Interview with Adrian McWalter about Shadowstorm

 

Let’s welcome on our blog Mr. Adrian McWalter, prolific wargame designer, known for his work for Warlord game (Clash of Eagles for example). Today we discuss a new game published by his own company Stand to Games currently on Kickstarter –Shadowstorm, which is „Corps level" fantasy game where you will command several brigades of classical and not so classical fantasy races on the tabletop battlefield.

Adrian, can you tell us something about yourself, your wargaming history?

Hi, my name is Adrian McWalter or Ady Mc, I have been gaming since my early teens playing both historical (mainly Napoleonics) and fantasy games. I guess like most fantasy players I have spent most of my life playing Warhammer Fantasy Battle. I have played in WHFB tournaments since the late 90’s and done well winning lots of events as well as winning lots of best sportsman prizes, I am really proud of the latter. I have represented Team England at the European Team Championships on a couple of occasions. As a result of my WHFB results I was invited by Games Workshop to help with playtesting their rules and have done so with the 5^th/6^th/7^th editions and more recently Age of Sigmar. I have also appeared in the GW magazine White Dwarf on a number of occasions where I have played in games using my favourite army Bretonnians.

Away from fantasy gaming I love Napoleonic gaming and have written three supplements for a company called Warlord Games. Those supplements compliment their Black Powder rules.

I play regularly at my local club, playing Shadow Storm mainly although I do love playing Over the Hills and Forager.

 Can you introduce Stand to Games and their products?

In 2016 I decided to set up my own wargames company to show case my ‘home grown rules , such as Over the Hills (Napoleonic) Rise and Fight Again (AWI) Over Malvern Hill (ACW) and Forager (Napoleonic Skirmish) all of those rule sets have done well and I have received positive feedback on them. As I have played fantasy games most of my life I have always wanted to produce a set of rules that cover the things that I believe are missing from games such as Kings of War and Warhammer, Shadow Storm is that set.

Can you please introduce the Shadowstorm to us?

Shadow Storm is a fantasy rule set where a player can use D10’s or D6’s, they can be used to play small or large games. Small games can be played by layering lots of special rules onto the units involved to give a more narrative feel whilst large games, and I am talking 50 units plus can be accommodated by toning down the number of special rules. Obviously there is the middle ground where players can use say five to ten units aside ( a typical Warhammer/KOW affair). Units have a set of statistics which are: move -shoot-combat- defence- might- special abilities. When shooting or fighting a unit matches its shoot/combat against the enemies defence to get the number of dice the player roles, tactical factors also come into play here.

Taken from Kickstarter preview:

Units in Shadow Storm are multi-based like many other rules systems I play such as Hail Caesar and KoW, but it still allows Warhammer players such as me to use movement trays to create that multi-base feel albeit with single miniatures. There is a piece written in the campaign section that states that players record hits against a unit’s Might characteristic and a unit reduced to zero might is classed as broken and removed from the game. I thought that was enough to identify that the rules where not a single figure removal mechanic. That said, perhaps I should have spelt it out more.

The game does have a broad approach, and I will try and explain further, small games allow players to layer their units with several unique attributes and leader attachments as well as character (mighty Heroes) creation again with unique characteristics. A quick, but characterful game could be played with three units easily. Yet, players can accommodate larger games by reducing the number of attributes a unit has and reducing the number of attachments they receive. One thing that has come through in feedback from playtest groups is that Shadow Storm handles larger games (20 + units per side ) better than others on the market.

I play Warhammer and KoW, and Shadow Storm is different because I wanted a game that offered a different and unique perspective of fantasy wargaming. I have been involved in fantasy wargaming since the 90’s I have been part of a small group of play testers for Games Workshop for many years, working on 5th/6th/7th editions of Warhammer and recently AoS. I say that to identify that I do understand the concepts of rules writing and knew how to make Shadow Storm different to what was already on the market. Over the next few days, Joanne and I will be highlighting those differences, but here are a few:

Army building is different with players creating commands to form their armies; a command has a commander and several units. In a game, players alternate activating commands starting with the player who has the initiative. This gives players a real choice as to how they manage the ensuing battle and impacts on command and control.

Command and control and the rally phase interact to ensure a commander has choices to make about the positioning of their units and themselves. Players have found that the command ranges set for each commander mean that they cannot do everything they want to and takes away the ‘god-like’ feel. When units start to take hits, commanders must position themselves to rally those units, and this may take some of their units’ out of command’ and unable to move. In playtesting this has come out as a strong plus for the game.

Movement is different in that depending on the formation and unit type a unit can move several ‘move segments’, if a player chooses to move all the segments available to a unit, that unit will take a hit. Interacting with terrain is different too, in most games terrain slows a unit down, in Shadow Storm in can do, or a player can choose to push their unit on, at its regular movement rate, but the unit will take hits for doing so.

Shooting and combat follow a similar process which is different form KoW or Warhammer; a unit has an attack stat, be that shoot or combat, and this is matched against the targets defence stat. If an attacking unit had an attack stat of 7 and the target had a defence stat of 3 the attacking unit would have 4 dice + or – tactical factors.

Units, depending on their type, can respond to an enemy charge by counter charging against the initial charge.

Shadow Storm is a game where you record hits against a unit in the same way as several other games such as KoW, the difference though is, in Shadow Storm commanders can attempt to recover those hits through rallying their units, over and above regeneration and healing spells etc.

Commanders also have heroic intervention points, that they use through the game to reroll dice or attempt to snatch the initiative from their opponent.

The way magic items interact with players is different in that players select at random several magic items from the five card decks of scrolls, banners, armour, trinkets and weapons the number depends on the size of the game.

In Shadow Storm, some sections allow you to create units of mighty heroes, monsters (although all the usual suspects are pre-written) and create war machines, although some are already pre-written in the army lists.

 What are the design goals for Shadowstorm?

Shadow Storm takes rules mechanics from several of our games, they have been moulded together to produce what we believe is a fast yet fun games system. Our main goals where:

1. Play with any scale of figures
2. Small or large games can be played by layering special rules
3. Cover things that were missing from other rule sets, such as the ability for units to counter charge
4. Play with D6 or D10 depending on your preference
5. The game could be played on many levels be that narratively or in a tournament setting.
6. Create a rich fantasy setting  

There are currently two books coming - Shadowstorm and The Gathering Storms. How they work together. I understand that The Gathering Storm is book of army lists. Does it means that in Shadowstorm are no army lists?

You are right there are two books Shadow Storm is the main rule book and really is all you need to play the game. Within that book are all the rules you need plus scenarios, points systems, and basic unit stats for a number of armies, but there are no army lists. That said it allows you to ‘point up’ the armies that you have to play the game. The additionality comes with the Army list supplement The Gathering Storm Armies of the Shadow Lands. Within that supplement there are twelve lists and they are Orcs and Goblins, Dwarfs, Living Dead, The Imperium of Man, Feudal Lords, RatKin Under Kingdoms, Kingdom of Elves, Elves of the Shadow Kingdoms, Ruinous Powers, The Land of the Scythians, Forest Elves and Ice Kingdoms.

We thought about putting everything into one book, but it would have been too big and cost the same as having the rules and lists separately. That said there is enough information in the main rulebook to play the game.

There is further additionality as we have created spell cards and magic item cards to assist players navigate the game.

The cards looks very nice. Do we need them, or they are just optional? And what’s in the deck?

The cards are a nice to have, but yes they are optional. There are four magic decks Earth, Air, Fire and Water all with nine spells, and then 70 magic item cards split between trinkets, scrolls, banners, armour and weapons.

So I can play the game without need to purchase The Gathering Storm, Which races are covered in Shadowstorm, and which are planned for the Gathering Storm.

Don’t get me wrong , I would love people to go out and get the rules and its sister supplement, but yes you can play the game with just the rules as in there are basic stats for your main fantasy types as well as monsters , elementals , and war machines as well as advise on how to create stats for units and points costs.

Back to rules. I have seen in your introduction, that Over the Hills and Forager are mixed together for this game. That’s very interesting as Over the Hills is Corpse Level Napoleonic Game, where Forager is Man2Man skirmish. Can you explain how it works together?

We have taken the movement and fatigue mechanism from Over the Hills and blended that with the combat mechanics of Forager. Over the Hills is a Napoleonic Wargame where there is no single figure casualty removal, units take hits until they are broken. It can be played with a brigade of say five units to a corps of say 20 plus units, the mechanics handle both small and large games. |In Forager our Napoleonic skirmish game combat is dealt with by adding and taking dice away from a basic combat stat depending on your troop quality versus the enemy with tactical factors layered over that.

Corpse level size of games is very unusual for fantasy games. Why do you choose such design? By the way I love it. I am long-time fan of Dragonlance, where war is main driven concepts of the series. And the armies were used in old ADnD Battlesystem. I am looking to match my army of Whitestone council against Dragon armies of my bro Jindra.

You don’t have to play the game at that level it can accommodate lots of units but a game of five to ten units is really where the game comes to life as you get that big game feel, but can add a lot of unit flavour with attributes e.g Doom Seekers (don’t take courage tests) , leader attachments e.g. apprentice mage (low level wizard attachment)  and unit attachments e.g. camp followers ( increase might stat by one )

In Czech Republic, most fantasy players never heard about historical games, so some design concepts are unknown to some of them.  For example corpse level game where you command armies – corps – divided in several brigades and brigades to regiment. How does command and control works in Shadowstorm?

Armies are made up of one or more commands, and a command has one commander and three to nine units. A commander has a command range, and their units have to be within that command range to move, although there are certain units that can ignore that. The game doesn’t have to be masses of units on each side, I recently too two people through a game of Dwarfs v Orcs with one command and five units each.

Is it possible to play the game single based on round bases? You know, there is that game from the market dominating company on round bases.

Yes and I do, I have a Living Dead army that is made up of night haunt figures that I have put on movement trays , but you don’t have to just have them side by side I guess. As long as both players agree. Shadow Storm is that flexible.

Fantasy is the game about heroes. About Wizards, Paladins, Barbarians, and sometimes Antiheroes as well (its matter of perspective of course). Napoleonics has its own heroes, but they do not slay singlehandedly whole regiments and dragons. How are monsters and heroes incorporated in the game?

The game includes commanders be they heroes, wizards, deamons etc , each with their own differences but basically a commander as a command range , Battle prowess, Heroism and Heroic intervention points. Such commanders can add their weight to combats using their battle prowess for example. Then there are good and evil mighty heroes that you can personalise by adding different attributes. Over and above that there are leader attachments that you attach to units, these include minor heroes and wizards.

Also included here are wizards and heroes riding monsters, so the leader of an Orc command could be riding a Wyvern for example.

There are tons of Fantasy game. Why another?

I have played fantasy games for over thirty years and been involved in the rules writing process for several games including WHFB. I believe that these rules cover the gaps that are in other rules sets, without  over complicating things.

What do you feel is the strongest aspect of the Shadowstorm? There are tons of games on the shelves and web alike, so the key question is what is the reason for a potential buyer to purchase the game? Specifically why I have to buy another fantasy game? This is very strong question I feel, as I asked in the past about it to some others and did not receive acceptable answer. What do you think about it, how do you promote the game on already wide market?

The hardest thing as a small company, is convincing people that our product is a quality one, everyone who has played Shadow Storm have loved it and we have received very positive feedback. The game does not play like any other on the market, in my opinion they are better. It is not I go you go, so players interact closely all the way through the game. Command and control takes the ‘god like’ approach  away from  a player, movement is different form other rules sets allowing players to push their units on rather than the normal half move approach to terrain. Shooting and Combat is totally different with the Shoot/Combat v  Defence mechanic adding and taking dice away. Being able to use either D6 or D10, creating your own monsters, heroes and war machines.

Thank you very much for your comments, we wish you luck on the Kickstarter with delivery in April 2021 (I have birthday on the 9^th by the way).

P.S. the Fatigue Boards – will they be available again?

Yes they will COVID willing

Pictures from Kickstarter campaign approved by Adrian McWalter