A Shot from the Guntower - Sept 2025

Why have one Store when you can have 2?

Hello Crewmies, in this Newsletter I’m going to talk about:

·       Our online store(s)

·       Tabletop Scotland and Arcadia

·       And where we’re at with Carta Imperia

So let’s dig into those dark corners…

OUR STORE(S)

So Peeps, we now have an online store.  In fact we have two…

Our main store is here on our Website. 

But we have also opened a Gamefound Store for EU customers. 

We’ve done this because Gamefound can process EU VAT efficiently, which makes things work more smoothly for all concerned.   So if you are a customer in the EU, please use this site.

But Gamefound charges a fairly high fee for all purchases made on its site, so we would naturally prefer our other customers to use the Store on our Website.

Both sites are identical. So if you missed out on any of the Add-Ons during the campaign, such as the Extra Minis or Marina the Colonial Marine, you can now purchase them here.  And of course, the Core Game with All-Ins is available for anyone who has not discovered the Pandora yet. So if you know anyone who’s into sci-fi monster movies feel free to pass it along… 😉

A BRIEF NOTE TO US CUSTOMERS: Thanks to the IEEPA’s somewhat chaotic suspension of the ‘de minimis’ exemptions, we cannot at present ship any purchases from the UK into the US – we literally don’t know whether you would be charged an extra $200 for the privilege of receiving it right now! 

We have some very limited stock in the USA, which we can ship to US customers, but once that’s gone, we cannot ship any more until there is more clarity.  We apologise for the inconvenience, but there’s not much we can do about it until the dust has settled. 🤷🏽

We will be at Tabletop Scotland demoing Pandora: Pirates & Salvage this coming weekend – and we’re going to be doing it on a bespoke gaming table – oooooh! 😛

In an exciting development, we have teamed up with Arcadia Game Tables, who have built a version of their brand new Tourney Table for us to demo Pandora on. 

So come check it out at Y2-04 in TTS – and get hunted by Nasty alien monsters while you’re at it! 😈

CARTA IMPERIA

I must admit that we’ve been so knee-deep in Pandora Fulfilment over the last few months that Carta Imperia has had to take a bit of a back seat.  But I’ve still been testing the changes whenever I can.

We had a great test session last weekend, which showed off the head-spinning domino effects of the game’s new Political Reforms.  These are part of the game’s tech tree, where players can spend Prestige to Enact a Reform which will then earn them Auctoritas (perma-Prestige) any time someone else uses it. 

The first 2 Political Reforms on the tree are the Lex Sacrata which allows you to veto the result of any 1 election and rerun it without the winner, and the Lex Hortensia which adds the votes from the Plebeian Assembly to your candidate’s total.  And oh, the ramifications!

You see in a 4-player game, a Governorship Election usually breaks down into 2 factions of 2 players, one pair of which can muster enough Prestige to outvote the other pair.  So after the dust of the horse-trading has settled, the higher pair’s candidate gets voted in.

But if the Lex Sacrata is in effect, one of the losers can immediately pay an Auctoritas to veto the winner out of the race and rerun the election without him. Now the goalposts (or should that be ‘spinae’?) have shifted. Now you don’t want to win outright.  In fact, you want to manoeuvre your opponent into first place, so that you can veto him out of the race and sneak in behind him. But he knows that, so he starts making deals which puts a no-hoper in the hotseat, so that he can veto the no-hoper out of office and take over on the rerun.  But your opponents know that’s what you want to do so what used to be a 2-way back-room deal has now become a three or even four-way deal as you try to set things up so that your most dangerous rival is the one who takes the fall…

And did I mention that the second reform allows you to skew the vote in your favour using the Plebeian Assembly, which throws another chaos-bomb into the voting calculus!?!!! 😵‍💫🫨🤯

Boy that was fun! 

And what makes it even better from my point of view is that the elections now feel like authentically Machiavellian Roman elections – even if Machiavelli hadn’t be born yet (but if I said ‘Marian’ most people wouldn’t get the reference 😉). 

If you like wheeling and dealing and plans within plans within plans, where nothing on the surface is as it seems and everyone is thinking 3 votes ahead, then this is the game for you.  But beware, your head will explode! 😂

That’s it for now.  Please do check out the store – and come say ‘hi’ if you’re at Tabletop Scotland.

We’re at Stand Y2-04 in the dark corner against the wall just below the Thistle Tavern, and we’d love to see you.