NEWS: Assassins Creed Animus: The Board Game - Mantic Games and Ubisoft

Hail Mighty Readers and Followers of the Luck Gods Math Rocks,

Today we don our Brotherhood robes, the Da Vinci modified Hidden Blade and prepare to embark on an adventure with Mantic and Ubisoft.  Here's what they had to say in their latest press release:

Mantic Games and Ubisoft today launch retail orders for Assassin’s Creed™: Animus, a new competitive board game that brings the Assassin–Templar conflict from Ubisoft’s iconic video game franchise to the tabletop.

Assassin’s Creed: Animus is a competitive board game for up to 4 players that puts fans at the heart of the Assassin–Templar conflict. Players take on the roles of legendary Assassins from across the series, including Ezio Auditore, using asymmetric gameplay mechanics as they race to complete objectives across rich historical settings.

Blending stealth, strategy and action, Assassin’s Creed: Animus gives players meaningful choices as they navigate historical settings, pursue targets and adapt their plans against rival Assassins.

Each mission is structured around memory blocks, where players choose how to hunt down their Templar targets: striking from the shadows, engaging in open combat or changing tactics as rivals close in. Every decision asks players to balance speed, stealth and competitive advantage.

The game features:

• Legendary characters and eras from across the Assassin’s Creed series

• Highly detailed character bust miniatures

• A wide arsenal of iconic targets, gear and weapons

• Series-authentic artwork

Whether you are a long-time player or brand new to the world of Assassins and Templars, Assassin’s Creed: Animus offers a dynamic tabletop experience for series fans built around friendly rivalry, evolving challenges and high-stakes choices.Assassin’s Creed: Animus will be available in two editions:

• The Standard Edition includes 4 historical eras and 4 playable Assassins, giving players a 

game of intrigue, action and rivalry as they write their own legend across history. Step back 

in time and adventure through:

o The Crusades: Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad

o Renaissance Italy: Ezio Auditore da Firenze

o The American Revolution: Connor (Ratonhnhaké:ton)

o The Viking Age: Eivor Varinsdottir

• The Collector’s Edition is available in strictly limited numbers for dedicated Assassin’s Creed 

fans, expanding the game to 10 historical eras and 16 playable Assassins – the majority of 

which are currently exclusive to this edition. It comes packaged in a deluxe, Kallaxcompatible ‘Assassin’s chest’ storage box that houses all of the game’s components in a 

series of organiser drawers. Step back in time and adventure through:

o The Crusades: Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad

o Renaissance Italy: Ezio Auditore da Firenze

o The American Revolution: Connor (Ratonhnhaké:ton) & Aveline de Grandpré

o The Viking Age: Eivor Varinsdottir (Male & Female versions)

o The Golden Age of Piracy: Edward Kenway & Adéwalé

o Feudal Japan: Naoe & Yasuke

o Ancient Egypt: Bayek of Siwa

o Ancient Greece: Kassandra & Alexios

o The French Revolution: Arno Dorian

o Victorian London: Jacob Frye & Evie Frye

Pre-orders for this tabletop celebration of the Assassin’s Creed series are live from today via the 

Mantic Games website, shipping from the start of November 2026:

To purchase either edition go here.

More fab news as we get it from Mantic.

All the best,

ThunderMouser

VOICE ACTOR INTERVIEW: Assassins Creed: Black Flag: Charles Vane: Ralph Ineson - Ubisoft

With Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag, having been recently rereleased with updates, I thought it would be good fun to bring the interview I conducted with one of the voice actors, Ralph Ineson as a feature on this site.  

Here he chats about vocal acting vs stage acting and we hope that you enjoy this special feature, due to the age of the interview some of the information such as amount of films/tv shows he's been involved in will have changed:

Hello, my name's Ralph Ineson, I'm an actor. I've worked on ninety odd films and TV shows over the last 20 years, I'm a character actor, and in the words of the late Richard Griffiths as Uncle Monty Withnail "I shall never play the Dane". As a jobbing character actor I'm always looking for new work, I have distinctive voice which has lead me into voice over work over the last few years, but until this year I had not had the chance to work on video games. Actually I'm lying, I did appear as Amycus Carrow in a Harry Potter game, but that only required a two hour voice recording session as the facial/body scanning was done during the filming of the movies. Having auditioned in London twice, I was cast as the pirate Charles Vane, the audition process being much the same as for a film or TV show. In fact, to guard against any snobbery towards the project being 'just a game', Agents were told that the project was a TV series. I however have an old mate who just happens to work at Ubisoft in Montreal who tipped me off that I was someone they were interested in and filled me in on the details (not what you know etc.). To be honest, the thought of motion capture filming had never really done it for me, I was excited to be trying something new, but I'd always imagined the work to be incredibly detached and over technical with little opportunity to actually 'act'.

The process of creating a game on the scale of Assassins Creed 4 Black Flag is mind boggling, Ubisoft studios from Singapore to Sophia all combined to create an amazing world; the cinematics of the game were all recorded at Ubisoft's state of the art motion capture studios in Montreal. These cinematics were not shot continuously as would be the case with a film, with mo-cap the schedule seemed to revolve around a week’s recording followed by 2weeks of working with that technical data. This meant I had four trips to Montreal over 3 months. A typical week would involve a day’s rehearsal at the main Ubisoft studio with lead writer Darby McEvitt and cinematics director Kama Dunsmore, followed by 3 days recording in the mo-cap studio. During the rehearsal day we would work through the script and block out the scenes to be recorded, we also had the chance to play the game which meant we could go to the tavern we were about to record a scene in, look around, make a mental note of the view that the character is looking at when doing a certain scene etc.

On recording days we'd start with the suiting up, a strange process where you squeeze into a skin-tight Lycra suit and stand there for about 15mins whilst 3 French speaking animation technicians buzz around you attaching 50 Velcro patches to very specific points on the body to hold the malteser sized white balls that are picked up by the mo-cap cameras. It's an odd experience, like a knight being dressed in armour by his pages, but quite a useful one when you're getting into character for a pirate captain. Next step is the head cam, I have an unusually wide head so this was not my favourite part of the process, the technology for head cams is still in its infancy really so there are not that many available and unfortunately none to fit my outsized cranium. The upshot of this is that I'd spend most of the day with my temples crushed, not ideal but handy character help when playing a permanently angry psychopath like Charles Vane. The head cams would be calibrated and matched up with a matrix of black dots applied to the face (it's a good look). The last part of the pre shoot process is the range of movement test or ROM, another strange and ever so slightly humiliating part where you perform a set routine of movements for the animation software to register.

Now to record, the studio itself is small compared to a sound stage at a movie studio, about the size of a basketball court with 50 motion capture cameras around the walls, it has a badminton court sized rectangle marked on the floor within which we record. It's at this point that mo-cap filming gets interesting for an actor, if you were shooting a scene for a film you would set up multiple shots (wide shot, 2shot,various close ups etc.) and in all probability do multiple takes of those shots. In all of those the actor has to match his performance for continuity, to make sure that he picks up the glass on the same word of the line each take for example. This technical side can often feel like a compromise on film, something that inevitably gets between you and really inhabiting the character you're playing, the way mo-cap works is different. Because all 50 cameras are recording, the Director can take whatever shot they like from the one take without having to edit from different takes, this gives an extra freedom to the actor. The way you can let go, throw yourself into a scene fully without having to think about focus marks, lighting etc. is quite exhilarating and particularly great for me playing Vane with his screaming and howling at the moon. There's something reminiscent of theatre performance about it all.

My first proper taste of working on Video games has been a fascinating experience, there's much more to motion capture than I'd imagined and I hope it's an area I get to do more work in. I hope you all enjoy the world of the Golden age of piracy we've created, there are fantastic performances from Matt Ryan as Edward Kenway, Mark Bonnar as Blackbeard and many more, the writing is superb and the look of the game is just stunning.

Ralph