Alessio Interview Transcript from Essen Spiel '05
Transcribed by Krahl

Preface
This transcript was only made possible due to the extraordinary work done by two of the SBG game's finest community members.

Tankred and Asuryan, both staff members from www.tabletop-hdr.de, set about arranging and then conducting this interview with the former "ring-bearer" of Games Workshop's incredible Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Games, Alessio Cavatore.

As you will see throughout the interview, Alessio has a great sense of humour as well as a keen insight into the strategy battle game's rules and development.

Thanks to everyone involved in the interview!

Video Section One

Tankred: Developing a new version of a rulebook is always a kind of evolution. How many people besides you were involved in the development of the new rulebook? Alessio: The new rulebook is really the product of me, Rick Priestly, Mat Ward and Adam Troke. .... The hobby department has done a lot for the hobby section as well. They have made a lot of the models and the scenery that you see. I am responsible mostly for the rules and Mat Ward is responsible for [the profiles primarily]. One thing that I need to say at this stage is that I'm not the Ringbearer anymore. They gave me a more difficult job which is being responsible for all the rules of everything that GW makes, so all the books we make for Fantasy Battle, Warhammer, 40k and Lord of the Rings. I have to make sure the rules are ok for all of them. So it's a big job and leaves me less time for Lord of the Rings of course. I will still try to (buy?) some things because they're fun and I like them.

Tankred: Who is the Ringbearer now?

Alessio: Officially there isn't a Ringbearer because some years ago we had a Ringbearer for Lord of the Rings which was me, a Loremaster for Warhammer which was Gavin Thorpe and an Over-fiend for 40k which was Andy Chambers. Now things have changed. Andy Chambers doesn't work for us anymore. Gavin Thorpe is responsible for all of the background, the stories, all of the IP which we create. .... Effectively there isn't a Ringbearer.

If I had to say really, the new Ringbearer is pretty much Mat Ward I would say because he is doing a lot, lot, lot of the Lord of the Rings work himself so I would say if somebody has received the ring, that's Matthew Ward.

Tankred: How often do you test the new rules in HQ in Nottingham or at home?

Alessio: When you make a new product, especially a rulebook like that one, you have to try and test it as much as possible. Designers would like to keep that thing forever and ever and ever because you're never happy. Your work can be made better if you have time. You can always find mistakes and always make it better and better. But there are other people like salesmen and managers, the people who actually have to sell the product that at a certain stage, those people will go, "Enough, give it up, give it here. It is good enough! Give it to me!"

So you have to learn to stop and just... you know it will never be perfect. There are always little mistakes. There are always problems. Especially in something as big as a rulebook. If it's an army book it's easier but if it's a rulebook.. you have seen, there are little mistakes in there, like the army of the dead and all these kinds of things. If we had another month it would be better. It would always be better but people need to sell them so we have to give them away. So six months, maybe, on a rulebook, maybe something less.

Tankred: How many games (is that)?

Alessio: We normally test in-house with six to eight people, making it four to eight games a week. That goes on for the time I said. For an army book like Shadow and Flame it would be maybe two, three months. For a rulebook it's more than that but it's never enough. Never enough.

We also have external play testers. Secret people that actually we give the rules to. They can read them, can test them and they give us feedback on the internet in secret places. But frankly, I prefer the in-house testing. We can control it more directly, I trust it more in a way.

Tankred: How did you start the re-launch of the rulebook. Where were you inspired, by feedback or by your personal gaming experiences? How did you define where to go, what's the goal?

Alessio: You have feedback from people like you, when I talked to you in advance. You have feedback from the web forums on the internet. You have feedback from your own personal experience, when you play the game. It's a combination of feedback from those elements of feedback and the company policy. So for Lord of the Rings, pretty much from the company the idea was not change as much as possible, it's fine as it is. The company is happy with where it is. I personally liked it as it was. I really liked the game.

All in all it was a big "let's not change too much." It was pretty much identifying the few areas that needed work and try to make them better. .... The courage rules were the thing that I really wanted to get right. I didn't like the end game when you had models running way, coming back, running away, coming back so a lot of tests for no result really. So that was my main area of attention this time.

Tankred: What new rule do you like best. Alessio: Well, I think I kind of already said. I think the courage is the thing because the end of the game now is very fast, very decisive. Things happen and it normally ends very quickly and very decisively. I like also that will, which is always related with courage, but now you can use will to modify the courage which is a great thing because before you were paying for your will but if there weren't wizards then you couldn't, you know, you couldn't play... you couldn't use it. So Courage and Will are the best combination of the new rules, I think. Tankred: What is the newest Lord of the Rings miniature in your personal collection at home? Alessio: Well that would be a Gandalf the Grey on horse. I don't know if you've seen it yet, have you seen the model? Have we shot it yet outside? We have? Right, ok. Yes I've just started with him because my new army, which I think we'll talk about later, is a Shire army, led by Gandalf the Grey and Strider. So that's my new tournament army.

Tankred: Will we see that army in a Grand Tournament later on next year?

Alessio: I think so, yeah. I'm planning on it. The next UK Grand Tournament is I think the beginning of next year? April, yeah. So if I manage to finish in time yes. I will have them for basically a Shire army for good, and a Moria Goblin army for evil.

Tankred: The new rulebook has many minor changes. I was told 63 profiles have changed from the core rulebooks. Many gamers expected and wanted a major change....if you could have done it, would you have changed more or are you satisfied?

Alessio: A lot of people asked for a battle system. Effectively, a system with units so that they could use lots of models and have a faster way of moving all of the models.

We had discussions if we wanted to bring Lord of the Rings in that direction and we decided not to. For many different reasons. One reason, of course we have Warhammer, we don't need to formulate another game like that. Or maybe later, we will go more into that direction but I think with supplements, not with changes to the rules. I think the game as it stands is fantastic. The game is really, really good. Trying to change it would mean pretty much making another game, a different game. In general, as I told you, I'm now responsible for all the rules, so in general our main first rule is "If it's not broken, if it works, don't just change it for the sake of changing it."

I don't think, for example, you respect the customer [if you make changes just for the sake of changing]. If I was a customer, if I like the game and it really works and I spend a lot of time and energy learning the game and getting good at it and playing it a lot and I enjoy it then someone changes it, I have to learn it again. So I don't like that change. If there is nothing wrong, then I'll try not to change it. If there's something wrong, like the courage as I said, I found that really tedious, that kind of rolling again and again so yes I changed that because I felt it was wrong. The less changes possible I think is the principle.

Tankred: Who was blamed for forgetting the Army of the Dead? We have detailed many mistakes and misspellings in the German rulebook and we wondered why you hurried so much. It could have taken a month or more.

Alessio: More or less what I told you before. We would have liked more time because there's so much in the rulebook that we need more time and you always feel like you need more time and it would have been better if we had more time but obviously they have to release it. They have to sell it. Who was to blame for the Army of the Dead? I'm sure that when the files were given to the production department, the Army of the Dead was there but that section has been changed and changed again. Before it was like in the previous one, just mixed. Then we decided to tidy it up into sections. So maybe it was me, maybe it was Mat, maybe it was the guys who do the production job on the Macintosh.

We will never know who was actually the person that deleted them by mistake but actually really it's kind of irrelevant. What would you do, you crucify the people and go "Oh you, you killed the Army of the Dead!!"? We don't know. They are on the internet for free, they can download them. They are in the other books anyway so it's not a terrible problem. But yes, it would have been nicer if we didn't forget them, yes.

Video Section Two

Tankred: Now we present the new range of models from the Shadow in the East. In comparison to the Shire, it seems to satisfy the needs of a non-scenario player. Which means if you want to collect a huge army and a huge, impressive evil army this is a good choice to start with. What is the idea and the overview of Shadow in the East. Alessio: It pretty much started with "we want plastic Easterlings!" That was the big thing. Everybody loved the easterlings, they just looked great. So we really needed to make plastic Easterlings. And to release plastic Easterlings, we thought, "Well, what's the best thing we can do?" Well, probably, we can make a big supplement based on the East. And I think, apart from the Easterlings, which we already knew the looks of, we got to make cavalry. So, New Line, they allowed us to make them into cavalry as well. I think they look great. We also got permission of developing a bit and we did the Variags.

I think that's another question. Do you want to talk about the Variags of Khand now? Yes? Ok.

We made the Variags the Khandish warriors, which are effectively based on a line, one and a half lines in the book. Tolkien says that, among the many troops that fought on the Pelennor Fields, there were the Variags of Khand. He says they wielded their axes. So we know that they're from the East, evil men with axes. That's pretty much all we know.

Then we actually went a bit into the past of Middle Earth when the Rohirrim fight a war against another population from the East, which is the Wainriders. So from the East there is this population that uses [carts] and possibly chariots. So we thought, "well if they have big carts pulled by horses, probably they have chariots, as well. Maybe."

So we actually mixed these elements of kind of a horse culture, chariots, axes and the East and we developed this design which is a Mongol, Korean, kind of oriental, very oriental looking range which personally I like very much. The Perry twins designed it and I think it was an excellent job. I think it was really cool.

Of course, some people may not like it. They may say, "Oh no, they're too oriental, they look like Japanese..."

Well, you can never please everybody.

Tankred: What will we expect from a gaming point of view?

Alessio: From a gaming point of view, as you said, it's a good excuse to have a good army. A good evil army. A good evil army. A great evil army which is a bit more complete in a way than other ones because you get light cavalry for the variags, heavy cavalry with cataphracts of Easterlings. Light infantry and heavy infantry, because again you have the two of them. Chariots. So it's a very, very complete army.

And it's fine if it's led by a ringwraith so you can also have good characters, good heroes. I think it's a pretty complete army and looks very, very good on the battlefield.

We just finished playing a battle report where I played the Easterlings against Gavin Thorpe, who plays Gondor. And looking at my Easterling army with chariots and cavalry and infantry all together, it was really, really nice. Really good showing.

Tankred: What impact will chariots have in the upcoming battles in middle earth?

Alessio: Well I see hard times for Rohan really. Well not only Rohan but all cavalry armies because chariots as you know that they count as monstrous mounts. So effectively if they charge cavalry and they win the fight, the cavalry model is actually thrown to the ground. And since the cavalry, the horse, is thrown to the ground and the rider is thrown, then you lose your horse. Then you get hit by the chariot on the ground. So it's the nasty anti-cavalry army I think.

And, like most things, they're really good on the charge. On the charge they're really nasty, but they're not very resilient. They're very easy to kill, they're only defense four. The rider is defense four, and is one guy so normally an arrow just takes him out, wound him on a five. They're not really tough but when they hit on the charge they're really hard. So if you want an army that is kind of difficult to use well because it is not very forgiving because you can kill them easily, but if you get the right charge and keep going then they're not bad. It could have been worse, because the first time we tried the rules for chariots we tried the same rules as the Mumak, so actually you charge and do the hit and if you kill you keep on moving, but you know it was too good. It was just like, it was too lethal.

So in the end we went just for a kind of monstrous mount cavalry. Which is still good.

Tankred: Who developed the Chariot rules?

Alessio: I think that Matthew Ward is again is the person who was most... well he was the person who wrote the book. We did work together on this thing so of course I helped and Adam Troke helped as well. So the three of us but I will say the dad of the chariot is definitely Matthew Ward.

Tankred: Besides the two Dwarven heroes already shown on the internet and at Gamesday in the UK, who will fight against the Shadows in the East?

Alessio: The Shadows in the East book actually doesn't have much for good players, you're right. There's not much more than what you said.

There's another ranger which is Madril. A ranger hero who is the one you see killed by Gothmog, kind of an older guy that is with Faramir. So we made him, we made the two dwarves, we made a new hero from Gondor called Cirion [pronounced kee-ree-on] who is a made up hero, and last but not least we've done Eorl the Young for the Rohirrim.

So Eorl the Young is absolutely very hard. If you think about it, he's almost like Aragorn. So he's a really nasty character and you see the model there as well. Unfortunately, of course you cannot mix him with, well, you can, but if you want to keep your army themed then of course you cannot mix him with Theoden and Eomer, etcetera. What you can do of course is use the same models and the same rules but call them a different name. Use "Eomer," another name, pick a name from history. But yes, he is unfortunately a different period but he's hard.

Video Section Three

Tankred: You made the uruk hai captains very attractive now. They have an increased strength and points but they are still very cheap. Were your intentions to get rid of armies led by Lurtz and Sharku? Alessio: Well, I wasn't thinking about getting rid of them but to give alternatives to those players. .... Mostly that was... I would have kept them at strength four but Matthew was really, really keen on making them strength five. And in the beginning I was going, "nope, nope, nope, strength four! Nope, nope, nope!" But actually Mat, everyday, three times a day, "going no, no, they should be strength five because this, this, this and this." So eventually I gave up. Probably I was tired one day and I went, [as if worn down] "Yes, yes, strength five, yes, ok!" So now that's what they are.

Tankred: Does the Mordor Siege Bow kill field targets automatically unlike the Gondorian Bolt Thrower?

Alessio: Yes.

Tankred: Oops!

Tankred: Eagles may not use the passenger rule anymore. Why did you drop that rule?

Alessio: Well, if you notice on the new rulebook, a lot of the more detailed, extreme detailed rules like picking up weapons, or passengers or loose mounts. All of those rules we have taken out of the main rules and we have put them into a section which is called "scenario specific rules." It's like optional rules that you can use if you want to put them in a scenario but they're not in the normal rules. They're just not "normal."

The Eagles, or Gwaihir, carrying a passenger we thought was really for scenarios so people of course can still make it up as a special scenario rule but it was too easy to exploit. If you make the eagles as a normal troop then you can have entire good armies mounted on the eagles with strange combinations, etcetera, so we just decided it was simpler to leave it as a scenario rule

Tankred: I want to build an Isengard themed army, am I allowed to field all captains?

Alessio: Next question please! I have a few of these "next question please."

Basically the idea is yes, there are a few things that are kind of wrong there, yes. We should have probably included them in there.

If you put the rules in the tournament that you have to stick to those, to the things in the book, then the answer is no, you will have to use Uruk-Hai.

But if you want to, and frankly I would say, absolutely yes. And yes, we should have put the Orcs in there.

It's a bit like Army of the Dead really.

Tankred: A Dwarven warrior may choose between a hand-axe and a two-handed axe. Due to the new rules, they should have a hand-axe even when they have a two-handed axe. So, should we ignore this?

Alessio: Yeah, actually we decided very late during development to put the rule that everybody is armed with a hand weapon unless it says literally, "this guy is unarmed." Yes.

So that was a late change. So after making the change, we had to go through the book and update all of the descriptions and some of them we missed, like the dwarves. But yes, absolutely, they all have hand-axes.

So you can choose to have hand-axes, basically nothing happens, they stay normal. Or, you get a double-handed axe. If you get a double-handed axe, you also have a hand-axe that you can always choose to use.

Tankred: One of your favorite armies used to be Rohan. You played different Rohan armies in at least three grand tournaments. Personally I have seen two different lineups of the armies. Now times get a little bit harder for Rohan, I think. Theoden increased points-wise. Royal Guards are more expensive now. Spears are more expensive. Uruk-Hai Captains got better. The Warg rider rule was changed. So what's up with Rohan? Have they suffered?

Alessio: I think Rohan is still my favorite army in the background because if you look, frankly every time I watch the Return of the King, when I see Theoden doing his speech in front of the army just before Minas Tirith, and then when they charge in, I cannot help it, I always cry, "boohoohoo, that's great!" So I really love that. I still think in the background they are my favorite army.

The latest version, I don't know if you've seen it, I decided to use a force which is Gandalf the White and Eomer leading the Riders of Rohan to rescue Helm's Deep. So there is no Royal Guard, just riders. The problem with that, in tournament, is it's a very, very small force so sometimes you just lose because you don't have enough models.

That's why I went for the Hobbits, which is actually 50 models. As many models as possible. I like both, I like to use both. Sometimes I use one, sometimes I use the other but I still love Rohan.

And yes, maybe they're less hard than they used to be. Maybe they were a bit too hard at the beginning, I don't know. I still think they can be competitive. I don't think they're that weak.

Tankred: Are there any plans to focus on Rohan again, in supplements.

Alessio: Yes, as you have seen this year we have released the Fellowship of the Ring book and next year obviously will come a Two Towers book. And if there's a Two Towers book then obviously there would be a lot more about Rohan.

I think people like Erkenbrand we will probably make, etcetera. So yes, you will get a few more stuff. Theodred is another we will make because, you know, you must have Theodred.

Yeah, we'll do something for Rohan as well.

Tankred: Now to the detailed things. A Troll has an option for a Mordor Catapult. Its points were cheaper than the model itself. So is this correct?

Alessio: Next question please. Yes, oops!

Tankred: Not to say it was just a mistake? Alessio: I could be honest or I could try to convince you that there is actually a very good reason why the troll is cheaper but I think it's just because it's wrong. Again, being responsible for the rules that we produce, if there is a mistake and the only way to correct the mistake would be to change the book and make a Q&A on the web that changes the rules, in principle I'm against that because then you have two books out in the world, in the market which are different. So one player has one rule or one point cost and the other player has a different one and if they meet they just go, "which one is right?" And if they don't know... how do they know which one is right? People like you which are up to date and know everything that is released all the time, you would know which one is right and which one is wrong because you're always switched on, you know it. But some people aren't so keen on following all of the developments, how would they know which one is right and which one is wrong? I don't want to be in that position.

So if there is no choice, of course we will correct and I will put a Q&A to them but if there is a choice to just live with a mistake, we'll just have to live with a mistake.

Now I don't know specifically with the troll. We will have to examine it and see if we can live with it or not. But we'll discuss it.

In general, I'm trying to reduce the number of Q&As, corrections and all this kind of stuff cause I think, especially with the other two systems [warhammer & 40k] because they're very big, suffer a lot from too many Q&As to make corrections.

Tankred: Compared to Warriors of Rohan, Haradrim are cheaper points wise, although they have the same stats and poison arrows. Is this due to their lack of shields option?

Alessio: Well they have the option to buy the shields. Are we talking about the foot guys, not the riders? Because I think the riders are fine. The infantry, I think you could argue that they should be a point cheaper. Often, you would really like them to be half the point cheaper. Because they're not as worse to be one point cheaper but they are a bit cheaper. You would really like them to be half point but sometimes you have to just choose and go, "well, maybe the difference is not too big, we'll leave it at that same cost, even if they are slightly less good."

If they could be, they probably should be half the point but can't do that.

Tankred: In comparison to the fighting Uruk-Hai, why are Siege Engineers at ten points, which is one point more?

Alessio: Next question please.

Tankred: The difference in the Guard of the Fountain Court seems to be too high in comparison to other Human elite warriors. For example, Royal Rohan Guard.

Alessio: I know this one, this actually is intentional. It's because Tolkien describes them as having mithril helms. So we assumed there was other mithril in their armor, not just the helm although maybe just the helm is enough. But yes, they have the best armor that Gondor can afford, they have the best.

The elite of the elite, so that's why.

Tankred: What was the intention of reducing Shelob's points?

Alessio: Well mostly it was people complaining that she was too easy to scare off by wounding her.

When we did the new rulebook, we went through the old profiles of everybody. We had like a big chart with all the profiles, all the costs and tried to make them all kind of make sense. But as you can imagine, the more models we have, the more that kind of process becomes more difficult. So sometimes you probably would disagree with some choices we made and yes, just because we have so many models.

You might agree or disagree. It's a bit like the Rohirrim, it's a difficult one.

Video Section Four

Tankred: So your customers urgently desire plastic Dwarves, will they come? Alessio: Yes, yes of course they will come. Before them, I think there will be Elves, Elves from Mirkwood. Like Legolas' Elves. So Thranduil and his court. Before we do that, before the Dwarves, I'm looking forward in the future and seeing a supplement on Mirkwood, with Spiders and Elves and then a supplement on the Iron Hills with Dwarves. Plastic Dwarves and possibly a Dragon or two to fight against the Dwarves. Tankred: Wow, you said it!

Tankred: Giant Eagles are included in the new rulebook. We hoped to see Ents too. Why weren't they included?

Alessio: Yes, we will make Ents. We would have loved to do Ents already but unfortunately, there is a technical problem with Ents. They are really, really difficult to design.

Treebeard, as you see, is very simple, he doesn't have a lot of branches all over the place, which is why we could make and a lot of companies can actually produce models of Treebeard.

If you look around, there's not many models of the other Ents and I think one of the reasons is that they are absolutely difficult to actually physically, technically realize because they have lots, so many branches. For example, you couldn't make them easily in injection-moulding plastic machine. In metal they will rip the moulds apart. It's really a technical issue here.

We're probably, I think, in a year, something like that, we'll probably have worked out how to make Ents and we'll probably make Ents.

It's something we really want to make. I mean, it would be way too cool to have an army of Ents.

For the moment, well, not for this edition but maybe next year? Possibly with the two towers? Who knows. I really think it's a technical thing so we'll see if we can do it.

Tankred: In the future, will there be more bits for equipment options like in the Royal Guard blister?

Alessio: I don't think that's very likely to happen. There's a complication with the mail order and the royalties and also we try to keep the Lord of the Rings game as simple as possible.

Maybe a bit more simple one-piece models as opposed to 40k or Warhammer. But I don't feel there will be many of those, no.


Tankred: Let me form the question another way. Will all equipment options, for example, the spear and the sword like for the Royal Guard be included in a blister in the future?

Alessio: No. I don't think we'll make other blisters like those but surely we are trying to make sure that you have models to cover all the options that in the book because obviously it's not nice to have options then you don't have all the models so as much as possible we're trying to fill in the gaps. So we are making models like rangers with spears, stuff like that.

Slowly, we hope to close all the gaps.

Tankred: Will there be another Best of White Dwarf book in the future?

Alessio: I don't think that's going to happen but, on the other hand, that kind of compilation is often done by the different companies in the world so maybe GW Germany might, I don't know.

I don't think at a group level, at the highest level in the HQ of Games Workshop, I don't think we're going to do any more of those.

The problem with those is that they get very old very quickly and the next year you have to replace them and replace them and replace them, so I don't think we will make them but it's not sure.

Tankred: Are there plans for further development of the Battle Company rules?

Alessio: I think there will be a few more things in White Dwarf but I don't think there are any plans to make them into a separate supplement or something like that. Not yet, not in the immediate future.

Tankred: In the Fellowship, Isildur was accompanied by Numenorian riders and riders of Gondor while he beared the ring. Could Gondorian and Elven cavalry be better options for the future development of a Last Alliance supplement?

Alessio: Yes, I think at some stage in the future we will make a Last Alliance supplement and if we do, then of course Elf cavalry, Gondor cavalry.. excuse me, Numenorian cavalry will definitely be a must.

Another thing that I kind of like the idea of, if you look at the ancient classical look of the High Elves in the battle, I kind of think, hmmm, maybe, I can really see a nice golden chariot going with those people. So, Elf chariot perhaps? But it's just a "maybe," nothing sure there.

Tankred: But riders are a must?

Alessio: If we make the supplement, we must do it, yes.

Tankred: Will there be some elite troops for the Elves in the supplement? Many people think Elves are not hard enough.

Alessio: To make them even harder would be nasty but I can certainly let you know that when we make the Mirkwood supplement, there is not only elf with bows, there is more stuff, more stuff and something to do with disappearing into a forest following strange, mysterious music and stuff like that. I cannot say too much.

Video Section Five

Tankred: When it comes to your visit here in germany, you do know some German phrases, I know, just tell us some please. Alessio: Sprechen Sie Englisch? Sprechen Sie Deutsch? What else do I know? Oh, I do know this one, yes. Just listen: [at this point, Alessio counts to 100 in German] Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier, Funf... Do you want me to continue? I can go for an hour or two. [He then goes on, attempting to count above 100] Tankred: I will tell the world Alessio knows more than 100 German words. Alessio: Hundreds and hundreds! Numbers! Then I know a few other words but I cannot tell them in a public place, in an interview. Sorry.

Tankred: For sure, those are the first to know!

Tankred: The Germans are very correct. You are emphatically precise. Are German Lord of the Rings fans more difficult for an Italian, like you?

Alessio: It's funny because, in England, when people don't know me and I start to talk to them and they start to know me, they always... well, not always, but very, very often they think I'm German. Maybe it's the blue eyes, I don't know. But they just, they never think I'm Italian. Maybe I look more German than Italian, I don't know. Perhaps I'm a bit of an atypical Italian.

I'm possibly a bit more tidy and possibly, I don't know, a bit more precise than the stereotype of an Italian would be. But of course, we are talking about stereotypes, we know. When you live in another country you find out very soon that stereotypes never work, they are never true.

Tankred: How do you like the Spiel? Have you spent time to look?

Alessio: I love the Essen Spiel, it is just... well, let's put it this way. I am a geek. I am a professional geek. I am an uber-geek! An uber-geek, absolutely. And, for me, this place is paradise. It is absolutely, just like, I don't know where to start! I feel like a kid that walks into a candy shop. I'm just going, [said frantically] "what do I buy? What do I buy? There's just too much stuff." It's a bit like that. I'm just going, "Oh there's too much, and not enough time!"

And I have to work on a Saturday but tomorrow I will spend the entire day shopping buying lots and lots of toys so yes, I'm really looking forward to that. I really like Essen, it's great. I love it.

Conclusion
You can access the actual video files at www.tabletop-hdr.de.

Thanks again to Tankred, Asuryan and www.tabletop-hdr.de for conducting this incredible interview. I would also like to thank Taliesin of www.thepalantir.org for taking time to edit the images used in this article.

Great job guys, keep up the fantastic work!

Krahl