Update #28 Moving forward!
over 2 years ago – Sat, May 21, 2022 at 04:48:10 AM

Hello all, we hope everyone is doing well out there!  We wanted to touch base regarding the pledge manager as well as show off some progress!  Let's get started!

Confirm your pledge!

We still have about 30% of our backers that have not confirmed their pledges, so if you are one of those, please do so!  If you lost your survey, or never received one, please reach out to us and we'll get you sorted out!

Pledge Manager Deadline

We still don't have a firm date as to when the pledge manager is going to close, but as of right now, we are planning to hold it open until after Gen Con so that we can try and generate more awareness about the project that the convention. So, the tentative timeframe to complete pledges is the middle of August.  At that time we will announce the shipping costs based on the current rates from Quartermaster and Spiral Galaxy.  We'll make sure everyone has plenty of notice before we lock the pledge manager so that you can make any last minute changes to your orders before we lock them.

Final Stretch Goal Achieved!

People have been asking about it, and it's official, we made enough in the pledge manager to pay for sculpted bases for all miniatures in the game!  We don't have super fancy renders for the new bases, but we have some shots of what you can expect:

Berserker Touch Up

We also had the Berserker sculpt from the World Killer expansion tweaked a bit based on some feedback during the campaign.  IT's still a bit of a WIP, but here is a preview of the changes:

New Art

We received some new gear art that I thought I'd share with you!  These are Allied gear, but we'll have some Xethan cards to show soon!

Focus on Lt Hicks

“The enemy moves with a confidence and purpose that suggests a long history of conquest. You can sense it in their posture, see it in their gestures, feel it in the very air around them.  Obliterating entire worlds is nothing new to them. The casual contempt they show our forces is galling. We are as nothing to them.  Insects to be crushed.  Resources to be consumed.  Nothing, and less than nothing.  But their unchallenged superiority has made them lazy.  They expected to find no resistance, no obstacles, no effort.  Instead, they have found us.  They turn their lazy eye upon us only reluctantly, acknowledging our presence as we would a mosquito.  An annoyance to be crushed.  But we are not crushed so easily, and their annoyance begins to shift to anger.  Who are we to challenge them?  Who are we to disrupt their plans, kill their leaders, destroy their supply lines?  We announce our presence like a dagger in the dark and shout over their corpse:  'We are AEGIS, and this is our planet!'  We will fight you with stealth, with sabotage, and with guns.  And if that fails, we will fight you with our hands. Every inch of ground you take will be paved with your blood.  Your every step will be upon the thorns we lay down.  Your every breath will be labored with the efforts of our resistance.  You came here expecting to find another trophy for your empire, but instead you have found your grave.” 

Hicks is a team leader that focuses on giving his fellow Operatives card draw and rerolls.  Each Operative has multiple techniques you can build your deck around, and one of the paths Hicks can focus on is his ability to "take advantage of a bad situation".  Several of Hicks's cards only produce effects when they are discarded during the Operative phase.  The most common reason an Operative would discard a card is to gain a reroll after failing a check, but team leaders come equipped with the Command HUD (each class of Operative has a unique gear card they can choose to start with) which allows them to discard a card after another Operative fails a check to give them a reroll.  Team leaders are very handy to have around, especially if the dice tend to hate you!  Combining the HUD with his array of cards that trigger off of being discarded allows Hicks to turn a bad situation into momentum for his team! 

 Discarding his cards isn't the only thing Hicks is good at, he's also great at letting his team draw cards so you're never out of options!

Interview over at Chris Investigates!

Lastly, I did an interview with Chris over on his YouTube channel, Chris Investigates, a German based channel that focuses on board games!  It's a pretty basic interview with information that most of you have already heard elsewhere, but Chris likes to do a little song at the end of his videos with lyrics centered around the game he's covering, so be sure to check that out, it's pretty clever and quite funny! :)

https://youtu.be/poV_ED797Pg 

That's it for now folks, stay tuned for the next update!  Until then, watch your six!

Update #27: Changing pledge levels in the Pledge Manager
over 2 years ago – Wed, Apr 27, 2022 at 04:51:11 AM

Hey everyone, just a quick update about the Pledge Manager.   There have been some questions from backers about how to change their pledge level.   There is a small link on the fist page of the survey that allows a backer to change their Pledge Level, but it's not very prominent and is easy to miss.  Please see the screenshot below showing where to click if you want to change your pledge level.  As always, let us know if you have any questions, thanks!

Update #26: Pledge Manager and Late Pledges are Live!
over 2 years ago – Mon, Apr 25, 2022 at 10:38:48 PM

Please read this update in its entirety!  There is a lot of important info here!

Surveys

Over the next day or two, backers will be receiving an email with a link to their survey on BackerKit.  First we'll be sending out a 'smoke test' to about 5% of backers to see if there are any issues or errors with the pledge manager. If that goes smoothly, the rest of the surveys will be sent out soon thereafter.  Important: if you don't receive your survey within the next 48 hours, please contact us and we will get a new one sent out!  Be sure to check your spam folder if you don't receive your survey!

Timeframe

We plan on keeping the Pledge Manager open for the next 2-3 months.  We will send out an update to announce the official closing date well in advance so backers have time to complete their pledges.  However, please fill out your surveys as quickly as possible.  Prompt completion will greatly help us determine an accurate count of add ons.  In addition, if you fail to fill out your survey before everything is locked down, we cannot guarantee we will be able to fulfill your pledge, so please be sure to fill them out as soon as possible! 

Final Stretch Goal

In addition to helping us determine final quantities for placing our order with the manufacturer,  funds raised in the Pledge Manager will allow us to unlock sculpted bases for each miniature in the game!  However, this needs to be reached relatively quickly, because we need to finalize the sculpts in order to get the STL files to the manufacturer as soon as possible so they can begin the process of getting the miniatures ready for production (the longest part of manufacturing). So, again, we can't stress how important it is to fill out your surveys as soon as you can!

Charging Cards

We will not be charging backer cards until we close the pledge manager in a couple of months.  Again, we will notify everyone of when this will occur so that you are aware you will be charged your outstanding balance (if any).

Shipping Charges

Shipping and VAT will not be charged when the pledge manager closes in 2-3 months.  Instead, we will wait as long as possible to charge shipping later this year so that we can get the most accurate rates possible. We will notify everyone well in advance of this happening, as well as let everyone know what the final shipping rates will be.  Hopefully the world settles down a bit by then and we can get better shipping rates!

$1 Backers and Early Birds

If you backed at the $1 level (or dropped your pledge to that level during the campaign) and were eligible for an Early Bird, you can still qualify for those pledge levels.  Contact us directly and we can manually add you to those pledge levels.

Filling out your Survey

Once you receive your email, simply click the link to be taken to your survey where you will need to complete a series of steps to complete your order:

Step 1: Fill out your country and state/region

Step 2: Select your language

Step 3: Prepaid Add Ons

This step just notifies you that whatever add ons you've already purchased have already been added to your order.  Just click "sounds good" to continue.

Step 4: Add On Confirmation

If you prepaid for any add ons during the KS they will be listed here.  The only add on that requires any additional action is the Operative Add On Pack (which comes in the Extinction Level Pledge).  If you will be receiving one of these you will need to select the language for the cards in the pack.

Step 5: Additional Add Ons

If you wish to add any additional Add Ons to your order, just click "add to cart" (you can order multiples of each item if you wish).  If you select the Operative Pack, you'll need to select a language.  You can also add additional pledge levels to your order if you wish.

Step 6: Confirm Address

Fill in your address information:

Step 7: Payment information and final confirmation

Check over your order to make sure it is correct, add your payment info, then click 'place my order':

And that's it!  You're all done!

Be sure to let us know if you have any questions, or if you don't receive your survey in the next 48 hours!  

Until next time, watch your six!

Update #25: Pledge Manager Incoming!
over 2 years ago – Sat, Apr 23, 2022 at 03:22:51 AM

Pledge Manager launches early next week!

Hey everyone, this is just a short update to let everyone know the pledge manager will be launching next week!  The first step is to send out what they call a "smoke test" to roughly 5% of backers just to make sure there aren't any issues.  If that goes well, we'll be sending out surveys to everyone else shortly after. We'll be posting a full update when the surveys are going out with instructions on how to fill out them out and complete your pledge.

Timeframe

As of right now, the plan is to have the pledge manager open for the next 2-3 months.  We will certainly make the closing date well known before we lock down pledges, but please don't dawdle getting your survey complete!  The information is vital for us to lock in quantities of add ons and other things, so please get them filled out as soon as you can.  When we lock pledges at the end of the 2-3 months we will be charging everyone's cards for outstanding balances (again, we will clearly indicate when this will occur).  However, we will NOT be charging shipping or VAT when your pledges are initially locked.  We are going to hold out as long as we can on that so we can get the most accurate rates possible (hopefully the world settles down a bit by then).  Once again, we will let everyone know well in advance when we plan to charge shipping so everyone is in the loop.

As mentioned above, we will have another update early next week with further instructions on filling out your surveys.  

Until next time, watch your six!

Update #24 Post KS progress!
over 2 years ago – Thu, Apr 14, 2022 at 07:29:19 PM

Hello everyone, it's been a couple of weeks since the campaign ended but we have not been idle!  While we did take some time off and get some rest, we've been back at it and getting things rolling!  We've been hard at work on finalizing details with LongPack (the manufacturer) and working on the pledge manager.   

Also, as we release new updates, we're going to continue focusing on various aspects of the game in greater detail.  See below for a detailed look at Mama Bear Moss!

Late pledges and the pledge manager

We are getting the final touches done on the pledge manager and getting things set up for late pledges. If all goes well, we should have that ready in a week or so.  We'll be posting an update with info about that after we figure out a more definitive date.  A note on the pledge manager: we aren't planning to charge shipping until just before the pledge manager closes so we can get the best rates possible.  Hopefully later this year things will be a little more stable around the world and we can give the best rates available.  

Development

Obviously we are continuing with the development and testing of the game as well as getting the final art assets complete.  Speaking of art assets, we just received two new pieces for the Specialist cards!  We posted them to our FB Group, so if you haven't seen them, be sure to head over and check them out here: 

 Earth Under Siege: Flashpoint Group 

Rules Streamlining

There has also been some discussion over on our BGG forums about rules suggestions and tweaks (mostly from the ever helpful Paulie).  If you've got ideas, suggestions, questions, or anything else, be sure to head over to our forums and post them!  We're listening and taking everything under consideration, so feel free to chime in and help shape the final version of the game!  

One rule we are currently testing is a more streamlined stealth system.  This new system would reduce the overall number of stealth checks that need to be made per game.  How it works is, Operatives only make stealth checks in two circumstances: when they gain LoS to an Enemy, and if they enter an Enemy's zone (or vice versa).  This would eliminate the need to make multiple checks each time you move in LoS of an Enemy, and it would also remove the need to make stealth checks for performing Orders in LoS of an Enemy.   If you end up playing and games on TTS, be sure to test this out and post your feedback!

Focus on Mama Bear Moss

“No, I wasn’t retired, I was just hibernating. When they invaded our planet, threatened our species,  and put my children in harms way, they woke the sleeping bear.  They say nothing is more dangerous than a cornered animal, and that’s what the Xethan have made me.  What they have made all of us.  With our backs to the wall, staring our own extinction in the face, we have become quite dangerous indeed. They dared reach their hand inside our dens seeking to draw out easy prey, but instead they drew back a stump. These Xethan will leave this planet licking their wounds in fear of us, if we let them leave at all. A bear woken from hibernation isn’t just angry, it’s also very, very hungry, and this hunger can only be sated by lots and lots of dead Xethan.”

Mama Bear Moss was a former special forces commander in the US military who feels called back to service to defend her planet, and her children, from the horrors that have invaded the planet. 

Mama Bear is a Team Leader who focuses on Ongoing effects.  Tactics cards with the Ongoing trait stay in play until the end of the round, and an Operative may only have two such effects in play at one time (if playing a third, one must be discarded). However, Mama Bear's cards have the Aura trait, which means they stay in play indefinitely, unless you play a third Ongoing card which will force one to be discarded.  In addition, each of her Aura cards has an effect that triggers when it leaves play, so careful management of which Ongoing effects to have active at any given time is not the only important factor when playing Mama Bear, you also need to think about the best time to trigger a card's leaving play effect!  

Until next time, watch your six!