Ex Illis

My latest discovery is Ex Illis. Ex Illis describes itself as the next generation in table top gaming. It seems to be a traditional miniatures game - two players sit down with their own little plastic men and make them fight. But the game is accompanied by an app (run on a laptop or iPhone) that takes care of all the hard stuff (combat, keeping track of in-game effects, etc).

There is a starter set for the game (two version - one with a fold-out paper game mat, and another with a modular plastic game board), but you can also increase your army with other miniature packs. Apparently the individual miniatures can level up and advance through out their lives (or through a campaign or something), so even just getting the starter pack gives you a living, evolving experience.

The app also keeps track of your previous battles, and there seems to be some online component.

Apparently it's been around since last year, and I think I may have noticed it in various banner ads around the place. But what caught my eye was a post on TableTopGamingNews about a free trial. This free trial seems to give you access to everything except the miniatures for 30 days. So basically you can play the whole game with proxies to see if you like it.

All of this has piqued my interest enough to want to look into it further. I've been thinking about the idea of merging physical games with various tech for a little while now, and from what I've read today, this seems like the most integration approach I've seen.

My research has been a little limited so far. Despite having a chunk of free time this lunch time, I'm currently stuck behind a filter that will let me get to BoardGameGeek and MaelstromGames (not to mention Facebook), but won't let me get to www.ex-illis.com or http://gameralone.blogspot.com because they're about "Games".

I know the starter set is available from Milsims for about $80, which from what I've seen of the models sounds like a pretty reasonable deal.

It's been a while since I did an update - real life hasn't left a lot of time for gaming/hobby stuff. Or writing about gaming/hobby stuff. But I do have a bunch of posts in the works, so I'm aiming to put them up over the weekend.