Banner Saga board game Warbands takes to Kickstarter next week
A cooperative game with lovely little miniatures.
There's a Banner Saga miniatures board game! Or at least there will be if the Kickstarter campaign, which launches next week (12th November), is a success.
The game is Banner Saga Warbands and it's made by small American company MegaCon. Warbands has been in design for about a year, and all the prototypes of the miniatures, boards and cards are ready. The aim of the Kickstarter campaign is to raise enough money to go into full manufacturing - but how much money it needs we don't yet know.
MegaCon has been working with Banner Saga creator Stoic to capture the spirit of the video game, and has made what is described as "an innovative, cooperative miniature-based board game that deals with the difficulties and consequences of decision making". And that's really all there is to know for now.
The Banner Saga video game lends itself very well to being a board game. Combat is grid-based and turn-based, and characters are restricted both in movement and abilities, so it shouldn't be difficult to translate onto a board in real-life. But how the board game will handle the parts of the game where a caravan travels across a frozen tundra, and supplies dwindle and people die - and also the dialogue sections - remains to be seen. Maybe it simply won't.
The Banner Saga was Kickstarted once upon a time and and came out in early 2014 to wide acclaim. A sequel is planned for consoles (PS4 and Xbox One) as well as PC, and is due Q1 2016.
The Banner Saga 1 is also being ported to PS4, and was supposed to be out this year. I'm trying to find out what's happening there.
Incidentally, publisher Versus Evil is holding a sale on Steam right now, in which The Banner Saga is only £3.74!
