Over the past few weeks we have been shown some fantasy miniature designs by Sword and Board Games. Recently they have made an announcement that they will be teaming up with Alessio Cavatore's River Horse Games to create their game's rules!

Here is the official announcement with all the details:

"We are pleased to announce that Sword & Board Games and Alessio Cavatore's River Horse will be working in partnership to produce the rules for our upcoming fantasy skirmish game.

On board for this project we will not only have Alessio Cavatore himself. We will also be joined by Dylan Owen, who has worked for Games Workshop, Fantasy Flight (Dark Heresy and Warhammer Fantasy RPG) and Black Library. Also on board is Anthony Reynolds. Anthony has done work for Mantic Games (working on their Kings of War fantasy game), Black Library and Games Workshop.

The core rulebook will include

- The main rules for playing the game.

- Scenarios.

- 43,000 words of rich Background History, Faction Fluff, Character Information, Short Stories, etc.

- Warband lists and stats for the first 5 planned factions. Also included are states for 6 characters.

- Rosters and reference sheets.

- Great artwork from some talented artists.

Our rules are designed with both new and veteran gamers in mind. Easy to pick up for someone just starting out. But also challenging for veteran gamers. We aim to add new and exciting rules additions in the future for other styles of play.

One of the things that makes our game different from other fantasy tabletop games is that we are getting rid of the “fantasy race racism” that is found in the majority of fantasy games. You will have a choice to pick warriors from 9 fantasy races for your Warband. So you may have Orcs, Humans, Trolls, Halflings, Fauns, and Goblins etc working alongside each other. Each race will have different statistics and skills. A player will have to choose a balance of races that best suits their style of play. Alongside the different race statistics and skills a player will also have the abilities and equipment granted to them by the faction the have chosen to play.

A set of free quick start rules will be released around the same time as the rulebook.

We have a lot more planned for the future to support this game and we really hope we get the opportunity to show you all that we have to offer.

We are really excited to have such industry talent working alongside us on this project. The name for this game will be released in the coming weeks along with the logo."

Leaving aside the pedigree of names who will be working on this the concept behind the game sounds interesting. The idea of having factions which aren't restricted to one particular race is interesting, though I fear that it might end up removing a faction's individual character.

What sort of game do you hope Sword and Board will create?