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2021/02/03 03:08:52
Subject: Re:Maelstrom's Edge - Feb 2021 Preview, pg12
I'm (very slowly) working on a small Karist force. I have a small stylistic question: are all Karists bald? Do they all have a religious mandate to shave their heads, or is it just Kaddar Novas losing their hair from channeling Cybel energy?
Dakkadakka: Bringing wargamers together, one smile at a time.™
2021/02/03 03:26:07
Subject: Maelstrom's Edge - Feb 2021 Preview, pg12
Ongoing exposure to na-cybel energy initially causes muscle and bone growth (which is why Shadow Walkers and Tempest Elites are physically larger than regular Troopers, and Novas larger again) but over time also resulting in hair loss and eventually starts wasting their bodies, leaves them looking gaunt and emaciated.
So lower level Karists could potentially have hair, but as they progress through the ranks it would generally either have fallen out or been removed for convenience.
Having said that, while rocking the bald would likely be considered something of a status symbol by Karists at large, there's no reason individual adherents or even entire cells couldn't choose to wear wigs, particularly given Karists' general habit of infiltrating communities on the sly.
2021/03/01 20:45:35
Subject: Re:Maelstrom's Edge - Feb 2021 Preview, pg12
With the past year's challenges wreaking havoc with our schedule, it's been a while between releases. We're getting the ball rolling again with something a little different!
This fantastic gun carriage model was made by PDC Gaming for a Kickstarter campaign some years ago. It's a multipart plastic kit, that comes with options for a turreted or fixed-mount weapon, and a range of different weapons that slot into place on either variant.
Although not being sold as a part of the core Maelstrom's Edge range, this kit is useful for those looking for a plastic track unit for conversions, or wanting to add some heavier firepower to their games. For the latter, you can find an unofficial rules card for the Epirian 'Thunderbolt' sentry drone in our Force Lists section here, or included in the PDF download in the Rules section here.
And stay tuned for an upcoming conversion article from Iain, using one of these carriages and parts from the Epirian Hunter war mech to build an all-plastic Epirian Automated Uplink Relay.
This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2021/03/01 21:23:59
2021/03/01 21:06:13
Subject: Maelstrom's Edge - Plastic Heavy Weapon Carriage, pg13
bbb wrote: Did you guys buy up old stock or have a new batch produced?
I thought those were long gone.
They're actually still around, quietly selling these in a 6-pack on their eBay store. I came across them by accident, and thought they would be really, really handy for conversions, and so reached out to them. The price on the MEdge store works out fairly similar to their eBay price per unit, but without having to them in bundles of 6!
I recalled they had some useful looking gun sprues as well, any chance of those appearing?
They have two gun sprues - a sprue of multi-option heavy weapons, and a sprue of not-bolters and combi-bolters. The heavy weapons in particular could be potentially useful for MEdge, so we're looking at them as a possibility if the gun carriages do well.
2021/03/29 20:14:50
Subject: Re:Maelstrom's Edge - Epirian Contractor Support Drone, pg13
Within the Epirian Foundation, many Contractor militia units make use of specialised bots for some extra firepower or to fill battlefield support roles. We introduced the resin weapon drones to boost your Contractor teams on the table a while back, and this week we're adding to your options with a new support drone kit!
This resin kit is comprised of a Support Drone chassis, and optional parts to equip it to join any of three different Contractor unit types. The Recon Package is the standard gear for support drones utilised by Contractor Scout units. Contractor Engineers make use of tool-equipped drones to effect repairs on other damaged bots, while medical drones in Contractor Medic units patch up the force's less hardy human elements.
A recon drone surveys the battlefield for ongoing threats
By far the most rare of the Broken sub-factions are the Spiral Arm Revolutionary Army, also known as just SARA. These are Broken who escape their system but cannot abide the immoral way that governments at the Edge continually lie to, and doom the common man to death by the Maelstrom while escaping to safety themselves, and they vow to do whatever it takes to stop this from happening to others. Unlike most Broken, members of SARA are proud to be known as Broken, and often display the Broken symbol on their ships and gear. Like all Broken, SARA engages in piracy to survive, however they make a point to go after very specific targets, namely those they deem to be colluding to save only the rich and powerful from the Maelstrom. They regularly attack Epirian Foundation facilities, blaming the massive, wealthy corporation of profiting off the destruction caused by the Maelstrom while not utilizing these profits to save every person they can. Its unsurprising that SARA is also a natural enemy to the Karist Enclave, as the Karists actively attempt to keep people from escaping the Maelstrom. Unlike other sub-factions of Broken, SARA utilize propaganda and often have secret donors helping to support their cause even when all planetary governments condemn the actions of SARA as those of a terrorist organization.
Tales of SARA have filtered throughout the spiral arm, so similar to the Jackals, there is a constant stream of people moving towards the Maelstrom’s Edge looking to join their cause. However, while SARA sees the Forsaken as potential allies and a pool for recruitment, they are vehemently opposed to Jackals, who they see as poisoning the otherwise good name of the Broken. SARA cells will often go out of their way to attack a Jackal stronghold when they discover its location.
With their well-equipped, fast-moving fleets, SARA does wage some military campaigns at worlds right at the Edge, mainly by attacking external forces that have laid siege to a planet so as to exploit its resources before the Maelstrom arrives. But even when they’re successful in these types of campaigns, the number of people they can actually rescue is often quite small, basically just those who can fit onto the ships they manage to liberate during the fighting. As a result, SARA instead prefers to target worlds that are still a few generations away from being threatened by the Maelstrom, but are downplaying the danger to their populace and secretly shuttling away the rich and powerful. These types of worlds almost always have secret cells of SARA already in operation, funded by secret donors who see SARA as either a philanthropic cause or just a way to guarantee their own escape from the Maelstrom. These cells seek to weaken local government and ferret out hidden Karist Enclave cells. Bolstered by reinforcements from out-system, SARA groups will spread their infiltration throughout the society to fuel full scale revolts. It isn’t entirely unknown for SARA to completely topple a government this way, and turn the planet’s full scale production towards producing ships to save as many people as possible.
SARA is very much a paramilitary organization and more often than not, the founders of a cell start as lower echelon military units on a dying world who realize their government is not going to save them. They spend years organizing rebellions, training civilians to fight, struggling to get as many people off-planet as possible. As SARA contains a higher percentage of military-trained individuals, it tends to be much more regimented and organized than most Broken forces, and has better discipline and morale. When the time comes for open conflict, SARA cells are organised into brigades, each led by a Revolutionary Colonel. Each brigade is comprised of a varying number of companies depending on the number of SARA units available, each led by a Revolutionary Captain. When SARA manages to rescue souls from a dying world or from ships that have no place to go, able-bodied adults are offered a place in a SARA company for a certain period of time - usually 5 to 10 years, depending on the particular cell. After their service time is up, they are free to leave and try to find their own way in the galaxy, though many choose to remain with the fleet. In this way, SARA fleets are constantly provided with a stream of new recruits.
While from outside SARA is commonly seen as a single entity, there is no true central leadership and each brigade acts autonomously. Some degree of communication between fleets does exist, through cells utilising fast courier vessels or infiltrating Comm Guild facilities and piggybacking support requests or warnings onto authorised Guild messages. This allows SARA fleets to converge when a larger response is required than each can handle alone, or to avoid systems where the danger from the Maelstrom’s unpredictable advance is too great to risk their valuable resources. Sharing similar goals does not always guarantee co-operation though, as fleet commanders may disagree on the value of specific objectives or the best allocation of resources, occasionally even leading to conflict between different SARA brigades.
SO... why are we telling you all this?
Next week sees the release of our new, plastic SARA commander model, which will open up new options for your Broken forces in Maelstrom's Edge. We will also have a showcase article to follow the commander, with a SARA force being put together by Iain - stay tuned!
Put together your own ill-equipped rabble of doom by picking up the plastic Broken infantry sprues, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge range from the webstore here.
For other building ideas, modeling tutorials, army spotlights and conversion walkthroughs, check out the Hobby section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here.
Last week, we shared an intro into one of the sub-factions within the Broken - the Spiral Arm Revolutionary Army. The time has come to see SARA roll out onto the table, with the release of a new plastic model for the SARA Revolutionary Captain!
Revolutionary Captains lead companies of SARA troops on the battlefield. While SARA companies are comprised mostly of the same sorts of units as you would find in Forsaken or Jackal forces, their more military-focused structure results in better discipline and tactics on the battlefield.
On the table, the Revolutionary Captain's military experience grants your Broken force some new abilities. The SARA Discipline rule grants units in the Captain's command radius a boost to their WP. These units are also granted the new Guerilla rule, which allows a unit taking an Advance & Fire action to shoot before moving, allowing your units to to attack enemy positions and then fade away into cover.
The first of a series of smaller plastic kits that we are releasing, the Revolutionary Captain kit is a single sprue with a multipart, monopose model and is supplied with a 25mm base.
Is there more background on SARA? And besides the new officer, are there other SARA specific Broken units or unit options?
I think the new captain looks like a more neatly combed and trimmed Che Guevara, or the late actor Alan Rickman cast as a villainous military officer. {He was tired of being typecast as the villain.}
Aside from the intro posted here, we'll be delving more into SARA's background as time and releases allow.
So far as models go, the idea for each of the Broken subfactions (Forsaken, SARA, Jackals) is for them to use more or less the same core units, with more specialised units to be added for each.
The Forsaken will lean heavily on jury-rigged tech, Jackals will be the spiky wasteland raiders, and SARA will field more quasi-military units.
For the moment the Commanders remain fairly generic, simply because that's the way command models were set up for V1. The eventual aim though is for these units to be fieldable by any of the Broken groups, but to work better under their corresponding commanders, which will be worked into various Command rules in V2.
Deathwatch 
AdMech 
Necron
