An Ode to Obscure Games Bonus Edition! Void 1.1

 Hi!

I had planned on getting on with finishing off some sculpts that I've been working on this week but a pounding headache saw tools downed for the day.

It appears that I've been reading, drawing and sculpting more than usual during my hols which has resulted in brain ache but it seems to be relenting somewhat so I thought I'd add a bonus obscure game to the mix and settled on Void 1.1 originally produced by i-Kore back in 2000.

It appeared shortly after the sad demise of Warzone and had much of the team from back in the Grendel and Fantasy Forge days and from what I can gather from chatter back then, it had initially been intended to be Kryomek 2.0 but with the weird split between UK and UK ownership, we ended up with something completely different, yet at the same time familiar.

Artwork was initially supplied by Stuart Beel who had done much of the art for Warzone and I remember hearing that quite a few of the original miniatures for the human factions were leftovers from the 2nd edition of Warzone.

The setting revolves around the the uneasy alliances of the Viridians, Junkers, Syntha and policed by VASA who encounter the alien menace, the Koralon out on the frontier resulting in everyone fighting to claim worlds, defeat the alien menace and generally stabbing each other in the back.

This background is remarkably similar to the Kryomek one but instead of borrowing from the 80's sci-fi style of the Aliens movies, it went in a more anime direction. Tech is smooth and sleek, colours are bright and the rules were a lot sleeker than its ancestor.

I remember when the first release of the game came out and was basically a small rulebook and collectors magazine along with the core forces for each of the factions, several of which could be used by everyone. 

This approach was pretty brilliant as it allowed you to collect a decent range of force from the miniatures that were released and every month following, we got a new Battles With Miniatures magazine that laid out more of the background and introduced new units.

Eventually 2nd edition arrived which saw a release of proper force books with several cover illustrations by Adrian Smith, who had worked on Kryomek and Leviathan as well as going onto really develop GW's chaos look.

Similarly the rules were tweaked to encourage somewhat larger games, much like the difference between 2nd and 3rd edition 40k but not as drastic a change so instead of fielding 3-4 squads of 5-10 figures a side, we had a starter set with fifty miniatures which you could build on to create fairly large armies.

By this point, the forces that were available had really started to develop into unique factions with the Viridians riding around on dinosaurs but also having jungle commandos and elite power armour, the Junkers being a bit of a cross between Kryomek Cyclos, Mad Max and the Roman Legions and relying on sheer numbers to win the day. Syntha are high tech with lots of robotic assets, again much like the AI units in Kryomek while VASA has lots of high mobility and peacekeeper type figures as well as stompy robot suits.

The least complete force was actually the Koralon, whose sculpts were decidedly hit or miss and described in the background as sluglike. This was remedied somewhat by the redesign that Adrian Smith worked on for the Koralon forcebook which made them much more menacing and more like the Thing than had really been explored in their previous iteration.

Sadly at this point i-Kore went bust, for reasons that we don't need to go into now but would reappear a few years later as Urban Mammoth which went onto further refine the game into Urban War, a much grittier and darker version of the setting and aimed towards small scale skirmishes on a single planet.

At some point, I do think I'll take a look at it too but thats for another day as Void 1.1 has a lot of retro charm and fond memories for me as I remember playing the game at Borders Books in Edinburgh and collecting a decent sized Koralon and VASA force back in the day.

Handily Void 1.1 was initially picked up by Scotia Grendel (like so many other great games over the years) and is now being produced by SEB GAMES who have got a Void 2.0 due out soon which I look forward to seeing and are slowly gearing up to not only get the full range re-released but it looks like theres some new stuff in the pipeline too.

Now hopefully my headache will clear and I'll be able to get on with some sculpting but in the meantime, All the best!