Darklands 3rd, Backlog Busting and 12 Hour Days

Even though I am busier than a busy bee bee-ing busy, in an exciting and unexpected development I have actually written something down for you all to read about Darklands 3rd (or, as you may know it by now, Darklands Lite).

Drēorgan

Before I go into that: here's the latest iteration of Drēorgan the corpse-dragon...

 

There's still a fair bit to do; not least Garwald himself of course; I do want to add some more boney bits, probably to the tail and a leg. He's almost there, guys and gals...

Darklands: 3rd Edition

Note, here, that it will only really make sense to those of you steeped in Darklands 2nd, or have at least attempted to read it; so bear that in mind. For those of you that don't know the game at all, have heard it's too complicated - or attempted it and found it to be too complicated, overwritten and slow, and too hard to create a muster (which I agree with) - well, Darklands 3rd will be much simpler, faster, easier to understand and easy to get into, and the rules WILL fit into 36 pages and possibly less. There will be a hardback book version of the rules that will contain lore and so forth, which will probably double or more the page count, but actual rules to play the game will fit into 36 pages.

As an aside, I am only really protective of the lore of Darklands; the game itself I am proud of as it is - it has brought enjoyment to many people around the world - but I am philosophical enough to understand why it's not played by thousands. So, I am not particularly protective of it, and I don't mind changing it radically.

The Main Changes

Let's get down to brass tacks. I've got a document that broadly outlines the main changes from 2nd to 3rd, which is now with my playtesters, but here's a brief outline of the main changes:

• Same basic mechanics: the game will still work on the ‘I go with a unit, you go with a unit’ principle; that won't change as it works well. Similarly, the main actions - attack, shoot, invoke - won't change much.
  
• Attributes reduced: there's now just five attributes - PACE, MASS, WOUNDS, AUTHORITY and TEMPER
• No comparisons: there will be no attribute comparisons; for example each profile will have a single ‘to hit’ value, which you need to roll to force the enemy to make a parry roll.
• Few modifiers: there will be some modifiers, but not many as they were becoming way too difficult to remember.
• Reduced dice: attack dice, shoot dice and so forth will be reduced to around 2/3rds of their current amounts, as will the WOUNDS attribute, so playing will objectively be quicker as you're not rolling as many dice. Fated dice still apply on a 9 as that's still a very cool mechanic.
• Reduced weapons: similarly, profiles with multiple weapons (such as big monsters) will be reduced; this will be tricky as they all have something different to offer, especially if they have a special rule, but I do think pretty much everything can be reduced to one main weapon and then a trample of some kind. There may be exceptions...! But that's down to the individual profiles. While they'll still have tons of attack dice, it will be a lot easier to use them.
• Traits and Abilities: while they'll still be there, they will probably move from the rulebook onto the profiles; and a few will be simplified and possibly removed.
• New Profiles: there'll be nice new profiles that will be much simpler to look at, and possibly even become cards, but that's a fair amount of money, so we'll see I guess!
• Host and Command Warriors: host warriors become more important, as do command warriors. If you have a host or mustered herald in a unit, that unit gains +1 PACE. If you have a host or mustered banner bearer, you get to re-roll Panic reactions. If you have a host or mustered champion, your unit gains a -1 strike benefit.

Mustering will also be much simpler! The first few points here are pretty much the same as 2nd, and they work so I'm keeping them.

• Warlords: 1 warlord per 1,000 silver
• Sorcery: 1 animus (basically per level of sorcery) per 500 silver
• Same Realm: at least half your host's silver cost must be from the same realm as the general
• Sworn Units: each commander must have 1 sworn unit from his realm (as indicated on his profile, although there will be a smaller, much more truncated muster chart). Sworn units cost 0 AUTHORITY
• Pledged Units: commanders can have as many units as he likes from his own realm as a pledged unit, and their AUTHORITY combined must be less than the commander's AUTHORITY. Free command warriors (champion, banner, herald) at effective size.
• Petitioned Units: commanders can have as many units as he likes from other realms of his kindred as a petitioned unit, and their AUTHORITY combined with pledged units must be less than the commander's AUTHORITY. Remember that half the host's silver cost must be from the same realm as the general! No free command.

Many of you - understandably - resist change and love 2nd edition as is. I get that, and while I don't have the brain space to keep two game systems in my head, I will try to ensure you at least have profiles for new things to keep things going in that direction. I can't guarantee that though!

A mockup of how the new profiles will look on the PDF. I should be able to get this way more graphical for the actual release, note. It'll do for now though!

The hardest thing to fettle will be the new profiles, I think - and they will take the longest time to sort out, too. I'll do the profiles that have miniatures first, so that you can use what you have. Just don't mention invocations and artefacts to me yet...

Darklands: 3rd Edition Kickstarter

I will be running a small Kickstarter later on in the year (hopefully October) for Darklands 3rd edition, with battle hosts to purchase alongside it, which will fund the book and generate interest. I should be able to get my face-for-radio onto face-for-video as well.

Better get painting that Vras host I keep threatening to paint!

Backlog Busting

Time for an update on ‘the backlog’. I'll start by thanking you all again for your patience and understanding here; it's greatly appreciated, and we couldn't continue without that. So, thank you!

I'm a little burnt out at the moment and I'm taking the opportunity to have Monday off (it is the August bank holiday after all), but Tuesday onwards I'll be cracking on with the Grey Wulf backlog. I've pretty much sorted everything from January onwards - barring the ratty war tower, which I'm working on next - and the current lead time for most things is 1-2 weeks for Grey Wulf miniatures. If it's taking longer than that, and if you're wondering, just get in touch and I'll let you know why - it could be that there's some cast resin that isn't done yet, and so on.

I actually have some Darklands stock already, by the way: my plan to print something every day, starting with nobles, is definitely working and beginning to reap rewards.

Anyway: the backlog. I can properly tackle the long-term backlog now. I will start with the ratty war tower - I already have plenty of spear-vras - and that shouldn't take a long time to do as there's not many left to send. Then I will be doing mallax, hydrar, jutgar, ograx of Baalor and the Irish, in that order; although many bits and pieces from those hosts are already being worked on because they are day prints.

All of our printing schedules revolve around day prints and night prints. If a plate is over 60mm tall, it's a night print; under that, a day print. Day prints start early in the morning and finish around 2-3pm. Pretty much all infantry (barring banners and tall spears), beasts and some monstrous infantry are day prints. This means mallax and hydrar are night prints, jute infantry are day prints, ograx are night, and so on; so I'm already ahead of the game with the jutgar as most of their stuff are day prints. I've already got plenty of jutgar and jutsweord miniatures done as I can fit 40-60 prints on Krull or Angrislaug (if you didn't know already, we name our printers; those are our two largest ones, Phrozen Mega 8Ks), but there's many more to do especially as I'm flipping these guys. I think I have around 10 unflipped and 19 flipped (including the jutboga) left to do, but I can do two of those plates a day so it will take around two weeks to get them all done. I've already done the nobles in the hosts and some beetles, note.

Angrislaug, Krull, Belech, Euryalia, Penda, Ophios and Ingjald. Bless 'em all

While it will take two weeks to print all the infantry for the jutes, this system ensures I can effectively deal with the jute hosts as a big lot, rather than fannying around trying to get a host printed each week, which leads to great frustration when something doesn't work. I've fettled the Mega 8Ks a fair bit (as well as changing exposure times and so forth) and they're now pretty solid, and give good results, but the odd thing still fails to print. This way, you get 60 of the same thing, and it doesn't really matter if one scabbard fails, or one sword, and so on, because the rest are okay.

Once the jute infantry is done, I can move on to the Irish infantry, and all the while, the bigger stuff is being done. I estimate that - as long as I can keep up with getting enough of the resin itself - the host backlog will be done before Christmas, and the brutal beasts backlog before that. All being well!

This is not to say that new orders don't affect the backlog - they do! And we need them more than ever; sales from long ago don't help me pay this month's wages; but I have a system in place now, and things are getting much quicker - especially if we have stock.

Artisan Guild In Sight!

I am currently getting the Artisan Guild miniatures ready to upload to the site, so watch out for that soon; these really are quite beautiful, and I'm very much enjoying working out what's what. That means you'll soon have plenty more elves, dorfs and orcs & goblins to gawp at, as well as undead, chaos, beastmen, lizardmen, and loads and loads of VERY cool monsters!

Artisan Guild's Veiled Sisterhood

After those guys, I'll be bringing you some sci-fi miniatures (Adeptus because I love their style) and a fantasy football one, so I've got all the bases covered with the best alternative miniatures out there (that allow merchants to make them, anyway).

Adeptus Miniatures' Shock Troops

The best thing about all of this is that they all have regular releases, which is always very exciting. I'll endeavour to ensure you all get a nice blog post about those new miniatures each month, probably with a deal on that month's releases, to get your juices fired up!

For example: Avatars of War have just released this bad boy, which will be going up for printing shortly.

Black Orc Warlord on Wyvern

That's all for now folks; I know it was a long post but sometimes I have to get this stuff out of my head. Even if one of you reads it in full, I'll be happy...