Author's note: I wrote most of this article back in December, but failed to publish it for a variety of reasons. The initial article I penned down was long to begin with and I kept coming back to it adding more each time, so I decided to break it down into a series of articles in order to be able to be more focused on certain aspects I felt needed to be covered. Needless to say, more info has started creeping out into the light of day, positively reinforcing some of the things I mentioned below. It's important to note that this is a think piece article, it is all just rooted in my own speculation and contemplation, I have no insider information nor do I claim any of the below as a fact of certainty. I'm just thinking out loud.
If you're following all these rambling posts of mine, you know by now that way back in October I published a component overview of the newly crowdfunded and delivered board game by Monolith, Mythic Battles: Isfet. Receiving MB:I made me realize that it is time to prioritize and push Hybrid way up my collecting wish list. I acquired both Hybrid and its expansion recently and I've promptly posted a component overview of both shortly afterwards.
Following these two linked statements, dear reader, I expect you to do the math.
If you can't firgure out where this is heading, I'll interject with a hint in the form of a newsflash relevant to this post. Most of my readers here come from the 7 Hills and the French Confede server, but some come via other places where I try to "advertise" the blog. Thus, most of you have probably seen the infodump done by Sweet on the 7 Hills back in December:
Back when I saw the initial announcement that Monolith acquired Rackham's IP, the first thoughts that sprang into my mind were not about Confrontation or Rag'narok, but instead they were about Hybrid. And okay, to a lesser extent about the Cadwallon RPG and AT-43, but let us shelve those thoughts for now. Hybrid simply made sense and the more time passes the more it seems to become a reality.
Obviously Confrontation was the flagship product of Rackham and the one that made them popular and the one which ultimately made them sink into oblivion in the end. But back then Hybrid was a natural extension of the skirmish game, mimicking the steps Games Workshop took with things like Space Hulk, thus Rackham so beautifully flowed into that direction, doing it with such smoothness that it was simply amazing to witness. It had the classic Rackham signature quality with amazing art and design, packed with tons of lore and atmosphere, and a relatively simplified ruleset to what Confrontation had to offer. It was a big step into the world of boardgames which opened the gates of Aarklash to a potentially new source of consumers.
With this being said, it is important to understand that, unlike Rackham, Monolith is a board game company, first and foremost. They've dabbled into other avenues, namely RPGs and publishing art books for their games, but again lets shelve these for now. So as a board game company which operates for more than 10+ years on platforms such as Kickstarter and Gamefound, it simply makes sense for them to first step into Aarklash via Hybrid.
I know a lot of people are going to grab pitchforks at the first mention of Kickstarter (actually a lot of people are going to grab pitchforks just by the mere mention of any kind of Rackham revival, but they are fairly harmless clout chasers, so we can freely ignore them), but this post is not about that. If you want to take a chill pill for a second, sit down and go read my Monolith article linked above, it has some information to soothe your soul. And if that ain't enough, there'll be more posts about that topic on this blog, trust me.
What this post is about is me writing my thoughts down about how I think thus far released Monolith campaigns/games might translate into Hybrid and what are my expectations on how it will be shaped and modified in its new iteration, based on what I previously saw from Monolith. I have a lot to say about this subject, so probably this will be only a first post in a line of many to come. Also, this is still speculation at best and who knows, maybe they don't even do Hybrid and I end up looking like a fool. Whatever, it is fun to speculate, sue me.
Let's tackle the "boring" things first, the rules.
I've previously mentioned my experiences with games released by Monolith. I played two incarnations of their Mythic Battles games, with the latest Isfet still waiting in storage, and I've played Claustrophobia 1643. Way back when those crowdfunding campaigns were live, I also closely followed development of Batman: Gotham City Chronicles and Conan, as well as the latest Berserk/Rokugan campaigns, so I've read the rulebooks for all three of those titles even though I didn't back them, mostly due to limited storage space.
And for the purposes of this article, I've read the rulebook for Hybrid, but with an important caveat that I still haven't played a full game of it, just a dry run testing session, and I don't have firsthand experience with how this all plays out on the table. So take these opinions with a grain of salt.
All of this is to say that I think I have a fairly good grasp of how Monolith designs their games. They tend to have very streamlined basic rules, yet they gain complexity when certain bits of the rules system interact, which mostly means that the games themselves remain tactically engaging albeit simple. I think this kind of approach will benefit Hybrid tremendously. For me, Hybrid does seem to be fairly straightforward in some aspects, but then also tends to be a little needlessly complicated or confusing in certain spots. There are instances in Hybrid where the rulebook tries to give examples and explain a rule, only to leave you scratching your head and going back to the original rule for further clarification. As much as I understood browsing the internet, this was mostly the issue with the English translation of the Hybrid rulebook. This has never been an issue with a MB title, which are fairly straightforward and clear in the sense of layout, rule definitions, and overall clarity. Similarly, as much as I've noticed, no big discrepancies between language versions.
Claustrophobia 1643 is also a good example to look into, since it is the same thing that Hybrid will be, a new version of a previously existing game released by a different publisher. The original Claustrophobia, while a great game, suffered a similar bane to that of Hybrid, since some rules were convoluted and needlessly complicated, while also somehow limiting its own tactical depth at the table. Monolith stepped in, modernized some rusty bits and pieces (to the absolute horror of the grognards mind you), streamlined some of the questionable rules which in turn made the game faster and more tactical, while keeping the overall Claustrophobic flavor. A clear win in my book.
When it comes to components, I think we'll be in for a massive upgrade in the new iteration of Hybrid. Monolith has always produced high quality games with sturdy, long-lasting components. For example, my group has actively played MB:Pantheon ever since the 1.5 version came out in 2018 with over a 100 games under our belt (yes, we keep a score, it is a dreadfully competitive group) and all the components are as good as new. Tokens, unit dashboards and cards, boxes, none show any kind of wear even after so many games.
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| Box comparison #1 |
That said, the actual box itself is in for a bump in quality. It didn't even occur to me to write about this, but when I took out both boxes to make some photos of the components the difference in quality is glaringly obvious. In almost all aspects the Isfet box is done better, from the actual material used, to the way the box is glued, its thickness, and the way it is coated to protect the print. Sure, Hybrid was released more than 20 years ago, but these are the sort of upgrades which will make the potential 2.0 even better.
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| Box comparison #2 |
The biggest upgrade I see coming is for the faction boards. I'd expect those to be of high-quality thick sturdy cardboard, probably multi-layered for order placement and keeping the tokens in place. The Hybrid "boards" are fairly bad due to essentially being just thicker paper and are easy to push and mess up all the tokens on them. Not to mention that you do have to handle them with more care, either that or laminate them yourself for extra sturdiness. And also, lest we forget the dreadful glare possessed by the boards. Under stronger light and many angles, they are nigh unusable.
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| Faction/unit board glare comparison |
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| Faction/unit board thickness comparison |
Similarly, I'd expect a glow-up (hehe) for the tokens themselves. Hybrid tokens, the ones that come from the cardboard sheet with the door tokens, are visually amazing, but when held in hand there is a bit of a weird glossy finish to them which tends to get easily tarnished over time and also feels somewhat sticky in your hands if they are being handled often, ultimately I suppose caused by the very thing that gives the components the strong glare. In contrast, the tokens so far produced by Monolith have had a matte finish which is smooth to the touch and is quite sturdy and resilient. If memory serves me well, between MB:Pantheon and Isfet the tokens grew in size slightly (haven't played Pantheon in a while, so my memory is a bit foggy), which is a welcome addition to prevent the fiddliness of handling.
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| Token comparison |
I'm not even going to comment the wound and activation tokens from the thin paper sheet, since those are an absolute crime in the original Hybrid. I'd expect a massive upgrade to those, we'll most likely get proper thick cardboard tokens or even actual dice for wound tracking or perhaps some plastic tokens, though these are not that common in Monolith games as far as I remember. Monolith does occasionally produce nice little 3d tokens, as you can see the cute little Isfet scarabs.
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| Scarab tokens from MB:Isfet |
Similarly, the update to the dice is a certainty. There's nothing wrong with the original Hybrid dice, but as a big RPG fan I'm not a stranger to weird and niche dice, so some bling for Hybrid 2.0 wouldn't do any harm. I'd go so far as to hope for maybe faction (or at the very least Light/Darkness) specific dice, which would definitely be a nice little addition to the box.
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| Dice comparison |
When it comes to room tiles, Monolith showed what they can do with those in Claustrophobia 1643. That one was released way back in 2018 and the quality of those was excellent, again "lacking" that Hybrid glossy finish and instead featuring the abovementioned matte smoothness of the tokens. You can also see that on the gameboard of MB:Isfet below. Similar reinforced cardboard like the dashboards, our Pantheon boards survived quite a lot of yanking around with no visible tarnishing or damage. As I also mentioned in the component overview, they've expanded their color palette and the level of details up to Isfet, so I imagine they'll be able to do wonders for the new Hybrid boards. And again, no glare.
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| Game board/tile comparison #1 |
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| Game board/tile comparison #2 |
The biggest question mark will be the miniatures, simply because we don't know what Monolith plans to do in that regard. It is important to emphasize again that Monolith is a board game company and as such has an established process for producing board game quality miniatures made with a combo of PVC and ABS plastics. While I do believe their miniatures are of exceptionally high quality and are definitely the best I've seen in the board game world, they are still "board game quality" and nowhere near what old Rackham established as the norm and what metal is able to replicate in the sense of detail or longevity. It is fairly certain that we will definitely not see metal miniatures, for various reasons. For one, a hard pill to swallow for most people out there, is that Rackham grognards will not be the primary target audience in this campaign. The primary target is the dedicated board game crowd which Monolith garnered over the years and that crowd is used to the Monolith miniature standard. Of course the Rackham IP will attract fans of Rackham, but what I'm saying is that we need a dose of realism.
Second, unless you are producing metal miniatures in-house, things are bound to get expensive real fast nowadays. As far as I am aware, most bigger publishers who still work in metal are either doing it in-house, like Corvus Belli, or they are so small that their production costs are more affordable and on a much smaller scale, like Oathbound Studios, for example. Some publishers who previously had metal miniatures in their catalogue are slowly moving over to some type of plastic, like GCT Studios, the publishers of Bushido, and even Corvus Belli slowly moves over to plastics for their bigger miniatures.
Monolith, so far and to my knowledge, has no production in house, not even for their plastics. However...
PVC/ABS is what we can expect with a some dose of certainty, but what I would potentially hope for is maybe some kind of crowdfunding pledge level where you might pay a more premium price to get models made entirely out of HIPS plastics, aka on plastic sprues. In order for something like this to happen, I would assume that Monolith would need to have new means of production which currently they do not have in their catalog. Personally, I would love for them to reach an agreement with Archon Studio and establish a manufacturing deal with them. They are currently one of my favorite European companies, thus far been made famous for producing their Dungeons & Lasers miniatures and terrain for RPGs, as well as contractually producing HIPS miniatures for games like Conquest and most recently Trench Crusade, but also dabbling in licensed IP's like Masters of the Universe and the upcoming StarCraft miniatures game. This would be an ideal way to nourish the wargaming crowd coming directly from Aarklash, but I'm not sure if this is something Monolith would be willing to try, nor am I aware of what kind of deal Archon might offer them. Monolith does so far provide different versions of games, where you have a standard bare-plastic version and a "shaded" plastic version as seen in the Berserk campaign, so they are definitely no stranger to producing essentially two products simultaneously. However, providing actually different materials is completely new ground for Monolith which I'm not sure they would explore, but it would absolutely be a direct hit for the more hobby painting part of the audience.
I have some previous experience with products from Archon Studio, so if you're interested in reading more about that, let me know! I also have a tingling notion that Archon would be more than willing to participate in the revival of Aarklash, so there might be some more things to explore there in future articles.
Think I've opened a whole new can of worms with this final tidbit, so I'll stop the post here, but I'll definitely come back to this topic some time soon.
Again another reminder, the component overview post about Isfet perfectly shows what I mean with all of the above, so be sure to check it out for a much better visual description than what my convoluted words here can provide. I feel like these two articles will play well with each other. And also worth pointing out before anyone gets butthurt, this is not me dumping on Hybrid. Hybrid was and is a fantastic product and one that definitely left an impression on the industry. This is a simple product comparison and me day dreaming about what we might get in a new iteration of the game produced by Monolith, if it ever comes to pass.
But that's it for now, more posts on this subject to come! If you have any of your own thoughts to spare after reading this, be sure to leave a comment below as I'm more than curious what other people think on this matter. Thanks for reading, I'll see you soon!
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