Azrael Productions was a gaming industry news site which attempted to revive the Rage CCG in the early 2000s.
Overview[]
After the poor performance of the version produced by Five Rings Publishing Group, White Wolf reclaimed the license for Rage. They contracted with Azrael Productions to run official tournaments in 2000, which lead Azrael's staff to work on some much-needed rules revisions and clarifications. In 2001, Azrael began negotiating with White Wolf for a license to revive Rage fully with new cards.
It was Azrael which proposed treating the two incompatible versions of Rage as different games: the original Wizards of the Coast cards were designated Rage: Apocalypse, while the Five Rings version was dubbed Rage: Tribal War. They began playtesting new Apocalypse cards while still pursuing the license, and obtained Tribal War cards that Five Rings had already playtested at the time the game was originally cancelled.
When it became clear by that they were not going to get the license to produce new cards, Azrael generously relinquished their rights to the roughly 200 Apocalypse cards in playtesting and permitted their playtesters to share the cards online. This resulted in the first fan-made Apocalypse expansion, the New England Block, consisting of the Intermezzo, Periphery, Gauntlet and Coda sets.
Azrael eventually merged with anime news site Argo Radio, and shut down circa 2005.