Defense Grid: The Board Game is a Cooperative, Deck Building, Tower Defense board game, for 1 to 4 players with 57 Aliens, 19 Tower Miniatures, and 1 Miniature Raspberry in every box.
Every copy of the game includes 10 complete campaign Missions that can also be played as standalone missions. After release, 24 additional free Missions will be posted online, 1 each month for 2 years after release.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Post-Kickstarter Update 2 - Maps & Card Art & Missions
about 9 years ago
– Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 12:08:03 AM
Maps
One of our top goals with Defense Grid: The Board Game was to deliver a unique experience for each Mission. This comes in the form of both the maps and the waves that interact with those maps.
From the map perspective, we wanted a great variety of experiences that include everything from the traditional Defense Grid map that has the aliens exiting from the same path they entered on to maps that included two core housings that you have to protect.
We now have all 10 maps done and have finalized which map tiles will be on each side of all of our double sided map tiles. If you would like to take a look at the final campaign maps, you can download the PDF linked here.
Today we received our initial Card Art designs from David White as we are loving it! The following two pieces are for our special cards called "Core Speed" and "Critical Shot".
In addition to doing all of the Card Art, David will also be reworking our card background art and framing to fit better with the main art. This should greatly enhance our table presence for the game.
Core Speed
Critical Shot
Missions
We are now mostly complete with testing and balancing of Missions #1 through #9 for 2, 3, and 4 players!
We are going to keep beating on these up until the last minute when we send off the rules books for manufacturing, but we are loving the overall feel.
Rico has been working hard to make sure that there isn't just 1 perfect solution for how to beat each Mission. We want to make sure that players can use their favorite towers and favorite Support and Special cards with their preferred AI all the way through the final Mission and still have them provide value.
In 2 weeks we will be shifting over to mostly working on the 1 Player game to make sure that feels just as good as 2 through 4 players.
Thanks again for your support!
Anthony Hanses & Rico Hall
Post-Kickstarter Update 1 - Money & Minis & Shipping & Missions & Art
about 9 years ago
– Wed, Mar 01, 2017 at 08:45:39 PM
Money
We officially received the Kickstarter funds this week! (Yay!). So now we are starting to charge forward with our next steps.
Miniatures
All of our Miniatures have completed sculptures and the sculptures have all been mailed to our small run manufacturer in Indiana to get Masters made.
Once the Masters are done, we will be mailing ourselves a set for safe keeping and then mailing off a set of the Masters as well as the original sculptures to Panda Manufacturing so we can start getting the production molds made, which is the long-pole to getting the game done as soon as possible.
Metal Tower Miniatures + Raspberry
After the Masters are complete, the small run manufacturer will be making the production molds for the Metal Towers. This will allow us to make the all Metal Towers Sets and prepare them for delivery.
We won't be able to ship these until we are able to collect shipping for the entire project through our pledge manager. See shipping below for more details.
Ohh, and completely random, the Metal Tower Miniatures set now includes a Metal Raspberry miniature.
Shipping
We have now received rough estimates for what it is going to cost us to ship from Panda Manufacturing in China to our 4 preferred warehousing partners in the UK, Australia, Canada, and the US. We are still working on locking in the warehousing agreements, but hope to have those done by end of March at the latest.
At the same time, we are working hard to lock in approximate box dimensions and weight for Defense Grid: The Board Game. Once we have these locked, combined with the estimates above, we will be able to send all backers a BackerKit survey that will include shipping costs.
We are currently planning to give people until September 1st, 2017 to pay shipping and pay for any addition add-ons they wish to acquire. This is subject to change, but that is the current plan.
We are looking into options to be able to charge shipping for the Metal Towers Set separately for those that are interested in receiving it early. We are still hoping to be able to ship these in May.
Missions
We are working hard to finalize our remaining Missions for the 10 in-box Missions. We now have Missions #1 through #6 complete for 2, 3, and 4 players, Missions #1, #2, and #3 are complete for 1 player.
The remaining 4 Missions are almost complete. We are mainly working on a couple of tweaks based on 3 changes we made over the last couple months.
1) We increased total Cores in the game from 8 to 12. This was done so that we could increase difficulty a bit and increase the Silver Medal window for later Missions where Aliens can carry more cores.
2) We have added an AI reset option after Missions #3, #6, and #9. When players complete these Missions, each AI receives a reset token. This token can be spent at anytime afterward to complete reset all upgrade points spent.
3) The AIs powers now automatically upgrade after completion of Mission #5. This makes them just a bit stronger and no longer requires players to spend Medal points on the power upgrades.
Art
We are pleased to announce that we have hired an amazing artist to do some full-color card art for all of our Support and Special Cards.
David White of MechaZone fame is that artist. We have worked with him a bit in the past and are extremely impressed by both his art and his ability to meet deadlines. All the art is expected to be complete by end of April and we will be sharing it with backers as it is completed.
Thanks again and let us know if you have any questions!
Anthony Hanses & Rico Hall
People like to get emails?
about 9 years ago
– Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 09:42:51 AM
So, this came as a bit of a surprise to me. Apparently some people like to get email reminders about stuff.
If you would like to get emails from Forged by Geeks LLC about major things (product releases, new Kickstarters, etc...) you can sign-up here. This will take you to our MailChimp sign-up form.
http://eepurl.com/cBBdpL
Note that if you got an email from us about Defense Grid: The Board Game because you signed up at GenCon or a PlaytestNW event, you will want to sign up to this again. As we promised people at those events, we will only ever use those emails to notify you about the Defense Grid: The Board Game Kickstarter and eventual release. So, in other words, you will only ever get 1 more email from us if signed up at one of those events.
Thanks again and happy emailing!
Anthony Hanses & Rico Hall.
The Cores will be PROTECTED!
about 9 years ago
– Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 09:41:33 AM
Wow! We can't thank everyone who has backed us enough. It has been a crazy couple of years to get to this point, but it is now official that Defense Grid: The Board Game will be made. We can't wait to get it into everyone's hands later this year.
We still have a long road ahead, but we aim to keep everyone as informed as possible along the way. We will be posting regular updates as we make our way through finishing the final components of the game and start manufacturing with Panda.
If anyone ever wants to talk about how things are going or share any ideas, please feel free to contact us through any of the below options, and yes, that is my direct email. Anyone who has met me at GenCon, PAX South, or other events knows just how willing I am to share my contact information and communicate.
We also have a Discourse Forum setup that people can reach us on. This is one of the locations that we will be using to post the Challenge Maps (in addition to posting them on BoardGameGeek.com) and where we will be encouraging users to share their own map and wave creations.
Pardon the dust :). We set this up a while ago and haven't really used it till now.
Finally, we are working with BackerKit to create our Pledge Manager and get it out to everyone as soon as possible, but it will likely be a couple months. We will be sending this out as soon as we have a solid estimate on box size and weight so that we can collect shipping estimates alongside the Pledge Manager.
The Pledge Manager will allow everyone to add-on anything they missed, or if you pledged $1, to add-on the game itself. As long as you pledged at least $1, you will qualify to get the game at the Kickstarter price of $80.
Thanks again! We cannot express our gratitude enough to everyone who has helped to make Defense Grid: The Board Game a reality.
Anthony Hanses & Rico Hall
5th Stretch Goal unlocked!
about 9 years ago
– Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 09:17:08 AM
We hit $80,000 and unlocked our 5th stretch goal!
All 25 Tower and Alien reference cards will now be produced on chipboard instead! They will also have the nice linen finish like the map tiles.
In addition, we have added our 77th miniature to the box in the form of another Bulwark miniature. We absolutely love that we now have another Bulwark to include in our Mission design. This will allow us to occasionally stack multiples of them in a wave which will make towers like the Tesla or some of our shield ripping cards more valuable and important to use.
Next up, we will add another miniature at $85,000 and if we hit $90,000, we will upgrade all of the dice to engraved dice.
