The Insider – May 22nd – Prime
Welcome to this week’s BoLS Prime Insider. Let’s talk industry whispers, what’s coming in the week ahead, and a look behind the scenes of the studio.
Welcome back to this week’s Insider. This will be an ongoing weekly column where you get a behind the scenes look into the BoLS office, what our core team is up to, and working on, as well as what we are hearing in the industry. Our promise to Prime members was to give you greater insight into what we are up to, excited about, and what we are seeing and hearing out there in the industry.
Remember you can always hop into the member groups and directly chat any of us up or ask questions. So enjoy and don’t be a stranger. On with the show.
Larry
We have all kinds of big news this week. GW has announced three big things:
- Their factory is back up, and new product starts flowing Saturday after next. Get ready for the deluge.
- The annual price increase is here (FFG just announced their own this week) and it’s fairly minor.
- The BIG seminar is this weekend. People are expecting BIG things out of it, mainly for 40K.
What this means is that we are entering a new normal for tabletop and the industry. On the one hand, all the major players are back up and running. FFG, GW, and all the others are releasing new products, the distributors and comics are flowing, and FLGS are slowly getting back on their feet. So the lifeblood of the industry, new products and ways to buy them is flowing again.
On the other hand events are smashed, with the biggest 65,000+ attendee GENCON just cancelling this week. Social distancing is still in effect, and people are extremely leery of venturing out into environments with large numbers of people. The death toll around the world is sky high and shows little sign of slowing. People will have to adjust to the new “pandemic normal” and adjust their daily life to the level of risk they are comfortable with.
It is uncharted territory and we will see how it all shakes out over the next 6 months. Until the world gets a vaccine, or therapeutic drugs to treat the infected, we are all living in the new normal. Many nation’s economies are now predicting falling into recession, and desperately trying to stave off full blown depressions. There will be many closings and bankruptcies in the months ahead.
So game on, be prudent, keep yourselves and your loved ones safe. We are still in the early phases of this. We are all truly living through history.
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Adam
Hey all – hope you’re doing well. I’m looking forward to the news from GW on Saturday, but in the meantime, I think I’m finally going to tackle some backlog projects. I have a bunch of Morghast on my hobby table that I’ve been putting off because I haven’t found a good use for them (on paper) in my OBR army. I’ve decided to just go ahead and assemble them anyhow – sometimes the act of building minis is enough to get me on a hobby kick and this feels like a better use of my time. I know the news from GW on Saturday is going to be all 40k all the time, so this feels like a way to get some AoS hobby in before the 40k tidalwave.
JR
I am reliving the glory days with Avatar the Last Airbender on Netflix. I kind of forgot how good that show is, and how much it inspired some of the campaigns I ran. I’m excited to hit those trails once again, but it does make me wosh the 5E Monk had the Bender option they wanted. But. The other big news this week has been the new D&D Live event.
I’ll be attending it virtually, along with a few other events in early June, hoping to catch up on whatever news comes out of those. Have you been to any virtual events? What do you think of this crazy mixed up world?
Mars
Something to look forward to… radio director and writer Dirk Maggs and Gaiman talked about doing an audio drama back in the 90s, but it didn’t work out at the time. The two met up again and decided now is the time. The audio adaptation of Sandman was in the works in early March and it is now available for pre-order. Release date and length isn’t available yet, but they have released the cast list.
A powerhouse supporting cast helps translate this masterwork into a sonic experience worthy of its legacy, including Riz Ahmed, Kat Dennings, Taron Egerton, Samantha Morton, Bebe Neuwirth, Andy Serkis, and more. Setting the stage for their performance is an unprecedented cinematic soundscape featuring an original musical score by British Academy Award winner James Hannigan. Fans will especially revel in a new twist for the audio adaptation: Neil Gaiman himself serves as the narrator. Follow him as he leads listeners along a winding path of myths, imagination and, often, terror. Even in your wildest dreams, you’ve never heard anything like this.
Abe
Is it just me or does 40K feel like it’s in a bit of a rut right now? Now obviously that could be in large part due to the current situation, with releases on hold, stores closed and events canceled. Not being able to play certainly can put you in a rut. But I can’t help but feel like this feeling started in the before times, when we could still go out and I knew what human laughter sounded like. I’d be extremely interested to see, though I never will, what GW thinks of Psychic Awakening internally.
From my end it doesn’t seem like the event has really been a success or gotten people that excited. What excitement there has been seems to have mostly centered around getting new rules of under preforming armies rather than any real interest in the event itself. Even that excitement has been a mixed bag, some people look forward to rules but for many its just seems that this is a long line of books, with somewhat rote stories, doling up predictable and fairly meh new rules. But maybe I’m wrong and this has been a huge success. Likely we’ll never know. I’m not tied into the AoS community to tell if there is the same rut there, which might answer the questions of if this is due to the virus or PA. Ah well, the game goes on either way.
Thomas
I finished off this Chaos force update for a client, knocked out some illustration, and even started work on another customer project. I got a few builds to do this coming weekend so will see how far I get. Overall it hasn’t been a terrible week with work done, real life work done, and the kids not being completely insane. I am very excited for the weekend and hope to something cool on Saturday. The return of new products next week has me so excited. I am so ready to see all the new Psychic Awakening stuff to come out and my armies to get some fun updates. Let’s look at some art and miniatures.
Meaghan
Hello and Happy Friday, Adventurers! Finally our entire house selling checklist is complete and we’re done missing D&D anything for for foreseeable future! The good news is it’s off of our plate, but the bad news is that our move out date is a little farther out than we thought so I get to be surrounded by boxes of books for a few weeks. Way less fun than being surrounded by unboxed books.
It will be nice to get back into the swing of playing D&D regularly; I know we’ve only missed a few sessions spread out over the last few weeks, but it feels like it’s been forever.
~Talk to all you folks next week!
