Tag Archives: Hell Dorado

Hell Dorado’s Here!

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Hell_Dorado_logo

Just a quick note: my Hell Dorado Kickstarter finally showed up!

I’ve been really pumped about this: I got super-excited about the game back in mid-2007 when a friend and I had to buy the minis from Fantization, who wasn’t so much Asmodee’s distributor as they were the only people who were just importing the damn things from France.   When Asmodee dropped the game, I was sad; then happy when, in 2009, Cipher picked up the license; then sad when they did nothing with it, while games I don’t particularly like (:cough: Malifaux :cough:) that fill a similar niche caught on; then back to happy when the Kickstarter was finally announced.

Digging through the box, everything’s here, which is unusual for a Kickstarter that’s so add-on finicky.  Bravo.  This cannot be overstated: when a company like Mantic (which isn’t GW big, but’s bigger than Cipher big) can’t get the fairly straightforward Deadzone pledges right, it’s both notable and laudable that Cipher got theirs right when there are so many freaking variations.

My book’s mangled to shit, though, so I’ll have to see if I can get a replacement.

Really pumped about the game: I’ve had the full run of Demons and Lost (er Démon and Égarés) up until Asmodee dropped the game (though, to be honest, several of them are still in their boxes in the hobby closet. With this, I’ve caught up the two factions, and picked up a respectable number of Westerners (which I hope to also use in some Baroque-era tabletop games).

Hell Dorado – Painted Minis

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As promised, here are the photos of my painted Hell Dorado minis: these are almost the entire (French) Démon starter (minus the Succubus), plus the Golem.  I painted them three years ago, so it hurts a little for me to look at them: I know I could do a much better job on some of them now (I’m looking at you Infernal Ambassador), though I remain satisfied with the Golem and the Lemure.

(I’ve definitely figured out that the trick to actually following through on my occasional “Tomorrow, I’ll…” posts is to actually write the dang post immediately afterwards.  Otherwise, I get distracted and it never happens.)

Hell Dorado

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It was with some disappointment that I picked up the Hell Dorado rulebook a few weeks ago.

See, back in mid-’08, I was all about Hell Dorado.  The minis are gorgeous.  Between Google Translate and a guy we knew on RPG.net’s OGO forum (a Finn who’d gotten the French rulebook and helped us out with some rules), we were able to fumble through a fistful of games and it was fun.  We threw together cheat sheets and even set up a freaking Google Group.  I’ve got a nearly complete set of Démons Demons and Égarés Lost and a good fistful of Mercenaires Mercenaries.

All we needed was for the game to, you know, be printed in English.  It’d have been nice to know whether or not we were playing the game correctly (not that translations of French games tend to be particularly intelligible; I’m looking at you, Rackham), and there were a handful of folks local who were very interested in the game… but unwilling to commit without some sort of English language support.  Until there was an English rulebook, the game wasn’t exactly real.

Then Asmodee said they weren’t publishing it in the US.  Then they dropped it altogether.  I moved on, but was pleased to learn that the game was licensed about a year after things cooled off for us.

At the time of licensing, there was a full line of minis and an unpublished English translation of the rules (the translator’s active on OGO).  You’d think it’d be just a matter of logistics to get production up and running in the US and the game out the door.  I don’t do this sort of thing for a living, so I couldn’t say what a reasonable period would be: three months?  six months?  I don’t know.

I do know that a hair short of two years is too damn long.  Not only was it long enough to let any interest in the game cool off, it completely left the door open for Malifaux, which very much fills the same sort of niche in terms of play, style, and size, to scoot in and take any sort of place Hell Dorado could have had.

When Malifaux came out and I saw folks’ response to it… I pretty much knew Hell Dorado would be DOA. Then, like, a whole extra year came and went.  Sheesh.

Anyway, I picked up the book when it came out.  I haven’t really read it yet.  Tomorrow, since I’ve never posted pictures of them here before (and because I took new pictures of them with the light box), I’ll post pictures of my painted Hell Dorado figures.

Hell Dorado Licensed

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It’s great news to finally have some resolution on the state of the game. When we get a release date for the English-language book, I’ll finish painting my Démons.

Hell Dorado

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Just got a text from Chris S., who’s at GenCon right now. He wanted me to know that, at the Hell Dorado tournament, they’re using a cheatsheet I threw together about this time in 2007. That’s pretty cool!

I’m excited about the most recent news about the game, and hope it works out. I’m not holding my breath, though, and my minis will probably stay in the foam trays until we see some sort of Anglophonic love for the game.