Six Year Plan - Mortal Gods hits the table, and why cards will strangle a game.

So in 2019 I was playing Impetus in 28mm (great game) and Mortal Gods from Footsore Miniatures* was released. As I already had some Persians I thought Hoplites? "Why not?" So I split the starter set with my mate Paul and then ............... got distracted. The plastic hoplites got given away and the rules sat idle.

Then a few weeks ago Rob and Mark suggested we get into a small scale historical skirmish - they suggested Saga, but sometimes you just have to go with the flow. I'm not a fan of Saga. 

While the Saga wheels were slowly turning I remembered Mortal Gods and mentioned it - and was surprised that both Rob and Mark had it but had never played. So we decided to give it a go.

AND - it's been fun. We've played twice now and will be introducing them to our games group next week.

The rules are a development of Test of Honour, but they certainly have quite a lot more hidden under the hood and don't have the problems I remember with power creep that ToH succumbed to (IMHO).

One positive now we are playing is just how small the forces are. The rules say the usual 12-20 figures a side, but as we are initially only playing 225 points it's looking very much on the 12 figures end of the scale. I can probably paint that in a week. The group bases were easy enough to manage now I have a 3d printer (yes everything is a 3d printer problem when you have one)

AND - there's the rub. The starter set is now out of print. The game relies on a number of cards. Stat cards, Omens, Wound Cards, and Gifts (special abilities). Back in 2019 when this was released cards were all the rage. EVERYTHING had cards, and some of them were even limited availability just to encourage the FOMO \ Gotta catch them all thing. Luckily Mortal Gods didn't, but it did rely heavily on cards to carry the info that in the past would maybe be handled by army lists and playsheets. This is a bugger if you want to introduce a game to a new player "It's great but you cant play without the cards so tough" etc

So now I'm speculating (based on conversations with folks in "The Industry") but cards are expensive. Compared to the other content, printed materials are a major cost factor. You can't do without rules, and playsheets are pretty much essential, but other printed "stuff" like cards or counters ain't cheap. Plastic figures - what usually draws the punters in, is ridiculously cheap to manufacture once the frame \ mould is created. I'd wager in many cases the cardboard box almost costs more than the figures inside. Here the Mortal Gods starter set was already in a happy place because the project was a collaboration with Victrix, who had already made the Hoplite and other figure sprues. The problem is the Mortal Gods starter had 163 cards in there. When Footsore planned the game they will have bought x sets of cards, which would be enough for their expected production run. No idea, but let's say a thousand just to work with. They got the printing done at a bulk discount, but what happens when you sell them all? Crap! You probably can't expect to sell another thousand sets any time soon as the peak demand will have passed, but printing cards in smaller batches is going to ramp up the costs. So cards strangle wargames. 

Footsore have obviously realised this and have converted the info on the cards into a more traditional roster system and tables. They have done the same with their Gangs of Rome game which in v1 released with lots of individual cards but now have shifted to playsheets and roster sheets for v2. 

So I've bought some Hoplites and will hopefully be playing some more games soon.

*It's a skirmish \ warband game set in Ancient Greece, a little bit like Warlord's SPQR except it works . I forgot to explain that !