by Gavin Dady
This week I’m going to give a general update on the status of the release schedule, and then we have the release of the winning entry in our Basecamp Campfire Tales competition from last year.
Releases
Bad news first – there has been, as we feared, a delay on the Chapter 2 Card Pack of perhaps two weeks. This will have a knock on effect that the bundle deal s will also be delayed in their despatch by this time as well. It may end up being a bit shorter, as our Breton printers are working feverishly to deliver as soon as they can. If the cards come in early, we’ll turn things around as quickly as we can.
Histories of the Empire: The Stormcloak Rebellion is off to the printers! The first printed content expansion for The Elder Scrolls: Call to Arms covers the Skyrim Civil War and allows you to lead your forces through 20 Battle and Delve Mode scenarios in a linked campaign. A map based campaign allows you to fight over the Holds of Skyrim with custom rules for terrain and hold-specific benefits that you can use to give you an edge in your Delves and Battles. In addition, there are suggested force lists, conversion rules for a multi-player campaign for a group of players, co-op and solo Delve Mode rules for the whole campaign and an entirely new faction – Hold Guards! I expect this should be available from the Modiphius web store and in your FLGS in or about August.
The Dragons supplement is in our second round of development after closed play testing. We’ll probably go through another round of closed play testing before we are ready to unleash the rules for these fearsome beasts on the world. These will be introductory rules and PDF only for now. If you’ve already purchased Mirnunir you’ll get these rules for free. Dragons will get a full treatment in a later Chapter release.
The Draugr Faction rules are laid out and are with Bethesda for approval and comment. These will allow you to fight as Dragon Priests, Deathlords and their deathless followers. They include Hero, Follower and new Adversary cards along with Draugr-specific spells and upgrade cards. The rules include Draugr specific Quests, as a Deathlord has no interest in collecting a Golden Claw for a Shopkeeper. Like the Dragon rules, these are an interim PDF product and the Draugr will get their full treatment in a later Chapter.
Work is also well under way on Histories of the Empire Volume 2: Steam and Shadow. This will provide content related to the Chapter 2 faction releases –Dwemer and Dark Brotherhood. It includes interesting new ways to play, including a Rogue-like exploration of Dwemer ruins, with the rewards and risk increasing the further into the ruins you delve, and a reputation-based campaign for the Dark Brotherhood that introduces new challenges for the stealth assassins that can’t always be solved by a sword, arrow or blast of magic.
Elder Scrolls Online cards are also laid out and with Bethesda for approval. As soon as we get the thumbs up they will be made available for download. There are no plans for printed versions of these at the moment, but we may add them to a future card pack.
Thanehold Saga development continues, and is informed by all the other products we are working on. We remain committed to releasing this when it is ready, so we don’t have a fixed release date for this.
We will also be releasing more Community Scenarios to support the Chpter 2 releases. Game designer Mark Latham is working hard on these right now and look out for them in the coming months.
We also have our next three sets available at the end of June, The Council of the Dark Brotherhood, Dark Brotherhood Aspirants and the Flame Atronachs. These are available as part of the Bundle deals now, but will be available in retail at the end of June. In July you’ll see some more reinforcements for the Imperial and Stormcloak forces in the form of Imperial Vanguard and the Stormcloak Shield-breakers.
Community Scenario Winner – The Children of Malacath
Back in July last year we announced our Basecamp Competition. Alongside our scenery competition we also ran the Campfire Tales scenario competition, which was won by Michael Dunkerton with his Children of Malacath.
As we said then we liked the focus on the often overlooked Orsimer of Skyrim, and the frantic chaos that can arise from trying to grab the treasures and drop them off for favour with the Orcs!
We’re happy to present the scenario in its final form here: The Elder Scrolls Call to Arms - Community Scenario: Children of Malacath
Also, remember that you still have a little time to get your entries in for our current competition, Tales of the Dragonborn.