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/drool

Seriously, is 'when' here yet?

 SickSix wrote:
/drool

Seriously, is 'when' here yet?

My luck it will come out at the same time as mark from dreamforge releases the next faction

No chance of that happening. Mark is not going to come out of his chains until Wave 3 hits retail, methinks, which will be in 2013 if we are lucky.

Trust me, there will be money (especially from my sold Tau army) that will be earmarked for this.

I'm in the exact same boat, Mathieu/Theophony! I'll be in for this one.

I like the Blackfrost quad, but it doesn't quite blow me away like the light and heavy Blackfrosts did. Still like it though

Nice to see a piece of the colored art, albiet just a few so far!

 paulson games wrote:
Here is your Mecha Front Monday preview.



Blackfrost Quad.


I'm also going to play a little game with you guys and piece out my colored art a few snipets at a time.

Remember, you don't need to be as stoked about the quads, since you'll only ever field one, but you'd damn well like the bipedal mechs, because those will be the meat of your force.

Stupid question, but I'm always in awe of people who can draw: Paulson, is that your pencil work we've been seeing for the past few weeks, or is all artwork, from the ground up, being commissioned?

 SickSix wrote:
/drool Seriously, is 'when' here yet?

I'm hoping to have a formal announcement the monday after Adepticon. (April 22nd) I can't promise 100% for sure but I'm hoping to have things finalized then.

For the people attending Adepticon I'll be running a couple demo's in the evening if I can manage to wrangle the table space.

 RiTides wrote:

I like the Blackfrost quad, but it doesn't quite blow me away like the light and heavy Blackfrosts did. Still like it though

Yeah it's a solid design which I'm happy with, it's not quite as imposing as the other two but not every thing can be a grandslam. It is a bit lighter so it's a bit quicker than the other quads and has slightly better defense as a result, but quads on the whole are still slow no matter how "quick" they may be. My personal favorite design so far is the NorAm quad followed very closely by the Blackfrost heavy.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
Remember, you don't need to be as stoked about the quads, since you'll only ever field one, but you'd damn well like the bipedal mechs, because those will be the meat of your force.

This would be a good assement. Most you'd ever need is one and it tends to be a showcase model sort of like the collosals in warmachine. Really helpful if you have one (and hopefully fun) but the mainstay of the force is the mix of smaller mecha.

Stupid question, but I'm always in awe of people who can draw: Paulson, is that your pencil work we've been seeing for the past few weeks, or is all artwork, from the ground up, being commissioned?

Short answer is I'm invovled with the art but it's a mix.

It's comissioned work all being done digitally. Anthony sketches on a wacom tablet which is sort of like drawing on the computer screen with an electronic pen. I give him a lot of reference ideas for what I want and general ideas behind the mecha. There's usually a couple rough sketches in between that get tossed before we nail down the final look. It's a pretty colabritive process which I enjoy doing. We also BS a lot about differant mech games and what we like and dislike and how to make this stand out as it's own thing. It's very fun to be involved with the process on livestream. The downside is that we both keep crazy late nigt hours so it's hard to catch our work online.

I'm capable of drawing stuff on my own (I was an art major) but I'm so buried with getting everything ready that I needed additional help. I'm doing all the 3d work as well as the card and PDF graphics which is a pretty heavy workload on top of the writing. The color art that's slowly being revealed is a mix of both 2d and 3d, using the original sketches I built a 3d model, then Anthony drew a digital painting over the 3d render. That way the propotions will be the same as the eventual physical model. It also speeds up the painting process as some of the realism as it gives a proper display of lighting and shadows on the piece.

Anyways onto the next puzzle pieces, I'm a big meanie and can't let you have too much fun right away so there's one last useless piece, but from here out the rest will all have some meat to them.

A lot of your designs (which I love, btw) seem to be at least partially inspired by Chromehounds...

... did you ever play the game?... if not, you should... imo, it's what a mech game should be...

From doing some digging online I have a small amount of familiarity with their mecha but only what I've seen from the game covers and a few screen shots, same with steel battlalions. However I haven't played either of them due to not having an xbox. I wish they would have also made them for the PS2 or PS3 but they are sadly system exclusive. I always thought they looked cool from what little I've seen but I have no first hand experience with them.

Well great work, keep it up.

And personally, I prefer the Blackfrost quad... so there's a little bit for everyone.

As a Canuck, does that means I have to be the de facto CanOil representative on the board? I did work in the oil industry for 6 years...

Sounds like a good resume for a Can-Oil exec.

In the event that I get my own forum set up for the game if you're Canadian then your avatars will be required to have South Park styled floppy heads.

I'm alreay pretty excited about this, but I don't think I ever asked this (or saw an answer lol), but this isn't on a grid correct?

No grids are used. It plays as a standard table top game like warmachine, or stuff from the company who shall not be named.

Just got in the first playtest game since the rules were roughed out and it went well. Pacing and game flow kept very close to how I had intended at skirmish level. Noticed a few minor typos which will be an easy fix.

 paulson games wrote:
No grids are used. It plays as a standard table top game like warmachine, or stuff from the company who shall not be named.

Just got in the first playtest game since the rules were roughed out and it went well. Pacing and game flow kept very close to how I had intended at skirmish level. Noticed a few minor typos which will be an easy fix.

Awesome Thought that's how it played Grid based mech combat just seems slow paced

 paulson games wrote:
No grids are used. It plays as a standard table top game like warmachine, or stuff from the company who shall not be named.

Voldemort, Inc. makes a table top game? o.O

What really turned me off of Battletech, back in the day, was the hex grid. I could not get into my head why it was so easy to run straight in one direction but completely impossible in the other. You had to go forward, turn, forward, turn again... ad nauseam. And you could really face how you wanted too.

Speaking of facing: Are the mechs going to be on square bases? Or round bases that we can easily quarter? I'm assuming, maybe wrongly, that facing is going to be relevant for fire arcs and damage purposes, but I could be wrong.

 Breotan wrote:

 paulson games wrote:
No grids are used. It plays as a standard table top game like warmachine, or stuff from the company who shall not be named.

Voldemort, Inc. makes a table top game? o.O

He led the infamous second legion, now none of his brothers speak of him or that Tom guy.

Seriously though, I can't wait for this. Any special dakkadakka mechs out there in the kickstarter?

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
What really turned me off of Battletech, back in the day, was the hex grid. I could not get into my head why it was so easy to run straight in one direction but completely impossible in the other. You had to go forward, turn, forward, turn again... ad nauseam. And you could really face how you wanted too.

... You could turn in place. I'm not sure what you're saying here.
Even with that, 1 hex = 1" and 1" of movement = up to 60 degrees of turn is trivial to figure out and iirc was talked about as an option in one of the rule books (too lazy to break mine out - the one with the color magazine style page inserts)

Speaking of facing: Are the mechs going to be on square bases? Or round bases that we can easily quarter? I'm assuming, maybe wrongly, that facing is going to be relevant for fire arcs and damage purposes, but I could be wrong.

I think he said circle/oval.

The mecha will be mounted on 60mm round bases, and 120mm round for the quads.

I'm trying to keep things streamlined so front facing is the forward 180 degrees. Rear arc is the back 180. Changing facing during your turn does not cost any movement or actions, that's something that has always driven me nuts with battletech (as well as the grids). It worked well for old school games but belongs back in the 80's.

I'll work out something special for the dakkanaughts as you guys have been very supportive and I apreciate it.

You couldn't end up in half spaces, however. And turning was considered a move. If you only had three for your turn, it was going to take you a long time to step sideways four spaces.

Just finished a round of play testing of Mecha Front. Being a mecha neophyte, my brain was swimming for the first few turns but once I got the mechanics down, it flowed ever so nicely

Hands down, this game will make you happy!

 mad robot wrote:
Just finished a round of play testing of Mecha Front. Being a mecha neophyte, my brain was swimming for the first few turns but once I got the mechanics down, it flowed ever so nicely

Hands down, this game will make you happy!

Good to hear!

 mad robot wrote:
Just finished a round of play testing of Mecha Front. Being a mecha neophyte, my brain was swimming for the first few turns but once I got the mechanics down, it flowed ever so nicely

Hands down, this game will make you happy!

Sweet! Wish I was going to be at AdeptiCon to try it out.

 RiTides wrote:

 mad robot wrote:
Just finished a round of play testing of Mecha Front. Being a mecha neophyte, my brain was swimming for the first few turns but once I got the mechanics down, it flowed ever so nicely

Hands down, this game will make you happy!

Sweet! Wish I was going to be at AdeptiCon to try it out.

So I'll be sure to see if I can't take plenty of pictures and showing how much fun I'm having?

 paulson games wrote:
From doing some digging online I have a small amount of familiarity with their mecha but only what I've seen from the game covers and a few screen shots, same with steel battlalions. However I haven't played either of them due to not having an xbox. I wish they would have also made them for the PS2 or PS3 but they are sadly system exclusive. I always thought they looked cool from what little I've seen but I have no first hand experience with them.

Honestly, the Steel Battalion mecha designs are average. They produced a line of Steel Battalion action figures that were great for how accurately they captured the in game mech designs, but were kinda... meh.

An Xbox + the dedicated Steel Battalion controller + a wide screen TV > better than the creaky old Battletech pods that they still rolled out at GenCon last year.


Ain't no other reason to care about Steel Battalion than that.

Yeah, Steel Battalion is great.
The Kinect version I've found a little very disappointing though tbh.

Though I can't afford to put towards the Kickstarter atm, I continue to look forward to the release of this, and playing games!

Perfect Ovion, because the KS won't start for a little while. Time enough for me to finish 2 classes and have lighter load...

Two new pieces

Thanks, but not really enough for us to do anything with yet.

Yeah we need some more of the body but I see a foot!

Fetishists take note. A foot has been spotted.