Spoiler: Firelock Games Announces-Blood & Yoga

is proud to announce the newest game in their 28mm skirmish series called Blood & Yoga. Blood & Yoga is a huge departure from previous games published by Firelock Games and was developed to expand the appeal skirmish gaming beyond the typical wargame crowd by creating a game for the whole family to play and enjoy. The design came from the mind of lead designer Mike Tunez who developed the initial idea of the game while spending hours of solitude on his boat “The Flying Wench” during the Covid-19 lockdown. The game revolves around Mike’s embracing of yoga during this timeframe as well and uses a lot of the mechanics gamers have seen in games like Blood & Valor and Blood & Valor.
In Blood & Yoga the game places you in the bare feet of a Yogi who runs a Yoga studio and attempts to guide their students thru each different form of yoga until the class masters the most difficult form of yoga before their competitors do.
The yogi starts out with 5 students and starts with them mastering Hatha, or basic yoga. Each Yogi and student have skill ratings such as dexterity, flexibility & spirituality and each round starts off with each yogi drawing a “Pose Card”. Each pose will have four poses and will require a player select one pose on the card for each student and then they have to meet a minimum roll based on the skills of the students. An example is drawing a “Child Pose” which is a basic pose, the player must roll a 5+ on dexterity and flexibility and a 7+ on spirituality. The die roll, which is a d10, is added to the players skill rating and if they make the required rolls, they have mastered that pose.Once a student has mastered four basic poses, then can attempt the next level on the next card drawn, so once the Hatha requirements are met, the Anusara level for that model is met and they can attempt those poses. After Anusara the poses get much more difficult as the player gets into Iyengar, Bikram and finally Jivamukti. The game ends when a player has all of their students achieve Jivamukti or when the 90-min timer runs out and all the players chant Namaste. Once the game ends, the level of the students is totaled and whomever gets the most student points wins the game.
Beside the “Pose Cards”, each player draws 3 cards from the Karma deck which they must play during the round. The Karma Deck contains events that can be either good or bad for you. Events like injuries, the gain or loss of students, broken heating in the gym (which prevents you from making rolls for Bikram) and the acquisition of new mats are covered in the cards. The cards add a chaos factor in the game that can instantly turn the leading player into the deep depressive meditation of last place.
In designing this game Mike wanted to share with his fans his personal Kundalini growth that he has enjoyed over the last year. This inner growth has made his work on the latest updates for games like Blood & Plunder flow from his creative mind. In fact, the “Braves” figures pack came to Mike during an extended meditative trance he entered in.
Blood & Yoga also is an attempt to breaking into the popular Euro-game market. Firelock feels that the subject matter will have a very wide appeal and get the families of their current fans into gaming. According to Mike “as gamers many of us has a significant other who feels our passion for playing with painted soldiers is childish and a waste of time, this game gets them into the fold so you can have a fun weekend without the guilt trip when you get home”. One cannot fault Mike’s thinking here, he also feels this will help some of the more stressed players he sees at events. “Some guys get so mad when the dice go against them, they should do a Vinyasa and just chill” according to Mike.
The biggest question many fans will have about Blood & Yoga is will this new game take away from the other projects Firelock is working on. Mike replied to this when I asked him; “It won’t, maybe Blood & Valor since those guys breed so much negative energy, in fact it will add to existing games and we should be releasing the Yogi as a special character for Blood and Plunder today.
Special Character: The Yogi (5 Points)
Plundering was a tough and stressful business and leaders had to cope with a myriad of issues in order to stay focused. Many brought a personal Yogi with them on campaign who would be used to advice and “center” a forces commander.
Nationality: Any
Unit Restrictions: Command unit only, does not count toward the one Character per unit limit.
Main Weapons: None
Command Range: –
Command Points: –
Extra abilities:
– Passivity: In the case of a tie in activation this force will always lose. This command also cannot use Fortune Points since nothing is that important to get worked up about.
– Instant Meditation: Once per game when targeted the commander and Yogi can go into a yoga pose and fool the enemy into thinking they are already dead, thus cancelling any combat against them for that turn.

You can get the Yogi at the Firelock Games