Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Looks like they finally fixed it, it's faster now.. still as slow as usual but I think that's because of all the big photos I have

Here's a question: Are the Savage Beasts cards ready yet? The link to download character cards from the Savage Beasts webpage goes to some new Clancy Gang cards.

EDIT:
I found the Werewolf Starter beast cards on the download page.
So next question: Are there cards for Wildeye & Rugaroo yet?

I didn't get Wildeye and Rugaroo done yet, I was gonna wait till I got the sculpt files for them so I can do nice renders of the minis since I never got concept art done for them. So I'll hopefully have them done in a couple days

Thinking about upcoming cons...

I think I'm gonna have to scrap my origins booth plans, I would have needed my Kickstarter to be up around $20k to get all the funds to cover a booth, I don't think that will happen. They do also offer an Entrepreneur booth for new companies that's are like half the price, but it would still be too expensive with all the hotel and gas and everything since I have to be there almost a whole week.

So starting next year around Feb, there's Cold Wars. Never been, but it's kinda nearby for me. I might see about demos there Friday and Saturday.

Next would be Adepticon in April i think.. That one might be a little too far, but I'd like to go if I can, and also do Friday/Saturday demos. I think the chances of going will be pretty low, but I'll see if I can.

Then Origins in June, I'm thinking if Porkuslime and his gang want to continue to run demos there I might skip it due to the travel costs and all, and instead maybe see about Historicon which is a little closer to me I think, and also around the same time.

And then at GenCon in August, I'd do the same friday/saturday demos if I can make it.

And then rather than a store booth I'll see if I can bring an ipad for orders or just hand out discount cards for the demoers.. though since I'll be packing up the new starter sets myself I could probably bring a few of them and some rulebooks with me just in case

Yep. We are down with running more BWG this coming con. We have added another session daily, so.. 50% more BWG and a second table we hope

However, since we cannot do retail in our area, I cannot sell direct to the marks.. I mean, players.

Was kinda hoping you could maybe get someone to go in with you on a booth.

I think the coupon card thing worked pretty good, had a bunch of sales after your demos So I was thinking of doing the same thing this time, maybe also doing a nice quickstart rulebook folks can keep that’s maybe like 8 or 12 pages with the basic rules and product info in it.. like my own little white dwarf.

What I’m hoping i can do is get out to a bunch of cons next year and do lots of demos, and then hopefully build up enough interest and sales that I can do a booth or 2 for the following year.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Speaking of sales, I had a whole bunch of new web store sales when I launched the kickstarter. The game got lots of attention but i guess folks didn't want to pledge and wait for stuff that's already available now

So that was a nice little bump. I'm a little panicky about the campaign going slow but I think as long as we keep getting a few new pledges a day we'll finish on target. I was thinking though, if it doesn't work out, rather than rebooting I think I could just set up pre-orders on my online store for the werewolves and chupacabras, and then I'd be able to deliver them much sooner, probably November or December. I'd offer the same bundle deals as I have them for the campaign pledges now just to make it easy.

Sorry that it seems that Origins might be a bust... (still holding out hope). I might be able to coordinate with Porkuslime to do some events/provide more coverage for the Convention.

There is a free-play area (that is unfortunately, out of the way) where some folks have set up demos. My Brother used to run Infinity Demos there.

I am painting my gangs and working on terrain (much of it inspired by Porkuslime's layout. I will eventually get some great in-home table action going.

It's funny that you could draw a line on a map from mid-Ohio to Eastern PA and you would go through basically all of the frequent posters to this forum.
I think this calls for a special edition of the game entitled "BLACKWATER GULCH: Mid-Atlantic Rust Belt Edition!"
Maybe just a special limited-edition Codex will do.

I'm curious if you could make a two player bundle out of existing stock; by putting the classic rulebook and two infamous gangs (with the possible added bonus of a hired gun) into a value set, for those not able to wait for the pre-order.

I had some thoughts about adding a mountain howitzer, mostly on crewing. with a crew of three or more, it can fire every turn; with a crew of two, every other turn; with one crew member, it'll take three turns to fire that bad boy. You'll want to adjust for having engineers or additional crew as to speed and accuracy. They have two primary types of rounds, roundshot and grapeshot/canister. The roundshot is one big cannonball, lots of damage if it hits.... canister is like a large shotgun blast. There is also the Spherical Case Shot, which is effectively a grenade. The following PDF from the National Park Service breaks it down fairly well.

http://www.nps.gov/fols/planyourvisit/upload/The-Howitzer.pdf

The key is that can a player afford to have their gang members crew a cannon as opposed to other pursuits... wonderful trade-offs in play.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As an amusing addition to the Mountain Howitzer post is an articl where a hunter used a Mountain Howitzer to bag a white-tail Deer...it has some useful information as well.

http://www.buckstix.com/howitzer.htm

I'm planning to do a real 2-player starter box, but probably not till next yearish. What I want to do is 3 new men and 3 new beasts. The minis would be mostly 1 part to keep them cheaper, and it would include quickstart rules (updated version of what came in the old starter sets) and character cards

So now I’m thinking about how to handle Henchmen. They’re all going to be regular townsfolk types, 1 weapon and a couple of skills. I want them to come in packs of 3, since 3 henchmen = 2 professionals as far as XP/Fame goes. What I was going to do is have a pack of 3 of all the same type, so you’d get a pack of Bandits and they’re all armed with just 1 pistol. This was going to be done to match the Beast minion format where you get 3 of the same type with different poses.

Now I’m kind of wondering if I should break that up a bit more… and have 3 different types of henchmen in each pack. Would you rather see 3 guys all armed the same, or 3 different ones?

And taking things a step further, would you rather see them packaged more as official parts of a gang, or generic? So, “Clancy Gang Henchmen Pack” and “Secret Fist Henchmen” … or “Outlaw Henchmen” and “Chinese Rail Workers” ? Going the former route, I was thinking that might be a good way to reach a 10-model max for each gang… when the old sets get repackaged the gangs would all have a 3-man starter, 2 2-man booster packs, and then 1 3-man henchmen pack.

So 3 options… 3 different guys all armed the same. Or, 3 different guys all armed differently. Or, 3 different guys all armed differently and part of a gang. What do you folks think would be the best way to go?

I’m experimenting with my own 3D sculpts now and I think I’d like to start working on the henchmen sculpts myself, and have my other sculptors work on the beasts. It will probably take me a little while to get proficient enough to make something I think is good enough to want to sell it, so right now I’m just practicing while I have some time to spare before the minis show up and I have to start packing up all the preorders. After they’re all shipped I’ll have more time to spare sculpting new stuff

One cat's opinion:

It would be kinda disappointing if all 3 Henchmen were the same. So why not have 2 of the 3 share a similarity, and then have the 3rd be different. So there is a slight theme, but also something unexpected.
And I like that idea of semi-attaching them to a gang, like you mentioned with "Chinese Rail Workers" so it becomes kind of obvious where they might fit in (with the Secret Fist gang) but they aren't mandatory for that gang.
If you did 3 identical henchmen AND assigned them to a specific gang, that would be the worst, because it feels like you're just ticking off boxes on a checklist at that point. It loses some of the fun and creativity of the game by limiting player choice.

The cat has a good opinion, which I agree with. Making the third henchman one which is different but supports the others is the way to go. It also keeps human gangs different from the beasts, where you have a pack of similar small monsters.

Cool, yeah that's kind of what I was thinking.. mix them up so there's more variety.. then I started thinking it might be good to add them to different gangs, but I think I'd rather keep the official gang members more like the tougher elite guys.

I think what I'll do though instead of having every henchman with a pistol be a "bandit" with the same exact stat line, I'll give them all names and unique stats .. the stats will be mostly similar though just because they only get 10 points to spend raising attributes. So that will make them more like wimpy Hired Guns who will fight for anyone.

There should be some generic henchmen; which fit into the bulk of the groups; naturally, you'll have some "ne'er do wells" to fill out the ranks as well as upstanding citizens that are well intentioned and motivated, but might not know which is the business end of a shootin' iron....

So, I'm just starting to learn to sculpt with zbrush. This is just the basic T pose so far and his clothing needs lots of detail and he still needs a gun, but here's 4 days worth of sculpting so far (i have a lot to learn). Another week or so and maybe I'll have him finsihed and looking a lot less blobby And I gotta get rid of that ken doll hair...



If all goes well when he's done he'll look like the guy on the left here

I spent a lot of time on that guy, but I think I’m gonna scrap it and start over. There’s lots of things that aren’t coming out right and I think it’s because I started out with a premade guy and sculpted the other parts onto the body. I think I’m gonna take a step back and try and set up a good workflow to use for all of the minis and have lots of extra bits saved like guns or heads or hand positions.. then I can add those onto the bodies and eventually put stuff together quicker. That’s one of the awesome things about Zbrush, you can download or create your own “brushes” full of all kinds of objects that make it easy to add lots of details. I already have 1 file full of guns from back when we did the rebels & reinforcements campaign, so that will be a good one to start with and start adding on new stuff.

In other news, I know I've been back and forth over this 87 times, but I finally decided to include the new cards with the new models after all. This is mostly because I decided to do the packaging myself (so I'm not charged for every item that goes into a pack) and because I decided to go with a clamshell that will be big enough to hold them.

The old starter sets currently in stock will still have the old cards though, not much I can do about that. But I'll still have the PDFs online and print on demand options. Eventually when old stock sells out and I need to produce more, those will get packaged with the newer cards since I'll be doing the packaging.

So now my question is... for the Chupacabras and other minions in the future, you get 3 in a pack and they all have exactly the same stats. So, do they get 1 card, or 3 copies of the same card? The former way would be like if you were to use the cards more as a reference sheet, the latter for if you want to have 1 card to represent each mini on the board. When I play, I like to flip over someone's card so I know their turn is done, and then I discard it when they're out of action. So I see the value in having 3 cards, but I prefer to just do 1 card to save money So I'm torn...

My preference is one card per model for the reason you mention, but also if the models get used in different packs, each player will need a copy.

Yeah, I was just thinking I could take a picture of each mini by itself, so each card would have a different photo and then the same text & stats. Doesn't cost anything more to have different cards vs 3 identical ones, they're all the same print on demand cards.

Next little issue about the cards. For the print on demand cards, Wargame Vault says you need to order a minimum of 10 cards.. which means if you just want to order the 5 cards for a gang starter, you need to add on 5 more from another gang. Plus, their minimum shipping price will be kind of high for just a few cards, something like $2.50.

So, I think for the gangs I'd like to do it as 1 big "infamous gangs" deck, which would be a total of 58 cards if my math is right. Then as new characters are released, the deck will get updated with their cards .. and of course those new cards will be included with the new models too, the print on demand decks are more like for replacements or if you want to collect a full set or whatever.

I also thought I could do it the same way for beasts, having 1 big deck we're always adding to... but I wouldn't create that until I have at least 10 different models worth.

So, I decided to go back to the drawing board (or wacom tablet?) and start that bandit guy over from scratch. This time, instead of using that muscley guy as a base mesh, I used Zbrush's built in male guy, I wanted to make sure I can get the proportions right... but then I ended up changing that around anyway, because of heroic mini proportions. Things have to be more exaggerated to look right when printed. This are going more smoothly now that I'm learning how the program works.

So here he is now. Now I'm going to finish adding most of the details to the rest of the clothing and head and then pose him, and then do the final details at the end.

More progress Took a while to get the pose right.. still a lot of tweaks to do to get everything lined up. But now I'm going to start adding in the detail, lots of folds in the fabric and stuff like that, after that I'll tackle the face and hair and add the gun at the very end. I already have the guns all done, I have a file with all kinds of guns from back when we did the rebels & reinforcements sculpts. I'll probably chop off all the fingers rather than trying to twist them around the handle, then I can resculpt the fingers around it. So, here he is so far...

Not bad looking at all

Thanks he still has a ways to go and I still have a lot to earn. Posing was kind of a pain, but I’m getting the hang of it. All of the videos I watched said you should add all your detail, then pose, then resculpt your detail since it will be all warped… which sounds really dumb to me. So I’m going to go with basic sculpts, then pose, then do final detail at the end. Seems like a big waste of time to finish all the detail, then break it, then fix it. I think it’s mostly because it’s easier to sculpt when you can keep things symmetrical so the left and right side both happen at the same time, that’s why they do em in a T pose first. But shirt wrinkles aren’t going to be the same on both arms.

I think the gun in his left hand is gonna have to be a 2nd piece, so I think I’m gonna sculpt that separately and import it.. then at the end I’ll attach it to the tab under his feet so he’ll still only need 1 mold.

A little more progress Next I'm gonna mess up the hair a bit, and then chop off his gun hand and make that a fist and separate piece. I'd like to add some detail like fancy stitching to the holster on the gunbelt, but I'm a little worried it won't really come out since it will be so small.

I don't know if you're familiar with Wild West Exodus, but those guys use 3D modeling exclusively and you can tell because their sculpts (although nicely detailed) look like a bunch of zombies pointing guns in the air. Maybe it's difficult to really excel at 3D modeling, but apparently it's easy to do a crap job because those Wild West Exodus sculpts are terribly static and convey almost zero movement or fluidity. They just look like cigar store Indians, or immobile statues. Here's hoping you find the right answers.

Yeah, I like some of their sculpts but to me they're more of a sci fi game in western clothing. I like 3D sculpts though because from a production standpoint it's so much easier to manage, and it's easier to correct or make new poses without having to get a whole new sculpt done from scratch. And then there's all those times I had european sculptors send me stuff and the greens get stuck in customs for weeks and weeks

I'm just learning the ropes with 3D sculpting but hopefully with practice I'll be able to make some nice action poses. This guy I'm working on was more of a static pose in the art, and since he'll be a henchman I want those to be as few pieces as possible to keep the prices lower. And I thought the more static poses would be good to start with to learn the program works

It's been pretty fun so far, and if I can take over even half of the sculpting work that'll help me grow the whole product line a lot faster.

And here he is again this time from more angles. I redid the holster and added some detail to try and make it look more like a folded over piece of leather which is what most gunbelts looked like, I went and did some google images searching for ideas. Also added some more hair and twisted the fingers around his gun... but they aren't looking right to me. SInce the gun has the a separate piece for the molds I'm gonna just slice off the hand and resculpt that from scratch out of a sphere.

Just a little progress report for the preorders. Iron Wind is finally going to start on the production molds this or next week. They’ve been really backed up lately. At any rate, I should have the metal bits in my hands in a couple of weeks, then I’ll pack everything up and start shipping. Everything is still available for pre-order though, I guess I didn’t really need to set an end date for the ordering, I’m getting a whole lot of extra stock.

In other news, I’ll be finalizing the printable stuff this week. I got my first sample of the new rulebook the other day and it came out great, but I have to make some small changes since I decided to include the cards with the minis now. I’ve also been flipflopping back and forth over whether or not to include the campaign rules or do a separate supplement later on.. but I decided to keep them in the book after all. And then later on I hope to put together a few separate story driven campaign books, each one with maybe 8-10 different scenarios to play plus rules for special new characters or professions. I may use that method to introduce the Undead faction later on too, rather than doing another new rulebook. I want to try and keep the rules cheap and / or free.

I also just ordered the 3D prints for the 2 new werewolves, Rugaroo and Wildeye, and also the Werecatcher artillery piece. I’m expecting to release those early in the new year. After that I’ll be planning to release a henchman pack followed by the Werebears, but they haven’t been sculpted yet. My free trial for Zbrush ran out, so now I gotta shell out $800 for the real thing. Yuck. Will be a worthy investment though since it will save me a lot in sculpting costs over time and I’ll be able to get future releases released a lot faster