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Kickstarter has been launched! Here is the campaign URL:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gangfightgames/bad-lands-curse-of-the-skinwalker



Bad Lands is a Co-Op Western Horror Survival Game where you play the roles of rival gang members turned town defenders, forced to put their differences aside to fight off a vicious onslaught of Skinwalkers (were-beasts) and many other folklore creatures.

Curse of the Skinwalker is the first game, focusing on werewolves and other were-things, along with other corrupted animals like Jackalopes or Chupacabras. We do have other separate-but-compatible games planned for other themes, this is just the first.

The game is fast and fun and easy to learn. It plays similar to other survival games like Zombicide, you can use the heroes right out of the box for a quick game, or build your own heroes, adventures and campaigns totally from scratch and earn fame and fortune RPG-style.



The game shares many similar rules with our skirmish game, Blackwater Gulch. You can use any BWG miniatures in your games if you wish, we'll have downloadable Hero Cards for every BWG character or you can use them for your custom heroes. There are no miniatures in Bad Lands though, we will be using cardstock pawns similar to games like Pathfinder to keep the prices way down. We will do miniatures later on though, but first we need to get the core game funded. We're planning to launch the game on Kickstarter on February 1st if all goes well. We're working on the "how to play" video and hope to have that done in a few days to a week or so.

We've been working on this game for the last 2 years now and are really excited to see it all finally coming together! I've been posting about it down in our Gangfight forums, but now we're finally ready to really start showing it off. So, head on over to our website to check it out! You can see some more pictures and also download the preview rulebook. Or leave a reply or PM with any questions

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gangfightgames/bad-lands-curse-of-the-skinwalker/

This looks interesting. I hope it evolves into using miniatures.

Looks pretty cool, guys. I'll check it out!

I would be interested, can't be worse than Shadows of Brimstone.

Thanks folks!

What went wrong with Shadows of Brimstone? I never got in on that kickstarter so I haven't really been following it.

For miniatures, I'm just not really a big fan of PVC, but that's the only way to go for a game like this. The costs involved would be super high, we'd need a $80,000 funding goal and a $100 game, but going with the cardstock version we'll have a $25k funding goal and a $55 game. There's that and also we just couldn't afford to sculpt everything ahead of time, and I doubt too many would back the game without seeing the sculpts... I know I wouldn't. With this format, everything is going to be really high quality, thick cardstock with linen coatings, just like you'd see in any Fantasy Flight game and others of that caliber.

So anyway, what we hope to do is keep it as 2 separate product lines.. Bad Lands will be the board game version, and then miniatures will be made for Blackwater Gulch later on in metal or resin, and both games will always be compatible with each other.

I'm liking this business model. Much easier to get people into the game at that price point, and I think it would play better with the local boardgame community. They're a lot more willing to drop $50 on something that plays well and looks decent than $100 on the "scads of minis" types of games that typically seem aimed at... well, minis gamers who want hordes of little plastic/metal people. And if you *want* to detail the game with models, it's easy to do. Absolutely watching this one.

 Necros wrote:
You can use any BWG miniatures in your games if you wish, we'll have downloadable Hero Cards for every BWG character or you can use them for your custom heroes.

Will this also include Bombshell Miniature's Dusty Paige?

I'm sure that could be arranged, I'll email Patrick just to be sure

Yay, that would be excellent!

Little update, I finished the preliminary loot cards now. The design my change slightly in the end, once Don is finished drawing up all the stat icons. For now, I placed each of the core loot cards here in this PDF

http://www.gangfightgames.com/badlands/downloads/BadLandsSampleLootCards.pdf

Gray cards are uncommon, there will be multiple copies of each making up almost half of the 64-card deck. Green cards are uncommon, blue are rare, purple are infamous and orange is legendary. You'll only be able to get Legendary cards in the core boxed game(s). Later on when we do all new stand-alone games, each one will have a different legendary item.

Beast Packs will have 10 extra loot cards too... 4 commons, 3 uncommon, 2 rare and 1 infamous. There will be some repeats for common items but each new beast pack will have a few new loot cards too that don't come in the core box.

The first beast pack we're planning is Werebulls, they'll have an Alpha Skinwalker Bison, 2 Skinwalker Bulls and 3 Hodag minions That will be the first stretch goal and an add-on item, and each goal will also add a new bonus hero and/or monster to the core game too

Good news... Dusty Paige will continue her misadventures in Bad Lands

So she will get a PDF Hero Card, the same as the BWG gang members. One thing I think I may do with those cards is have them available as print-on-demand through The Game Crafter, so folks can get physical cards if they want. I don't know if I would pro-print them at this point since I'd need to do at least 1000 copies, and there's a lot of characters.

Having the option as a .pdf is great news in itself, many thanks!

Looks good. I will have a try.

I'm putting together the Kickstarter campaign page now. Hoping to submit it for approval tomorrow. I'd like to get it submitted since it can take several days, then I can continue working on it. Here's the link. Any thoughts?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gangfightgames/1965724351?token=8a0cdb41

Still waiting on some art that will be coming in next week (like the werebull & sasquatch for the stretch goals). I'll add the video in when it's done too, and I have some more graphical menus to build for the add-ons. I'm also planning to make update #1 as soon as I launch it, and use that as a kind of menu to show pics of all the BWG models that you can add to your pledge, rather than filling up the already full main campaign page. Then throughout the campaign I'll be making Hero profile and bestiary posts to show off the art and bios and stuff.

Just got some new art to share. First, here's a standard werewolf. The one I've been showing is the Alpha version, this one will be a Fiend, which is what we call the the regular mid-level beasts.



Next up, here's a standard Werecat.



And here's the standard wererat. At first I wanted them to be "wild west skaven" but after some thought I prefer this look, but the alpha version will be much meaner. The Wererat beast pack will be the 2nd stretch goal.



And last is the first demon in the game, the Jersey Devil. I think i'm going to name him the "Barrens Devil", since New Jersey is pretty far from "out west" .. but it's a local legend and I wanted to include it, since it's still a folklore creature. He will be the Bonus Beast that gets added to the core game if we hit the 2nd stretch goal, and he'll be a boss level monster.



I should have some more to share in a couple days

Next batch of artwork is done!

First we have the colorized Alpha Werecat



Next here is the standard Werebat



And a standard Werebear



Next. here is the Alpha Werebison, who will be the boss in the Werebull beast pack that will be for the first stretch goal



And last, here is the Sasquatch, who will be a bonus fiend. We’ll add 2 of them into the core game if we make it to the Werebull stretch goal. I was going for an “evil chewbacca” kind of look with him



All of these will be getting colorized in a few weeks. Next on the list will be to get the video finished. I’ve been having trouble with my camera but I think I finally got it all captured onto my PC now, so it’s just a matter of editing 45 minutes of me droning on about different rules into a quick 5 minute video

I wonder if there are companies out there that do 28mm models of some of these odd beasties.

hehe, i plan to I have an evil scheme to take over the world. What I hope to do is get this game & product line up and running first with a few different boxed games + separate villain packs, and then do Blackwater Gulch 2.0 bringing everything from the boxed games into the skimish game, and both will be fully compatible with each other. So first we have Curse of the Skinwalker and that will make up the BWG Beast faction. the 2nd game will focus on Wendigo (vamps) undead and those villains will be for the BWG undead faction. And I hope to do a 3rd game that will be all underground focusing on Tommyknockers (goblins), and then they will be the 4th BWG faction.

Since the sculpting and molds and everything will take a long time and be really expensive, I thought it would be better to get the board games up and running to flesh out the game universe and then the BWG minis could be used for BWG or in place of the cardstock pawns Bad Lands. I’m not going to do cheapy PVC minis though, planning on metal and resin. If I ever did plastic I’d want real hard plastic multi part model kits, and that’s way way out of my price range at the moment

Anyway, the minis are going to be a ways off. Probably a year at least to be honest. First step is getting Bad Lands funded and up and running then I can take it from there In the end I’m hoping for something kind of like Dust Tactics & Dust Warfare, but planned that way from the start, both using the same combat rules with just minor differences, and just one is played like an adventure game and the other is a skirmish game.

No complaints here, looking forward to the launch!

So, I finished the how to play video. Came out to 12 minutes which is about twice as long as I was hoping, but considering it was about an hour to begin with I guess that's not too bad I just did the first few turns of the game then jumped to the end to show how to figure out who wins if it's a single game, or how much XP you'd earn if it was a campaign game.

This was just mean to show the basic mechanics so I just used 2 heroes to speed it up. Most games will use 4 heroes and have twice as many beasts spawning, so the fights will be a lot more challenging.

I've got the campaign page all finished now and ready to go, planning to hit the launch button tomorrow around 3 PM EST

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gangfightgames/1965724351?token=8a0cdb41

Campaign has been launched!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gangfightgames/bad-lands-curse-of-the-skinwalker

check it out

I got the announcement email and hit the remind me button...

What's your planed retail price point for this, because at $55 it seems a little much for what we'd be getting.

Retail price will depend on how many copies I can produce. RIght now it's based on the minimum 1000 copies and that will be around $65 or slightly less. What I'm planning to do is add more and more content to the game with each stretch goal, so as I need to print more copies and the printing price would come down, the extra content will make it stay the same and it will be a better and better value. So each stretch goal will be for an add-on pack, but also the core game will be getting new monsters, new heroes, new board tiles, custom dice (hopefully) and more.

I'm interested in your gang and hired hands add-ons and checked out your website to remind myself about the minis. Looks like Game Salute has bitten the dust and all your links to buy stuff are no longer valid.

Yeah, they did away with their online shop. They want to focus on selling to stores instead. So I added them all to the Kickstarter for now, and later on after the campaign I’ll be adding the BWG stuff to my online store. They’re still going to have all the minis in their warehouse though, so they will handle all the shipping. Makes things a lot easier for me

How many scenarios do you think this will end up having out of the box?

Right now, I was planning on be 6. 2 for stand-alone games, and there's a 4-part mini-campaign for adventure mode. The scenarios are more like examples though, players are encouraged to build their own

Right now I have a list you can roll on for building your own objectives / story, for folks that don't want to come up with their own. Depending on how well we do, I hope to have a stretch goal for an Objective Deck that will get added to the core game that you can use instead of the list.

Today's update:


Howdy pardners!

Wow, we’re off to a great start. Thank you all for your support so far! We need help spreading the word, there are so many gaming sites out there, I’ll never be able to find them all. Please share this project with all of your friends or post a link on your favorite forums or facebook or anywhere you can

Throughout the course of the campaign I’ll be posting updates with some of the game’s background, hero & villain bios and other aspects of the game. So let's start with the two different ways to play.

The “default” way to play is Survival Mode. This is the co-op rules that were shown in the How to Play video, where your Heroes are suddenly caught in the middle of a beast assault. All Heroes hail from rival gangs in the town of Blackwater Gulch, but they are forced to work together if they want to survive the night. Still, each Hero wants to come out on top, and the one who scores the most kills and scores the most loot will win. Combat is easier in Survival Mode, the beasts are easier to kill, but there are a whole lot of them and if you allow them to swarm around your Hero, they will rip you to shreds real quick. Also, since the enemies attack automatically, it's quite easy (and fun) to play solo games too.

The second way to play is Adventure Mode. In this mode, one player will become the Overlord or Game Master, we just call him the Villain Player. He will set up the board, place the objectives and control all of the beasts, while all other players will control the Heroes. The combat rules change slightly, unlike Survival Mode where Heroes can automatically wound their enemies, in Adventure Mode the Villain player will roll to hit and make saving throws the same way Heroes do. This makes the beasts much more powerful, so there won’t be as many. The Villain player builds his beast back based on the amount of Heroes in the game. First he chooses one Boss like an Alpha Skinwalker. Then he can select 2 fiends like normal Skinwalkers, or 3 Minions for each Hero in the adventure.

Both game modes can be played as a single game, or they can be linked together into ongoing campaigns. I'll go more into detail on the campaigns next time

Thanks again for your help!

More to come...

Last time, I said I would go more into detail on the campaign system, but I decided to change things up and do the first Hero preview instead. So, here are the first 4 Heroes, plus a bonus Hero courtesy of Bombshell Miniatures!



Azalea is a new recruit for the Widowmakers gang. Her pistol skills rival even the most infamous Gunslingers in town, and her short fuse has earned her quite a reputation in just the few weeks she's been around.



J. W. Clarkson is an infamous hunter of beasts, come to town at the request of the church to investigate the recent Skinwalker curse plaguing the land. He comes from a long line hunters, roaming the land protecting an unwitting populace from dark things that lurk behind the shadows.



Gina calls the Tranquility Crew her family, lending her gun and her know-how to Captain Reinholt and the rest of the crew. With her keen eyes and a longarm she can take down at any target at any distance.



As his name might suggest, Cookie is a cook. He works at the Golden Coin Saloon, where his new specialty, Jackalope Stew, has been filling the bellies of hungry miners and gunslingers alike. "All the flavor's in the horns," he says.

Special Guest Star



We included Dusty Paige in our original skirmish game, Blackwater Gulch, as a bonus hired gun. Due to popular demand, we will be including her in Bad Lands as well! She will have a downloadable PDF hero card, along with all of the original Blackwater Gulch characters, and you can use her miniature instead of a pawn. You can buy her figure from the Bombshell Miniatures online store.

That's all for today! Tomorrow we'll show off some of the Villains