Samaritan Troopers

Just a quick post today - it's still incredibly busy here and hard to find the time to do anything 'extra'!

I wanted to show the concept for the new Samaritan troopers and talk a little about them. When we originally launched the Sedition Wars miniatures a couple of years ago, the troopers were quite a lot lighter armoured and more low-tech - and while I really liked them (and still do), I saw Battle for Alabaster as a chance to refresh them, and add a little more hard sci-fi edge to the Vanguard. The new Prophet Armour Samaritans certainly do that - and the design of the armour and weapons definitely has echoes of high-tech sci-fi video games and films.

Here's the concept -

Great work from Roberto Cirillo (by the way - we haven't done that version of the grenade launcher yet - the one in the game is quite different) - wonderfully sculpted by Kev White, who has such a natural feel for this kind of subject matter. I have just shown the Male Samaritan with Las Carbine here, but will be showing the other miniatures in the coming weeks - I can't blow them all in one post, I'm trying to post a blog every day the Kickstarter is running!

Here's some flavour text about them -

A squad of Vanguard Samaritans can end up visiting dozens of systems on a single tour of duty. This means that each squad must be ready for a vast number of tactical situations. Simulation training prior to deployment often implants specific survival techniques for a variety of environmental conditions. A single Samaritan is trained to improvise whenever necessary, and to persevere no matter what the adversity.

Specially deployed in Prophet Armour, Samaritans are entrusted to excel in the most hostile of battlefield conditions. The armour system combined with the Katar kinesis carbine makes the Samaritan a lethal battlefield platform. Should they die in combat, each Samaritan is implanted with a cortical recall beacon that allows the mind of the slain soldier to be uploaded into a vat-grown replacement body. Downtime is temporary and battlefield stress is dealt with in virtual space prior to redeployment.

Samaritans are seen as one of the most elite fighting forces on the Edge.

Cheers!

mike

Battle for Alabaster tile design

Wow - it's been a crazy day and a half since the Kickstarter campaign launched! The level of support we've been shown has really blown my mind - we were funded in six hours, and are now on our way to the second stretch goal. It's so great - the more people support us, the better we can make the game and the more cool stuff we can give everyone.

As promised I am going to be looking at different aspects of the game  and the way we created it, here on the blog. The first of these posts is a look at the tiles - an aspect of the game I'm really proud of (well that counts for pretty much everything!).

There were a few different routes we could take with the tiles. When we did the alpha rules we created a poster map that was rendered in a hi-tech blue-print style. While I loved it, it wasn't quite the look I wanted for the finished game. I wanted the tiles to be rendered in a 'realistic' style that made you think you were looking at a real location. I wanted to present Alabaster Station as a definite place - a secret facility that the Strain nano-virus has ravaged and swept clean. The virus consume all organic and non-organic material it comes across - re-purposing it into part of the construct.

In the course of my career, I have been lucky enough to become friends with some incredibly talented people, and the person who did the art for these tiles is one of the most gifted artists I know. Rich Wright worked on a wide variety of products for GW - he did the tile art for Warhammer Quest and Space Hulk 2nd edition, along with most of the 40K vehicle cover paintings in the mid nineties. Since then he's produced matte painting and 3D work for a wide variety of well known projects - the intro scenes for Motorstorm, Muse Sing for Absolution video, and many other high profile projects.

He built the tiles for Battle for Alabaster completely in 3D - lighting and rendering them just as you would with any vfx shot, then importing them into photoshop and adding details, weathering and blood stains. I really love the results.

We purposely kept the designs pretty clean and futuristic - Sedition Wars is a high-tech universe so we wanted to steer well clear of any dark and gothic elements. I didn't want them cluttered with furniture and details - partly because all that would have been consumed by the virus, and partly because it would interfere with game play.

There are ten different tiles, and one transit network car (that's a train!), so that gives you a wide variety of different  board set ups. What the pictures here don't really show is the size of the tiles - each is 12x12 25mm squares, so they are 350mm square (including borders) - pretty big! You can link them together in a lot of different ways - creating many different settings for games.

The ones I have shown here are the Cargo Bay, the Personnel area, the Engine Control Room and the Transit Car (you get two of these - there is an awesome scenario that need both of them).

I hope you like them!

mike

Kickstart us!

After more than two years of work, the first Sedition Wars game - Battle for Alabaster, is nearly done. Most of the miniatures are already in plastic tooling, the art is complete and we're just putting the final tweaks on the rule book and packaging.

It's been an incredibly hard journey - the hours have been long and stressful, and sometimes we thought we would never get to this point - but we're very proud of what we've achieved. The amount of work you have to put into a project like this is mind boggling, and if we'd have know going into it, we might never have started. (Actually that's not true at all - I knew exactly what's involved with a project like this, and it's why, when I left Privateer Press, I swore I would never do a game - but you know, memories fade!).

Of course we didn't do it alone, and I have worked with some of the best talents in the industry on this project. I'd be proud to put the miniatures along side those from any other company - no matter how big that company is. The art and design are similarly top-rate.

The person that deserves the most credit is the game designer, and all round creative genius - Rob Baxter. Without Rob, there would be no game, and the Sedition Wars universe would be a poorer place. It's thanks to him the game is fun and exciting, and the storyline compelling and evocative.

Why Kickstarter?

So if the game is pretty much done - why do we need help? Well, we've aimed pretty high with this product. If you look at the miniatures, they're not the usual flat, two dimensional sculpts you generally see in board games - they're animated and highly detailed - just as good as you'll get in any 'real' miniatures game. But that comes at a price - as do the rest of the components - die cut counters, large game boards, full colour 60 page rules and scenario book - they are all very expensive to produce.

Launching a Kickstarter for this game helps us take those last steps to make the game as good as it deserves to be. Without it we would have to make cuts - fewer miniatures in the box, less variations in sculpts, shorter rule book - things we really don't want to have to do. We have the know-how and talents to make this a fantastic product, and be able to go toe-to-toe with the big guys in the industry - but we need a a little help.

Support us!

So we're asking everyone to support the Kickstarter campaign and spread the word to anyone who might be interested, we need to get the word out there!

I'll be publishing more material on this blog in the coming weeks - miniatures, fiction, art, sneak peeks at the rule book - so keep coming back.

The Kickstarter page is live now - please take a look.

cheers!

mike

Tentacles of Death!

New release time! This is the miniature we previewed at Salute (in very limited quantities), and is finally now ready for a proper release. We've wanted to do more 50s style pulp sci-fi miniatures since Beauty and the Bot, and this is the first. It's pretty obvious where the inspiration for this character came from - but I think the rendering is brilliant. Another stunning combination of concept and sculpt from Roberto Cirillo and Yannick Hennebo - both really nailed the look and feel we wanted from this piece.

I had hoped I could announce the Sedition Wars game was finished right about now, but it's not - quite... Very close though. It seems that that last 10% of any project contains the majority of the effort (and stress). We will have some announcements on the game in the next couple of weeks though - so stay tuned!

In not so great news, we have had to raise our postage rates. We have kept them the same for the last couple of years, despite Royal Mail raising them - but this time they put the prices up over 30%, so we have to raise the flat rate shipping charge.

News on Battle for Alabaster soon!

mike

Head Hunter

Just a quick post to share pictures of the latest release in the Limited Edition Resin series - Grizzel. Another awe-inspiring sculpt from JAG, this time from a Sam Wood concept - great stuff from both parties!

Absolutely beautiful painting from Ali (is beautiful the right word when something is covered with blood and severed body parts...?).

She's in the Studio Store now.

Only been back from GAMA for a few days and still up to my neck in all things Sedition Wars. We have about six weeks to get everything finished and off to production for the game's summer release. Really excited about it - but by god there's a lot to do...

cheers!

mike

She's back!

We've been planning this miniature ever since we did the first version of Ar-Fienel, and long before the original turned out to be so popular. When we first discussed the character, we couldn't decide if we should do her in an active or passive pose, when we opted for the latter, we still thought we'd do another version that was a little more dynamic. Here she is!

The challenge was always going to be capturing the same etherial grace and poise of the original, but with some dynamic movement - and hopefully we've achieved that. That's down to the concept and sculpt of course and it had to be the same talented pair that did the original version - Stephen Tappin and Yannick Hennebo.

If anything I think Ali's paint scheme is even nicer - but of course she's had some practice now! It definitely feels smooth and more glowing than the first version, and the creams and pinks work really well with the greens on the base. Talking of which, the scenic base it really lovely - I'll take some pictures of it and post them here - it's just covered in beautifully rendered details.

She's available in the Studio Store now.

Hope you like her!

mike

Al-Raavia

Apologies for the time since the past post - December flew past in such a blur there didn't seem to be a fraction of the time needed to get everything done. January has been similarly busy, and we've been shut away working on various different projects for 2012. The major one is, of course, Sedition Wars - Battle for Alabaster, but there will be plenty of blog posts about that in the coming months. Suffice to say, we're really excited about it.

This post to just to show some pictures of the new Limited Edition resin release - Al-Raavia. She is the latest release in our series of Faerie inspired miniatures. The concept and sculpt are by the usual team of Stephen Tappin and Yannick Hennebo, and the end result is up to their usual exceptional standard.

She's in the Studio Store now.

In other news, the entries for the Sedition Wars painting competition have been judged and winners announced over on the forums - some stunning painting and converting. Check out the entries here.

cheers!

mike