Ten years ago, Monsterpocalypse was a prepainted collectible line. Now it’s being relaunched by Privateer Press as a traditional unpainted, non-collectible miniatures game.

Gameplay is about eliminating your opponent’s giant monsters. Each side gets one large monster figure and a number of smaller units, such as tanks, airplanes, or little monsters. A turn can be taken as either a monster turn or a unit turn. Units are spawned to the board by spending white dice. And in addition to attacking an opponent’s monster, units can also be used to occupy buildings, thereby granting power-ups to a player’s own monster.

At Gen Con, there were two versions of a $50 starter box, each with one monster, five units, dice, card stock apartment buildings, and a paper battle map. Blisters with five additional units were priced at $20-25.

The new Monsterpocalypse is scheduled to hit retail next month. Look for more monsters and building types, the latter of which will provide different kinds of power-ups.

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Gamers near Plano, Texas have an opportunity to practice their crafting skills with Goliath Games. The company is looking for a part-time Prototype Maker.

The U.S. Chess Federation is searching for an experienced Director of Development. A new position with the organization, the Director of Development’s role will be to “create and implement a comprehensive development plan for short- and long-term revenue growth in support of the US Chess mission.”

WizKids is looking for an experienced Product Manager in Hillside, New Jersey to develop long term plans, develop packaging, and interface with operations on the company’s unpainted miniatures line.

Ludo Fact needs Machine Operators and Assemblers for board game manufacturing in Lafayette, Indiana.

For production of miniatures, Privateer Press needs a Metal Caster in Bellevue, Washington.

Topps has multiple openings at its locations in New York City and Scranton, Pennsylvania, among them a New Product Development Associate with drawing and modeling skills and a Brand Manager for non-sports entertainment properties.

Hasbro’s 100+ openings include:

• Games Brand Writer to write copy for games packaging and to “produce accessible, friendly, and accurate rules.”
• Product Design Manager for the kids gaming category, which includes Jenga, Simon, Bop It, Connect 4, and Twister.
• At Wizards of the Coast, Manager of Global Brand Marketing for Dungeons & Dragons.
• Also at WOTC, Technical Product Manager to focus on the company’s product development process.

TCGplayer has numerous openings in Syracuse, New York and Atlanta, Georgia. Lots for Software Engineers and Product Engineers. Also for finance and data analytics and shipping. Two individual positions are worth highlighting, though. There’s one for a Digital Marketing Manager to be responsible for online marketing campaigns. And the company is looking for a General Manager of Seller Services, who will be a member of the executive leadership team and responsible for the company’s line of business supplying software tools to retailers.

ACD Distribution has several warehouse opportunities in Middleton, Wisconsin and Fresno, California. Also sales positions in Wisconsin.

Alliance Game Distributors is looking to hire a Sales Specialist in Roseville, Minnesota, specifically to work with Asmodee North America. The company also has openings for a Sales Trainee and an Administrative Assistant at its home offices in Maryland.

Asmodee North America, itself, is recruiting for a Trade Marketing Manager to support the sales team with PR, media relations, trade shows, and merchandising.

Games Workshop has many openings for retail work at various locations worldwide, also for a variety positions at headquarters in Nottingham, UK, including:

• Middle Earth Product Manager to coordinate production, promotion, and consistency with the source material.
• ‘Eavy Metal Painter for Forge World products including Horus Heresy and Middle Earth miniatures.
• Managing Editor for White Dwarf magazine.
• Games Developer for Warhammer Age of Sigmar products.
• Games Developer for Warhammer 40,000 products.
• Armies and Battlefields Painter for products to be showcased in Codexes, Battletomes, and other publications.
• Games Developer for specialist brands, such as Blood Bowl and Necromunda.
• Model Designer for specialist brands. Experience preferred but the position may be offered at a trainee level.
• Concept Artist to be part of the Citadel Miniatures conceptualiser team.

Gamerati in DuPont, Washington is looking to hire a full-time Social Content Creator/Community Manager for the company’s services to game publishers.

Board game-related freelance jobs posted on Upwork include:

• Design and production for an employee-training game ($3,000 fixed price).
• Rulebook-writing for a historical board game.
• Production of an animated instructional video for an adult card game.
• Social media management for an upcoming Kickstarter project: Facebook and Twitter.
• Graphic design for a game’s box, cards, and tokens.

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Privateer Press just announced that all the distributors in North America it works with (ACD, Aladdin, Alliance, E-Figures, Gamus (GTS), Golden, Lion Rampant, Peachstate Hobby (PHD), Southern Hobby, and Universal) have signed the company’s new distribution contract and agreed to support the company’s new free rider policy.

The policy seeks to discourage high-volume online retailers from discounting product and not offering meaningful services that help the growth of the industry. It’s been put into place to help brick-and-mortar stores compete with online stores on more equal footing.

“We greatly appreciate the support and commitment to the health of brick-and-mortar retailers shown by our North American distribution partners,” said Sherry Yeary, president of Privateer Press. “Change won’t happen overnight, and eliminating free rider practices will be an ongoing issue that will take time and a united effort between publishers and distributors to overcome, but we have already seen the positive effect of instituting this policy, and we remain committed to its success, no matter what it takes.”

Privateer has also released that over 200 brick-and-mortar stores that previously didn’t carry Warmachine and Hordes product will now do so thanks to policy. Currently all launch kits for the new editions of Warmachine and Hordes have currently sold out at the manufacturer level through presales and distributors.

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Privateer Press is joining the list of companies with sales policies that aim to limit discounting by online retailers. But while the usual approach seems to be to restrict sales to approved retailers, Privateer is making a list of sellers it calls “free riders”.

Online retailers who have little meaningful contact and offer few or no services of value to player audiences undermine the stability of the market by selling product at discounts well below the retail value. They are depending solely on the efforts of independent brick-and-mortar retailers to offer those services that they do not in order to keep their business model alive. This model of business is widely recognized by experts and the justice system as “free riding” and is viewed in the hobby game industry as crippling and anticompetitive.

Under the new policy, Privateer, best known for the miniatures games Warmachine and Hordes, will delay deliveries to distributors that sell the company’s products to anyone on the free rider list.

Privateer’s Free Rider Policy went in to effect April 4th.

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Based entirely on what looks cool to me…

For Warhammer 40,000, the KV128 Stormsurge ($150) from Games Workshop holds two Tau crew and features ball-and-socket joints for a range of posing options.

From Privateer Press, the gargantuan Trollbloods Glacier King ($135, November) for Hordes freezes lakes, streams, and enemies with its passing. The heavy warjack Hand of Judgement ($60, December) for Warmachine wields an immolator cannon and mace for the Protectorate of Menoth.

Among the Wyrd Miniatures releases for Malifaux 2nd Edition, there’s the pre-colored Swamp Cottage ($21) and the gun-toting Abuela Ortega ($16) in steam-powered wheelchair.

Gale Force Nine’s resin minis for the Dungeons & Dragons Rage of Demons campaign includes a five-piece Orcus figure ($75) seated on a throne of bones.

In Reaper Miniatures’ Dark Heavens series there’s a new Temple Dragon ($33).

And for a very limited time, Reaper’s Bonesylvanian series includes the better-look-at-the-pictures-than-have-me-describe-them Jacques ($8), Howie ($8), and Lou ($11).

Spartan Games adds two new forces to Firestorm Armada this month, including a Terquai Dreadnought Group (£25) and a Xelocian Imperium Dreadnought Group (£25).

And last-but-not-least, Dark Sword Miniatures recently released a Cat Paladin ($10).

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Here’s an awesome piece of news that just grazed across my email tonight. Privateer Press has gone and released the rules for Warmachine and Hordes for FREE in PDF format. That’s right. Free.

This is a brilliant move. Let the players read the rules, get hooked, then go absolutely broke buying tons of minis and supporting materials. To coincide with the free rules release, Privateer is also holding a contest where you can win a prize package worth over $400 just by buying a two-player battle box for wither Warmachine or Hordes. Maybe you don’t need to go broke after all. Just win the contest and you’ll be good as gold!

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Looking to field a complete 35-point army without all that collecting? The new Warmachine: Convergence: All-in-One Army Box is for you! Plunk down $129.99 and you get the following:

1 Warcaster Father Lucant
1 Inverter Heavy Vector
1 Diffuser Light Vector
1 Galvanizer Light Vector
1 Eradicators Unit (5)
1 Optifex Directive Unit (3)
1 Reductors Unit (10)
1 Transverse Enumerator Unit Attachment
2 Enigma Foundry Solos
3 Accretion Servitor Solos
Digest-sized WARMACHINE rulebook with complete core rules
Strategy cards with tactics and tips for your army

The box comes out in July, and is a limited run aimed at new players of the game. I’ve always loved the idea of all-in-one boxes, but have never actually splurged on one.

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This year is the first year I’ve had the opportunity to attend PAX East in Boston, MA. Mostly known as a convention for video gamers, there’s a large, and growing, tabletop  component to the show. Though I only attended the show on Friday, I was able to see a LOT of great stuff for the tabletop, and even demo a few new games. Since there was a lot to see, I’ll be breaking this up in to several posts over the next few days so as not to overload everyone.

Wizards of the Coast

My first stop was the Wizards of the Coast booth were they were showcasing the 2015 version of Duels of the Planeswalkers. While none of the new cards have been added to the alpha build yet, I was able to check out the new UI and tweaks to the game overall. While 2014 was a vast improvement over 2013, 2015 is just a more polished, smooth update to 2014. The new deck builder is supposedly more robust, but wasn’t available yet. Overall I was impressed with what I saw, and can’t wait to get my hands on a finished version with all the new features and cards.

Wizards also had a demo station set up on the tabletop floor for Kaijudo, where they were explaining the new draft format, and had samples of their new competitive decks. These decks are constructed to be a bit more competitive than current pre-constructed decks, and make for much more exciting play. I was able to get one to bring home, and will soon be testing it out with the kids. One of the most exciting aspects of the draft format, coming out this May, is that the number of cards in booster packs is going up from 9 to 14. The price will stay the same. Now you’ll be able to buy 3 boosters per person to host a draft game.

Privateer Press

Privateer Press’s booth had several things going on, but the main two attractions were Zombies Keep Out and Warmachine Tactics.

Zombies Keep Out is a cooperative board game for 1-6 players where everyone is trying to keep zombies from breaking down the barricades to a goblins’ workshop. Players work together to try and build crazy contraptions to stop the zombie horde before they break down the barricades and invade the workshop. One of the cooler mechanics of the game is that players who suffer zombie bites have to slowly start acting like zombies. 1 bite means a player has to start slurring their speech while playing. They also can’t trade cards. More bites start making the player have to moan and point, instead of speaking.

Privateer was also showing off Warmachine Tactics, a PC game of the popular miniatures franchise. The game looks pretty amazing, and feels solid. The really cool part of the game will come to a future update of the build. Players will actually be able to paint their units. Not just color them, but paint them. Since the data will be stored procedurally, it takes very little power to send your unit customizations to another player over the internet, so any player you play against will see your custom units on the field. The game is currently still in development, but will see a release around the end of the summer.

Geek Chic

One of the most amazing things I saw at PAX was the Geek Chic book. We’ve covered their tables in the past, but I’ve never gotten a chance to see one in person. Flat out, these are some of the most amazing, beautiful pieces of furniture I’ve ever seen. They’ve got tables in every size and shape to meet the needs of gamers in all stages of life. From coffee tables and GM desks to kitchen tables and the famous Sultan, these tables just ooze class.

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