Playtesting German Ship Cards: German vs. British

As mentioned in previous blog posts (here and here), I’m currently developing/playtesting the German faction. Specifically the 6 German Ship Cards that’ll appear in the faction box set.

I’ve got the usual large playtesting apparatus banging on them and Bryan and I took them for a jaunt over the weekend…a pile of fun.

These photos are when the game was two turns from the end; three ships already down and the rest fairly damaged.

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Play Leviathans at Steamcon III

I had an absolute blast last year at SteamCon II and I’m looking forward to running a pile of Leviathans games at SteamCon III next weekend. I’ll be in the Laurel Room Friday and Saturday, making noise, tossing dice and having a great time with who ever shows up.

If you’re in the area, stop on by and grab your first game, or a more expanded game if you’ve already tried the QSR.

Hope to see you there!

Randall

German Ship Cards…A First Look

So just got in the first layout sample of the German Ship Cards from Matt and I’m immediately sharing.

Below is the SMS Weisbaden…a German Light Cruiser.

Right out of the gate, no, that’s not the correct ship art…for those paying attention that’s the British D-class…the German art is a ways away, but I wanted nice Ship Cards for playtesting.

Second, you’ll note that all the gun batteries use CM; that’s what was used by the Germans at that time. From a blog post ages ago, I mentioned that I’d generated a mega spreadsheet where I’d taken all the real world gun sizes and wedded them with the game mechanics.

In that spreadsheet, the British use “IN”, the French, Italians and Russians “mm”, the Germans, Japanese and Austro-Hungarians use “cm” and the wacky Americans use both “pdr” for the smallest guns and then “IN”.

Now I’m pretty sure some of those gun battery Slots need Bracketing Fire icons on them (will need to check the spreadsheet…I may have not provided the details correctly to Matt).

Finally, you’ll note a new type of Crew Slot…the ship mounts two Screening Crew Slots, which provide some additional cool rules for what can be done with Bracketing Fire…provided it survives playtesting, of course.

See ya next duty shift!

Randall

Game Development Continued…: Faction Game Play Aesthetics

I just passed along the Ship Quirks rules for playtesting (I’ll dive more into that in the future) and I’m currently generating the Italian vessels stats to go with the first wave of Germans so I can send those out for playtesting.

Just as we’ve spent a lot of time creating a visual distinction for each of the factions (if you’ve not read it, check out this blog post that delves into that in-depth), game play itself needs to provide a flavor.

Now, similar to the discussion in that previous blog post where I mention that due to the nature of how we established the universe the visual differences often are subtle, the same applies in-game. The distinctions between each faction are not nearly as apparent as many other table-top miniatures games…but they are there and do provide (and enhance) specific styles of play.

The following are my current concepts for the specific flavors of the first four factions. Note that as with many aspects of the game, these are not locked in stone by any stretch. Based upon the community’s interaction specifically with the Germans and Italians (thus giving us a gut check on 4 of the 8 factions at that point), I can then decide if my concepts for the Russians, Japanese, Auto-Hungarians and Americans will work, or needs a major shake-up.

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Fun With Dice

As promised, now that I’ve got final dice in hand, sharing photos (because as we all know, “photos or it didn’t happen”).

So as reported in my public catharsis blog, the custom D12 Leviathans dice were one of the issues that blew up production before Gen Con. During that week before the convention, however, we still thought we’d get a good chunk of Core Box Sets to sell there, just minus the dice. As such we contacted our good friends at Iron Wind Metals that produced several thousand dice in just days, which you can see in the first photo.

The colors weren’t exactly right and of course the un-colored numbers made them hard to read…but it was a miracle to have the dice at Gen Con and ultimately we put them to superb use with all the great games we ran…thanks to Mike Noe and his whole team for making that happen!

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Pax Wrap-Up

Catalyst Game Labs snuck into Pax 2011, with a very small footprint to get the lay of the land as we’ve never attended before. It’s been almost two weeks since Pax and I’m still trying to assimilate the experience.

I’ve been to a pile of big conventions, from Gen Con to DragonCon and even to fabled Essen Spiel that has a geek body count that I believe is pretty much the largest on the planet (from between 130k to 150k). While I know San Diego ComicCon is also massive, I’ve never been there (I know, I know…hope to rectify that next year), so I don’t have that frame of reference.

Even so, I’ve been to conventions with far more people than Pax (Essen) and I’ve been to conventions where the main exhibit hall is far larger than Pax (Gen Con), but I’ve never experienced the sheer sensory overload of that large of a convention dedicated to nothing but computer games (with other style games there, but tucked into various nooks, corners and crannies).

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Leviathans’ Gen Con Experience: Part 5

So while we didn’t have it on-sale, we did have a few precious (hard not to fall into a Gollum-rasp right there) Core Box Sets and Fleet Box Sets to show off. Below is a series of photos of the “display” we put together in the retail section of the Catalyst Game Labs booth to show off all that Leviathans will have to offer once it’s available.

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Leviathans At Pax Prime

I realize this is a pretty late announcement, but I’ll be running Leviathans demos at Pax Prime tomorrow and Saturday in room 214, under the Games & Gizmos banner (thanks to Tim for helping us make this happen!).

Catalyst Game Labs has never attended Pax before, so this was a pretty last minute set-up to get a few tables to run some demos and to have a chance to walk the show and really get a feel for whether it’s a good fit for Catalyst Game Labs. If it is, we can then look at having a full presence next year.

But for now, stop on by to learn how to play the game, see the miniatures in person, or just ask me any question you’d like…I’ll try and have an answer!

Hope to see you there!

Randall

Leviathans’ Gen Con Experience: Part 4

I know you’ll likely laugh at the obviousness of it all…but walking into a massive hall dedicated to nothing but endless tables and games…nirvana to a geek’s soul.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the Exhibit Hall as well…17 years I’ve been going and every year it’s great to see whose doing what, what cool things are being shown off and so on. For example, this year Mayfair had a very large banner presence throughout the convention center, and there were more steampunk costume booths then you could shake your goggles at (which I’m just fine with, of course).

But there’s something about hundreds of tables that at a peak will have thousands of gamers of all stripes playing a hundred different games from miniatures to boardgames to card games and more…just creates a high of energy I’m still riding (which is good, because if you didn’t leave Gen Con with that energy we’d all likely fall into comas for a few weeks).

Here’s several photos of all the Leviathans action going on in the Miniatures Hall.

First we’ve got two shots of rows of the Shakedown Cruise (which is the Lieutenant’s Manual Quick-Start Rules).

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Leviathans’ Gen Con Experience: Part 3

As I mentioned in the first blog about Leviathans at Gen Con, the in-booth demos were just…well…one of the most insane experiences I’ve seen for almost any in-booth demos since my first years at FASA fifteen years ago.

The proverbial “a picture is worth a thousand words” applies very well in this case…so let’s jump in.

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