Welcome to the overdue update on Conquest of the Gods! 2016 has had a somewhat chaotic start for me in my personal life, and as they say life can get in the way. However I am happy to report that progress has been made and things are moving forwards (just not as quickly as planned).

Norse: All models have been sculpted, book art work has been finalised and these are now finished! Nothing new here to show off but I can advise that Thors rules have been given a tweak thanks to some very helpful playtesting feedback.

Egyptians: All models have been sculpted, I am re-sculpting one of the models, adding another unit to the range. The need to add another sculpt came out of play testing and is almost finished. One more piece of artwork needs to be done and then this section of the book is also finished – this should all be sorted by the end of April. Dan Mitchell has been doing a great job in finishing up this part of the book, here is the recently completed artwork for the Alpha Sphinx.

Greeks: Final unit has been sculpted and I am waiting on the final files for the unit to arrive and then they all sculpted. I am going back and making a minor edit to the hoplite miniatures as im not happy with their Doru (long spears), they tend to bend too much when being transported – another small edit ill make thanks to playtesting. The talented George Evangelista has started the final illustration for Greek section of the book. I expect that the Greeks will be off my list by the end of April. George has finished a few pieces recently; here is the last one he completed – the mighty Spartans.

Japanese: Oliver Cook has been working on the final amazing sculpt that I previously previewed for the Japanese. It is a giant, the mighty Gashadokuro and I am happy to report that the model itself sculpted and we are in the process of making a few adjustments to his scenic base and breaking him up for prototyping. The artwork for the Miko and Kannushi has been started by the talented Abigail Sins, and once that piece is finished she will move on to the Gashadokuro artwork, completing the Japanese section of the book. Each culture has a priest model/unit. For the Japanese we have a Miko and a Kannushi – here are the final models (note the streamers on the Mikos’ fan are straight because these will be cast in metal so you can bend them to your preference):

Also here is an updated preview of the above mentioned Gashudukro

One of the reasons the art work takes a while is that I don’t commission each piece until after we have sculpted the miniature, this is to ensure that the artwork matches the sculpt. This has been an ongoing bugbear of mine with other games for years, so its important to me that when you look at the artwork in the book it aligns with what we have produced in the miniatures range.

I also found time to re-review the books fiction and found two small plot holes that I had to fix, this allowed me to write a new combat scene between two of the gods that I am going to have someone proof read for me before I insert it into the book. Once the above mentioned artwork is finished I can finally move on to having the final quotes and proofs for the book printing done. I will be also looking to do a digital release of the book, and will confirm details on this once I have signed the book off as finished.

On to the miniatures production. I have sourced a vulcaniser and plan to pick it up soon – I have been chasing this machine up for the better part of a year now but am assured it will be ready in a few weeks. Once I have picked it up, I will look forward to sharing some pictures with you all. I will also be importing a spin casting machine, allowing me to cast all of the metal miniatures in-house, in turn, this will help me sell them at a more competitive price. I had planned to be sharing news on the vulcaniser in this update but unfortunately, it will have to wait for a future update. I have some 3D prototyping to do, and will be focusing my efforts on that in the coming months as I start to get my in-house moulding up and running. For those interested, here is  a couple of pictures from one of the recent play testing sessions, please excuse the unpainted models, these are play test models and have been broken, dropped and some have been used for testing paint scheme ideas.

For those of you who are not interested in game design, this next bit may be quite a bore to read. I am also in the middle of re-designing the points cost system for the miniatures and I thought I would share my thoughts on this rather complex process. There has been an ongoing debate within the game design circles around model points systems and if they really bring about game balance. The basic premise of model points costs is that each model is worth a certain number of points, this, in turn, helps balance the power of models against one another as most games are limited to a specific number of points – for example, you take 1000 points worth of models, more powerful models are worth more points. The major player in the industry recently launched a new (ok, recycled might be a better term here) game system that controversially did away with the traditional points system, seeking to find game balance in other ways. The major issue with points systems is that the formulas used to create them can be somewhat subjective and ultimately the game designer makes those subjective decisions. So we are left with an imperfect formula, made by imperfect human designers that often result in what gamers call power creep, where newer models are more powerful as the systems used to design them evolve with the designers understanding of what they can get away with through the rigors of playtesting. To try and future proof conquest of the gods I have created a horribly complex formula that includes variables from the next 3 planned expansion books – will this result in a perfectly balanced game? I’d be lying if I said yes, but I think it will be better balanced than some of the other systems out there. After all I still have to subjectively start with what 1 point is worth and make subjective assumptions about some of the specific model rules, but I am playtesting the new system with a lot of rigor to bring you something that has some degree of in game balance. I would be interested to hear people’s thoughts on model points systems and what factors they like and find frustrating about them.

That’s it for this update. We are inching closer and closer to an actual release! I have had a few stockists contact me who are keen to support the game, so I am pushing hard to get the in house casting up and running ASAP!

Happy gaming until next time

John
Demigod Games

It is time for another update on Conquest of the Gods. Over the past month things have been steadily inching closer to completion. Here is an overview of what’s been happening.

The book:

The book had another round of edits this month, tightening up some of the looser elements that I identified needed tidying up from play testing.  The core game rules are pretty solid now and I am not foreseeing many (if any) changes to them between now and final publication. I have also been grappling with the issue of miniatures point’s costs – a fairly topical issue in the community at the moment. The points cost of most of the models work well, although I think there is room for improvement here so this is something I plan to roll into some broader local playtesting with a larger gaming group.  Conquest of the Gods, I have intentionally designed the game so that you are not standing around waiting for your turn – a few of the more complex rules for some of the gods were slowing things down so they needed an adjustment.  In most cases this was just a simple wording adjustment.

Art assets continue to flow in at a steady pace. Forrest Immel and I have gone over all of the Norse artwork as a set, and Forrest has done a final review pass all of the Norse artwork, so that entire section of he book is now ready for printing. The other sections of the book should be at this stage within the next few months! George Evangelista recently completed the artwork for the Greek Harpy. The miniature was sculpted some time ago and had its resin and metal production moulding done some time ago. As a reminder, here is the sculpt.

And here is the artwork.

As with everything else for the game, we did not hold back and I think this piece and I am very happy with how it has turned out.  George has also posted a censored version of this piece viewable on his Facebook page, the uncensored version will be what appears in the book.

As with a number of the many of the sculpts and illustrations for the game this one is based on a real person and I have to thank the harpy’s model Rebecca for being a good sport throughout the artistic process.

The miniatures:

With only a couple of models left to sculpt, my attention has been focused on the prototyping and production end of things. This week a batch of prototypes arrived that im keen to share. I have taken some photos, but i have to apologise in advance for the quality of these pictures,  i am still learning how to take macro pictures without having lighting issues!

The Scion Wolf sculpt is here and is ready for resin moulding and casting. Im very happy with how it has tuned out.

The Norse Valkyrie has finally been prototyped. This bad girl has presented a few challenges that im very pleased to say have been overcome. The wings will be heading off with the above wolf for resin prototyping whilst the rest of her will be headed to the vulcaniser for moulding with a number of other metal miniatures.

The Oni is the only mid-sized creature I have not shown off yet, this is because I’ve had a couple of minor issues with his hair and his weapon arm. The hair was not fitting on to his head as I wanted, so one of the local gamers who is a handy painter and sculptor is having a go at tidying that up for me by hand over the coming weeks. Originally the Oni’s right arm was going to be cast in metal so you could bend the fingers around the resin weapon. This would have allowed me to do weapon variants later on, but that has been scrapped. Casting the hand in metal is a major pain in the rear. So I have re-prototyped the weapon arm with the weapon in it. This will be heading off to resin casting along with the other parts above.

Thankfully this is also off my list and I should be able to preview him in a month or two. The Oni is the last resin miniature I need to tie up for the games starter sets, all of the other resins I am working on are standalone models that are part of the broader range.

I will be re-prototyping some of the basic infantry models over the coming month to make them easier to cast, and to fix some very minor scale issues that are bugging me. These new prints will be moulded in the vulcaniser I need to drive to Sydney to pick up. I’ll be making time to do that sometime over the coming month.

Well that’s about it for this development blog. Stay tuned for the next one, as I plan to show off some play testing photos and hopefully some new production moulds. As always, thanks for your interest and support. Like many of you, I can’t wait to see this game out there in the hands of gamers.

Until next time, may the dice gods be with you.

John

Demigod games.

Hello and welcome to the latest update on the colossal project that is Conquest of the Gods!

I have received a few emails over the past two weeks asking for updates on the game, sculpts and information on purchasing the miniatures. An update is way overdue, in part due to personal circumstances but also due to my focus on play testing and moulding and production. I am aiming to launch the starter sets and rule book at the same time and then follow up with the rest of the range fairly quickly.

I receive regular requests to buy the miniatures, so i have to flag up that the miniatures are not yet for sale, this is the most common question I get asked. The site and development blog are really here as a way for me to share the journey with those of you who are excited about the project. I plan to get most of the games miniatures range available for sale this year (2015), assuming I get everything I need moulded. Whilst I want to release them as soon as possible, i am not going to rush the release until I have everything organised. This includes finalising each models rules so its rules statistic card can be printed. I do not plan on selling the miniatures early without their stat cards to people who want to use them for other systems. So with that out of the way, let’s go over where things are up to.

Of the 116 individual sculpts over 47 unit entries for the core rule book, there are only 4 models left to sculpt for 3 entries in the book. This is not including a couple of other sculpts that are nearing completion over the next couple of weeks. My plan is that by Easter the few that are being worked on at the moment will be finalised and the final 4 sculpts will be under way, one of these is the Japanese giant that has been a fun and complex challenge to design.

Since my last update a number of models have either been finished or brought very close to completion, of these is the female sphinx for the Egyptians. I received an email specifically about this sculpt recently, so it’s time to show you how we got on with this one.

This beautiful sculpt is a multi-part design with some interesting interchangeable parts. The heads are interchangeable as you would expect, but the hair on each of these is also interchangeable, giving you some great options. For those who don’t like nipples, the breasts can be covered with an optional breast plate and the collar is also an optional part.

Here she is with the other three previously revealed creatures in this size category; an unfortunate Egyptian archer is also pictured for scale. As you can see we have one of these ‘cavalry’ sized mythical creatures for each army.

Another one that is nearing completion is the Norse Jotunn – I have shown this one before, and he has been slowly nearing completion. The delay on this is due to Carly working on the upcoming Warhammer 40,000 Regicide computer game. We have finished his artwork and he should be tied up pretty soon and ready to send over for prototyping and moulding.

Yes, those victims are to scale with the infantry in the game, meaning those are roughly the same size as most of the humans you will find in the other popular ‘heroic’ 28mm/31-32mm scale ranges.

And here are some other work in progress goodies that I plan to tie up over the coming month:
Shinobi – 5 poses; Work in Progress

Housecarls; Work in Progress

Broadly speaking the bulk of the range has been prototyped. There have been some minor issues with moulding that are being worked on, specifically the quality of some casts are not meeting my standards. In resolving the issues i am also looking at being more cost effective by moving more of the production in house. This means making a few significant investments at my end that I am slowly doing over the next few months. Costs and quality control have been challenges with some of the metal miniatures and I am seeking to address these as part of the wider investments I am making.

The rule book is nearing completion; it is in Beta. Play testing has been great fun and identified a few minor tweaks, and one or two major ones. One of the major play testing issues being worked through is balancing the models points costs and identifying any imbalance issues between the units. I may do a slight rescale on the Alpha sphinx to accommodate some rules tweaks for him, making him slightly smaller. The rule book has a few more art assets to go, these are taking longer than expected and could delay the release slightly.

So in sum, things are going quite well. I will look forward to providing another update after Easter when I should have some more news.

Until then, may the dice gods be with you.

As a caveat this news went out to our news letter subscribers earlier today. Today’s post is a follow up from the Conquest of the Gods Kickstarter campaign that i closed early the other day. Some of you were disappointed that I stopped it early and today I wanted to go over why i closed it and where to next.

So what happened?
The first three days of the Kickstarter went brilliantly, we hit 5k on the first day and by the end of day 3 we had hit $10,000, a sizeable chunk of the $22,000 funding I was seeking. It was looking great, then day four the campaign stalled, and day five saw almost $1000 fall off the campaign, it was falling backwards fairly fast. So it was at this point that I acknowledged a few issues with the campaign and decided that it was better to pull the plug on it and re-assess things.
The lead up to the campaign was quite frantic; I ran a gauntlet of issues to get the Kickstarter live. Mat our painter injured his arm, there were technology issues with the video content, some of my suppliers were behind schedule in sending me things such as dice, casters were behind schedule in getting me some of the miniatures in time for the campaign and several of the stretch goal sculpts were behind schedule. This all accumulated into me having to try and sell 3D renders and concept art instead of the actual miniatures, something I wanted to avoid from the onset. The original plan was to have it all done by October, and then order the casts of the models within 3 weeks of the campaign ending and delivering the while thing early next year, at least one month ahead of the promised schedule… Well as you can guess, that was not going to happen. I do not believe in over promising and under delivering, and that’s where things were headed.

The launch date actually moved three times due to some of the above delays and when paired with issues around double bookings and availability of adverting space, the dates that ended up being available for the campaign were less than ideal with the campaign ruining over the lead up to Christmas when people typically have less money both due to spending on Christmas gifts and sending on the pre-Christmas sales such as black Friday in the US. Rather than acknowledge this early on I pushed on to try and meet the arbitrary deadline I had set myself, during a less than ideal time of year to fill the gap that was available for the advertising when I really should have waited for a better time in the new year when everything was ready AND the advertising space was available.

Why stop it?
Launching without the painted production models was a huge mistake as it did not sell the miniatures in their best light, the images I posted did not show off the amazing detail that is in them, and really was done to just get it live given the pre-launch issues that came up. I should have delayed things and waited until all of the production casts were back and had them all painted up before launching, even if it took a couple of months. I also needed a game play video, now this was planned but time just got the better of us on that one. Posting the alpha rule as a PDF as a way to band aid this was probably not the best solution – not that anyone has actually commented on the rules to me, but it underlines the next point.
Conquest of the Gods is not just a miniatures range, it’s a game system with a fully supported range of miniatures. This did not at all come across in the campaign and is something I needed to resolve, it was going to be a tough thing to sort out on the fly. The boxed sets include cards and a book that were not pictured with the models, again another issue I failed to resolve before launch and people really did not have a clear sense of what they were getting unless they read the text for the campaign, It would seem a number of people backed it by just looking at the pictures and did not read the text.
This made the campaign purely about the poorly presented miniatures, and if I’m honest, it put me into the category of being someone who makes alternative miniatures for other games and not a start-up independent games studio. The alternative miniatures market that is already well provided for with several companies doing cheap alternative plastic models for the established games (I know a few guys in my team are cringing at me saying this publically). I am making a new game system with a fully supported range of high quality miniatures, I am confident what once people give the game a go they will love it! I think I failed to present the wider game on Kickstarter and focused too much on just the miniatures. I also really needed to better explain what the wider plans for the game are and how the expansion content will support existing armies as well as introduce new ones.

What’s next?
I plan to get some if not all of the base range ready for sale sometime in 2015. I want to build a community around a good game system and its range of miniatures with organised play events, campaigns and painting events. I am considering adding a few pages to the book to add an organised play section in the back of the book to help players organise and facilitate their own events.
On reflection, I question if Kickstarter is the way to go this kind of start-up. I realised during the campaign that in the context of table top games, Kickstarter has really become more of a pre-order service and a place to find cheap models more so than it is a capital raising platform. If I go back to it in the future, I will look at it in that capacity and not as a start-up that needs early stage capital. Several of the larger companies’ use it Kickstarter a pre-order e-commerce platform with great effect. In a way, this experience has turned out to be a huge positive as I now realise that there are more cost and time effective was to generate the capital I need.
I was contacted by several overseas distributors interested as well as a few Australian based stores before and after the campaign who are keen to stock the game once I’m ready to do a general release. I was also approached by a couple of people who are interested in investing in the company and this is something I will need to weigh up and consider very carefully. In short the future of Demigod Games and Conquest of the Gods looks bright despite the Kickstarter ending prematurely.
To make this all a reality I need to cover three major areas of cost;

• Firstly Demigod Games really needs some plant and equipment – top on that list is a decent laser cutter. This was what I wanted the Kickstarter campaign to fund. A laser is needed to make the model bases in-house as well as tokens and templates; I also have plans for some multi material terrain kits for each army that the laser would help move along. I also have hopes of moving the 3D prototyping in house in the long term.
• Minimum printing runs; this is up there next to the laser in both costs and how essential it is to get the models that are finished out there into the hands of customers. Doing larger print runs on packaging, books, cards and of course the hard cover rule book costs money. This is something I can chip away at slowly and I’ll need to weight up how to approach some of these issues in the New Year.
• Moulding costs; moulding costs are an issue for any game system like this, but when there are over 100 sculpts in the launch range, this magnifies the issue. In light of feedback from my mould maker, there are a few sculpts that I want to go back and touch up a little to make them easier to mould and these improvements will make some of the details even more pronounced, and that’s never a bad thing when you’re looking at adding a layer or two of paint to the sculpts. Cancelling the Kickstarter has actually bought me more time to get this sorted – its less of a major issue but just helps take the quality of everything up another notch.

Enough jibber jabber, what’s on the way?
The plan is that 2015 will see the release of the starter sets as well as some of the models that were lined up as expansion goals once I have my hands on that laser and a packaging solution I’m happy with. These will probably go straight up on to an online store as well as going to the few stores who want to stock the game. I’m not currently planning on re-doing the Kickstarter as the money and time I would need to invest on re-launching that would be much better invested into the above items to finish everything off. I might consider Kickstarter after everything is finished, but the more I think about it the more I think it’s probably not the best platform for what I’m doing and for what I am trying to achieve for my brand. I think would be much better off having a launch sale or something along those lines for those who really just want some kind of discount to get in on the ground level.

2015 will see the moulding and casting of as most, if not all of the models, including the larger models. I’ll continue to just just chip away at them one at a time, slowly releasing the entire launch range over a 12 to 18 month period. I also plan to tie up the core rule book and release it electronically as well as doing a print run of the Mini-rule book to go out with the starter sets. The big leather bound version full of art and fiction will get printed as soon as i have the capital to do a minimum print run.
So here is a taste of things to come, behold the 3D model we are about to break up for printing, the mighty Jotunn for the Norse army.

In closing
By looking at a number of other options I will have more capital to play with as I’m not spending money on advertising, giving 10% to Kickstarter etc… and by taking this approach i can do it without having to stress about meeting pre-determined delivery deadlines and the logistics involved in doing a major world wide release all in one go. I can instead release it at a pace that is comfortable for me and the company, after all I’m doing this for fun and to share my passion (my income is not dependent on the games success). For some reason I got it in my head that I had to do a ‘Kickstarter’ to launch the game… this resulted in me losing sight of what is important for my, my game and its long term future.

I think because many of the game sites have built an industry around Kickstarter and in some cases are almost dependant on it, I had this false perception in my head that Kickstarter was necessary– this is of course silly, I can release the game the old fashioned way in stores, conventions and (not so old-fashioned) online. This lets me focus my efforts on building a loyal fan base and a building a community around the game.
I will be releasing more details on what’s on the way for each army as with this change in direction, I don’t need to keep things as secret. I was only keeping them secret to announce them as stretch goals for Kickstarter and I think we can throw that concept to one side and just focus on what’s important, making the best game with the best miniatures range we possibly can.