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 Vain wrote:

carboncopy wrote:
Well that puts this old topic in better perspective:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/552663.page

I had totally forgot about that. Yeah I thought at the time it was a weird thing to do on a holiday...

Good eye, carboncopy and that demonstrates how long this game has been in the works - that thread is from 2013!

Although, I remember legoburner saying somewhere that they're using multiple factories for all the molding on this project.

 insaniak wrote:

The galaxy is a big place. It's taken a thousand years for the Maelstrom to reach as far as it has, and it still has a ways to go. So the overall story arc is potentially quite long.

Aha! I like that sort of timeframe. I can imagine a campaign setting in a single system that the maelstrom is literally tearing its way through being an awesome focus for a plot of fighting between multiple factions trying to take over the last access to outbound system ships or something, being really awesome.

I can also imagine the moves and motives of the larger factions making plays on the outskirts of the galaxy as they try and take or keep potential systems filled with supplies, science bases, agricultural reserves, rich mineral or rare element deposits or large population centers.

This has tons and tons of potential for storylines. I can't wait to see where that goes.

Oh hey, on a sidenote, will there be female models?

Lego had said earlier in the thread that the current focus on males exclusively is down to the logistics of launching a new range from scratch, but that it was a potential option for the future.

Awww, I must've missed that post. Well I do look forward to seeing how that plays out. I love the scope of what you've come up with so I hope I can eventually play a disparate group of men, women and aliens banding together and running scared in a desperate bid for survival against other larger overwhelming forces. /sage nod

This I must have

darrkespur wrote:


I think there's room in our universe for a more complex and open-ended future.

Many thanks darrkespur, GrimDork, Insaniak, and everyone for the thoughtful replies. This all sounds very promising. I'm actually tempted to read the books now.

darrkespur wrote:
I think you will be happy with what we'll come up with, both in future factions and what we'll announce in the next few weeks.

I'm looking forward to it.

I'm liking the first book so far, Vermonter. I really tend to *want* to like scifi books, but often they lose my interest for various reasons. So far, I'm doing ok with this one.

Lots of things could happen to stop the Maelstrom, maybe humanity flees out past the cybel network and the expansion of the maelstrom is so slow to follow that they can forget it. Or, maybe they find out how it started and they detonate some kind of uber bomb at a node causing another maelstrom to head towards the first and they cancel out See, there's Hope in this setting, but for the time being there will be loads of desperate squabbles and fights between the various factions.


Not to lend credence to an obvious troll, but at one point in the first novel, they do mention a shadow walker (or similar) who can basically teleport short (as far as I know) distances due to exposure to the Cybel network and learning to use it.

To me though, this doesn't cheapen anything, but instead opens up a whole world of possibility. I'll have to chime in more as I read, but mostly only reading before bed.

Is there anything the community can do to support this project?

I know some 3d modellers.

I can't really say that I'm a fan of the Maelstrom, it is too close to the 40k 15 minutes to midnight style universe. Either everything dies, at which point the plot attains a certain uneasy ending, or people survive in something which, given the scope of the threat, feels contrived. I don't think that it is a good idea, but right now I can't think of another.

About the game, do the designers have an idea about how to balance army building with the desire of people to put whatever they own in a battle? For, as much as 40K Unbound seems ridiculous, I must admit that any 40K army I ever build will abuse Unbound to its fullest, as I'll go for model design as much as rules. Do you have a plan to balance the need for an equal game with the desire of players to play with what they have / want?

DrRansom wrote:
I can't really say that I'm a fan of the Maelstrom, it is too close to the 40k 15 minutes to midnight style universe. Either everything dies, at which point the plot attains a certain uneasy ending, or people survive in something which, given the scope of the threat, feels contrived. I don't think that it is a good idea, but right now I can't think of another.

I sort of agree, except this is a little more in your face than it is with 40k. The end is coming, but its rather nebulous and might take centuries or millennia from the current time, and has been going on for 10,000 years.

Thats not to say it can't be worked with. Someone might come up with a solution or they might escape.

 Grey Templar wrote:

DrRansom wrote:
I can't really say that I'm a fan of the Maelstrom, it is too close to the 40k 15 minutes to midnight style universe. Either everything dies, at which point the plot attains a certain uneasy ending, or people survive in something which, given the scope of the threat, feels contrived. I don't think that it is a good idea, but right now I can't think of another.

I sort of agree, except this is a little more in your face than it is with 40k. The end is coming, but its rather nebulous and might take centuries or millennia from the current time, and has been going on for 10,000 years.

Thats not to say it can't be worked with. Someone might come up with a solution or they might escape.

Well we only have gotten a taste of it so far.


So i will reserve judgement until I have read and play tested it.

Last time I was asked to fix something for a game project it was a major issue with how the gameplay interacted between players.

 Grey Templar wrote:

DrRansom wrote:
I can't really say that I'm a fan of the Maelstrom, it is too close to the 40k 15 minutes to midnight style universe. Either everything dies, at which point the plot attains a certain uneasy ending, or people survive in something which, given the scope of the threat, feels contrived. I don't think that it is a good idea, but right now I can't think of another.

I sort of agree, except this is a little more in your face than it is with 40k. The end is coming, but its rather nebulous and might take centuries or millennia from the current time, and has been going on for 10,000 years.

Thats not to say it can't be worked with. Someone might come up with a solution or they might escape.

The planets on the edge of the Maelstrom are at full on apocalypse and are doomed in the very near future, but dont underestimate just how huge the galaxy is - around 100K light years wide. The colonised human sphere is limited to a single Spiral Arm, but the Maelstrom will still take a huge number of generations to cover the whole thing. Beyond that, the universe is bigger than the galaxy. Our stories are centred on the edge, where the bulk of humanity is being forced to flee towards the rim of the galaxy, but our time frame on a galactic/human survival scale is a lot broader than 40k's 15 minutes to midnight.

 AlexHolker wrote:

privateer4hire wrote:

 AlexHolker wrote:
...a non-cult religious faction as the good guys, like my old "What if the Salvation Army had an army?" faction, the Order of the Shield.

The Salvation Marine Corps. You don't walk past their donation pot without putting something in, if you know what's good for you.

No. This is apparently a difficult concept for people to grasp, but I'm talking about a faction who - stay with me here - are not donkey-caves. Not a doomsday cult who converts others by the sword, not some corporation which cares for nothing but its own self-interest, good guys who try to keep the peace and get everybody evacuated before the Maelstrom hits.

You mean like the Ultramarines? Everyone loves them, right?



To be honest, I feel exactly the same way. My favorite 40k books by Abnett read like Christian Fiction with lasguns. I don't believe in saints or miracles, but I love reading about them. Honest men and women of faith with huge plasma rifles are chicken soup for my soul.

 legoburner wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

DrRansom wrote:
I can't really say that I'm a fan of the Maelstrom, it is too close to the 40k 15 minutes to midnight style universe. Either everything dies, at which point the plot attains a certain uneasy ending, or people survive in something which, given the scope of the threat, feels contrived. I don't think that it is a good idea, but right now I can't think of another.

I sort of agree, except this is a little more in your face than it is with 40k. The end is coming, but its rather nebulous and might take centuries or millennia from the current time, and has been going on for 10,000 years.

Thats not to say it can't be worked with. Someone might come up with a solution or they might escape.

The planets on the edge of the Maelstrom are at full on apocalypse and are doomed in the very near future, but dont underestimate just how huge the galaxy is - around 100K light years wide. The colonised human sphere is limited to a single Spiral Arm, but the Maelstrom will still take a huge number of generations to cover the whole thing. Beyond that, the universe is bigger than the galaxy. Our stories are centred on the edge, where the bulk of humanity is being forced to flee towards the rim of the galaxy, but our time frame on a galactic/human survival scale is a lot broader than 40k's 15 minutes to midnight.

Ahh, I see I misinterpreted things.

Its more like there is a definite count down, but its still a long way off. Like if we knew the universe would end in 15,000 years.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 legoburner wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

DrRansom wrote:
I can't really say that I'm a fan of the Maelstrom, it is too close to the 40k 15 minutes to midnight style universe. Either everything dies, at which point the plot attains a certain uneasy ending, or people survive in something which, given the scope of the threat, feels contrived. I don't think that it is a good idea, but right now I can't think of another.

I sort of agree, except this is a little more in your face than it is with 40k. The end is coming, but its rather nebulous and might take centuries or millennia from the current time, and has been going on for 10,000 years.

Thats not to say it can't be worked with. Someone might come up with a solution or they might escape.

The planets on the edge of the Maelstrom are at full on apocalypse and are doomed in the very near future, but dont underestimate just how huge the galaxy is - around 100K light years wide. The colonised human sphere is limited to a single Spiral Arm, but the Maelstrom will still take a huge number of generations to cover the whole thing. Beyond that, the universe is bigger than the galaxy. Our stories are centred on the edge, where the bulk of humanity is being forced to flee towards the rim of the galaxy, but our time frame on a galactic/human survival scale is a lot broader than 40k's 15 minutes to midnight.

Ahh, I see I misinterpreted things.

Its more like there is a definite count down, but its still a long way off. Like if we knew the universe would end in 15,000 years.

Yep, but I think unlike 40k, MEdge isn't without hope. There's always the possibility that someone figures out a way to bypass/contain/stop the Maelstrom. I'm guessing it's not all pyrrhic victories, just instead very dire states throughout.

 bbb wrote:

computertrucker wrote:
So let me get this straight. During the golden age of technology when mankind was exploring space. A massive warp storm starts eating world's excuse me I meant the maelstrom starts eating worlds?

There are some that can commune with the warp err I mean melstrom and gain powers in their psychic oops I mean meditative state?

This sounds very original!

Nice first post. Very original.

To be fair, we all thought something like that at one point. I mean, come on.

Yeah, and the xx-thousand years off is the doomsday clock for humanity in general. Specific planets may have a single generation, or decade. They may have determined they have 10 years but then the maelstrom expands through an unexpected strand of the cybel network and then its there in 2 years. On the Edge, things are pretty desperate and immediate. Many systems out you'll want to make sure you invest properly so your descendents an afford tickets offworld in a century or two.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Ahh, I see I misinterpreted things.

Its more like there is a definite count down, but its still a long way off. Like if we knew the universe would end in 15,000 years.

With the caveat that, for individual worlds right on the Edge, that end is obviously altogether closer...

And as GrimDork suggests, the unpredictability of the Maelstrom's movement means that those closer worlds have no real idea just how long they have. They just know that it's coming.

For that matter, even those worlds further away would have to consider that they don't understand the Maelstrom, and so would have to plan for the idea that things may change without warning. So even in those 'safe' areas, I would imagine there would be a certain amount of paranoia and apprehension butting up against those who feel that they have nothing to worry about because it's all so far away...

It's disappointing to hear that the cool women in the novels won't be represented on the tabletop, at least in the beginning. I guess at least conversion should be relatively easy using third-party parts already on the market.

ETA: I also just want to say that I think the contractor guy looks really cool.

The lack of female models really bothers us too.

We do not have any explicitly female models in our first phase of sculpting, but have instead opted to go for gender ambiguity wherever we can. It simply comes down to economics - only so many bits can fit on a sprue and they have to be interchangeable for mult-pose to work. The female form is notably different from the male form (primarily hips and torso) and those differences are even more extreme at the scale we use. Just having female heads and torsos would not be enough. We have a company-wide veto on making any over-sexualised female models with armour that barely covers their boobs too.

We've tried to complement this gap in our initial model range by having a lot of strong female characters in our fiction, and it is our definite goal to get female versions of models as soon as it is viable, but sadly, and after a huge amount of internal debate, we determined it was not possible for our first few releases.

I have a lot of respect for people who have courage to and will to create things like this. I wish you good luck on your journey with the game.

Thanks all, and great to see such passionate thought about the small amounts of the universe we've revealed so far

As promised, here are some more things to draw you in to our expansive universe and awesome model range:













To pre-empt questions we've been asked before on the model design choices:

The draw lines for making a two part mould meant that we had the choice of either splitting the legs at the hip, or greatly restricting the poses available. Additionally, merging the legs to the hips would have meant that some of the edges of the nice crisp armour plates would have to be blended in to the legs which is one of those really annoying things you see in sub-standard plastics.

As a result, we opted for splitting the legs and getting more sharp detail and more poses as a result. It does make assembly a touch more fiddly, but assembly only needs to be done once, whereas crappy detail is crappy forever. It also makes conversions a bit easier as there are more pre-cut places, so bending a leg, sculpting an addition, or adding a robotic hand from the bits box is much more straightforward.

The same logic is applied for the hands - the armour plates on the forearms of the Karists meant they would be out of draw line if we had hands on the arms, so there would be no finger detail without the split there. All other models we've done since have hands attached.

We've now got the best of both worlds on our more recent plastics as we are using multi-slide core tooling to give us multiple angles of draw, allowing us to get crisp, extreme detail and have easy assembly. These images are of the very first sprues we did. They are great and we've only got better and more talented since then!

Congratulations on getting this going guys. It seems you've put a Herculean effort into getting this ball rolling.

The models look gorgeous and the paint jobs are exemplary.


Really looking forward to the KickStarter and I can't wait to see how this project expands and grows.

The last sprue definitely comes from wargames factory.

No comment on my ship based faction?

 legoburner wrote:
We do not have any explicitly female models in our first phase of sculpting, but have instead opted to go for gender ambiguity wherever we can. It simply comes down to economics - only so many bits can fit on a sprue and they have to be interchangeable for mult-pose to work. The female form is notably different from the male form (primarily hips and torso) and those differences are even more extreme at the scale we use. Just having female heads and torsos would not be enough.

Treating men and women as being completely incompatible and requiring separate kits would be my recommendation. Gender ambiguity is a non starter - the breadth of the chest and shoulders makes these impossible to mistake for women, and fixing that would also require redoing the arms for any two handed weapon to compensate for the narrower shoulder joints.

 AlexHolker wrote:

 legoburner wrote:
We do not have any explicitly female models in our first phase of sculpting, but have instead opted to go for gender ambiguity wherever we can. It simply comes down to economics - only so many bits can fit on a sprue and they have to be interchangeable for mult-pose to work. The female form is notably different from the male form (primarily hips and torso) and those differences are even more extreme at the scale we use. Just having female heads and torsos would not be enough.

Treating men and women as being completely incompatible and requiring separate kits would be my recommendation. Gender ambiguity is a non starter - the breadth of the chest and shoulders makes these impossible to mistake for women, and fixing that would also require redoing the arms for any two handed weapon to compensate for the narrower shoulder joints.

Things like the bigger power armoured guys could be male or female underneath though really.

I'm jealous - I'm sure we've all wanted to make our own game at some point or another. I remember sketching some concepts a few years back, but with the saturation of new games on kickstarter these days I'm sure I'd have no chance. Living the dream guys!

 ImAGeek wrote:

 AlexHolker wrote:
Treating men and women as being completely incompatible and requiring separate kits would be my recommendation. Gender ambiguity is a non starter - the breadth of the chest and shoulders makes these impossible to mistake for women, and fixing that would also require redoing the arms for any two handed weapon to compensate for the narrower shoulder joints.

Things like the bigger power armoured guys could be male or female underneath though really.

Not if it's power armour. A piloted mecha could be piloted by a man or a woman, but any suit of armour where the wearer's arms are inside the armour's arms has to conform to the proportions of the wearer's skeleton, or else you're not going to be able to do anything without dislocating your shoulders.

 AlexHolker wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:

 AlexHolker wrote:
Treating men and women as being completely incompatible and requiring separate kits would be my recommendation. Gender ambiguity is a non starter - the breadth of the chest and shoulders makes these impossible to mistake for women, and fixing that would also require redoing the arms for any two handed weapon to compensate for the narrower shoulder joints.

Things like the bigger power armoured guys could be male or female underneath though really.

Not if it's power armour. A piloted mecha could be piloted by a man or a woman, but any suit of armour where the wearer's arms are inside the armour's arms has to conform to the proportions of the wearer's skeleton, or else you're not going to be able to do anything without dislocating your shoulders.

well yeah in real life, but a 28mm model, there could be women in them.

I think there's a pleasing level of genericism in the sprues, which is inevitably important. The Karist sprues I can see other uses for which, ultimately, human sprues are always going to have. In terms of the plastics used, how do they respond to different types of primer?

 inmygravenimage wrote:
In terms of the plastics used, how do they respond to different types of primer?

Pretty much the same as any other HIPS model, I would expect.

Consider me interested!

Especially interested in the rules.
I am still waiting for a GOOD 28mm skirmish game, and preferably hard sci-fi, not sci-fantasy.
I tried many, none got it right IMO.
I have high hopes for this one!

And i like the Karist models, but models are of secondary importance for a new game, there will be many in the future anyway and the first ones are promising enough.

Good job all around guys. Way to go!

 Jehan-reznor wrote:

No comment on my ship based faction?

Ship based factions are absolutely part of the plan, as for obvious reasons mobility is a key goal for many people in Maelstrom's Edge. We don't want to say too much about future factions yet as the development time for making each HIPS sprue is significant. We don't want to get into a situation that some games have of showing you ideas that get you excited but take years before you hold them in your hands. But in the long term, if this first launch goes well, that's definitely an area we want to explore.