We made some big, exciting announcements on Friday, just before the holiday weekend. I wanted to take a moment to go into more detail on what we have been cooking up behind the scenes here at Privateer Press.

At 2 p.m. today, the world-famous Penny Arcade will be kicking off a new streaming series on their Twitch.tv channel: Penny Arcade Plays: WARMACHINE.

If you’re familiar with Penny Arcade (and I’m willing to wager you are), then you can probably easily imagine exactly what this experience is going to look like. Playing through a six-week Journeyman-like league, Jerry Holkins, Kiko Villasenor, Erick Blandin, and Jamie Dillon are going to go head-to-head on the tabletop—and you just know the smack talk is going to be flying fast and furious! Our very own Executive Director of Business, Will Shick, who has a gift for wrangling an audience, will be hosting the show. But trapped in the no-man’s-land between Penny Arcade’s fierce competitors, it’s unlikely he’ll emerge unscathed.

It’s going to be a great show that you won’t want to miss. You probably couldn’t find anything more entertaining than the PA crew playing WARMACHINE…unless it was streamed live from Lock & Load. So, yes, we’re doing that! The final game between Penny Arcade’s top two players will be streamed live from Lock & Load this year, and the winner will be crowned “Overlord of WARMACHINE in This Context!” And if you’re actually going to be at Lock & Load, you’ll be able to watch this soon-to-be legendary tabletop throwdown live and in person!

This isn’t the first time Privateer Press and Penny Arcade have conjured a little magic together. We’ve been fans of Penny Arcade forever and have attended PAX Prime since the very first show, which coincidentally was held in Bellevue’s Meydenbauer Center, where Lock & Load takes place now. But several years ago, to help raise money for Penny Arcade’s Child Play charity (www.childsplaycharity.org), we commissioned a custom Rock Band song. Some of you may remember this righteous work of pure metal, written and performed by Jerry Holkins, the man himself. If you haven’t heard it, prepare to have your face melted!
https://soundcloud.com/penny-arcade/war-machine

You can expect to hear that soul-shredding track during the Penny Arcade Plays: WARMACHINE series. But we’ve got even more metal-on-metal action in store for you—this time of the animated variety.

For the past year (and some change), I’ve been working with a couple of very talented animators (Gabriel Teixeira and Rafael Chies), my favorite composer (Deane Ogden), and a brilliant sound editor (Michael Ferdie) to create a CG animated short that would bring WARMACHINE to life…at least for about five minutes. The short film follows a brief encounter between two of WARMACHINE’s most famous warcasters, the original sisters of light and dark, Captain Victoria Haley and Warwitch Deneghra. And the best part is that both characters were voiced by the always stunning and immensely talented Marisha Ray of the Internet sensation Critical Role.

This animated short has been a passion project for quite a while, and I’ve been waiting for the right time to release it into the wild. When the opportunity to work with Penny Arcade became a reality, debuting the short at the same time seemed like the perfect way to kick off the series with a display of unrestrained rivalry.

I hope you’ll tune in to to the live stream today and that you enjoy the short as well as the unpredictable antics sure to follow! We’ve got one wild summer lined up between Penny Arcade Plays: WARMACHINE, the upcoming Summer Rampage event, Lock & Load GameFest 2017, and the release of Grymkin: The Wicked Harvest—the first new Faction for HORDES, ever! What more could we be cooking up behind the scenes? Catch us at Lock & Load, and you might find out…

PENNY ARCADE PLAYS: WARMACHINE begins Tuesday, May 30th at 2 p.m. PDT — Penny Arcade Twitch Channel

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