That’s a nice Iron Kingdoms you got there. Sure would be a
shame if someone…blew it all to hell and back.

The release of our newest game, Riot Quest, is rapidly
approaching. You might have heard of us talk about this game, but if you
haven’t, let me give you a quick rundown. Riot Quest is a hybrid hobby
miniature-board game set in a post-apocalyptic alternate timeline of the Iron
Kingdoms. This hex-based arena skirmish game is packed full of mayhem and
chaos.

You bring a team of scavengers, represented by miniatures,
as well as some gear upgrades to the table. Here you fight against up to three
other players in a dynamically changing arena where you can never be too sure which
trap, treasure, or tribulation is going to be pop up next.

A shared market of Bounty cards are randomly dealt out each
game, with two cards always available at a time. These cards detail what
effects they have on the arena, how to score them, and how many points they are
worth. When a player scores one, that player grabs the card, and a new Bounty
appears. This means that no two games of Riot Quest are ever played out the
same.

We’ll be talking a lot more in detail about the specific gameplay
of Riot Quest in the near future, but in today’s Insider, I wanted to focus on
something different. What the hell happened exactly to make things such a mess
in this timeline.

Well it goes a little something like this: humanity in the
Iron Kingdoms was never really supposed to have access to magic. Humans aren’t
the most careful or responsible creatures. There was no telling what humans
would do if they could wield magic—probably something absurd like create giant
magical death machines and go to war with each other. Ya know…like they did.

But along come the Orgoth, and they royally screw up everything
for everyone. All of humanity in western Immoren is enslaved. It’s a bad time
with lots of sad music playing in the background. So, what does one of the gods
of humanity do? Comes up with the brilliant idea to make a deal with literal
otherworldly soul-claiming horrors to get humanity full access to magic.

Great job, Thamar.

Humanity blows the Orgoth up with their fancy new magic,
obvs, and then guess what they do? They start blowing each other up. And who
would have guessed it, they built giant magical death machines in the process.
This goes on for like…a while, until those otherworldly soul-claiming horrors
show back up wanting their half of the bargain. That half being a boatload of
human souls.

You probably know these alien monsters by a different name
at this point: Infernals. Well, as you know, humanity likes keeping their own
souls, so a bunch of them buddy up and fight back valiantly against the
Infernal invasion. It’s all very heroic with lots of really epic music playing
in the background.

Well, in Riot Quest, they lose.

Yup. Riot Quest represents the timeline in which the
Infernals not only got what they wanted but killed a whole mess of people who
tried to fight back in the process. Cities got razed, fields were turned to
ash, everything just sort of went…boom.

Thanks, Thamar.

What’s left behind are the toughest and cagiest survivors
imaginable. Now that nearly everyone’s gone, there’s no one left guarding the
vaults, watching the supply depots, protecting the world. So, what do you do when
you’ve been left behind in a shattered world?

You get rich. Survivors have banded together into scavenger
teams, racing across a ruined landscape in search of wealth and power. Some
just want gold (though who can say where they’ll actually spend it?), some want
scraps of mechanika to cobble together their own gear, and some just want to
fight for the fun of it.

You can build your own scavenger team and join in on the
mayhem very soon! Riot Quest is pre-releasing at Gen Con 2019, with a full global
release shortly after. Keep an eye on the Privateer website and our weekly
Twitch streams, where we’re going to showing you a whole lot more in the coming
months!