It’s Friday, and here on No Rerolls that means it’s time for an all-new 5 on Friday. We’re going to start with 5 exciting releases for this week before moving on to our usual digest of some of our favourite articles from the past week. Of course, we’re slow readers, so don’t be surprised if there are some articles that are a little older – these are just some of the great articles we happen to have actually read in the past week.
Releases & Previews
Every week there are many games and miniatures released. This will probably be a mix of previews, preorders, and releases, and with release dates being the way they are in this industry, it’s always pretty approximate. Excuses out of the way, here are 5 of the releases that caught our attention this week:
Games Workshop releases a new army box for the Slaves to Darkness – This is an exciting release. The Slaves to Darkness is a bit of a relic of the past, as far as it goes in AoS. GW has released new miniatures for the army, but the aesthetic and core identity of the army is still rooted in the Old World of Warhammer Fantasy Battles. That said, with each step that Games Workshop takes with new models and expanding the range in new directions, the more that the Age of Sigmar version of the Chaos Warrior army becomes its own thing.
The New Daemon Prince is a cracking mini, and I love the new Ogroid Theridons. They are delightfully chunky lads. On the one hand, this box doesn’t contain all that many miniatures, but they’re all new, they’re all gorgeous, and they’re all smaller units of bigger, or at least more expensive models. Having been working on a Slaves to Darkness army for some time, I’m really keen to get my hands on the book, too.
Lookout Games releases Frantic Fiends expansion for Caverna – Caverna is a game that I’ve only managed to get to the table a couple of times. I do like the game, and it’s made it into previous editions of my top 50. I’ve just not found a group that really likes the game, and so it doesn’t get a repeat play. That’s a pity, but it probably explains why I kind of forgot that Caverna was still a thing until this latest expansion popped up:
Caverna can feel a little bit passive, at least thematically. This is not uncommon for a ‘eurogame’ and it is a worker placement game rather than a wargame or the like. This adds in a bit of conflict, giving you the chance to fight some orcs. Or bribe them. Cash is a valid choice, here. Seems neat. I just feel that Caverna is already a game with a lot of components on the table. Adding an expansion, while it will add more elements to the game, also adds just more fuss and stuff to deal with.
Free League’s remastered edition of Into the Odd making its way to UK retail – An exploration-themed RPG, Into the Odd has previously caught my interest. Now, the remastered edition has started to show up not only as a PDF purchase, but as a physical book in UK-based stores.
There’s a load of great content in there:
- Fast Character Creation – Roll an explorer in minutes, grabbing a starter package of flavourful equipment and starting your expedition.
- Minimalist Rules – An ultralite system that keeps the game moving forward. Combat is fast and decisive, with every turn counting.
- Strange Things – Monsters are horrific hazards, not opponents to be fought for sport. Arcana are weird artifacts that each carry a unique ability, from firing portals to attracting bones like a magnet.
- Return to the Iron Coral – The strange expedition location from the original game has tripled in size, now sprawling over three levels. The surrounding Fallen Marsh now hides four mini-dungeons in its 24 hexes. In the North, the desperate port of Hopesend welcomes adventurous travellers looking to go further.
- The Expanded Oddpendium – 26 pages of modules and random tables to help you flesh out the world. Roll to create weird creatures, find the best shortcut across town, and find out what happens when you “eat the stuff”.
I know I posted this one a few weeks ago, but I’m excited to see it out in the wild, and in physical form.
Free League launches Kickstarter campaign for Zone Wars, their Mutant Year Zero-based miniature skirmish game – Free League are fantastic. They’re one of my favourite publishers. I’ve got several of their games now and I really love them, especially Mutant: Year Zero. It’s cool to see them branching out with the property. I also rather like miniatures games, so this might be a good proposition for me.
I’ve had a good look at the campaign and it actually looks quite well put-together. I like the clear influences from the RPG in terms of both theme and rules. Yeah, really solid campaign! You should go and check out the playtest rules.
The Onyx Path releases a new standalone Scion game, Dragon – Scion has always been an underrated gem from the White Wolf collection. In it, the players take on the roles of demigods, scions of great and powerful deities who live among us regular folks. The second edition has been out for a couple of years now, and it’s cool to see supplements like this arrive.
I say supplement, but is variant a better term? This is a standalone game, after all. In it, rather than being the descendent of a deity, you are born of the dragons. Ultimately, the theme is pretty similar, but with more shape-shifting, avaricious patrons and… scales? Sure, scales. Let’s go with that.
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Blog Posts & Articles
The meat of 5 on Friday, the articles are listed in no particular order, so let’s get into some recommendations:
What have The Sentry Box staff been up to – Oct 24-30 @ The Sentry Box – a nice, wee digest post. What I really liked in it was the Star Wars: Legion minis. It’s not a game that I’ve found especially tempting, but the Shadow Collective miniatures are pretty great. They’re certainly done justice here, too. The red and black commandos look great!
How to Leak Games Workshop Rules @ Woehammer – Woehammer has really great content for the competitive side of Age of Sigmar. I really like it when they break away from this, though. This is a fun article that reveals a wee bit of exasperation about some aspects of our little community. A solid, comedic post.
Bloodletters @ A Loft Full of Lead – I’m working on some Bloodletters at the moment. The 20 that I have sitting on my desk are the newer, plastic ones, but I do have several older, metals varieties in my big box of daemons, including some of the snakelike ones that are featured in this post. You can actually see some of the design cues from these older models in the plastic ones, which share more similarities with the snake lads that with the buried boys that were release in between. These ones also benefit from rather fetchingly painted. Thanks for sharing! .
October Gaming @ Dude! Take Your Turn! – Another digest post, this time with a board gaming theme. It’s a record of what the author played in October. Of his the games listed, I’ve only actually tried two, myself. It’s always cool to see what folk are playing. It’s nice to see some GMT in there as well.
Ogor Mawtribes: Beyond the Basics @ Plastic Craic – The first Plastic Craic post on the new Mawtribes book takes a look at your standard Ogors and what you could do with them. The article is solid, as always, and is full of great advice. Something that grabbed my attention for entirely others reasons was the line, “He’s got a potato cam! He must be the guy leaking all the books!” This immediately made me think of the Woehammer post that I linked above. Synergy, yo!
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It’s been a good week on NoRerolls, where I’ve actually painted some minis! Go figure. Since my last 5 on Friday, I’ve published the following posts:
- Some finished miniatures:
- A look at the Kickstarter Campaign for an MYZ-themed skirmish game
- A Throwback Thursday reflecting on one of my favourite authors
In the coming week, I’m hoping to finish some more minis. I’ve got a few RPG-themed posts in the forever-drafts. I’d love to get them finished, but I’m finding them tricky to write. Perhaps my recent spurt of painting is actually an avoidance technique…
Catch ya’ll next week!
No Rerolls 
Thanks for linking to my post! I think this kind of digest for what we’ve been playing is a good way to engage conversation and bring gamers together in a
‘Oh, I love that game!” kind of way. I’m going to make it a staple of my blog.
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