I’ve been back from my trip a week and a half now and I’m still digging out…it was a great trip, but very long and of course, gonna be a while until I’m fully “dug out”.

In the mean time, continuing the CC Releasing of the Core Box Set materials…and we’ve reached the big boy…the Commander’s Manual!.

Grab the PDF file at here (you can also find it on the downloads page).

This month I’ll get to the final German ship illustrations, start to reveal the Italian ship illustration developments and hopefully some new fiction!

See ya next duty shift!

Randall

If you look at any of the French or Italian Recognition Cards, you’ll note the background sky for each ship has the same tone/coloring. This is particularly apparent when you take a look at the poster. Almost as if they’re all flying in the same sky “shot”.

This, of course, was done on purpose. Both to instantly provide a visual awareness of which ship is with which faction (even beyond the ships themselves), and ultimately to simply provide a cool look that sets the vibe for a given faction.

The Germans were no different…needed a new coloring/tone for the background, which J. embraced very quickly.

Here’s a screen shot of one of the German ships about 75% done.

Very static looking at this point, and not a lot of fine details…but those will come. And of course we’re currently having an internal discussion whether the coloring on the ship needs to be a little more unique to set the Germans off from the French and the British…

See ya next duty shift!

Randall

First up, a new open beta test.

Catalyst Game Labs is developing the Captain’s Box; a stand-alone expansion to the Leviathans Core Box that will include a slew of enhanced scenario rules, from weather and wind to elevation, alternate movement and combat options, and more. Those rules have been extensively play tested to date.

However, the two rules in this PDF have come up for potential inclusion in the Captain’s Box. Instead of simply play testing them internally, however, we want to run these externally as well. So here ya go…put together some games, run with it, and let us know. Visit the forums at www.monstersinthesky.com. A “Captain’s Manual Excerpt Playtest” thread has been created and will be active for a few weeks. Post your feedback, comments and especially your suggestions for tweaks to the rules that you feel will improve them.

You can also find that PDF on the downloads page as well.

Additionally, we’re putting out a call for your scenarios! We’re working on several new PDFs to release in the coming months, and one of them will be a collection of scenarios and we’d love to get the community involved!

If you’re interested, click here and you’ll find an rtf containing the third scenario from the Commander’s Manual. Any scenarios you wish to submit MUST follow this template; simply take the rtf file and overwrite the pre-existing text with your new scenario. If you wish to include anything not in this scenario (for example perhaps the rules from the Captain’s Manual Excerpt Open Beta Test), that’s just fine and we love to see that…simply add it in, following the example of the other rules from the scenario template.

All scenarios must be received by April 15th; send them to randall@catalystgamelabs.com. Once they are received, Catalyst Game Labs will review the scenarios and any we wish to use we’ll contact the author to pay him a nominal fee, at which point the scenarios are 100% Catalyst-owned.

If anyone has any questions, feel free to post them here.

Good luck…and see ya next duty shift!

Randall

Grab the zip file here (you can also find it on the downloads page).

See ya next duty shift!

Randall

In the last blog, if you remember, J. had provided 4 different potential “directions” we could take…here’s the art direction I gave him based on those illustrations.

>>>>

Hey J.

So I’ve gone round and round in my head on this, and I’m settling on the #1 as the 95% German battleship.

The reason I say 95% is I’d like a few tweaks.1. The ducted fan portions of the ship need to be tweaked slightly. First, use the off center and the additional ducted assembly on the hull as shown in B. Then, elongate the ducted fans smewhat and ensure that they better match the attached illo; i.e. specifically the three “segments” of the pipes, with the first two with the largish round vents…on the smaller ships you’re likely to only have one ducted fan section, so it’s important that the “three segment with two segments have two largish vents” is clear and distinct as “the German” ducted fan look.

2. Minor thing, but my Lev posse pointed out that having a crows nest on the back mast, right in the smoke, just wouldn’t work.

3. Please find attached the Baden battleship. I’d like to try and mirror this ship, which has four large guns mounted in each Location. But they’re not the “biggest” guns, like the British. So my thinking is that on A, the rear gun appears slightly smaller than the two front…drop the two front guns to a single gun and make it slightly smaller.

Then, the key will be to create a turret on either side that’s close to that size. If you look at the attached illo, you’ll see a decent sized turret on the right side of the ship…I’d like to mirror that…note that I realize that due to the smoke stacks and basic size of the ship, the turret as shown in the attached illo may simply be the largest size we can get away with…if so, that’ll be close enough to the game stats (as I’ve mentioned, all we need to be is “close”, not exact).

I think we those tweaks, we’ll be good to go.

Note that I believe the “top part” of C could be used almost exactly as is on a Light Cruiser; i.e. the SMS Wiesbaden, though we’d drop the two turrets in the back to one and then create 3 turrets up front, one bigger and two smaller. Just wanted to point out that you’re already well on your way towards starting to design the other ships.

Let me know if you’ve any questions…if not, look forward to seeing hopefully a final of the new battleship.

Thanks!

>>>>

Based upon that feedback, he provided the following.

So that looked fantastic, but I have to admit, sheepishly, that I spent a day or so reviewing them and wondering what was bugging me that didn’t seem exactly right…and then it hit me…the size!

So I asked him to re-size the as they should appear to each other; i.e. left retains the size for looking at the details, the right showing their ‘real’ size in comparison to each other..

So then it was time to work up the orthographics. One of the fascinating aspects of working in this style is that you often are surprised by what the top of the ship will look like and in this case, I was. Not necessarily in a bad way…I just had something a little different in my head based on my pre-conception of what the side was like.

Ultimately, of course, I agreed with all of J.’s instincts here and I’m very happy with how the German ships turned out.

Next up, moving into colorizing!

See ya next duty shift!

Randall

Next week I’ve got a great German Art Development blog post ready to start revealing the ultimate direction those ships will go…and we also might be making an open solicitation for scenarios from you guys, for inclusion in a cool future PDF…so stay tuned.

In the mean time, as with the Gazetteer we released at the end of the year, we’re continuing to embrace the Creative Commons nature of Leviathans by releasing printable PDFs of every British Ship Card and Recognition Card found in the Core Box and British Fleet Box.

Grab the zip file here (you can also find it on the downloads page).

It will release the French ships in the same fashion in the very near future.

See ya next duty shift!

Randall

For those who’ve been following me for a while, you’re well aware of this, but for some, this may be new. Originally the Captain’s Manual of “Enhanced Scenario” rules was simply going to be in the Core Box Set. Unfortunately, we crammed way, way too much stuff into the box as it is and we had to cut that completely, leaving us the chance to publish the Captain’s Box down the line.

Now a lot of the material was already done and playtested for some time. In fact, I’ve got a rough PDF of a first layout before the “cut” decision was made that contains the following rules (I didn’t think I’d covered this fully before…if I have, apologies…):Initiative (Expanded)
Fog of War Initiative
Steering Rolls
Elevation
Ramming (Expanded)
Rolling Maps
Stacking (Expanded)
Advanced Firing Arcs
Minimum Range
Breaking The Keel Roll (Expanded)
Clouds
Range (Expanded)
Rate of Fire
Visibility
Cargo Ships
Commanders
Crew Skill Ratings
Faction Abilities
Mountains
Wind

As most of you know by now, I’ll never leave anything along if I still have time to kick it and make it even cooler. As such, between the time the decision was made to cut the Captain’s Manual for a future release, and last fall, four additional rules had been added; some ideas from playtesters, one from myself and one from a player at a convention:

Breaking The Keel and SI
Critical Gun Battery Failure
Gun Battery Shockwave
Recoil

Right now there are two last rules that I like enough to fully develop, get playtested in the next few weeks and wrap up the whole box and get it ready hopefully for print for summer convention seasons.

The first is Repairs & SI; basically making repairs harder and easier based upon high or low SI numbers as a way to provide some great flavor, while also giving some benefits to the lower SI’d ships.

The last is Critical Hits. This is a pretty big one. Originally I had no intention of including them period, as it simply adds in a level of complexity that I felt wasn’t needed. And I certainly would never change my mind to include it in the Core Box Set. However, after kicking this around many times with numerous playtest groups, I’ve changed my mind and feel it can be a very cool addition to these optional rules that a lot of player groups may want to embrace. Right now it’s just a matter of making them work within the constraints of the current Ship Cards/rules system.

See ya next duty shift!

Randall

It was logical for me to try J. Lonnee, since he’d done a fantastic job on the orthographics for the British and French based upon Doug’s work. His first concept sketch for a German ship came in and well…man, made me very, very nervous…

While that’s a wonderfully cool looking ship…it’s not a Leviathans ship. I responded back with the following comments (between the previous blogs and the releases Core Box Set, the images are available for those that want to carefully follow along with what “attached” images I sent the artists):

>>>>

As I mentioned previously, we have a starting point for what the German’s look like. Attached is the illustration for the German battleship. The goal here is to maintain the over-all aesthetics, while introducing your own vision for the other ships. The ducted fans, look of the stacks (though not the number), and the look of the side-mounted tanks for the electroid must all stay the same.

The best example I can give is what we’ve done to date. Look at all the attached French/British ships:

You’ll notice that the fins in in the back swtich up here and there, as due the number of stacks and of course number and placement of turrets.

However, the over-all aesthetic of the hulls, along with the look of the ducts, the look of the stacks (note how each British/French ship may change the number of stacks, but they all have a unique look) and the look of the placement of the electroic tanks all remains identical.

That’s what we need to retain. The illustration you generated will be a wonderful third generation leviathans; i.e. I could absolutely see this once the Great War starts.

But for now we need to take the already established German Battleship and extrapolate that look into a series of other ships that all appear to have come out of the same general mold.

Hopefully that makes sense?

>>>>

Based upon that feedback, I receive the following revised illustration (was still a little nervous, but could start to see a glimmer in there):

Based upon the above image, which I receive in October, I provided a very thorough list of notes:

>>>>

So I’ve just spent the last 30 minutes going over your ship and looking at everything we’ve got, and here’s my comments for some additional tweaks we need to make.

First, I’m feeling like this is a Light Cruiser. For example, attached find all of the Ship Cards we’ve generated to date. Now as stated several times, we don’t match up illustrations exactly to Ship Cards. Instead, we ‘come close’ and then try and simply get the feel of the ship. Looking at what you’ve got here, I’m feeling the Kolberg-class Light Cruiser, specifically the SMS Wiesbaden. Especially if you drop one of the four bottom gun batteries off, then it will really fit well. Thoughts?

Second, I mentioned this before, but there are some key things that need to remain the exact same (or very close) throughout all of the ships and we’re still missing that slightly.

I believe I sent you a core box, so if you open up the poster and review it as you read the email, you’ll see how consistently these elements are carried across each faction’s ships.

I’m once again attaching the two illustrations we have of the Germans so far. You’ll actually note that the B&W and the sepia toned have different aft configuration, with the fin going over the back engines in the B&W version. We’ll just say this is an older ship and go with the sepia/your sketch as I feel it separates it more from the other ships. (Just bringing that up in case you noticed that.)

Now, some of the specific differences in your sketch.

1. The ducted fan casing at the back has three marks towards the back, where as the two sketches below have two circular marks…please follow that mark.

2. The location along the side in the center where the eteroid is carried is significantly different on your sketch then in either of the German sketches. Again, if you look at the poster, while there are slight differences, they are very slight, where as your take goes too far, IMO. Please pull that back to match these sketches.

3. The other eteroid tanks I don’t mind them being slightly different, but in the sketches below they look like compressed spheres set within a hollowed out rectangle, where as you don’t get the same vibe on your sketch…again, you don’t have to be identical, but need to mimic that same feel.

4. I’ve no problem with the different tweaks you’ve done on the deck…very nice there.

5. You’ve actually got different looking side guns along the bottom then what’s in the sketches below…I think I’m okay going with your version…but that means all future German ships should follow that same basic vibe.

6. The back mast is way too thick, especially along the bottom. Please trim that up significantly so better match the Sepia version.

7. You know, I absolutely love your smoke stakes. We’re officially going to label the smoke stakes below as the “old” version of the stacks and these stakes should be the new German look; i.e. this means ALL German ships should have that look.

8. Finally, there still is a ‘newer’ vibe to the illustration for me and I believe it has to do with the bow…you’ve got a “folded” metal line around the bow that tapers back…somehow that’s giving me that newer vibe I’m not liking…please refer to the sketches below and try and emulate that just a touch more.

Okay, I think that’s my comments. Again, absolutely love the direction you’re taking this and can’t wait to see the next iteration. If you’ve any questions on anything found below, let me know…

>>>>

In place of receiving another single iteration, J. (and rightly so) decided to simply send me a “mash up” set of illustrations; taking my comments above and generating a variety of different takes on all of the elements that make a Leviathans‘s ship…well…Leviathans. This would allow me to pick and choose and more easily and quickly settle in a final direction.

As soon as I saw this illustration, all my fears instantly disapated. Not only did I realize that J. was incredibly easy to work with and took well to my endless prodding, but the style and look of what we were reaching absolutely screamed Leviathans in all the important style/aesthetics Doug and I established.

Feel free to see if you can figure what we ultimately took from each ship to form the final Germans as you wait for the next installment.

See ya next duty shift!

Randall

Both Bryn and I’s own playtesting, as well as some thorough playtest reports from other groups, have brought us to a new stage concerning the current status of the German and Italian fleets.

The Germans vs. the British and French work great.

The Italians vs. the British and French work great.

And even the Germans vs. Italians on 2 maps works very well.

The problem is when you put the Germans vs. Italians on 4 or more maps…things start to break down at that point.The problem is multi-faceted.

1. Germans are slow…on average the slowest fleet.

2. The Italians have more torpedoes than any other fleet.

3. The Italians also have access to different submunitions, including an extended range version (2DRed/24 hexes).

4. The Italians have torpedoes mounted on Bows and/or in Turrets and are incredibly maneuverable.

What all of that equates to is the Italians are able to easily get almost all of their torpedoes from Bows and one side Location always firing towards the Germans. And even though the Germans are heavily armored and high Breach Numbers, the sheer mass of launchers, even with the downgranded damage of the ER, means a few are going to get through for the 2 or 3 turns of that type of fire. And then it’s two or three more turns of a wash of standard torpedoes hammering into the Germans as the Italians continued to maenuver and compact down into a far corner, before the Germans finally get into range and start dropping Italian ships. But so much damage is done by that point, the Italians too often come out on top.

Bryn rightly pointed out to me that in the fiction of the Gazetteer, the Germans are said to be working on some “advanced technologies”, and yet everything to date that we’ve given the Germans is all crew related. He and I had kicked around for some time the idea of an anti-torpedo Slot (basically a type of flake for torpedoes). The German battleship even against the French can sometimes run into trouble with torpedoes if the German player isn’t careful, hence our discussions already along those lines…but with the new playtest data in hand, it looks like we’ll push forward with rules creation and playtesting.

The goal, of course, is to fix the German vs. Italians on 4 map sheets problem, while ensuring it doesn’t upset the solid game balance in all other aspects already achieved.

I’ll let you know in a few weeks if we’ve managed to grasp that brass ring.

See ya next duty shift!

Randall

Leviathans Online entered Kickstarter on December 3rd with the intention of providing the community with an opportunity to engage in the early stages of development and join in on the process of building a great experience from the ground level. We still believe that if we can get a community to rally behind an already great board game and contribute valuable ideas about the experience they want to see in a digital version, that our team can develop Leviathans Online into an experience that completely caters to the fans.

Hyper Hippo Productions and Catalyst Game Labs would like to sincerely thank you for all of your support, for backing this project and for providing integral feedback over the past two weeks on Kickstarter!

Since so many of you believed in this project and took the time to learn what we were about, we want to keep you updated on our studios progress. Please send us an e-mail to info@hyperhippo.ca so that we can add you to our mailing list.

Thanks!

Hyper Hippo Productions Team