Zombicide...IN SPAAAAAAACE!!!

Back on March 2nd (oh so long ago) CMON Surprised us with a strange video, compiling the cover art for all the of the Zombicide sets they produced in conjunction with Guillotine Games  titled "Something out of this world is coming."

the closing shot of the video was a very Star Trek-esque type face posing the questions "are you ready to go BEYOND?"


Naturally, everyone was freaking out and pondering what this meant, and speculating the details about this new announcement. Someone in the facebook comments with some clever detective skills found a trademark CMON owned  titled "XENOCIDE".
https://trademarks.justia.com/874/88/xenocide-87488225.html

We weren't left waiting long however, as this afternoon, CMON has officially announced ZOMBICIDE: INVASION!

The above graphic was accompanied by the following Blurb:

Humans came to PK-L7 in search of high powered fuel. They found it with Xenium, a dark, oily compound deep below the planet’s surface. But they found something else too. The Xenos attack was brutal and unrelenting, and they’re still coming. On April 10 at 3pm EST, Zombicide: Invader is coming to Kickstarter. Follow the CMON and Guillotine Games Facebook pages for regular updates on the Survivors, Xenos, Equipment, and Environments of this interstellar battle for life, and look for our interview with the Zombicide: Invader design team later this week. Grab a weapon, barricade the doors, and prepare to be invaded!

Shortly after this whet our appetites, they updated the cover of their facebook page with an animated graphic of what is undoubtedly this version of the games "abomination" class creature.

And If we adjust the brightness in this image, you can see a number of the hapless survivours in the background, and some other "walker" class alien creatures! You can clearly see a US decorated astronaut, and the woman int he front with the shaved head has a distinctive African style with the neck rings etc; leading me to believe that the initial crew is some kind of international UN style assembly.

It looks like Adrian Smith is doing the artwork and desgign of the creatures this time around, which is a departure from the usual artist featured on ALL the over core Zombicide sets, Eduard Guitton.

I have been eager for CMON to visit sci-fi again; it has been quite a while since their failed Sedition Wars Kickstarter; and with Starfinder being launched last year, I'm looking forward to getting my hands on what undoubtedly will be a large number of amazing miniatures!!

Keep your eyes on CMON's facebook page for more info as it comes! We don't have long before the campaign launches, so I'm sure we will be getting LOTS of previews!

EDIT: A high res copy of the cover art has popped up on boardgamegeek! Looks like we have a pair of alien "abominations" to deal with!

EDIT 2: An official cmon post from the website with more details!
ZOMBICIDE: INVADER LINK

Stranger Things meets Zombicide!

CMON is currently running a kickstarter for a follow up to their VERY successful Zombicide Black Plague campaign from a few years back.

One of the nice surprises was the cast of Stranger Things showing up as KS exclusive heroe
s.

The downside, is that several of them so far are only available if you purchase the $50 add on packs; meaning that so far you have to shell out an additional $100 usd for the complete set of kids. We are still missing Lucas and Eleven; hopefully they are in the stretch goals and not in any more bundles.

In any case, they look GREAT! I'm very excited to get these on my game table!

UPDATE!! Eleven was just spoiled on facebook!!!

STARFINDER: Ship Prototypes

STARFINDER: Ship Prototypes

A New image has surfaced over on Bell of Lost Souls, depicting some 3d prints of the Ninja Division ships. They showed us some of the digital sculpts of the Eox Empire and Pactworld Alliance ships earlier; but this is the first glimpse we have of the minis for the Veskarium.

Starfinder, GAMA 2017

STARFINDER, GAMA 2017 Previews!

Last Fall Paizo Announced a new rpg system based on their popular Pathfinder ruleset. This New game, Titled STARFINDER, would be set thousands of years in the future in the very same star system the planet Golarion (the setting of Pathfinder) is nestled in. They are calling this new game "sci-fi fantasy" and it will be a galaxy in which magic and space age technology work in harmony to fulfill the daily needs of the various inhabitants populating the many worlds you will explore.

The core book is said to contain all you need to start playing, and will apparently contain what would normally be broken out in to the DM's handbook, players guide and monster manuals; apparently this book will be clocking in at over 520 pages!!

I have been rabidly hunting across the internet far and wide for new tidbts and every scrap of information I can find about this new system; reading blogs, listening to podcasts, interviews, ever on the hunt for a new scrap of information. A few points I consider most prevalent:

• James Sutter has stated in pretty much every interview that they want this to be a kind of sandbox concept system, where you can take the rules and pretty much play ANY kind of sci-fi universe you are interested in, the aim is to have it "free" enough that it would work s well for a star Trek themed universe as it would say Guardians of the Galaxy.

• SHIPS! Spaceships will be an integral part of the game; each party will have their own ship they can upgrade customize and pilot. Each member of the party will have a different role in the crew, and when ship combat occurs, every one participates in their crew role on the ship. The space combat aspect of the game will be utilizing a hexgrid. James has said in interviews that the development teamhas viewed the ship encounters as Starfinder's way of introducing random encounters like you would run into in say the forests in Pathfinder.

• THE GAP: Across the entire galaxy there is a 300 year period where everything is a complete mystery, everyone's memory and history just VANISHED., along with the plane Golarion. Nobody knows basically anything about what happened, who they were, where they came from, or why anything is the way it is. It was a huge source of unrest and turmoil across the entire galaxy. The setting for Starfinder takes place several hundred years after this galactic cataclysm, but it's effects are still felt throughout the setting.

• THE DRIFT: Faster than light travel is a new gift to the universe in Starfinder, given to the species from a newly formed super powerful AI. This new AI "god" has discovered this new plain of existence which can allow travellers to basically enter and emerge on another part of galaxy impossible distances away in mere fractions of the time it would normally take to travel there. THERE IS A CATCH however, for every journey taken into the Drift, a chunk of another world/plain of existence is pulled inside of it, making this pocket dimension larger, and inhabiting it with all manner of displaced things. You could run into derelict ships, fragments of planets, or all manner of horrible and unpleasant beings trapper there, and more than a little unhappy about this fact.

• PLAYER RACES: the core book will contain 7 player races, 6 of which have been officially revealed. They are: humans, androids, lashunta (humanoids with antennae... ala Mantis from Gaurdians of the galaxy), kasatha (tall pale humanoids with large elongated craniums black eyes and 4 arms), ysoki (ratfolk) and the Vesk (a race or large lizard like creatures). All the other fantasy races, elves, dwarves etc. are still available, and pretty much any race you can think of will potentially be available as a player character. The 7th race looks to have been revealed at GAMA, more on that below.

 L-R: Human, Kasatha, La Shunta, Android

L-R: what I believe to be the 7th player race, and insectoid species called the Shirren, Vesk, Ysoki

• Backwards compatible! Becuase this is based on the pathfinder ruleset (which they have apparently cleaned up and streamlined) monsters etc. will be able to be ported back and forth between the systems with little effort.

• James Sutter has said many times that they hope that this system does for sci-fi opera "what shadowrun did for cyberpunk".

Onto the pics! I found these images on Figures.com; and action figures news and review site... not the first place I would have expected to see covering rpg's and boardgames, but I'm glad they did! I took their initial pics and fixed the funny angles and colours a bit to share here. To see the original gallery, click HERE.

MINIATURES:

Ninja Division announced just before GAMA that they would be working on a range of prepainted minis for the game; according to sources at GAMA their release is to coincide with the release of the Core rules at Gencon in August.

Ships from the Pactworld Alliance

More Ships from the Alliance

The Capitol Ship of the Eox Empire; a race that destroyed themselves in a war with their own weapon, and now exist as a planet of space necromancers. Their ships are created from bone and have no life support systems... as they are all dead. SO METAL.

More Eox Ships.

For more information please check out Paizo's Blog and this great interview on Taking20. It's 45 mins, but well worth it!

Harry Potter Miniatures Game Table

Later this year Knight Models (of the Batman DC and late Marvel miniatures fame) is releasing  another table top system based on the ever popular Harry Potter series.

While there has been no official word given on when to expect the release of this games, sources from GAMA are telling me that we should keep our Eyes open for the end of may.

When Word first broke last year about this new game and range of minis I began drafting up this game table based on one of my favourite sets in the films, the Chamber of Secrets. I think that I will have to design some kind of scatter terrain to block that wonderfully terrible firing lane right down the middle of the entire table, but I'll cross that bridge when they actually make an announcement about how the game actually plays. :P