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UPDATE:

Here we go - Kickstarter pledges are in the hands of backers, and our storefront is live! This where you can buy a hardcover copy of the rulebook, unit stat cards, and pre-printed models. Check it out!

https://abbynormalmedia.com/shop/

In addition - for those of you unafraid of wrangling your own 3D printers, we are currently converting our MyMiniFactory page from a campaign to a storefront. When that is done (very soon!) you'll be able to buy the PDF rulebook, and the entire game's suite of 3D printable STLs! I actively maintain the model library and push updates or refinements when people run into issues - which fortunately isn't often. I also post updates and work-in-progress stuff to our Discord channel.


Hey everybody,

This is it! Return of the Tripods (All Quiet on the Martian Front 2nd Ed) has run its Kickstarter, the 2nd Edition rulebooks and unit data cards have arrived from the printers, and things are ready to ship to the Kickstarter backers.

For the next 48 hours, if you have not already gotten in on the action for All Quiet on the Martian Front's relaunch with Return of the Tripods, you can use BackerKit to open a new pledge/order and be part of the 1st wave. Your orders will go out with the rest of the Kickstarter backer pledges. After that point, we will wait until all the Kickstarter backers have their stuff before opening up retail sales of the game - which shouldn't be a huge amount of time, but it'll definitely be more than a few days.

On top of that - Return of the Tripods has full digital content available in BackerKit: if you want the PDF rulebook, you can get it right now. Same goes for the 3D printable STLs for both armies (Imperial Germans and Martians). If you want to get some armies printing sooner rather than later, we've got you covered.



Here is the BackerKit link: https://return-of-the-tripods-www-kickstarter-com.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders/585758

Whether you order or not, thank you to everyone who has kept All Quiet on the Martian Front alive with love and determination over the last 10 years - whether it was collecting, playing and sharing 1st edition, backing our Kickstarter for Return of the Tripods, or just remembering now and then our game exists. There would have been nothing for us to relight without you all.

Our thanks again, and we'll see you on the battlefield.

(T H E S W A R M W I L L E A T Y O U A L L, H U M A N S)





P.S.: I'm also the lead sculptor, so if you guys have questions about the game, or the models, or where the game in general is headed after this initial relaunch, by all means throw some questions at me and I'll get ya hooked up with some answers.

Hey nice to see this game returning!

One thing I've been curious about since seeing them (and having not been able to jump in myself nor seen anyone else) is the tripod tentacles. I'd be really interested to hear how durable and well they hold up with typical 3D printing.

They look like they'd do well in metal/cast plastics but for cast resin or 3D printed resin they look - to my eye - long and venerable.

 Overread wrote:
Hey nice to see this game returning!

One thing I've been curious about since seeing them (and having not been able to jump in myself nor seen anyone else) is the tripod tentacles. I'd be really interested to hear how durable and well they hold up with typical 3D printing.

They look like they'd do well in metal/cast plastics but for cast resin or 3D printed resin they look - to my eye - long and venerable.

Really good question and a totally valid concern. Fortunately, we've got a solution. Actually two. Bear with me -

When I first started sculpting the Martian lineup, we were investigating injection molding for the big models. Ultimately we went to 3D printing for a bunch of reasons and we don't regret that choice, but you're right, the tentacles were a problem to solve.

Fortunately, we have a custom resin blend we've worked up after a lot of trial and error that prints easy, takes primer and paint great, and has way more flexibility than standard ABS-like photopolymer (like a bottle of Elegoo or Anycubic Gray). Its durability and elasticity is much closer to what you'd expect from polystyrene parts off a model kit sprue. All of the pre-printed models we've done for backers have been met with thumbs up for durability in those regards, even for the thin pieces. They're not indestructible, but they're not too much worse than normal thin model parts from a box kit, which was our goal. That blend recipe isn't something we're selling, it's just a mix ratio of resins that are available on the market, and we'll be releasing that info so our players can use the mix recipe for themselves too.

Beyond that, I've made a long-term commitment to support the model lineup for the game as a living project. There are lots of little pieces of my soul in these models, as well as promises to my friends... including one who we lost to cancer before he could see the game brought back. I am going to support, maintain, and expand the printable model lineup for a long time coming. So - if a model or part of model gets out to the players and they discover an issue that I didn't see in my test prints, I will fix it and get revised STLs released to solve things. As part of that: towards the top of my current to-do list is to make alternate versions of the tentacle parts that are just the base and tip, with the option to use something like wire or bent rod in place of the modeled tentacle.

Kind of a long answer, but short version: we've got two solutions to the problem - a printing material fix, and an alternate part(s) option that's backed up by ongoing long-term product support for the printable model lineup.

Nice to see someone put serious thought in what fulfillment through 3d printing should look like!

Agreed, those are some really good points and ideas on dealing with those tiny parts and its nice to hear that you're looking to use the strength of 3D printing in providing alternatives for those printing that aren't needed for physical distribution to work.

I suspect you could also look at things like shorter tentacles (just retracted) and I saw at least one or two had them wriggling over the ground/base rather than hovering in the air so that's another option just to ground both ends so that they aren't dangling around.


Sounds like a great passion project for you. Wish I could dive in but I can't justify the cost right now with everything going on. I'll be keeping an eye on the MMF store though - I assume once the KS funds that will also get a bit of a revamp and polishing up too.
I really liked the new design work on the Martians in particular and really hope that we'll see more from this game - its always sad to see a game die so its a joy to see one coming back to life

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Nice to see someone put serious thought in what fulfillment through 3d printing should look like!

Thanks! I was the art director for a 3D printing startup before I got involved with this game, and we poured a lot of what I'd learned the hard way into our plans here with Return of the Tripods. 1st Edition's Kickstarter 10+ years ago (under the original owners, not us) famously ended in a pretty ugly implosion, mostly because they set themselves up with practically no road to success, or even getting everybody their stuff. The IP passed through other hands before we got it, but we really set up a lot of our approach for 2nd Edition around Not Making Those Mistakes Twice. 3D printing just solved so many of those problems in one swing that it was the obvious choice.

I've got four printers at home for prototyping - an Ender 3 and a Rostock Max v1 (giant delta-arm printer) for FDM/filament printing, which I mostly use for terrain and scenery, and then an OG Elegoo Mars and a Photon Mono X for liquid resin stuff like the minis for our game. David Pearce, the brains of the operation at AbbyNormal, is set up for resin casting with poured, spincast, and pressure-cast molds, and we're looking at using that for certain things down the line, but Return of the Tripods / AQMF will stay a primarily 3D printed game from here forwards. That also means that it'll never go out of print again, like 1st edition did.

...you can probably tell I'm kinda passionate about the game and all the stuff we're doing for it.

Overread wrote:I suspect you could also look at things like shorter tentacles (just retracted) and I saw at least one or two had them wriggling over the ground/base rather than hovering in the air so that's another option just to ground both ends so that they aren't dangling around.

Funny part is... Initially they were a lot shorter, but we made them longer so they looked like they could fully reach humans on the ground to grab them. I think we've got nine or ten versions so far? There's a bunch.

There's probably going to be several dozen tentacle options by the time we get a ways into this. There are two standard-size hardpoints for the modular Tripod models, so it's really easy for builders to swap parts to get the build they're after, and they magnetize very easily so you can even swap configs completely. If you use some magnets when you do your initial model builds, it's entirely possible to build a set of Tripod body cores, a variety of arms, some leg bases, some auxiliary parts like tentacles, and build up the specific mix of configurations you need for a game on the fly, right there during setup. That was part of the design goal and we have pictures of players doing it in games. Was really cool to see that come to life!

Overread wrote:Sounds like a great passion project for you. Wish I could dive in but I can't justify the cost right now with everything going on. I'll be keeping an eye on the MMF store though - I assume once the KS funds that will also get a bit of a revamp and polishing up too.
I really liked the new design work on the Martians in particular and really hope that we'll see more from this game - its always sad to see a game die so its a joy to see one coming back to life

Glad you like the Martian designs! They were a big departure from the Golden Age Sci-fi stuff of 1st edition, and we lost some players specifically because of that, but on the whole the response has been really positive. It's been one of the most creatively fulfilling experiences of my 20yr art career to see people getting excited to print these off, paint them up all kinds of ways, and post WIP build pics and battle reports. My standing promise is that I'll keep making models for the game until my pulse stops. Maybe longer, if it's a warm day.

Kickstarter pledges are shipping as we speak and once they're out the door the game goes to open retail sales. We're definitely going to shine up the storefront and we've pondered eventually moving it to our own web hosting instead of MMF, mainly so that I can push out model updates easier, and release fun stuff like one-off scatter terrain or scenario-specific models.

Good luck. I really enjoyed the 1st edition of this game.

Got higher res pics, can't make out the details

 Malika2 wrote:
Got higher res pics, can't make out the details

Yeah, I got pics.

These are mostly Martians (with a couple of my work-in-progress zbrush screenshots mixed in), but there's a few photos with some of the German stuff in there too.

Really wish I lived somewhere that would make playing this a reality! The imagery of late Victorian (well, post-Edwardian here) soldiers fighting martian machines is an all time great one.

Got to say I didn't quite realise how elongated you'd made the walkers! Probably cause a lot of the promo shots have them from the front and the original ones were very spherical.

Honestly I really like the design choice a lot - certainly adds bulk and size without making them extremely "bobble headed". Great choice!



On the MMF front - personally I'm a fan of "all models in one place" which is often a lot easier to remember and browse than loads of separate websites (though I do know a few creators who not only use their own sites but put bonus stuff on there to encourage people to move over).

If you do get any difficulties with the site feel free to shoot me a pm - I do file management for a few 3d print firms on MMF so I'm familiar with the quirks of the back-end of the site.

 RustyNumber wrote:
Really wish I lived somewhere that would make playing this a reality! The imagery of late Victorian (well, post-Edwardian here) soldiers fighting martian machines is an all time great one.

Where are you in AUS? David (the overlord at AbbyNormal) lives in Perth, and he's on a one-man mission to grow and support the play scene for the game down under.

 GarageBay9 wrote:

 RustyNumber wrote:
Really wish I lived somewhere that would make playing this a reality! The imagery of late Victorian (well, post-Edwardian here) soldiers fighting martian machines is an all time great one.

Where are you in AUS? David (the overlord at AbbyNormal) lives in Perth, and he's on a one-man mission to grow and support the play scene for the game down under.

Close but still over 300km away!

 RustyNumber wrote:

 GarageBay9 wrote:

 RustyNumber wrote:
Really wish I lived somewhere that would make playing this a reality! The imagery of late Victorian (well, post-Edwardian here) soldiers fighting martian machines is an all time great one.

Where are you in AUS? David (the overlord at AbbyNormal) lives in Perth, and he's on a one-man mission to grow and support the play scene for the game down under.

Close but still over 300km away!

Was worth a shot.

If your main concern is not having somebody to play against, drop on over to our Discord channel and see if we can connect you with somebody else down there - there's more AQMF players in AUS than you'd expect. If you've got a pretty active FLGS and think you can get a few other people onboard if you run some demo games, then we should talk some more.

Here's a Discord invite link for anybody and everybody to the Return of the Tripods server! We've got a pretty active channel for game discussion, rule clarifications, and modeling / painting stuff. https://discord.gg/Zg9HqAZJhf

Here we go - Kickstarter pledges are in the hands of backers, and our storefront is live! This where you can buy a hardcover copy of the rulebook, unit stat cards, and pre-printed models. Check it out!

https://abbynormalmedia.com/shop/

In addition - for those of you unafraid of wrangling your own 3D printers, we are currently converting our MyMiniFactory page from a campaign to a storefront. When that is done (very soon!) you'll be able to buy the PDF rulebook, and the entire game's suite of 3D printable STLs! I actively maintain the model library and push updates or refinements when people run into issues - which fortunately isn't often. I also post updates and work-in-progress stuff to our Discord channel: https://discord.gg/Zg9HqAZJhf