Here's the official word in an unofficial update. I'm not going to go into too much detail here, but my hope is to be able to put together another Q&A chat around the end of next month when we can adress this subject at more length.
HORDES: Evolution (the book) will release at
Gen Con Indy 2007. Yes, this is somewhat of a deviation of what we had originally planned (by about four months). The last year of development on both HORDES and WARMACHINE has shown us a lot and we're finding our pacing for the development and release of these products. Now, this does not in any way increase the amount of time waiting for Primal models. We still plan to have all of those out at our pre-forcasted time (which I don't have in front of me so I won't quote, but I'm sure some of you do) and then we'll begin releasing models that will be found in Evolution pretty much right away. There won't be any lag in the releases whatsoever, but like Superiority, the book containing the models will release about four months after the first models start coming out. Ample information will be available in No Quarter during those times as well, so you won't be hurting for new stuff in HORDES.
Similarly, this pattern will not affect the model releases for WARMACHINE— there will still be releases nearly every month. It just means there will be a wider gap between the actual books, and the books themselves will be on the thicker side (more on Evolution in a second).
<!--emo&<_<-->Again, to reiterate— you're not going to see gaps in support for either of the games, and no one is going to fall back on 'giving you more time to paint' in order to placate your desire to get new things. We're finding our pacing in all of this, and the books take a certain amount of time to do well. (Clearly, they can always use a little more time in order to perfect!
<!--endemo--> ) However, there are additional reasons for us establishing a more liberal development schedule— we're going to be making more products. We have several game projects in the works, things we've been wanting to do for a long time and things that we know a lot of people are hoping to see from us. We'll continue to explore the Iron Kingdom in many different ways and there are some fantastic games that we have in store that will allow us to do that. As well, we have a couple of other potential surprise releases for both WARMACHINE and HORDES that will take your mind off any stretch of time between book releases. (Forget guessing though, surprise mean 'SURPRISE!') We're also hoping to get some official fiction publications done, art books, and of course, you've got No Quarter Magazine for a regular infusion of new material. There is some fantastic material going in there for both HORDES and WARMACHINE over the next 4-5 issues that will add great utility to your games.
Okay, speaking about Evolution, I'll give you guys a little advance knowledge about what we're hoping to achieve in that book:
While it's not possible to catch HORDES up to WARMACHINE in terms of actual number of possible options, what we do plan on doing is covering many of the options that create discrepancies between the two games. Things like weapon crews, cavalry and unit attachments as well as additional warlocks and more standard 'filling out' of each of the armies will be found in Evolution. According to our current outline, HORDES: Evolution will probably be our biggest book yet in terms of total model entries, so it's going to dump a whole load of options out there for your army building pleasure, and effectively make HORDES competitively diverse with WARMACHINE in all ways. Currently, there are no plans for Epic Warlocks in Evolution, though—probably the only thing you won't be seeing in there.
Hopefully that helps you understand a little bit about where we're headed, and if we can find the time next month, we'll see if we can get together a full on Q&A to help answer some of the more detailed questions.
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