TwitchCon - Free Metal Raspberries
over 8 years ago
– Wed, Oct 18, 2017 at 07:06:46 PM
This is completely random, but if anyone is at TwitchCon this weekend and would like to get a free Metal Raspberry for use in Defense Grid: The Board Game when it releases, I will be there with 200 extras I have on hand.
The Raspberry is used to keep track of Resources used to Build and Upgrade Towers in the game.
I will be giving them out during our panel at 1:30pm PST in the Hey Guys room on Friday October 20th, 2017. I will be discussing How to Stream Board Games.
Thanks and I hope to see you there!
Anthony Hanses
Box Insert for Defense Grid: The Board Game
over 8 years ago
– Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 11:38:44 PM
Here is a render of our Box Insert for Defense Grid: The Board Game!
Having played way too many board games ourselves and spent way too much money to places like Storables and Broken Token, we really wanted to provide a great experience in the box.
This insert will hold all the card and larger chipboard components along with all the tracking tokens. All the card holding slots are designed to hold the cards even in premium thickness sleeves.
The 4 Card Slots at the bottom are designed to hold each of the 4 Player Decks. The pin in the Lower Right will hold all the HP and Status tracking tokens.
In the Upper Right, you have storage for all the Single Hex, Double Hex, and Large Map Hex pieces.
Hope you like this!
Anthony Hanses & Rico Hall
BackerKit launched and Pre-Orders now available!
over 8 years ago
– Mon, Oct 02, 2017 at 08:55:32 PM
BackerKit Now Available!
We have just launched the BackerKit! Backers should be receiving the emails shortly with instructions on how to pay shipping and the option to add additional copies of the game or other add-ons as desired.
Game Changes
As mentioned in a previous update to backers, The modeled and sculpted Alien Miniatures are no longer included in the base game for new orders. Existing backers will all get these at no extra charge, including shipping. We will also cover any VAT or Customs related charges for existing backers for the Alien Miniatures for the US, Canada, EU, and Australia.
Any additional copies added onto to an order or new pre-orders will have to add-on the Alien Miniatures in order to receive them. The game does not require these to play. They are just a nice cosmetic change.
Pre-Orders
https://defense-grid-the-board-game.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
Pre-Orders are also now available! If you were not able to back the game earlier this year and would like in, please pre-order. Our plan right now is to produce just a handful of extra copies beyond what the backers ordered and what are Pre-ordered. These extra copies will be there mostly to handle any damaged or missing pieces and to demo. This may be your only chance to get Defense Grid: The Board Game.
BACKERS FIRST COMMITMENT
This is our first game, but as long time Kickstarter backers ourselves, we know the frustration when a game is made available at any online or physical retail location before Backers get their hands on it. If we do have any extra copies left we can sell, our intention is to make sure all Backers receive their copies before we start selling extras to non-backers. Some things could mess up these plans, like any unexpected issues with customs clearance, natural disasters, etc...; but we are going to do our best to get backers their copies first even if we have to pay some storage fees for warehousing extra copies for a month.
If you are an original backer at the $180 or $270 level and have not yet received your Metal Towers (about 18 of you haven't), you can contact me directly ([email protected]) to arrange shipping payment and get them sent to you. If these backers have not paid in the next week, a couple of the copies will be sent out to replace copies that were damaged by USPS during shipment.
All new Metal Tower add-on orders from the BackerKit will have payments made through BackerKit and will likely ship around the same time as the main game. As with the main game, we only plan to order a few extra sets beyond what is backed. If you want the Metal Towers set, remember that it is some assembly required and to order them now.
Thanks again and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.
Anthony Hanses and Rico Hall
Post-Kickstarter Update 4 - Game Complete & Manufacturing & Rules & Card Art
almost 9 years ago
– Fri, May 12, 2017 at 12:11:11 AM
Game Complete
Defense Grid: The Board Game is officially 100% tested and complete! We have extensively tested and balanced all Missions for all player counts. Single Player balancing work ended up being a lot more than we originally anticipated, but we were more than happy to put the work in and finalized it just over a week ago.
All that is left now is for us to finish one piece of art, any modifications to rules based on our reviews, and finish up laying out art for manufacturing. All of that should be complete within the next 2 weeks.
Manufacturing
That leads us into the manufacturing update. Panda has all the miniatures and is almost ready to start making the production molds. This should begin within the next 10 days based on current estimate.
Production molds for the miniatures are our "long pole". This means is that the date when we start the production molds will determine when we can ship the final product. We are still on track to begin shipping in early to mid-October as originally planned and do not currently anticipate this changing.
Rules
Our near final rules are out for review to everyone sent me an email from the last update. If anyone else is interested in reviewing the rules, please feel free to send me an email at [email protected]
Card Art
All of our new Card Art wrapped up late last week! We are quite pleased with the results. Below you can see an example of each of the 4 card types from the game.
Thanks again!
Anthony Hanses & Rico Hall
Post-Kickstarter Update 3 - Miniature Masters & Rules & Die-Cut & Single Player & Map Change
almost 9 years ago
– Mon, Apr 10, 2017 at 11:32:07 PM
Miniature Masters
Whoo... all of our Miniature Masters are now 100% complete and are on their way to our place near Seattle. It took a bit longer than we were hoping, but once we get them on Thursday, we will be opening our set and verifying them before sending the sealed set and all the original sculptures off to Panda to begin making the productions molds.
Once Panda has all the Miniature Masters, we will be able to get final box size and weight estimates. This will enable us to put up the BackerKit page to charge shipping and begin taking pre-orders.
In addition to all of this, our Production Molds for the Metal Tower Miniatures will be manufactured in late-May. Once complete, we will be able to quickly turn around all the Metal Towers and potentially ship those out. We are working with BackerKit and a couple of other places for options regarding charging of shipping for the Metal Towers from backers separate from the rest of the shipping charges so we can get those out to backers asap.
Rules
We are really deep into our next big rules update. Once done, before we make them public, we would love to have some more gamers review them and let us know if anything feels confusing, contradictory, or otherwise might need changes or additions.
If you are interested in helping, just pop me an email to [email protected] with "Rules Review" in the subject line. When ready, I will send you the draft and work with you to resolve any issues you encounter.
Die-Cut
We have finalized our die-cut sheet design for producing Defense Grid: The Board Game. With the design, we will have 15 total sheets included in the box, but only 1 cut needed to produce them.
As part of finalizing this, we increased the size of the map tiles from 2" hexes to 2.5" hexes. This will make fitting the miniatures on the hexes a lot more comfortable with a minimal increase to space needs on the table. This was a change we have wanted to make for months, but were not sure we could do until we got to this point in the process.
We also ended up with a couple of extra chipboard card-shaped pieces that we were not expecting. As a result, we will now be including a quick reference card on chipboard for each player in every copy.
We still have 1 extra chipboard card with nothing on it that we are trying to figure out what to do with. If you have any ideas, let us know!
Single Player
With all multi-player testing complete, we are now completely focused on the single player variant of Defense Grid: The Board Game.
After tweaking for a couple of weeks we have mostly locked in on using the same HP counts for all aliens as the 2 player variant. This came as a bit of a surprise to us, but a welcome one. It makes for an extra challenge for solo players. We have a couple other changes that we made for solo play to enhance the experience, but until we have completed testing we don't want to talk about those changes in case they need to be tweaked more.
Map Change
As we wrapped up testing for 2, 3, and 4 players modes; we decided that our Mission 10 map was just not giving the experience we wanted for the end of the game. As a result, we completely redid the entire map and all the waves.
Like Mission 9, it has 10 waves instead of the traditional 7 waves. With our new design, Mission 10 will use ALL the aliens included in the box across the 10 waves.
The map itself is actually based off of an idea from one of our backers a few weeks ago. We went with a bit of a volcano style setup that uses the barricades to form the mouth of the volcano. The Aliens then proceed to run around the outside to the core housing before running back down the same path as they try to escape with them.
Thanks again for backing and if you have any questions or ideas, as always, we love to hear them!
Anthony Hanses & Rico Hall
Die-Cut ++
Someone pinged me on Email about the Die-Cut design, so I thought I would share it here as well.
In this image, the black line is what is called "Bleed". Sometimes the die won't cut very precise, so this area is for art that may or may not show up on the final pieces.
The purple lines are the required space between cutting blades. You can't put them too close together.
The red line on the outside is just buffer for the outer edge. You can't get too close to the edges of the chipboard you are cutting.
If anyone has any ideas for any extra things into include in the spaces that we are not using currently, we are also open to hearing suggestions.
