Warzone Eternal

December Update
12 days ago – Tue, Dec 24, 2024 at 01:26:32 PM

Hey Warzone Eternal backers, happy holidays to you in whatever form you celebrate. At Res Nova HQ we're prepping holiday meals and wrapping packages. But I know the package you're most interested in from us is the one containing Warzone Eternal. So let's dive right into that.

As of today, miniatures manufacturing stands as shown in the now familiar chart below - Pretorian Stalker pose 2 and Mortificator pose 2 are the only outstanding models to be produced. But, per my conversation with Trenchworx late last week, even those two are now done and on their way here. So, presuming no holiday shipping shenanigans, the entire Kickstarter range of miniatures will be in hand before the end of the year.

PAX Unplugged

Earlier this month we attended PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia. Many demos were run, conversations with fans new and old were had, and we showed off a number of previews for models down the road. Thanks a ton to Grey for the assist in running the booth.

For Imperial we showed off prototypes for our first Wolfbane unit, the Commandos. Long time fans may recognize the inspiration for the HMG Support and Leader models shown below, sculpted by the uber talented Michał Marciniak.

For Algeroth we had a prototype of the fan favorite Ezoghoul, brought to life by Bruno Antelo, and a Reaver APC, sculpted by Julian Faulkingham, who really nailed the techno-organic look. Both of these are releases planned for well down the road, but I was eager to share these awesome looking models.

Rulebook

We also had on hand a printer proof copy of the Warzone Eternal rulebook, which I was pleased to see was really well received by those who stopped by the booth. I think our graphic designer on this project, Matt Sturm, has done a bang up job. Below are a few screen grabs of spreads from the book (thus the slightly blurred resolution).

In the thick of the holidays, final approval of the rulebook from our licensor was a bit delayed, but, like a Christmas miracle, I just received confirmation this morning and approval to move forward. So the book is with the printer as of now and should be back to us shortly after the New Year.

Shipping

With everything nearly in hand, I will shortly be sending our Backerkit surveys to collect shipping for your orders. This is very straightforward for US backers, and so those will likely be processed first as a test run, and I'm working with an EU based fulfillment company to help manage the same for our EU backers.

As stated before, I won't be springing these on any of you without some notice, but expect that notice sometime around mid-January.

With that, I'm back to wrapping gifts and I'll talk to you all in the New Year. Looking forward to 2025 being the year of Warzone Eternal!

Alex / Res Nova Games

November Update
about 1 month ago – Mon, Nov 25, 2024 at 11:01:38 PM

Hey Warzone backers, and happy November. For the US backers, Happy Thanksgiving as well and I hope your stuffed Ezoghoul is delicious.

Jumping immediately into the production status update, take a look at the now familiar chart below. You'll notice there's a LOT of yellow on there (as a reminder, yellow means the models are completed and in hand, so that's a good thing). 

Even more excitingly, a phone call on Friday from my miniatures manufacturing production partner, Trenchworx, informed me that the last mold was being balanced on that day and the invoice for the remaining models to be completed would be showing up shortly. It did, and I should expect to have the last models in hand sometime at the beginning of December.

A few of have requested pictures of the production miniatures, and I'll post an update later this week, or early next week, with some sample shots taken while sorting models into their unit sets.

While this has been a slog, and a lot longer than I or any of you expected, I'm proud of the fact that in an 8 month time frame we were able to pivot from our previous manufacturer, create masters and molds for 106 sculpts, and produce more than 24,000 models.

Speaking of Trenchworx, make sure you check out this great behind the scenes video of their facilities and processes produced by the luxuriously coiffed Brent from Goobertown Hobbies. He's even painted up some of our Cybertronic models (check out the 12:45 mark)!

With the rulebook and the unit cards at the printers, we're mere weeks from having everything for this Kickstarter in hand.

I know the immediate follow-up question is, "So this means I'll be getting my product when (by Christmas)?" For now, I'm punting on answering that question as the realities of the logistics of the pick and pack process aren't going to fully reveal themselves until I start doing it, and I imagine that this is going to be a lengthy endeavor. But I'm eager to unearth myself from the mountain of miniatures, dice, decals, shirts, books, and acrylic counters that threaten to bury me, so shipping will start as soon as possible.

As noted in the last update, this process will be kicked off with notice of impending shipping charges, and I'll be giving a couple weeks notice of that so as not to catch anyone off-guard.

Finally, if you're heading to PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia next week, be sure to stop by the Res Nova booth at 4311. We'll be running demos all weekend as well as showing off painted models and some prototypes of future product. And, if all goes according to plan, we should have sample copies of the rulebook to peruse.

For those who can't make it to PAX, keep an eye on our socials for updates from the show.

Until next time!

Alex / Res Nova Games

October Update
2 months ago – Wed, Oct 23, 2024 at 04:24:57 PM

Hey Warzone backers and happy October. As the ghouls and witches arrive with cooler weather, things have been chugging away at Res Nova HQ and I've got a full update for you.

Miniatures Production Status

Diving right into the topic about which we're all most interested, miniatures production currently stands as shown in the chart below. As noted in the last update, all items marked in yellow are completed and at Res Nova. Per my production partner, progress slowed since the last update as they ran low on the Siocast polymer and resupplying took longer than desired. Nevertheless, they wrapped up the rest of Cybertronic and made additional headway on Imperial.

Their current estimate is that remaining molds will be completed over the next two weeks, at which point they'll be able to tackle the rest of the casting work.

Acrylic Production Status

In other production news, I'm happy to announce that manufacturing of all of the acrylic objective counters, measuring widgets, and status tokens has been completed. Check out the mound of acrylic in the picture below.

As noted in my August update, we were forced to look for a new acrylic production partner quite suddenly when Muse on Minis informed me they were shuttering their business. After a quick scramble we were thrilled to re-connect with our friends at Death Ray Design, the producers of the beautiful transfer sheets previewed in last month's update, who were able to pick up the project. DRD does stellar work, so collaborating with them again was a joy.

While it took a moment for them to fit us into their production schedule, they were quickly off and running and the last of the acrylic items showed up at Res Nova today. This shipment, in conjunction with the items that Muse had been able to complete before closing, marks complete another box in the Warzone Eternal project management spreadsheet.

Rulebook & Cards

This leaves us just with the printed materials - unit cards and the rulebook. With miniatures production stretching longer than originally planned, I made the purposeful decision to sit on our rulebook and unit cards, not sending them to print, for as long as possible to give our playtest team as much time to work their way through the rules as they could. No final product is ever perfect, but I wanted our rules to be as close to perfect as we could get. And this extra time did in fact give us a number of opportunities to refine language to ensure clarity and make some subtle tweaks to unit balance.

While the quick turnaround ability of our printer could allow us another week or two of tinkering, it's time to call the rules truly finished and send the printed materials off to production.

Which means that unit cards are now complete and available to all as PDF files. They can be found here in two different formats:

Warzone Eternal Unit Cards

The print format includes the cards with a bleed area and cut lines. The screen format includes the cards as they will appear in final production, without bleed area or cut lines, for those who want to view the cards digitally.

Res Nova will once again be attending PAX Unplugged, hosted at the Pennsylvania Convention Center from December 6th-8th. We'll be in booth 4311, but, as PAXU hasn't released an exhibitor hall map yet, we're not exactly sure where that booth is located. Hopefully we'll have more concrete details on our location in next month's update.

As with our previous conventions, we'll be running demos all show, chatting with Warzone fans, and showing off a few new previews for wave 2 . . . and perhaps beyond. I hope to see you there!

Shipping Costs

With project components nearly completed and in hand, we're inching closer to shipping. So, a friendly reminder that shipping costs are still outstanding and will be collected before fulfillment starts. I'll be sure to send another update at least two weeks before that occurs to ensure nobody is suprised.

Thanks For Your Patience

Finally, as a small token of appreciation for all of you and your patience as this project has wound along, I commissioned a set of STL files comprised of the faction logos for each of the megacorporations, the five apostles, and the Brotherhood, with a few variants mixed in. Those can be found here:

Faction Icon STL Files

We kept the details simple so that you can freely scale these up and down, for use on vehicles, terrain, etc., without any loss or exaggeration of detail. We've been printing these flat on the build plate of our FDM printers, where they've worked splendidly, but these would work fine in resin as well. The files do not include supports however.

Unit next time!

Alex / Res Nova Games

September Update
3 months ago – Tue, Sep 24, 2024 at 05:26:03 PM

Hello Warzone Eternal backers, and welcome to pumpkin spice Razide season.

I don't have much to update on, as miniatures production continues. But, to provide a greater level of transparency into that process, as opposed to simply noting that our manufacturing partner continues to slog away and boxes of new miniatures continue to show up at Res Nova regularly, I wanted to share the following production status chart. As of today, all models highlighted in yellow have been completed and are at Res Nova.

In terms of actual production numbers, this accounts for approximately 70% of the entire miniatures production run. While nothing has been delivered so far for Mishima, as one of the lower backed factions they account for a much smaller number of miniatures that some of the other factions (Algeroth in particular). 

As you can see, we're close!

The other production consideration noted in my last update related to the acrylic objective counters and gameplay tokens. Our new partner is getting up to speed, as they need to fit this new project into their workflow, and I hope to hear more about the status of production in the next two weeks.

On a different note, a backer had requested in a comment to last month's update some pictures of the final production versions of the waterslide decal sheets from Death Ray Designs. So I grabbed my phone and snapped the pictures below. Though they're faint in the image, those places in which the sheets appear blank actually contain logos in white ink.

Finally, back during the Kickstarter campaign, in response to our plans for future support for Warzone Eternal, I had shared an image of an initial prototype sculpt for an Imperial Wolfbane Commando. Well, while the vast majority of my work since that campaign has been focused on getting this game into your hands, I've continued to work with our sculpting team on post-Kickstarter releases. In fact, as of today, Wave 2 models have been completed for nearly every faction featured in the Kickstarter, Wave 3 models have already started, and the first models for an entirely new faction are in the prototyping stage (no prizes for those who correctly guess which faction this is). As a sneak peek at some of those future models, check out the pair of new Wolfbanes below!

And that's in addition to a few additional surprises that we have in the works for all of you, and the larger Warzone community.

It's been a long haul, and I appreciate your enthusiasm, patience, and support as we get ever closer to all of you playing Warzone Eternal at your local tabletops. Thank you again.

Unit next time!

Alex / Res Nova Games

August Update
5 months ago – Mon, Aug 19, 2024 at 08:55:53 PM

Hello Warzone Eternal backers, happy August. For those in the northern hemisphere, I hope your summer is winding down nicely. 

Here at Res Nova HQ, other than a brief respite at GenCon (and while RN wasn't at the convention in an official capacity, it was great seeing many of you there!), we've been slogging our way towards our Kickstarter fulfillment goal. As I have mentioned in a few places previously, the aim was to have all components of the Kickstarter in hand by the beginning of September so that we could start shipping later that month. That, unfortunately will not be happening due to an unexpected obstacle which is entirely unrelated to the most likely culprit in a project like this – miniatures production – as that is still moving forward swimmingly. See below in this update for more details there.

Instead, last month I was informed that Muse on Minis would be closing their doors effective immediately, and that Warzone Eternal would be their last project. Just before GenCon, I received the first shipment of product from them, which amounted to less than half of the contracted acrylic deliverables. While Muse proposed a few paths towards getting the balance of the Warzone Eternal project completed, none of them included any level of certainty that this would occur, as their manufacturing capacity was significantly reduced. As a small company myself, I understand the impact that even small hiccups can cause to a going venture, and would have been happy to offer Muse the chance to try and finish the project in most circumstances. But with production of the acrylic suddenly becoming an uncertainty this close to wrapping up all production on the Kickstarter, that wasn’t a gamble I wanted to make.

So, part of my time at GenCon was spent looking for alternative partners. Fortunately, that was a short process as a company with which I’m quite familiar and with whom I’ve worked flawlessly in the past agreed to step in and complete the contracted production run. And just to cover my bases, I engaged another manufacturer who noted that they had the production capacity to pick this up should the first solution fail.

However, neither of these companies had space for an unexpected project of this size in their production queue, so we have to take our place in line. At this point, the end of September, at the earliest, looks likely. If that changes, I'll let you know here.

To say this was a surprise is an understatement. Muse had been a well-established company for many years and produced some of the nicest acrylic game accessories in the market. For those who swung by the Res Nova booth at Adepticon, Origins, or PAX Unplugged, you saw in our demo sets the quality of the product they produced. So this news is not only a disappointment for the Warzone Eternal project, but a definite loss to the miniatures gaming community. The folks at Muse are good guys, and we're sad to see them go.

Fiction PDFs

While the first two of our new Warzone Eternal short stories were distributed through Backerkit back in May, I just realized that the remaining four had never been sent out. You should find those - "Blackwater West" by Chant Evans, "The Price of Heroism" by Richard August, "The Intruder" by Bryan Borgman, and "Nightwatch" by Jake Krajeski - in the digital downloads section of your Backerkit account now.

Follow this link if you've misplaced your Backerkit invitation.

Production Status

As of today, here is the production status of the various elements of the Kickstarter products:

• Miniatures - In Production. Miniatures continue to arrive at Res Nova and our production partner thinks that our goal of early September (likely nearer the mid-point of the month) is still attainable. Below are some shots I grabbed of a random collection of models that arrived last week.

• Rulebook - In Production. Layout continues.
• Unit Cards - In Production. Final pre-print setup is being completed. PDF versions of the final cards should become available via the Res Nova website later this month.
• Acrylic - See above.
• Dice - In hand at Res Nova.
• Shirts - In hand at Res Nova and bagged for shipping.
• Decals - In hand at Res Nova.
• Short Story Compilation - In hand at Res Nova and bagged for shipping.

Unit next time!

Alex / Res Nova Games