The Comm Guild Maelstrom's Edge

- by Iain Wilson

The frontier world listed in the Epirian Foundation directory as PG-4215 [designation pending] is a barely-habitable planet on the outer fringe of populated space. At the time the Maelstrom approached the system, PG-4215 possessed a single official settlement, known as 'Research & Terraforming Implementation Facility Alpha' by the Foundation and as 'Hamilton' by those unfortunate enough to have been posted there.

With PG-4215's few small, equatorial landmasses being hot, dry, and generally unpleasant, Hamilton's small population very early on had committed themselves to paving over and urbanising as much of it as possible.


Oblivious to impending conflict, an Epirian cargo drone shunts shipping containers for unloading.

Hamilton is the first table setup that I've finished off so far for my own Maelstrom's Edge games. I've used it somewhat as a test-bed for trying out different ideas, with the end result being a bit of a hodge-podge of styles.


Taking up position on the roof of the refectory, the squad watches an automated uplink relay trundle down the laneway.

Buildings have been constructed from a range of different materials, with the components from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue helping to tie it all together into a more-or-less coherent whole. The building above is made from a cardboard giftbox with the lid flipped upside down.


In the distance, past the plantation dome, a squad of heavy armoured Karists approaches, weapons at the ready.

The plantation dome was constructed from a plastic salad bowl, with foamcore used for the enclosed area at the front. You can see how this was put together in the walkthrough here.


A Warden conducts a routine maintenance check on the exterior of the planation dome.

Trimmed-down and repainted aquarium plants were used for the plantation beds inside the dome. In the background is one of my first foamcore constructions.


A Hunter warmech on patrol.

Cover is extremely important in Maelstrom's Edge, so wherever possible I have tried to include protruding elements for models to potentially hide behind, as can be seen in the buttressing on the building behind the Hunter.


A Scorpion drone lurks in the courtyard, awaiting instructions from its Handler.

Of course, some details aren't particularly useful for cover, and are just there to look pretty.


On the other side of town, a Hunter on loan from the Swamp Research Team surveys the laneway.

Painting has mostly been kept fairly simple, with the buildings all painted white with some salt weathering to make them look like they've been exposed to the elements on an unfriendly world. I wanted a unified colour scheme to help tie the disparate buildings together, so they would look like the town was cobbled together from various sources, but would still look like it was purpose built for a single organisation.


Lieutenant Bob takes up position on the balcony.

Variations on a basic design can help create a 'kit-home' look, with some different buildings that all clearly belong together. The above building was constructed using a similar template to the first foamcore structure, but with the courtyard removed and a balcony added. You can see the construction of this building in a short video here.


The Karists advance.

If you're aiming for an urban-themed board, it's a good idea to add in some area terrain elements rather than just having a table filled with solid buildings, as this mixes things up a bit for movement and cover. The same template used for Lieutenant Bob's balcony building was used to create a ruin, just by cutting off the roof, bashing things up a bit and adding some rubble on the base.


A lone Karist trooper lurks between the buildings.

In the background above you can see another building made from a plastic storage tray. Check out the build video here.


Scarecrows move to intercept the intruders.

Playing on a themed table is a great way to bring your games to life, as it helps to create the illusion of an actual battlefield, rather than just having a random assortment of different terrain.


Despite imminent conflict, Bob can't resist trying out his new camera drone...

Still to do: I have several more buildings still on the workbench for this board, including a bot storage building and some more small multi-purpose buildings. I'd also like to add some sort of water-treatment pond. This will help to expand out from 4'x4' to a more rounded 4'x6', which is better for standard games. It would also benefit from the addition of more scatter terrain to break up the firelanes a little, which will be my next terrain project:




All of the decorative elements on the buildings shown here are from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue. You can find this in a handy two-pack in the Maelstrom's Edge online store here. You can share your terrain creations on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

Most of our Epirian colour schemes use metallic plating on the shoulderpads, but to many people, the 'blocky' effect is a bit too much. This one from Golem painting, went with a much more muted colour scheme to great effect. We've got an entire army painted up in these colours and will share more pictures of them here on fridays.

One of our most widely loved models, the Epirian Spider drones are fun little robots that are equipped with either a cutter light machine gun or a flakk gun.

Design
The origin of the design of these drones started with a desire for an 'animal sized' drone. We played around with a bunch of different options, with a crab-type robot being an early front runner. Debate amongst the team deemed it much more appropriate for the Epirians to have an all terrain drone that could fit in small spaces to help from a terraforming perspective. That role and specification evolved in to the spider drone.

Early Concepts
We always wanted to create a common drone core that could be extended into different means of locomotion. Below, we share one of our early drone development concept images:

Conversions
The drones also convert very easily due to being a versatile plastic kit. We've seen a few variants - the 'grasshopper' drone which has both legs and turbines, and the 'scorpion' variant, pictured below:

You can check out more on the Spider Drones, as well as being able to order them, at the Maelstrom's Edge web site.

Our friday posts here at the comm guild are photos of a model in a colour scheme that we might not have shared before (or much at least), an interesting conversion or whatever takes our fancy!

Today's inaugural post are these Karist troopers in a striking red and white colourscheme.

These troopers were painted by lil'legend studios, and are a colour scheme of their own invention. Red works so well on Karists, but changing the cybel glow on the weapon to that greenish-blue colour really makes them pop nicely. We actually have a full force of Karists painted up in these colours and will be sharing more photos of them over the coming months.

Wrapping up this week's expansion sprue content, we thought we'd list the sprues you need to make each unit.

Karist Praetorians

Minimum requirements: 1x Karist Trooper Sprue, 1x Faction Expansion Sprue
Maximum requirements: 2x Karist Trooper Sprue, 3x Faction Expansion Sprue (the max 2 cybel glaives are on a single sprue, but for a larger size unit you'll need more loin cloths and, if so desired, 5 cybel blades)

Epirian Contractor Suppression Team

Minimum requirements: 1x Epirian Contractor Sprue, 1x Faction Expansion Sprue
Maximum requirements: 2x Epirian Contractor Sprue, 5x Faction Expansion Sprue (if you want the max 5 shock batons/mauls), 2x Epirian Scarecrow Sprue

Cybel Mine Equipped Shadow Walker

Minimum requirements: 1x Karist Shadow Walker Sprue, 1x Faction Expansion Sprue
Recommended requirements: 1x Karist Shadow Walker Sprue, 2x Faction Expansion Sprue (to also make a mine on a base token to represent mine deployment)

Customised Karist Troopers / Karist Assault Troopers

Recommended: 2x Karist Trooper Sprue, 1x Faction Expansion Sprue (for the variety of extra parts and poses)
Maximum requirements: 2x Karist Trooper Sprue, 3x Faction Expansion Sprue (for the max 5 cybel blades)

Remember, the faction expansion sprue is only discounted for 2 more days, so head over to the Maelstrom's Edge webstore and pick them up now if you have been waiting :)

It is with great pleasure that we can now offer the Faction Expansion Sprue for sale at the Maelstrom's Edge webstore.

The faction expansion sprue is needed to build the following new units:

Epirian Contractor Suppression Teams

Karist Praetorians

and it adds new options for:

Karist Shadow Walkers (cybel mine)

Epirian Contractors (shock battons, as well as helmet and covered arm options)

Karist Troopers (cybel blades, new head)

as well as Karist Trooper Assault Squads (cybel blades and extra weapons).

The faction expansion sprue contains the following components (in no particular order):

1x small knife (faction independent but generally more appropriate for Karists)
1x EMP grenade
1x Choke grenade
1x Cybel Charge
1x Rad Grenade
1x Swarmer Grenade
3x different Epirian helmeted heads (usable on contractors and contractor suppression teams)
1x Karist pistol without attached hand
2x Karist cybel blades
1x Epirian shock baton
3x Karist new hand poses (grip, hold, clench)
1x Epirian shock mace
2x Karist pulse carbines without attached hands
2x Karist grenade launchers without attached hands
2x Karist radwave emitters without attached hands
5x Epirian clothed left arms
5x Epirian clothed right arms
1x Cybel mine
1x Karist shouting bald head
1x Karist trooper pointing arm
3x Karist praetorian loincloths (keyed to leg poses on the Karist Trooper sprue)
2x Karist cybel glaives

As part of our launch promotion, the sprue is being sold at a discounted rate until the 22nd Aug. Right now it is just £2.33 / $3.33 per sprue for a limited time, and sold in packs of 3. On the 22nd the price will go up to the normal price, increasing by £1/$1 per sprue.

We'll be revealing more of the new unit options over the next few days. For now, here's an early look at the new unit cards for the Praetorians, Assault Squads and Contractor Suppression Teams:

Thanks for reading! For now and the immediate future, the expansion sprues are only available through the Maelstrom's Edge webstore, so feel free to head over and take a look.

As many of you may have noticed, we've been a little bit quiet in terms of public content since we attended Salute 2016. A good chunk of the core team at Spiral Arm Studios was commissioned to work on some very interesting things in a business to business deal with a third party. While we would normally have refused so that we could keep strong focus on building Maelstrom's Edge, the bribery was simply too convincing, with the compensation enough to fully fund Maelstrom's Edge development at a greater pace through to the end of 2020, so we've suddenly got even more stuff in the pipeline! Gearing up for that extra production took a bit of time, but things are well under way now, and we'll be sharing a bit more of our in development work as time goes on so that everyone can see what they have to look forward to.

In addition to the above, JP, the guy who was working hard to build our community channels, got poached by another games company, and since this happened while our focus was elsewhere on the b2b stuff we did not have the capacity to immediately drop someone else into his place. He was doing a great job and had a lot of smart initiatives in place, and from his work we've now got a wider communication infrastructure in place (centred around this blog) ensuring that we can keep feeding out news and content on a regular basis, bringing in a wide range of content writers to keep things fresh and interesting. As always, we are very happy to share community generated content as well, and we'll be releasing some tools and information to help people dip their toes even further into the Maelstrom's Edge universe over the coming months.

We are celebrating the launch of this blog with the release of our next set of models. This coming week sees the release of the Maelstrom's Edge expansion sprue, as detailed a couple of months ago. This sprue is packed with parts to allow you to build Epirian Contractor Suppression Teams, Karist Praetorians equipped with Cybel Glaives, Cybel Mine equipped Shadow Walkers, Karist Trooper Assault Squads, and loads of new detailing elements like new arm poses, grenades, and more. Here's a sneak preview of the contents of the sprue, broken down by faction (Pink=Karist, Blue=Epirian):



Over this week and next, we'll be releasing loads of new content to support the expansion sprue. Including but not limited to, new unit cards (in digital form), new faction summary sheets, free army books for the Karists and Epirians detailing the new units and weaponry available to each, and plenty of new model photos.

The expansion sprue will go sale tomorrow - Aug 15th in an unspecified timezone, on the Maelstrom's Edge web store. For one week, we'll be offering it at a discounted price as a thank you to all of our loyal supporters, so make sure you grab your discounted sprue before the 22nd Aug! We'll then be bringing out bundles of sprues to allow individual units to be purchased with all necessary parts (The Epirian Contractor Suppression Team for instance needs an Epirian Contractor Sprue, 2-3 expansion sprues and 1-2 Scarecrow sprues!)

Exciting times for sure, and we thank you for being a part of it :)