Sweet Sassy Molassey! Double the fun!

I had booked the day off work today so that I could be on Dad Duty while Gdayshiela worked a wedding… and I ended up spending most of the day keeping a very sick Gdaygirl company in the hospital until she could be discharged, while Gdaysheila tried to get some rest after being with Gdaygirl throughout the night.

All in all a pretty sucky leadup to Canada Day.

Leave it to Privateer Press to counterbalance the stress and worry of the last 48 hours with a double dose of sheer awesomeness!

Let’s start with the lesser of the two… Mittens!

For a while now I’ve been waiting to see who the mysterious gauntleted dude from the cover of the Retribution book was; turns out he’s a House Shyeel Magister.

What the smeg’s that, I hear you say?

“Battle mage magisters manipulate invisible energies to tear an enemy limb from limb or to haul weighty machinery around like pieces on a game board. The massive arcanika gauntlets they wear not only serve as conduits for their powers, but can deliver tremendous crushing blows and send opponents flying.”

So… we have a mage with all sorts of telekinetic functionality, channelled through oversized fists. Wheee! Of course, now we know why the Retribution Myrmidons have such small hands – House Shyeel’s bogarting all the large ones!

I can totally picture the kids of House Shyeel growing up…

Kid, after opening Elfmas gift: “Hulk Hands? Again???”

How will this telekinesis be represented in game? Ability to Push opposing models? To move friendlies up to X inches? From the description, I could even see these guys having telekinetic Reach…

And now, on to the main event…

Hot. Freakin. Damn!

I make no bones about it, I loved Blood Bowl. I had every single metal model made for the game, right back to the very first, before I immigrated to Canuckland. I loved that it took the combatants of the Warhammer world and brought them into a sporting environment, and that games *mattered*. Wins and losses affected team budgets, experience levels, injuries, skills, etc.

When I first heard about Grind, I thought “Oooh…” and then I found out that no-one was playing it, nor had any real burgeoning interest in doing so (with the exception of a few hardcore nutters on the forums).

Now, with PP having established its plastic manufacturing skillz, they can produce a boxed game with cleaned up rules, and I can relive the joys of Blood Bowl, but in the infinitely cooler Iron Kingdoms!!!!

Huzzah for:

• The box comes with two teams – 6 runners, 4 crushers. That translates to three lights and two heavies per team, I would think.
• 32 interchangeable weapon arms. Oh… Oh my… even if you find a couple of configurations you love and want to stick with, you’ve now got an abundance of bitz for conversions! 32 arms is enough for 16 jacks, and there’s only 10 in the box…

Boo for:

• The official website launches July 3rd. I don’t wanna have to wait! Teases!

Uh… for:

• Uncertainty. Hopefully when the site launches we’ll know if there’s going to be an established league system et al.
• What about existing models? Can our faction figures be used in the game, or are we stuck with the generic plastibots that come with it?  Can we expect rules for Warbeasts as well?

Hopefully all will be revealed Friday!