Winter is Coming

It's been a quiet end of summer and first half of Fall here at 6mmACW.com, but as they so often say in one of my favorite TV shows, "Winter is Coming." And this winter, there will be plenty of happenings with Altar of Freedom. Since I don't expect anything major to drop before mid-November, this seemed like a good time to pull back the curtain on some of the projects in the pipeline and offer a few preview of what's just around the corner.  

Campaign Supplement

You may recall that we ran a big poll this summer to see what level of interest players have in a new campaign supplement. Our first supplement covered the 1863 Vicksburg campaign and has since been downloaded by almost 1,000 players. What comes next? There are two Eastern Theater campaigns in various stages of design--one more advanced than the other--and I don't yet know which supplement will be released first. There is no firm release date for this campaign, except to say that it will be sometime this winter, early 2017. The new supplement will cover a much larger area and longer period of time than Vicksburg, and just to encourage you to keep painting more troops, here's a tiny preview of one little piece of the map, along with two photos from one of the major pitched battles that was fought in our play-test. Teaser: Our double blind play-test has yielded 5 tabletop battles (so far...). 

A Big Terrain Tutorial

It's probably best to clarify that the new terrain tutorial I'm finishing is actually not "big" in scope or difficulty. It's a fairly easy craft project anyone should be able to complete on a budget, but it addresses a problem that's bedeviled me for years, ever since I began gaming in 6mm scale. How do you make tiny cornfields? Seriously. I haven't found a satisfactory solution to this terrain question for years. ​There are some excellent products and tutorials for 28mm and even 15mm cornfields, but nothing that works well for the micro-scale we use with Altar of Freedom. I've finally produced something very sharp, perfecting a method I once tried in 2013 but failed to finish. I am excited to share it with the wider gaming community, since no one else seems to be offering any suitable ideas to date.  The 6mm cornfield tutorial should be ready to go before the holidays.

Print Edition is Back!

Speaking of problems that have bedeviled me--the original print edition of Altar of Freedom has officially been sold out for...well...about 18 months. We originally ran 500 copies of the rules and those disappeared within the first year of distribution, with the only sales since then being done via PDF download on Wargames Vault. While I still think downloading and printing your own PDF is a great, affordable solution for rules (and we've sold even more PDFs than print copies) there have been many people emailing me about getting their hands on a hard copy. ​​Why has a second print run been so difficult? For starters, my first printer (a small local outfit) has since gone out of business. More pressing, my exclusive distributor for the print rules has since been sold and folded into another company. Thirdly, I am often busy with non-wargaming matters and setting up new printing and distribution takes a lot of time.

In any case, this is all a round-about way of saying that I finally buckled down and explored print options that would allow gamers to buy hard copies once again--especially all the players overseas. A stunning number of sales for Altar of Freedom come from outside the US, and finding an international solution has been a focus of my latest efforts.  Expect to hear news on this front within a matter of weeks, as the first proof copies arrived this week and should require only minor tweaking.

More Free Stuff

To celebrate the return of the print copy of the rules, we'll have some new free stuff posted to the website, in addition to the terrain tutorial. You should also see a couple new historical AARs and an entirely new free scenario, not published anywhere in the rules or scenario supplement books. As long time followers of this site will know, I like offering free content for players as a way of thanking them for trying the rules. This latest scenario will bring the total number of available historical scenarios to the nice, round number of 40! It will be a small engagement (35,000+ men is small by AoF standards, anyway) from a well-known campaign that receives little attention from most ACW wargamers. Look for this free stuff to start appearing on the site before the end of 2016.

Until then, happy gaming!

--GRW