Production Update 5/22/19
almost 5 years ago – Fri, May 24, 2019 at 02:21:07 AM

Hey everyone! A quick update today to discuss a couple of things.

We would like to  address something that we're sure many of you have become aware of. At the moment, there is a lot of talk of a 25% tariff being added to board games shipped from China into the US. While this hasn't gone into effect yet, as it currently stands, it will before LAOK arrives in the United States.

The question on everyone's minds--backers, publishers, and manufacturers alike, is how is this going to affect  Kickstarter campaigns in the midst of fulfillment?

The honest answer is: we don't know yet. A lot of conversations are being had  throughout the industry, but until the tariffs go into effect the conversations are mostly conjecture. 

While we are hopeful and optimistic that this will be an issue that can be easily handled, we must also accept that it may introduce new challenges that are out of our control. We will keep you updated as the situation develops.

Now for the good news! The manufacturing process is continuing along the timeline we provided in the previous update, as you can see below with some molds fresh from the machine shop! 

Now comes the important QA work--making sure the packaging is strong enough to avoid model breakage during shipping, double-checking all of the printed components, and all that fun stuff. We'll report back as we go through these quality checks, which will also provide a great opportunity to show off the physical product.

Speak to you soon!

Production and Delivery Schedule/Video Content News/Skylord's Fury and Solo Play
about 5 years ago – Sat, Apr 13, 2019 at 02:57:56 AM

Let's start with the most pressing information, which is our most updated delivery timeline.  We apologize for the delay, but the nature of communicating with overseas manufacturers on a large project makes getting firm dates a challenging task in and of itself. 

Unfortunately, it seems that our previous estimates which were based off our initial timeline and previous experience were inaccurate. We have been told that due to the complexity of many of the miniatures, the molding process is going slower than expected which has caused the rest of production to lag behind as well.

Here is our current timeline:

May 12-May 20: The molds will be complete and mass production can begin after QA.
May 26-June 29: Mass production completes and the games are freighted to the worldwide distribution centers.
June 30-July 26: Asian fulfillment will start, and freight ships will arrive at their destinations. Fulfillment from the distribution centers begins here, and should take approximately 1 to 2 weeks.

While we are disappointed in these delays and apologize for them, we're glad that we have a schedule that all parties have been able to fully commit to and that we now have a strong set of dates to refer to when it comes to project progress.

LAOK Playthrough Videos

We've received many requests for more video content, especially full play throughs, so we loaded LAOK into Tabletop Simulator and started up a 10-round 4 player game. While this first video has some mechanic explanations and some tangents to talk about some of the strategic options of the game, for the most part this is a straight playthrough of the first two rounds. We will continue to record and release game sessions and follow that up with more varied kinds of videos. Check it out here on YouTube:

LAOK Tabletop Simulator

As we mentioned above, we've taken Age of Kingdoms and adapted it into Tabletop Simulator. We're working out the final kinks to make sure it provides a great end-user experience, and then we'll be release it as a publicly available mod. We hope those of you with Tabletop Simulator will take the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the game, and maybe even get a few games in!

Skylord's Fury

Our goal with the Legendary Events expansion was to allow the two event sets to 'shade' a session of LAOK in a specific direction. The Queen's Masquerade introduces mechanics that punish players for killing other player's units, making for a tense game where trade, economics, and intrigue are safer paths to victory.

On the flip side, the Skylord's Fury places a premium on having a strong standing army and introduces some 'take that!' mechanics that can greatly increase the chances of direct conflict between players.

The Skylord is a fearsome dragon that directly attacks player Kingdoms, using its own deck of battle cards to wage war on that player. Players at war with the Skylord have two options, both of which have their own pros and cons.

Players can attempt to defeat the Skylord, gaining immense Favor in the process. While this can be challenging, with the target's permission, other players can also join the fight to gain rewards of their own. Players may find this especially appealing because once a war with the Skylord is ended, it's next target is chosen by its current one! 

Of course, fighting an ancient dragon has its risks. Remaining at war with the Skylord is a taxing affair that can leave a Kingdom in a weakened state. Even worse, if the Skylord changes targets during the World Event Phase, it keeps all the damage that was dealt to it until it is defeated. This means if you don't act fast enough, you may end up merely softening the Skylord up and handing a rival player an easy victory and all the rewards that come along with it.

For those who don't have the stomach for such a war, players can also pay Tribute to the Skylord by sacrificing some of their Population or Units. If they do so, they can gain Allegiance tokens, which allows players to purchase powerful benefits--including having the Skylord wreak havoc on another player's Territories!

In addition, the more Allegiance tokens you have, the greater the rewards will be when the Skylord decides to show Laruna its mercy rather than its ire.

Each player has to consider a careful balancing act between gaining Allegiance tokens and attempting to defeat the Skylord when it is wise to do so, making unit recruitment and management a focal point of any game that uses Skylord's Fury. 

Solo Material 

The final topic we wanted to touch on in this update is the solo material. Solo play is divided into 6 different scenarios, one for each Kingdom. The scenarios see a Kingdom facing off against a Kreesh and all have 2 separate victory objectives, allowing the scenarios to be replayed using different strategies.

While the solo scenarios use the same Kreesh that are used in the base game, they are beefed up by given their own deck of cards, forcing players to deal with new challenges that are drawn randomly as the scenario continues.

Structuring the solo play in this manner allowed us to not only tailor specific challenges to specific Kingdoms, but also allowed us to introduce more of the lore of Laruna into the game, giving players a good feel of the history and themes behind the playable Kingdoms. They're also a great way to experiment with different Leader combinations and try out more unconventional strategies, skills that will all easily translate into the competitive game.

Well, that's about it for this update. We want to thank you again for your patience and your support as we continue down this journey. As we reach the milestones of the roadmap, we'll keep you updated on our progress and continue to bring you more video and gameplay content.

Laruna: Age of Kingdoms Gameplay Updates!
about 5 years ago – Tue, Mar 12, 2019 at 01:48:12 AM

With final revisions submitted and manufacturing well underway, we can finally take a step back from the process and discuss how Laruna: Age of Kingdoms has  evolved from the original game design to a sleeker, more satisfying, and down right better tabletop experience.

We had three parts of the LAOK experience that we needed to dial in to make sure the game was as great as it could possibly be - Pacing, Agency, and Clutter. I'll address each of these separately so we can demonstrate how some of the exhausting playtesting and adjusting yielded an even better experience than we first imagined. 

Pacing

As with most games of this style, early-game decisions tend to appear to be easier to make due to a limited amount of options. However, players do have to make certain extrapolations in these early turns. 

The ramifications of changes made in the early game are very large in the late game so precision was necessary when making these adjustments.

In the earliest balancing of the game, the first few turns felt lackluster and players could "rush' through them because much less thought was necessary and the options of what could be done were limited--Favor was mostly gained at the end of the game and the ways to gain it required a lot of ‘runway,’ causing the first turns of the game to be mostly ‘setup’ for the late game.

Slowly, tweak by tweak, we go to a point where Kingdoms yielded enough resources and fielded enough units to make even the very first turn intriguing. Rather than arbitrarily assigning workers and  fielding a unit, compelling choices need to be made right out of the gate.

Changes that contributed to this were tweaking the kingdom yields, having kingdoms start with their militia units immediately on the world map, and changing the way Garrison and Command were calculated, making worker placement a more involved decision even on turn one.

Agency

In the first iteration of the game, the paths to gaining favor were the same for every Kingdom--you could win a war, you could use your economy to upgrade your Kingdom, or you could work specific tiles to leverage your Stability. While each Kingdom was better or worse at taking these paths, every game came down to trying to do one of those things as efficiently as possible. While running an efficient engine is fun and was satisfying, we felt that the world of Laruna offered us greater opportunities than that.

One of the first things we did was try to eliminate as many ‘automatic’ rules as possible, and instead have most of the game’s action be driven directly by the players. Units no longer automatically activate, Garrison is no longer automatically accrued, and things like recruitment limits are no longer passively tied to Population.

The second aspect of increasing player agency was to examine the cards a player held in their hand. While spells always worked as intended, the old Kingdom Agenda cards were oftentimes too situational--strong enough that you’d be afraid to discard them out of your hand, but not always immediately viable. As we’ve mentioned in previous updates, Agendas went through a hefty redesign, which we’ll detail below.

Clutter

The great thing about a complex, involved game is that there is a lot to consider. One of the bad things about a great, complex, involved game is that there is a lot to consider.

We wanted to make sure that players were spending their time and energy on considering winning strategies and how to counter their opponents, as opposed to considering how many resources they had, how much upkeep they owed, and whether or not they reached a particular Population milestone once or twice.

We’ve counteracted a lot of this clutter through reformatting the Kingdom Mat to consolidate all of the information on one mat, make resource generation and storage obviously grouped together, and eliminating mechanics that were making for too much bookkeeping (such as upkeep).

With the theorycrafting out of the way, let’s go into details of some of the new designs:

Agendas

Easily the largest change was the division of previous agenda cards into Actions and Agendas. Agendas are now kingdom specific objectives that the player can activate (only one at a time) and they all offer a means to earn favor. This allowed us to shift the focus with how favor was earned to a more Kingdom-specific model while still allowing players real choice about the method they wish to pursue victory. 

For example, here are Darco’Garaith’s Agendas. Remember, only 1 Agenda can be active at a time, but Agendas can be changed on your turn.

For someone who wants to focus on their economy and Darco’Garaith’s high food yields, Aggressive Breeding offers Favor for reaching certain amounts of Population.

It also allows Darco’Garaith a way to gain Population outside the normal means, allowing them to reach milestones quicker and easier than other Kingdoms.

If you see a war brewing (or if you’ve been taking actions trying to make one happen,) switching to Profiteering would be wise. You automatically gain some extra Favor for being involved in a war, which is always helpful. You can also take advantage of wars by making trading cheaper and quicker. Since every 3 Trade Progress cubes grants you a Favor, you can capitalize on warring nation’s increasing resource needs.

If you’re ready to just get into the thick of it, Clan Conflicts give you a quick, easy way to make cash and gain favor: kill, kill, kill! Of course, your units will have to seek out stronger opponents--there’s no honor in culling the weak, after all.

Kingdom Actions

Kingdom Action cards now all offer immediate effects that allow a player to make some executive decisions that focus more on the short term and aren't intrinsically tied to earning Favor. They also make the Kingdom Phase feel a bit more ‘active’ since the likelihood of playing a card is much higher than it was. While some Kingdom Actions have costs, many are free and offer an immediate boost to your Kingdom.

Kingdom Mat Redesign

We added some more art and grouped the resources nodes together in a more logical way so that it’s easier to fully know the ‘state of the kingdom’ at a glance. Rather than having to calculate a passive income and then add what your workers are generating, resource fields are either worked or unworked, and the more workers you put in a single field, the greater your gain. We also added more info to the BACK of the mat, giving players a quick summary of the Kingdom and its units, as well as offering a suggestion for new players on what Leader to use for their first game.

Command

Command has been changed in some important ways. First, it is now accumulated and spent like other resources are, making it much easier to keep track of and manage. Secondly, rather than simply being a running tally of how many units you can have out, it is now used to activate your units. This helps your worker placement have a stronger effect on your war efforts, and allows you to intelligently plan how best to use your units for attack and defense. We also eliminated Kingdom-wide unit limits and reduced Kingdom-specific units from 3 copies to 2 copies to encourage players to form a more diverse army. These changes also made each individual unit more meaningful, and it reduced clutter on the map, making war a matter of intelligent usage of your units rather than a numbers game of ‘the biggest army wins.’

Garrison

To keep it in line with the changes to Command, Garrison can now also be stockpiled and spent, allowing players to leverage their peaceful efforts at gaining Garrison to protect their lands during times of conflict. We also made Garrison easier to use so it could keep up with the faster pace of the game.

Summary

Every turn and every decision matters, from the first turn, until the last. Our adjustments over the months of development and playtesting have ensured that players are more involved with every turn and they have new and exciting ways to implement their will and strive for victory. Each spell, unit and kingdom has a unique feel and purpose that helps players immerse themselves in the lore of Laruna. The game also got a whole lot easier to handle and enjoy without losing any real depth or strategic options. We are very excited for LAOK to reach your tables and to hear your stories!

Production Update
over 5 years ago – Sat, Jan 12, 2019 at 12:50:19 AM

Hey all! We hope you've all had a great holiday season and new year! 

We mentioned in our last update that the physical miniature prototypes were completed and the process of making final adjustments for the final molds had started.  A great example of this process is the Abomination sculpt.

This sculpt passed all of its initial checks when it was originally created.  We're also able to make a physical prototype of the mold with no issues. So far, so good.

Even after passing these two checks, when trying to create the final injection molds, an issue arises.

The angle of the tentacle's 'faces' creates a problem once the final prototype is being adapted to an injection molding. The two tentacles are directly on top of each other, but not connecting, creating an undercut. Fortunately, the problem is resolved by some clever rotation and minor sizing adjustments. It is both fascinating and frustrating that a difference of millimeters can take a model from ready to production to requiring adjustment. Fortunately, the required changes are minor and do not cause heavy delays, but this is a process that each model goes through. The majority of the models required little to no adjustment, and as only 1 model had to go through a substantial change: the Catapult. 

We tried multiple configurations and went through a few different design options, but our manufacturer felt that in mass production, the men pushing the catapult would lose enough detail that they would be a detriment to the final product rather than adding to it. While the design worked through the rest of the process, we've decided to lean on our manufacturer's expertise to make this change rather than insist on a detail that would end up not working.

Speaking of our manufacturer's expertise, we would be remiss if we did not take a quick second to thank WinGo, our manufacturer, for the hard work they've done on this project. While this process has taken longer than we hoped, it's all of the sake of quality. We're glad that the manufacturer came to us to make sure we worked together now, rather than allowing us get deep into the process and create something we were unhappy with and cause major delays. They've been an awesome partner and we're really confident that the final product will be top-notch.

That process is now complete, and we're glad to say that minimal changes were necessary. Other than minor detail adjustments, the biggest change for the models is a slightly heavier, sturdier base that will improve the experience of using the miniatures during game play. Since we're going with a harder plastic that includes a lot of details, some of the model's weapons were adjusted to ensure they don't bend, warp, or break during shipping or gameplay.

With the models complete, the rest of production is thankfully relatively straight-forward. While the Chinese New Year holiday will introduce a small gap into the production process, at this point the process consists mostly of continuing quality assurance checks (this time on printed material, which thankfully is a much quicker and easier process,) and then 'hitting the button' as it were. 

We believe that production should be complete by the middle of March, meaning that freight should start by the end of March, with Asian fulfillment starting around that time.

This does mean that for those outside Asia, overall fulfillment may start later than originally anticipated by a few weeks. Fortunately, we're confident that the fulfillment process after freight shipment will be quick and easy as it has been for our previous Kickstarter and retail fulfillment projects.

Now that we've explained what's going on from a production aspect, our next updates will return to explaining balance and gameplay adjustments and features.

 We appreciate your patience during this process, and will be sure to update you whenever something changes or there's significant news to report.

Miniature Production Update!
over 5 years ago – Wed, Nov 14, 2018 at 01:21:07 AM

As estimated in the last update, we have received photos of the miniature prototypes! These prototypes are used in conjunction with the digital sculpt files to create the production molds, so they're an important step in the production process. We're very happy with these prototypes, so a minimal amount of time will need to be spent making adjustments before the final molds are cast.

Before you check out some of the photos, we wanted to invite you to join our Discord channel if you haven't already! It's a great way to chat directly with the entire ODAM Publishing team and other backers. https://discord.gg/JuYFCC4