Adepticon 2025 has left the Iron Dice crew in a fervor. At some point we will (probably) do an after action of the event. Many exciting things happened, friendships were made, and old friends covorted with. But I want to talk about a particular pair of very exciting things…

One – we added a new member to the IDG roster, Josh! Josh comes in with a passion for Sci-fi gaming and spending money on minis. We are stoked to have Josh on the crew and we will watch his career with great interest.

Two – The crew has been frothed into a frenzy over BLKOUT by Enemy Spotted Studios. Though in fairness Evan had been around ESS games for a while. He probably even told us the games were fun… like we’d listen to him… After hanging out with some of the ESS crew and playing demo games the rest of the gang was hooked. I have to give a shout out to the ESS crew. Julian, Rob, Simon, Zenny, and the others are great people. Watching them work at Adepticon showed me they care about their community and have top notch customer service.

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Evan: I started in with ESS with the 2021 Kickstarter for BLKOUT’s predecessor game: Killwager. Having been around the property for a few years I have plenty of terrain and minis already for this. That said, I do have the three original BLKOUT releases waiting for paint still. I gave everyone else first dibs as they were all excited and buying in, so I landed with Manticor as my little BLKOUT project. Stay tuned because I have an additional half dozen Killwager era Manticor I’ll be painting up with them at the same time to join my extant Manticor force. Below is a picture of one of my boards in action, and I’m stoked to get them out again.

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BLKOUT is a near future sci-fi skirmish game set on Earth’s only colony planet ABOL in the early 2100s. It’s tactical, plays fast, and is brutal. Players take a small number teams of miniatures and square off on a 2’ x 2’ to 4’ x 4’ table. The rulebook is an eye catching 23 pages long. The core rules are tight and concise. Each expansion box gives you everything you need to know to run that set of minis on the table. The rulebook, lore primer (which is gorgeous), and several game assets can be found on the BLKOUT site for FREE!

The lore is well established but gives some wiggle room for players to weave their own narrative. We will sneak some lore talk in future articles but here is the quick version. There are a number of factions vying for control of resources and habitable zones on ABOL’s volatile and inhospitable surface. The government throws its weigh onto the colonists and many seek protection or fortune with mercenary companies. Factions rely on surgical strikes by small teams of heavily armed operatives instead of the conventional armies of old. Large bipedal weapons systems colloquially called Dusters can be found as center pieces to these small lethal teams. And let’s be honest, who doesn’t like stompy weapons platforms?

Each of us has decided to pick a faction and agreed to paint up an initial force. Thus began Operation Bone Scraper.

Hopefully we will be able to detail the building, painting, and playing of our forces and terrain tables. So far this has been a lightning bolt; kick starting our group mojo. It has been a while since we have had something get us going as a whole group. And with the teams being 4-16 minis there is a high chance we will follow through to completion.

Josh and I got three small games in on a weeknight while Teddy and Anthony worked on terrain and their own forces. We still have to figure out the in and outs of the rules but we had fun.

Fortunately for me (not so much for my wallet) Kick Ass Mail Order is now carrying BLKOUT. On top of that IDG is excited to start up a local BLKOUT community. While I love a nice long game this seems like a great opportunity to play a few games in the same time I’d play one longer one.

I’m personally looking forward to a painting palette cleanser with my Harlow Kinetic Solutions mercenaries. I also have a large amount of unpainted MAD Gaming terrain which will work excellently for several locations on the harsh surface of ABOL. I foresee hazard stripes a plenty in my future.

We are really stoked and think that the Enemy Spotted Studios crew nailed it with BLKOUT. The minis, the lore, the gameplay… it’s all high quality.

Stay tuned for some more BLKOUT content soon!