steampunk

Above the Seven Seas is a Steampunk inspired set of miniatures rules. Author Henrik Granlid writes:

Longing for a way to recreate the massive air battles of the fantastic anime Last Exile and also dreaming myself away to the wonderful imagery of old naval battles, I just felt I had to try and recreate these battles between massive ships high up in the skies wilst still trying to keep some form of realism. After looking into several things, i finally came to the conclusion that trying to have as few dice as possible might well be the best option, the tactical ability of the player coupled still with a few handfulls of luck would work a lot better than someone rolling all ones when unleashing a broadside and missing the huge ship next to his own. What I hope to bring players is a new view of tactical miniature gaming and I hope you people will make your own models to play this game.

Invisible City Productions has a new miniatures game called Steampunk Arena.

Jonathan L. writes:

Steamwork Arena is a quick playing, diceless, customizable, miniature-based fighting game. You’re the pilot of a steamwork mecha in an arena battle with one or more other mecha. During play, you move your mecha miniature around an un-gridded playing area, attacking and being attacked by your opponent(s).

Here’s the big gimmick: You have a special card for your mecha. This card is called a template. Your template keeps track of your health. It also keeps track of which one of 5 modes you’re in. Your mode dictates your attack, defense, energy, movement, and the range of your ranged attacks. During play, you’ll shift from mode to mode as your needs change. As you take damage, modes will shut down� and become unavailable to you. You win the game by dealing enough damage to your opponent(s) to shut down all of their modes.

Here’s the small gimmick: There are no dice. During play, you’ll spend energy to attack and defend. To do this, you hide energy tokens in your hands and your opponent gets to pick a hand. The number of tokens in the selected hand determines how strong your attack or defense is. All tokens in both hands get spent. This “pick-a-hand” mechanic encourages bluffing that’s atypical for miniature games like this.

Steamwork Arena is a game for two to four players, although you could probably play it with more. Steamwork Arena uses miniatures, a large flat surface, small tokens, custom templates, and paper clips.