Wizards ‘n Zombies

Fantasy Flight Games’ End of the World line is an incredibly cool sounding series of RPGs. The different manuals in the series each focus on a different apocalypse scenario: zombies, aliens, robots, petting zoo uprising, that kind of thing. Regardless of how The End came about, the scenario you find yourself in will be familiar: a ragtag group of survivors trying to escape the city/find help/make it home.

What’s different about these books is the character creation. In the ‘End of the World’ series, the character you play is yourself. The character creation process is an honest appraisal of your own strengths and weaknesses, which are distilled into usable attributes in the game. The game you will be playing is as if the apocalypse had actually landed on your own doorstep, and you and your actual friends need to get to safety, with nothing more fantastic than the tools that might actually be to hand.

More on that next week though, as this is part one of a two-part comic! Wooh story arc! Kind of. While I don’t want to spoil what’s going to happen next week, long time readers will know that both Gary and the word ‘zombie’ appearing together can really only mean one thing. Here’s a hint or two, if you are unfamiliar.

For me, these last few days have been all about GAMA. I was totally unprepared for the number of announcements and reveals coming out of the show. My phone is burnt out from constant twitter-checking, and my fainting couch is worn out from subsequent collapses due to over-excitement.

I’m not going to go into everything in detail. Indeed, most of these were just reveals that lacked much actual detail, but the following were my personal highlights:

• A Game of Thrones miniatures skirmish/wargame from Cool Mini or Not. Although I can find no details of a designer, just the idea of this game is exciting. Following CMON’s usual model, it will be a Kickstarter launch later this year, likely meaning a big, expensive starter box packed with miniatures, which is fair enough given it is a miniatures game – and just look at those minis! The starter box looks to be Lannister vs Stark, and I will likely hold my resolve on this one until they release a Greyjoy faction. After that, they can just take my damn wallet.

• Dead of Winter Colony Wars was officially announced. Not many details, what they did announce had my knees a-tremble.

• From IDW Games, there is a Planet of the Apes game coming. That is literally all I know about that one, but Planet is one of my all-time favourite movie franchises, so I wait with bated breath, flushed cheeks, and weak knees to hear more.

• Star Realms is our favourite two player game, and I have heard that it’s fantasy equivalent Hero Realms is even better – with the addition of its character packs. Up to now, we were content to stick with Star Realms as we had invested so much in it. But soon the campaign expansion ‘Ruins of Thandar’ will become available for Hero Realms, making it a co-op, campaign adventure. I don’t think we will be able to resist that when it hits retail sometime after May, and I think we are going to end up buying into Hero Realms every bit as much as we did for Star Realms.

• All of this, plus details of the new wave of X-Wing ships, and, possibly most exciting of all, Games Workshop finally announced the new edition of Necromunda. Sort of. Necromunda was the amazing campaign gang-level skirmish game that I still hold so dear, 20 years after its release. The new edition, while apparently working of the original ruleset, switches out gangs of gritty underhive factions for all of the familiar races of the Warhammer 40K universe. The new starter set will be Orks vs Space Marine scouts. As much as I would have loved a return to the original underhive world, I can’t say the idea of hand-picking, naming, and slowly levelling up a small unit of Orks, or Chaos doesn’t hold a great appeal. Time will tell on this one.

All of this news in just a short couple of days! What is everyone else excited about? And did I miss anything? Any other games announced that I should be excited about?