Do you have Soul?

Hi all, as we explained last week we are in the transition phase at the moment. Waiting for boxes, artwork (physical) and the model to arrive, ready to pack, pack, pack them up ready to go out. So what is new this week? 

• Background art for Death arrived this week, something to set the tone and it is stunning, be rest assured.
• Delays?!!? Yep, unfortunately we are likely to be a week behind our initial expectations of having the stock in store. It happens like that, not all news is good news.
• Game progress, a few more items have been added to the game and we are stepping up our approach to rule design and core identity

I would like to touch on things going wrong. It happens, so keep your head up. Often things aren’t quite as simple as they seem. That quote hasn’t truly been explained or explored, that delivery timeline hasn’t factored in UK mail or even that artwork didn’t arrive because the adjustments you made took longer than you expected.

Having delivered multi million pound projects in my day job, I am well aware of the term ‘stretch’. It happens to even the most organised amongst us and well, we have experienced our first. But whilst it is a disappointment, context is important. The customer base we have are likely to wait a week for a model they truly want, it’s not like turkeys at Christmas, the window is much bigger. Don’t get us wrong, we don’t want to let anyone down but to date nobody has suggested that they need the model by a date that we cannot now achieve. Therefore our clients expectations are maintained. So if anyone out there is looking at this with a view to doing something themselves, don’t panic. Deep breath and go again, because ultimately you will still deliver what you set out to achieve.

Chugga Chugga, Choo Choo….

The Soul Train have been mentioned in passing quite a few times now. In fact they were the subject of our first competition. So who, or what are they?

In the last few weeks we have given you some more information on the who’s who. This focussed in the main on the chief protagonists from the Purgatory world. The Soul Train are our first revelation of the human detritus that mewl around the feet of greater beings.

Purgatory is about angels. It is about the aftermath from the War for Heaven. Where did the angels go? What did they do next? Who was left? Whilst this is a core element of the world, Humans also play a big part. Man was God’s creation, his finest work and the angels were created to watch over and safeguard His greatest creation. So what with Earth being the battlefield, it would kind of be missing the mark if humans were not kicking around hey…

The Soul Train are the first faction and their creation came about from the method of approach we explained last time around. Take a solid idea, stretch it and view it from the another perspective. How differently can it look?

The initial idea was to attach a faction to a person. It’s a tried, tested and traditional approach which has evolved since that point but the Soul Train were attached to Erishkigal who is the guardian of souls. So we quite literally took the world ‘soul’ and thought about what we could do. We ended up looking at the miniature market and realised that there was a space for a group of humanoid models that had a musical slant. They are unique and unlike others created on a table-top game, so how could we best represent them?

The Humans in purgatory are designed to be pretty useless. I mean, they are not angels of prodigious strength, speed and dexterity, they are more like a goblin equivalent from the well-known Warhammer world. They are also mortal which means they are pretty weak. But it was the will of man that God was so proud of and it is this that sees mankind stand and fight, despite the odds. So it doesn’t matter your background, creed, colour, race, religion or purpose, anyone can pick up the nearest thing and club and angel to death with it.

The Soul Train consists of 9 ‘individuals’ and most of them were in a band that played in clubs across the world. They were famous and infamous in the same breath. Through tragedy they perished in a raging inferno as a nightclub was raised to the ground after a feud between St. Peter and another unknown angel spilled into the mortal realm. In death they eventually found their way to the halls of Erishkigal who would torment each soul in turn.

Though Erishkigal is capricious and is known to use the souls at her disposal to bring havoc on the world above and the Soul Train found favour with their new master which saw them restored to the world of mortals with a much changed but very clear agenda. The Soul Train are reapers of souls in name of their master, they appear indiscriminate in their approach but rest assured there is method to the madness. Targeting the generals and lieutenants of other Angels is a specialism of the Soul Train.

So if Super Stevie wheels out the grand piano “Ragdoll 3000” and Parisi starts shuffling through his stack of vinyl’s be wary because you just became collateral for a target close by.

Next up: More on the Soul Train and Game Mechanics…