UK Games Expo 2024 Awards
Finalist 2024 UK Games Expo Awards
Codeblade has been shortlisted as one of the final three games in the UK Games Expo's Award for Best Miniatures Rules. A massive achievement, we're thrilled to get the recognition the game deserves!
Prepare for a different type of skirmish game
Play the Whole Board
There are no Napoleonic battlelines in a cyberpunk brawl
CodeBlade uses a unique, dynamic close-quarters deployment mini-game in a tight 2' square. Forcing players to make difficult strategic decisions about how to deploy their forces, creating a fast-paced, exciting game from the second the very first model is placed on the table.
Multiple Play Styles, Multiple Win Conditions
Think you're good enough to win without firing a single bullet?
CodeBlade is fought across three different ability themes: Kinetic, Hacking and Stealth. These will give you asymmetric matchups, different mechanics and play styles to exploit. But with three alternative ways to win, you'll need to keep your strategic abilities sharp!
Honour is Everything
Get ready to gamble all of your Honour away
In CodeBlade, Honour is both a goal and a resource. You'll need to manage it carefully to succeed. Just like your game score, it can determine if you win or lose, but you can spend it at any point to improve your actions and attacks! And making the choice harder, what if your opponent could have a chance to win all the points you spent?
Re-Rack?!
High-tech merciless brawler combat means quick games
CodeBlade is played on a small table (2'x2'), and with a small selection of characters on each side (about 5), making it naturally easy to get set up and started. But, combined with a unique deployment system and a wickedly merciless action and combat system, games are done quickly
(about 3 turns!). So, more time for gaming!
Welcome to CodeBlade
Tired of tidy battle lines and predictable army matchups? CodeBlade smashes the status quo with a fresh skirmish wargame set in a neon-lit dystopian future. Here, the old-style of thinking: "march to the center" and brute force your way through the opponent just won't cut it.
Choose your faction and weapons wisely. Your warriors, goons, and throwaway mercs wield hacking tools, stealth tech, and combat skills. Lethal combat, and the latest tech mean every action counts. A single stray bullet can obliterate your key character. But clever a hack will have you whishing it had been that bullet instead! And through it all, you'll have to think on your feet: the objectives shift every round based on AI whims - outthinking and outmanoeuvering your rival are the only way to emerge victorious.
Leave dated matchups and predictable standoffs behind. CodeBlade is all about cunning tactics, objective manipulation, and asymmetry. The future of tabletop battle starts now.
Embrace freedom and the future of tabletop
CodeBlade can be played with absolutely any miniatures you like. Period. This is the freedom to play with all the cool stuff we have in the tabletop and mini communities. But, won't it get confusing, with everyone using something different?? Well, CodeBlade games usualy have 5 or so minis per side, so it's not hard to keep track of who is who!
So, embrace that freedom. Have a mini you love? It doesn't have the right gun? Nobody cares. Get it on the table and let's roll some dice!
The mini wargaming community is absurdly talented. We want to see the complete freedom of converting, customizing, and adding your own personal touch to your team of lowlifes trying to make a 'honourable' living in the the megacities of CodeBlade.
We're also technology fanatics. So, we want to support the future of the hobby. We love 3D printing, and the artists that make gorgeous models. Have you seen some sweet cyberpunk models you're dying to paint? Already subbed to someone's art, and want to put all that goodness on the table? Yes, us too. We got you.
The CodeBlade Rulebook
CodeBlade is a tabletop brawler miniature wargame set in a near-future cyberpunk version of our world. Artificial Intelligence is everywhere, and it's found a way to influence the physical world directly: setting tasks and other small-job contracts in exchanged for Honour tokens that give privileged access to AI systems.
You'll control a small group of lowlifes vying to complete these tasks, earning, stealing, losing, and gambling their tokens along the way. The game has a small footprint, playing easily and quickly, while providing a deep strategic challenge. You'll also have to contend with multiple win conditions, dynamic objectives and scenarios, and a unique close-quarters brawl deployment. CodeBlade truly begins from the setup. Your characters will also carry formidable CodeBlades! Injectable shards of emergency code that give you a once-per-game ability with very powerful in-play consequences.
CodeBlade is a miniature agnostic game, meaning you can use anything you like or already own, including 3D printed versions of your own characters, scenery, and more! The rulebook contains a rich description of the world and its setting, all of the rules required to play, and details on each of the playable factions and their characters. It is a self-contained tome that will give players all of the information they need to enjoy every part of CodeBlade.
Gameplay Overview
Choose your faction
Choose to command one of the unique factions, ranging from the Neon Underground hacker collective to the ruthless Compliance and Enforcement agency. Each comes with their own distinct toolkit of skills, tech, and abilities for you to leverage. Bolster your forces with freelancers to enhance your abilities or make up for skills you lack.
Deploy your team
Assemble your team by recruiting faction members with synergistic abilities, weapons and gear. Each character has a stable loadout, so all you have to choose is the role you want. Determine deployment initiative, and deploy them anywhere on the battlefield to set up for your strategy, the only constraints being distance to objectives and opposing characters.
Navigate shifting objectives
Every round, new objectives will be determined by the watching AIs, constantly changing the battlefield conditions. Analyse and adapt your strategy to the new objectives each round, knowing that a strong position one turn can suddenly turn into a disadvantageous one the next. Only commit what you need, and setup your position for the next round.
Make your move
On your turn, take two actions like moving through terrain, using stealth and gadgets, and striking with kinetic attacks. Leverage your strengths against the enemy's weaknesses, but don’t forget to play to the objective. Opponents alternate taking turns and their two actions.
Manipulate Honour
Earn Honour by completing objectives set by the AI. Wager whatever Honour you have against your chances in battles and in hacking challenges to gain big advantages. Or steal Honour from unsuspecting opponents! However, all of the risked Honour is lost if you fail to win that round’s objective. So make sure you push your luck at the right time to come out on top.
Achieve victory!
You can still win by brute force, but Victory goes to the person who reaches 20 honour first, or to the one who does not honour-out at zero. You can even win if all your models have been downed or killed - honour really trumps everything in the world of CodeBlade. Creativity, cunning, and calculated risks will win the day.
With that, your team has gained enough to survive another day. They only have to start the whole process over again tomorrow, if they want to continue living in the world of CodeBlade.
The Factions
Iron Samurai
Do you like to fight? Would you like to have the longest ranged guns available, some exceptional armour, support gun drones, and truly lethal melee blades? Want an in-faction medic? Well, you just might be a Samurai. They will reward aggressive (but not careless) physical fights, favouring gaining Honour - which only fuels stronger and more accurate attacks.
Neon Underground
Hackers that cannot, under any circumstance, be left alone to their own devices. Uniquely capable of manipulating game objectives, they will gain Honour fast until they win the game outright, all while having a light amount of enemy suppression. They will reward defensive, “keep-away” and reactive play, but can switch into really dangerous combat if needed.
Slummers
Sneaky thieves specialising in stealth, they ideally attack without being seen, creating an enormous positioning challenge that can potentially invalidate the opponent while they are at their strongest. They will often seek to avoid a direct confrontation, repeatedly stealing resources and hoarding them until the have enough to claim victory. However, that does force a bit of a tight-rope walking situation, as the resource accumulation strategy means you'll often be spending fewer resources, and thus gaining fewer bonuses than your opponent!
Compliance Officers
Very capable fighters with heavy physical defenses that prefer to operate at closer ranges, bringing a surprising number of ways to deny the opposition many chances to act. And while this is a very strong capability on its own, it interacts in terrifying ways with their ability to Dishonour their enemies and pressure the opponnets' resources.
ONI, Official News Inc.
Manipulators and hackers that will obliterate your reputation, blast your personal business all over the airwaves and monetize your downfall. They have nearly no way to engage in a fist fight, but they will debuff their opponents, punish actions, and utterly destroy the opponent's honour, rewarding players that love to burn and destroy opponent’s resources.
The Syndicate
As befitting a shadowy organisation that is merely a rumour and street folklore, The Syndicate specialises in stealth play, capitalising on the asymmetry of line-of-sight requirement, operating at their strongest when no enemy can see them. While they do bring a little fight, they truly excel in forcing the opponent to lose resources and in forcing bigger gambles every turn. This gambling is definetely a risk for the faction, but they benefit from some of the most powerful control mechanisms around - just in case things don't go to plan.
Freelancers
While not a standalone faction, they provide stop-gap capabilities for all. The freelancer provide inexpensive medics, hackers and muscle. Invaluable in providing protection against a specific weakness, or enhancing already-dominant positions. Picking different Freelancers to add to your team could change the way you play dramatically. They are never the strongest, and each is strictly narrow in what they bring to the table, but they are reliable.
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