A SHOT FROM THE GUNTOWER: Pandora, Pirates and Daggers & Diplomacy
- Guntower Mike
- Mar 25
- 6 min read
So Peeps, busy times and lots to tell. TL;DR in a nutshell, over the last month we…
Started mass production of Pandora Celeste, due to finish at the end of March.
Sorted out the storage solution for Pandora’s minis, which keeps everything in Pandora’s box (see what I did there? 😉)
Revealed the upcoming Pirates & Salvage expansion for Pandora Celeste
Decided on a name for our new dastardly dealing 4X game, Carta Imperia: Rise of Rome
Had a great time demoing both games at Airecon 😁
To find out more, read on! If you’re here for Carta Imperia, scroll down to the bottom of this newsletter – but you’ll be missing out on Pandora Celeste if you do…😯
PANDORA CELESTE – Printing & Shipping
As you know if you’ve been reading our Gamefound Updates, mass production of Pandora Celeste is now in full swing! 🥳
We are on schedule to finish printing at the end of March and if all goes according to plan, the boxes will be ready to ship in early April.
If that is the case:
Australia & New Zealand will be fulfilled in April.
USA will be fulfilled by in May.
UK/EU & the rest of Europe will be fulfilled in late May/early June.
But as I have told you guys many times before, no plan ever survives first contact with the Shipping Schedule, so I won’t be holding my breath until the boxes are actually on the ship and heading your way. Even then, the chances of the games reaching the UK in time for UK Games Expo remain unclear as things stand – it all depends on shipping lanes and customs delays.
All I can tell you is that we really want the games in the UK in time for UKGE and we are doing everything we can to make that happen. We’re monitoring the situation closely, and when we have a clearer idea of when the games will make landfall we’ll let you know.
No matter what: we are still well on schedule to deliver to everyone on or before the June delivery date we promised in the campaign.
With that in mind, we are extending the Pledge Manager until Sunday 30th March, when it will lock for shipping & fulfilment. So if you haven’t yet filled in your shipping address, please complete the PM asap. We can’t send you your game unless we know where you live 😉
PANDORA’S (MINI BOX)
If you watched the unboxing video of our print sample, you’ll have seen the ingenious solution we’ve come up with to make sure that the minis fit into the gamebox along with everything else.
Basically, the minis will come in their own little Pandora’s Box which is designed to slot into the Bridge Insert, holding them snug in compartmentalised sections which protect them from bouncing around. Here’s a mock-up of the box. At the moment it’s still a work in progress and the final production copy may differ in structure to the hand-made prototype that you see here, but the idea is to make sure that the minis are stored safely along with the rest of your game, without using up more of your precious shelfspace.
If you want to upgrade your pledge to include these beautiful minis, you have 5 more days to do so here.
PANDORA CELESTE: Pirates & Salvage Expansion
Now that Pandora is properly underway, we’ve started working on her first expansion: Pirates & Salvage. This turns the Pandora into a pvp game, in which a team of pirates boards the Pandora and tries to achieve their joint Mission, while the Crew may choose to help, hinder or join them depending on what Agenda they’re pursuing.
Tests have been great fun so far, with Greaseball locking the Pirates out of their own ship and stealing it out from under their noses on one memorable occasion, and the Pirates deliberately blowing a hole in the Ship to suck out a particularly nasty Nasty, then immediately resealing it in another (an ingenious use of Wekka’s kit, gents, and I applaud you👏🏽).
In classic Pandora style, the Pirates are an engaging bunch of misfits who pay homage to the kind of characters you find in space pirate movies, so you have:
Wekka Wabbit: a psychotic pink, fluffy bunny who loves blowing things up, Wekka is the twisted result of a genetic experiment gone wrong. He wields a Wocket Launcha which has a tendency to blow holes out of the Ship if it misses its target, he sprays grenades around like confetti and can gnaw through armour with his sharp incisors. He also has The Kid’s ability to Run through the Vents.
Androidgyna: a rogue android spec-ops infiltration Skin with a literal chip on her shoulder, Gyna can hack anything and open any door on the Ship – even at a distance. With advanced Android Immunity and the ability to Team Up with her crewmates to enhance her defensive skills, she can weather (almost) anything the Ship might throw against her as she hacks into its systems.
The Whistler: technically blind, the Whistler is an alien which uses echo location to orient itself. This means that it is not affected by the darkness in the back of the Ship. It can also focus its sound waves into a piercing ranged attack that can shear through armour and go round corners, or a sonic blast that affects all in the room it attacks. However, its sonic sensitivity makes it particularly vulnerable to blasts, which inflict extra damage to it.
Each Pirate also has a special Team Up card, which enhances their abilities if they are in the same room as their mates. So if they work together, they are stronger than if they split up. This plays very thematically to the nature of the characters in this type of movie, who often combine into a team that becomes stronger than they are on their own.
The Pirates will come in a small box, which converts into the Pirate Shuttle that docks with the Pandora. In line with our commitment to keeping everything in one box, this Expansion box is designed to fit into one of the inserts within the main box, enabling you to keep all your game elements in one place.
Get in, grab as much as you can, get out again. What could possibly go wrong? 🤨
We are currently working on a BBG Page and a preview page will go up on Gamefound after we’ve delivered Pandora, and we hope to launch the Crowdfunding Campaign on Gamefound in October, after you’ve all had a chance to play the game and are hopefully hungry for more.
In the meantime, we are also working on…
CARTA IMPERIA: Rise of Rome
This is our new game, which covers a subject that I love – the Roman Republic.
In essence, Carta Imperia is a mini-4X designed to play out in just 2 hours, rather than the 4 or 8 of a usual 4X game. For those who don’t know what a 4X is, it’s a grand strategy game where you eXplore new territory, eXpand into it, eXterminate your enemies and eXploit its resources. So, it’s an empire-building game for dylsexics 😁
Usually, these involve a sci-fi space opera setting and take at least half a day to play out. But Carta Imperia: Rise of Rome translates this into ancient history where you use daggers and diplomacy to claw your way to the top in a wheeler-dealing mini-4X played out on an ever-changing map of cards.
You play a leading family of ancient Rome which engages in back-room deals and backstabbing plots with fellow players to make your family the most prestigious in Rome. It’s all about persuading people to give you what you want through dodgy deals, shifting alliances, bribery, extortion and military exploits – until by the end of the game you realise that you’ve conquered the Roman Empire as an incidental byproduct of all that infighting!
The game is played out on an ever-changing map of Era Cards, which are laid down turn-by-turn to reveal a map of Rome’s historical expansion across the Mediterranean. As the game progresses, you can Romanise these cards to gain more resources, spreading Roman purple across the expanding map of the Mediterranean.
We ran a test demo at Airecon, which played out Eras II to IV, up to Hannibal’s invasion of Italy in the Second Punic War of 218BC, and it was a blast! It was great to see just how much people loved all the wheeling and dealing that the game is designed to invoke. Thanks to everyone who tested it – your feedback was invaluable and has already helped to make this game even better than the one you tried.
In my wildest dreams, this is the first of a series of Carta Imperia games that will stretch from ancient Rome through Persia and India to the Empire of the Dragon at the end of the world. But to begin with, we’re planning to Kickstart this game, Carta Imperia: Rise of Rome once we have a big enough following.
So look out for the preview page, which will tell you all about the games mechanics and gameplay coming soon to a Kickstarter screen near you! We'll let you know when it's up and running.
Until then, watch your backs and keep those daggers sharp.
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