Monday, August 23, 2004

More news from GenCon...

This news is from Shinobi on the Wizards boards:

Hey guys -- I had the honor of attending the D&D Miniatures Seminar at GenCon only a few days ago, hosted by Rob H, Mike D, and "Leaky" Rob Watkins. The seminar was outstanding, and it was determined relatively quickly that the devs have a very hard time ignoring your questions when you ask them eye to eye, coupled with the fact that they are working so far in the future (on set 7 now), that a certain unmentioned *coughLeakycough* member of the dev team managed to leak out quite a bit of information on future sets.

Below is the info that I recollect from the Seminar, anyone else who was there that caught anything I missed is free to add it here.

-- Beholder is in Death Knell, is between 71-100 points, and is a "less controlling piece than the gauth".

-- Mummy Lord is in Death Knell, but has been toned down from it's MM2 incarnation to better fit the skirmish game. It is a commander.

-- Trumpet Archon will be coming out in the future, it is a commander as well with an "interesting commander effect"

-- Celestial Badger is coming out in a future set.

-- Fiendish (monstrous?) Praying Mantis is coming out in the future.

-- Ryld Argrith (City of the Spider Queen books) is being made, and is a commander. He is a drow fighter character.

-- Death Knell contains 2 uncommon large figures, one of which is an animal, most likely a bear.

-- A future DDM set will contain less CE figures than any other faction! (woohoo!)

-- A piece will be coming out soon for LG that "makes Orc Champion suck". This one was interesting to me, as Rob H and Leaky Rob did not agree on that point, but interesting none the less.

-- LG will get a spellcaster with an energy protection not unlike the Elf Pyromancer

-- Mounted units will be attempted again soon, but all of the sculpts that had been proposed so far have been scrapped, so they were pushed back.

-- CG will be getting a 4 point piece in Abberations, and another 3 point piece soon after.

-- There will be no more 'difficult' pieces after Abberations, and the PLAN is that eventually all of the currently difficult pieces will be controllable in the future, how far in the future is yet to be seen.

-- There will not be any more non-huges over the 140 pt limit, ala King Snurre

-- There is an LG Paladin coming in the future with a spell from the miniatures handbook that is as such, On death, the paladin explodes, healing good creatures and damaging evil creatures -- can't remember what it's called.

The seminar was truly enjoyable, and a memorable part of it went as follows...(in response to questions asked)

Rob H: "Sure, there are definitely more interesting commander effects on the way, but you'll just have to see in the future"

Mike D: "Yea, things like the Rakshasa and the Standard Bearer really pushed the limits of what we could do with it as far as interesting Commander Effects go

"Leaky Rob: "Right, like the Trumpet Archon too"
*Room goes silent*
Leaky Rob: "He's been released, right?"
*laughter ensued.*

There were instances of the above multiple times during the seminar, and it was a great experience -- I'm incredibly fortunate to have been able to go, and I can't wait for the future sets