Quiet but not idle

Haven't made any updates for a little while, but I've hardly been idle.

One of the things I do when tinkering with boardgames is throw a lot of detail in, revise, cut down content, revisit systems, and then go ahead again with a full range of drafts. Then I repeat.

Then I repeat again.

And again.

And sometimes again.

In between I search for useful figures or scenery or other bits and pieces, sometimes order some promising ones, and in between it all, watch some inspirational movie source material in the background.

And so it goes with Xenoform.

The Alien faction is pretty much all assembled - some painting needed for some bits and pieces. The Marines faction is all assembled, but unpainted. The Predator faction is mostly together (though there's a set of figs I'm pondering buying) and a little painting is required.

System-wise I've been to-ing and fro-ing. I started out with the Doom boardgame rules, but it's travelled a fair distance since then and bears only the most vestigial resemblance now.

Each figure in the game will have a unit card with their stats on it. I've been trying to make them as simple and straightforward as possible.

All the board pieces are printed out, I just need to xyron them onto some card. Sidebar: get a xyron machine. If you tinker with making your own boardgames, xyrons are fekking awesome. Print what you need, run through the roller, stick down onto card. Easy-peasy. I first met the mighty xyron in an ad agency I worked for - a giant A1 or A2 sized beastie. A4 ones for the scrapbooking crowd can sometimes be sourced from crafting stores, at a much lower price.

A sample campaign of 9 Missions is about 3/4 written. 6x 2-player Missions, and 3x 3-player Missions.

A bit more writing, some painting, xyron-ing, sticking, cutting and internet shopping, and I will be done with Phase: 1 and ready to get into some serious testing. Meaning I'll probably be done with Phase: 1 as the summer months start rolling around, which is I think perfect timing to playtest with a cider to hand.

I've decided that Phase: 2 is going to be corporate-themed, with some double-crossing, betrayal and intrigue. The three factions of Phase: 2 will be Weyland-Yutani and their Private Military Contractors, the cyborgs and robots of OCP, and the war machines of Cyberdyne. I watched the largely awful Robocop III recently, and despite it being entirely naff, I am tempted by the idea of including Kanemitsu Otomo androids and Urban Rehabilitator goons to the OCP faction, because despite making for dreadful drama, they could be handy kickass units for a boardgame.

I made some PMC's with bits from Maxmini and Mad Robot - cool online conversion stores worth checking out. Terminators have come from Reaper, Copplestone and EM-4 - differences in size and appearance being handy excuses for different generations of Terminator machine. Lastly some souped-up and chunky Robocops have been made with bits from Anvil Industry and Puppetswar - also good places to buy conversion bits.

As seen here I've been making up, redrawing or pinching corporate logos. I was pondering adding some kind of 'Sponsorship' system to Phase: 2, where deals made with different companies give some factions a small advantage, but I'll see how that goes.

This project definitely has a finite span - there's only so many movies within a certain feel or ambience I can strip-mine concepts from, but in the meantime I'm enjoying it, and re-watching some old cheesy classics along the way. Given that the game is set in a time period beyond that of some of the source films, I am of course taking some liberties, so figures for some factions are more suggestive than strictly representational, but eh, what can ya do?

I, for one, welcome our new corporate overlords.

Phase: 1 Factions

So, for Xenoform, one of the factions are the Colonial Marines. Now I did a horrifyingly huge amount of googling to find some good minis for marines. I didn't want a lot - some basic grunts, a couple of guys with incinerators, only one smartgunner (I have reasons for one, but I'll get to that).

Hasslefree minis had a couple of nice ones. So did Copplestone. So did EM-4/Mirilton. And then one day Mad Robot Miniatures announced their Colonial Defence Force squad kit. So, that settled it. Out of all of them, they looked the most like the Colonial Marines;

So tonight, in between gluing my fingers together, I've been gluing Marines together.

The Marines player will field 5 Marines for the average mission. The player can choose from a Sergeant, a Smartgunner, a Medtech, a Technican, 2 Marines with Flamers and 3 regular Marines.

I chose 5 because I thought it was a nice round number for a small squad. I chose to have only one Smartgunner, for the same general reason you're only allowed to have one Assault Cannon in Space Hulk - because it's a big, chunky, filthy nasty weapon. That and I wanted to encourage a player having a bit of variety in their squad.

I also ordered a few EM-4 minis for some advanced characters, which players gain by winning missions.

The Marines are in a way the basic template of the factions in the game. They're also sort of the 'heroes' of the game.



Then there are the Predators, or 'Yautja' as they are known in expanded universe canon. There are a few 'not-Predator' minis out there. Again, Copplestone do some, Ground Zero (iirc) do some. But they're tiny. I don't truck with no tiny Predators. There was only one option. I used my ebay-fu to find some Horrorclix Predators;

And the bonus? I don't need to glue my fingers together or paint them. Because I have sausage fingers and I'm too old to piss about with that stuff anymore.

The Predators are more formidable than the Marines. The player only has three to field, but can choose from an Elder, 2 more elite-y Preds and 3 regular ones.

And of course Aliens. There are few people who make Aliens or 'not-Aliens'. And most of them are really, really tiny (15mm scale) or just not close enough-looking. So, once again some ebay-fu and I scored two boxes of these Horrorclix guys;

These, plus one I had from way back when Horrorclix was a game that people actually apparently played. And a Queen from those days too. Also, same bonus as the Preds - no painting, no gluing my fingers together.

These guys are swarming critters, so I have 'borrowed' a kind of Blip mechanism for them from Space Hulk.

For spawn points, I'm probably going to use these from Dark Arts minis, although they're pretty big;

I could also use these;

But they're much, much, MUCH bigger. Although they look cool.

Once I finish gluing the Marines and paint them and some eggs, they'll be done.

Xenoform - planned Phases and factions - teasers

Here are the individual Faction teasers;

Phase: 1

Phase: 2

Phase: 3

Phase: 4

Xenoform - a board game.

Like many gaming nerds, I had a big 'OOOOH!' moment when I saw that an Alien vs Predator game was being launched on Kickstarter (which you can find here). Being of a certain age, I can recall a time when fans of both franchises anxiously clamoured for them to be merged. Dark Horse Comics first series in that vein was fun, and the two official AvP films were... well, they were what they were, let's leave it at that.

I thought of the attempts I'd made over the years at building a game that was similar, and how those attempts petered out to nothing.

So I started a new iteration. This time, however, something else occurred to me. I'm older now, and with films, games and comics all having explored the AvP idea in years past, I wanted to do something a bit different.

This new project I'm calling 'Xenoform'. It is based on a premise of merging the creatures, tech and general setting conceits of a particular vein of sci-fi/horror/action films.

I have a guilty fondness for crossovers. They're generally pretty rubbish, but at the heart of them is an enthusiasm I share - 'hey! Let's throw all these things randomly together and see what happens!'

Xenoform is being done in Phases. Phase: 1 features the basics of Aliens, Predators and the Colonial Marines, but future Phases will start adding other settings into the mix.

I had seen a pile of gamers across teh interwebz playing with Space Hulk or Doom as starting points for an AvP conversion, and ended up with a heavily mangled and adapted Doom engine for my game.

So here's the cover of my rulebook. Using stark silhouettes is a continuing design motif.

An early page introducing the start of the backstory and the Factions involved.

Generally the premise is this: In Phase: 1, all of Weyland-Yutani's dirty laundry has been discovered. Concerned about the intentional breeding of uncontrollable xenomorphs, the Company is decalred criminal. The Marines are sent to take down the company's outer facilities, one by one. However, most of their bases seem abandoned, well, apart from the occasional hive of aliens.

The Predators have noticed humans entering the outer fringes of their space more and more, as well as a sharp increase in numbers of the aliens (or 'hard shells' as they call them). Far from taking umbrage, they view this event as a good opportunity to hunt and blood the young ones.

The board is modular and depicts abandoned Weyland-Yutani facilities.

Some sample tiles that make up the board. Constructed from magpied textures, images etc from RPG Mapshare and Dundjinni and so on.

So hope you enjoyed this. More as I do it, or can be bothered. ;) To finish off, here's a teaser for the project;

So here we go

I decided to start this blog to share personal nerdy projects I'm doing. I'm into a weird range of nerdy stuff. I'm an unashamed Lego nerd, I like board games, and there's a pile of other things too - comics, films, all sorts of stuff.

A lot of the time when I make up board games, it's more of an intellectual exercise, than a goal to make something I will obsessively play, so bear than in mind. Also, to make these personal projects I magpie images from the internet with wanton abandon, so here's the necessary disclaimer:

These are all PERSONAL projects. I'm not distributing these for commercial gain, and this blog is more for the examination or exploration of what I get out of these projects, rather than presenting complete, downloadable products. So, to the IP holders - I'll credit where I can, but NOTHING here is for commercial purposes. Cool?