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I got to play a demo with of this at the uk games expo earlier today. I have to admit, this has gone from sorta-interested to must-buy as the mechanics were quite refreshing.

The entire system is reaction based. Each force gets a number of action points (I forget what they were actually called) that have to last your turn and your opponent's. These points are used to activate a character or squad, either as part of your turn, or as a reaction to something.

As an example I had two points to spend. The first was used to declare a move towards the enemy. The enemy spent one of theirs declaring a charge at the point he thought I was going to move into. As these two conflicted, we had an initiative style roll off to see who actually activated first. I won, forcing him to move first and only moving part of the way, causing his charge to fail.

Characters have base stats. That are dice related, for example my hero had a base attack of two d6 and one d8. He also had a heavy sword that added another d8 and a skill that added another d6 and d8. As a character or soldier gains xp, new skills or equipment, these dice will change making them stronger.

The dice are special dice containing blank faces, hit, critical and in the case of the d12, super criticals. Tests are Vs rolls with the symbols cancelling each other out. Critical and super criticals both cause one wound each; one or more unsaved hit symbols equates one wound, regardless of number.

Each force has a deck of cards that they get to draw from that include events, spells or special effects for use. Some of these are generic, others are force or character specific. There was one that was a suicide attack that, if successful, outright kills the enemy model... at the expense of your character's life as well.... so rarely used!

When someone reach a 0 wounds you roll to see if they are out of action or dead. In most cases they are just out of action and will heal up over time. Dead is dead and the winner gets to loot the bodies. We didn't get to talk more about the rest of the between-game bits sadly.

Model wise they have lots of plans for figures and terrain to add as stretch goals. Terrain will be included in the campaign at roughly 20% discount. They are still working the numbers. He did say there will be one level that includes about £1800 worth of terrain for about £1200-ish for the uber rich. There are also new terrain sets for this, including a neat fort with four multi floor buildings and walls.

There is a lower level that includes the starter set (two forces, rules, cards, tokens and enough terrain for a 4x4 table for about £200. What they consider enough terrain is about 4 or 5 ruins and a tree or two. Again, this isn't final and they keep adding more in.

Video battle reports will be going up on BoW in the next week or so to show off more of the rules

 Gallahad wrote:
That sounds really interesting. Hopefully there is a peon level pledge or something for those of us that can't shell out 200 pounds sterling on a KS....

The £200 level just came up because I was asking about the terrain. There will be lower pledges, but I don't know what these are.

There wasn't any information on custom characters, but it would not surprise me if there were. Everything else seems well thought out. Given that it is an rpg-like system it would make sense that the named characters are just for the starter set or quick play *fingers crossed*

We only have 3 days left to release, so I'm surprised we don't have more action in here. Let's correct that shall we?

The starter sets seem to contain 3 characters, 5 supporting troops, an A5 rulebook, dice, tokens, all the required cards, a measuring tool and a Character sheet pad, which implies that you may be able to create your own characters... *fingers crossed*


The campaign is starting with two factions, the Druggoi and Eightfold Path, with two others being unlocked through stretch goals.

These are the Mordanburg Watch


And Sellswords


There seem to be additional squads that will come in smaller packs. Each contains unique sculpts and character cards for each that include small stories for each.

Two of the pledge levels have been shown so far. There is the £40 level that gets you one starter box and a KS character


The bigger pledge looks great (not sure I need two of the A4 books though!). The A4 book contains 100+ pages of fluff as well as the rules included in the A5 starterset books

 Alpharius wrote:
What's the the cost of bigger pledge?

The cost of the bigger pledge (£200) is in the image

Given that that includes two starters (£45 each) + £150 of terrain and two of the books (probably 20-30 each?) - So a pretty good discount.

The guys at the UK Games Expo said there was also a pledge that is £1000+ that includes *all* their fantasy terrain

Not the middle ground pledge you were hoping for, but kind of interesting none the less. Someone else asked about the £200 pledge without the second A4 rulebook. Unfortunately their response was that you can make a similar pledge from the lower tiers and add in extras.

For £800 you get everything in the £200 level, a gaming mat and 3 days up at BoW HQ with the game's writers where you get two sets of the preproduction resins (plus prototype cards/rules/dice) to paint and game with. You'll be taught how to play and go through a campaign with 11 other lucky people. This includes hotels and food, but not travel costs. Interesting, but not for me.



You get to take away all the bits afterwards to carry on playing with. One thing this did let slip is that it will not deliver until September 2018(ish)

They have also shown the sketches for another of the stretch goal characters

The sketches of the Mordanburg guard really do look like the City Watch, yes. Probably why I'm liking them so much

I have played the demo a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it. They didn't go into too much detail as it was only one round to show actions, reactions and combat, but it was good fun.

They didn't talk about the character evolution either, but hopefully we should hear more about that on friday

 Alpharius wrote:
Do you feel like it can be the spiritual successor to Mordheim that we're looking for?

No idea. The demos didn't go into the warband evolution, other than there is some.

They keep referring to something called the Legacy system, which seems to be where you gan grow/evolve the warband. The way stats and equipment are handled also implies that your group can get better as I'm assuming that dice will improve for skills and better equipment will also grant more dice. There is also the card decks that *may* evolve, but don't quote me on that one... they may just become more useful or form more synergies... who knows. Hopefully we will find out more tomorrow.

Unlike Mordheim though, the supporting troops work as units, so in the Eightfold Path set you get three characters, a unit of two spears/halberds and a unit of three guys with axe/shield. The reactions system does look like it will give a nice interaction in very close quarters fighting though.

There is a BoW video interview on Facebook today talking more about the world, some new terrain and how the pledge levels are going to work.

Freebies that are unlocked as stretch goals are for all backers, or High level backers. The high level backers are not linked to a pledge level, but the total that they spend *during the kickstarter*. That is the important thing to keep in mind. There will be a pledge manager to buy more after the campaign, but you must spend over £200 *during* the campaign to be eligible for the stretch goals.

It sounds like some of these goals will be new characters. The characters themselves will not be KS exclusives, but the figures will be. Another goal will be a large printed version of the map.

Two more levels have just been shown on Faceybook

For £8 you get the KS character, the Cartographer, and access to the add-ons.

The other end of the spectrum is £400, which is the £200 level, plus a Deep Cut Studios mat (4x4) and every unlocked stretch goal.

This last bit implies that not all of the stretch goals will be free to those spending over £200. I guess this will include the two other starter sets and any additional units and terrain that are unlocked during the campaign. It is limited to 200 people


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ok, so they followed up that reveal with the first 15 stretch goals and clarified things a bit more for the £400 level. This level gets one of every stretch goal, including the add-ons, plus an extra copy of every stretch goal marked as free to the £200+ level. I am on my phone so cannot repost the images, but the goals start unlocking at £35k and currently go up to £150k. In there we mostly have adobe, plus some extra dice, one free character, some PDF warbands and some posters. The add one include the next two starter sets (£40 each), a set of three buildings (£70) and 10 decks of different ability cards (£3 each).

I guess the ability decks are things you can learn as your force gains experience as each deck seems to be a skill area, such as Light, Dark, Spirit and regional.

Aaand we are live: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/250544710/the-legends-of-fabled-realms


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Bizarrely, the campaign is only 16 days long... for something like this, I would have expected longer

It is not two extra henchmen... it is two extra *sets* of henchmen, from whichever factions you want. So 10 extra figures

Another update has just come out and based on the 55 replies so far, pvc is still winning, but a resin upgrade option has been added. Sadly the resin upgrade is £12 *per starter*.

The PVC figures are being produced by the same people that deal with Conan, Mythic Battles, the forthcoming Batman and the CMON games (amongst others).

We have just unlocked the fourth faction set and another small piece of terrain and accompanying scenario has been added to some of the levels for free

Just watching through the Q&A session from last night, so I'll update this when interesting bits come up.

- Digital sculpters are the same used by Monolith for Conan, Mythic battles and Batman.
- The material and quality is aiming to be the same as the giant snake in Conan, which is fantastic quality imo. Detail is exceptionally sharp and non-flexible. they specifically held up some of the lighter plastic Conan figures and went "Not this", but this:



- Resin was discounted as the primary manufacturing material of choice because during playtesting and the initial test casting there were a lot of breakages on weapons.
- They are looking at the hard plastic for weapons on figures as the samples from Mythic Battles are apparently very nice and as they are using the same factory, the experience is there.
- They are looking at reducing costs of the resin upgrades, especially for the £400 level where it would rack up very quickly indeed
- The manufacturing process will be overseen by someone that used to be the manufacturing exec for Hornby who looked after their overseas manufacturing
- The pdf options will probably have a KS print version available, so a book of all the scenarios from the terrain sets and the two warbands that were previously in the stretch goal list
- There is another A4 book coming in the KS that is more of a roleplay/background book. In the levels where you get two A4 rulebooks, it will be possible to swap out one of these for the new book instead for less duplication
- You can pay some extra postage to get the terrain early
- Beta rules will be made available to all the backers after the beta weekend as a pdf download/dropbox link
- The delivery date given is a very conservative date to make sure everything has time to be manufactured and go through the full QA process. They would rather be conservative and maybe deliver early, than promise much earlier in the year and fail to deliver on it, or have to cut corners.
- The QA process is going to be done by them in the UK. The factories will ship all the different components to 4Ground where they will QA all of the models and pieces as they go into the packets. Anything slightly miscast or bent is going to be rejected and not packed to maintain a solid quality product.

- Legacy system advancement:
- Heroes record wounds caused and spells cast. Each gives you one point to spend; you can then upgrade some of your stats/dice. To spend this, select a stat/dice to upgrade, roll a D6 and add the amount of points needed for the upgrade. You have to roll over a certain value to see if you actually learn the new skill... so there is no certainty that that experience will actually pay off. I kind of like the uncertainty that can bring...
- The starter sets include rules on designing your own characters, so you don't have to use their figures at all if you don't want to.

They seem to also have lots of plans for expansions, more warbands and different ways to play too... so... interesting.

They did investigate metal first, but thanks to our wonderful politicians, Brexit (amongst other worldwide issues) has caused the price of metal to skyrocket with no sign of it coming down.

Some other updates today.

The pledges that come with the £150 terrain packages will get a choice of two in the pledge manager; one is shown in the picture, the other is a pack of Daldorr terrain that will interlock with the £70k stretch goal buildings.

The gaming mat also has three choices: Grass, Snow or Barren earth.

There are also more timed unlocks to be added every few days. These are free to the relevant pledges, regardless of when you pledge. No idea what these are yet.

Oh. the update regarding upgrading the £200/£400/£800 pledge levels to all resin was in there too. This is capped at £12 per starter set, all the other figures that are not resin, but included in your level will be upgraded for free; so the £200 level that is £24, 400/800 is £48. As part of this they have confirmed that this includes the *10* extra reinforcements (2 sets of all the non-character figures from starter sets of your choice) given at 400/800 levels... so there is definitely a number against those extra troops now.

The wagon kit comes with 3 linked scenarios and some character cards for the special characters in the stories. No extra figures though.

Some rules bits from the comments:

4ground wrote:The way terrain interacts in a mechanical sense is mainly increasing your defence against attacks and slowing movement. You can climb buildings/cliffs doing a stamina test and moving 2" per face symbol (success, critical or super critical) if you fail to traverse the wall you stay where you were. If you test while going up a wall and roll only blanks you fall taking an attack with one red dice per 2" fallen.

4ground wrote:Regarding narrative dice, in the book it covers how you would use the white dice to be a 50/50 dice, 1 in 3 and 1 in 6 (also technically 5 in 6 for really easy things). They are only supposed to be used in narrative games as tournament players would not appreciate them (which means we do use it a lot)

This last one was in response to a question about people flipping over wagons, jumping across gaps or generally interacting with things in a more cinematic way.

 Monkeysloth wrote:
Eight for 40 is more metal pricing to be honest. That's 5 quid a figure not even taking into account the other things in the starter. I feel like the Brexit excuses is pretty poor.

The brexit comment was mainly from the commenters in the show, not 4ground. The London stock exchange is showing a rise of over 20% on the price of tin in the last year alone. All they said was that after lots of investigations, they had been strongly advised against going down the metal route du to the rising costs. I am also unsure why people are just splitting the £40 by the 8 figures and ignoring the 120 page rule book, dice, cards, tokens etc etc that come with it as well as the carry case/book? Granted, the figures are still going to be more than 50p each, but if they come out at the same quality as the better Conan figures, it seems like a fair deal for everything that a player needs to get started?

Anyhoo. Today has seen another 4 decks of cards and three more buildings unlocked and added to the higher pledges for free

This morning another 2 prints have been unlocked and added to all the goals.

In addition to that, they have also added their next timed unlock. Some of the pledge levels are now getting a guard tower that goes with the ruins, added for free. It is also being added as a £40 extra for anyone else who wants one

Time for another big update, even though some of you have given up on it, I'm still looking forward to this coming through

Since we last peered through the window at this world, things have moved on quite a bit, with lots of extra value being added to the higher level pledges

- There will be a Campaign supplement, which is the same size as the A4 rulebook. It can be added on, or at the higher levels, one of the main rulebooks can be swapped out for this new one.

- The Mordanburg Stage Guard Forever Vigilant set (two KS exclusive guards, their cards and a scenario) have been unlocked and added to all pledges above £200, or as an add-on. The 400/800 levels get two sets of these figures


- The Eightfold path have two Warders of the Path unlocked and added to some levels, or as an add-on.


- Lots more skills and spells have been added in... discounted decks will be added towards the end, for the lower levels that want them all.
- More prints have been added to levels
- Two wayshrines have been added to a lot of the levels, or as an add-on for anyone that wants more. These include a new scenario as well


- A mill has been added to the higher levels, or as an add-on


- The Fellendorf Militia pdf faction has been added to all levels over £200, along with 3 sprues of Gripping Beast Hirdmen and Dark Age Warriors, giving you 8 heroes and 10 henchmen. this warband seems interesting. You can only buy heroes for this warband. For each hero that joins the battle, you roll a D3... the total of these rolls tells you how many henchmen your warband currently has available. You can bring them all to the fight and seriously outnumber/overpower the enemy, but if you do you get nothing between games as you took all of your henchmen away from the farming/mining activities that would pay you... so this is a balancing act.


- the Beast of Balvenburg has been unlocked and added to some pledges, or as an add-on


- Hasty defences have been added to a lot of the levels. This is a set of extra bits to build barricades, block doors/windows on your buildings or link wooden buildings to the ruins


- The map has also been unlocked, but not added to the pledge images yet.

The overview of the £400 level is currently :


This is currently worth (at KS prices) over £700 and will be getting at least 4 more daily unlocks, even if no extra goals are unlocked (which is unlikely).

They have also been talking about an RPG that uses the figures and some of the core rules with enhanced character/unit cards that may or may not be coming during the campaign.

Next goal is Sell Sword crossbows


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Today's unlock is another piece of terrain. This time it is a whiccan hut