Stage 3 of the Kickstarter has been fulfilled, the supply chain has received their order forms for the new releases and should be available at many major retailers the first or second week of February. MSRP and kit details can be seen on my retail site. Current Retail Release:
4 New 28mm scale kits that are sure to please...
•Keilerkopf APC
•Valkir Heavy Troopers
•Valkir Assault Troopers
•Valkir Support Troopers
9 New 15mm scale kits!
•15mm Scale Leviathan Mortis
•Eight, 15mm Scale Weapon Arms for the Crusader and Mortis
Upcoming releases:
There is another shipment that is expected early to mid-March for the Command Squad, the Panzerjager, the Thor and Odin/Loki kits. I am anticipating an April retail release for these four kits.
Wall of text and eye candy incoming….
Sooooooo what’s next?
Two more kits for the Eisenkern faction to round out the force selection. I think we have the Infantry component pretty much filled, between the Basic trooper sets, the Valkir sets and specialty sets like the Panzerjager and support weapons set, we can get a pretty balance force. The glaring hole in the faction is the armor section. We have a super heavy slot filled by the Leviathans but nothing in the light and medium armor selection.
The APC is a bit of an odd duck, armored like a main battle tank, it lacks offensive punch. The Thor adds that but it is a one shot per game weapon as the reload times are simply too long. The Odin Loki does a fine job of adding sustainable firepower but the open top is a severe weakness. If you run around without an infantry escort or a vanilla Keilerkopf to provide protection, feral Shadokesh can easily scramble up the sides of the vehicle and make short work of the crew.
The two kits planned to round out the force selection are, a light walker, about 3.5” tall (you can see it under the foot of the Leviathan Mortis in the box art for that kit). This will be the light armor choice. The medium armor slot will be filled by the StuG, both hover and tracked (pictured on the Valkir 20 man box set). Before you ask, there is not a release date set for either of these kits yet, these will likely be released at the tail end of the Shadokesh releases. I hope to release an accessory kit for the Valkir and eventually the Shadokesh as well as a modular building set similar to what you have seen in the Mortis box art.
Both I and WGF are quite eager to begin work immediately on the Shadokesh. As the backlog of Kickstarter work they took on is finally coming to its fruition, there will be time for them to dedicate energy towards the next set of releases in a far steadier and less pressured manner. This will make it much easier for us to start planning regular quarterly releases.
Shadokesh Preview: The Shadokesh are the second faction for the ‘ICU’ Iron Core Universe. Brutal and efficient, their gaunt frame towers in at roughly 9’ tall. I have been reworking the base model for the Shadokesh trooper as the Shadokesh and Handler did not come across as strong as I had wished. After much tweaking I am happy with the base model pictured here. These are still a work in progress but I should be able to get these over to WGF fairly soon. The CAD program I use does hard surface modeling with ease but organic items like their hands and the fabric are better dealt with in Zbrush. These have not been through the Zbrush process yet, so the fabrics rough form is blocked in but the details and small folds have yet to be added.
The Iron Core Game: ICU-Ion Core Universe
Robey Jenkis over at Precinctomega has been working with me over the last year to come up with an enjoyable game that allows the use of massive models like the Leviathan to play well with all those squishy infantry and not rule the table. He delivered an innovative system that deals with that very challenging problem. I like it, I like it quite a bit. I had an opportunity to play a few friendly games and the resource system works as it should to help balance the uber vs. the squishy.
Robey delivered the core system; unit selection, movement, morale, combat, and turn sequence. Based on my experience, there are some tweaks I would like to make and some areas I will actually be attempting to incorporate even deeper into the system than Robey had done initially. Without going into too much detail, there is a resource management aspect that is key to the game but it was troubling me, it felt like an aspect that was clunky to track as it needed to be managed turn to turn. My intent is to integrate this even further, making it part of the decision making, activation and reaction system, removing it mentally and structurally from the status of a ‘trackable item’ and interweaving it into the game play so that it feels and plays like an integrated part of the game play. That is my hope at least….
There are other rule sections I need to put flesh on, campaign rules, vehicle and unit design rules, rules for generating your own ‘Household’ within the Eisenkern faction. As buildings are on the list of kits I will need to develop rules for that aspect as well, to make terrain an integral part of the experience.
I have a new forum, I still need to add content to so I am not quite ready to post the link. I will use this forum for rules discussion and play testing feedback.
For those of you who have been following this process for some time, you know that I have had two other forums, both died horrible deaths due to database corruption at the hands of the hosting service. I have moved away from that host and signed with one that is experience with forum maintenance, which performs daily backups. Hopefully we will avoid the wasted time and energy associated with a corrupted database. When it is complete, when I have content and am ready to open the game to Alpha testing I will post here again with the address.
Thank you again for all your support.
Mark-
