Precinct Omega

Cover Art WIP

So, for clarity, the stick figures are my contribution to David's work in progress, because he asked for some guidance on where to put the infantry in the image so as not to overwhelm the impact of the mech.

You can just about make out the shadows in the clouds that show where a pair of aircraft will appear. And dangling from the barrel of the main mech's big gun is a rappel line being used by a mech pilot (presumably) busy trying to kill the pilot of the main mech by... firing a pistol...

Contents Page

Still here!

In fact, I'm excitedly looking forward to next weekend, when I have a full weekend, a whole week and another weekend to plough through getting the book finished and ready for release.

Even at this late stage, changes are being made.

For example, just today - while doing the indexing! - I realized that I used the term "armour" to describe a particular type of element, but then had "armour upgrades" and it might be confusing that people think they can only...

Weapon Upgrades

This is an area I'm sure lots of you are interested in, because everyone likes their boomsticks! I put a great deal of thought into what types of sci-fi weapon actually felt like they belonged in Horizon Wars: Midnight Dark. For quite a long time in playtesting, laser weapons were basically only harassing weapons that messed up sensors and suchlike. But eventually I decided that they needed to be "proper" weapons (because the game is, after all only hard-ish sci-fi).

S...

More Upgrades!

I recently posted a preview of the Utility Upgrades page in the rulebook. It occurred to me (as I read the replies - thank you, we now have a "Combat Engineer" utility upgrade*) that you guys might like to see some more preview pages, given that most of you haven't seen the rulebook since I last posted beta rules.

Anyway, here's the Leadership Upgrade table.

Leadership and Command are ab...

Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines...

I have carved out a week - by which, I mean a weekend, a full week and then another weekend - in which I expect to get everything finished for me to send the manuscript for test printing. This fits in with cover artist, David Sondered's, deadline as well, so I'm confident of being able to send the test printing with David's art in it.

Speaking of which, here's a preview of the cover art:

August Update

"The Briefing" by Mike Doscher, used with permission.

Midnight Dark

As some of you may have anticipated, I'm little behind schedule on Midnight Dark for a few reasons. One is simply life. I had expected to be finishing a contract in August, taking a month or so off to finish and then going to publish in late September. Instead, I found myself leaving a c...

July - Rule of the Month - Civpop

I didn't manage to sustain the content I was providing back in 2021 in the face of having to also do a day job, look after my family, stay fit and not have a mental breakdown. The fact that so many of you have stuck around to support me anyway means the absolute world to me.

So have a draft preview of some more rules from Operation Kurgan, as spoilered earlier this week: civilian populations.

Civpop is only relevant in PvP missions, at the moment. In solo missions, they a...

I seem to have lost Operation Kurgan

I was planning on using Zero Dark: Operation Kurgan as a palate cleanser between sessions working on the minutiae of Midnight Dark. But I've turned my hard drive upside down and inside out, as well as my back-ups on Google Drive and the damn thing has vanished.

Fortunately, I posted some of the fiction, draft rules and missions on here in forms that, whilst not as polished as what I had, are at least good enough to strip for parts.

This is definitely, as the sayi...

Update Time!

First, new job is going well, but I'm spending more time in the office than I originally intended. Hopefully should get to work more from home in the next few weeks, which will free up energy and commuting time to make more progress on Horizon Wars: Midnight Dark. Only problem is that, due to a mix up with HMRC, I have been put on a D0 tax code, which means that I'm pay the higher, 40% rate of tax on 100% of my income. Thank goodness, we have the financial reserves to carry that for ...

I gotta job

Just touching base to keep you guys up to speed.

If you follow @precinctomega on Instagram at all, you'll know that I've been ploughing relentlessly through a range of items, largely focused on terrain for Horizon Wars: Midnight Dark, but also including a bunch of new stuff for Zero Dark: Operation Kurgan.

Text layout is looking pretty good, so I'm keen to add some illustrations and photographs to start fleshing out the book towards finished status.

A minor...

Terrain Progress & Sense of Humour Failure

I thought you folks might like to see one of my first very nearly finished buildings (I'm making some additional street furniture details that may or may not end up being attached to buildings - more on that in the future).

My crop of buildings is from Blotz terrain in the UK who are one of my commercial partners. I'm aiming for a strong post-apocalyptic look on these.

I've got three or four finished with a bunch more in progress, and I'll be re-painting a lot familiar ol...

Shiny new thing!

Some of you will have been aware that I've been working on the same laptop since 2017 which, in laptop terms, is practically the Dark Ages. Despite despite my being temporarily between employments, my wife agreed that I could drop a modest chunk (of family money; Precinct Omega doesn't have enough in its coffers to shell out for me, right now) on a suitable replacement and, today, it arrived.

Key to my needs, when deciding on a new device, has been its ability to comfortably run Blender...

Midnight Dark - Fiction

I've very nearly finished laying out the book and finalizing the text. I've just got a few more missions to write and a few more upgrades to devise and we'll be done.

Which means, of course, that I now have to turn to developing the fiction to support the game! The setting for Horizon Wars is pretty well developed, even though I've struggled to make headway on any of my attempts to write a single narrative (which, it turns out, might be the fault of that ADHD I've previously me...

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED - Platinum Best Seller

I posted a while back that I was on the cusp of reaching the Platinum Best Seller status but, well, it turns out that things are never quite that simple.

Wargame Vault (or rather, their parent company OneBookShelf or, rather, Roll20 who recently merged with OBS and became the dominant entity or, rather, Orr Group LLC that is the holding company for Roll20*) actually has a pretty rigorous standard for deciding whether a sale counts towards metals.

Sales to the author don't count. I...

Horizon Wars: Midnight Lite?

I've been asked about producing a "lite" version of the Midnight Dark rules for commercial partners to use to promote their own products - as well as to serve as a PWYW version of the rules for interested customers on Wargame Vault and, maybe, to take to events and shows and suchlike as a promotional tool.

But I'm wondering about what I should include in it and I'd welcome your suggestions.

See Your Mini in Lights!

I'm ploughing ahead to get Midnight Dark finished and am now talking with artists and others to help add photography and illustrations to the text, and it occurred to me that patrons might enjoy seeing their work in the book if they had the chance.

I'm conscious that this looks a little bit like me outsourcing my job to people who are paying for the privilege, so let me say that *any* patron who submits a suitable photo will get a free pre-release digital edition of the book wh...

Midnight Dark - Cover Art Sketch

One thing I've learned over the nearly-eight years I've been doing this as a regular thing is that artists benefit from clear guidance.

And while I may lack the technology and experience to create my own digital art to the standards I want to see on my book covers, I can still find my way around a pencil.

But one thing that had always defeated me is mechs. I spend ages looking at beautiful mech art online, trying to see and understand how the artists can visualize so perfectly t...

It's an ill wind...

From your perspective, everything I have to say here is good news. I'm going to be getting a lot more time to work on finishing Midnight Dark and even to get back to creating more content for Zero Dark and Infinite Dark. I'm going to be making some more videos and taking a good hard look at whether to continue maintaining the podcast site (your thoughts are welcome).

From my perspective, this is all because I've resigned from my job having been put in...

TONKS & Salute

Work on HWMD continues. But if you're itchy for a new gaming experience, you might to check out Tonks, by Apocrypha_Now (who might, possibly, also be a patron).

Development of Tonks was at least partly supported and inspired by my videos about miniatures game design on YouTube, and is a great example of the kind of game design I enjoy. It doesn't take its theme too seriously, but the design is crisp and clear and, importantly, focused on delivering a very specific kin...

ADHD Powers... Activate!

I'm not going to make A Big Thing about this, but this is by way of illustration of how my brain sometimes gets "switched on" to do something utterly irrelevant to anything else it is supposed to be focused on.

My wife made a joke. And by noon the following day, I had this:

https://precinctomega.teemill.com/product/manatea-tee/

Anyway, I'm going to be posting on the Precinct Omega ...

...Also, it turns out, I have ADHD

I try to keep personal stuff off this feed as much as possible, because it's rarely relevant to the purpose of the blog and not what you're hear to read about. But in this case, I thought it was actually sufficiently relevant to share.

I should say that I haven't had a formal diagnosis. But after he faced some challenges in his education, we did pay to have my son assessed on a range of neurodiversity disorders and although it turns out he doesn't have ADHD (probably ASD), I got to walk...

Rubbish Patreon Continues to be Rubbish (also, thoughts on narrative in miniatures wargaming)

Man, I am not at all surprised by how many of my patrons have cancelled their support recently. This place has been rubbish.

I wanted to assure those of you who remain that I am still not dead. In fact, after taking a while to find my mojo recently, I'm making tremendous progress on Midnight Dark, turning it from the crappy Google docs document you've all seen into a shiny new layout for publication.

I'm currently on about page 33 of what is, currently, 69 pages ...

Can CMON Challenge Games Workshop?

Finally got a new video done.

If you're interested in why I think GW might have a fight on its hands from CMON, despite the company's rocky history with miniatures game and, well, lots of other stuff, check it out.

This script went through a lot of drafts as, initially, I was pretty disparaging of CMON but, the more I dug, the more impressed I was with the company's ability to pivot again and again. They haven't always given the best customer service or fully delivered on their pr...

Update 3 Feb 23

First, Horizon Wars: Midnight Dark. Most of you have seen at least one version of the text, by now. These are strictly, I supposed, alpha versions because they are all to some extent incomplete.

The beta version - in that the rules will be complete in their entirety - will be finished on Monday. Of course, I'm sure more will change and be added, and there will be corrections to make as there always are in any beta. But I will be at the point of preparing to move to layout.

Horizon Wars Beta v0.02 - Elite Edition

See attached, as promised.

It's not the document I was hoping to give you in some respects. I wanted it to be closer to finished-finished whereas this is still, very much, um, not finished. But the more I went over both the notes from the Mech edition of the beta and my own cross-checking, the more bits of the last version I found that just weren't quite done.

So although this isn't nearly as finished as I wanted it to be, it is a good deal more finished...

I ate'nt dead

This should be a nice, long update, so go and get yourself a cup of tea or coffee or a glass of mulled wine or something seasonally appropriate.

Sorted?

Good stuff. Let's chat.

First up: I'm still alive and still working on Horizon Wars: Midnight Dark as my current priority. Given that I've got the whole Christmas break off until 3rd Jan, this is what I'm spending my time doing, this holidays. I will have the latest draft ready for Elite level backers and above by t...

Midnight Dark #006

First up, many thanks to the Mech-level backers for their notes and feedback.

The raw rules are pretty nearly there, with two big features still needing further detailed work: solo play rules and points values.

The solo play rules are basically fine, but I need to get them onto the table more to thrash them out in a bit more detail so I can include a few decent scenarios for players to enjoy from the get-go.

Points values, though, are that much harder to work out in terms of...