Collins Epic Wargames Introduces Polyversal and Spearpoint Expansion

Polyversal 6mm Sci-Fi Mass Combat

Image courtesy Collins Epic Wargames, LLC

CG: This is Byron Collins about Polyversal, which comes from, your company is?
CEW: Collins Epic Wargames.
CG: Are you the founder?
CEW: Yes, sir.
CG: Not your dad?
CEW: No.
CG: You’re pretty young.
CEW: [Laughs.] Yes, sir.
CG: So Polyversal, what’s it all about?
CEW: So Polyversal is a 6mm sci-fi mass combat system. It’s designed by Ken Whitehurst who’s played miniature games like this for 20 years. He’s played a lot of different rules sets. He’s got a lot of expertise so he wanted to create a game that is something that anybody can play and is easy to learn and play, something that keeps players engaged the whole time. So there’s a lot of ebb and flow in the game of combat and morale and effectiveness of your units.

So what’s cool about Polyversal is that we’re going to have some boxed versions that include miniatures from various manufacturers, basically a sampling of their line. In that respect, we’re going to be able to show gamers what’s out there regarding manufacturers. There’s a lot of great manufacturers out there already. We’re already working with Plasmablast Games, Steel Crown Productions, Microworld Games, and other miniatures manufacturers to basically create stat cards for their minis and to include them in some box sets. Dark Realm Miniatures and Brigade Models too. It’s a growing list. So with that you’ll have everything you need in the box to get up and running and play the game. You’ll also have a rules set that is compatible with other miniatures out there in the same general scale, 6mm.
CG: It’s fairly generic?
CEW: It’s fairly generic. Adaptable system is what I would say, where you can actually design miniature stat cards for whatever you’ve got. If you’ve got green army men, you can stat them out and play with them, I mean, that’s fine. But no, we prefer that you use some nice-looking minis from Plasmablast or you know, Microworld Games, or whatever. It’s neat, because you can take their line, stat them out however you want, and we’re going to have an online tool to help you do that, to create your armies to go into battle. So more info is on the website for the game which we just launched last week as part of our initial marketing at the GAMA Trade Show. The website is polyversal-game.com.

Frontline General Spearpoint 1943 and Map Expansion

CG: And what else do you have in terms of Collins Epic Wargames?
CEW: Collins Epic Wargames has been primarily historically based right now. We’ve been based in our games on World War II. We’ve got a game called Frontline General Spearpoint 1943, which is our fast play card war game. It’s very simple to play and teach. It’s about a 5 minute learning curve and a 30 minute total. So you can teach anybody to play it. It’s got everything in the box to go. It’s non-collectible, so there’s not endless boosters to buy. It’s got a low price point as well. And we get a lot of good feedback from the game from both reviewers and players on boardgamegeek and so on, so it’s done really well for us.
CG: It uses these double-sided tiles?

Image courtesy Collins Epic Wargames

CEW: Well the Spearpoint card game at its core is just a boxed set of cards and dice and one sheet of rules. Very simple. Now what we’re about to release is a game that we’re just coming off of a successful Kickstarter campaign for it. It’s called Frontline Spearpoint ’43 Village and Defensive Line Map Expansion. The map expansion that you’re looking at here is actually a terrain-based expansion for the card game, where we were abstracting some of those elements in the card game, we actually add those back in on the terrain boards along with destructible terrain tiles. There are various ways to set those up. Some tracking counters, some gorgeous artwork from Marc von Martial from Germany, and also fictional scenario intros written by Mark Walker, who is the owner of Lock and Load Publishing. So the goal of Spearpoint 1943 Map Expansion is to take Spearpoint a little further tactically. It adds a lot of miniatures-like rules, so it does feel like that, regarding line of sight, terrain effects, and so forth, to go a little further with the card game and to take it a step further.
CG: Did you say that someone actually put miniatures on the board and was playing that way?
CEW: Yeah! We actually have some photos on our Facebook page. You can find us there and look under our photo albums. You’ll see some alternate ways to play the map expansion, some optional things you can do. If you have your own 15mm WW II minis, you can take one or two of these stat cards, or take the stat card, substitute a miniature for that card on the board, and the miniature looks even better. So you would just keep the stat card off the board and use it for the information, but visually you’re playing now with a miniature, so it’s totally doable.

Image courtesy Collins Epic Wargames

CG: Just looking at the boards here, what I notice too is that there’s not really a scale. I know there’s some building tiles, but also people could use these for any kind of other game.
CEW: Sure, yeah, the boards themselves are generic. It’s a gridded system. The grid’s a 4″x4″ square. The board itself is 36 inches long by 12 inches wide and it’s nice and compact like that to keep people in the game and the action. We found that if it was too spread out, it just took too long to get into contact and to get into the battle. So we want you in there blowing things up and hiding in cover, and having to be on your toes. I think we’ve accomplished that with the game. Everybody who’s played it at demos over the past year has been very supportive of it and really have enjoyed themselves and the majority of those people have pre-ordered which actually helped us get to this point of production. We’re about to release it in early April, and at the earliest March. So we’re in production now.
CG: Great. Thanks!
CEW: Thank you.