08 May 2009 - BattleBlog - Starting Early

[Hobbit]

I''ve not slept well for long, long years. Obviously part of that are my kids that literally cannot sleep through the night except for the 'once in a Blue Moon'. But even beyond that, I just sleep poorly and often wake up way too early. This morning I woke up in the middle of a dream about some decisions I've got to make and couldn't go back to sleep...so 5:30 I'm waking up, taking a shower trying to wake up further and then it's at the computer just after 6. Now the nice part is that usually gives me almost 2 hours of quiet to work while the rest of the house is still asleep, so I pop in good tunes (a little DT this morning) and try to make the best of it.



HexPacks. This is a product that we've been kicking around for well over a year at this point. However, it's unlike anything we've produced before and that means trying to figure out how it'll be done, means going with a new overseas manufacturer, which means a whole giant pile of issues can and will arise and so on. And such issues did arise and it got pushes endlessly around as we worked to solve those issues. We seem to be very lose to resolving them at long last (though there still are a few things outstanding), so I'm finalizing work on it while layout is starting.



For those that haven't heard of what a HexPack is, here's the rough back cover copy for the first of two (Lakes and Rivers and the other will be Cities and Roads).



>>>

More terrain for the battlefield…



You’ve defeated your opponent across all the terrain that the BattleTech Introductory Box Set has to offer and now you want more worlds to conquer. Grab your dice and start rolling, because this product is for you!



HexPack: Lakes and Rivers is a flexible map system aid for the BattleTech game system. Designed for use in conjunction with other pre-printed mapsheets (such as those from the Introductory Box Set), the system’s flexibility allows for easy modifications to existing mapsheets, increasing the enjoyment of a given scenario as players quickly change the terrain to bring new excitement to each game they play! A booklet contains two ready-to-play scenarios, which include expanded play options such as clearing woods, buildings and additional weather conditions.



The BattleTech Introductory Box Set is required to use HexPack: Lakes and Rivers.






Contents



· One 18” x 22” full-color gameboard-quality mapsheet, with a different map printed on either side.

· Four punch-out-and-ready-to-play gameboard-quality template HexTiles.

· Sixteen page booklet

>>>



So what does that all mean? Imagine any quality boardgame you can think off (BattleLore, Ticket to Ride, Tikal, and so on). That's the "boardgame-quality" map. Next, take any game that has "hex tiles" of that same quality (Settlers of Catan, BattleLore and so on) and those are the HexTiles. Except the HexTiles range in size from the largest 'cluster' of 17 hexes, down to 7 hex clusters, to 4 hexes in a row, to a dogleg of 3 hexes and of course single hexes, and so on. Each of those HexTiles has terrain printed on either side. So you open up a HexPack and you've got a double-sided map to instantly use, while you've got several sheets of these HexTiles that easily punch out and your quickly and easily modifying existing mapsheets to create cool new terrain to play every time you sit down at the gaming table.

Pretty cool? I sure think so...then again, I help develop the idea (the seeds originally came from Loren), so I'm biased. But that's the basic concept. Course this morning I've got to finish up the contents of the booklet for HexPack: Cities and Roads so it can head to edit. I'll talk about the difficulties of putting 16 pages together for these packs another day.

See ya later!

Randall