I was most fortunate to have an email interview with the gentleman who createrd Pulp-city Heroes, the Skirmish superhero game which I am enjoying playing and collecting at the moment. so big thanks to Maciej Zylewicz.

Please vist their website @ www.pulp-city.com

how long have you guys now been up and running ?

I started working on the game roughly 5 years ago, first stuff was announced online 4 years ago and we opened up the sales 3,5 years ago.





how did you start out ? was it very small scale or did you come from other larger projects?



It started and pretty much still is a hobby project. From the very beginning it was just me, now I have one formally employed co-worker and an amazing team of consultants, designers and friends who help me out with the game.

The initial idea was to provided top concepts turned into miniatures sculpted by professionals. Initially we were super tight on budget as the miniature games do not have fast or instant returns.

Over the years I pressed on to warrant the highest artistic quality of the sculpts and the presentation and you can probably see that each next wave is usually better than the previous one ( I guess it is like with the musicians, they tend to like the last album best).



also why super heroes ? was it from a love of super heroes or was it just because you had noticed a gap in the market?



There is as gap in the market. There are very few well sculpted super-heroes on the market. But it is a niche within a niche. While the comic-book tag attracts some Customers, it shuts the door in front of the others.

I am a huge comic book fan. I love retro 50's stuff as well as the modern day series. Pulp City had been walking both worlds, taking a bit from the Golden&Silver eras and from the modern, where spandex isn't an obligatory item.



how long did play testing take? did you always use cards to represent the characters or did you toy about with other things like army lists ?



Playtesting is a process. Coming up with the core rules is 10% of the success, maintaining interesting rules for Supremes is the ongoing process.

Every game lives a certain life-cycle, after which it has to fine-tune itself because 100 models = 100 little rules sets and they have to work together!

I am a big believer of the "ockhamization" - cutting out irrelevancies from the game rules to allow the players to focus on the core of the experience: strategy and fun!



How hard was it to get a foot hold in a market that seems dominated by bigger model companies ?



Yes, it is. For big companies, direct productions costs are the biggest challenger (hence striving to switch to plastic or cheaper alternatives to pewter), for smaller companies it is the creation costs (as they are exactly the same as for the giants, but they are spread over fewer copies of each model sold).

Please mind most of the small companies assume the break-even policy as they are run by people with dayjobs etc.



and finally where do you see pulp city going ? would you ever move onto plastic miniatures or even smaller scale resin models?



Not at this point. Pewter is the part of the appeal and part of the magic of the hobby - it is as old-school as it gets.





a year from now what do you see pulp city looking like? are there anymore factions or super teams on the horizon?



I see a much higher model count then in 2011. We got some amazing things down the line, so it is worth waiting.

First on the agenda is to complete all current subfactions. So you may expect likes of VH or Papa Zombie.

Then... we may have a small surprise for all the Pulp City citizens!



thank you for your time.


Thanks!
Maciej Zylewicz (morf)

Ok I promised a review of infinity the wonderful sci-fi game that is doing very well at the moment. I have ordered the rulebook and a collection of 2 factions to use, all of which have turned up and at the moment I am going through the motions of reading and gluing etc.

 

I have (as I usually do) been a little side tracked over the past 48 hours with a game I stumbled upon, and now think it deserves a mention. And since I have brought  (ordered) a starter box on the strength of a 20 minute tour of there site, I want to run you guys what little I know about it in the hope of giving it some coverage, as everyone I’ve spoken too has never heard of it.

The game in question is by a French company called Taban and the game in question is called EDEN.

Again we are talking cards and characteristics, both look good and much fun. I have been driven toward the Clown gang called the jokers and have brought their starter pack to have a look into it. The setting seems very post apocalypse almost MADMAX style game, but with slightly larger than normal figures about 36mm. (some upto 80mm)  there seems to be the now standard action / order points and I have been told the system plays very similar to Freebooters fate game, (which I haven’t played) which I hear is very fun with, hit locations, head, torso and arms etc. Unlike other games you have mission cards and tactical cards which from what I can see describe mission parameters do’s and don’ts and victory conditions. If this is true it might mean each faction / opponent can come to the table with there own set of mission cards and place them in such a way that there should be loads of combinations of game play. But…. Watch this space….. some more.

So here it is first game under my belt. And first off it all looks very good. I ordered about £200 worth of stuff for this game including scenery, rulebook etc.
The figures turned up in sets of 2 - 4 models in not blisters but boxes, all well illustrated and looking good in a nice matt/ gloss finish. the models all come with stat cards again looking fine well finished no problems at all. Finally the pewter models all seem well formed very little if any flash and simple mold lines. excellent.
    The rulebook is hard back colour illustrated and nicely finished with comic style pictures.
 I used a 4X4 board to play my first game on  using warhammer 40k city section scenry, about 4 large buildings and 1 small.

The game play'd very well, we started off with 3 (me and my 2 friends) players each with a duo (thats 2 figures each!!) The play to begin with was slow. in an activation of 1 model, doing 2 combined actions or some exclusive, slow, single action.  the turn then passes to the next player until a pool of action points are spent. There is a limit on how many actions each model can take in any 1 turn. lower level characters having a  4-5 point allowance, but you can activate a character more than once in a game turn. one of my opponents did feel a little limited by his low level character, he was wanting his character to drop from a building ledge, move into close range and execute an attack, which was more actions in 1 round than his was allowed. This did seem a little frustrating but I could see as some of the characters being used were of greater level that  if these guys had more freedom they would start to over dominate the game.

Overall the game played well. each character is like a mini RPG character with a good set of statistics and skills but also exclusive powers, shooting attacks auras and deffeensive abilities. This led to us taking along time to play even with just 2 characters each, I enjoyed this level of complexity but as I owned the game I had the priviledge of having more understanding of skill sets. It also became apparent that some characters worked really well together, but apart, they were absolutely useless, as I found out! I let my 2 friends choose their characters first, (to be fair) , then I chose after. I decided to choose a character I liked the look of, a cool vampire guy who has 2 sets of cards, 1 day time and 1 night time, this seemed a really nice touch. 1 of my opponents also picked an undead banshee style character but sadly when I matched up with my vampire against him I soon realised that all of my exclusive special powers only worked against LIVING characters. (so not chatacters with living dead,construct or mechanical skill) so I ended up in a fist fight for 3 rounds. This was again frustrating but as we only used 2 characters each, obviously with a normal sized game of 4-5 models + each this would not happen so offten and be so limiting.

Conculsion:  An excellent game really fun. the mechanics are simple, just opposed rolls of D6 + abilities Vs. opponents D6 + abilities, the difference is the damage or efffect.
the models are good, very simple but good. they do the job and are not cluttered with unnecessary objects. The feel, at least first off, is that because each character seems like a mini RPG character there is alot going on there, alot to remember, alot of coins and markers floating around the table. But I think give it a few goes with the same charatcers or factions and this would rectify itself.

Presentaion: 8/10
Mood & feel: 9/10
Complexity: 8/10
Miniatures: 6/10
Fun:               8/10
 Overall:       7/10

All in all an excellent game. But not quite what I want as my Rackham Confrontaion world consuming game.

Hello all,
Well After some long late night dedication to the internet. (no..no.. it's all above board!!)
I have decided on the first 2 games to be reviewed by me on the quest for the ultimate tabletop game.
First off is not so daring, it is INFINITY the sci-fi skirmish game. this is also the game that has the 1st miniature I have rated on miniatures on parade. I have been recomended it many times by many people so in i jump. I have ordered from my local games company 2 starter sets with a few extras, and a rules book. all of which I will get back to you with soon.

secondly is a little out field. I will be looking at PULP-CITY. an odd chice as it is a game I have asked many friends about over the times and they have all said oh yeah the super-hero game I heard thats really good; Have you play'd it I'd ask ? No. do you know anybody who has ? errr.. No. and so it goes on. a game everyone talks about but never plays.
Oddly I spent about £200 on ths game rules figures the lot and never played it. So I have ordered a few more bits and some replacement cards I've misplaced and this will be my second game of choice.
Stay tuned

ok sticking firmly in a sci-fi theme this little beauty: It is an Infinity game miniature so sent in the near future but it could pass as an 'today' model' it is called a Highlander
Cateran for the Ariadna faction. it is quite a simple model but captures a feel of the skirmish game. It does what it says on the tin and the base brings this model to life. Infinity use a 28mm scale not a 32mm heroic scale, so the hands and head are very proThis will be the first of a few models I will attempt to enlighten you with.

Wow ok well lets hit you with it. I have been involved in tabletop gaming / RPG gaming for the last 20 years. Than includes working for gaming companies and just casually playing games. For the last 6 years I have (all but once) exclusively play'd Games Workshop games both 40k and Fantasy.
But now I have decided enough is enough. GW I still play and I played it exclusively for so long for many reasons (I'll come to that)
Due to random price rises my personal pocket change, what I want from a game Plus another mysterious point I will get to latter I have decided to look for more games to play.
This journey I want to share with everyone who will listen, with reviews, best of's, rumours and tournament scene.
o I have play'ed Games workshop games exclusivly for the last few years
(all but once) but why? GW is the biggest gaming company and everything I want
is really at my fingertips. I enjoy playing games most of all and GW has a store
in most every large town that once or twice a week I can pop down to and play
against old and new faces. Thats just what I want. I want to access information
whenever I want be it while bored or looking for new releases or whats available
to buy. GW have a website dedicated to all that and more.


so Basicly ~I have become a lazy gamer and as a Lazy gamer GW
gives me all my lazy ass needs when I need it.

Because
I'm a lazy gamer I quickly eat up the price hikes and over priced rule books
that as far as rules go, are as old as I am and are (compared to many other
systems) frankly stale, with a you go~I go style of play, that lead to  some
games feeling like an exercise in rolling tomany dice, rather than a top of the
market stratigical and tactical game that it once
was.

Now I once did find a game. All by
accident. Called Confrontation by a French company called Rackham. I was still a
thrall to GW at the time but I became mesmerized by this French skirmish game.
The models were'nt models at all but sculptures and reasonable in price. They
had a website with figures that were painted better than I knew figures could
be. The system was innovative with cards and dice that allowed reactive choices
doing things in your oponents turn no less.  To top it off rules were not only
available to buy but could be downloaded free !! heresy!! I hear you cry . I was
simply blown away by all of it, the game, the website, the tournament scene and
even the ridiculously over priced magazine which I subscribed
to.

So Rackham went the way of the pair. they
changed the rules about 3 times in a few months odd I thought. (all
downloadable) The the director at the time announced that the models were going
to be made in plastic and pre-painted..... hmmmm. Then a few short months after
this another announcement confrontation as we know it was going to be scrapped
and replaced by a large unit you go I go style game. what the
Fu*K!!!
I was ...... upset..... and any how Who wanted a perfect
game where there was a new tournament every 3 months and only cost £12 to enter.
or board games that included exclusive miniatures.

Well
frankly guys and gals.... I want it back all the rackham stuff all the fun all
the feelings of it the new inovative system the new way to play it, read it,
live it and I attempt to use theese pages to go through games we have on offer
today maybe tomorrow and some older retro stuff and discover a new Rackham
Confrontation, and I want you with me on such journey.