August 7th, 2008 -- The office of Dream Pod 9 will be closed next week while we are attending Gen Con Indy (August 14th to 17th, 2008), if your attending stop by our booth (#1534) and say hello. We'll be back in the office on Tuesday, August 19th and the next shipping day will be Friday, August 24th. The August miniture releases are now available on the HG Blitz Online Store. Releases include the Peace River Infantry Platoon (DP9-9087), Hoplite APC Two Pack (DP9-9088), Stripped Down Hunter Two Pack (DP9-9116) and Weasel Two Pack (DP9-9117). We have also added the new Locked & Loaded Quickstart Rules and some Quick Reference Sheets PDFs to the L&L Datacards Page, along with a cool new HG Blitz! Locked & Loaded Datacard Maker software, check it out. Special Thanks to Daniel Bond, who put together the Datacard Maker (7.3MB zip file) java software. With the release of the L&L Quickstart Rules we have also revised the contents and price of the North and South Starter Army Box Sets, they now each include 1 G.P. and 1 Fire Support squads and are priced at $85.95 like the Peace River Starter Army. One important announcement, as of August 1st, 2008 we have increasing our shipping costs by $2 for USA and Canada and $5 for International, in order to cover the latest postal cost increases.

Two of Dream Pod 9's products have been nominated for ENnie Awards this year. The first is the Heavy Gear Blitz! Locked & Loaded Rulebook e-book which has been nominated for Best Electronic Book and the second is the HT-68 Hovertank which has been nominated for Best Miniature Product. Voting has now ended, so lets all cross our fingers, the Awards will be given out at Gen Con Indy.

The new Coyote Stider Pack (DP9-9103), is now available to order on the HG Blitz Online Store. It includes parts to make either the walker or vehicle mode Coyote along with light rail gun, antigear missle launcher, satellite uplink, normal head and command head option parts. Also, available are the Cheetah Paratrooper Two Pack (DP9-9113) and Iguana Paratrooper Two Pack (DP9-9113) that where released at the end of June.

We also added some new Online Only Heavy Gear Blitz! Locked & Loaded Starter Packages (with one of the Softcover, Hardcover or Deluxe Edition Locked & Loaded Rulebooks, a Peace River, North or South G.P. Squad of 5 Miniatures and a Measuring Tape), to the online store and removed the old starter packages. At the start of August, before we head off to Gen Con Indy (August 14th to 17th, 2008) we'll release the following new miniatures. The Hoplite APC Two Pack (DP9-9088), which includes extra parts (command and mortar) and the Infantry Platoon shown with a Hoplite APC (40 infantry and 12 hex bases) for Peace River. Here are a few more pictures of the new Peace River Infantry as One Squad, Closeup, and Platoon with an APC shown from a higher angle. Also in August the new Stripped Down Hunter Two Pack (DP9-9116) and Weasel Two Pack (DP9-9117) for the North. Phil is also working on some Armor Upgrade Two Packs for the Aller, Klemm, Visigoth and Hun tanks, which will be upgrade parts you add to the existing miniatures, they should be out in September and we'll get pictures up as soon as they are ready. Here are a few pictures of the 3 Hun upgrades that can be made shown painted and unpainted (Hittite, Hittite unpainted, Ballista, Ballista unpainted, Recon Hun, and Recon Hun unpainted).

We have added a new Heavy Gear Blitz! Locked & Loaded Datacards section to the website with all the Locked & Loaded Datacards. Also, checkout some cool new miniature pictures by Darrin "spaceman spiff" Teigen, which we added to our Fans Miniature Gallery, check it out. CanGames 2008 was a lot of fun this year, a big thank you to Bryan and Stephane for helping out. Checkout a few pictures from the convertion, Robert at the booth, Miniatures display 1, Miniatures display 2, and one of the Heavy Gear Blitz! Tournament Tables. The tournament was won this year by Brad Bellows (shown with prizes), second place when to Ryan Henshaw and third place to Robert Orth, grats to all our winners. Also, Stephane made a cool Heavy Gear Blitz! Counters pdf that you can download, print, cutout and glue over 12mm dice for movement, actions and damage. For our Gear Krieg fans, John Bell has made 9 Gear Krieg Cardboard Models that you can download, print on paper and then glue on thicker cardboard, cutout and play with.

June's miniature included the Hunter Commando Two Pack (DP9-9111) and Desert Viper Two Pack (DP9-9112) are available to order on the HG Blitz Online Store and ready to ship. Also, one quick note, if you purchased a HT-68 Hovertank from January to March you maybe missing a few pieces, two molds were misplaced and we didn't notice before some of these shipped. If you are missing these parts please let us know and we'll get them shipped out to you right away. Phil has finished up the Coyote Strider (includes parts to make either the walker or tank mode), shown with other Peace River forces, it will be available in July.

The Heavy Gear Blitz! Locked & Loaded - Rulebook (DP9-9996, 200 pages including 10 color pages) is now available to Order on the HG Blitz Online Store. Locked & Loaded will now be available in 3 formats a Softcover (DP9-9996s at $34.95), a Hardcover (DP9-9996 at $49.95) and a Hardcover Deluxe Edition (DP9-9996de Full Color at $89.95). If you purchased the e-book version of Locked & Loaded already we have a special where you get $10 Off the purchase of one of these 3 books from our online store. You need to mark your e-book order # (this should be stamped at the bottom of each page of your e-book), name and email address in the comments of the Cashout Page, we need this info to confirm that you purchased the e-book. We'll then remove $10 from the order before your credit card is charged, if your paying with Paypal you will have to pay the full amount and we will send you a $10 refund within 24 hours.

May's miniature releases included the New HT-72 Hovertank (DP9-9090) shown in view 1, view 2 and view 3, is now available to order on the HG Blitz Online Store. Along with the new Pit Bull Two Pack (DP9-9085) for Peace River and the new Air Strike Counter Pack (DP9-9115) for Locked and Loaded, here some pictures of its contents (North, South, Earth (PAK) and Peace River), includes 3 of each counter.

The Locked & Loaded e-book is also available now on the www.DriveThruRPG.com website, here is a direct to the ordering page, or if you prefer its also available on the www.rpgnow.com website. The e-book is Electronic Format, Full Color, 200 pages plus front and back covers, about 87MB in size, priced at $25.00US. The GAMA Tradeshow was great this year we got to meet with lots of retailers, a big thank you to all who stopped by our booth.

Also, April's miniature releases of the Razorback Two Pack (DP9-9108), Anolis Two Pack (DP9-9109) and Black Adder Two Pack (DP9-9110) are available to order on the HG Blitz Online Store. Along with the Bobcat Two Pack (DP9-9106), Basilisk Two Pack (DP9-9107), Hunter Paratrooper Two Pack (DP9-9104) and Jager Paratrooper Two Pack (DP9-9105). Check out a few pictures of some recent releases: Hunter Paratrooper, Jager Paratrooper, Bobcat, and Basilisk. As well as the Dragon Strider with Medium Flamer & Heavy Rocket Pack, the resin kit also includes lots of extra weapons, as shown here with Snub Cannon and Medium Field Mortar or with Light Particle Accelerator and Heavy Pulse Laser Cannon.

As we announced on January 1st for our Canadian customers it's a great start to the new year with the Goods and Services Tax (GST) being reduced to 5%, the online ordering pages have been corrected accordingly. Phil is busy working on the South Dragon Stider, we should have some pictures to show withing the next week and it will be available for sale shortly after that.

In recent news, as the Canadian and US Dollars are now at par we will now just charge the US price as Canadian Dollars when processing credit card sales, in effect all prices on the online store are now in Canadian Dollars.

Phil has also finished up the new Earth/PAK HT-68 Hovertank, also checkout a picture with the Port Arthur Korps (PAK) Army. It is now available for order on the HG Blitz Online Store. We have also just added to the store the repackaged Camel Truck DP9-9102 (as a Two Pack), Defence Turret DP9-9101 (as a Two Pack), Destroyed Hunter DP9-9008, Destroyed Jager DP9-9014, the new Tiger for the North, and the new Sidewinder for the South.

The new Cataphract is now available for order on the HG Blitz Online Store, we finally decided to go with a big resin miniature instead of metal. Here is a quick picture of all the Cataphract resin parts, Phil made alternate shields, head and added some extra weapons (HBZK and VLFG). Plus a few more pictures of the painted up Cataphract in a Group Shot, Side 1, Side 2, and Back Shot. We have added a little bit of World History, Gears used and Equipement to the QuickStart Army Sheets found on the new Heavy Gear Blitz Demo Game Page. We'll also be adding this to the sheets included in the Starter Army Boxes.

Big News for Heavy Gear Blitz! the game was nomiated for an Origins Award for Best New Miniature Game of 2007.

If you are running Dream Pod 9 games at a convention or local gaming store or have scheduled gaming days for Heavy Gear Blitz, let us know and we'll announce it the website!