The Insider – August 28th – 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 DISCORD channel and directly chat any of us up or ask questions. So enjoy and don’t be a stranger. On with the show.
Larry
This week continues GW’s shift back into the “side games” after the launch of 9th. We got to see the last unknown Necron – a 6 armed gunfighter, and a couple of 40K books coming soon. But overall, it was Necromunda, Warcry, and Underworlds, steadily filling in more factions and warbands.
If anything the thing that has hit me the hardest is the end of Blackstone Fortress. I’m sure it was a slow retail mover, but it was GW trying something new and making a giant “Haunted House” in space. It gave GW a reason to dig deep into their ancient lore and pull out reimagined gems like the Ambull, the Zoat, and even the Men of Iron. Even if you weren’t a fan of Legacy Boardgames it was a grand experiment that helped the grimdark stay well, grim, and dark, and even a little spooky. I am genuinely sad to see the game go, but I hope they work the Blackstone Fortress’ narrative into the grander arc of the 40K universe in the future.
The 9th edition datasheets for Space Marines and Necrons keep on drip, drip, dripping out of retail stores, further cementing my belief that the both faction’s codexes were supposed to be out by now, but got pushed back to October. So a brand new edition of 40K sits in a strange limbo, with players with core rules but unable to play due to the pandemic, and future rules floating around in stores, but no points or detailed army construction rules to use them with. It all has a very tenuous, ethereal nature to it. Like we can almost see the new game, but can’t really touch it. It’s vaguely disconcerting.
On the business front, we are doing some tweaks and tuning to the main BoLS website, as we continue to broaden our coverage to cover our main topics of 40K, D&D, and Geek News. There’s a new snazzy logo coming soon.
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Adam
I’m back and feeling pretty refreshed. Not much to report on my end but I am looking forward to the new Khainite Shadowstalkers that GW showed off. Personally, I’m really hoping that we see more from them besides “just” a warband. I’m REALLY hoping we see a full army of shadow aelves eventually as that was actually the army I wanted to play way back in the day. But that was when I was a kid and didn’t have the hobby budget to build all the armies I want. It was 40k or Fantasy and I opted for 40k. The rest is history.
I’m hoping to make some more progress on my Blood Angels stuff from Indomitus. It’s been slow going – mostly because I don’t have a ton of motivation to paint due to the lack of gaming stores in Austin hosting in-store playing (with good reason obviously). I’m almost done with the Assault Intercessors however. So hopefully I’ll have something to show off soonish.
JR
Have you seen the new Baldur’s Gate III everything? Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything? It seems like the last couple of weeks have been one D&D announcement after another after another. Which is a lot–but it’s also been super exciting. I’m looking forward to running a campaign with the rules they outline in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. There’s just a ton of stuff to play around with. From things like new character creation options to new subclasses, or what I’m most interested in, the class feature variant rules–I can’t wait to dive in to a whole new campaign full of this stuff.
In other RPG news, I’m finally getting around to cracking open Fire Emblem: Three Houses and have been enjoying playing through it. I am on a kick of lifting video game mechanics to use in my RPG sessions. A good DM should steal everything they can–whether it’s mechanics like tracking the Cult of Kosmos members in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey or dealing with boss phases out of Darksiders, or weird cosmic horror monsters from Bloodborne…there’s a lot to steal. And now that I’ve finally got time to go through my backlog of games, it’s opening up a wealth of possibilities–as long as my glasses don’t break…
Mars
Some sounds I’ve been enjoying this week. First an explanation…
The SAFE Project is one of the largest ecological experiments in the world. We are studying how biodiversity and ecosystem function change as forests are modified by human activities. As well as studying the change, we also explore whether preserving sections of forest within modified landscapes and around waterways can protect biodiversity and ecosystem function, and how much protection is needed to be effective.
- Listen to the dawn chorus in an old growth Bornean rain forest.
- Sit beside a river in a forest preserve at noon.
- Hear the sun going down in a logged and regrowing forest patch.
- Wake up in the middle of the night during a rainstorm in an old growth forest.
Abe
One thing you may, or may not, have noticed about me is that I really love history (it is what I got my degree in after all) perhaps unsurprisingly I’m really into military history. In fact historical, ACW gaming is what first got me into tabletop, for a short stint before 13 year old Abe saw 40K and was like THAT’S ALSO COOL. Anyway one part of history that really fascinates me is forts. Not just castles, but in particular Forts, both early modern and modern. If you’ve seen any of my posts where I’ve taken miniatures around Europe you might have noticed a few of these forts, and some castles. This fascination leads to be spending a lot of free time reading about forts. Currently I’m re-reading Fortress America, which is about… well American forts, that I appropriately picked up a few years back at Fort Washington outside of D.C., another great fort. It’s a fun read, for me at least.
One reason I really like forts I think is that so many still exist, in one form or another. Building tend to fall apart on their own over time, but forts are actively hard to get rid off, even when effort is made to remove them you can often still see the bones of them, just check out half the cities along the Franco-German border. This of course means I get to go visit them! Well, in a normal year I would at least. Now I’m sitting here making lists of ones I need to hit up asap.
Thomas
This past weekend again was a big art weekend. I knocked out some Frontline stuff (more to go), more logo/youtube work, and even painted up some Marines for myself. This next week is more Marines as I wait on a Flawless host commission to come in. Oh I might sneak in a Bloodthirster or two – will see. I also got more art to do too – woohoo been a crazy month for me. Anyway let’s show some stuff!
Counts as Khan – I painted a real one but it doesn’t fit the army so I had to make one of my own. The bird is from the Ogre Kingdoms kit and the model itself is a Lt I updated.
I somehow had a ton of Assault bolters so I used some running Intercessors to make them running bolter carrying intercessors!
Meaghan
Hello and Happy Friday Adventurers! I hope you’re planning a more fun weekend than I am, even if it will be spent at home! My big weekend plans right now include going to the dentist and then… that’s basically it. Our weekly D&D game is about to take a short hiatus, so in the meantime we’re looking for another game for a different GM to run a shorter story in for a few weeks. This may be my opportunity to finally sell this group on the FFG Star Wars game.
Next week we have some fun stuff in store including some most excellent character sheets, a peek at the Star Wars legends characters that I just cannot bring myself to miss, and maybe a look at different kinds of D&D monks in other popular media.
~Talk to all you folks next week!
