Dreamblade

New game brings your nightmares to life

Rick Teverbaugh

Any creature that can appear in your dreams … or your nightmares could make an appearance in Dreamblade.

Dreamblade is the new strategic miniatures game from Wizards of the Coast. It will soon be on the store shelves and be making a big splash next month when GenCon, a gamers convention, opens in Indianapolis.

In the near future, specially trained psychics called dream lords venture deep into the dreamscape. Here they explore a shifting landscape of ancient archetypes, modern terrors, and mismatched elements of the waking world. This is the shared unconsciousness of humanity, the boundless well of hopes and fears that makes us human. The reality they create in this timeless realm reverberates through the minds of dreamers everywhere. Some dream lords seek to protect it, others to dominate it, and others to destroy it.

Jonathan [Tweet] and I came up with the game’s basic concepts in a three-hour conversation in a Starbucks just before I was going on vacation,” said Rob Heinsoo, co-creator of Dreamblade. “We entered the conversation knowing that we wanted to design a miniatures game that would focus on seriously competitive tournament play. We left Starbucks with the initiative/spawn/cost system that’s still in the game, a plan for a simple board using a form of area movement, an understanding that board control would have to form a big part of the victory conditions, the notion that many special abilities would be activated by one result on the attack dice that creatures would pool together for combat in a single area, and a plan to experiment with extremely simple options for what players could do on their turn. We were both ready to design a new miniatures game. Our ideas flowed together well and we ended up with a common vision that got stronger during the design and development process.

There are four aspects in the dreamscape and each creature belongs to one of them; valor, fear, madness and passion. Each has different characteristics that the gamer can use to fit his or her playing style.

The player assembles a warband of 16 creatures to do battle with his foe. These creatures are brought into the dreamscape playing board through the use of spawn points. Spawn points are established through a roll of two dice at the beginning of each turn.

After both players have added whatever figures they can to the board, then players take two phases to either move their creatures into different cells or squares on the board or to battle opponents’ creatures that share or contest a cell with their own creatures.

Certainly squares on the board are worth victory points to the players if they are controlled and uncontested by one player. Points are also awarded for creatures destroyed. At the end of each turn each player totals his or her points. Whoever has the most points at the end of that turn wins the turn. The first player to win six turns wins the game.

“Victory isn’t all about destroying enemy creatures, but it helps,” said Heinoo. “Victory isn’t all about controlling the board, but it helps. You’ll eventually discover that there’s a time to concentrate on punishing the enemy and a time to concentrate on spreading out and seeking board control. Recognizing the moment when your best option is the opposite of what you expected is very rewarding.”

Because of the images on some of the figures, Dreamblade is suggested for players 13 years old and up.

The figures are a bit larger than normal by miniature gaming standards. Wizards of the Coast uses the size to produce great detail in the sculptures. Each creature is rated for his attack ability, defense and life. Each also has an individual cost to bring it into play.

In addition, many have a special ability to be used during game play. In order to remove the time-consuming and sometimes confusing process of finding these abilities on a large masterboard as is done with Heroclix, the ability is printed in full on the bottom of each figure.

To help entice players to get into the game, Wizards is putting up cash prizes for its tournaments. There will be regional tournaments nationwide, some with $5,000 total cash awards and some with $1,000 prize pools. At GenCon a sealed box event will have cash prizes of $20,000.

“Dreamblade is a fast-playing high-strategy miniatures game and as such it lends itself to the tournament format,” said Ginger Ahn, brand manager for Dreamblade. “Wizards has developed a great tournament structure to support the game and to allow gamers to have all the opportunities for competition that they will be seeking. GenCon is the launch event for Dreamblade, so Wizards is planning big things to showcase the brand. Our booth will be fully decked out in Dreamblade artwork and we’ll have cool giveaways like T-shirts and miniatures. Additionally, there will be a large-screen TV playing the video trailer, several demo tables, and a life-sized die cut figure from the Dreamscape world to greet gamers.”

Wizards is also offering weekly cash drawings for players who take the online demo at the Dreamblade Web site.

During the next 12 months, Edge tournaments will be held in many stores where players can accumulate points that will gain them entrance into the $50,000 2007 championships to be held at GenCon in Indianapolis. Reader Copies in Anderson is one of the stores that will be hosting these tournaments.

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