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This is definitely being added to my watch list. When you do get the kickstarter up and running, I'd be very interested in the "full-team level"... Just saying. I love printed rulebooks. I might even get two.

Cool Well what I plan to do with pledge levels is keep them basic so to start with there will be one for just the rulebook, a pledge for just one starter set, then pledge for 2 starters and a rulebook and probably 1 plastic terrain kit for $100 for the "sweet spot" .. and then I'll add the whole team pledge after we get the heavy mechs unlocked. I think the full team pledge will be around $150 and will include 8 light mechs, 4 mediums, 2 heavies and rulebook and a team playbook for the team you select.

And then what I'll do for the free stuff is any pledge over $100 gets the bonus cash to spend on add-ons, so you could use it for terrain or extra minis or just put it toward shipping or whatever.

I want to keep the pledges simple, no need for 20 different ones like some campaigns do.. just pick one and add extra cash if you want extra add on goodies

Necros,

Nice walls! Hey, to make those cross-conmpatible, would/could you make some 28mm door pieces, or some "hangar" doors, as those would probably be a great way to push those to other games too.

Can't wait for your KS!

I was thinking that too.. I was going to make a "mech bay door" piece that will be big enough for a light mech to fit through.. or a space marine

Yes, and then just partner with one of these laser-MDF groups for some diamond plate or cross-hatch flooring to put those walls around for a reconfigurable field, or even some space ship action perhaps...

You could probably work with Burnindesigns or the guys doing the T5 KS, Firebucket. Do 12" by 12" pieces, either 4 or 9 depending on your field size.

Actually I've been talking with Ken from Proxie models about doing plastic terrain. Will probably take time to sort it all out so I doubt that would make it into the campaign. I would like to basically do a 15mm version of cities of death or deadzone tiles and all plastic, and he's got similar ideas for 1/72 scale stuff. So for now to get the ball rolling I'll be offering the ruined brick walls and other stuff he already makes and then we'll see what we can do later on. Also going to be using the proxie bases for all of the models rather than the rounded edge warmachine style.. I think they fit the smaller scale a lot better.

More news .. Apparently I updated the rulebook but forgot to upload it, but just fixed it. So you can download the current version with the new upgrades and other stuff now. I think I may do 1 further change before the KS campaign and remove all of the team info, but do separate PDFs for each team with a bio and roster.

Was just talking to Dave and he's going to start the Terran medium mech tomorrow and should have something to show around the end of the week. The medium will be similar to the light mech, but taller and bulkier with hips that can pivot so you can do different poses with it. He'll be kind of around the bulkiness of a space marine terminator, but slightly taller.. but probably shorter than a centurion.. kind of right in the middle. Lots of folks have been asking about using these models for 40k proxies, so I'm trying to please

We'll probably have the Terran heavy under construction during the campaign, so I'm getting updated art for that so it will match the look & feel of the other 2.

Looking at the calendar, I'm thinking of launching the campaign around the week of the 23rd, unless I can get stuff painted sooner.. and depending on how long it takes KS to approve the campaign page and all that stuff. I might try and do the week before if I can. It all depends on when I get metal masters so I can start painting some. I know I won't have full painted teams for the campaign since the medium mech won't be done yet, but I want to have a few painted samples to show off the minis with color schemes for a few different teams.

Here's the first WIP for the Terran Medium Mech.. bottom half shows the size in relation to the light mech.. this one should be about the size of a space marine terminator, maybe slightly taller.

Still a lot more detail to add especially in the shoulder area, those will wrap around and cover up the front a bit, and the missile pods will get updated a bit. He'll have all the same weapons as the light mech, but we'll also be adding a blaster turret for the top, RPG style missile arms and an optional blast shield for the cockpit to give your mech +1 armor Those will get shrunk down for light mech versions too.

So here he is, you can click for the gallery version to zoom it in and stuff

Nice. Looking forward to the Heavy

Heavy is gonna take a while But he'll be an even bigger & fatter version of the medium, with big cannon arms

Been thinking about packaging and how to sell the different models that make up the teams, for retail and for the Kickstarter. At first I was going to have a 5 man starter set, an then sell light mechs in blister/clamshells of 2 per, medium mechs solo, and heavy mechs solo. Doing it that way I'll end up with like a dozen or so different products to keep track of for each team, so I've been thinking about consolidating things a bit. I'd drop the rule for minimum team size to 3 mechs, and keeping with the Team Organization rule where you need 2 lights for each medium on your team, and 2 mediums for each heavy... I'm thinking now I'll change it to where there would be no more starter sets, instead there would be 4 different "Squad" sets for each team consisting of 1 medium mech and 2 light mechs, that would be kind of like positions on a sports team. Assault Squads, Support Squads, Guardian Squads and Recon Squads.

Each squad would be based around the kinds of weapons they use, like assault squads are melee oriented, support squads are ranged, etc. They don't have to stick together, there's no unit coherency rules or anything like that, it's more for theme and fluff. There's 14 pilots on a team, and 4 squads will take care of the first 12, so heavy mechs will be sold with the weapons to build both types of heavy mech for each team and come with both pilot cards.. so you can build the guy you want. So that drops it down to 5 different items per team, 6 if you include a full team box set.

Since there are no more starter sets, new players can just pick any 2 squad sets and can start playing small games with that. Doing it this way I think the squad sets would be $20 each, so it's a cheaper price to get into the game, and it's easy to grow your teams too. I would do pledge levels for 1 rulebook or 1 squad for $20, 2 squads and a rulebook for $60, 4 squads and a rulebook for $100 for the sweet spot.. any pledge over $100 gets you bonus credit for add ons.. and the amt of bonus credit goes up as we get to different stretch goals. So I was thinking that would make things a lot easier to follow and collect a team, rather than having dozens of little clamshells to keep track of.

Necros, that Medium is awesome!! And more weapons are always cool. It is great to hear that there will be more options for on top of the mechs, and tell me that the "power fist" he's got will get ported down to the Juniors' too! That's probably my favorite of the melee arms you've shown so far.

I think your teams work out great Necros, and the idea for the squad boxes is a good one, and will help with your storekeeping. However, I'm a round numbers guy, and think that you should up the team to 15 people. That your "Captain" could have a "free" Medium in that last slot, or only have 3 mediums total, and bump that last slot to another Heavy. But, I'd want Battletech like campaign rules, where some mechs aren't ready for the next match after damaged, and you fight underdog style, or the other team matches your mechs, but gets a bonus in money for that game. I would like to grow teams from an initial 3 or 5 man team, purchasing mechs and weapons, and growing the sport in a league. Have teams field more mechs as they can buy them in the game, have that dictate match sizes and have teams gearing their games towards profitability in game. Your squad boxes would make the expanding of mechs very easy, as a 5 man team would be 2 squads, and the next purchase in game would be the medium you already own. Then either a heavy or that next squad box, depending on play style and local meta.

But, great idea and great mechs, Necros. This is looking really good. I have to get the updated rules and give it a run through, but it was interesting reading for sure. While I like the customization, I am hoping you have some abilities or upgrades that can only be reached through campaign growth or experience. Your mech building system really allows for a wide range of play style and dynamics inside of a team. I'm just hoping there is more there to add depth and growth to the pilots, both beneficially and detrimentally. Some guys become special because they accumulate scars.

There is a small Crusherfist for light mechs, it's on the mech on the left hand side in the pic in the first post, but I guess it's kind of tough to tell since it's a clenched fist.

There will be 15 mechs per team actually, since you will need 2 heavy mechs to field 1 superheavy The superheavies are a long ways off though, i want to get the 3 sizes for the main races done first, and a nice select of free agents. I'd also like to do tanks and flyers too some day.

I have lots of campaign ideas, but I don't really have the rules together yet. What I was thinking of is basically you start with 10 fame points to make a team. A light mech costs 1 point, and has 2 free weapons, after that you pay 1 point for each additional weapon or upgrade. A pilot starts in a light mech, and you can upgrade to a medium mech for 2 fame, and upgrade from a medium to a heavy for 4 fame. Weapons and mech upgrades are on the mech, not on the pilot, so if your mech gets destroyed your pilot has to start over in a light mech. But that's rare, usually your mech will be damaged and you can pay fame to repair them after a game. If you don't repair you might suffer -1 speed or energy. After each battle each mech that survives earns 1 fame, and it will be a pool that you can spend on any mech, not only for the mech that earned it. There will be other objectives that earn you extra fame points too. And like in BWG, every mech that was out of action has to roll on a chart to see if's wrecked or salvageable, it'll be a 2D6 roll and snake eyes means wrecked.

Anyway that's the gist of it. Still working on it


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Here's what I put together for the squads..

Artillery Squad - Long ranged weapons make these Mechs a force to be reckoned with. Often equipped with dual weapons and salvo upgrades to unload a hail of bullets, beams and plasma at your enemies.

Assault Squad - These feature Mechs equipped with vicious melee weapons, and equipment like booster jets to quickly get up close and personal with your enemies.

Guardian Squads - A Guardian’s job is to defend vital objectives on the battlefield. They are often equipped with Shield Generators or Reinforced Armor, if not both.

Recon Squads - These squads are usually dropped behind enemy lines to relay enemy positions back to the rest of the team.

Support Squads - Equipped to handle a variety of battlefield roles, Support Squads are the most common and most versatile.

I might put together a couple more. What I'm thinking is with only 4 squads per team for the official roster, not every team will have access to every squad... and some teams might have more than 1 of the same squad. Like, Team Bushido is mostly a melee oriented team, so they might have 2 assault squads, 1 recon squad and 1 support squad. Terran Titans might have 2 support squads, 1 artillery squad and 1 guardian squad. Wrecking Crew might have 2 guardians and 2 artillery, etc.

And then Heavy Mechs will also get the same squad roles, so there will be heavy artillery mechs, heavy assault, heavy guardians, heavy recon and heavy support.

I don't think that will impact gameplay at all, for custom teams you won't need to form squads. It's more for packaging and fluff reasons.

Love the fame idea. Keeps everyone on an even playing field, while also giving everyone plenty of customization. A pitfall to avoid would be always making it a no-brainer to take an extra mech over better weapons. Easily remedied by severely limiting the free options.

Yeah good point. I could probably change it to 25 pts to start your team, and it costs 5 pts to hire a new pilot, then you still have to pay for the mechs. So a squad pack would have 3 models, so there's 15 points there for the pilots, each light mech is 1 point, but the medium mech will cost 3 to start with since you have to buy 1 light mech, then upgrade it to a medium. That leaves 5 more points to add some upgrades or extra weapons, but not quite enough to add a new mech.

or I guess you could look at it like a new light mech costs a total of 6 points, new mediums cost 8 and new heavies cost 12. You still have to honor the team organization rules though so you need at least 2 mechs for each medium on your team and 2 mediums for each heavy. All new mechs just get their 2 free weapons or 1 free heavy weapon since they count as 2, and then everything else costs extra points.


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Oh, and here's the concept art I just got for one of the Free Agents, Lilly Hammer. She's in a medium mech with a Heavy Jackhammer, wrist mounted blaster and booster jets. Gave this one more of an anime-ish look so there's a little something for everyone

That Medium mech is what I would have liked a Centurion to look like. Great work there! I can't wait to see this in the flesh/metal/resin.

I have the Terran Titans and Team Bushido rosters done, I'm going to put them together in a little mini-codex PDF for each team.. should have them done soon.

Just got the art for the next anime-ish Free Agent, Omega Centauri. Like Lilly his rifle will be a 2-handed heavy weapon, and he'll also have booster jets and a shield generator.



Next I'll be getting new art done for the Terran heavy mech, since that sculpt likely won't get started until the campaign is underway.. I'll need to show how he's gonna look.

Hmm, I am mixed on the manga feeling Free Agents, as they clash with the clean lines and sci-fi feel of the Terran Mechs. I hope your digital sculptor can un-cartoon them. I'd much rather see special weapons/arms for the standard mechs to make Free Agents. Like a Heavy with a wrecking ball arm and a top mounted alien weapon.

 Necros wrote:

More of this please.

There will be some free agents that are in the same mechs as the other teams with special weapons, but I also want some that will be in totally different unique mechs so there's a bit more variety. Actually my first idea for Team Bushido was to have them all be anime-themed mechs, but after I started figuring out all of the costs I decided to make the mechs based on pilot races.

The same sculptor is going to do everything so these guys will still have the same armor plates and rivets and stuff. They have to be made to look like they fit in together in a team.. so we'll see how it goes. I just wanted to have a couple of more humanoid mechs that use weapons like handheld things rather than as whole arms. I'm kind of wondering if I should just do a whole race & team like this, rather than a couple free agents.. but I think that would just be if the campaign went crazy and I started running out of stretch goals

So I'm setting a tentative date for the KS launch to be March 20th. I'm going to have a kind of far off delivery date though, just to be safe. I'm thinking around October or November. I'd rather have a distant date send hope to stuff sooner, then guess a date too soon and have people upset if it's late. We'll see how it goes, I should be getting the light mech sample minis later this week and I'd like to get a few of them painted up before the campaign. I also need to get the medium mech sculpt finished, at least the body and a couple of weapon arms so I can do 3D renders to show off how the squads will look.

I'm also going to just offer the rewards as generic models, not teams. So you'll be able to pick a "Terran Support Squad" or "Martian Artillery Squad" and each one will be 1 medium and 2 light mechs with whatever weapon sprues they need for the squad type. Then, separately, as an add-on item I'll have team upgrade packs that will come with shoulder armor emblem bits for each team, a couple of custom objective markers like banners with the emblem on it, and all 14 pilot cards. And the team upgrade pack will be included if you want to get a full team box set after the heavy mechs get unlocked. I think having the cards and emblem bits separate will be easier for people that want to make up their own teams, and also keep the main sets cheaper and the delivery time sooner since I won't have to wait for cards and stuff to be printed first, I can start sending most rewards out as soon as the models are made.

Speaking of heavy mechs, I got this new rough sketch for the terran heavy .. should have the finished version in another day or 2

That heavy looks sweet. Looking forward to your kickstarter.

Here's the finished terran medium body. Weapons and other bits will be done in a couple of days



The body is actually in 2 pieces, might be hard to tell. There's the top torso area, and there will be a legs & hips in a couple of different positions.

Now I have a favor to ask I'm more seriously considering doing limited "KS exclusive" 28mm versions of the light and medium mechs, in resin. So many people are asking for them. So, since I don't have a space marine army anymore, can anyone give me the measurements for a dreadnought model and a centurion? Just average #'s, don't need to include banner poles and stuff.

I was thinking I would just get them printed at 2x bigger. The light mech is 28mm tall now, so he would be roughly 60mm tall. The medium will be around 40mm, so then that would be 80mm tall. I wanted to make sure they would be good and similarly sized proxies for centurions and dreadnoughts.

Problem is, I have no idea what they would cost. My best guess is maybe $20 for the light and $30 for the medium? But I've never had resin models made before, so I have to get them printed and cast first before I'll know what the costs will be. So I might not be able to add them to the campaign till a couple weeks in. I was thinking I would pick 1 body position for each, and get every weapon option printed too.. so all the extra arms will add to the price a bit, but I'd rather just do them all rather than selecting a few and then having a bunch of people tell me "you should have done this one or that one instead". Anyway, I'd probably just offer them for the campaign and maybe have them available as a direct-only thing or at cons, not for retail. I'll have to see how the timing works, maybe I can postpone the launch by a week.. but i really need to get it started since the bills are adding up

Been chatting with a bunch of folks today and based on their feedback I'm going to be making some minor changes... This mostly will be for final retail products. Rather then sell a bunch of different squad box sets for each team, I'm going to base the box sets on the races and then make team upgrade packs. There won't be multiple squad sets, instead there will just be 1 Mech Squad and 1 Heavy Mech box set per race. Each set will come with all weapons and equipment and no pilot cards. This is mostly to reduce the number of retail boxes I need to print, since those costs add up real quick. Then there will be team upgrade packs that include all 14 pilot cards along with armor emblem pieces and other things. And I'll also still offer the full team box sets that will include the upgrade packs for free. I thought it would be good to keep the upgrade packs separate like that, since a lot of people I'm sure will want to make up their own teams from scratch. And this will also make it so that no matter what you'll have everything you need to build your mechs however you want right out of the box (or ziplock bag for Kickstarters ). This should also help with the KS delivery time too, since we won't have to wait for cards to be printed first if all you want is regular models.

Next up, I'm having a 28mm version of the Terran Light Mech printed now.. well, I guess it will be more like 30mm since he's taking the original 15mm model and just printing it 2X bigger. This will be done in resin and will include all weapon options. I'm going to call it a "showcase" model, since it's something you can't use in the game. If there's an interest, I'll print the Medium Mech 2x bigger too. This kind of got me wondering if I should plan to update the rules to accommodate both scales, so you can play with 15mm games for battles with more mechs, or 30mm battles on bigger tables with bigger models. Essentially all you have to do is double the movement and gun ranges. I decided to hold off on that for now though, I'd want to wait until those larger mechs are made so I can really test the game and make sure it's fun. So that might become an expansion kind of thing later (Mechadrome Extreme? ). I still want 15mm to be the primary version of the game though, because I really want the game to be all about having lots of mechs running around beating each other into scrap. Anyway, I'm hoping to have the 30mm 3D print in hand next week so I can show it off in the campaign, but it will probably have to be an early stretch goal to unlock it.

Last but not least, I just got the new finished art for the Terran heavy Next up I'll be getting a new Martian medium mech done, the pointy top martian medium I have now will become the light and the beetle head body light martian will be going away. And then I'll be getting a couple more Free Agents done, Johnny Danger and the evil bionic mech DED 902. I'm hoping to have the Medium mech sculpt finished around the end of the week or early next week. Here's the new heavy

Ooh, yeah, that's sweet.

And here's the next medium update It's pretty much done now, just a matter of updating all of the weapons. These weapon arms will also be 2 pieces split at the elbow, so there will be more options for poses and also for later on when we do other mechs, they can all use the same gun bits so everything will match. Just the light mechs will have full gun arms just because they are smaller.

Wow, I really like that Heavy! I love the different feet, and just the "thick, ponderous" feel of it. I think you could have a "medium +" Free Agent that looks like an ED209, kind of a hunched Warhound look to it, but with the Terran elements. I see some shark mouths and a wolf face being painted across the cockpits of the medium and heavies. Great stuff Necros!

Ha .. yes, I'm planning a free agent named DED-902. He's a cyborg piloting a modified terran mech. So it'll be like ED-209 with a terran cockpit for the main body, like the middle part of the medium mech's torso, big chainguns and chicken shaped legs

 Necros wrote:
Ha .. yes, I'm planning a free agent named DED-902. He's a cyborg piloting a modified terran mech. So it'll be like ED-209 with a terran cockpit for the main body, like the middle part of the medium mech's torso, big chainguns and chicken shaped legs

Boom, that is awesome. I didn't correlate the name, 'Well played Sir, well played!' I like it a lot. I think the hunched, big shoulder silhouette will be awesome on the terran torso. Are you going to go for oversized mini-gun/gau-19 looking chainguns, vs the current ones you have? Can't wait to back this one!

Well I was just going to include whatever weapon sprue has the chaingun bits on it, plus the new body.

Depending on costs, what I might end up having to do is use the standard terran medium legs & hips, rather than sculpt new chicken shaped legs.. so then it would just have the different horizontal style body piece. That would make it a lot cheaper for me to produce, which would also mean a lower stretch goal for the campaign. And then, people could also buy him to count as a different looking terran medium if they want, since all of the pieces will be compatible