So I wrote a new game. You can buy it
here. It's £5.00 and only available as a PDF for the first three months. If there's any snagging to do that I and my proofreader missed, I'll fix it before the end of December and then make a softback hard copy available in January for those who like such things.
In the mean time, what's new about this game? After all, there's absolutely no shortage of great skirmish games on the market right now, and miniatures-agnostic games are all the rage what with people throwing their space marine teddies out of the pram all over the place.
Well, the game has a loosely piratical theme. In many ways it's a very generic skirmish game and you could easily adapt it to fantasy, sci-fi or a range of historical settings. But the pirate theme comes through in the core activation mechanics, which are built upon the idea of a hero leading a crew that isn't, like, 100% disciplined or inclined to do what they're told. Hey! They're all criminals!
So a turn has a series of activation steps and where you place your hero will dictate where in that series of steps
your crew members will get to activate. Activate too late in the turn and you may already have taken enough casualties to be running for safety. Activate too early, though, and you might be facing a barrage of incoming fire with no way to escape!
But it gets more interesting than that, because every activation comes with an activation test. If your hero is nearby, no worries! Thanks to the captain's grim expression and muttered reminders of what happens to crew members who screw up, you can automatically pass those activation tests. But if your hero is off being heroic somewhere else, well... maybe they'll just do what they like instead...
Anyone old enough to remember when I first tried to publish a miniatures wargame might recall a game called
Skrapyard and
Blood & A Black Flag is essentially the same rules with a teeny bit of fixing and more options for creating original heroes to fit your miniatures collection.
Please do let me know what you think!