Iconography!

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).

T-shirts, reviews, and local beta-testing!

We finally got ourselves some sweet branded Ts for our convention appearances! Here's a dorky photo:

Also, we're very excited for our upcoming prototype printing (the box above is our current prototype). We'll be sending the newest copies out to some reviewers here in the next week or two!

Also, we'll be needing some blind playtesting help from any who are willing or interested to take After the Empire from us for a day or two to play with your play group and give us feedback. You'll get the game with our current rulebook, and as little further information as possible. We want to know not only what you did and did not enjoy about playing our game and your suggestions, but also especially looking for feedback regarding the rulebook and difficulty of learning After the Empire as compared with cold plays of other medium-heavy Euro games. The rules are pretty easy when we are there to explain the game, but we need to know what happens when it's just the rulebook there to help and no play through videos available. (Of course we'll make a play through video soon for the kickstarter in June). We've made some good changes and simplifications to the rulebook with the last few times we've done this, but we still need more help! Due to having only very few prototypes and lots of events coming up where we'll need them, we're looking for people who are in or near Portland for this, so we can avoid long wait-times (and shipping costs).

Thank you all who've helped us get this far! Let's keep going and make the best game (and rulebook) that we can!

Check out our current playtesting setup!

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!

Check out the art for the game board!

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!

Here's the final cover art for the game!

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 another player board!

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!

Check out another player board!

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!

Here's another of our new player boards! #2/4

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!

Check out one of our player boards!

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:

Check out our interview at SaltCON 2017!

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

Here's another great one from Tomas O. Muir!

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!

Check out the newest card from Jack Watson!

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.

Check out the newest one from Tomas O. Muir!

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!

The new playtesting boards have arrived!

Here is a shot of our new board art (in progress) thanks to Print and Play games in Vancouver, WA. Plus, a closer look as some of the new card art and iconography (these icons are not final, BTW...just my poor approximation of art)!

Another great piece from Tomas O. Muir!

Here's his art for the Building deck card backs. This series is really looking cool!

Check out our logo!

Patrik Hell gives us more great stuff with his logos for Portland Gamecraft!

New stuff!

I'm very excited to have received our first ever boxed version of After the Empire! This is the first major step in making a few updated playtest copies, spurred on not only by wanting it ourselves, but our very first customers! They played our game at PAX and have been waiting to get it ever since. We agreed to send them a couple mid-production copies for Christmas, and we're very honored these folks would want to get a version of our game at this point, as we still have a ways to go with art, graphic design, and a few other fine tunings. This box only came with the cards and chits, so we're still waiting for wood pieces from Denmark and game boards from Print and Play games in Vancouver, WA (they're not slow...I JUST emailed them the files today) in time to send off the games!

The down side of all the great progress we've made and continue to make is I know what is already out of date in this box! Our more recent art updates, like the awesome title logo by Patrik Hell, the Refugee deck card backs by Tomas O. Muir, the Fortified Keep by Baconstrap, and everything else between now and then, will have to wait for the next pre-production edition! But, what it does have is LOTS of great new art and pieces, tiny rules updates on the cards, and last but not least...the very intimidating roll out of our transition from text-heavy cards, boards, and other game pieces to an iconography dominant style (although I couldn't help adding some reminder text all over the place). We expect a few bruises, but I'm sure our playtesters and fans will get us whipped into shape quickly!

Another awesome card from Baconstrap!

Here's the Fortified Keep from the Building Deck! The last bastion of hope for the city if it's walls are breached! Once again, I love all the little details he puts in his work, like the little chickens, the subtle shadows, and that it's snowing!

Here's the next awesome work from Tomas O. Muir!

Here is the card back for the Refugee deck! We're very excited about how these stained glass-style paintings are coming! Only 2 more to go, and we'll have the complete set!

Patrik Hell gives us another great piece of work!

Here's the game title for After the Empire! We love how it turned out. It's legible, but still very cool looking! We're very excited to start putting this on game boxes! (And thanks to Baconstrap for letting me poorly tweak his Ladders art to put this on top).