Warlord: Temple of Lore preview

Here.

Also, Chris and Laurence have written a bit since our last frontpage update, Todd, in his new role as Legend of the Five Rings brand manager, has given us some new artwork, and Jeremiah has written his GenCon report.

Laura has now taken on the role of Story LEad for Warlord, so, given that I'm busy, I'll need a new assistant editor. Knowledge of Warlord, AEG generally a must, PHP useful, styling Wordpress themes would be very very cool. (Yes, I'll be switching CMS to make running the site easier at some point this autumn).

Also? I manged to get to a tournament last weekend. I borrowed a deck made by Chris. 12 players, which is a great turnout for Barnstable (small town on the coast of North Devon), Chris took first, as usual, Laurence 4th, and I took 3rd. Very impressed with the Epic environment, and loving the tricks the Dwarves can play with items.

Jeremiah: The Plans of Crazy Men: Part I

This requires special mention. I'm not sure which is worse, he's doing KublaCon (San Francisco, California) on one day and Kotei Florida (that's, y'know, the other side of the continent) the next, or that he's doing it with Chris "motormouth" Aven. I shared a room with this guy; he wasn't as bad as Harrington but still. So, we expect a full report when you get back from both events my friend. You're allowed to sleep first though ;-)

So far, so good - a round up

So, a week since we went live with the beta version of the site, and so far we have some excellent content. Laura and I have done three round-up posts in the Warlord area linking to the Warlord related articles. Of more general interest however, Jeremiah has written three articles on tournament attendence and Pete has written about the importance of the human element in a game.

For those interested in wargames, I wrote an article yesterday evening about the lessons I learned from, well, having my backside handed to me in a game of AK-47 Republic. I regularly find that it's not winning games that helps you improve, it's losing - same applies in tournaments, when I've won big, I've not learnt much. The person I fear most when I hit the cut is the person I beat in the Swiss, if they're good enough to still cut, then they're good enough to figure out where they've gone wrong.

Admin

I've been a bit busy, and am suffering from a cold as well, so progress is slow, but steady. I'm planning a "dead games" section or two, for Doomtown, and possibly Spycraft as well. I'd like an L5R section, and am thinking of a board games section. Many people have contacted about being either guests or columnists, including a few notable names. I'll get through everyone as and when I can. I'm tweaking templates and appearances, and working on a proper visual identity for the site (logos, etc), I'm quite happy with the way the Warlord section is now looking, but will continue to apply tweaks.

I'll also probably add an 'admin' column somewhere, to put this sort of remark, alongside a few "how-to"s and similar. Probably. Lots to do, but no real rush, the site can build up gradually, right?

Follow the Leader to the Roleplay

Did I mention there's a Roleplay section? It's going to cover all sorts of Roleplay, from D&D, Deadlands and of course the Warlord RPG through to the esoteric realms of Live Action World of Darkness - no, I don't get the appeal either, but then, I play with toy soldiers regularly at the age of 31, so I can hardly talk. I've asked my good friend Mark to run it for me, and have a few people lined up to write for it.

I was going to set it up over the weekend coming, but I got an email asking if he could contribute stuff for it. Mr Mike Leader himself. Poor boy thinks he's David Tennant. Go remind him he's not?

-Mat
ps admin note. Each main section will have editors, who can write to the front page, brief posts (this one is a little long but we're new), saying "X has a good article here", etc. There are also columnists, etc. Some of the columnists will write stuff for many different games, others are, for example, Warlord specific. If Jeremiah writes a good Warlord article, one of the editors will put up a post saying so in the Warlord section, so if oyu only want to read Warlord stuff, you can subscribe to just the Warlord feeds (when they're set up), for example. Also, the TaKtiX blogger id is mostly me, but when I write, I'll try to do so as MatGB, but it'll depend who I'm logged in as...

New Columnists - welcome Todd and Jeremiah

Todd Rowland.

Yes, that Todd Rowland. He's not going to have time to write a lot, but whatever he can contribute is definately a welcome addition to the site. Also, I've set up Jeremiah "Malexin" Uselton as well, more to follow as I get time.

And yes, I did say he could fiddle with the template. I was hoping he'd pick a nice one though. Still, I can hardly have a go at others about aesthetics, can I?