5 on Friday 13/12/24

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, books, 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 Striking Scorpions (Blades of Khaine) for Kill Team and Warhammer 40,000 – I’m not sure if these are newly released having previously only been in a larger boxed set, or if they are just repacks. I don’t really follow 40K releases that closely. However, they did grab my attention when they appeared among the preorders.

The Eldar were my first army for any version of Warhammer, and the Striking Scorpions were always my Aspect Warriors. Were they the best, rulewise? No, but I loved the minis, the concept, the whole feel. It’s great to see them get excellent, new miniatures.

Affiliate Links:

Element Games
Wayland Games

Leo Hunt releases The Shrike, a sandbox adventure – A world of decay, rusted iron, crumbling stone, saltwater, blood, and fog? Well, those are all of my favourite things. Count me in for The Shrike!

This looks like a fun, dark sandbox setting with a lot of content. 46 defined locations, 3 details dungeons, 5 factions, and a handful of new monsters, classes, magic items and the like makes for a decent stack of new content. Worth a look, I reckon!

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DriveThruRPG

Preorders begin for MTG Innistrad boosters – It barely feels like we’ve gotten into Foundations, especially when the starter collection just immediately sold out, but we’re already gearing up for another new set at the end of January. This one is a return to the classic Innistrad setting.

Heck, they’ve spent the past few days revealing sets beyond this one, so that pace is not slowing down at all. Still, I do love gothic horror, so this set is very interesting to me. It does follow on quite quickly from Duskmourn, another horror set, but the vibe is very different, I suppose.

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HOMIEandTheDUDE releases a holiday one-shot adventure for The Wandering Tavern – I hadn’t actually heard of The Wandering Tavern, but seeing this made me go check it out, and it looks really cool! It’s a whimsical, Ghibli-esque campaign setting with a whole bunch of cool content. We do enjoy our whimsy, here…

This specific item is their holiday one-shot. Putting aside the slightly lazy, minimally edited cover art, the adventure sounds fun! The introduction of the naughty and nice mechanics sounds like the real seasonal highlight. Well, that and what sounds an awful lot like Santa flying overhead…

Affiliate Links:

DriveThruRPG (this one-shot adventure)
DriveThruRPG (main Wandering Tavern book)

Bandai taking preorders for One Piece Card Game: Japanese 2nd Anniversary Set – I don’t play One Piece, and I don’t need another TCG at the moment. Two are enough. I do like this set, though:

It seems a really nice celebration; almost too nice for just 2 years! But, hey, what do I know? The black and gold is classy, and pretty neutral themewise. A lot of care has gone into this, which I appreciate.

Blog Posts & Articles

The meat of 5 on Friday, the articles are listed in no particular order, so let’s get into some recommendations:

Painted Logray, Bright Tree Shaman @ The Bovine Overlord – Moar ewoks? Fantastic! The author is second guessing himself a little about the painting, but it looks good. The stripes do definitely need to be uneven, so as not to look too clean and unnatural, and I think the sepia wash probably helped a lot. Good job!

No Such Thing As An Overshare – Breaking down Player and Character Knowledge @ Burn After Running – I bet I could test that supposition… Back on topic, I love all of these suggestions. The factors around timing are especially useful. I really like games where setting and NPCs are largely created cooperatively, like the Dresden Files RPG. Yeah, a good post, this.

The Blackfish @ Convert or Die – One of the coolest characters from A Song of Ice and Fire, the blackfish is brought to life here! The darker metal of the armour works well, and it makes the blue and red pop all the more.

Casual Chat: Card Game Resource @ J.M. Casual Blog – An interesting read. I like that several different games are explored, including some with which I am familiar, like MTG and Lorcana, and others which I am not, such as YuGiOh. Resource management is such an important part of many, if not most games, and it’s worth considering it from a design perspective to understand fully how they are intended to be managed in each game.

It’s like a civil war (ACW) – Part 5 Rebel Rouser @ Imperial Rebel Ork – I’ve never taken the plunge into historical gaming, but the ACW is one of the periods that would really interest me. It’s been fun to watch this author build up his collection.

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There have been a few posts since my last 5 on Friday: