Strange Aeons - 2nd Edition Preview

Strange Aeons announced a second edition of their Horror skirmish game:

Why Publish a 2nd Edition?
It’s hard to believe the original release of Strange Aeons was nearly five years ago. In the miniature gaming world, that’s a long time for a product to stand unaltered. We’re of the firm belief that you don’t update until you absolutely have to, and with our existing rules now spread across five volumes, plus five years of unused ideas rolling about in our heads to boot, the time has finally come to issue an updated edition of the game.

What’s Included, and What’s Changing?
Strange Aeons 2nd Edition will include all the core rules from the 1st Edition combined with the additional rules, scenarios and Lurkers that appeared in Shocking Tales of Madness and Mayhem and Morbid Adventures. Basically, everything that wasn’t part of a Black Dossier has been crammed into one jam-packed volume of eldritch miniature madness! All of these rules have been reviewed, revised and streamlined where appropriate to improve the flow of the game, balance, replayability, and ease of comprehension for new players.
“But is there any new stuff?”, you ask? Of course! Being avid gamers ourselves, we don’t like buying an ‘updated’ product with no new content any more than you do. Strange Aeons 2nd Edition features a wealth of new and revised content, including:
Expanded Master Weapons List with rebalanced stats and costs
A doubled selection of Special Gear
More Special Agents, which are now easier to recruit
Multi-tiered Promotion system, with expanded game size for veteran Threshold squads
Skills have been expanded and revised to provide a much broader selection and a greater sense of character customization
Many brand new Lurker profiles, plus rebalanced costs for existing Lurkers
New terrain rules, including water, snow and ice
And we’re adding yet more as playtesting progresses. It really is a whole new game!

When will 2nd Edition be available?
We’ve opted to raise funds for 2nd Edition via Kickstarter. The campaign will launch on Wednesday, October 1st, and run through November 2nd. We’ll continue taking pre-orders after the campaign wraps, with a target release date in August 2015.

Why Kickstarter?
For a number of reasons, the Kickstarter funding model is a great fit for Strange Aeons. First, it lets us know exactly how many books to print and models to produce, which in the past has been a somewhat unpredictable guessing game that left us in an endless cycle of reprints and temporarily unavailable titles. Second, the rapidly increasing cost of shipping is making our old system of releasing a new model every few months impractical, as frequent small purchases make little sense economically; most players would prefer to bundle their products and save on shipping. Releasing a large portion of the product line in one fell swoop really makes a great deal of sense, both for us as the producer and you as the consumer. Third, we very much want to maintain Uncle Mike’s Worldwide as a fully independent game manufacturer with a strong and immediate connection to our player base, and funding products directly through you is the best way to achieve that goal.

Will your Kickstarter be EU-Friendly?
An enormous proportion of the Strange Aeons player base resides in the EU, and we want you to be able to enjoy the game without having to worry about a massive VAT bill when your package arrives. We are therefore planning to ship all Kickstarter pledges through a fulfillment service with warehouses in multiple countries. This will allow backers in Canada, the US and EU to receive their packages free of taxes and duties.

I’d rather pay with PayPal, but Kickstarter doesn’t accept it.
No worries! We’ll be accepting PayPal pledges directly through our website, and will apply PayPal pledges to unlocking stretch goals.

Link: Strange Aeons