 Hello everybody, if it's Wednesday, it's Warhammer and that must mean it's time for a completely different episode of Warhammer Weekly Since we're not going to talk about Warhammer at all this week Instead we're going to talk about Majestic 13. That's right everybody It's a completely it's a takeover show. That's that's what's happening I've got Tom here. What's up Tom? Hello friends I've also got Adam with me Adam. How you doing? Not too bad All right, fantastic so We are I am currently on the road in case that's not obvious, but you know the show must go on And so early show today. It's actually very late where I am I'm over in Europe, but of course where you are it's the middle of the day So hey, you're a friendly show today everybody. Hope you all enjoy Today we're gonna talk about Majestic 13 our newest game from Starling Badger and We're gonna take your questions. I'll be watching your questions in the chat So if you've got any about the game anything you want us to answer hit those up but we're just gonna talk about the game in the process what we're excited about that kind of thing and So before Tom and I get into stories Tom was the developer on this again We did a lot of good work in helping me correct numbers. This is a very complicated game to balance And be just because the nature of the thing But the first just for those who don't know Adam. Hey, what is Majestic 13? Why don't you give them the pitch? Sure, so Back in 1947 There was a crash in Roswell, New Mexico Of an alien spaceship and all that jazz and people have heard of that generally before and it's very Frequently known as the beginning of kind of the UFO kind of you know era to some degree That being said there was actually a crash in 1941 in Missouri in a place called Cape Gerardo and it is It's also kind of known you find information about it on the internet. This is not a thing that we made up but it's lesser known and There's another conspiracy theory out there that has to do with aliens and stuff that after the Roswell crash Henry or not Harry Truman president Truman Got this group of 12 Powerful men in the military and business and intelligence agencies know that kind of stuff together and formed this group called Majestic 12 now whether this is true or not No one actually knows but in the in the in the snarling Badger reality. We're gonna say yes, it was but it's It's not the group that we're talking about in our game our group in the game is called Majestic 13 Majestic 12 Kind of failed because I mean at the very least if you try to do a vote It's very easy to split when there's 12 people. So you got to have at least another in other person in there And plus those were just 12 guys, you know, basically and Majestic 13 is 13 Organizations 13 separate organizations that are trying to protect the earth from the alien menace These organizations otherwise known as maybe as factions if you want to get into it that way It's basically you have you have a group of five models You have a team of five in your in your group And you pick a faction and then you go and fight aliens and very frequently in the battles It is five against one. You have just are basically fighting one big kind of alien creature and the five of you are doing that it is It is generally designed to be played in the modern era or near future if you want to get down that road though This last weekend at TMX I talked to a couple different people who were like so this started back in the 40s, right? I'm like, yeah And they're like so I could definitely make my models look like they're from the 60s if I wanted to and we're like sure You could do that if you wanted to as well You know depends on what you got going on. So again, it's miniature agnostic. It is designed to be played solo co-op Also, you can play versus basically military exercises team versus team not fighting aliens at all and Let's see what else like I said miniature agnostic. You can use whatever kind of models you want You're basically just looking for something that looks kind of like modern military soldiers With even like normal looking guns because though the guns they carry look normal so that if people see them They're just like, I don't know some military guys They have a lot of technology built into these guns that are used using reverse engineered stuff that they take from the aliens So they're actually much more powerful and all that kind of stuff. So it's it's basically a game of If you've ever played XCOM or ever watched X files, it's kind of those two things squished together Yeah, exactly the other things that I would mention that are important and relevant are you know, obviously there's a full campaign mode to it It uses sort of programmatically generated Scenarios and then at sort of intervals throughout the scenario as you encounter where you're fighting these alien monsters, you know theoretically going all over the the area to fight them The story shows up, of course, like That is to say there is an intelligence namely this alien menace force is the name of it Or let's the code name that majestic 13 has given it They don't know what it actually is called or who they are But force will basically take a hand and show up and attack you in your base or ambush you and those sorts of things So all hold it's a it'll play a pretty long campaign. It's meant to run over, you know, basically 18 plus games Before it's it's concluded. So it's it's quite a lengthy sort of campaign experience if you go that direction Yeah, so that's sort of the basic rundown of the thing There's also base building in it and you know lots of fun equipment that you get to kit out everybody with and stuff like that We're gonna just talk about it tonight share some stories, but mostly we want to answer your questions So if you've got questions drop them in the chat happy to happy to answer those So my I'll be actually asked one already and Adam. This is an interesting one because I know you have an answer for this Here's my big question How did you know this was going to be so timely with the big push recently that the US has not human aircraft intact in their possession or that like, you know, all the UFO stuff basically that's come up recently, right? I mean, I've been interested in kind of UFO stuff I don't know what I think about it yet necessarily particularly, but I do like I you know keeping my my eye on that stuff Literally half an hour ago. I just tweeted out about a video that I saw from Fox 26 news out of Houston about a Air Force guy who basically gave a whole bunch of documents to Congress and said hey This is a bunch of documents that prove that we're holding on to UFOs and and craft and all this kind of stuff And I was just like flipping through my YouTube on the TV there and I was like wait what and so I shared that on Snowing Badger Twitter, I believe or yeah It was either the snowing Badger Twitter or the tabletop minions Twitter, but yeah It is I mean we've kind of been hearing about all of this like Edging more and more towards that type of like I don't want to say disclosure necessarily But we're heading in that direction a little bit That's been going on for the last couple of years At least 2017. Yeah. Yeah, I guess they are when I say a couple of years I always forget about the pandemic time is a flat circle, but yeah, no for a while now It's been going on and it's definitely a situation of like I'll be very very honest with you. I Kind of came up with a name for this game and then tried to figure out what the game should be like I was just like it was and I do that a lot I'm just like it was like they came up with the title. I'm like oh majestic 13 Oh, it's kind of spooky and then I just yeah, and then I was the defense I was like hey, I got this idea and then what here we are So yeah, it's it's definitely like as far as like the limited number of models that you are playing with I really dig that, you know, it's like it's you have a team of five You always have a team of five if you lose a guy or two or whatever. There's clones back at the base It's fine. They may not be necessarily, you know, exactly the same, but they're pretty close and it's okay If you spend a bunch of money on tattoos and then you get killed when then you're gonna have to get those tattoos put back on again I think I don't think that's how clones work. Yeah, watch out for that. Yeah, yeah No, it's it's funny because it really has just sort of come up in the news Recently a lot like all the UFO stuff and all these people are like that's some really great viral marketing And I'm like it couldn't be better timed, right? So I know absolutely. Yeah. Yeah Honestly, we just need a bunch of aliens to like land someplace big and just start doing alien stuff or whatever and it will be like that's Yep, thank you. I guess. I don't know Majestic 13 marketing in full effect. Yeah Indeed Patrick Kellis said is the game a hundred percent cooperative or are there some PvP elements? So it's solo co-op and versus Patrick. So that's saying played alone. You can play a cooperative cooperatively with your friends. You can also run it As PvP the way that's written in the book is, you know, you're exactly what Adam said You're taking your two teams against each other. Now, technically, there's also no reason why you couldn't put a Person in charge of one of the alien monsters and like the other person is just playing the alien monster They're not they they would like there's limitations in their actions as to what they can and can't do So as long as those were heated, they could overwrite overwrite as it were the normal enemy AI We didn't test to that. That's not like a it's not that'd be an off-label. That's not an endorsed Yeah, right. That is not an endorsed lifestyle, but you could do it, but you could do it It's your game. You can do what you want. Yeah, absolutely, right I just may not work. That's all well the enemies of the enemies They have certain capabilities like it's gonna be harder for the for the good guys as it with good guys as it were Right because the monsters when you can't learn their sort of AI and tricks and rotations and plan accordingly Some of them are really tough And that's intentional Because you're supposed to supposed to be able to figure out how they're gonna operate and then make smart moves to counter them because they're Very very very powerful and deadly. So Yeah So Dougie fresh said would this be a good game to introduce with friends family to miniature war games? I mean, I'll give my general answer to that, but I want everybody to give a shot at that. That's what they think My answer is we write all of our games to be friendly to new players. So You know no matter Where you are in your journey like we try to write that so it's easy enough to that you can get a hold of it Learn how to play it very quickly and simply but also that there's enough complexity like what I just explained there that over Time you can learn how to build. Okay, this is how the monsters are gonna move what they're gonna do I can you know, make the right place to survive this and you can sort of skill up that there that there's both a Low floor and a high ceiling is what we're always aiming for. So I mean if people like aliens and Cool XCOM men and black stuff X file stuff then sure it's oftentimes I find with games It's more about the concept grabbing them than it is about the the rules of the play but Tom What do you think? I mean, well, yeah The other thing that I would add is that there's tons of replayability to this like that's one of the things That struck me in testing Makes it really difficult to test When you begin to look at just all the permutation of not only For building your force but also just as you are going into scenarios and the way in which the scenario sets up the foobar happens and The actual alien that you're you're facing off against Like it has like Significant replayability and so I say that just to say that like there are some games that you would buy that that Once you've done it a couple times you get a feel for what this game is and what the experience is with this game it I Mean you could play this for a year or probably and not get tired of it Yeah, I'll tell you a funny quick aside and Adam. I want your take on it when I was filming the bat rep okay, I Was rolling for the bureaucracy event the first time I rolled I rolled a 13 and 13 on the bureaucracy event is a second alien monster is added to the fight And I was like no no I cut the footage and it was just like re-rolled because I was like I'm not doing this Bat rep with something that's so Unusual right but that is put but that right that is it within the play experience for you to have a second alien Wander in like over the course of a campaign that's going to happen Right whether through the foobar event or whether through Bureaucracy beforehand like it will occur and it will be a heck of a tough fight Right, but I didn't want to do it. There's nothing like sample bat rep There's there's simply nothing like going in and just spending your first cold turns trying to get away Yeah, yeah, oh, yeah, like fighting yourself in a scenario. We're like just let me out I want to leave you alone alien just trying to call for a me back as fast as you can You can have this whole area I'm gonna go This is your home now. Yeah. Yeah, I as far as being something it's it's Decent to get people involved in it early on people introduce introductions I think that as the person who's the gaming advocate in the situation It's pretty easy because you've got two choices for co-op you can either be like You take these two models on the team and I'll take these three models on the team And we work as one team versus the the the thing Or you know, it's not very difficult for you as again the gaming advocate to be able to paint up two small teams of five You know, we didn't want to make it I think where there's a lot of models on a side and and you know, none of we're never really planning on making any army style Games particularly we're generally always kind of airing more towards the size of side of skirmish size So it's a little bit easier. Excuse me For you to be like I have enough stuff here again Whether you want to split a team or whether you want to have two teams now if you have two teams Generally, you're fighting against two aliens But as long as you're not making like a full campaign out of it and trying to make it a whole thing If you're also trying to introduce to somebody too, you could have two teams go against one alien You'll take them out relatively quick I suppose but you they would get the hang of like the play loop and all that kind of stuff and there's that That's fine too. So um There's a lot of different ways you can get people involved and kind of teach them the game without Adding too much peril and that kind of stuff and then they can have a hopefully a good time. Yeah So then let's see here my obviously base building like awesome and he asked You know, that was his favorite part in County Road Z What is your favorite part of the base building mechanic? Yeah, I'll tell you so the base building is pretty robust It happens over time, but it's also very hard to plan for By that, what I mean is you don't like you make requisitions for equipment and base upgrades But you don't necessarily get them like most things they have to go through bureaucracy The better you perform in the mission in any individual mission The better chances you have of your requests being fulfilled And the base itself the bases both have a lot of interesting Sort of interaction with the outside of the game element So your post game processes where they weigh the most heavily as well as like special missions i.e. when you're ambushed in your base, that's sort of where they sort of have a big hand And the way you choose to expand your base will say a lot about your team and its capabilities Because sort of here's a simple example You could try to push into sort of advanced unusual technology and research and end up with a team that has like jump jets And is capable of a lot of utility and movement and stuff like that that that could be a very Potent way that your team, you know sort of deals with the alien menace You could also push into upgrades that are just like straight up weapons and damage, right? Just like better guns better, you know better killing And your team deals with like every alien is a nail and you've brought a big hammer, right? So It's it's going to define a lot about how your team sort of operates in the long run over the course of a game Tom, what do you think did I miss anything there? Yeah, I mean what I would just say is that like you list that in yet The variability amongst the aliens is so significant at times that like your mobility in some instances will simply mean nothing Right, or your big hammer will you will just not have the tools needed, right, right for this nail And so I you know one thing that struck me about it was that there's no Um from a You know, I'm proud of this in the in this sense And I think Vincent and initial good job even in the design process There's no like one size fits all track Right, right like there's no one path towards victory of building any one army or anyone, you know, you like any one faction because simply There is so much variability in the experience itself that That a lot of things will work a lot of the time But not always the I think that the the hope is that you never end up having a net list You know, I mean like something where people just go online and go. Oh, this is the way you win Because that makes the game relatively, you know uninteresting Um There are so many different ways to play in different play styles that we always like to have lots of ways for you to Customize the way that things are, you know the way that your team is done From the different organizations the factions, you know, you've got 13 choices there, obviously You've got all kinds of different equipment you've got all that kind of different stuff And then as you get into the base building, you know, you've got a lot of options there And some of those options at least one of those options is not available to you unless you take this specific, you know Uh, unless you take this specific faction and then there's another bunch of like add-ons to the bases that are only available if you take this certain base expansion Then you can potentially get these breakthroughs So there's a lot of kind of branching that goes on in there and gives you a lot of variability again If you want to play if you went through the entire campaign and you want to do it again You can completely change things that'd be a very different game. Yeah, agreed Um, one thing other to note just for everybody watching don't forget to put your questions into the chat We're going to try to do our best to answer all of them If you're curious about the game down in the description, there are links for everything including atoms like very quick flyover walkthrough video I have my full bat rep listed down there I have the website itself down there where there are downloads like your Crew sheet or sorry your your um your team sheet. There you go team sheet Yeah, we were joking about this because three of our games three different groups. They all have different names your team sheet Cabals Crews and teams now. Yeah, exactly. Um, we're gonna run out of synonyms by the time we get to like game five The so everything's down there as well as to order the book all that's linked there and For the first time what we've done with the game is actually introduce a Supplementary game aid that is completely optional as well So for all of the monsters as well as all the base building there is a set of cards you can order They're really nice high quality cards. They're printed on tarot sized cards And it's so there's a there's a single pack you order it has all the monsters So stats on the front abilities on the back and then there is the base sheets And so you can just like actually physically build your base on the table and easily reference any bonuses That you have I really like having the cards. It also makes it fun to do things like oh Let me generate the monster shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle flip. We're fighting this guy As a point in fact when I ran the demo at tmx, that's exactly what I did And just to to harken back to what you said earlier about koa I had five people playing in the demo that I ran and that was just each I you know one person took Each team member right and so it was like, okay, you know, you're the commander. This is this guy This is this guy and so on and so forth, right? And so all five people just literally took their turn And it was fine. It played great. Like it felt like any kind of I don't know dnd experience or something like that, right? Like no different Okay Simon asked my hard copy. I just got shipped today very reasonable shipping cost to germany even The reason for that is because we have the company that we work with that we do the printing through It's all print on demand. So when you order it and they make it There's not they're not pre-printed sitting in a warehouse But there's a facility in the united states and there's also one in the uk So people in the uk and europe are getting it shipped there are printed there and then shipped to but not very far People in the united states canada, etc are getting it shipped closer to home We hope that someday they have one like in australia or someplace like that But for right now at least the two facilities does save on people overseas ordering as far as shipping is concerned It's considerably cheaper than yeah, absolutely. Yeah Uh walk about games said I love the 13 factions. How did you come up with them? Some are so different I'll give you the honest story here. Here you go. This is the behind the scenes director's cut footage so No offense to adam here, but he did come to me with less on this one than he has in the past As far as like like you came with rain and hell is a pretty like you had a pretty good idea of what you wanted out of it Right, I mean like I built on it some and we we we work back and forth like always But you kind of came I think you still came But you still came to me you you still came up with the the philosophies for rain and hell right right Like yeah, but I was like I think that the we do you have to have philosophy We talked about that but you're the one that came up with the six different philosophies And in this situation I was like there should be 13 factions and so You know, there you go, right? Yeah, and so in this one the honest answer is a couple times a year My wife and I go away to a bed and breakfast in Amish country. This is like a weekend vacation we do It's not very far from where I where I live And the reason I go there is because there's no internet no cell phone service nothing There is no connection to the outside world. It's fantastic And what I often do is work on the book pretty exhaustively while I'm up there Um, like cat you'll go to bed And I'll stay up for a while a couple hours three hours whatever and just sit there and in silence or listening to the same sort of song over and over again Uh, I'll work on the book and one night Back last year when we went up there in the fall I sat down and just started thinking about like, okay What would all these look like and then just started sketching out ideas, right and and writing these things up of like Who would be the reasonable Who would be the usual suspects, right? If you were trying to put together these power rovers within society And that's sort of what I came to and I think I initially cut it to the like out of the original list I created which was a little more than 13 I think I cut to the 13 that we ended up actually using in the final I don't think we ended up switching any of them out. So We kicked around the idea initially of only having 12 factions and then having the ability for you to build your own 13th faction and then we were like Let's not do that. That seems like that 13th faction could get real squirrely on us potentially. So we decided. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah And So, you know, the the 13 factions I wanted them to play very differently to have very different abilities And I think what excites me about it is for the most part when I look through there like when I'm I've obviously built multiple crews myself both in testing and then for Built a new thing for bat rep and built a new thing to run demos and on and on again And every time I'm like, I'm gonna try this one. This one seems fun And like there, you know, even though I'm the one who wrote him I'm still interested in playing them all which I think is is good So Yeah, there you go. Okay All right Okay Simon ranky page 118 and pdf the deranger enemy it speaks of clearing conditions with the psionic keyword I didn't find keywords attached to conditions. Is it meant to be a condition caused by a psionic attack? Yes, probably a good answer for a for a frequently asked question or something I'm to clarify that but yeah exactly like if the so when you're looking at an attack It will say this attack has the psionic Keyword basically in the attack. Well And It like if if it's a psionic monster and if it's a psionic it has a psionic type Yes, it'll have this the what they attack has a psionic type Correct. And so the assumption is that conditions that are granted by attacks that have that type or have that keyword Yep, exactly Anything that is a psionic labeled attack or if it's if it's an area attack It'll say at the end this attack has the psionic keyword. It'll say both one of those two things So anything that comes from there Okay, good Terrier halo said I have not checked shipping for the cards to hear but I do love cards The downside about the cards is that there's only one facility that prints the cards Uh, and I think it's here in the states and it's not the same people that do the books So Getting the cards shipped overseas. We've had some people come back and go the shipping is more expensive than the cards So it depends on where you live But just keep that in mind that the cards the other thing downside is that you can't order the book and the cards together Because even though they're both on the same website they get produced separately. It's a kind of a glitchy weird thing but The we've had to talk with the folks and they're like hoping that they could eventually fix that in some fashion But for right now, they are kind of separate. So yeah, yeah, absolutely Uh Kathy ask do you really like it when your wife comes along on these trips? Yes, dear. I love it. Absolutely I always prefer to have you along Okay Let's see Yeah, as I said put some put put any questions you've got about the game in the chat What do you want to know? We've got the game queued up over here as well. This is obviously the thing We'll just take a look here while we're waiting for some more questions to roll in And just kind of show everybody a little bit of the vibe of the book Because what I want to do here is I want to actually this was an interesting Game in our previous books We worked with other artists and people to put stuff together and images for it But as this was more of a modern setting and it had needed to have more of like a government redacted document feel to it Well Guess what? Adam did all the work. So We just piled it all on adam So adam talk about making all the art for this because you really had some creative stuff here with uh with with doing this art Yeah, I well the idea that I had in my head when I kind of came up with the game as well is also that this was going to be From the point of view of of some sort of conspiracy theorist who's been collecting Images and documents through freedom of information act or who other you know Whatever kind of weird back channels and things like that and that this would be a document about This is what majestic 13 is about So all of the the images and things like that that are in this book are not just like I mean I got most everything from stock photos There's actually a couple pictures in there that I actually took of things There's a there's a geiger counter in there that I needed a picture of for The equipment page so I just grabbed my geiger counter because of course I have a geiger counter and I took a picture of that and um, but for the most of the stuff it is either um Me photoshopping pieces together from different stock photo things from different services that I Pay a subscription for to be able to use you know, royalty free this and that the other thing But even then once I get an image then I didn't just want to go well Here's the image. I wanted to look like it was a photograph that had been taken that was sitting on top of like The texture of all the pages is to make it's got that kind of like bad photocopy texture along the edges and that's uh, you know intentional and then pretty much all the pictures look like an actual picture That is actually set on that page. There's a little bit of a shadow Sometimes the pictures the corners are little dog-eared. Sometimes there's a stamp on them and all that kind of stuff um, so doing all of that myself was It took a long time But the upside was is that as I did layout first, I mean we had the text It was all finished and proofed and everything with Tyler and also my wife and then I laid it all out and then found out where all the spots were like sometimes the section ends And it's halfway down the page in the next section I could start it on this part, but I could also start on the next page over now I have a hole this size What do I fill it with when we work with other artists? I have a finite amount of art at the beginning and I'm like, all right Well, I'm gonna have to figure this out in this situation I could always just be like, oh just make whatever I want and stick it in there to make it relate to whatever and all that kind of stuff And that worked really really well and I'm really happy with the look of it That being said it did take a really really long time And but the thing was we also didn't have that much time because we knew we wanted to launch the day before tmx So it was just a lot of like I did that from the time that I got up in the morning And then I would like, you know till pretty much near bedtime unless I had like a stream or some other thing I had to do but yeah, it was a lot of work over about three-ish weeks. I think But I'm very happy with the way it turned out and looked and I was concerned that Some of the printing might look a little weird because we had some issues with rain and hell We had to get the initial proof and then do it again because we had to go back and change some things So now on the third book I think I've got it dialed in enough that we didn't have to do a proof on You know something being too light that you can't see it or too dark that it gets all muddy and that kind of stuff So overall I'm very happy with things how things turned out and I like the look of it But the next book we're going to work with illustrators again Yeah, we've got some we've already got some people lined up for the next one very excited but Stay tuned for more on that in the future. All right Okay I can answer this one pretty quickly Califax 512 any plans on releasing stl's models for this game or taking this route for future games? So for this game, no, but we do have a blog post up right now on the Basically majestic13game.com it again link is down below in the description. The blog post is there and will And it gives you a list of like hey Here's a bunch of soldier models that we think would be good for this for from like pre-printed models and 3d printers and all sorts of stuff like that So a big giant list you can go reference and hopefully we've we've grabbed a wide selection of different vendors and everything like that from very well known Stuff to what I think pretty pretty, uh, you know small shops And and 3d printers and things so certainly we want to always help out folks who might be newer Or who might not be aware of all the models that are available out there with some easy options Now will we ever do it for this game? No, it just doesn't really make sense for us to get in the business of trying to craft soldiers or stuff like that Will we ever do in the future? Maybe if the game if the game Sort of demands it or is right for it Like if we ever do make that robot squirrel game and we're gonna have to make robots for all stl's, you know, it's true It's true. Yeah. Yeah, or if we ever make a game of um Uh sentient uh cello cases that uh, you know go into battle. Uh, we already got a guy for that actually so um Yeah tmx this weekend One of one of the attendees had uh sculpted up an entire squad of five different Guys that look like my wife's cello case back there and uh, it's a long story if you don't Um, watch the every other sunday show you may not know about nick remando back there But it's a whole thing and uh, yeah, he showed up with a squad of five of them And it was amazing and then the vince used him in the um in the demo Yeah, I used to miss the squad for the the team for the demo game Uh, unfortunately the dog died Um, but they they did win that that demo game by the way was very funny because they they defeated the alien on The last activation of the last turn it dropped to to and by one hit point It was great. You couldn't Yeah, yeah, you couldn't have that happened sometimes Uh, okay, michael millenich said can you briefly describe how the basic mechanics mechanics work? Sure So there is a video down below mic. Just so if you want to see uh, Another sort of shorter explanation you can um uncle adam's video is linked down below that walks you through Sort of the the basics of this it's also linked on the website so you can check it out there There's a there's a short sort of primary loop playthrough video, but Um, not to make people click away from this. I don't want you to do that just But i'm just as supplementary information if anyone's curious We did make videos of all this stuff so that that way people would have easy reference for it Um, how's it work? Sure in simplest form There are five sats Okay Acuity combat dexterity fortitude and psionic in general Most monsters and human psionic is zero and so you're not really worried about so you got four stats Each stat governs some basic function of the game Acuity is your sort of initiative and seeing you helping you spot enemies combat is how you attack Dexterity is your movement speed slash avoiding dexterity based conditions And fortitude determines your hit points as well as avoiding fortitude based conditions um pretty basic Way this works is everything in the game uses d20s and d6s Uh to make a combat attack roll like let's say you are a your soldier It has a gun and is going to shoot the alien monster You roll a d20 you add your combat score if that total Like your stat and that that total equals or exceeds the enemy's defense Uh, then you have successfully hit and roll your damage, which is generally some number of d6s Um, that's pretty straightforward if you roll a 20 it's a critical and you double all damage if you roll a one you always fail There are situations where you can get into states of advanced critical and where or both hit and failure Where you can successfully critical on a 19 or 20 or fail on a one or two Usually that comes from having conditions applied and stuff like that, but in the simplest form that's it To it's it's a basic stat check system. So it's using a d20 plus the actual stat the number Uh to at at some sort of target number you're rolling at that basically the you know shortest and simplest explanation Um, the variance comes in both your team because you actually roll to generate the stats of your team Like you roll dice it is a flat number plus dice So you always basically your team starts with every stat being some number between 7 and 17 as determined on 5 plus 2d6 Uh, and so you'll see variance across the team as to what they're good at and so you don't pick roles first You can sort of like assign after riddling, you know in general What I've done whenever I make teams and in my testing I was like, okay Well, here's the guy with the low combat. Welcome to being a medic, you know or something like that like instantly that guy's the medic You know, and but there's there's there are things you're doing besides just moving around and attacking when uh when player activates A team member there's sort of lots of things that you may be able to you may be able to do or want to do Including just move around the board for secondary objectives Obviously attack or try to kill the enemy Protect so that is to say like you can actually take a protect action where you're trying to shield a teammate from some kind Of damage or effect You can help them so that's you know using med kits or various and sundry equipment on them to remove conditions That kind of thing Pretty simple system of four conditions in the game two of which are dexterity base two of which are four to two base They're always locked to those things They're very easy for you to sort of get your head around and they understand exactly what's happening So you can just like you don't have to memorize 50,000 different conditions or whatever The monster might be using alien goo or slime or you know punching you through the chest with sharp needles or something But it's in the end it's going to amount to one of four static conditions. So Yeah, there you go Did I miss anything there tom? Did I miss anything? Just the the play uh root is based on um On the acuity on acuity, sorry I want to say initiative and I knew I knew that my my that was not correct. Yes On the acuity and so the sequencing is going to be based on that the activations And so there is going to be some variability depending on where the alien sits in that priority on in each any one encounter and it your general like Routine is like clearing conditions moving and then taking an action and that can be anything from like Attacking to helping team members or protecting team members or even calling for aid Um, we're moving again. Yeah or moving again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah And so like calling for aid is a special action that you can do basically once per game that has a special effect And sometimes that call for aid is to get the hell out of there. Yeah Yeah, and it's it was really important to us when designing this This is you know, something adam really hammered me on a lot in the beginning And that was making sure that like hey if we're going to do this It's going to be a sort of, you know Asymmetrical game many on one Right, it's we've got to make sure that there's lots of interesting options This is just like stand still and shoot the bad guy Right. Um, so we we really is a it's a high movement game The aliens move very far your people move very far in general like it has high movement speeds vis-a-vis the board space And that's because we wanted to feel quite fast-paced quite mobile You're moving around the board trying to complete secondary objectives trying to get to certain places You get the alien to move or not move in certain ways in response to you, you know Like standard sort of military tactics You're trying to flush somebody out of positions So you kind of move up into cover and flank him so that then the enemy will move a given direction Like those kinds of things all actually very much work and are the expected play mode in this game Because that's what the enemy AI is going to react to so sort of the more the more like a tactical You know a team of specialized soldiers you play them the better you'll do I guess effectively so Mm-hmm And so some degree that came out in play testing as well as far as the mobility and because you know Sometimes the AI early on was sort of just hunkering down a little bit And so uh, we'd spend some time on the three different types of monsters trying to figure out how to make them Act a little bit differently and do things to make it a little bit more interesting and To frankly put the teams in peril a little bit more often too. So yeah Yeah, yeah, the AI is something that um, it took a lot of work um to make sure that you it didn't get caught in loops and cycles, um because um It's a lot more difficult than you might anticipate Yeah, I think that's why so many different games are made to be just basically one versus one or two versus two When you start working on solo and co-op you have to make an AI if you're going to be playing against something And it's actually sort of a pain. So yeah, it would to make it work right. It does definitely it's definitely a thing Um waffles and joyer asks what kind of terrain setups are recommended? Um, basically we're looking at either, um Um wilderness or urban so wilderness could be woods, you know forests. It could be desert. It could be Meadows, I mean, there's all kinds of different possibilities as far as that's concerned You do want rocks, whatever. Yeah Yeah, or yeah rocky outcrops trees, you know things like that Whereas urban is going to be obviously a little bit more buildings and roads and dumpsters and scattered terrain and things like that all those yeah, and there's a high kind of Yeah, indeed indeed and there's quite a high variability even amongst the terrain like size pieces that you'll need and so um that was um Like I would just be prepared like if you don't have an entire shelf worth of terrain You'll likely need to mix and match Yeah, which is fine I tried to leave a lot of that when you generate the terrain as part of the sort of scenario generation I tried to be pretty open with it like a d3 pieces of terrain like this or like this or like this right like say, okay Yeah, anything of this type is going to work, right? So I didn't want to railroad people to be like you have to put one four by four Building there's no more than six inches tall like no no no no no we're not doing that We're never going to do that like we understand people Have incredibly varying setups and terrain is often a barrier. So we're always going to try to keep it pretty open. Yeah Uh, okay But all that to say that terrain is an intimate part of this game Like it is a like it is something that is a very important part Um, and so the game doesn't work well if you're just basically kind of out in the open You know some games can a little bit but this one. Yeah, you want to have stuff out there, right? And the ai itself for the monsters are taking into account things like cover Right. Yep. It wants the aliens want to go to cover hide and cover all sorts of different things That different aliens are going to respond to yep Uh mdb boyd said I have five unpainted blake sevens federation troop minis convenient any tips on alien minis Adam, what have you been recommending for alien minis? So i'm working on a blog post which will go up soon We have a there's currently a blog post on the news session on the swimming Badger website Which talks about the teams and the places that we vince referenced that before I'm working on a second blog post that will go up probably later part of this week That will be about aliens and where you can take a look at the aliens that i've been using the ones that you see in the video If you watch the video, those are both I think either dnd or pathfinder creatures Uh, they are from whiz kids those, you know, if you go to the game store And they got all those blister packs on the wall, although there's kind of gray primed Plastic minis. I just looked two that looked I just looked for two that looked like they could be potentially aliens And then I sprayed them with um turbo dork color shift colors because aliens are you know Iridescent why not and uh, I went from there honestly, so really I've been saying since the game since the game has launched That anything can be an alien as long as you believe in yourself So um, I think that it's important just to find right basically the right base size Most of the creatures are between 40 and 60 is what it says on the cards for them or in the stats So as long as your your creatures are between a 40 and 60 Millimeter base then you can use whatever you want now You know, would you use an orc who's got a giant axe and he's covered in furs? I mean you could we're not going to tell you obviously not to it doesn't particularly look alien per se but it depends on what your definition of alien is so um, the ones that are in the um, I mean he is the ones in the video Yeah, that's true. The ones that are in the in the um in the video I think one of them is either called a wizard killer or a mage killer He's the one that's got like kind of he's on the kind of claw feet and stuff and got the weird dreadlocks And the other one is I don't know what that guy is but he kind of reminds me of a giant frog But I painted him purple because I didn't want him to look like a giant frog Um, so yeah, honestly pretty much any kind of creatures like those if you're into 3d printing then the world's your oyster You can find all kinds of amazing things Um, but just look at something and go does this look like it's a scary kind of you know monster that doesn't look Too, you know dungeons and dragons or something like that. And then you're pretty much fine. Again, even if it's sci-fi If it's a creature, but it's got like some pseudo robotic stuff on it. That's totally cool as well. Absolutely And for for dnd I was like for dnd. My favorites were like umber hulks. Sure. Uh And stuff like that just big weird alien things carapaces Super man of those from gw things like tiranids. Yeah, tiranids would work great like, um, there's lots of options War games atlantic right now has got a series of uh, like a kind of alien bug creature things called stalkers Strikers, I forget what they're called, but they're on the uh, they're gonna be in my blog post as well Um, but yeah, they're multi-part plastics and they're great. They they're not exactly starship troopers alien bugs But they're kind of close-ish. Yeah Uh, by the way, don't forget to hit like and subscribe and do all those things Obviously normally every week we're gonna go we'll still talk about warhammer, but this week we're just talking about all about majestic 13 But don't let that not change you or yeah still hit the buttons. I don't know it still says the thing up there Buttons are fun buttons. They're fun. They're fun. Absolutely Uh, all right, uh, approximately how much time does each mission take to play out at the table? 32 45 minutes is the general average of time. It might take a little more might take a little less depending on Exactly where you are, but 30 to 45 minutes per per play session is the goal from from set up to uh, post and so The battle report that's on my channel is, you know, fairly lightly edited Like I said, I didn't cut that much out and that's about 38 minutes Right. I had already set up the board in the terrain, but that's pretty much where we're at So and that I was going to slow or to actually make it reasonable what I was doing. Go ahead Someone asked also how many missions it takes to save the earth and it's generally the the campaign if I remember correctly It's about 18 missions, right? Yes, it's about 18 missions long to save the earth and that's that's or or fail or not save the earth. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, exactly Somebody asked in there Oh, hey, what's up there? What's up chair? I see mc. I'm a little mc Excel is in the chat. What's up, Evan? Uh, he said I'm looking at the the leviathan box next to me and thinking about how good these big these big nids would be as the alien threat Oh, yeah, absolutely And as an aside, you're okay I'd say just from a soldier standpoint Um, and even some of the aliens, uh, some of my favorite ones are actually the reaper bones Chronoscope miniatures. They're cheap. They're like a couple bucks two three bucks. They have some great soldiers The imef soldiers with, you know, various military tat gear and again, you're talking two bucks a model Three bucks a model may have a number of them that are real good fits for aliens as well. Yeah, I agree. Yeah Uh, let's see Okay Mikey r asked if does the ai account for the power difference between one team of five or two If you end up playing a co-op game and you've got two teams of five Then you're usually going up against two monsters. Yeah, which is more than a linear increase in power By the way, because the monsters usually are additive to each other in very dangerous ways Especially when they start overlapping potential area attacks and then stacking conditions Yes, like things get real hairy real fast So yes, the game is meant to respond to that situation like two enemies is not One plus one scary. It's like one plus one plus one scary effectively like somehow one plus one makes three effectively So it is it is meant to respond to that that ramp and power that the players will have Uh Terrier halo said feels like majestic 13 easily be hacked into an rpg the stats are already there sure And somebody asked like are we ever going to write an rpg? Well, so first off I already wrote an rpg It's called the narrative game system. You can check it out It's the big giant picture that's usually behind me when I'm at home That's the rpg book I wrote back in 2014 or something Um, so if you like really really Which could be a that light rules. Yes Which could be adapted to the majestic 13 world Yeah, I mean if you like really light rules and very narrative focused rpgs Then this is the game for you because I promise you you're not ready for how light the rules touches in this game um But at any rate, um, you know, will will adam and I ever write an rpg? I don't know I wouldn't say anything's impossible. It's not really our focus like adam And I have the shared love of skirmish war games and it's really where we want to be And you know, as we've shown we're not afraid to incorporate rpg elements into these games campaign mode and you know The sort of progression mechanics and things like that So I would say if anything i'm more afraid of making a game that doesn't have campaign mode You know what I mean like making like a competitive style kind of game that that's way over my head because that's not how I play So, yeah Yep. Yep. Absolutely. Um, Matthew W. What major lesson have you learned from space station zero or rain and helpful that you have applied to this game? Well, that's interesting. You asked that most of the lessons we've learned are actually meta lessons so What I mean by that is it's not like the game design components. By the way, somebody earlier asked I'm sorry. I kept missing the question Somebody earlier asked is there a is there a static game design resource that I recommend like books and stuff like that? um not really unfortunately for, um For designing role-playing games. Um, there are a couple of video game Books that are pretty good. I'll link. I'll try to link those down in the show notes afterward But those are basically where you have to go. There's been lots of books written about good video game design And if you go and look at those you can oftentimes extract pretty vital lessons Mark Rosewater's famous 20 lessons for game design is sort of a good bible. It's actually delivered like a ted talk video You can just look up 20 lessons from Mark Rosewater for magic the gathering But they're most of those lessons just apply across all types of games I think rick treasly wrote a book with somebody else about designing war games He did he did. Yeah, I don't love it. But yeah Oh, I think I have it, but I don't know that I've gone that far through it. I mean, he's a he's a seminal creator I'm not trying to bash the guy like he's an incredibly creator, right? And obviously he's responsible for a lot of things He's the person who Incepted rogue trader and warhammer 40,000. Um, I just don't love that particular book But it's not bad. It's just not my cup of tea But I think that's because he has more war game focused in it And I've always looked at it as more like game game design to me is like a holistic Thing like in the end, it doesn't really matter what you're trying to design There are certain lessons you have to internalize and the rest just becomes engineering around the specifics of Of understanding what the is this for a card game or like, what's the user experience going to be? Okay Um So what did we learn? Yeah, sure lots of stuff, man. Oh my gosh We learned so much from the first few games like have a bat rep up on day one. That's a good lesson Uh, I just learned another lesson here putting this one up Listen to the entire bat rep up on youtube to make sure it doesn't go silent at minute eight and a half And you have to re Reprocess the video and re upload it when you're supposed to be driving to the airport for a flight and horribly inconvenience your wife Uh, that's that's an important lesson. I learned No, but yeah, like, you know collecting the FAQ questions is something we do consistently now having the Like our planning and launch and all of that like we've really formalized a lot of the the process that we go through Like we have a sort of standard Gantt chart, you know that we that I create of like this is when we need to be done with this thing by this date we built in You know due dates and times and and everything like that Um, a lot of the we learned. Yeah, go ahead We learned that we shouldn't have the game come out the day before tmx. That's probably not necessarily a great idea We might want to put a week in between there next year. So yeah Yeah, exactly. Um, but yeah, I mean like so a lot of the stuff is just sort of those meta lessons of like What we need to do to provide ourselves with the time the space to do this properly and provide a high quality product because that is the our chief focus like we want to provide a high quality like relatively low cost Fun experience is going to give you You know, lots and lots of hours of fun playability. That's always been the goal with our games Like deliver a great game at a great price And the iron triangle always applies, right? You can have it good. You can have it cheap You can have it fast, but you only get two out of the three, right? And so for us the part that has to be cut is fast like we want to make it good We want to make it cheap. So we know we have to take our time Um, right and and so that's that's what we've really built in a lot Like we've moved back when we start working on games way way way back how we we concept them and work them back and forth and stuff like that And we could still use more time on things like development. Yeah, sure sure which the next one we'll have I mean every time we're learning and continuing to inspect and adapt Um, like I already have the schedule for our Uh, sort of next couple projects built out um Jim Crimmins, how much did the og game ogre inspire this iteration? If at all Great question ogre sort of had a classic asymmetrical thing adam I mean, I know it was something that you're familiar with. I've never played the game is the short answer Yeah, I played the game back in the day and I have the most recent version I did the kickstarter that came in a Literally 27 pound box. It doesn't fit under the bed um But it is definitely kind of a it gave me a bit of an idea like instead of being like let's have You know a group of aliens versus a group of humans run around and fight I that part of what made me go I think it would be interesting to to have one alien and then a bunch of people fighting it or one alien And maybe a couple of sport folks or something like that was predominantly because of Um games like ogre and I don't know a ton of other asymmetric games out there But I'm sure there are some but that's the one that I know the most about so that was that was something That definitely was like I think if we headed in that direction to some degree I think that'd be kind of an interesting play experience. Yep Absolutely, and so like I I like I said, I've never played ogre, but I'm fascinated by different sort of game modes We're gonna work you'll you'll see more of that explored over time as we continue to make additional games um But this just felt like a pretty natural Sort of sort of the way to do it You know, this is the question we came and and if you look at my early notes There's a lot of like drawings and charts and things like that where I actually try to map out like graphically What a fight would look like against one monster and how do we keep it interesting and where are the like Points of high interest and low interest and stuff like that. So I'm like I try to when I'm in early concept phase I'm doing a lot of work that isn't necessarily what you would think of as traditional game design Like I'm literally drawing pictures of what I think a battlefield would look like or Something like that and like where would figures move and what's going to be interesting and how much space Do they need to have and things like that? um Okay, um, how many figs do you need for the alien force encounters? It varies but That might be a good thing for us to eventually put up a uh, a list as well Uh, so we'll we'll put together a blog post around that But in general, I want to say that it caps at what? eight Maybe eight. I think I'm looking at a bunch of them in here of a single type Um, yeah, that may be the case. It's basically three different sort of force aliens I think and then there's different numbers for each like the the toughest the biggest toughest ones. You'd never need more than Uh, two and then the middle ones. It's like four or six and then I think the littlest ones It gets up to eight at the high end encounter. I don't have the book sitting right in front of me I apologize everybody. Obviously I'm on the road But you get the pf you could go to the oh, yeah, I suppose I could uh, I do have it right here Yeah, pdf is the last page is 99 Yeah, I do have this right in front of me. How about that? I don't want to spoil anything for people. That's the issue Because they're all gonna see this as well Well, the one there on page 100. It says that that which is the number of enemies It says that there's six four strike team members per team Participating in the mission. So I haven't I haven't found one that says eight yet But then I must have been loaded six. I couldn't remember where it capped at Yeah, I don't want to spoil any of the story missions for everybody. That was my only concern there with doing it live Um, but the But the in general like we'll do a little blog post and where we'll we'll put up kind of this is this is the maximum amount of stuff You need but it's not it's not large That's probably the most fission because obviously you could play the whole game You could go have one alien fig and your five guys and play the vast majority of the scenarios and you just keep Reusing the same alien fig. I wouldn't necessarily find that compelling but who knows everybody, you know You could do three taste. There are three arc types, right? So you could do three like a certain model for each of the different arc types, right? Yeah, that's exactly right The minimum I would probably have would be eight Right, which would be your five soldiers and your one of each arc type of alien Like that's where I would start and then you know for the campaign you may need for Absolutely Okay So like let's see Simon rank. He said really like the fact that guns don't have a range really speeds up gameplay and feels more realistic Yeah, I mean we're dealing with relatively short Areas here like this is not a huge amount of space. This is played on a three foot by three foot board Somebody else asked how do we come up with that? It was just the correct size board for the amount of movement We wanted to have given the size of the aliens the size of the encounters Like that's a it's a mathematical equation effectively like We first looked at can we keep the 22 by 30? We did the previous two games on and with the sort of movement speeds we want and the way the numbers work It just didn't it just didn't actually pan out. It was too small of a space. So three foot by three became the right answer Um Now like on that kind of a space You know if you if you take a human you assume it's six foot tall like six foot an inch and you lay it sideways The types of weapons we're talking about here are lethal at At like that full distance. We are not out of lethal range even close, right? I mean effective effective being able to hit effectively with a pistol might be Potentially like half range in real world. Maybe Uh, but uh, you know, um alien technology boom that takes care of it right there. That's just that's the whole thing Yeah, especially we're doing a potentially re-tech and advanced technology. Exactly. Yeah I was listening to like a I was watching a special and there was like an interview with a sniper And he was talking about having somebody in his sights at 297 yards and he's like now I can hit a dime Under these weather conditions with this humidity at 297 yards, right? And I'm like, well, that's I mean that is a lot further than what we're dealing with here, right? And this dude's right hitting something in size of a dime So yeah, and you know, that's that's the kind of soldier that would be in this This kind of a team right that sort of dude. Okay Uh, will the cards be available as a pdf for download and local printing? Uh, I don't think we have a way to turn that on Uh, it's I think believe we can only make them physically print it I don't think we have a way that they I don't think they have a way to actually let us sell just the pdf file So I'm not sure. No. Yeah, they don't seem to We I initially I thought we could but like each pdf or sorry Each page of the pdf is a separate card And so like if you were to print them then it would take up an entire piece of paper Plus, I don't know how you double-sided Like we have to upload a specific way to them so they make it work in their machine properly But they don't have any I don't think there's any way to just buy a pdf On drive-thru cards if we can look into it again This this card deck for us was honestly kind of a a bit of a proof of concept We want to be able to see I'm not necessarily a big card guy when I'm playing I like to have my stuff on a sheet generally but other people Vince reminded me several times that I'm not everybody which is true and so We design these cards for the people who like that kind of thing and if you don't like that kind of thing We got those, you know sheets. You can download off the website But Going forward we you you very probably see more of this and so we wanted to kind of get this one underneath us and figure out Okay, how does it work? What are we doing? You know to shape what do we need to change in the future stuff like that? Yeah, so so we'll certainly look into it. I just I don't think it's a service They make available through that site unfortunately at this time, but we'll check Uh, do you have a retailer code set up for stores wanting to carry majestic 13? Adam you want to take that one on how retailers work? I Yeah, I will but I don't have it yet In the if you go to the website down at the very bottom of the footer There's the thing that says retailer portal I believe and in there there's a form you can fill out and currently it just says you want to get either Um So there's a little thing it's a drop-down that says you would like to buy reigning hell Or space station zero or get a code for both which I have to generate two codes because they're different prices So i'm going to figure out how to add to that Like is maybe someone only wants majestic 12 and space stations I'll have to make it probably radio buttons instead of a drop-down But yeah, I'm I'm going to add that very soon and then um, it'll be available for people to purchase So basically you get a code and then you buy it at a discounted price From them and then they ship it to you. Yep, exactly Uh, all right Oh, yeah, so uh, terence milter said thanks for giving an excuse to roll some d20s How did you come to choose this die roll versus the others? Well, there's a whole sidebar in there in the book that literally says why why d20s? I thought you guys only use d12 Because it was the right die for this mathematically. Um, I actually started wanting to use d12s or sorry d10s I apologize. Um, because I still wanted to throw people off the scent Um, I just like I'm a contrarian and I thought well, maybe d10s would be a fun I've always wanted to use d10s in a game. They're fun die But it just didn't work mathematically Um, when you map the way that we wanted stats to work against the variance that was necessary And so how much how can we control, you know, what's the actual? Variance that you're allotting for there vis-a-vis the enemy stats and the player stats The d20 was just the right die for creating the correct amount of variance Because you're trying to balance how much is being determined by the rng versus how much can you sort of map and you know We'll fall within a certain case. So what percentages do your success scenarios map against on average versus your failure states? Those kinds of things So it's that's basically the sort of math that we're doing and the d20 was just the correct guy for that in this particular case So tom anything else you want to say? Oh good. Good. I know some people think that it's uh, say Well, do d20s are real swingy, but you know, sometimes life is kind of swingy. You know what I mean So I don't have a problem with that either as a is a non-mather. Uh, yeah, it doesn't bother me too much. But yeah Yeah, math is the answer Yeah, like I like I don't want to belabor the point but math ultimately is going to be the end Yep, I mean and that's always where we're going to make the the decisions, right? It's not we're never going to make it because in the end like I'll start with an idea because I think it sounds cool But in the end the thing we go with will be it's the right answer for the play experience and mathematically what's going to provide the most Uh, sort of rewarding positive play experience No matter what I happen to like I like I'm not married to anything I ever write tom kills my darlings all the time and that's perfectly fine. He tells me like There's a fun moment There's I'll share a little fun behind the scenes moment actually from the previous game When we were developing space station zero. So when tom was doing the development and testing He came to me and he was like, hey, you got a problem. I was like, what's that? He's like, well, you can't actually beat this this challenge. He wrote a challenge. It's literally impossible It kills everybody instantly I was like, oops, you know, it seemed cool at the time, but you know, like that's that's why we do the development work Okay Let's see Okay Uh The front cover is too terrifying for me. I'm thinking of playing with toy story aliens the claw and green army men Yeah, I mean it is ironic that we made a game that you could actually legitimately use like green army men on as your Your sort of your figures and stuff like that and that would be perfectly reasonable Um, so they're even like basically the right size. So uh, yeah Yeah, and if you did uh toy story stuff, you could use rex potentially as in one of your as one of your aliens Alongside the little uh claw aliens and but lots of options there. Mm-hmm. Sure Uh, I'll be on fc. I just brought frost grave for the mini agnostic nature and was going to look out for a sci-fi version So I can take advantage of my monstrous 40k collection. How similar is this system? Well, I'll be honest if you want something like That's very very similar uh or a similar ish from the same creator Um star grave, right would be very good. Yeah, it would be the easy answer Not that I'm trying to talk you out of buying, you know our game. I certainly hope you do But star grave, you know does he does make star grave as well. Um Now how similar is this actually there are some some overlaps. This is the closest A sort of experience I suppose to something like frost grave just because it's using a d20 Because the way it works with stats and stat checks and things like that. So there are some some parallels there Um, you know, it is obviously also very different in many cases being that you're talking about an asymmetric experience generally So the the many against one big bad alien Things like the activations are are somewhat different in the way things activate Uh So, yeah, I mean there's uh, there's certainly very notable differences But it's it's not a completely dissimilar experience is that is the short thing I would say like it's it's uh You're in the same zip code. You're not going to a different state or anything like that Different. Yeah Okay Uh Terrier halo was roll under versus roll over ever a consideration during the design. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Yes I actually started with mechanics with making this a complete roll under mechanic game Some of my earliest initial design was exploring. Could we do a total roll under game where like the higher your stack gets The easier it gets to roll under it, right? There are various and sundry reasons why I didn't do that that runs into certain problems with Certainly like opposed interactions become much more problematic on roll under systems Because then you have to like calculate deltas of comparatives Like well, I beat it by 15. Well, I only beat it by 12. Okay. So, you know, I'm by down by 15 wins, right? There's a couple other things that get in the way, but yeah, I I did explore that like There could eventually I like roll under systems. I think they're they're a lot of fun to play around with Being somebody who learned how to do who came into gaming in 1989 playing second edition Dungeons and Dragons There's plenty of roll under mechanics in them, right? So so I'm not going to say we'll never use them, but no, I never it just didn't work for this game Okay Shadow sun or jaddo sun Does the system roll multiple dice or single few dice? I really like many dice for a more predictable distribution Okay, so in general, you're gonna like for most resolutions. You're rolling a single d20 Okay, sometimes you'll roll two and take the best sometimes you'll roll two and take the worst But I want to so it's not generally a lot of dice now damage wise It might be a higher number of dice like two three four five six dice and like that The but I want to talk about you know distribution percentages Um Unlike so the to go back to what Adam said earlier about the swinginess of the d20 The d20 is very swingy and something like d&d when you're rolling a d20 and your bonus is plus Five very common sort of to have bonus for like a first level character, right? So if you think about the size of the bonus versus the size of the variance on the die It's a pretty direct mapping like your bonus is 25 of the variance size the die, right? It can generate 20 results you have plus five. So your potential results are six through 26 right, okay now our Which the result set Only matters when then compared against what's the kind of target number you're aiming for right? So if my results are six through 26 and my successful target number is Sort of dead in the middle of that often Then it's going to feel like a very swinging experience It's 50 percent of the time i'm going to end up above it and 50 percent of the time i'm going to end up below it right The way that our stats work because you're using the entire stat So like often your bonus will be something like You know in the range of like nine to 15 Realistically could be so could be higher um In that in the bat rep for example My commander rolled like bonkers good stats and then I made him a veteran commander because he just rolled so hot Do drop multiple 10s and 11s tom and then I was like well, he's got to be a veteran. I'm up in those stats more This dude's a haas, right? um Like when you generate arnold it's you you go for it, right? He's just there in predator ready to rock and roll so The like because the size of the bonus is larger It represents a much bigger percentage of the variance space right now in the end you still have 20 potential results But then we through the development we are able to then much better calibrate What are the success states, right? So if you're ending up in a success state and a higher percentage of time and you can know that reliably Right, then you don't feel the variance is heavily. So that's what we'll say Tom what did I miss there anything? No, I mean that's like a lot of I don't want to say this um When you don't have a designer hat on or developer hat on you're not You're not reflecting on those ranges and I think that uh, it's easy to miss that it's the experience Sorry So, um, yeah, uh So the variance is much more controlled is what I'll say. Yeah. Yeah. Tom is dying. We'll give him a minute to recover Um, all right. What scale do you recommend for majestic 13 with the bigger tiered monsters? Be suitable for the aliens Uh, depends on what you mean by bigger There's quite a lot of bigger tiered nids. Some of them get like real wild But yes, most of the bigger two. Yeah exactly like if you're talking about like the giant forge roll ones That's probably too big But like most of the bigger ones in Leviathan for example, like the brain bug and the snappy snappy Four limbed guy like yes or all that stuff's fine. They're all they're all about the right size Generally, we're we're usually trying to stay within 40 to 60 millimeters on the base round And the normal scale to the game is generally 28 millimeter scale. So it's the same type of scale as something like, you know, 40 k or You know age of sigmar and lots of things that are related to that type of game I would say that you could play with say marvel characters or the new star war shatterpoint characters They're 40 millimeter So they're a bit taller But that won't bother as long as the base size to your team is about 25 to 40 millimeter And as long as the monsters are 40 to 60 millimeter, you should be fine. Yeah I want to jump in you jump you Skipped a comment from uh, dougie fresh just said he liked the idea of a kobi ashi maru Test mission where there's no win Well, dougie, let me let me encourage you that this is probably the game for you then Because depending on your roles there will be some missions that you cannot with Yeah, it is possible like a horrible bureaucracy role To end up fighting like three aliens at once and then round one You roll the foobar and you roll a 13 and a fourth a land jumps in like that is a possibility. It's statistically that is a highly unlikely That is a One in eight thousand that sound right. Yeah one in eight thousand Where that'll happen But it can happen And when that happens that is a no win scenario that is as no win as he gets four alien monsters hit the board You are dead when you back out back immediately like you call the raid run one every character calls Raiden runs and hides Well, and you choose who you're in a sacrifice, right? Like you're now running people off to try to get them like feeding them to the aliens to keep them away from the bulk Right of your soldiers for the best you're able to right because each are going to be running on different ai Yeah, yeah, and again, you've got clones back at base But again, you know when you are in the post game process and you're rolling to see well What do I got to do with clones? You're going to be in a situation Maybe you get a bad clone or there's all kinds of different things on that on that chart You got to be able to be wary of Exactly Um, all right, uh waffles enjoyer is crag knows too big to be an alien Yeah, he's on like a hundred and thirty mill base. That's probably a bit too large Yeah, realistically because you want something that can actually move around and use the terrain like the monsters ai Are going to want them to be going into terrain utilizing terrain utilizing verticality stuff like that Like there are monsters that want to pick people up and take them up to high spaces and drop them and do all sorts of other Fun things with terrain and that's just you know, they'll do that with that pipe play base, right? Like I I love a big giant, you know Play sons of Emma and haven't cried knows and love him and all that stuff. I have lots of big big base monsters Um, but no that just ends up being too large to be functional in the game Uh, so there you go. Um Okay, uh, let's see Uh dances xcom x files in real life UFO lore have been mentioned as inspiration for the flavor and lore in this game Which I love my question is this do aliens exist and are they already among us? I don't know I don't know but recent uh Recent news reports seem to say maybe I don't know who knows the world's a crazy place Uh, ancient aliens suggests they've been here a very long time Yeah, I think it depends. I was hoping I could get you to spit their events It kind of depends on what your definition of here is. You know what I mean? Like that's it's all kinds of different possible Yeah, there's I I listen to a lot of podcasts. Let's just say that sure. It's a big universe It'd be a lot of wasted if we were truly alone. Okay Uh, let's see Dr. Zefi, what was the biggest challenge when designing the game? Uh, just making all the the monsters work because you there's so many monsters There's like 30 different monsters you'll run into or the game you could count the special The the minions of force as well in there And so like actually making them all sort of function and work with the ai and the different things We wanted them to do in the different stats we wanted them to have so they felt like truly unique Encounters was the was the biggest hurdle in this game like by far Yeah, the interface of the ai which is generic to archetype With the individual abilities itself of the discrete permutations of that archetype archetype Yeah, exactly Simon Rankie is there a mechanic to leave a mission with your guys alive if it really hits the fan? Yes, so we've been mentioning this thing your your people have the option to do which is called call for aid Um, and so as many team members you want can attempt it every round But you can once you succeed in it once it you can only do it once per mission successfully And one of the options on call for aid is an evac and all your figures are immediately removed from the board and your Mission over you evac out like you're just your air ripped out of the place, right? emergency evacuation So that's the mechanic to get you out of there Um, there the other options on that call for aid are things you would expect like drop of medical supplies A drone strike, you know that kind of stuff Um, so it can be used offensively or sort of defensively or utility stuff It's generally a pretty important part of like how you use your call for aid during your mission Is going to be a pretty critical component of your success basically um We had a tom during the demo game. There was a monster that was like just above He was getting down, but it was getting late in the game And they called for aid Finally got it off like took him a couple times where they got it They got the call through called on the drone strike needed to roll three Rolled the one On the hit failed the drone strike. They still got him down to their credit. They still got him down But yeah, it can happen. Things can go wrong Uh And and things can go right as well Um, like I think about the sniper. Sure. Um option within uh bureaucracy. Yep. Um Uh where sometimes you'll have unexpected help. Yes. Uh now It's on it's uncommon. Let's be honest. It's uncommon, but it can happen. Yep. Absolutely Uh Jesse Lee, uh, is the single use gear single permission or is a once and done and get a new win next mission once and done You gotta get a new win next mission Is it's powerful use it's powerful stuff, but it it that's it use it once and then it's done So you kind of you requisition it over time. It's it's generally not something I would expect people to take as part of their starting Uh, sort of gear allotment In general, although it can be perfectly fine if you do But it would be the type of thing you would certainly want to requisition over time because it can be a powerful thing to have in Your pocket and use when you really need it when you run into the tough mission and suddenly have to to dig deep Um, if you're a d&d player, you would recognize this in like potions and similar sorts of You know scrolls and stuff like that when you got to dig in deep into the like oh crap bag Uh of tricks to get yourself out of a bad situation Right Okay, uh Aaron gudge if you get bad clones. Do you ever get good clones? Yes I'll just say that I'm not gonna say any more to it. Oh, we got a visitor Oh, speaking of aliens Uh creatures among us there, um the I love that that's where the cat wants to be this exact minute right there Yep on top of the computer Um Yeah, so like in both the death and injury mechanics and in the cloning mechanics There are all sorts of different, uh Good and bad things that may occur when you're dealing with Weird alien otherworldly stuff Things will oftentimes turn strange fast. That's what I'll say Uh, there are many unusual outcomes both positive and negative in the death and cloning chart So there you go Uh, cool. All right. Very good. Uh, let's see. I think I've got all the questions that they that are currently asked So, uh, waffles enjoyer said yes cats are the aliens. There you go Mm-hmm There you go. Jesse leases my very first mission. I foobard a 13. Captain Crawford's no good very bad day Yes, indeed right there getting that second alien on your first mission out is rough That's not good. Uh, yeah, it's it's a thing that'll happen a little more likely like that that as I said over the course of the campaign I would expect that to happen a couple times rough if it's your first time out. That's that's gonna be a tough crew Um, all right Cool. If anybody has any other questions, feel free to drop them in there Like I said, don't forget to hit like and do all that. Hey down below are the links for everything If you're interested in the game, want to check it out Additional videos are below including the bat rep including Adam's walkthrough on the tabletop menu channel as well as our site Which has the primary loop overview video on it As well as the all the links need to be to for to pick up the product Just I haven't said this yet. It's worth saying I suppose Um, the pdf itself is only 14 dollars But you can also get the book and the pdf for 19 dollars and for the first time We have our completely optional supplementary game aid the cards We contain all of the monsters and all of the base building. Um, and those are I don't remember what those are adam those 19. Is that right? Those are $18 I believe 18. Okay. I think that's right. Yeah. Yeah, really should have known that off the top of my head Yeah, $18. Yeah. Yeah. Um, this adam and I good catalyst as always can't even remember Yeah, we've we've I mean well, we've not done cards before so there's that but it's also You know, we were kicking around the ideas like this book is 20 Pages longer than the last book So the first book ran it ran in hell was like 64 pages. The second book was like 124 pages Space station zero. This one was 144 pages So we didn't want to raise the price a ton because it but we kind of had to a little bit Um, but we do focus on specifically keeping things Accessible, um, we've had people ask We had a guy actually at tmx this week and ask he's like, well, why not hardcover? And we're like is it like nearly doubles the cost, you know And we've had people ask about color too and that double not doesn't it might double the cost But then it also makes artwork more expensive and it makes layout a whole extra thing kind of and all that stuff So yeah, we um, we err on the size of accessibility and keeping the price cheap Yeah, it's not that I wouldn't love to let people have a hardcover It's more that just like it would probably go well over $30 for the exact same book You know, it ended up being like a $35 $36 book at least at least Yeah, and it's the exact same stuff inside and I would just feel like perfecting people off Like we wouldn't be making any more money We're just making people throw more money away on the same content and that just it just doesn't feel good to me Like I and people can spend their money however they want, but I'm like geez That's that's just like if somebody didn't know and just click that button accidentally I would feel terrible They would think they were buying like the more special edition is like nope same stuff same 144 pages inside Just just a hardcover of money with cover. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I am Terrence Mildner says primary setting urban woodlands ruins. Um, so actually The answer is urban or wilderness and you generate that at the start of every mission So the very first thing you determine is the geography And that is either a urban or wilderness mission that you're on and that has some very minor mechanical effects over the course of the mission and That also then will be derivative of like the terrain that's available for that Now if you are very limited in the terrain you have Let me just tell you right now and I think I say this in a sidebar as well Don't ever feel like you've got to like we're putting an onus on you to do a certain thing I I know we have a cyber on this use whatever terrain you've got if if you are Urban setting is full of like trees and hills and you know stuff like that great You're playing you're having a fight in central park like Fine, you know, you can people have city or parks in the middle of cities. They're full of green things I'm okay with it right still an urban setting Um, I don't think anybody's gonna argue central park in new york isn't still an urban place, right? So so you do you make your terrain whatever you want based on what you got I don't want you to go out and have to spend hundreds of dollars on terrain or something silly like that Yeah, yeah We I mean we were using Kind of I don't want to say it was 40k terrain. We were using stuff from uh battlefield in the box um At the demos that we were doing, you know at tmx But they they don't look like super gothic But they don't also just look like you know the type of buildings that you would have in like marvel crisis protocol either But I mean again, there's so many different options out there and again You don't have to use any of them if you don't want to you can make stuff out of cardboard You can have stuff that you already like to use and just keep using that as well. Yep, exactly Uh, all right very good. Will there be a hobby cheating for painting men in black? You know if I was smart, I would align these things better and do like a hobby video that would related to To the game we release. This is again, we're just very bad at this Yeah, I know I I because I painted up those guys that are in the video and I'm like, yeah I probably should have made a video about it. It's it's honestly not hard like the guys that I did It was just I primed them black and then I zenith all them from above with like a dark gray And then I went in and just painted some details and skin and stuff like that and whatever dry brush some guns a little bit It's pretty Low impact and the reason like the idea behind this whole concept of that the majestic 13 troops Always have a tendency to be wearing either dark gray or black like, you know, military fatigues A it kind of is that sort of men and black sort of thing, right? But also the fact that they're wearing military fatigues If the public sees them which we do reference in the book There are times when the public sees you and that kind of stuff and that has effects on things the way they work um You know, they'll just be like, oh, uh, well if they tell some else later I don't know. They're just military dudes in like dark, you know Fatigues and they had like what looked like regular guns, but they weren't regular guns Yeah, they don't know that if you throw it up in some sort of crazy sort of gear That people would see them and they'd be like vats and they don't have that little thing Like they do in the men of black movie where they can like blank your memory and stuff like that So you have to be a little bit more wary But then again, it just makes it very easy for you the player to just go out and get some regular military folks Paint them gray or black and go to town. Yeah Exactly Uh, how was tmx hope lots of fun. Oh tmx was great. It was absolutely fantastic Uh, would recommend 10 out of 10. I hope everybody's there next year We're going to do some more painting classes and stuff there like we did this year. That was a tremendously Successful and just a lot of fun had a head what do we have like full class basically all all day and All six. Yeah, there were six There were six classes, uh, two from ninja and two from vince and two from sam lens And there were 16 seats in each they sold out a couple weeks before the show and I would say that as far as paid Like tickets and stuff like that. I think there were 78 people who attended Not including because some of the people who came to the classes didn't come in and play or anything like that So they didn't need to get a badge for the convention if they didn't want to but some of them did as well So it was probably more than 78 But that was the number of actual tickets like sold and stuff like that. So yeah, it was a great time Uh, we're gonna do it again next year. As Adams said, we'll probably split up the game release in tmx by by about a week That way we're not uh, that way we're not killing poor adam in the days leading up to that The launch but overall was good By the way, if other people have questions drop them down in the comments below Well, we'll keep answering those questions here for at least a few more minutes and But overall it was uh, it was a lot of fun. It was great to introduce the game to everybody To play through, you know, a demo and take folks through it answer people's questions as as they were there So yeah, it was just it was just a good time good time hanging out with everybody. Good to see sam and john Obviously, so we had a we had a ton of fun. Um, yeah Um, did you aim for a win percentage for the players like 80 percent over a campaign? terrier halo asks, um No, uh, not really Because the way your experience works is actually structured slightly differently Um, what I mean by that is there's not a hard Uh requirement for advancement for team rating on a victory condition Um, I expected there to be missions that were quite bloody where you often were ruling for death and injury on a lot of people Um, the way the experience works is it's like you can advance your team rating and still gain some experience um, even when you quote unquote don't kill the Bad guy as it were like to put that in the simplest terms possible. Um, it's not like there's not a hard failure state for this Um, well, I shouldn't say it. There is a hard failure state. It's your entire team gets wiped Um, but that's it. That's what it takes, right? You have to go that bar And so it's a pretty forgiving hard failure state. We actually so the way we handled this was instead of just making it like this very binomial Victory or loss and like you lose everything or you gain everything setting We pushed it way apart So that most the time you'll end up falling in the middle where you don't completely fail and you achieve, you know Some part of victory and and you know now you're just trying to run up the score, right? Like how much bonus can you achieve? Like yeah, you killed the guy. Did you kill him fast enough? Did you keep civilians from seeing it? Did you you know do these other elements of these other things? Did you complete your secondary objectives? How good did you do it? Right that kind of stuff? So like there's quite a variance in quote-unquote what success looks like I just found that to be more compelling than just saying like win or lose You know in a right in in a competitive game You kind of have to have a hard victory conditioning. It's you know Tom and I are playing aos or something You know, it's generally a good idea in most competitive games to have some concept of who actually was the winner, although I Not as necessary for me, but I think most people like that right like at the end even then yeah In those types of games you've got secondary objectives And so it might be it to the to the untrained eye it may look as if person a1 In a game like that, but actually because of victory points in this and that maybe person b actually won You know, it kind of depends Uh, as long as you don't get tabled or whatever, but um, but yeah with this kind of game being predominantly You know solo and co-op and everything and also being also designed to be played as a campaign We're definitely looking at it from the aspect of You know, they can't all be bangers You may not completely absolutely 100% win, but you also don't necessarily 100% lose. That's exactly right um Cascadian would star grave miniatures be good for this Um, yeah, probably some of them might be a little sci-fi but but a lot of miniatures should be perfectly fine for this Yeah, I mean I swear we I I'm 98% sure we mentioned them in the blog post. Those are the north star military figures ones I mean some of the head some of the heads in those boxes are alien heads and you could use them on your force models potentially Um, I'm going to be probably taking some of those alien heads from the star grave boxes And then just putting them directly on like old school not primaris But like the older like, you know space marines like normal like first born tack marines And then like boom, you've got some force people. You got to give them an alien head and like power armor and you're ready to rock Um, but yeah, no those there's a bunch of different models from that north star figures line that I think would work fine. Um Again, there are some things that they carry that might be a little bit too sci-fi, but it's totally up to you Yeah Jesse lead you aoe attacks originating from the alien wrap around corners If my teammates are not within line of sight of the alien But are otherwise eligible will the ravager a I decide to do aoe attacks great question This is actually something that came up earlier today that I'm going to include in the FAQ for for clarification Because it's it's there in the rules, but it's kind of like not as clear as it should be So this is one of those things that's like for clarity. It's not a change to anything Um, the answer is no it won't like because anytime you're determining a ranged attack You have to check line of sight and if there if the thing is outside of line of sight be that because it's You know behind a wall or hidden or anything else that could trip up line of sight Then it will then that is not counted as a viable target, right? So regardless of the fact that it happens to be an area attack doesn't change the fact that it still has to check line of sight like if the The if the alien's not aware. They're there. It's not aware. They're there, right? That's basically what it comes down to so Yep, still still satisfies them. It has still has to satisfy all all line of sight rules for for area ranged attacks Okay All right So sounds like a good chance to use different monsters that aren't seeing much use in other games Yeah, absolutely because anything can be an alien just I agree with that if you believe in it enough Just like whatever you can imagine Is there a rough min max number range of monsters over the campaign length to squeeze them all in? Well, you're gonna play uh about a dozen Over the course of a full campaign you're gonna play about a dozen Sort of programmatically generated scenarios And so that's you know, 12 different aliens there and then you've got the members of force that you'll fight Which is generally about another dozen miniatures total. So like if you really wanted something different for everything You know, you'd be talking about About that many Total yeah If you wanted to have like there are 26 monsters in the game So if you wanted to have a model for each one of them available at any given time Depending which one you might have to play. Well, they're 26, but that's a lot and it's not necessary Um, like like vince said earlier, you could just use the same monster over and over again If you really wanted to there's nothing wrong with that Or like tom said you could have three different monsters because there's monstrosities ravagers and stalkers Yep So, um, I keep on and say skulkers and I know that's not the right word, but um Yeah, so I mean, you know and Again, we we didn't go through really and go Here's what the monster looks like because a that would have taken a lot more work on our part and b We want you to make the monster what you think it looks like and or maybe just what you have available I think it's scarier with just the description too because then it's whatever's in your mind, right? It's like a shark under water Um cam b wait, did you help develop this game? Do you have a connection to it or just like it as a player? Oh, no, we made this game So cam this is uncle adam and I and tom was the developer for this This is our game from starling badger studios uncle adam and ios game studio. This is our third game So, yeah, this is this is it just to refresh for everybody who's new I know I saw a lot of people, you know joining in overtime. It's majestic 13. It's our new game. It's launched. It's available now It is an asymmetrical covert skirmish game where you play a team of Five soldiers basically who are part of the faction within the majestic 13 13 factions Who are trying to defend the earth from alien invaders and monsters? Yeah, so there you go Waffles and jurors said war games atlantic ura box has many that look like good candidates for men in black I think adam you use those guys That's what I used if you watch the videos and you see my guys fighting against the aliens and the stuff Those are guys those are ura models from um From yeah war games atlantic they they work perfect because they're They they their bodies look for the most part relatively kind of normal and their weapons They're not necessarily m16s and ak 47s and stuff like that But they're not like out of the realm, but they're just a little bit more futuristic And so they worked out great actually those are those are also in the blog post on the news site On the website that Mentioned I think I might have mentioned them first because I think they're nearly perfect But you know again any kind of modern e military looking people as long as you paint them gray or black You'll you'll be fine. Yep And again, don't forget link down below is everything you need So the link to the full battle report the primary loop overview and the actual website where you can buy both the game And the optional supplementary cards Okay, uh waffles and jurors said can you fail every mission and still finish the game? Uh, what's the what's the statement tom? What's the what's the what's picard statement? It's possible to Do nothing wrong and still fail that is not Yes That's not something yeah, it's it's possible to do everything correct and still lose There you go. Yes, that's not failure. That's life something like that. Yes, sure. Yeah yeah but The answer is Sure to a point like if you mean fail remember the hard failure state is Everybody in your team dies like you get wiped Okay, one that's pretty unlikely like the game has some challenge to it, but my god. It's not that um, I mean Sometimes it is Um Again, because you just can't you can't account for the random the randomness of both the fubar and the bureaucracy. No Yeah, that's like the way those do things. Yeah, yeah But it's not like that's gonna be every mission. There will be some technicians There will be some missions that you happen to be actually probably play a lot easier Because your team is well set up like however you happen to construct your team alien shows up and they just got on the wrong train um Like it's just incorrect choice alien and you're just gonna beat it into the ground like uh There's uh There were some some play test games I played where like just that nature of the team I built some sort of more skewy teams and You know some of those skewy teams they'll run into certain aliens and just rinse the floor with them But then they'll walk into a different alien and it's there on the back foot immediately, right? So you have to be careful like a more balanced team as usual is going to give you there There was one mission Where I can uh, wholly Attribute my victory To a sniper combined with an airstrike that was hyper effective Sure It was the combination of the and like Like my team itself did almost no damage over the course of the of the, you know the multi-round encounter, right? Um, and I would not have one period had, you know, those died had that dice not cut my my way Sure, so that just happened sometimes Yep But yeah, that's the point like that's really what failure is is getting wiped So could you could you fail quote unquote to kill the monster and so progress over the course of the campaign? Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Yeah, like that's very reasonable, right? Um, you know, you still drove it off or whatever, but you didn't have to eat back and so on You lived to fight another day like another team is going to get called in and hopefully go clean up your mess, right? um And in that sense like any given Like there's basically three tiers of Like this is not a win or a lose setup because You can like one status or one one result. Let me say it that way is that you can kill the monster One result is that you don't kill the monster, but you still have a functioning team Right, and then the other result is Everybody gets wiped and that happens too. Yeah Absolutely. So a couple of a couple of questions here Um, Terrence Milner said the quote is you can make no mistakes and still fail. Yes, exactly. Okay Do we have any do you have any comparable game to help me frame the general experience? If you're familiar with other miniature agnostic sort of skirmish games or then this is going to be in the same sort of thing You're piloting around five figures. You're generally fighting one enemy except in the special missions when you might be fighting multiple Uh, so it is a very it's unusual in that there aren't a lot of asymmetrical games like this out there Where you're sort of, you know multiple on one Um, but any any like even our previous games, it's you know, primary loop wise It's quite simple as far as how the math works. You're rolling a d20 adding a stat and then hit trying to hit a target number That's the majority of the the math you have to do, you know Does the d20 plus this number equal this number? So try to keep it very simple. Um, it plays pretty fast Uh, but there's a lot of movement. It's a highly mobile game that kind of thing Like you will be moving around the board a lot making a lot of different choices and actions reacting to what the monster does All of the aliens work on uh, AI. So they're all going to basically want to go do certain things In their activations. Um, the aliens will always activate multiple times In any given term and sometimes they might activate again Depending on each of them all all the different alien types have like a trigger that will make them activate again And so whether or not that gets tripped Can vary So, you know sometimes you can you can hold the monster to basically two activations Sometimes I'll get three and there's a big difference in a turn where they get three activations versus a turn where they get two activations Uh, because alien monsters are very strong and very powerful So it's about you know, using like smart play and teamwork and understanding what's going on and sort of acting tactically to to Minimize your potential losses basically Because the aliens are dangerous Um clavac, this is an interesting question. I want to ask ask this of everybody actually A lot of this makes me think of stargate the alien of the week the soldiers with alien guns Was there a reference or were you fans of the show? All right, so this is this is a legitimate question I want to ask everybody first of all the correct answer is this is the fog gate and I have no idea I've never even heard of that television show Which is I'll leave that out there for folks to get or not My answer is no, I watched the original stargate movie and that was it. I never watched the television show Which is a shame because I like my diver. He was pretty cool, dude, but I never watched the show and he was in it Tom did you watch stargate? Nope My dad did You say that like you're not an old man like me like you're some young kid No, like I mean, I know Uh, adam, what about you? Did you watch would you've watched the stargate? I saw I watched the movie Which I enjoyed and whatnot and um Though I do frequently get the beginning mixed up with the beginning of fifth element I don't know why that is but in my head sometimes it gets The whole when there is a z's light and all that kind of stuff And I was like telling somebody about there recently like that's the fifth element. That's not stargate. I'm like, oh, yeah That's right. No, that's not the same thing at all But uh, I never watched the show. No, I mean, I'm aware of it I know that it was long around for a quarter while, but I never I never did watch it Yeah, it's sort of in the cultural zeitgeist, but yeah, none of it was was our Apparently it's not none of our cups of tea. I guess. Yeah. Yeah, so there you go Um, I mean Kurt Russell and James Spade or whatever right in the movie. That's great. Yeah, yeah Okay, um, what was your favorite part of the development cycle? Uh, boy, that's a tough question I mean, I really do like writing games from from stem to stern. It's fun. And we have a very sort of rigorous process that goes from creation of the initial guiding principles that that govern the rest of design Down through outlines build outs write ups Uh detailing and then final fleshing out and then into formal development and editing So we use a pretty standard game design process um But you know, I think in this game Writing out the like the factions and the bases. I think for some of my favorite stuff It was just fun to picture like how these people what they started groups and how they operate. I don't know Adam. What do you think? What was your favorite part? um I do enjoy The the visual design part. I mean, that's kind of my my area in the situation and I I you know, like We work really closely early on in in like coming up with a concept and all that kind of stuff and then Once it's the ball is kind of more in vince's court Then you know, we meet every week usually on sunday nights and then kind of go over what's you know What's gotten done this week and all that kind of stuff and and bouncing You know, there's ideas bouncing off idea off of each other So I like the collaborative effect of even when in the kind of the mid parts where I'm not necessarily super involved in that kind of stuff But we do collaborate back and forth and then go. Oh, well, maybe this is you know, that kind of thing Or does this feel right and all that kind of stuff? um And then later on once that's everything's the text is locked down and edited and everything's happy and then for me Going into layout mode and all that kind of stuff and if it's if it's a normal game unlike this game At that point usually the artwork's already done like while the development is going on and even the the late design I'm working with whoever the illustrator is or whatever to get that stuff taken care of like our Our game last year came out in late August and in early june is when we started getting our first couple of illustrations from the illustrator, so I mean we were at tmax vince and I and I was showing him some stuff that he was sending So, um, you know, that was a little bit later than we would have liked But it was due to all kinds of other circumstances We are now trying to stick to a bit of a tighter schedule as far as launching in the late part of may early part of june depending um, so Like I'll be talking to the illustrators Very much sooner this time than last but the the tweaking I think is interesting too Like we did rain and hell we learned things from that. We did space station zero. We learned things from that We've done majestic 13 I would like to think that we've learned things from that and you know eventually we're going to get you know So that it's maybe a little bit less, um We don't have to learn as much let's say maybe that's the case, but I think we'll always be learning something. Yep Okay, um doctor Go ahead and drop your final questions in we'll bring this to a close here in just a few moments because it's getting very late Where I am and I do want to make sure I don't keep my uh, my very forgiving wife up to eight here um, so Uh, so drop any final questions you got in and we'll wrap up here in just a few minutes Don't forget every of the links for everything down below including the primary loop full bat rep everything like that's down there as well As to buy the game $14 to the pdf alone $19 for the pdf plus the book and also the optional cards that contain all the monsters and bases are 18 bucks You can find all that in the links down below And hit like and stuff too while you're just clicking buttons while you're clicking around on there hit that button too Uh, let's see. What was the guiding principle for this game besides aliens? Yeah, I mean sort of alien combat covert That oftentimes ends up looking a bit like a word cloud. Um, I think this one had asymmetrical skirmish was part of it Right. That was one of our guides. Well, I don't have it right in front of me. Um, I think in there I had like Uh, something about mobility or wanting to feel pretty dynamic Uh, was was in the guiding principles like everything should feel very mobile and stuff like that Like I wanted the monsters moving a lot the players moving a lot like having freedom to actually explore verticality and stuff like that so It's it's really good to start with something like that like with um, rate and hell It was like fast brutal hand-to-hand combat like that was kind of part of the initial Kind of group of words and with space station zero. It was about exploration survival stuff like that. Um, you know, and so It what happens is when you have those things that you hold on to when you use the design If you all of a sudden start to veer off course, you're like does this still Stick to what we were starting with or not and then you make a decision about well, maybe the game has Evolved or maybe you're just getting off track and you need to bring it back in again. Yep. Yep Uh, all right I'll be on fc if you had to grade the scenarios for fluff 10 being more hammer fantasy role play and one being monopoly Where would you put the average mission in the game? Well, they're broken up into two types of missions So there's sort of programmatically generated missions, which honestly don't have a lot of story to them I mean it is monster the week you're out there killing a monster. So it has whatever story you assign to it Right. I don't know if I call it monopoly. There's certainly something happening because you're still generating bureaucracy Which will very much and heavily potentially influence the mission and what exactly is going on You're still generating a foobar event, which is a very narrative infuse thing of like something goes wild in the middle of the mission Right So like those things all still Are there in part of the game, but it's not as story driven. It's it's more like there's a bad guy Some weird things are going to happen. You will be able to tell a story, but it's more emergent storytelling than it is like Planned storytelling then you have the actual special missions, which are effectively story missions This is where force comes in and takes a hand, right? And so this is the alien intelligence behind that That's much more story driven. So there there's a very distinct story that's happening and it's you know, you're being ambushed They're setting you out your mate. You're meeting a specific alien character Your base is being attacked like it's things are happening that you will feel the progression in the story of as this is escalating Yes I would say that our games generally if we were if one was monopoly in 10 was warhammer fantasy battles I would put us at maybe a solid two and a half in most situations Like we're not here to write to tell a story too much, you know, like in the actual book itself Which I have set right here The actual story the fluff at the beginning of the book is well, there's this page here And then there's another page Here and then there's another page here and then that's pretty much it again The special missions will tell you kind of like what's going on and give you a little bit of story there But we're not here to there's admittedly fluff as well about each of the 13 factions, but very short. We're not Not we're not like games workshop where we're going to write a 400 page book and 370 pages of it is going to be fluff as we're just not that's not kind of what we're interested in We want you guys to make up the story and then go. Oh, this is cool And it sparks something and then it makes your headcanon fire off or whatever Yep, in the end we always want to rely on sort of emergent gameplay emergent storytelling, right? Yeah, okay What's your favorite alien enemy and why? Oh boy That is a tough question. There are a lot of enemies. I really really like honestly the one I used in the battle report is pretty fun So it's the navite warrior I'll I'll see if anybody can guess what exactly the navite warrior is paying homage to many of the alien monsters are Let's call it subtle references to existing aliens in other media But you know, it's it's subtle But I'll see if you can tell what the navite warrior is supposed to be a reference to Or or a light homage to But yeah, that's he's one of my favorite for sure In general, I do like a lot of the stalkers though as well They act really weird and they're very unusual And what they'll try to do there are a couple fun ones The terraformer is a particularly fun weird Alien. Yep. Yep. The terraformer was going to be my pick. Oh, okay. Sorry, Tom. Yeah No, you're good. You're good. You're good. No, it's good. Uh, I like and I just I loved, um, uh Creatures aliens that that gave, um Unusual play experiences. Yeah, right and and the terraformer would be one. Yeah, for sure for sure Uh, yeah, okay. Very good. I think we've gotten to the end of the questions Jim Krimmins, how many robots worlds will the next game have zero? Still zero, but hold out hope Jim. It could happen someday Thank you very much. Ray. Thank you to everybody who asked questions. Don't forget All the links down below everything you need to purchase the game Don't forget to hit like Uh, if you've got us questions, you can hit us up on twitter You can also join a discord. Um, there is a discord to support all Uh, snarling badger studios games. You can also find just go to Like yeah, if you just go to snarling badger snarling badger.com and then up in the header There's going to be a little discord icon. You can click on that. They'll take you right there Yep, great community for people who are discussing the game sharing their hobby Um, you know asking questions if they have any so and and I'm there watching that basically 24 hours a day Uh, so like I'm always ready to be there and help, but if you've got questions hit us up Uh, we're really excited about the new game. We hope you're you found this, you know fun And and exciting. We hope everybody has a fun playthrough I've already seen people sharing their hobby of like going through some initial missions and stuff like that and having a great time So that makes me very happy We're gonna we're gonna keep Trying to make great games that are a lot of fun and provide hours and hours of good experience at a low cost That's that's our our mission statement our goal and we're gonna keep at it So thank you all so much really appreciate you watching Hit all the buttons as always We'll see you next wednesday