Talking 'bout My Character

PATHFINDER AND HERO LAB

For all of you Pathfinder fans, we have some exciting news this month. Content from the Inner Sea World Guide will soon be added as a free update to Hero Lab's Pathfinder data package!

The new World Guide is an integral part of the Pathfinder setting, and will be the foundation for a lot of future Pathfinder content. In addition, it contains a significant chunk of material that is already included with Hero Lab, mostly as part of the Pathfinder adventure paths. Because of these two factors, we decided that the World Guide should become part of the core data package for Pathfinder. When the book releases in March, all of our Pathfinder users will be able to access content from it by downloading a free data file update.

We've also released the Pathfinder Campaign Setting Package #5, which includes Book of the Damned volume 2: Lords of Chaos, Lost Cities of Golarion, and 1-2 other forthcoming books, which will be provided as free updates to the package when they are released. If you already purchased the "Campaign Setting Bundle" you'll get this as a free update. You can also purchase it separately, by going to the License menu within Hero Lab and choosing "Purchase Data Package".

Finally, we've now included the updated Magus playtest class, and the new Ultimate Combat playtest classes, both as a free update to the Pathfinder data package.

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ARMY BUILDER 3.3b ARRIVES

We continue to work on updating Army Builder and the latest update, V3.3b, is now available. This update includes more bug fixes for issues uncovered by you, our users, and includes other stability updates. AB 3.3 adds a variety of highly requested features, including personal image support, custom output, optimizations for larger monitors, and much more. We're thrilled by all the positive feedback we've received for these new features, and Army Builder continues to reign as the de facto standard for tabletop miniatures players.

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HERO LAB SHADOWRUN PREVIEW

Work continues to move forward on the the eagerly anticipated Shadowrun data package projected to release in Spring this year. We've been working hard on Shadowrun for some time now, and everything is finally starting to come together nicely. To whet your appetite, check out these new screenshots showing Active and Knowledge Skills.

More Yu Gi Oh

April 19^th Street Date

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YGO: Hidden Arsenal 4: Trishulas Triumph

$56.85 NPI

Twice before, Konami has unleashed a mighty Dragon of the Ice Barrier on the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG, and both times it's had a huge impact.

But the third Dragon is the biggest one yet: Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier! This super-powered Dragon works well in ANY Deck, just like the ICE Barrier Dragons from past Hidden Arsenal sets. In addition to Trishula, Hidden Arsenal 4 also includes 59 other brand-new monsters. And each one is a shiny foil card in this premium all-foil set.

Hidden Arsenal 4 even includes 10 Dragunity monsters, including 2 Dragunity Synchro Monsters. So it's also a perfect match with Structure Deck: Dragunity Legion.

60 card set includes 20 Secret Rares (1 per Pack) and 40 Super Rares (4 per Pack).

Knights of the Dinner Table

The comic book Knights of the Dinner table, published by Kenzer & Company, is an often overlooked gem of a product, easily lost amidst large releases from WOTC, Pazio, Fantasy Flight Games and Days of Wonder, to name a few. Yet for over fifteen years, Kenzer & Co has succeeded in making sure another issue of the book hits the shelves every month regularly as clockwork, with issue #170 hitting the shelves on two weeks ago. Only Games Workshop, with White Dwarf, has managed a similar track record in our industry, and Knights, though mainly focused on Hackmaster, is still much less of a house organ than White Dwarf, while managing to come up with 80 pages of comics, gaming material and columns.

If you are not familiar with KODT (as fans refer to it), the strip focuses on the interactions of a group of players of the Hackmaster RPG (developed after repeated references in the comic created a demand for it among readers) with each other and the other RPG players of greater Muncie. I can only wish for a devotion to games among my customers comparable to that shown by the characters in KODT. Alas, my dream of a twenty-four hour game store shall likely go forever unrealized.

Game Release Announcements

There were a couple of announcements in the game industry that really caught my attention. First, and probably more important game industry wide was the announcement that Games Workshop had extended their agreement with Warner Brothers to produce a line of miniatures rules and figures based on the upcoming release of The Hobbit. The should not only bring a lot of interest into the new figures but also juices sales for the fairly stagnant Lord of the Rings figure line. GW has regularly brought out new figures in the LOTR line, per their agreement with Warner Brothers but sales have been pretty low. The release of the game this fall should really help that.

The second bit of news is also GW related. Fantasy Flight Games announced the release in April of Blood Bowl: Team Manager. Team Manager uses the currently popular deck building format to take 2-4 players through an entire season of Blood Bowl in less than an hour. We have already had sveral people expressing interest in the release of this one when it hits the shelves.

Launch Party vs. Sneak Peek

While running the Sneak Peek for Yu Gi Oh's Storm of Ragnarok pre-release today, I found it interesting to read over Konami's rules for running the Sneak Peek and compare them to WOTC's rules for running last weekend's Mirroden Besieged Pre-Release . Considering that both events are supposed to emphasize having fun playing with the new cards, I found Konami's rules/ guidelines much more restrictive.

WOTC sets the weekend for the event and otherwise leaves it up to the store as to formats, prices, times, prizes, etc. Konami is much more specific as to format, price for the event, times (has to begin after 8 a.m. and end before 8 p.m. While both companies supply promo cards, Konami supplied a pair of playmats. If stores wish to award additional prizes, they must do so at their own expense. WOTC provided no deckboxes but did ship out displays of Mirroden Besieged boosters to hand out as prizes.

Finally, both companies have tournament software to assist in running the tournaments. Those WOTC's Reporter runs a bit slow at times, it stands head and shoulders above Konami's KOSSY software in terms of flexibility in running events. In addition, Reporter installs on your computer, while KOSSY resides in the cloud, which can cause problems if you disconnect from the net. KOSSY logged off from the web at least three times during the tournament because it apparently didn't detect any activity between rounds and thought we had abandoned it. Never any such problems with Reporter.