This is it. Tomorrow is the launch of the Kickstarter. We actually made it everyone. What a long journey it has been. I will cover one last subject in this blog, but I also want to hand over a section to Randall BIlls, the original Line Developer to share some of his thoughts as we hover our hands over the Launch button.

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I am…not surprisingly, pretty emotional now. Leviathans was my first all-original game design. What’s more, it’s a giant love letter–in its way–to BattleTech, which has been in my life for over thirty-five years now. So of course I very much want to see it back on tables.

But that’s only one part. The smallest part. For ten years now, ever since we first launched, every convention, every year, at least one person–and oft-times several–comes up, taps me on the shoulder, and asks politely when Leviathans will be back. And we have a wonderful conversation about our shared passion for this gaming and universe–and gaming and geekdom in general. And then we shake hands and they walk away, having assured me that they will be standing on the dock when the monsters in the sky rise again.

To be a part of such a wonderful, dedicated community. To have had those stories told. To have seen the look of joy in your eyes, reciprocated in my own…that is the emotion. That is the power of what you have helped build. That arm in arm, together, we get to see them fly once more.

I…cannot possibly thank you enough for all of those years of support. For lending your passion when the tanks were dry. And for standing here on that dock, just as we promised each other, all through the years…

Thank you.

Sky Admiral Randall Bills

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Backward compatibility

As you have hopefully seen, not a whole lot has changed from the original game. As such most of the old material for the game still will work. The old miniatures will still all be to scale with the new ones. The bases, while not having the new ship tokens, still fit the hexes. Even the ship cards still have almost all the information needed. All that is really missing there is the Anti-Air value. 

So to be clear, all the old material will be fully valid to play with the new material, just with a couple missing bells and whistles.

We will also make available online Ship Cards for the original ships after the Kickstarter.

I hope this clears up any confusion on this subject but if there still is, please feel free to ask. We don’t want to make anyone feel like their old material doesn’t matter anymore, and will try our best to make that a reality.

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Alright, this will be the last blog post for a bit. All updates from here until the end of the campaign will be done through the Kickstarter. After that will depend on reception and where people feel is best for information.

Let’s do this Captains, it’s time to once more take our fleets into the sky.

So welcome aboard Captains, and good luck.

Lord Admiral Bryn Bills

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HML Leviathan

So very little needs to be said of this ship. A massive vessel of war so powerful, its name and the style of machine are one and the same. Holding the largest guns in Europe, with thick armor on its side and a strong engine pushing it forward, there is truly no weakness nor equal found. This leader of the British navy, the admirals may be more nervous to lose such an iconic ship if not for her invulnerability in battle. But you are certainly free to give it your best chance.

And then there were two.

Campaign

The Campaign will be split between standard rules found in the core rulebook and Campaign boxes.

In the rulebook rules will be provided to connect your engagements together with a point system and alternative mission objectives to be able to tell your own story in the world of Leviathans. This system will be the simpler system overall.

The second version of campaign will be found in the Campaign Boxes (provided they are unlocked through stretch goals).

These boxes will provide maps, rules and additional materials to provide a complete campaign experience. These boxes will cover major engagements from the Great War. The example provided will cover the French, German and Italian battle over the Swiss Alps. I should note that while they are given a theme for the standard in-universe factions in that area, any factions can be used while playing.

We are not going to share too much about the exact gameplay of these right now but more will be shared later.

Only one more blog post to go before the big day, were close now.

Bryn Bills

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Anastasia

Russian air fleet production is currently the slowest in the world, with this large army centrict nation struggling to build the infrastructure needed. However, because of their expert crews they have managed to stay in the air race, and in many cases surpass those around them. The most impressive example of this is the famous “ship doctors” of the Anastasia. 

The crew of the Anastasia is able to pull up alongside friendly ships, board them, and repair important systems in a hurry. The exact methods for how they do this is a state secret but several engagements have had their outcomes changed when the Anastasia repaired a main gun on a Battleship or got the engines going again on a cruiser. While Russia has started to train more crews like them, none have matched the speed and ability of the Ship Doctors.

Rule Books

There will be two separate rules books from the Kickstarter so I wanted to make clear what they are and their relation to each other.

The two rule books are the Starter Box Rules and the Hardcover Rulebook.

The Starter Box Rules will contain the full rules for how to play the game. In standard play for Leviathans there will be no rules that are not included in this rulebook. This does include planes, torpedoes and setup options. 

The Hardcover Rulebook will have all those rules, but will also include the following:

• More ways to play the game, including campaign rules
• Faction guides
• Faction specific abilities 
• Universe lore

The Hardcover is for those that want more lore and expanded play options, but if those things do not interest you, there is no need to pick up this book.

Hopefully that makes the distinction clear.

Bryn Bills

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Lave

It is common knowledge that the Italains have invested more than any other nation into the torpedo boat design. But the French, with a longer time designing Leviathans, created the pinnacle of torpedo boats before most Italian ships were created. The Lave’s ability to turn nearly on a dime while firing two torpedoes along its side give it maximum control over any situation.

The Lave will always stay near the back of the fight, having little firepower or armor. But those very things make it easy to repair, and even after taking a beating it can quickly get back out into the field. 

And we are back. The sky is ever closer.

This is part two on changes to Leviathans, following yesterday’s. We will talk about all the main changes to the rules of Leviathans, as well as things added to the game.

Set Up

The largest changes to the game are found in the set up section of the game. The original game only had you place your ships on the board and then the game begins. Now, if that’s still how you want to play the game you are of course free to do so. However, for more varied options and further replayability we have added more to this process.

There will be objectives the players can pick from that will impact how the game is played. From control points to blockade runs, these objectives will encourage different types of play. Of course simple destroy objectives will also be in the mix.

Terrain is being added into the game from the start. Different maps will have different mountain formations to choose from, with large mountains or valleys creating a different feel. Clouds will also be placed on the board, chosen from clouds cards at the start of the game.

There are a couple other things under the banner of setup but this covers most of it.

Torpedoes

Torpedoes have seen a decent change from the original game. Instead of laying down two torpedo tokens on the map, a single token is placed out. The token will then show on it which hexes are affected by its placement, as shown below.

This system has greatly affected the speed of the torpedo phase, making games go faster, while keeping the great feel of the torpedoes.

Admiral Cards

These are ability cards that can be purchased at the start of a game and give yet another way to mix up your play experience. Only one of these may be added to your fleet but they can range from adding an extra die to your attack all the way to letting you use destroyed crew slots.

Planes

The newest thing added to Leviathans, planes are units that can also be purchased with points and added to your fleet. They will come as tokens that can move around the board and fire, just like Leviathans. However, they are very much second fiddle to the much more powerful ships. They can support what your fleet is doing but won’t change the course of the battle on their own.

That wraps up the changes section of these Posts. See you tomorrow Captains.

Bryn Bills

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RM Cassiopeia

During the Ottoman-Italian war, the Ottoman empire in desperation bought an old British cruiser and sent it to attack southern Italy, which they hoped would force the Italins to pull their sky fleet out of the action and give them time to regroup. However, Italy did no such thing, instead they sent a single destroyer to stop the attack. 

Outfitted with the most powerful engines in the world, the RM Cassiopeia took off at lightning speed and was able to catch the cruiser before it was able to reach the Italian coast. It then used an array of short range guns that would make some Battleships jealous, tearing into the cruiser and quickly sending into Mare Nostrum. Few smart admirals would pick any other ship besides the Cassiopeia as the peak of Destroyer capability.

Engines are starting to power on.

Here is the preview page where you can follow it and be notified when it launches.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cgl/leviathans-the-great-war

This blog’s topic will be covered between today and tomorrow. We will be going over all the main changes that have been made between the original release and this one. Today we will go over the quality of life changes and additions, while tomorrow will be on rule changes. For both of these many things have been covered in the past but this should put everything in one (or two) places for easy reference.

Ship Reference Tokens

As many Ship Cards will use the same miniature, the token above will allow you to at a glance know which ship is which, as well as some basic information on it. This will allow for much easier use of the same miniature. It also allows larger games to go a lot smoother.

Back of ship Card

The back of the ship card, instead of having just a pretty orthographic on the back, will now have useful information. In the middle is the firing arcs for the given ship, one of the harder things to learn when getting into the game. In addition any special rules for the ship will be at the bottom of the card. And of course we still have the orthographic.

Points

In order to make the game easier to have competitive matches with, a point system has been added to the game. As you can see from the ship card however, points will not be printed onto the card. As was suggested, the points will be found in the rulebook and online. The points section on the card is where you can insert the points for reference.

Part two of changes tomorrow. See you then

Bryn Bills

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SML Frederick the Great

The pride and glory of the German fleet, the SML Frederick the Great is a true beast of a Battleship. Covered in armor bow to stern, the Battleship is nearly unkillable. Then adding the many large caliber guns going all around the sides of the ship, the SML Fredrick the Great operates more as a moving fortress then as a more traditional Flag ship. 

To make sure it does not fall to enemy torpedo fire, the SML Wolve is almost always deployed with the Frederick. For obvious reasons this lumbering ship does not rapidly advance or chance down enemies. Instead, it slowly moves forward, taking the positions it wants through sheer weight, then allowing its support ships to work under its cover fire.

I can almost hear the fire of the Twelve inch guns at this point.

We have talked about the Fleet Boxes and Starter Box in the past but I wanted to go over the third way to get your hands on Leviathans miniatures.

The Ship Pack

As you can see from the graphic, every ship can be purchased through the Kickstarter as a Ship Pack. This will allow you to get exactly the ships you want without needing to get three of the same Fleet Box. In addition, there will be many ships only available as Ship Packs, especially as the Kickstarter progresses.

There will be three different Ship Packs: a Destroyer Ship Pack, Cruiser Ship Pack and a Battleship Ship Pack. The Cruiser Ship Pack will include both the standard cruiser as well as the Battle Cruiser when it is unlocked. The three Packs will have slightly different pricing 

Which ships go into retail will then depend on overall demand.

With that those are all the ways you can add ships to your fleet. 

Talk to you in the next briefing Captains.

Bryn Bills

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Pontbriand

The pinnacle of French naval ship design, the Pontbriand is considered by many within and without France to be the most powerful vessel of its class in the world. Originally created as a blockade runner, Pontbriand’s battle with the German Cruiser SML Hannover quickly changed things. Leaving the Hannover limping home after just two rounds of fire, the Pontbriand was moved to a front line ship overnight.

The ship follows a very simple but powerful pattern of attack. Waiting out of range until the right moment, she then dives in and quickly pulls up alongside her opponent and fires a devastating array of small guns before pulling away again, using her powerful engines to get behind her prey and rip up their engines. 

The Pontbriand only falters when a ship can survive its early attacks and return fire, as her guns and engines are only an option with reduced armor along the side.

One week Captains! 

Next Tuesday is the launch of the Kickstarter. It’s crazy to finally be here but the time has arrived. Once again, thank you all so much for your patience on this literally decade long journey to get this game we all love back out there and into all of our hands.

From here to the start of the Kickstarter I will post a blog everyday, showing off things from the Kickstarter and talking about what to expect.

Before showing anything, I just want to make sure everyone is aware that the Kickstarter will launch August 2nd at 10am PDT. 

Alright, onto pretty.

The first thing I want to share this week is that we will have colored render images of different ships for the Kickstarter.

These will show off the paint schemes of the different factions in the game. These will do two different things. First, they look great and they make the whole Kickstarter page look amazing. Second, a lot of the box renders have gray miniatures as they are just mock ups. We want to make sure everyone knows that these will be pre-painted and we also want people to see what they will look like.

As the Kickstarter goes we will continue to show off more of these guys through updates, especially as new ships are unlocked.

I’ve got a lot to show over the next week so that’s it for now.

See you tomorrow Captains,

Bryn Bills

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HML Cairo

The incredible power of Great Britain is seen in its control of one quarter of all land on earth. But what is Great Britain’s weakness? The fact that they control one quarter of the world. The shipyards of Britain were well aware of this when they began work on the modern British Leviathan. The goal of the British navy was to be able to finish a fight before it started, as they could not afford to have their ships needing to be put in for repairs when they are the only ones guarding a colony or a sea lane.

The solution to this was the HML Cairo. The guns were made and the crew trained in order to have the best long range accuracy in the world. From more detailed turning to better stabilization, the Cairo could force an advancing ship off before it could ever land a shot. However, this does come at a price. For if a ship closes, those very things put in place to make their range so impressive work against the Cairo up close. But so far the Cairo has made sure that doesn’t happen. Only time will tell if it can keep that up.

Another fine week captains.

This post will be a quick update of everything that has happened over the last couple weeks and what to look forward to in the last 2 weeks before the Kickstarter. We are getting crazy close to the launch which is incredibly exciting. Can’t wait to see this kick off.

The main thing I want to talk about is that this Saturday at 10am PST there will be an AMA with Catalyst about the Kickstarter and all things Leviathans so please come and bring your questions. We will go over things like Leviathan’s history, miniature production, and the real question you want to ask: what’s in the Kickstarter?

Here’s the link to it:

See you there.

In other news we have had a lot of progress on the last things needed for the Kickstarter. The video is finished, and man are we happy with it. I’m very biased but I think it’s a pretty amazing Kickstarter video.

We have the last art for the Kickstarter coming in the next couple days. Some truly great pieces showing off Leviathans at their finest. We will show off some of this art at the AMA as well, so another thing to look forward to there.

Really the last thing being worked on are the final graphics needed to fill in the front page of the Kickstarter and those are flooding in as I type this up.

Shorter today but before I’ll go and leave you with this new flag for a new group within the world of Leviathans.

There will be a final blog post next week before the Kickstarter. From there most updates will go through the Kickstarter, especially while it’s running.

Have a great week and talk to you all soon.

Bryn Bills

Here we are everyone, the Kickstarter has a date! Below is all the details for the Kickstarter. See you there.

Discord: https://discord.gg/AmueEJgGGv

As mentioned last time, this week I will lay out for you the contents of a Faction Box, looking at the ship cards and models that will be available in a box. The exact contents may still change but this should provide a clear idea of what you will get from a box.

For this dive we will be looking at the German Faction Box, one of the factions not present during the initial run of Leviathans.

Miniatures

The German box will have these three ships as miniatures. There will be 1 battleship, 1 cruiser and 2 destroyers, the same as the original Faction Boxes. Each ship will come with a base and stand, as well as tokens to distinguish between the different ships when using the same miniature, like when using both the destroyers. These 4 ships will give you a complete Leviathans experience.

Ship Cards

First thing to note is that we are making some changes to the look so I’m just using the playtest files for now. They will of course look much prettier at the Kickstarter.

The German destroyers cover a wide range of strategies from firepower to coordination. However, the real standout ship of this group is the Wolve. As discussed in a previous article, this ship is built with the sole purpose of protecting larger ships at the expense of any real offensive power.

The German cruisers are great examples of their love of armor above speed. The Hannover is a very simple German workhorse, where as the Lubeck brings some coordinated fire options with its Bracketing crew, similar to the Falke.

The SML Wilhelm has exactly one purpose, and that is to take the entire firepower of an enemy fleet without dropping out of the sky. Almost unable to turn without its steering gear on either side, this ship as truly a flying brick.

There is one last Battleship but I will save that to share for later. Got to keep some things for the Kickstarter after all.

That’s it for this week. Next week will be the French fleet.

See you all then

Bryn Bills