Update (January 9, 2025):
CMON have released their first narrative scenario since the Whispering Wood in October 2018. This time it's the Harrying of the Stony Shore, showcasing the Starks and Greyjoys. I think it's great they're finally releasing some narrative content, and I hope there's more coming soon. As far as the scenario design, I think it's cool that it's offering a totally different play experience. The format creates an interesting framework for scenarios where one side is heavily outnumbered.
I originally posted my version of the Harrying of the Stony Shore in July 2021, right after the release of House Greyjoy. This is one scenario I've thought about revisiting for awhile, especially since the release of the Stony Shore Pillagers. I also don't like that Howland Reed is the Stark commander, as he wasn't physically there in the books. I plan to replace him with a proxy commander when I eventually update it (update to the update: the scenario is now updated). If you would like to compare both Harryings, you can view my scenario here:
Original Post:
Overall, 2024 was probably the best year yet for Board Man Gaming. Things kicked off with the enormous expansion of Break the Siege, which included almost every significant castle/city in Westeros and Essos. Later in the year I added new siege defender and attacker cards that better suit the current version of the game.
2024 was the debut of the Others faction. This allowed me to work on lots of new scenarios, including the Fight at the Fist and the Massacre at Hardhome. If you are interested in reading about the Others in action, I highly recommend this fun battle report from our friend Teemu at 25 Years of Minis. Overall, I’m very happy with how the Others faction is currently performing and don’t foresee any major changes or additions.
Speaking of custom factions, House Arryn reached a fun milestone by achieving over 10,000 views. Considering this is a niche, rarely promoted website for a relatively niche tabletop game, I think that’s a cool accomplishment.
After a long hiatus we saw the return of Campaign of Thrones. I was also finally able to combine all the creative writing from the Campaign story into one post. The YouTube channel Le Bar à Théo has continued to publish amazing battle reports based on my custom scenarios, the latest being a battle from the Campaign of Thrones, the Battle of Nagga's Hill:
As always, I’ve tinkered with various custom scenarios throughout the year. A good example from 2024 is the Alchemist’s Substance. This scenario was originally posted in 2019 featuring a ‘race to the plateau’ mechanic that had been left mostly unchanged over the last 5 years. I’m now going back and altering older scenarios like this that contained unique gameplay mechanics and changing them to instead focus on unique board layouts, custom units, and occasionally 1 simple custom rule (or 1 for each faction). My reasoning behind this is that after extensive playtesting I’ve found ‘chasing/racing’ concepts to be too swingy and mainly lead to boring, one-sided games.
One unique mechanic I'm interested in exploring further in 2025 are Wild Beast units, which are non-playable or dual control animal units that wander the battlefield, such as the lizard-lion from the scenario Crossing the Neck:
I'm hoping to continue this momentum in 2025 with new scenarios, battle reports, and more. The rest of the Others-centric scenarios are pretty much ready to go, I’m just waiting for the North American release/War Council update of the Brotherhood Without Banners to grab some additional assets to finish the documents. These scenarios include the destruction of the Wall, Battle for Winterfell (broken up into several scenarios), and the wight hunt beyond the Wall, which will include a special character unit:
Once the Brotherhood are added to War Council I plan to add Hollow Hill to Break the Siege, which of course will have an extremely unique ruleset as its not a traditional stronghold.
I’m planning to wrap-up the Bolton and Greyjoy storylines from Campaign of Thrones, then decide from there if I want to continue the series or switch to more one-off battle reports (included several connected battles, but without the narrative fluff, like playing a best 5-out-of-7 with the scenarios that make up the Battle for Winterfell).
While my 3 biggest projects (House Arryn, the Others, and Break the Siege) happened rather spontaneously, I’ve already started work on a new custom faction that I hope to share with the community this summer. Originally, I didn’t like the idea of spending a lot of time on custom units when CMON could potentially release their own version within a year or two, but it’s gotten to a point where CMON’s release schedule is quite slow and predictable, so I feel comfortable investing time in another faction (especially since people seem to really enjoy them). Like the Others, I don’t think this faction is currently on CMON’s radar, and will help me complete my goal of creating custom scenarios of every battle from the books and show.
I hope to receive my A Song of Ice & Fire: Tactics pledge sometime this summer, and I’ll start posting scenarios from Robert’s Rebellion and the Dance of the Dragons. The Dance scenarios will include dragon units that remain off the battlefield (like NCUs) but can be attacked by other dragons and ranged units. I’m still fiddling with the mechanics, but I think it will be a fun, cost effective solution to relive the epic dragon battles from the books and show.
As for the TMG, my wishlist for this year includes House Frey units, Edmure Tully (please CMON, I desperately need him to finish all the War of the Five Kings scenarios), and either a House Tully or House Tyrell mini-faction (I would love to have Garlan and Willas Tyrell). Either way, I was very excited to see how characterful the Brotherhood Without Banners release was and I’m looking forward to what's next.
Thanks again for all the support. I’m looking forward to chatting with fellow fans and sharing more stuff with this amazing community in 2025.
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