Kickstarer - Duel Pack: Saladin and Border States

Descripción: Campaña para conseguir estos dos juegos: (+Info hilo de promoción).

Border States es un juego táctico para 2 jugadores. Tendrás que pelear y ganar batallas para influir en los estados fronterizos e intentar unirlos a tu bando.

Saladin es un wargame histórico para 2 jugadores.

Si tenéis dudas o preguntas sobre los juegos o la campaña, se las podéis hacer a @Shakos.

Enlace: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/shakos/duel-pack-saladin-and-border-states

Fecha de finalización: jue, 15 de abril de 2021 20:59 CEST.

Dinero necesario para financiarse: 7.000 €

Fecha estimada de entrega: Diciembre 2021

Idioma del juego: Inglés

Pledge Levels (Niveles de aportación):


Stretch goals (Desbloqueos):







Aduanas y gastos de envío: EUFriendly. Son de Francia, no creo que haya problemas con VATs.







Fotos del juego:

Un reseña completa de Saladin en español (video).

Thank you for your support that will make the publication of Border States and Saladin possible. The Duel Pack, it is two games proposing tense and fun games in less than one hour, but with a very different dynamic. Saladin is based on your ability to manage your precious Order tokens and keep the cohesion of your troops longer than your opponent. In Border States, you will need to try to guess the priority of the other player to win the battles that will allow you to influence the Border States. Two games full of hard decision to take in order to win. Try one, and you will love the other!

Why Duel Pack ? Some of you wondered if it was a mistake, but it is a pun (at least a tentative by French guys...). Duel is because we propose two players games, and pack, well because there are two games. So the Duel Pack name!

Stretch Goal sighted!

Well now, we will try to get some stretch goals. As explained, SG will be mainly improvements of the components of the two games. We want to keep everything under control not to delay production and thus delivery. So the first set of SG concerns wooden tokens!







In Border States, you will have to influence the Border States by winning battles. On the gameboard there are 5 Influence tracks, one for each state where you will move the State tokens showing the balance of influence. With this Stretch goal, we will do custom tokens (20), with different shapes instead of some classic circular tokens.





In Saladin, the Crusader may perfom a Shield Wall action to protect against Ayyubids harassment. Instead of having a basic token, we will do a custom Shield token.



In the Hattin scenario, the Ayyubids may perform special actions to set and feed a brush fire. During the real battle, they did it to exhaust the Crusaders already suffering greatly from the heat. Again, we will do a custom fire marker to note that the fire is set on the battlefield.



Production and delivery:

As indicated, we plan to deliver the games by end of this year. As you may see in the video reviews of Saladin, the game is nearly finished. We have still to perform some adjustments in the rules following the last feedbacks we received, and finalize the layout of the English Rulebook. For Border States, we need to do the layout of the rules, as proofreading is nearly finished.

Thanks again for your support!

Well the first SG did not stand for long! So the improved tokens for Saladin are yours.

Good occasion to speak about... actions in the game.

In Saladin, you will have to order your banners (formation made of mounted or on-foot soldiers). An ordered banner will be able to perform an action. Most of the time, effects of the action will be determined by rolling dice.



Above is a Charge action. It will cost 2 Orders to the Crusader player. Red dice will affect the targeted Ayyubids banner, and the green dice the Crusader banner performing the action. So clearly, Ayyubids shall avoid a charge if they can... The last white icon indicates that there will be a status change, as the banners will be commited in close combat after the charge.



The Shieldwall action is a bit specific, as you won't roll dice. The -1 green dice means that the Ayyubids will launch one less dice if they attack this banner. The soldiers stand in formation shoulder to shoulder, holding their shields so that they abut or overlap. Now you will be able to deploy the nice Shield custom token in front of your men!



In Hattin, the Ayyubids did light a brush fire. It is quite costly to light, 3 Orders it, but the following turns you will just have to feed it for 1 Order. This action will force the Crusader to spend 1 of their orders. As the game advances, Orders tokens are more and more sparse, so to lose an order that way can hurt a lot. Beware of the nice fire token you will be able to place on the battlefield!

Improved tokens for Border States are ours! Well done, we can move on now on some new and nice Stretch Goals. But first let's speak a bit more of Border States as it deserves much more than a quick look.

State tokens

The State tokens are used on the influence tracks of each of the five states to record Influence. There are 4 State tokens per state and they move thanks to the Influence cubes you get by winning battles. By securing the tokens, you can win a sudden death victory. Otherwise by the end of the 5 turns you count the State tokens on your side. The player with the more tokens just win the game.



Thanks to the SG improved tokens, tokens for each state will have a different shape, round, square, oblong, hexagone and rhombus.

Character cards

In Border States you will have some gorgeous Character cards. Each character will have a special power you can use to change the outcome of a battle. You can use it only one time per game, so timing will be crucial. Let's see at two of these characters.
 


Isabella Maria Boyd (May 9, 1844[1] – June 11, 1900[2]), best known as Belle Boyd (or as Cleopatra of the Secession), was a Confederate spy in the American Civil War. Boyd's espionage career began by chance in 1861. She operated from her father's hotel in Front Royal, Virginia, and provided valuable information to Confederate officers and conveyed those secrets via her slave Eliza Hopewell. Boyd was arrested at least six times but somehow evaded incarceration. For her contributions, she was awarded the Southern Cross of Honor.
In terms of play. As a competent spy, Belle will be able to reveal one of the hidden general placed by your opponent, giving you valuable information in order to win the battle.



George Brinton McClellan (December 3, 1826 – October 29, 1885) was an American soldier, civil engineer, and politician who served as the 24th Governor of New Jersey. A graduate of West Point, McClellan served with distinction during the Mexican–American War (1846–1848), and later left the Army to work on railroads until the outbreak of the American Civil War (1861–1865). Early in the conflict, McClellan was appointed to the rank of major general and played an important role in raising a well-trained and organized army, which would become the Army of the Potomac in the Eastern Theater; he served a brief period (November 1861 to March 1862) as Commanding General of the Union Army.

In terms of play. McClellan will open an extra slot in a battle allowing you to add a General block to a normally "closed" battle. This way you can change the result of the battle by surprising your opponent with the unexpected reinforcements!

New Stretch Goals

Two new stretch goals are revealed.


 
As you may have seen in videos we play with 6 dice, 3 reds and 3 greens. By tackling this SG we will have the necessary funds to offer you these 6 dice instead of 3 "generic" dice. So you won't be able to complain about your opponent using YOUR dice (and potentially cursing them). One more detail, dice will be wooden for Saladin.


 
In Border States you will have a recruitement queue for you Generals. Nicolas, our artist, suggested to add some recruitement boards in order to improve the ergonomy of the game. We thought it was a clever idea, so here is the stretch goal! They will be printed on 1,5mm greyboard.

That's it! Hope to see you very soon to announce that these new SG are ours.

The Shakos' team

Hi all!

We'll be playing live at Border States Friday, April 2 at 8pm GMT+1. You will be able to ask questions about the game at this occasion and to discover the subtilities of the gameplay with us.

We will be invited by La Garajeux, and you will be able to follow us:

1. on Twitch:  https://www.twitch.tv/garajeux
2. or YouTube :  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB6dpb_ZT5KF5zeXQqcqzAg

Session will be in French and English, so do not hesitate to join us. Video will be available in replay.

Moreover Denis Sauvage, designer of Saladin, will be with us to eventually speak as well of Saladin.

Thanks again to Gabriel, the station master of the Garajeux!

Hello everyone!

The dice SG has been crushed by a devastating charge from the Crusader knights. So we will be able to double the number of dice, 6 instead of 3, and customize them. Originally we thought we would make the dice the color of each side, with symbols of the other side's color. For example red dice for the Crusaders, with green symbols to indicate that the result applies to an Ayyubid banner.

This choice turns out not to be wise for people with color blindness. So we are going to follow the recommendations of our graphic designer, Nicolas, who advised us to use white for the symbols. This choice also makes it easier for everyone to read the results by reinforcing the contrast, especially in low light conditions. We would like to thank the persons who gave us their feedbacks on this issue.


Now let's talk about the results that can be obtained on the dice:

- Nothing (2 sides): quite simple, no effect.
- Elimination of Lances (2 sides / 1 Lance - 1 side / 2 Lances): causes the elimination of one or two Lances from your opponent. They are added to the loss track. At the sixth lost Lance, one of the precious order token is put back in the box.
- Spend one Order (1 side): causes your opponent to lose 1 order. It is not lost permanently however (it will become available again the next turn), but its loss can put you in a very uncomfortable position by forcing you to discard an order that would have been very useful to command one of your banners!

We have also decided to make wooden dice, to be in coherence with all the elements of the game which are also made of wood. They will be engraved, for a better durability, and colored, red or green, with symbols in white as indicated above.

What's next :

Let's discover the 3 next SG. The two first will allow us to add a plastic tray to help with the storage of the components in the box. For those who are wondering, the slots for the cards will allow to store them with sleeves.



The third one will allow us to offer a bonus for the authors of the two games. For every game sold during this crowdfunding, they will get 10% more in payment. A way for us to reward our authors without whom we could not offer you these games!


The Shakos' team

Hi everyone,

Well I'm a bit late, but the recruitment boards are yours. These two boards, one per side, will be printed on greyboard 1,5mm. This is a suggestion of our artist, Nicolas Roblin, to improve the game ergonomy to desing and provide such boards. He is working on them, and we should be able to show you what they will look like before the end of this campaign.


So let's see how you will use them.

Each side has 10 General blocks at their disposal. They will fight the battles and get victories to seize the Influence cubes needed to win.


Each turn, players will draw randomly 4 blocks. They are the available Generals you will send to battles. The others 6 are drawn randomly to create the recruitment queue. Each round of battle, players will take 1 of their Generals in the queue to add to their available Generals. It will be 1 of the Generals placed at one end of the queue.


The recruitment boards will allow to create this recruitment queue with slots for the 6 Generals blocks.

Hope you will like this nice addition to Border States!

The Shakos' team

Eso de pagarles más está super bien, una vez se te han acabado las cosas planeadas como recompensa, subir el sueldo a los autores👏👏👏

Hi everyone!

We have a new SG behind us now. So Saladin will have its plastic tray to keep everything tidy inside the box. Let's hope we will have it soon for Border States as well!

Survey

Below are the results of the survey we launched to know about the next game in the "En Ordre de Bataille" series. We received more than 200 answers which is really great as it shows an interest for this series of game. And as you can see, the winners are Wallace and his brave Scots! The battles portrayed should be Stirling Bridge and Falkirk.

Border States

Our artist, Nicolas, finalized the board of Border States as well. Hope you will like it as much as us.

That's all for today and thanks again for your support.

The Shakos' team

Link to the crowdfunding

We are entering the last days of this crowfunding campaign which is already a success thanks to your support.

We just reached the SG adding a plastic tray for Border States.



We are now close to the 25k€ SG which is a bit special. Our idea is quite simple, give more to the authors without who we couldn't offer you these games. So with this SG we will give a 10% bonus for authors on every games sold during this crowdfunding campaign. We really hope we will achieve this goal!



We hope to write you very soon to tell we got it!

The Shakos team.

Me parecen interesantes para 2 jugadores, que es a lo que puedo jugar. Si estuvieran en castellano hubiera entrado.

Hi everyone!

Well we did it, thanks a lot for the authors of Saladin and Border States as they will get a +10% bonus on every games sold during this crowdfunding campaign.

We are close to the end, however we have a few more SG in stock. These two will add some players aids to both games. Two cards, one for each player, that will be added and have rules reminder on them. These rules reminder will be printed on the back of the rulebook, but it would be more practical to have them also under hand. So let's see if we can get them.





Saladin is a great success and thank you a lot for that. Border States is a bit behind, however it deserves more that just a look in our opinion and the Duel Pack offer is pretty interesting. So just think maybe about the opportunity to upgrade if you don't have yet pledged for a Dual Pack!

Let's see tomorrow for the end of this campaign.

The Shakos team

If you missed the crowdfunding campaign, it is still possible to preorder the games on our website :

https://shakos.fr/en/shop/

Hi all,

After a well deserved summer break, time for an update concerning the project.

1. Production : Both games are in production. End of production is expected mid October.

2. Delivery : As you may know we have lots of uncertainties currently concerning sea freight. For reference, a 40' container was $2000 last year (for N1807 Kickstarter delivery), and it is up to $15000 now. This is more than a significant increase, so we are trying to get a better insight of how it will evolve in the coming month. We will keep you update on this specific point.

3. Rules : You can find the final rulebooks of Saladin here :

Saladin rules

And for Border States here :

BS rules

Last, you can still preorder the games on our website if you missed the campaign :

https://shakos.fr/en/

Take care and stay safe!

The Shakos' team