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Mantic Games now has a Kickstarter live for LOKA: The World of Fantasy Chess, a variation of chess designed by Alessio Cavatore which introduces wargaming mechanics, such as army list building, scenery and dice-based combat (using polyhedral dice, supporting attacks and other wargame-based game mechanics).

The game will also feature terrain tiles, elemental special rules and other things to expand upon the core chess rules (which are used for movement only!).

All of the miniatures for this are already sculpted, the Kickstarter exists purely to raise funds for them to be tooled in plastic, and to allow for the components in the box (rulebook, dice, board etc) to be upgraded.

Link to the Kickstarter page

Link to a Sample Loka Rules .pdf

The forces in the game are based on the elements, two of which have already been funded (Fire and Earth). The other two (Air and Ice) will be funded at $75k.

There will be optional rules so that each of the elemental forces can have a different playstyle, and the combat system is based on polyhedral dice (d4, d8, d10, d12, d20).

Air King and Earth Pawn miniatures:




Stretch Goals

$37.5k - Core Box upgraded with improved softcover rulebook. Achieved!

$50k - Core Box upgraded with Earth Chess Set, replacing the duplicate Fire Set. Achieved!
Bonus minis added to *all* pledge levels, free of charge:
Rook pledge level ($25): +1 Fire King,+1 Earth King +4 Pawns (any faction of your choice).
Bishop pledge level ($50): +1 Fire King,+1 Earth King +4 Pawns (any faction of your choice).
Knight pledge level($100): +1 Fire King, +1 Earth King +4 Pawns +1 Queen, +1 Rook, +1 Knight, +1 Bishop (any faction of your choice).

$55k - Loka Terrain Tiles added to all pledge of $25+. Achieved!

$60k - Air Chess Set created. Knight pledge level ($100) receives +1 Air King. Achieved!

$65k - Ice Chess Set created. Knight pledge level ($100) receives +1 Ice King. Achieved!

$70k - Loka Dice and Rulebook Upgrade
- All pledges of $25+ receive a deck of faction cards.
- All pledges of $50+ receive:
- Rulebook upgrade: Elemental combat and faction powers.
- A set of polyhedral dice.

$75k - Upgraded Game Board - All pledges of Bishop ($50) and up receive an upgraded game board with new art.

$75k - Bonus minis - 4 extra minis added to Rook and Bishop, 8 extra minis added to Knight.

$80k - Loka Campaigns - All $50+ pledges receive a digital download of a campaign map, all $100+ pledges receive a printed copy.

$85k - Extra Terrain - New terrain tiles, included in all $50+ pledges.

$90k - Extra Terrain -LOKApocalypse rules added, for games played using 4 boards.


Pledge Levels and Rewards guide.

Listed below are the most common pledge levels with a full list of everything that they contain. $100 is the sweet spot pledge that gives you the stretch goal freebies.

Pawn - $10

- Digital Download of the Loka Rulebook with your name on!

Rook - $25 - 27 miniatures total.

- One Loka Chess Set of your choice - 17 Pieces, including Bonus Queen!
- Kickstarter Bonus: Upgraded Softcover Rulebook.
- Kickstarter Bonus: Pack of Terrain Tiles.
- Kickstarter Bonus: Fire King.
- Kickstarter Bonus: Earth King.
- Kickstarter Bonus: Queen (faction of your choice)
- Kickstarter Bonus: Rook (faction of your choice)
- Kickstarter Bonus: Knight (faction of your choice)
- Kickstarter Bonus: Bishop (faction of your choice)
- Kickstarter Bonus: 4 Pawns (faction of your choice)


Bishop- $50 - 45 miniatures total.

- The Complete Loka Game
- KS Exclusive Alessio Chess Player Model
- Your Name in The Rulebook
- Signed Art Print
- Kickstarter Bonus: Upgraded Softcover Rulebook.
- Kickstarter Bonus: Upgraded Game Board.
- Kickstarter Bonus: Pack of Terrain Tiles.
- Kickstarter Bonus: Fire King.
- Kickstarter Bonus: Earth King.
- Kickstarter Bonus: Queen (faction of your choice)
- Kickstarter Bonus: Rook (faction of your choice)
- Kickstarter Bonus: Knight (faction of your choice)
- Kickstarter Bonus: Bishop (faction of your choice)
- Kickstarter Bonus: 4 Pawns (faction of your choice)



Knight - $100 - 89 Miniatures total.

- The Complete Loka Game
- KS Exclusive Alessio Chess Player Model
- two additional Chess Sets of your choice
- Your Name in the Rulebook
- Signed Art Print
- Kickstarter Bonus: Upgraded Softcover Rulebook.
- Kickstarter Bonus: Upgraded Game Board.
- Kickstarter Bonus: Pack of Terrain Tiles.
- Kickstarter Bonus: Fire King.
- Kickstarter Bonus: Earth King.
- Kickstarter Bonus: Air King.
- Kickstarter Bonus: Ice King.
- Kickstarter Bonus: 2 Queens (factions of your choice)
- Kickstarter Bonus: 2 Rooks (factions of your choice)
- Kickstarter Bonus: 2 Knights (factions of your choice)
- Kickstarter Bonus: 2 Bishops (factions of your choice)
- Kickstarter Bonus: 8 Pawns (factions of your choice)

Kicktraq page:

Backed!!!!

Me too. I needed a new chess set anyhow.

Looks really nice, think they've done a good job with the presentation and style.

(On a separate note, and I have to ask - when will they make 3D-projection chess sets with monsters fighting each other, like the ones from Star Wars? Or some kind of multi-platform, incomprehensible game like the ones played in Star Trek? )

 Pacific wrote:
Looks really nice, think they've done a good job with the presentation and style.

(On a separate note, and I have to ask - when will they make 3D-projection chess sets with monsters fighting each other, like the ones from Star Wars? Or some kind of multi-platform, incomprehensible game like the ones played in Star Trek? )

Give them time, it'll happen.

So it seems right now they only have the fire set. Does it seem pretty obvious to everyone else that the other 3 sets are ready and will just be used as stretch goals as this thong goes on. I'm not complaining, I'm just saying that it would almost defeat the purpose if you only got the fire pieces. I would be willing to bet a large sum that all 4 will be included by the end of this.

^ It's got $5k of funding in the first half hour.. give it a few days and the basics will be sorted.

I see a lot of broad appeal for this, even if you don't want to bother playing the game, just using the pieces as a regular chess set is a pretty cool end result. No major pressure to paint anything either.

It could be a really good entry point to wargaming for a lot of people too.

The $100 level seems like a great deal from the start, you get 68 miniatures + the board, rulebook, KS-exclusive mini and all the other stuff.

While I agree its a good deal, the fact that they are having people add 15$ for shipping is gonna cause a lot of whining. I know shipping costs, but I would have just added it into the price instead of making it separate. People have gotten spoiled to "free" shipping.

Edit- The shipping complaining has ALREADY started on the KS comments. I understand shipping costs a ton, but I know from dealing with people where I work that most people don't.

With Dreadball, they used second-class Royal Mail for the deliveries, and rather a lot of packages turned up mangled.

So, they're going with tracked, insured courier delivery this time.

$15 still seems a bit much for UK delivery, but I managed to get an early bird Knight, so that makes up for it.

$50 for the basic game is a pretty good price, same amount as dwarf king's hold, with even more minis (and larger ones, too) included.

With the "list building" element, it seems like people will get good use out of multiple sets, since you can build a set with 3 queens if you like, or flood the board with pawns.

I'm looking forward to alternate sculpts and terrain and custom boards and things. There's a lot of stuff that can be done with this, the stretch goals should be really fun once we get past $100k (at this rate, we'll be there by tomorrow!)

The main appeal for me is a miniatures game that I can play with non-wargamers. *Everyone* knows how to play chess.

Yeah. I have Shuuro and it's great fun. I am sure I'll pick up Loka.

However,with those shipping-costs and the DreadBall experience, I'll likely have Loka both faster and cheaper from WaylandGames than I'll do through Kickstarter

 scarletsquig wrote:

The main appeal for me is a miniatures game that I can play with non-wargamers. *Everyone* knows how to play chess.

Seconded. Even if no one else wants to play or collect Loka, I'll have a really attractive chess set.

Thirded.

Am a sucker for Shuuro.

 Pacific wrote:
(On a separate note, and I have to ask - when will they make 3D-projection chess sets with monsters fighting each other, like the ones from Star Wars? Or some kind of multi-platform, incomprehensible game like the ones played in Star Trek? )

If this is something that interests you, you might want to take a look at Dragonchess - a chess variant with three boards representing the sky, the ground and underground.

Okay, if anyone wants a KS signature, I've made a couple.

Fire Queen Sig:

Earth Queen Sig:


BBcode:

Earth Queen Signature:
[url=http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1744629938/loka-the-world-of-fantasy-chess][img]http://i.imgur.com/LQG9MIP.png[/img][/url]
Fire Queen Signature:
[url=http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1744629938/loka-the-world-of-fantasy-chess][img]http://i.imgur.com/vvFtHkp.png[/img][/url]

This is an interesting turn-out, only a few days ago we got previewed this and Mantic have already got the green-light to create the KS, good on them. The Fire Earth guys both look pretty good and the idea as a whole could be fun to play, a game like this could be fun for hobbyist creating custom/converted chess characters, boards and all.

All in all great looking so far, seems like this KS needs to hit the 50k mark before it becomes a "proper" game, of course I can't imagine that's going to take very long.

 AlexHolker wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
(On a separate note, and I have to ask - when will they make 3D-projection chess sets with monsters fighting each other, like the ones from Star Wars? Or some kind of multi-platform, incomprehensible game like the ones played in Star Trek? )

If this is something that interests you, you might want to take a look at Dragonchess - a chess variant with three boards representing the sky, the ground and underground.

Ooh interesting thanks for that mate, will have to check that out.

Dammit again Mantic....
*opens wallet*

$15 is approximately £10, which is not expensive for shipping given you will have a largish box delivered by courier. People need to catch themselves on (or actually get a decent job) if they think this is expensive.

Saxon wrote:
$15 is approximately £10, which is not expensive for shipping given you will have a largish box delivered by courier. People need to catch themselves on (or actually get a decent job) if they think this is expensive.

Or stick with the more affordable "blue-collar" companies that ship free... such as Games Workshop or Apple

.. and it's funded, in 5 hours flat.

Next stretch goals are $37.5k for the expanded rulebook and $50k for the Earth set (resulting in the core box being upgraded from 2 fire sets to one fire and one earth).

Well, it's funded already. This one's not for me, but good luck Mantic.

So I woke up this morning with a terrible champagne hangover from my fiancee's birthday party last night, saw my phone blinking, it was an email from Mantic, saw it was a KS, clicked the link, fumbled my way through the pledging process on my Droid, got confirmation, fell back asleep.

Congrats Mantic, even with an awful hangover haze I know to pledge immediately on one of your KS in an early-bird pledge level.

A look at the concept art for the terrain, going to be interesting to see how they manage to work terrain within the confines of a tiled chess board:

Not too bad looking art, it will be intresting to see if these become 3D tiles & terrain pieces at some point. maybe as a stretch goal.

The art work for terrain reminds me a lot of the artwork for Small World, I wonder who the artist is

Heath Foley is the artist.

Hm, I haven't played any of Alessio's chess variants, but I'm thinking that this is probably not for me. The figures don't look nice enough to make the product worthwhile as a figure purchase - either for an army or just nice figures for painting, and if I were inclined to spend $100+ on a chess set, I'd be looking at something a lot nicer than a card game board and a bunch of (probably warped) plastic pieces.

Nonetheless, it's probably a good move for Mantic, especially if they can get their product into more mainstream game shops, or High Street retailers. So I wish them the best of luck.

 Azazelx wrote:
Hm, I haven't played any of Alessio's chess variants, but I'm thinking that this is probably not for me. The figures don't look nice enough to make the product worthwhile as a figure purchase - either for an army or just nice figures for painting, and if I were inclined to spend $100+ on a chess set, I'd be looking at something a lot nicer than a card game board and a bunch of (probably warped) plastic pieces.

Nonetheless, it's probably a good move for Mantic, especially if they can get their product into more mainstream game shops, or High Street retailers. So I wish them the best of luck.

I am in the same boat here. I am sure there are plenty of chess sets out there for $100 that far surpass what these miniatures look like. On that note, when Mantic say plastic do they mean hard plastic or the restic, same as the dreadball set?

Was going to say, the artwork (and actually, overall design aesthetic) is one of the nicest things about this. It seems perhaps an odd thing to say (as this is no doubt a relatively small release compared to some stuff Mantic are doing) but this definitely gives the impression that they are making a step forward in terms of professionalism.

$15 ain't bad for courier shipping and you need to remember that they actually need to make money to be able to fund this stuff... when you take the cost of the components out of that $100 including shipping and i can't imagine there's much left... $15 seems reasonable.

you jsut know if that they'd included it people would have complained the reward level was too highly priced for the contents.

I am sure there are plenty of chess sets out there for $100 that far surpass what these miniatures look like

Probably, but with Mantic you just know they'll keep adding stuff to the level, so you'd get much better value!

^ Also,to be fair, the actual chess set is $50, not $100.

$100 gets you the game + 2 extra sets.

You'd struggle to find a premium chess set for under $50.

Typically, they sell for $90 in polystone (which is primary for display, not gameplay), without the board or any of the other stuff:
http://www.chessusa.com/category/FANTASY_CHESS_SETS.html