NaNoWriMo winners revealed! Plus, read the winning entries…

In November we took part in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and asked our dedicated Mantic fans to pen a story based on a handful of Events, Battles, and Character Stories from both the World of Mantica and the Warpath Universe.

There were six potential sources of inspiration for the budding writers. For the Lands of Mantica category the three themes were:

1. The Ratkin Revolt
2. The Life of the Green Lady
3. Living Battle Report (Mantica)

While the Warpath Universe category had these three themes:

1. The Last Match of Gregor ‘The Big G’ Davitz
2. The Garrison on Planet Exham IV
3. Living Battle Report (WPU)

We were absolutely blown away by the response and the quality of the submissions. In fact, we had almost 50 entries, so choosing the three winners wasn’t easy.

The most popular categories were The Life of the Green Lady and The Garrison on Planet Exham IV, although we had plenty of submissions for The Ratkin Revolt theme too.

Today, we’re delighted to announce that the winners are *drum roll please*

1^st place – The Lady’s Most Loyal by Eleanor Hingley

2^nd place – Hannigan’s Hope by Landy Rodriguez

3^rd place – Cornered Rats by David Crabtree

You can read all three of those entries by clicking on the links above. Eleanor’s tale about the Green Lady was absolutely superb and that tear in our eye at the end was definitely because of a piece of dust or something... honest.

We’ll be contacting all the winners to let them know the good news and after Christmas we’ll post some of the honourable mentions too. Once again, thanks for all your hard work in producing these fantastic works of Mantic fiction and we’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading the submissions.

A comment from Ronnie

It’s been a fantastic experience to see all the passion and creativity that has been explored through this competition.

When I embarked on the journey that is Mantic, I always hoped that it would be a gaming company where part of the narrative would be shaped by the community, just like the events and organized play would be too. With this in mind, next year we will be running a huge global campaign for Kings of War, where the games people play will move the timeline forward and shape the world, which will generate even more great stories.

With both Kings of War and Warpath we set out to create huge canvasses, on which epic stories can unfold. While we will set out the grand overarching plot lines, it is all the individual games, background and mini narratives that make the universe come to life. I'm sure you've all got your own stories about a particularly stunning last minute strike in Dreadball, a unit that just refused to die in Kings of War or a Deadzone Strike Team that got a lucky last shot to win a game. I always wanted to make sure Mantic made games that inspire these stories.
 
Finally a few thanks. Jared needs to be thanked for suggesting and driving the idea to fruition, and Rob needs a big mention for reading all the submissions and picking some winners! Thank you everyone for your efforts in making our worlds come to life.