Battleplan goes mobile

Today we bring Battleplan to the palm of your hand with the new Battleplan Mobile Edition site. It's a beautiful marriage, really, because it makes perfect sense. When gathered around a table full of miniatures or cards, practically everyone has their mobile phone with them, but how many bring their laptop computer? Often there isn't even enough room for it, and when there is, using it can be awkward because it's off to the side or otherwise in the way. But, with the rise of the newer, more powerful smartphones, we'll be able to take greater advantage of the as-you-go style of computing that mobile devices offer verses the stop-and-go of laptops and desktops.

To visit the new Mobile Edition site, simply direct your smartphone to mythacle.com.

Introducing Battleplan for Summoner Wars

A little over a month ago, the startup Plaid Hat Games debuted its first game: Summoner Wars. And it has been duly well received by the gaming community. If Summoner Wars is a sign of things to come, we're anxiously awaiting what other gaming goodness Plaid Hat Games has to turn out!

Upon reading the rules for Summoner Wars, we instantly saw it fitting in perfectly with our growing family of Battleplan consoles. So as our closing efforts for the year 2009, we give you our third and newest console, Battleplan for Summoner Wars.

Have a Mythacle New Year!

Breaking the rules

There is one clear advantage tabletop games have over video games: house rules. House rules are deviations from the standard rules that are (hopefully) agreed upon by those participating in a game session. They might involve large changes, minor tweaks, or simply a particular interpretation of the standard rules. They might aid in simplifying the game, or they may add new types of dynamics and challenges. With tabletop games, and house rules, you can play the game the way you want to play it.

With this in mind, we have adopted a policy of keeping letter-of-the-law restrictions to a minimum in Battleplan. Battleplan will do less of rules enforcing and offer more of rules reminding.

We begin observing this policy in today's release by allowing duplicate Unique units in a Heroscape army or a HeroClix force. For example, in Heroscape it's not uncommon for some players to treat Zettian Guards as a Common Squad and have several of them in their army. Now Battleplan will allow that army to be created.

The half gray/half green "add" button is a visual indication that while adding a duplicate is allowed by Battleplan, it isn't allowed according to the game's rules.

Have fun breaking the rules!

Battleplan for HeroClix: Alpha2

Yesterday, we rolled out an update to Battleplan for HeroClix. We're calling it Alpha2. That just means it's still not ready for prime time, but it is a little closer. Here are some of the new things to look for:

• Team Ability, Trait, and Special Power descriptions
• Character keywords
• Groups for grouping by stat symbol (Boot, Wing, Dolphin, etc.)
• Working filters
• Improved layout for character powers
• Improved layout for popup balloon

And coming soon: force printing capability.

If you have an idea you'd like to see in Battleplan for HeroClix, suggestions can be posted to the Batteplan Help Group.

Better Army Card images

Over the next several weeks, we'll be rolling out new Army Card images. This will address several issues we've had with the old images, such as missing card images, inaccurate information on some cards, and copious JPEG artifacts.

We already have some of the new images online. So far, we've installed new images for Marvel: The Conflict Begins, Defenders of Kinsland (Wave 8), Blackmoon's Siege (Wave 9), Crest of the Valkyrie, and three of the five promo units. The others will follow over the next several weeks as we work through the scans and process them one by one (which can be a time-consuming, labor-intensive process).

Introducing Battleplan for HeroClix

Yesterday evening we released the new Battlplan console for HeroClix! The HeroClix console is currently in the Alpha stage of development. This simply means that the core set of features isn't finalized yet and there are some things that need to be added to be a full-fledged force designer for modern HeroClix. Specifically, the things we'll be adding includes listing team abilities, character special powers, named powers, keywords, and feats.

Don't forget the upside to it being an Alpha version: you of the HeroClix community have a chance to provide early input on the things you'd like to see in a force designer and help define the direction of Battleplan. If you have thoughts on the matter, join the Battleplan Help Group and let us know.

Subgroups and more

Battleplan now gives you the ability to subgroup units in the Units list. Who are the Human Champions that can take advantage of the MacDirk Warriors' powers? Or who are the Vydar units with a Range of 4 or more that can benefit from Vydar's Range Enhancement Aura emanating from Laglor? Now these kinds of questions are a little easier to answer using subgroups.

Accompanying subgroups are additional grouping categories. Here are the new ones.

• Universe for easily separating classic Heroscape from Marvel.
• Type (Common/Unique) if you don't care whether a unit is a Hero or a Squad.
• Type (Hero/Squad) if you don't care whether a unit is Common or Unique.
• Figures, because more figures in a Squad means more attacks per turn.
• Spaces (Per Figure) to easily find those double-space units.
• Spaces (All Figures) when you're concerned about starting zone limitations.

The Universe, Figures, and Spaces (for all figures) also appears on the unit's dossier summary.