We’ve just released Issue 48, and now is a perfect time to go over our goals for this last year, as well as what directions we’re hoping to move towards in the next year!

Looking Behind…

This last year has been momentous, with the release of the Ironwatch Games brand and the Star-Struck City. We’ve also continued to have strong viewership, although there are a few areas we didn’t accomplish as much as we had projected.

Releasing the Ironwatch Annuals: NOT YET



We’re currently banging through the Annual Year One, but a large chunk of it will need to be remade given issues with the Lulu print options (in more detail below). However, we’re changing how we’re going to be making the Annuals: previously we were copying and pasting the individual pages from the older issues, but this had a boatload of formatting issues that needed to be fixed with virtually every page of every article.

Moving forward, we’re going to be using pages from the given issue, converted to high-quality image files and inserted into the annual. This does mean we’re going to be fixing issues with the Print-on-Demand options for each of the issues in an Annual, as well as fixing typos and corrections, but overall it should be a vastly faster process now that we’ve identified a streamlined process for arranging the Annuals.

Repairing the Lulu Print-on-Demand Options: NOT YET



This issue was more difficult than predicted, but tackling and overcoming similar issues with our release of the Star-Struck City Deluxe Edition has illuminated the issue: when the PDF is rendered as a commercial press file, it converts the color style from RGB to CMYK. In the process, the CMYK conversion very, very badly affects pictures with transparencies. Unfortunately, a great deal of our newer issues have transparencies in sidebar and background images, which is why the older issues have typically looked fine but the newer ones have looked off.

The fix will be a fairly easy one, but as indicated above, it’s a fix we’ll need to make for all of the issues in an Annual before we can add the page images to the Annual in question.

Recurring Article Writers: YES



We’ve had a couple writers with recurring articles, such as Matthew Lindsay with Deadzone: The Cleansing, terrain tutorials by Peter “Tek Thornisson”, Road to the Rumble by David Reid, terrain tutorials by Rob Phaneuf, and much more.

However, this doesn’t mean we don’t want more! Let us know at ironwatchmagazine@gmail.com if you’re interested in writing some articles for us.

Ironwatch Newsletter: YES



We’ve been releasing this Newsletter to let folks know about the new release of each Ironwatch Issue, as well as the release of the Star-Struck City Deluxe rules. If you’re interested, you can subscribe to the newsletter here.

Ironwatch Games: YES



With the help of fans for playtesting, ideas, stories, and content we’re excited to reveal over the next few Issues, The Star-Struck City has been a huge success. Readers like you have helped make this publication an outstanding ruleset, and with the help of interior art by Boris Samec, we think the rules are definitely worthy of a place on your gamebook shelf!

We’ll be continuing to work on expansions and additional content for The Star-Struck City, as well as our next game in the docket. See more on that below!

Looking Forward…

While this last year didn’t make as much forward progress as we’d hoped in some areas, this coming year should be packed to the brim with content releases and long-awaited publications!

Repairing the Lulu Print-on-Demand Options

Now that The Star-Struck City has been released, we can refocus our efforts on correcting issues with these files; this will have the simultaneous effect of both correcting the print-on-demand options, as well as helping make sure the creation of the Annuals is as smooth and quick as possible.

Releasing the Ironwatch Annuals

Now that we’ve identified a drastically-faster method for assembling Annuals, this should be a process that will be fast enough that we will be able to complete multiple Annuals, and fill this long-standing gap in our catalog.

Ironwatch Games

While we’ll also be working on expansions for The Star-Struck City, another game we’re aiming to polish up and get ready for release will be Quarantine: the starship battle game by Mike Tittensor, and based off of Mantic’s Deadzone.

Publication Schedule

While those of you following along in the Ironwatch Magazine subreddit may have seen this already, we’d like to list a publication schedule for all of the other content we’ve got planned. This will help both give us a solid window for milestones, as well as help you readers know what’s coming up next!

October 2016: Ironwatch Annual, Year 1

December 2016: Ironwatch Tales: Kings of War

February 2017: Quarantine Basic Edition

April 2017: Ironwatch Annual, Year 2

June 2017: Quarantine Deluxe Edition

August 2017: Ironwatch Annual, Year 3

While these don’t have solid dates yet, we’re also including these as planned publications for 2017:

Ironwatch Tales: Warpath

Ironwatch Annual, Year 4

Heroes of Mantica RPG

We’ll also be working on expansions for The Star-Struck City, although these have no set release date expected. And lastly, we’ll be publishing the Ironwatch Magazine as normal during this time.

Wait, what’s that you say? “Ironwatch Tales?”

Releasing the Ironwatch Tales

One of the consistently biggest requests we’ve had is for a compilation of all of our fiction stories published over the last four years, both for Kings of War as well as for Warpath and Dreadball. Starting later this year, we’re going to work on and release the first of these, so you have a more portable version of Ironwatch’s fiction offerings.

One thing of note is that while the Kings of War and Dungeon Saga/Dwarf King’s Hold stories tend to have similar subjects and themes, the subjects can vary greatly for Dreadball as opposed to Warpath and Deadzone. Please let us know if you’d like the scifi stories to all be together, or separated into different books, in this poll!

Thanks for reading, and Welcome to the Watch!

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