Hello, Gamers & Hobbyists!

Before we get into the meat of this the whole team at Beasts of War want to say a very special thank you to @nakchak a valued community and team member who has worked tirelessly behind the scenes with us for a number of years now to get to this stage. Tim, you are a legend mate and much beer shall be flowing your way at UKGE this year!

NOTE: There are still a whole series of updates and processes we are going through over the next while, to keep up to date on whats happening (reindexing of content etc) go here Enabling Functionality Forum

NOTE 2: We also have a lot of additional security in place on the new platform and you may find you get 'Challenge' or 'You are Blocked' screens, as these happen we will work on fine-tuning all the security rules that are in place to minimise the occurances of them, so dont panic, just drop us a message via email or on facebook and we'll help as best as we can.

This is a significant first step for us all as the previous platform had reached the end of its life a number of years ago making any new development for it both difficult and effectively redundant.

Yet we have had dozens of ideas and features we wanted to deliver to you all to give you the finest 'home for your hobby' available anywhere in the world.

So, for the last few years, we have been getting stuck into bringing the website and it's content over to its new platform and introducing the first set of new features we can all use as a community to build a collective knowledge base of our experiences, favourite games and other aspects of our hobby.

As hard as we've worked to bring what is already a massive set of new tools and features for us all to use, the thing that excites us all most is that we know this is just the first step. We can now work as a community to bring many new tools, toys and features to the platform. Importantly, this gives us a space where we can freely and confidently express ourselves and what we love about our hobbies.

What's New?

It’s time for us to take you through what’s new for BoW 2.0...

Your Projects
The jewel in the new platform is the new projects system that allows all of our members to show off their projects and earn the respect and adoration of this amazing community.

Other members of the site can reward project creators on their demonstration of ‘Ideas, Skills & Tutoring’ and every project can be linked to its relevant game or range helping people discover the interesting challenges people set themselves! You can discuss and feedback on Projects here.

Rating Games
We have a brand new star rating system for games that allows you to award silver and gold stars to each aspect of a game such as its Playability, Components, Writing, Art Direction & Replayability.

We know this approach is quite different, but we felt compelled to try something new for ratings that may unlock some deeper and interesting takes on what makes great games. Our whole approach to ‘Aspect Ratings’ can be discussed here.

Reviewing Games
We chose to compliment the statistical emphasis of the rating system with a reviews system that is a little more centred on emotions. Reviewers can choose from one of (currently) nine emotions for their reviews to give a fun and emotive look at how people ‘feel’ about the games they play.

Additionally, reviewers can highlight the ‘Aspects’ of the game they mention to help others find reviews that talk about components or gameplay etc. Discuss Reviews of Games here.

Games Catalogue
A growing games catalogue where you can find all the related information, news, videos and other content and activities going on within the community.

Companies Catalogue
A growing catalogue of the companies who make everything within our hobby.

Ranges Catalogue
For Items that are not games, such as some historical model ranges or terrain or hobby supplies we will catalogue them here within ranges, and collate related content and activities around them.

Places Catalogue
Places to play and enjoy your hobby, from clubs and stores to museums and battlefields heck even gamer friendly pubs and cafes. We hope that places will evolve into a one-stop shop of finding great locations all around the world to feed your hobby desires.

Places can be linked to the games they play to make it easier for community members to discover places they can play their favourite games. You can discuss and feedback on the Places functions here.

Professionals Catalogue
From Game Designers to the world's talented Game Testors and Demonstrators, the professional's catalogue is not only just a place to link their names to the great games they have contributed to, but will rapidly grow into a resource where you can show off your skills and hopefully gain more work in the industry.

New Comments System
Comes with better subscription controls and comment submissions without refreshing the page!

New Forums
Leaner and faster forums with better image uploaders and subscription controls.

New Search & Discovery Features
Ultra-fast search facility that goes deep into the catalogues and the content.

Community Achievements & XP
Every year we will reveal a new set of achievements community members can unlock as they interact with the platform and each other. XP will now be gained for a huge variety of activities taking place all around the community. Feedback on Achievements here.

Mobile Responsive Designs
Every page and feature of the site has been crafted to work seamlessly across all manner of mobile devices and set top boxes. So, no matter what you log in with, you will have access to all aspects of the platform.

More Security & Privacy
We have gone deep into providing more privacy options than ever before, allowing you to enjoy your hobby in confidence and privacy.

Not everyone ‘gets’ our hobby, so this platform is a place where you can enjoy as much or as little anonymity as you choose.

A New Scalable Underlying Server Architecture
Backing up all of this we have invested in a new scalable cloud architecture that should hopefully enable us to continue growing the community and it’s content far into the future, with fast delivery of data and stable connections.

Of course, there will be plenty of bugs to iron out of this first phase over the next days and weeks, but please bear with us and do get involved in the discussions taking place in the Technical Support forums, where we will be answering questions on all new features and taking feedback on them and the direction we are headed.

We’ve got much more coming so watch this space!