Blood Throne: Final Hours!

Reecius

11 months ago

And here we go! What a crazy feeling to finally get here. Thank you for considering supporting this project! The early pledge discounted packages are limited in quantity so jump on them quickly if you are interested.

Back Blood Throne, Here!

The Frontline Gaming team has brought you gaming mats, tables, terrain, events and more, but now it’s time to take the next step…
We are making a game!
Over 5 years in the making, this is truly a labor of love.
Enter a dark fantasy world on the brink of damnation. Blood Throne is a cooperative board game of intense tactical RPG adventure for 1-7 players.

Please be sure to click the “Notify me on launch” button on our Kickstarter preview page to be alerted to the campaign launch and be first in line for limited early bird discounted pledge levels!

The world of Cheol is riven by monsters thirsting for the blood and souls of the innocent. Belphegore, the Lord of Sacrifice is attempting to seize the Blood Throne and become a god in a world where the gods are dead. Your heroes come from every nation still standing to join the Last Accord in their desperate attempt to stop him.

A Closer Look at Belphegore

Today I wanted to take a closer look at the primary antagonist of the Blood Throne campaign, Belphegore! Below is some of the art and an excerpt from the book explaining his origin. For context, Ha’Sathan is the former god of destruction in the game world. The model is truly impressive, standing 130mm tall! The model is injection molded plastic, comes preassembled and unpainted.

Beneath Belphegore: Lord of Sacrifice, lays the remnants of a very old man known as Bel Phastus. He remembers the time before the Throne Wars, and served Ha’Sathan in the Priesthood of Destruction, proselytizing the necessity of endings to the peoples of Cheol. He remembers the cooperation that once existed between the Wild Horde and the Celestial Order, led directly by the Overgods. Two sides of the same coin: creation and destruction, tasked with maintaining balance. Bel Phastus was a man of intellect and believed both philosophies to be necessary, neither to be preeminent.

When Ha’Sathan slew Zenith, Bel Phastus was horrified. While his brothers and sisters in destruction gloried in the rise of their Lord, he felt a time of terrible imbalance lay before them. His Lord’s twisted vision of the strong never dying by virtue of cannibalizing the souls of the weak was an inelegant, unsustainable system. Bel Phastus, a mentor and confidant to young Kerioth, favored of Ha’Sathan, was quick to proclaim the legitimacy of the Lord Akrathil upon his apotheosis. In him, Bel Phastus saw hope to re-establish a semblance of order and balance in a chaotic world. However, his mortal body had grown old and frail and his health began to fail him. As he saw his death coming for him, he gave in to his fear of an afterlife with no Overgods. If he were to die, where would his soul go? The existential horror was too great to bear, and so he took Akrathil’s Sacrament of Blood.

Updated International Shipping Rates!

Hey everyone, we have been working nonstop behind the scenes to find a solution to international shipping rates and wanted to let you all know that we have decided to work with local distributors to help ease the shipping and tax burdens vs. shipping from our warehouse in the USA as was our original plan. What this means is the import fees will be frontloaded and the shipping will be domestic for you (or as close as we could get depending on your country, obviously we can’t distribute out of EVERY country) so it will result in more reasonable rates. The new chart on the campaign page shows what we believe will be pretty dang close to the shipping and taxes actual cost.

What this means for us is a higher risk as we will be shipping freight to each location and have product in distribution facilities. So if you all could be so kind as to please help spread the word to offset that investment for us, we would be massively appreciative. Obviously none of you owe us anything, in fact we owe you a great game, but we are willing to make the additional investment in order to show you all we are in this for the long term and want to get this game we are so proud of in to your hands at a fair price and build a vibrant community around it. Any assistance in getting the word out would be really amazing!

For EU customers, we are still working out the specifics on VAT as it is a more complex scenario there but we should have that finalized very soon.

If anyone has any questions, please let me know! Thanks for your support and feedback, it helps us to improve.

We added a ton of new content to the campaign page based on what was requested. We have rotating images of the monsters, and some short form videos of the core box heroes as well as the two big monsters to help give you more info and a better look at the big guys (one of whom is the big boss for the core game, and the other is Ghorgantus who comes in his own expansion and is absolutely HUGE!). Above is a sample of one of the monster mobs, the Reavers, who are nasty opponents to face. In addition to being powerful melee fighters, they can use their scythes to prevent Heroes from leaving combat making them particularly dangerous to support heroes and spell casters. Check out the campaign page to see the rest!

Blood Throne Co-Op Play Video

PvP Play Video

Long Form Co-Op Let’s Play Video

Making the Game: Concept to Kickstarter Ep. 3

Making the Game: Concept to Kickstarter Ep. 2

Making the Game: Concept to Kickstarter Ep. 1

Sneak Peak: Class Skill Cards

One of the most fun features of any RPG style game is the cool abilities your Heroes can get as they go through the game. They help define the differences between the classes in the game and mold your play style.

Let’s get some context to understand this mechanic. In addition to normal actions available to all models such as moving, or making a melee attack, each class has a selection of unique Class Skills. Before each game, you can select a number of Class Skill Cards equal to your Skill stat and up to your current Hero Level. The number of choices is determined largely by your Hero’s Intelligence, but there are other factors we will explain as we go. This system allows you to build your deck of Class Skills based on what you think you will need for the current mission and also allows you to customize your playstyle.

The Skill Card pictured is for the Bard class. The Bard has a selection of cool skills but their bread and butter are their Songs, which are AoE buffs (a unique feature to them) and Shouts (such as the card pictured below) which are similar to shouts in a game like Skyrim. They are short ranged and powerful giving the Bard a lot of utility.

Lastly, Heroes have Feats available as they level up as well. Feats are passive buffs that cannot be changed. You pick one of the options and that’s it! They provide a powerful way to customize your Hero to your playstyle. Now let’s dive into this specific card!

The yellow #1 in the circle shows us the basic Skill information. From left to right we have the Skill Name, how often you can use it, in this case you can attempt it every turn, the category of skill, metaphysical in this case, and lastly the Hero level it becomes available as an option to select. In this case, Hero Level 2.

The yellow #2 shows the second row of information. These symbols tell you how to use the card at a glance on the table. The first symbol indicates this is a Standard Action, of which a Hero will have two per activation. The second symbol shows us the Action Keyword this Skill uses, in this case it is a Shout Action. This matters as a Hero may only use each Action Keyword twice in an Activation. If your Hero gets a buff to have 3 Actions in a turn, you cannot spam the same type of abilities for game balance reasons. Lastly we have the Action Modifier vs the Defense Modifier. In this case, the Skill uses Metaphysics and the target model defends with Will. We will explain this mechanic in further detail but it is very easy to just find the corresponding symbol on the relevant Hero and Monster cards to see how many dice to roll. As all Heroes and Monsters have 3 defenses, you can pick the ability that will work best against them!

The red #3 gives us the detailed breakdown of the skill with the action type, range and effect. In this case it is a short ranged action that deals 3 red dice of damage and gives the Monster a status effect to boot! Below that we have checkboxes with possible upgrades to the Skill. These can be unlocked with Feats so that your Skills can be improved as you level. Not all skills will have the ability to be upgraded with a Feat but if they do, the information is on the card to make it easy to track.

In the section marked by the red #4, we get a brief bit of lore about the skill.

lastly, in the section marked by the red #5 we have on the far left the card ID number which will correspond to any tokens the skill may use for ease of play, and lastly the symbols for the Class and Factions this skill card is available to.

That’s it for today! Hopefully this helps give you an idea of the exciting abilities your heroes will be wielding on the tabletop.

Sneak Peak: Hero Boards, Cards and Tokens!

Today we will take a look at the Hero Cards and Tokens. Blood Throne has a lot of moving parts and we wanted to make it easy for you to keep it all running smoothly. These are the Hero boards, cards and tokens.

As you can see, they are all color coordinated based on the Hero’s class. Brother Boldstand is a Priest, so all of the Priest cards and tokens are white to make it super easy to find. The tokens are also shape coordinated so that they slot into the appropriate spot on the Hero boards. For example, Status Effects are always circles, so their tokens can only fit in the appropriate slot.

On top of this, not pictured, are custom tuck boxes for each class that is the same color scheme to hold all of their cards and tokens for ease of storage. Brother Boldstand’s is white, so you always know where to put his stuff! As he gains loot, you can also stick the loot cards in his box for ease of organization.

The cards represent the special abilities of the class. For those that have an effect to track, we have a custom token for each effect that is coded to the card it goes with. This makes it incredibly easy to track everything!

The Hero boards themselves are fully modular, so you can drop in numbered tokens to reflect increases in stats as they level up. We also have a workbook, not pictured, that gives you all the juicy details and crunchy mechanics on what choices your hero has available to them as they level, but while playing the game you only need their Hero board, cards and tokens to avoid excess clutter.

We’ll dive into how to read these in the future but this should give you an idea of how managing Heroes works in Blood Throne!

Sneak Peak: Monster Cards

Today we will take a look at the Monster Cards. Monsters in Blood Throne run on an AI script. What that means is you follow a flow chart (as shown on the back of the Monster Card in the second picture) for each action a Monster has, going down the flowchart until you are instructed to take an action. This allows the Monsters to be dynamic, reacting to the situation as it develops. The Monster shown here, the Berserker, is a higher Tier Monster at 4, which is essentially a mini-boss. Thus, he has higher stats, more special abilities and powerful attacks. Lower Tier Monsters come in groups of 2-3, but have less HP, few Special Abilities and weaker attacks. As the Berserker is a Martial Monster, he is geared towards moving towards and engaging the Heroes in melee, so his script is relatively straightforward.

Monsters that have other archetypes will have more involved scripts that allow them to support other Monsters, attack specific Heroes, or appear on the board in unexpected locations to go after your backline Heroes that tend to be more vulnerable. Some Monsters will even try and steal your loot! We have found in practice that the system is very easy to understand and creates fun and dynamic games where the Monsters feel like they are working together.

On the front of the card we have key stats, special ability descriptions and lore for each Monster. We will have a full breakdown of all of the stats and symbols to come, but after a few times playing with the system it becomes extremely intuitive and often you do not even have to look at the AI chart once as you know what to do from experience. This allows you to have fun testing you Heroes in challenging encounters that will be different each playthrough!

Sneak Peak: Campaign Management Board

Here is the Campaign Management Board! This is how you manage and track your progress through the campaign. Along the top you have the various buildings available to be built for your siege camp, and as you construct them you remove the tile to show the building. As you play the siege camp comes to life! Below that you have the various idle tasks your Heroes can perform. Idle tasks are what your Heroes can do that you did not choose for the current mission. Each Hero has a specialized task they can perform, such as the Alchemist Jib Job brewing up a potion! Additionally, as you unlock more of the buildings in the siege camp, you can perform additional tasks such as having a Hero train in the Barracks to gain additional Exp, or using the Blacksmith to improve their equipment.

For ease of tracking, each Hero has a class ID token that goes in their assigned slot. If they are performing an idle task, simply move their token into the appropriate slot. If they have been selected for a mission, you move their token into the Initiative Tracker for the duration of the mission. We will show that in a future preview but it makes tracking the order the heroes and monsters activate in very easy, as well as tracking the turns!

As you can see to the side we have the tokens for tracking things like turn, morale, etc. There’s more to go over but hopefully that gives you an idea of how this part of Blood Throne plays.

The Blood Throne Campaign Map!

Here we have the Campaign Map for Blood Throne. It takes place on the Blinded Peninsula, formerly the home to a powerful nation which was devastated during the Throne Wars, leaving only ruins and death in its wake.

You will control the Siege Camp of the Last Accord, in the bottom left of the map. When your party arrives it is poorly defended and organized, barely more than a collection of tents and confused soldiers. Your task it to help organize the combined forces of the Last Accord’s army, build up the Siege Camp with specialized buildings which each provide you advantages. Your party of Heroes takes on the most important missions to help pave the way for the regular army to march on the Tower of Sacrifice! As you move though the narrative campaign, new missions become available. You add these to the map with reusable stickers. Some missions are critical and must be attempted while some are optional providing the opportunity to gain additional experience, loot and clues about the game’s extensive lore.

Below are the masters for the monsters in Blood Throne. The masters are used to make the actual molds for the models! It is cool to see the process unfolding. As you can see, there is only one of each, but in the box the lower tier monsters (or weaker monsters) come in pairs or in threes. There are 27 monster models in total, giving you tons of variety and challenging encounters. The REALLY big guys in the back are Ghorgantus, an expansion Boss Monster available in the Kickstarter, and Belphegore himself, the final boss of the game. As you can see, the models are truly impressive and we can’t wait for you to take them on with your party of heroes!

We have revealed two of the heroes from the game so far. Click through to see a teaser video of each and learn more about these champions. Much more information to come!