Prime War

I posted on our main page, but wanted to link it here so that you have a place to comment and ask questions:

https://greaterthangames.com/content/prime-war

Since the old store is gone can I still validate what I had preordered before?  How do I update the address associated with that preorder?

You should be able to go to My Account at the top of this page, and then click on Orders. For me it shows what I have ordered since December 2013, and includes my Broken City/For Profit/minis order.

I don't think it's relevant to me, but I foresee a question: is it possible to upgrade a no-minis preorder to a with-minis preorder?

 Is there a cut-off date for customers to make a decision about refund requests?

Edit: never mind, I see answer in announcment "You can request a refund any time between now and then."

@Powerhound_2000

You can email contact@greaterthangames.com if you need to verify anything. We'll make another post once the game is in production in which we'll let you know it is time to update your address if necessary!

@dpt

Yes, it definitely will be before it ships!

Per the announcment "If, on the other hand, you want to “upgrade” your preorder (for example, from a “without miniatures” order to a “with miniatures” order), you can totally do that, but don’t give us more money just yet! Once Prime War is actually in production with a firm release date, we’ll post another update with information about preorders and a notice to update your address if you are still in."

Glad to finally see this out to the public =)

The paragraph about how Prime War fits into the Sentinels story seems unnecessarily convoluted to me.  It says the Prime Aspects can draw champions from multiple realities, but there are only two realities left, Sentinels and Mist Storm.  Are we saying there are more realities than those now?  If there are more now, why bother to say that they're going to draw from Mist Storm first?  If they can pull from multiple realities, then it's a straighter line to just say they pulled the characters from multiple realities.  If you have to explain the failed Mist Storm universe to someone when trying to explain the Prime Wars universe, you're just complicating things for no good reason.  This story needs a little more editorial trimming, IMO.

All these questions have no particular order but just the order that it popped in my head.

1) my understanding from this is the sentinel tactics line is dead? Correct?

2) moving forward, the prime war line will have miniatures included instead of separate? The main goal of doing this during the sentinel tactics line was cost and keeping them down. Is that no longer a goal with Prime War? Personally I was fine with it being separate so I could still play the game but not break the wallet.

3) taking into account that miniatures look like they are now required in the game, how are the Prime war figures going to compare to the sentinel tactics figures for consentency basis? 

4) since I do not have the sentinel tactics minis, are there plans to make it easy to get this?

5) as powerhound said, the store has been changed. What is the plan to update this on the new store. Especially concerned due to the address thing.

6) if I open my sentinel tactics boxes, what exactly will be useable from it? Can we get a rough idea? Would love to still be able to use the map tiles and other things in the box without throwing it all out?

7) can you have maggie live stream a game from gen con? Or is that no longer her position?

8) since I did not get the minis for broken city/ for profit, my concern as stated above is I am now being forced to upgrade to the with minis set for Prime war, if I plan to continue playing the Prime War line after this release for consistency. Do you have a target price point that you are hoping this upgrade will be? 

9) since you are talking upgrades from no minis to minis, would you consider a bundle upgrade of some sort for the flame of freedom/uprising sets that will help it not break the bank for these figures?

10) is the story line in sentinel tactics still canon? If so, how does the stories in sentinel tactics lead into Prime war?

11) once upon a time you guys did a stream of a tactics version of akash’bhuta. Will we be seeing any of that in tactics?

12) since this has been worked on for a while, can Adam tease any art?

13) you talked about actions in secret, but how does movement work?

1) That is correct.

2) Since Tactics was released, the board game market has changed significantly. Going forward, Prime War products will include the miniatures in the box.

3) They are going to be somewhat different. Most notably, they will have a different sort of base and the sculpts will be better, more in line with the kind of miniatures we released with Fate of the Elder Gods.

4) I assume you mean easy to get the Sentinel Tactics miniatures? If so, yes! They are available for 50% off MSRP on our web store right now.

5) Before Prime War ships, we'll make an announcement that address changes are needed, and have you email us your new address.

6) The map tiles for sure, as well as the hex tokens for the characters (if you don't have the Flame of Freedom/Uprising miniatures).

7) We definitely hope to! We'll see how the connection is in the expo center; that's always the trouble with Gen Con streaming. The Letters Page and the like are all in attached hotels, so it is easier.

8) If you pre-ordered Broken City (without miniatures) and want to upgrade to a with-miniatures version, it will be the same price as if you had ordered miniatures with your Broken City preorder in the first place.

9) Possibly. As I mentioned earlier, the Tactics miniatures are already 50% off on our web store, and we intend to keep them there at that heavy discount.

10) Yes, but the details are a Christopher / Letters Page question.

11) Possibly at some point.

12) The gameplay is far ahead of the art, but he'll tease some once he has some to tease.

13) We'll go into more gameplay details at Gen Con and during our livestreams this fall.

FYI Lore Forge Games had a development update April 15, 2018 on their news page with some details.
https://loreforgegames.wordpress.com/2018/04/15/system-streamlining/ 

The notes seem to be similar to what Paul has so far described as the rules system with some other concepts as well, such as movement. I expect this should also very much be taken only as an early glimpse of the development process, and not necessarily an actual preview of what would be seen at GenCon.

Multiple Realities didn’t go away they just can’t be traversed any of at all by the heroes/villains post OblivAeon

on 3) any plans to update flame of freedom and uprising minis as well to be in with the new sculpts? This is not a bad idea so they look the same.

on 6) please keep the train. That was a fun extra for any map.

on 8) can you remind me what the price of the minis from the preorder was. Currently thinking how I want to argue this to my wife to upgrade.

new questions:

A) will you be updating the scenarios in freedom and uprising to play with new format or creating new scenarios to use those map tiles. I love the scenarios over the skirmishes from tactics and want more.

Yes, there are and have always been more than those two.  Those are the two in which Sentinel Comics took place (not counting Disparation), but very few alternate realities were completely destroyed.

I assume they're pulling from Mist Storm because 1) the core products' characters will come from there, 2) the Mist Storm universe is what used to be the Tactics universe, and they want to create continuity, and 3) the Mist Storm universe is fully fleshed out, so it's positioned well to be the "default".  They probably added in Disparation because it polled well and because Haka made no sense otherwise.

My biggest question is how long the game takes to set up.  That's the main reason my group barely touched Tactics.

Going to be interesting to see how this plays. Gameplay was what kept me away from Tactics, mostly.

Will echo fenianb question on transparency on this project. We have waited a long time for info on this and regular updates would be nice.

sadly fenianb I have a feeling there won’t be any compensation for no scenarios since they can argue they are doing scenarios still with the new format. Also Kickstarter always leaves room to fanatical things if something doesn’t work

Got it.  However, I'm going to continue my opinion-giving by saying that I've always thought the Mist Storm universe was an awkward bolt-on that ran counter to the clean narrative of the end of the Multiverse.

"… and then the heroes defeated OblivAeon and in doing so, the pathways to the other universes were shut forever" is a clean ending to a clean narrative.  But GtG needed reasons for heroes and villains to fight each other in a tactical game that wasn't compatible with the world they envisioned for their RPG so they didn't stop with the clean ending.  Instead they said:

"… BUT!  There's this one other universe that's gritty and dark where everyone fights everyone else.  So there isn't just one accessible universe, there are two for… reasons."

My point here is that Tactics failed and the universe created to support it isn't necessary.  I think it should just be retconned away to keep the narrative clean.  If the narrative were:

"… but those other universes are still out there and when the Prime Aspects needed champions for their war, they drew them from the myriad of realities they alone could access", that's reasonably clean.  No Mist Storm needed.  Don't make anyone have to explain the Mist Storm universe to their friends when they're describing Prime War because it will only make people say "yeah, the Mist Storm universe was this thing from Tactics, which you've never heard of because no one wanted to play it so they invented this game instead."  I'm just saying, keep it clean.

Prime War sounds much less compatible with the original Tactics than I thought it would be. (Somehow I figured all the components, dice, etc would be the same and all we’d need is a new rule sheet.) However, I do have to say that the action selection mechanism seems like it would create a much smoother game flow than the original phases.

I’m pleased to see that there will be a cooperative mode, players vs the game! I really hope that mode works well. I am very curious how the automated villains will handle movement and targeting. The automation schemes for games like Scythe always seem so clunky to me.

Regardless of the success of Tactics it’s a story they’ve been building up through the Letters Page podcast.  And based on part of the story they’ve us the Mist Storm universe was years after OblivAeon took place and they thought Sentinel Comics had too many heroes.  Thus they retconned events from OblivAeon to have a harsher and more troubling timeline.   Now whether they make enough games related to this to tell the whole story is a different story.  Even SotM had the overall story they wanted to tell done with the original release but they didn’t know if they’d get through the content to actually tell it.  You can still not like the story line but it’s been intentional on Christopher and Adam ‘s part.  

For me, the biggest obstacle to Tactics being played more was full coop mode.   So, I will be keeping my fingers crossed and hopeful that Prime War will be another solid addition to my collection.  :-)  

@fenianb

1) For you and anyone else interested in the old Tactics scenarios for those maps, I posted them here: https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/map-scenarios-11579

2) We plan to post periodic updates with increasing regularity as the development cycle moves into high gear after Gen Con. By the fall, the updates should be monthly just like a Kickstarter.

3) Not currently.

Thank you for the answers, and supplying the Tactics scenarios.

Regarding updates and news in the future- I know that the livestreams and podcasts are popular, but please try to include text updates and transcripts as well for those of us who can't follow the audio-visual media for whatever reason.

Will the prepainted minis for Prime war include the colored transparent plastic that the painted minis for Sentinel tactics used?

The transparent plastic gave a unique extra aspect to the prepainted minis.

I have to second this. 

Will painted minis be available via retail?

We don't know enough detail about the miniatures yet to give any definitive answers about them.

While I can't guarantee that 100% of the information that is ever released about Prime War will be available in written form, the bulk of the information, and certainly all of the essential development info, will be made available in written updates, just like we do for Kickstarter campaigns.

And WalkingTarget does summaries for Letters Page eps on Reddit and the wiki, so anything lore related or other announcements about Prime War stuff in the LP eps will or has ended up in those summaries.

Broader request, not necessarily tied to Prime War or any product.

More and more recently, I've been seeing a lot of comments on the forums to the effect of "Hey, where did <X> get announced?" "Oh, it was in a Letter's Page Episode/Christopher dropped a comment in the Patreon-exclusive Discord Chat/Check the Sentinels Subreddit/It was in a livestream." This poses a few problems:

1) Not everyone has the time/attention to follow every resource, and so it's likely announcements are going to slip through the cracks.

2) You rely almost entirely on word of mouth for information to get spread around, which has led to plenty of confusion and ire (see examples in the Sentinels RPG forums where people are still asking "wait, did the Kickstarter for the core book get delayed again? Where was that said and why?")

3) Over time, it leads to information getting lost in the ether due to fragmentation.

In an attempt to be polite, yet blunt, communication has been an issue that GTG has cited on several occasions that they need to improve on. And while some efforts have been made, it still needs iteration. 

This Prime War announcement was the first in the long time that used a) The GTG website, and b) An official post in the forums by someone in the GTG staff. And honestly, it's a nice breath of fresh air. Is there any chance you, Christopher, Maggie, or whomever can make some sort of commitment that, in the near future, there will be one centralized location to get announcments about GTG, their product line, and any changes therein?

Agreed here. Announcements on social media are fine, but I do feel the website and a forum post should be the primary official channels.

@bobbertoriley, that is a very good point. I'll work on making sure that that happens (where "that" = "announcements on the official website main page and this forum".

Which "that", though? :)

Thanks for the consideration!

Because Paul is answering a lot of questions, I’m going to rephrase my comment as one!

When can we get previews of how the fully co-op game mode will work, mechanically?

@Trajector

We are not certain, but we believe we will be showing that off before the end of the year.

I will look forward to it! Thanks for answering, Paul.

Kinda belated, but I'm looking forward to Prime War.

Our Sentinel Tactics didn't really see much of play ever, and any of it there was was just after release. Because we found it so lackluster, we only have the base box and miniatures, I think... I don't remember getting any poster maps, if we don't have them, will those free scenarios become available in some other way? Will the conversion kit still do some good?

Paul posted in the Sentinel Tactics subforum with the scenarios for the add on Maps. These are being reviewed for part of the conversion kit for Prime War.

Also still looking forward to Prime War! Especially curious on what changes to gameplay have been implemented and how the coop system will work out.

Furthermore, the style of game that Prime War belongs to is notorious for balancing adjustments, especially as characters are added to the roster and even after thorough playtesting. Is there thought about a system that could incorporate such changes in a convenient and low-cost manner? Examples of this would be:

- A Legacy-style solution like stickers that could be stuck over existing parts of cards or character boards

- Allowing exchangeable stats in the character boards (cardboard character boards with punch-out stats or so).

Good luck in the coming months and looking forward to gameplay vids!

The Lore Forge folks posted this with piccies recently:

https://twitter.com/LoreForgeGames/status/1022877598668517376

They're also apparently doing demos at GenCon for anyone who's going.

Is that Captain Cosmic in the weird yellow-and-blue skinsuit? @_@ What?

Looks like a marker-shifted version of what we've seen of their outfits so far: https://greaterthangames.com/sites/greaterthangames.com/files/images/Prime-War-Box-Cover---W-LOGO---WEB.png

I mean, I still don't like the hood, but black and yellow looks so much better. :B

But people!

HOODIE FANATIC.

No-one's going to talk about the Argent Adept's scarf, huh?

That thing is sweet.

I'm totally here to talk about Argent's scarf of asskicking. It's an interesting switch from his cape while being no less flashy.

If anything, it's flashier. It can 'billow' dramatically in two different directions.

I also love how it's clearly only staying on his shoulders because of magic.

And the equal flashiness of the pages of his songbook always swirling around.

Question on the minatures

Are you guys digitally sculpting them?  Any chance we can see some prototypes when you get them mocked up(either digitally or 3d printed)

How many spaces does Sky-Scraper take up?

0, 1, or 3 [=

I'm a lot more interested in this after seeing these pictures (hoodie Fanatic yes) and hearing C&A talking about playing the game - especially the idea that Tempest and AA can pull some cool battlefield-control stuff. I might have to watch this closely!

I am so in love with the new Fanatic design (although I love all of the new designs) and my playstyle trends towards controlling areas of the battlefield in most games so hearing my favourite SotM hero was going to be a controller got me really excited.

Plus, being co-op (at least partly) means I'm more likely to be able to play it with my partner.

Same; I was already excite for Tactics-style Argent Adept and now after Christopher's descriptions I am even more excite.

I've never played or even got to read much about Sentinel Tactics, but everything I hear about the changes of Prime War is getting my attention: Enviroment control is my jam, Blood Countess is playable, it's not limited to the Miststorm-verse and I like the direction the story is going.

And I just realized: You know those cool-but-underutilized disparation characters? We have a chance to see more from them (plus Haka has a chance to get back home). 

Of those three numbers, only 3 is a prime number.

Neither 1 nor 0 are prime.

Edit: spacing.

Being perfectly honest, AA is one of the biggest reasons I'm excited for the game. I just don't want to step on your toes.

There is always room for more members of the Argent Adept Groupie Brigade.

Surely, you mean… the Silver Shadows!

I do like the way you think.

Why thank you!

They accompany the Adept everywhere he goes.

rimshot

um.

Can we get a Fanatic Hoodie in the swag shop? like, please? I love hoodies and um one with fanatics design on it would be awesome,

kthxbai

Not a big fan of Captain Cosmics new look, but then Captain Cosmic Requital is probably my basis for best looking CC. The mix of greens and gold with the backstory just makes it so awesome.

Certainly looking forward to Prime War though, enjoyed Sentinel Tactics and was disappointed that it seemed it wasn't recieving anything more.

Non the less it was a fun game, fast paced and easy to digest. Can't wait to see how it grows at Pax Unplugged.

So this is now Prime Number war? My money is on13.

Just to quickly answer the question about miniatures, we will likely be using one of the sculptors we have used in the past (either for Fate of the Elder Gods or Legends of Sleepy Hollow). Those miniatures all turned out great, and we anticipate having a much higher quality than we were able to achieve with the original Sentinels Miniatures. Whether or not they are sculpted digitally or in traditional medium depends on the artist we choose to work with.

The more I hear about Prime War, the more I hope that either it sets up and plays a whole lot faster than Tactics did, or that Handelabra does a digital version I can play solo on my phone.  It sounds pretty great, but it's the time commitment that kept me from embracing Tactics the first time around.

I never got into Tactics, though I only sorta wanted to, I wanted my Unity mini. Also, I don't think it helped that it was introduced in production before the Oblivaeon expansion was out.

Be that as it may, I see Oblivaeon as something like a cross between a cosmic janitor and Unicron from Transformer: either he's cleaning up the mess of existence, or he finds existence itself offensive. Considering that he cannot do damage to himself, I'm leaning towards the later: Oblivaeon is a death seeker and the only way he can successfully commit suicide is by destroying all existence.

So Prime War: Oblivaeon lost, and his shards go to two realities, so the Big Bounce doesn't happen. This leaves the Prime Aspects noticing the vacuum, seeing the cracks closing, and saying "Quiznak that, I need help, from anywhere and anywhen!"