Hi, everyone! We just got a pre-production copy from Grey Fox, and this game looks/feels awesome! There are a few final tweaks they made, but this is very close to the final version! Here are some photos for you (last one shows sleeve sizes):
Just in case you’re not following along with Grey Fox’s little teasers, here’s a few tasty morsels:
We hope you’re as excited as we are! I don’t want to be wrong again about when the kickstarter is releasing, so I won’t try to guess. But, I think the answer is SOON!
Okay, so the After the Empire kickstarter is officially slated to run after Tsukuyumi (looks really cool), which Grey Fox is running in March. So, After the Empire goes to kickstarter in May, 2019! It’s just a couple months past what we expected, and we are very excited, to say the least! Also, we just looked at a work in progress on some more art they’ve commissioned for ATE, and it’s looking awesome!
On a side note, I recently poked around BGG for mentions of After the Empire. Thanks for everyone who put us on your lists! Here are a few highlights from what I found:
We’re part of this recap from cardboard hoard.
We’re on this most anticipated list.
We’re on this list from heavy cardboard.
Here's his rendition of the Oxcart Teamster, who was actually first seen on the game board itself. This is a card we've added in recent months of development as one of our starting refugees, to help balance availability of resources. I love the adorable oxen!
Yet another in our amazing series of invader cards by Tomas, to round out new additions to the base game invaders! His lighting skills really shine in this one!
Also, we had a great time at Gamestorm this weekend. We had lots of great feedback from play-testers on our new game, Mountain God's Revenge. We had the pleasure of playing After the Empire with one of our long time supporters, James Hampton, who's been playing throughout the evolution of the game and can give us great insights. After a long day of play-testing, Ryan went home and I was privileged to play a late night game or two with local design legends Tim Eisner (March of the Ants and Grimm Forest) and Ryan Spangler (Sol).
First, we three played Antiquity. This was my first Splotter game, so now I get what people were talking about. This game is everything I didn't know I wanted from Settlers of Catan: bigger, better, heavier, and more engaging. And, if you're not careful, you can totally mess it up! Can you accidentally spend all your wood, then have no way to get more necessary resources for the rest of the game? Yep. Don't spend all your wood, unless you already have a woodcutter who can get you more next turn!
Then, Ryan and I twice played Tak, a great abstract game in the vein of chess, checkers, and go. The first game and a half I was basically convinced that it was mostly blind luck and there was no way to know or plan what to do more than 1-2 moves in advance. But, eventually things gelled, and it's really quite a deep and engaging yet quick play experience.
Check out another one of our new refugee cards! Ted has really captured the feel we were hoping for on this one!
Check out this new piece from our old friend Tomas O. Muir! As we've been figuring out what exactly is in the basic game and what is in the advanced play variant, we needed to add a little more content! So, here's one of the new invader cards!
We just got our new prototypes in! It feels pretty awesome to have a stack of After the Empire sitting on my desk.
Here's Ryan working hard on making some 3D printed walls perfect before we ship a copy to one of our reviewers!
And here's what it's looking like if I spread some game components out right before we play! I put a few cards out face up from the decks for you to see, but I didn't want to cover up our game board too much. With the kickstarter coming up in June, we still have a lot of preparation, but I'm very excited for how it's looking right now!
We already have a great group of graphic designers (Cole Munro-Chitty and Jason Harris) currently working hard on After the Empire, but I just had a great meeting with the newest member of our team today, our friend Zoe Morgan-Montoya! She'll be helping us get many of our home-made icons ready for final test-prints over the next couple months. I'll be sad to see some of my placeholders go (I have an overdeveloped fondness for a couple of them - see below), but having game icons that look like a professional adult made them will be a great improvement!
PS - In case you've seen my admittedly horrible iconography, my personal favorites are Farm (wheat bale with 3 little geese) and Refugee (profile shot of a guy who looks kinda like Beavis' father, or an estranged uncle).
Here's a photo from Ryan's house this Friday just prior to playing a couple games of After the Empire! Special thanks to those who came out to play with us; we had a great time!
Another amazing collaboration between the incredible artists Baconstrap and Ted Ottosson! They've done a wonderful job and we couldn't be more proud to have this as the centerpiece for After the Empire. I love all the details! It's a true work of art! The graphic design overlay is also coming along nicely! Only 2 months away from our kickstarter and things are really taking shape!
A staple among our great artists, Baconstrap has not only created many other great pieces of art you'll find throughout After the Empire, but he's completed a wonderful piece that we are lucky enough to put on the front of our box! It's beautiful and a perfect first glance for a game about defending your city from sieging invaders!
Here's player board #4/4 by the wonderful Baconstrap and Ted Ottosson! We're very excited to have these pieces finished for our new prototype printing (from our very own local Print and Play...thanks Chase!) just in time for Gamestorm this weekend! We'll be bringing these new player boards PLUS a first look at our game board with some new graphic design elements. Join us and be among the first to play on these beautiful boards! Or just come on by and take a look or chat with us! Online scheduling has been closed, but you can see the schedule here: http://schedule.gamestorm.org/index.html. We still have some room for our Friday and Saturday games, and there will be sign-up sheets available at the event. Here are our demo times and the current sign-up head count:
Friday, March 31st
[3466] 4:00 PM - 6:30 PM: 0/4
[4152] 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM: 1/4
Saturday, April 1st
[4482] 11:00 AM - 1:30 PM: 2/4
[????] 2:30 PM - 5:00 PM: Currently missing from schedule, so unsure of head count
[4155] 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM: 0/4
Sunday, April 2nd
[4504] 12:00 PM - 2:30 PM: 4/4 - Sorry, this one's full!
[4157] 2:30 PM - 5:00 PM: 4/4 - Sorry, this one is, too!
Here's #3/4 from the talented Baconstrap and Ted Ottosson! I love the snowy winter theme and iced over river!
And, of course Gamestorm is in 1 week and we're running demos all weekend. Go to http://schedule.gamestorm.org/index.html to see what spots are available and sign up!
Check out another great one from Ted Ottosson and Baconstrap. These guys are awesome!
Also, don't forget to come see us at Gamestorm in 2 weeks! We're running demos March 31st - April 2nd. Go to http://schedule.gamestorm.org/index.html to sign up!
We just got back from the GAMA board game and retail industry trade show, where we got to hob nob and chat with lots of industry big wigs, distributors, and retailers. We also got to sneak in a few demo sessions with some of those folks!
But, don't worry, we haven't forgotten you! You can come play After the Empire with us at the end of this month at Gamestorm here in Portland! Here are the scheduled demo times:
March 31st
Friday 4:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Friday 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM
April 1st
Saturday 11:00 AM - 1:30 PM
Saturday 2:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Saturday 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM
April 2nd
Sunday 12:00 PM - 2:30 PM
Sunday 2:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Go to http://schedule.gamestorm.org/index.html to see what time slots are left and make sure you're on the list! Plus, you get to check out our brand new player board art by the talented artists Baconstrap and Ted Ottosson! Imagine building and defending your city walls on this:
Here's the video from crowdsurfingutah. Our interview is split up and embedded throughout the video amongst other interviews. Our spots are at the following times:
21:55, 23:33, 25:16, 27:09, 28:49, 30:49
Thanks again for the face time crowdsurvingutah! We had a great time at our first trip to SaltCON!
Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7TmLXtxHPo
We had an old sketch we loved from the great artist David LaRocca who wasn't able to finish the piece for us. We are very lucky Tomas agreed to finish this one for us. Here is the Flaming Volley card from the Siege deck. It turned out great!
We gave Jack the difficult task of drawing the Irrigation card from the Building deck, and he came up with something great! Crops in the flood plain with the river beyond and a smaller stream estuary running between the fields turning the mill's waterwheel and an aqueduct to carry water to more distant fields.
Here's the back for the Invader deck! This now completes the art for all 4 of the deck backs by Tomas O. Muir! There was a lot of painstaking work to ensure that each side looks EXACTLY the same no matter what, so you can't tell which way is up. Otherwise, people might figure out which wall to defend before they're supposed to have that information. Normally, you have to take the Scout action for that kind of insight!
