July 2015 update
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.