Barzam wrote:
I think my favorite is probably "The Last Ship Off World." Gives a good sense of what the setting is like. I also really like that one of the Karist troops. I hope we see that officer someday.

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A summary of progress to date with a few nice images...
Posted by Spiral Arm Studios USA
Hello once again to all of you! We've been working extremely hard on Maelstrom's Edge, and we are pleased to report that we have been free from illnesses, vacations and any other unplanned diversions, allowing us to give our complete focus to Maelstrom's Edge over the past few months. As such, we are pleased to report that we still remain on target as per our existing project delivery plan which can be found here: http://www.maelstromsedge.com/status
We've had a number of small delays over the past couple of months, but fortunately nothing has pushed us back too far just yet and as such we will have no issue in getting everything out in December as planned. Those of you backing for digital rules only might see a couple of weeks of slippage which might push delivery of the rules PDF to Nov from Oct, but that is simply a measure of how much effort and work is going in to making the rulebook as good as it can be.
The biggest potential hold up is getting the final 3 models completed. The sculpts and parts are done, tested and signed off, and the final tooling (cutting the designs of the digital models into metal moulds to facilitate injection moulding) is underway, but due to the extreme number of variables involved, we cant count on it being done until the production is complete and the models are on the boat and on the way to us. There are many things out of our control, with one of the major consistent issues being large industrial plastic orders coming in from third parties, and due to them having 8-figure budgets, they immediately get priority over our small scale, high detail, high effort models. Thankfully we are at the very end of the model development process for these three, and as such the chance of those variables affecting us drops every single day.
Beyond that, getting the box printed is the next biggest issue. We desperately want to have pictures of all models on the box for obvious reasons, but printing is a very slow process and booking in print time alone can require as much as two months notice. We've committed to the extra expense of getting printing done in Europe so that we can get it into our warehouse without it needing to spend 5 weeks on the ocean, but it is still a very tight timescale with little buffer room for the unexpected.
The rulebook and all cards should not be a problem at all. Progress has been great on them and we will have them in the warehouse well in advance of the final packing and shipping dates.
The card tokens, suppression markers, victory point trackers, card objectives, blast templates and spray templates are all done and best of all are sitting in our warehouse ready for packing. We had some interesting adventures in international shipping to get to this stage, but they look great and the colour is vivid and sharp. We'll aim to get a suppression token assembly tutorial together before you get them so that you can plan on how to make them look as good as can be, though assembly is very straightforward and simply comes down to how perfect you want them to look by using things like black pens to mask the edges of the card. Here's a picture of a 1 metre cubed pile of our cardboard - a lot of suppression tokens!
A lot of cardboard!
A lot of cardboard!
and here's some pictures of the finished, final product - all three sheets (please excuse the camera shadow in the bottom centre!):
The production grade die-cut card sheets (A4 in size), front and rear of sheet 3
The production grade die-cut card sheets (A4 in size), front and rear of sheet 3
The existing plastic models are already starting to flow into our warehouse. We've had multiple injection moulding machines running around the world for weeks, churning out the best versions of our models that have ever been made. Our production teams have blown us away with their talents and we are very proud and pleased to state that the models we've shown you pictures of are not as crisp and sharp as the ones you will be getting. The production run surpasses our prototypes quite notably. Here's some of the recent palettes of plastic that have arrived in our warehouse:
A big pile of plastic (in generic boxes)
A big pile of plastic (in generic boxes)
If you are in at the $1 pledge level, then you'll be pleased to know that the next audiobook - "Crisis Point" by Stephen Gaskell just has a few minor bits of polishing left and will be going out to you all as planned this October. If you've not yet been claiming your audiobooks and other digital rewards, then be sure to check out this update: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/medge/maelstroms-edge-a-next-gen-sci-fi-miniatures-warga/posts/1299968
If you are just backing for terrain, then you'll also be pleased to know that your plastic is done and almost ready to ship and is in fact in one of the palettes photographed above. We have the logistics and packing plans in place now and just need to get the pledge manager out to you for your addresses and then the sprues will be on the way. Here's a nice test one of our friends did which shows just how many pieces of terrain can be built from a single terrain sprue:
Squeezing as much terrain out of one sprue as possible!
Squeezing as much terrain out of one sprue as possible!
The next update we send out will have the pledge manager details in it. We appreciate it has taken us a while to get it out to you, but we are not using an off-the-shelf solution and have developed our own which integrates nicely with our website at maelstromsedge.com. We also wanted to pin down a few details first, the most significant being if we are able to offer standalone models. I'm pleased to report that we will now be able to offer add-ons for individual model sprues though they will just be loose sprues with bases, not in final retail boxes, but as a result they'll be discounted too as a thanks for your early support in getting us to this point. For those of you who wanted to build a whole drone army, or just wanted a force of alien angels to proxy in another game, it will now be possible to get the models on their own! You'll be able to add them to your pledge very soon when the pledge manager goes live.
We spend a lot of time ensuring everything is going to plan, and as such we can see in our projections that there is a chance of around 40% that external or internal variables might affect our rate of production and prevent us getting everything together and shipped before Christmas. While that is still less than a 50/50 chance, we want to keep ourselves motivated and dedicated, so we'll publicly promise now that if we slip past December shipping and into Q1 2016, we will add the second most requested bonus unit - the huge Epirian Hunter Robot - to every single box set at the $90+ pledge level. We'd prefer not to give away one of our most complex and valuable models, so we'll be working extra hard to make sure we ship on time, but if we fail then you'll get a free Christmas present off the back of it!
Once again, please excuse our relative lack of community outreach at this time. We are a small team and we are working flat out to get Maelstrom's Edge to the highest quality while sticking to our timescale goals. We'll be ramping up communication as shipping approaches and are always open to questions and chats about the game, models and rules, so feel free to ask here on Kickstarter in the comments section anytime you want to!
As one more teaser from the Maelstrom's Edge universe, here's an image showing a number of Cybel Gates (the mechanism for travel over large distances at effectively faster-than-light speeds) in close proximity to a large star:
Ships queue before a Cybel Gate
Ships queue before a Cybel Gate
and an example page from our in-development rulebook:
A simple rules preview page
A simple rules preview page
We'll be in touch soon with the pledge manager link! Thank you for your patience and as always we cant wait to start getting the game, the rules and the models into your hands!