Leviathans at Gen Con Game Fair 2009
As the main entrance doors to Gen Con opened and the flood of attendees washed onto the red carpet they ran smack into the Catalyst Game Labs booth. And beyond the massive Catalyst Game Labs banner standing some 20 feet tall in the center of the booth, the first, front banner at the right-side edge of the booth displayed Doug Chaffee’s magnificent cover art for Leviathans.
On the left side of the booth area we ran over-sized demos of Leviathans (alternating between Leviathans and Balance of Power, our soon-to-be-published boardgame). The Geek Chic guys were fantastic and loaned us one of their beautiful hand-crafted tables to run Leviathans on (with a 4′ x 6′ playing area and double-sized hexes), which made it very easy to immerse players into the game at the scale. Brent Evans (our art director) is the one that put together the demo ships to showcase Doug’s great art and make it easy to demo the game.
Both my son (Bryn) and I ran numerous demos and of course I talked it up every chance I got. The game, of course, still won’t be released until early 2010, but Catalyst is dedicated to this fantastic new game and we pushed hard to get awareness of it out into the market place.
For those of you who have been following my blogs for a while and are just now getting a look at the sheets for tracking damage, I’ll go into full details of what they are and how they work in future blogs. However, I did want to clear a few things up before speculations spin on too far.
1. The Ship Cards were over-sized for clarity and ease of use in the demo…the Ship Cards will be smaller in the actual box set.
2. We laminated them so that during the demo we could use a dry erase marker for tracking damage and ease of erasing for the next demo. Currently, in the box set, the plan is the Ship Cards will not simply be laminated paper…but again, ultimately that’s still being looked at and I’ll cover the plans in a future blog.
Finally, we had an overseas company that we’re in negotiations with for manufacturing the miniatures for Leviathans make a prototype ship that they hand-carried to show us. They literally 72-hour-milled a block of acrylic down to the British HMS Leviathans Battleship to show us what they can do for us.
Please note the hand and the coin in the photos…this is to scale for what we want to see in the box set (the Battleship is 5″ long). As for the type of material to be used that’s still in negotiations but we’re trying hard for high-impact polystyrene…we really want these miniatures to hold fantastic detail. Finally, whether they’ll be pre-painted or not (I know that’s the next question) is still very much in the air. As soon as we have more information on such details that we can share, I’ll do just that.
I’d like to thank everyone that stopped by the booth, played a demo or just listened to me go on and on about the game and universe. The enthusiasm was great to see!
See ya next duty shift!
Randall
I know how other may feel but I really hope that it will be pre-painted.
I hope it comes unpainted, it’ll be a joy to paint them.
By the way, I’m loving the acrylic model I’d love to buy it.
I’m fine with it either way. Normally I don’t paint anything these days, as I just don’t have the time, and pre-painted minis won’t achieve the same level of detail I could do myself. On the other hand, because time is more limited than money at the moment, I could probably field multiple navies if they’re pre-painted.
I met many miniature painters but so far none who prefers miniature battleships more than anything else. I don’t have the time to paint myself. Even if I do, I would prefer finishing my fantasy stocks rather than starting a new game system.
looks really cool. how does it play?
If it’s a good game I’ll buy it, unless it’s collectible, so it doesn’t matter to me if it’s pre-paint or not. I would prefer pre-paint since i have gotten lazy with my painting, otherwise I would take a good, tough, plastic over metal especially with star/air ship games like this.
I can’t wait to see some rules posted for this and the models.
1) It won’t be ‘collectible’ in terms of random boosters. There will be minis available other than those that come with the main box, but if you don’t want to collect (say) Austro-Hungarian Levs, you won’t have to.
2) High-quality plastic is the aim, definitely.
3) Track down any of the folks who played in the demos at GenCon!
Really good prototype… I hope there will be soon other news and preview. And i want to see if there’s gonna be italian leviathans!!
I am a War at Sea player, i know this game from http://aaminis.myfastforum.org/index.php a forum about War at Sea.
I buy may year ago miniature unpainted, my attempt to paint them were unsuccessfull.
I only buy pre painted game this day (MechWarrior, WAS,Okko), so i hope it will be prepainted miniature.
Most of the 1/1250 WWI and WW2 ships are pre-painted. Navis/Neptune made high quality metal ships which are collector’s items. If the ship models from Leviathans have similar qualities, I am sure this game will attract a lot of buyers who simply want the models rather than the game itself. Price is not a major issue as long as the quality is good. Please ignore those teens who cried out for unpainted cheap plastics. Rackham has already proven that pre-painted minis can be successful with AT-43.
The ships looks good – if they come unpainted I think I will be painting my British ships red (with shading), French – blue, German – dark grey and so on.
If painted I hope they go for the quality end of the market.
Roll on 2010 now.
I for one certainly hope that they do not go the painted route.
I would much rather paint these on my own, especially considering the large size of these figures. That assumes, of course, that they are sculpted in a sufficiently detailed manner. It is difficult to really see the details on that clear example above. Hopefully we will be seeing more detailed examples in the near future that really show off these wonderful pieces.
As always, really excited about this game. Can’t get enough info fast enough.
Great looking game and fantastic models! Please Please Please make them available unpainted
I can’t wait for this game to be released. Any designs pics for the smaller vessels i.e. Frigates, torpedo boats??
Cheers
Neil
Can anyone tell me what factions there will be ?
Since this is about Europe and playing 1910 I assume there will be a Habsburg faction as well, as the Austro-Hungarian Empire was one of the most powerful European nations at the time ?
As for the miniature…the one on the Con pictures looks great and I do hope the company will not go for prepainted. Be it resin or metal, I do not care, but pre painted miniatures are a no go for me.
British ships should have black hulls, white uppers (superstructure) black funnels and brass details. – that would just cement the whole Victoriana feel. I’d like to see the US as the ‘Great White Fleet’, too.
Brilliant stuff. Who’s going to be the Aussie distributor? I feel the need to carry this range in my store!
No worries…the “Great White Fleet” is in there.
As for Aussie distributor, that’s not part of the business so I can’t answer that question. But once we get closer to the release I’m sure will be shouting where you can order it.
Thanks for all the great comments!
pre-painted please
don’t know how to paint stuff, paying someone to do it costs a ton of money, I have done it.
Hit the sky flying; game out of the box, and ready to go. Have the models in the boxed game painted.