By Modiphius Entertainment
Art by CLOUD
Hardwar is a fast playing tactical sci-fi game covering armour, airfcraft, walkers, mechs (or hardbots), and infantry. You can play solo, co-op or versus games, typically getting a game of 4-8 miniatures a side finished within an hour.
The setting is relatively hard science fiction on near future Earth battlefields featuring electronic warfare, drones, cybernetics, combat swarms, exotic weapons and more. The game concept was first created by Robey Jenkins. The full rules were developed by Krzysztof Raczynski, Rafał Zerych of Strato Minis, who then went on to develop the storyline and setting for Hardwar.
Hardwar is designed with 6mm scale miniatures in mind. Smaller scale wargaming has been made more popular by the recent Legion Imperialis release, but has been around in wargaming for many years, often for mass tank battles. However, this scale also lets you have quick pickup games of a few miniatures on a small coffee table, or huge sweeping tactical confrontations across a more normal-sized wargame board. Nothing stops you from enlisting your favourite 10, 15 or even 32mm scale forces, though, you just need to adjust the movement distances and size of the battlefield to account for it.
The official miniatures have their origins with a host of talented sculptors, including Stephane Chasseloup, Rafał Zerych, Christian Gerner, Ben Myers, Kamil Boruc, Giorgio Espinos, Krzysztof Raczynski and Mariusz Klat. Modiphius own Chris ‘Chrispy’ Peacey, and Colin Grayson have been hard at work re-mastering all the designs to a much higher level of detail for our own UK based factory, Modiphius Manufacturing, to produce in our super high detailed multi-part resin production process. Sean Bullough from our team created the awesome thematic new farming terrain and defences.
When the Strato Minis team announced they were looking for a partner to pass on the Hardwar range, Chris Birch, co-founder of Modiphius got in touch having had a life long interest in this scale of gaming. Chris felt the Modiphius team could take Hardwar to new battlefields, and develop both the story and the range. as well as making it more accessible. The 8-9 model faction starter sets are now priced at just £25 (instead of £40-50 for the same contents), and the digest size hardback rulebook is just £15 and had a big overhaul.
With the 3D team hard at work upgrading the files for the miniatures, improving the level of detail, and creating the new farm scenery, Chris set about looking at the rules not just for editing but next steps. First in that process was a streamlined Quickplay that could be a short pdf for people to download and try the game with whatever miniatures they had. This involved considering which parts of the rules could be cut, what was absolutely needed, and what could be simplified for the purpose of learning the core mechanics. Much like a tabletop RPG Quickstart is a good way to get a feel for a new roleplaying game, the Hardwar Quickplay should give players a feel for this new world.
If you’re familiar with Modiphius games you’ll know we’ve been leading the way with many solo games like Five Parsecs From Home, Rangers of Shadowdeep, the Solo Gamemaster’s Guide, Star Trek Captain’s Log, and Fallout Wasteland Warfare so it’s no surprise Chris wanted to add solo and co-op gameplay to Hardwar. Building on the foundation of mechanics developed for another recent solo narrative miniatures game by Modiphius, Cohors Cthulhu Tactics, Chris is developing a system to manage the enemy forces and give you a tactically challenging experience.
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Give Hardwar a try by downloading the free quickplay.
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