I've always had a fascination and love for tabletop miniatures; the intricate details, the vast array of choice and variety, the ability to customise them any way you wanted. The only problem for me, though, was that I wasn't very talented when it came to painting so my beginning miniatures looked as if a three-year-old had dipped them into a tin of acrylic paint and just left them.

They were the kind of paint jobs that parents would take with fake smiles, pin on their fridge and then slowly slip into the bin a few days later.

Not only that but the miniature's hobby can be pretty expensive and sure video games have tried to emulate the feeling of a tabletop miniature game before but they've always been missing something...
The actual painting of the miniatures.

Enter Might & Magic Showdown, a competitive PvP strategy game that mixes pre-combat tactics with real-time action from Ubisoft Montreal's FunHouse division. The game is currently available on Stream via Early Access for £15.99 but you can access one aspect of the game already for free, the paint workshop.

Here you can access five miniatures to paint and customise as you see fit before taking them into battle in the full game, but you should be aware that this painting aspect of the game will only be free for the first month of the early access process.

The full game doesn't yet have a confirmed date where the team hope to leave Early Access because, according to the game's producer Philippe Ducharme, they want to use Early Access to collect requests from fans and make sure they're implemented. As Ducharme puts it, he wants the community to 'decide the right priorities for the game.'

I managed to catch the announcement stream from Ubisoft where they showed off the game mechanics and equally played a couple of matches against the AI and I have to say, I was impressed. Not only does the game capture the feeling of playing a tabletop game but it equally looks stunning graphically.

In the meantime, I'm going to be spending my evenings painting the heroes that are available at the moment, so if you'd like to see a fridge-worthy artiste try their hand at miniature painting you can see find my first video above where I paint the Demon Lord Veyer.

Before I go, though, what are your initial thoughts on the game? Are you a Might & Magic fan? As a tabletop gamer would this sort of title interest you enough to buy it? Let me know in the comments!

By MrStainless001 (follow him on Youtube for more videos!)

Until next time though folks, have a great week and I'll speak to you all soon.