of the fun; you didn't have to aim to wipe out your foes as you just needed to recover scrap whilst holding them off!

Coupled with some really interesting fog of war effects and the ability to really develop your characters, the game was a minor success and by 2007 there were two supplements.

Distant Worlds which brought in the Hydrissians, a reptile like race of aliens who had all sorts of interesting tech and the Asteroid Miners, heavily cyborgised humans who had an absolutely brilliant little line of figures.

The second supplement, Alien Evolution saw the arrival of the X-12 Android Cult, rebel robots who sought freedom from the slavery of the humans and the Mephalians, a barbarous degenerate race which has the remains of a long dead species tech and a crude knowledge of how to work it.

Sadly after the release of the Alien Evolution rules, Alpha Forge was sold to someone else who promptly did nothing with it and the game, support and miniatures were eventually sold on to Mega Minis who in turn broke up the range and sold them off piecemeal. 

Now I believe Armorcast has the rights to the rules and some of the figures but the rest have vanished back into obscurity but I highly recommend folks download the rules and have a bash. They are on SCRIBD as are the supplements and with the plethora of sci-fi figures out there these days, its pretty easy to put together a Salvage Team. 

I'd absolutely love to see this game being revamped with new miniatures, artwork and rules as it is a really great wee game with some properly characterful figures but with the status of the figure line, I doubt this will happen. 

The Desert Rose Salvage Crew painted by Supervike

Star Mogul was ahead of its time as it came out when the obsession with massive scale 28mm wargames like 40k were still strong and the niche skirmish market hadn't really developed into what we see today but if you're looking for a small skirmish game that feels a bit Necromunda meets Outland, you can't go wrong.

Looking back at it, I wish I'd picked up more of the range when they were available as I had several teams including the Asteroid Miners but they all went in the big clearout of 2008 when I went off to uni so maybe at some point I'll expend some more time on putting together two salvage crews and playing through the scenarios in the core book.

A Demo-Bot trundles through an abandoned settlement somewhere on the border 

I used to own all the books in physical format but now only have the PDF's so do plan on getting them printed out at some point and will get them bound so I can relive the pleasure of reading them.

A Salvage crew captain with trusty robot minion

Looking through my blog, I can see that I've posted about the game before and even played a game using 15mm figures which can be found HERE and HERE. I'm fairly sure I got some of the rules wrong but it gives a bit of an idea of the game.

I look forward to posting more gubbins over the coming week while I await sculpting supplies to get on with my Leviathan project but in the meantime, thanks for getting this far and All the best!

Richard

Relics: The Return!

 Hi!

A quick interlude from my Leviathan stuff as today saw the announcement of the return of Relics the wargame!

As per usual my obsession with out of production games that virtually nobody plays has struck. Back in 2010, a small miniatures company called Tor Gaming released some super quirky figures that they classed as Stitchpunk and over the next few years the range expanded into a unique setting that featured voodoo doll soldiers, creepy fae and some really gnarly looking Dwarves.

At this point, I was pootling around with miniatures and was pretty much entirely focused on Leviathan so the game passed me by and by 2017 Tor announced it was closing up shop and the game and miniatures were sold on to TTCombat, who at the time were pretty much an online seller if memory serves right with no real gaming experience.

Since then the game has sat fallow as TTCombat focused on other games, namely Dropzone, Dropfleet and Carnivale and the Relics community on Facebook began to dry up and it appeared that the game was well and truly dead as while the 2nd edition of the rules were available as a pdf, the miniatures themselves, so unique a selling point of the game were unavailable.

Now we find ourselves in 2024 and TTCombat has announced that they are re-releasing the game with newly mastered models and the original range will be available once again.

Now I'm not sure if I'm going to be tempted to pick up the actual rules to try out but I do think I'm going to get some of the miniatures as they're really characterful and its not often that dead games make a comeback so I for one would love to see it reappear and continue to get support.

The first two factions to be re-released will be Orcnar and Britanan which should be happening in February with the rest following not long after.

If you're interested, its worth nipping over the TTCOMBAT page to see whats available and the 2nd edition rules can be found for free download HERE.

We shall see how things go but its well worth a peek for folks looking for a really quirky and characterful range of miniatures, and hopefully an expanding one to boot!

In the meantime, All the best!