[COMMERCIAL] Blood Eagle, skirmish wargaming in the Viking Age!

[Craig]

There are few genres in wargaming that quite get the blood racing like the 9th-10th centuries in northern Europe, the notorious 'Viking Age'.
Up until now you could march across those blood-soaked fields with big armies or with little armies, but there were no games that really captured every bone-cracking, skull-splitting, gut-spilling, heroic moment of the period. No game that really allowed you to play Jarl Ragnar Loðbrok and his close companions, Lord Uhtred of Bebbanburgh, the dark Picts, the wild Irish or the stalwart Saxons.
Well good news, Blood Eagle is on its way.
Based on the same core rules as In Her Majesty's Name and Daishō, this is a narrative skirmish wargame that is played with 5-15 figures per side on a 1m square board. The core rules have been proven in many thousands of encounters across the world and have been fettled to make them truly suitable for the heroic and grim nature of the period.
Like Daishō, we have set the rules so you can play it as a straight historical game, at a heroic level or go full legendary with monstrous warbands such as the Jotun, Svartalf/Sidhe or Draugr.
You will never be stuck playing the same dozen scenarios over and over again because our unique Scenario + Complications + Landscapes system ensures that you will have over three thousand possible game combinations to choose from. These feed into a campaign system that gives you the ability to create and play totally unique sagas of your own.
We have also included the very popular system that allows you to research and then create your own unique warbands. The entire points system is open and there shall be a guiding article on the blog helping you to build it.
There is already a community of over three hundred gamers discussing and preparing for this game on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/424811634371518/ , and we have just launched the supporting blog here: https://bloodeagleskirmish.wordpress.com/
This game shall be launched by us at Salute 2016 under our own imprint - The Ministry of Gentlemanly Warfare. Like our other book, Daishō, it will be about 96 pages, full colour A4 and cost under £15.

[Golgotha]

Sounds promising I will be looking forward to seeing these rules...

[Comsquare]

Great news, looking forward for the game to be released 
Sadly, I don't do facebook...

[muncehead]

I do Facebook with a made up name and a rarely used email.
 

[Jacksarge]

The rules system sounds interesting. I've never played IHMN or any of your other releases, so it sounds like it has some concepts that might be new to me at least.
What sort of table size would one need for playing Blood Eagle using 28mm miniatures?
It would be cool to get a model of Grendel into one of these games, or the Dragon that Beowulf faces in his old age- is that possible with this system?

[pocoloco]

Sounds very promising! Keen to learn more.

I noticed that you don't have (yet ) Finns and Baltic war bands listed, any possibility for such appearance? Plenty of real historical facts and mythical stuff (Kalevala and Kalevipoeg etc) available to wet your appetites

[raif]

As a saga player these announcement sounds very interesting! I have no facebook account. So is there any lack of informations between the facebook-site and your blog? Will it be published via osprey too?

[Craig]

The rules system sounds interesting. I've never played IHMN or any of your other releases, so it sounds like it has some concepts that might be new to me at least.
What sort of table size would one need for playing Blood Eagle using 28mm miniatures?
It would be cool to get a model of Grendel into one of these games, or the Dragon that Beowulf faces in his old age- is that possible with this system?

The system is simple enough for us to be able to teach people in ten minutes at shows, but has sufficient tactical depth to be played for years, and this is according to IHMN players who have been.
For a short game, with 2 players, a 3' or 1m square table is sufficient. For longer games or ones involving 3-4 player then we recommend 4' or 1.3m square tables.
The monster Grendel features in one of the scenarios in the book, where two warbands sit down to feast together and get gatecrashed by you know who. As for a dragon like Fafnir, I don't think we'll be putting one in the book, but we shall write one up to add to the free materials on the blog.

[Craig]

I noticed that you don't have (yet ) Finns and Baltic war bands listed, any possibility for such appearance? Plenty of real historical facts and mythical stuff (Kalevala and Kalevipoeg etc) available to wet your appetites

Honestly, we don't have Finns because we do not know enough about them. The book shall contain a core set of warbands for players which we shall expand upon either in supplements or on the blog. We would like to create Finn, Rus, eastern and southern warbands such as Huns, Arabs and Varangians in a supplement. With IHMN, we created two full supplements for Osprey and are writing a third at the moment.
A core element of our system is that in the book we provide the full points system so that players can research and then create warbands of their own. There are also far more weapons, equipment, creatures, traits and powers than are used in the included warbands. This is so players have a toolkit that they can use.
With IHMN, which is really the grandfather of this new game, we often feature player's own warbands on the blog and there is an article on how to create them. We shall repeat this with Blood Eagle.

[Atheling]

Well worth picking up a copy I think!

Darrell.

[Craig]

As a saga player these announcement sounds very interesting! I have no facebook account. So is there any lack of informations between the facebook-site and your blog? Will it be published via osprey too?

All articles that we write for the game shall be on the blog first. The Facebook page is really for people to discuss the game, just like we shall be using Lead Adventure's medieval board as well.

We stopped writing for Osprey two years ago Raif. Since then we have created our own imprint called The Ministry of Gentlemanly Warfare. Using this, we published the samurai skirmish game Daisho last year and we shall be using it to publish Blood Eagle this year.

Charles and I are not a professional publishing company. We are gamers with full-time jobs outside the industry. We do all of this in our spare time and with our own money. This is why our attitude towards gamers is a little different and we spend a lot more time on social media talking to players of our games. We treat you the way we would like to be treated.

[Jacksarge]

The system is simple enough for us to be able to teach people in ten minutes at shows, but has sufficient tactical depth to be played for years, and this is according to IHMN players who have been.
For a short game, with 2 players, a 3' or 1m square table is sufficient. For longer games or ones involving 3-4 player then we recommend 4' or 1.3m square tables.
The monster Grendel features in one of the scenarios in the book, where two warbands sit down to feast together and get gatecrashed by you know who. As for a dragon like Fafnir, I don't think we'll be putting one in the book, but we shall write one up to add to the free materials on the blog.

Thanks Craig!
I shall keep an eye on your blog. I already play Lion Rampant for this period, but it would be great to have a system for smaller encounters that I can play on a small table.
Excellent to hear that you have already factored Beowulf & co. into your plans 

[Craig]

Thanks Craig!
I shall keep an eye on your blog. I already play Lion Rampant for this period, but it would be great to have a system for smaller encounters that I can play on a small table.
Excellent to hear that you have already factored Beowulf & co. into your plans 

Dan Mersey's Lion Rampant is such a good game   I shall be getting Dragon Rampant when I next get paid as well.
These are what I define as 'small unit action games' like Saga.

[cram]

An exciting start to the New Year!

[pocoloco]

Hi Craig,

many thanks for the swift answer. Your plan does sound like a good approach to things.

Of course, if you are in need of any information regarding Finns from the Blood Eagle period, factual or myth, I am more than happy to help for the cause