Holiday Gift Guide 2018

I could have sworn we have done this numerous times before but all I could find was the Guide from 2014…  Oh well! Here come the recommendations for this year’s holiday season!

(By the way – those recommendations by Aki? They are still relevant. As are the Top 5 Boardgames I listed in February.)

This year I have been working in my local gaming store Puolenkuun Pelit (Tampere) and have quite a bit better grasp of thing I would like to recommend for holiday gifts. I have a few absolute favorites so let’s get them out of the way first. Continue reading

A Newcomer’s Review: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th Edition

As Lauri said in his review, I have never played or read any edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay or WFRP. My own experiences in RPGs are mostly horror and then American indie games during the last 10 years. My tastes have been drifting as of late, though, which is why I was eager to set my eyes upon a relaunch of a British classic.

Disclaimer: Cubicle 7 was kind enough to send us a pdf for review.

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Review: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th Edition

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th edition was published by Cubicle 7 quite recently. They were kind enough to send us a pdf to review and we will be reviewing this game in two parts. This first part is written by Lauri who has been there since (almost) the beginning. And the second part is the newcomers view written by Ville who has not played any edition of WFRP (published later).

Grognard’s Grumbles

Disclaimer: We haven’t actually played this fourth edition yet so all of my opinions are based on my earlier knowledge and reading the book so they must be taken with a hint of salt.

As said in the intro I have played WFRP a very long time. I started in the 90’s with the Enemy Within campaign (as player) and have GM’ed every edition since. My most active era of Warhammer was in 2002-2010 when I ran several campaign, wrote for Liber Fanatica and created the Daily Empire as a base for all fan material. So my approach for this game couldn’t be farther from Ville’s view which should create an interesting contrast to our views.

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Trying Out: Mansions of Madness

Mansions of Madness is one of the games I have avoided intentionally. I had a presumption about it being a dull game of overly complicated gaming system and too much fighting the Mythos. Luckily yesterday proved I was wrong. After visiting a few local caves with Santtu and Sami we headed to my place and I got to try out the second edition of Mansions of Madness by Fantasy Flight Games.

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Designing Eldritch Sigils

Last Sunday I published the beta version of rules for Eldritch Sigils. This is a game I have been working on for about five years. I have actually published earlier drafts over the years but this was the first time it actually has consistency and it is actually playable.

This has been a long process and one that is still in the works. But now that the rules are “out there” I thought it would be a good chance to talk about them. Since game design is quite an interesting topic I hope that sharing my process might produce new ideas or at least be curious.

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ZWEIHÄNDER is complete!

Back in the day I used to play Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay for years. It was “my D&D” (since I never really played that). I have a lot of memories about that game, I have made quite a few fan supplements for it, heck, I was even the other admin for long forgotten HAMMERZEIT (web site for WFRP3) and have been running the Daily Empire apparently for seven years…

Every now and then I have tried to get back into the game that really sold roleplaying for me but having been spoiled by Apocalypse World it has never really worked out.

Back while I was really active “some dude” got an idea of remaking the 2nd edition game. Since I really  (REALLY) loved the 2nd edition I was immediately on board on this. Then time passed. Games Workshop decided it was better to just destroy the Old World (with Age of Suckmar). I even played a little D&D! But yesterday “that dude” finally did it.

“That dude” is naturally Daniel Fox and his Grim & Perilous Studios. And the game is called ZWEIHÄNDER.

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Trying Out: Warhammer Quest: The Adventure Card Game

boxFantasy Flight Games’ Warhammer Quest: The Adventure Card Game is a brand new version of the ageless classic Warhammer Quest. Both games are set in the Old World and feature a group of heroes going into a dungeon to fight a bunch of monsters with quite high odds of them all dying. The original game had miniatures and cardboard rooms but this brand new version only has what FFG is famous of doing: cards, more cards, custom dice and counters. And naturally one of the most disordered rulebook there is.

When this new version of the Warhammer Quest was announced I could not help but to feel a kind of déjà vu. Fantasy Flight Games taking an old classic and turning it into a whole different beast with a boatload of counters on top? Yes – they did that with the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

Since I have always liked the approach WFRP 3rd edition had (even though I know a lot of players really disliked it) I was immediately sold on this new approach too. I have nothing against painting miniatures and playing with them (far from it) but if someone is doing a reboot they should at least consider about making it a bit different than the last time (I’m looking at you Film Industry). Otherwise why would I even by the remake?

But since a very few people are interested in the story about “how I bought this new game” I’ll get straight into the juice stuff. Trying out Warhammer Quest: the Adventure Card Game!

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Alpha Polaris Released on Steam

Alpha_Polaris_PosterOnce upon a time I lived at Rovaniemi and game mastered a campaign of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying game for a group of friends. That small group had grown into a quite large community and it is called Redemund’s Guild (hence the name of the this blog too). Two of those original founding fathers of our guild were the driving force behind a horror game called Alpha Polaris and the original play testing was done via our forums.

So now I’m extremely delighted to see that game going on Steam!

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This Week in Magic

I usually do not post about Magic the Gathering. Mainly because Aki posts about it. A Lot. And I rarely have anything interesting or worthwhile to say. This week however was a bit different. I had a small vacation (since my son was with his grandparents and my wife was working). So what could I do? Turns out – nothing much but play through various different types of MtG. So this will be my random rambling about different formats.

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About the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

If the rumours are to be believed Games Workshop publishes a new edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battles during this summer. I am one of those who actually believe that Fantasy Flight Games might rekindle their ownership on the rpg version of Warhammer. There is nothing to prove this (so it isn’t even a rumour) and I have been known to be wrong before. But still I think it could happen.

This post is not about speculating of what would, could or should happen. As someone who has been playing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying game through each edition I thought I could summarise some of my experiences with it.

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