The Comm Guild Maelstrom's Edge

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.

Developing models in plastic is a very slow process with a lot of complicated factors involved. We start developing models about 24 months before they come out, and thought it might be interesting if we provide some early previews of stuff instead of sitting on it until the last minute! These previews are things we are actively working on, but you should assume a conservative time scale when we talk about them here!

One that is a pretty obvious model is the Karist Angel Keeper. It is no secret that we'd love to be able to field a force entirely made up of Angels, and the key to such a force would be a powerful HQ unit. A number of places in the fluff describe the Angel Keeper, including the audiobook "A Keeper's Duty" which is entirely about a trainee Keeper and their charges. This means that the model is fairly well defined, and currently undergoing artistic design.

Unusually, we've got the rules in a fairly good place even though it will still be quite a while until the model is out. This means you can try one out today by building your own, or proxying one with another model from your collection.

The awesome Insaniak on Dakka made his own Keeper conversion with a bunch of spare parts and bits box parts and it looks like this:

Here are the current target stats for the Angel Keeper from our master Rules overseer - yakface:

• Command unit. His detachment can include 1-4 Angel core units, 0-2 Angel hammer units (none of these exist yet), 0-2 Angel vanguard units (none of these exist yet) & 0-2 Angel anvil units.
  
• He would be somewhere in the realm of 8-9 points.
  
• His stats would be: MV7, EVS3, SKL3, AV3, MAS2, FOR2, WP4. Model type: Infantry (human, character).
  
• He'd be armed with some kind of CQ weapon (that you could imagine him using to punish the Angels when they're not behaving properly) and a Ripper Grenade Launcher that would fire Swarmer Grenade rounds. Might have to tone down the Swarmer Grenade rounds to only being 'psych 2D3' (instead of the normal 'psych 3D3')...although this could easily be justified by saying that the fired grenades are not quite as big and therefore don't carry as much na-cybel as the thrown version. He'd probably have the option to take traditional 'Ripper' rounds in the grenade launcher (to give him an actual gun that can deal damage if you want to pay the points for it).
  
• He'd have the 'Angel Handler' & 'Command (1)' abilities. His big other ability would be to remove the 'Kill Mission' ability from Minnow units within a certain range of him (probably the normal command range of 18"), thereby allowing those units to capture mission objectives (while they're close enough to him).
  

Finally, if you have one or more Angel Keeper in your force, you'd be able to swap out your standard faction objective for the 'First Contact' faction objective.

This faction objective would give all Angel units (units with at least 50% angel models) the 'Fearsome (1)' ability, or +1 to their Fearsome ability if they already have one. Any time a non-fearless enemy unit fails its activation discipline check while affected by the Fearsome ability of an Angel unit, you gain +1 VP. You can gain a maximum of 3 VPs this way, and once you have, the 'fearsome' ability bonus immediately ends.

If you have a go at using an Angel Keeper in your force, please let us know how you get on with it!

Part of the development of the comprehensive background fiction for Maelstrom's Edge is ensuring a constant level of universe-specific terms. One that has become quite endearing to us is Stellargee.

While the etymology of the word should be fairly self apparent, a combination of 'Stellar' and 'Refugee', the reason for the introduction of the word was because every time we used 'Refugee', it pulled us back to the modern era/real-world settings, and away from the grandiose galactic scale vision of the universe that we try to encompass when talking about the crisis caused by the Maelstrom.

Refugee was also strongly suggestive of world-scale evacuation and migration, whereas Stellargee allowed us to vastly increase the scope of people affected and associated with the term.

Stellargee is specifically defined in our internal dictionary as "The diaspora refugees - able people temporarily on a world while fleeing the edge". Billions of people forced on to desperate planets, doing everything they can to keep themselves and their families ahead of the inevitable expanse of the Maelstrom.

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.

Part of our plan for the comm guild is to have some consistent weekly content in place. You might have noticed the beautifully named 'Artwork Overview Tuesday' earlier this week. Today is Terrain Thursday - a day each week when we'll share something related to the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, from building templates to pictures of things people have made using it.

Opening the terrain posts is this nice, simple structure designed to look like a quick prefab house that is shipped alongside other shipping containers.

A simple rectangular box is accented with a cardboard trim, then plastic corner components from our terrain sprue are put on each corner, a large door in the middle, a window and pipe fitting on one end, and a door, terminal, steps and light fitting on the other.

For 15 minutes effort, a nicely themed piece of terrain is born.

If you are not familiar with the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, it is a plastic sprue that contains a whole host of plastic components which allow you to easily create terrain for your 28-32mm science fiction battlefields. Visit the Maelstrom's Edge store to learn more!

In our inaugural community spotlight, we wanted to share pezzapoo's great overview video showing the fully painted contents of his Maelstrom's Edge: Battle for Zycanthus box set, along with his general thoughts on the set, assembly process and everything Maelstrom's Edge.

The Comm Guild's community spotlight focuses on sharing something from the Maelstrom's Edge community each week, if you have anything you'd like to get in to the queue, please get in touch with us via the Maelstrom's Edge website

In the Maelstrom's Edge universe, massive numbers of people are forced to flee ahead of the ever-expanding galactic explosion that is the Maelstrom. Evacuation fleets require large amounts of energy, both for travelling long distances through space and to support the many lives aboard each ship on those long journeys. Over time, fuel and other resources inevitably become scarce.

The scientists and engineers of humanity have had millennia to consider solutions to resource optimisation in space. One of the most prevalent is the Interstellar Hydrogen Harvester, or 'IHH'. This relatively small ship has a huge set of harvesting films affixed to the front of it, which allow it to grab every possible scrap of interstellar material that it can. This material is then redirected to a storage hub at the rear of the craft which is periodically emptied into the purpose built storage ships in the fleet.

Harvesting is dramatically more efficient in resource rich areas of the galaxy, such as nebulae. However, objects of large mass tend to attract the Maelstrom at a greater rate than open space, so diverting a fleet for more efficient resource collection is never a decision to be taken lightly.

A handful of IHH ships can massively extend the practical range and viable capacity of an evacuation fleet, and are therefore extremely valuable to all of mankind. Countless fleets have been destroyed in combat over the smallest rumour of IHH possession.

In just 10 days time, the audiobook sequel to Transit will be released - 'Fracture'. We thought it would be prudent to use our first product spotlight post to talk about Transit - our most distributed audiobook.

For those who have not heard it, Transit is a one hour long audiobook by Stephen Gaskell which was written to serve as a broad introduction to the Maelstrom's Edge universe, following the POV character as he learns what the Maelstrom is and what it represents for his future. Amusingly enough, none of the Maelstrom's Edge factions are directly present in the story as it was written while things were still being finalised on that front and we did not want to have to retcon story number 1 if we changed anything at that time!

We've now made the first 5 minutes of Transit available here so that anyone can preview it.

We tried out a few different voice actors and studios, and differing mixtures of sound effects and music with our initial recordings. We opted for an older British accent with subtle ambient sound effects to be the standard in our audiobooks as it was deemed to be the most appropriate for the setting and avoids too much in the way of distracting sounds.

The pace of narration is deliberately designed to work well for listening to when you are either painting or driving. Painting our models is a massively enjoyable part of the hobby for us, but painting while enveloping ourselves in the universe with an audiobook makes things even better. This is why we've gone so heavy on audiobooks already, with 5 painting session length audiobooks already released on the Maelstrom's Edge webstore.

If you've got a long commute, or want to take your relaxation to the next level when painting, we hope you'll consider checking out some of the Maelstrom's Edge audiobooks.

One thing that slipped a lot of people's notice was that we now have a very detailed game walkthrough document up at the maelstrom's edge website.

It is also available in PDF format for reading on a tablet or phone offline, or printing out.

The guide covers all major parts of the gameplay of Maelstrom's Edge, from setting up, to the phases of a turn, suppression and beyond. Even if you are very familiar with Maelstrom's Edge, we still recommend having a read through of the document as it could always give clarity on things that you want to know more about.

In other news, the Maelstrom's Edge homepage has had an update. We will continue to update content on the website, but the homepage was very overdue for some tweaking. One fun thing of note on there is this video:

The above was made for internal use only, but we do like the narration on it, so we'd thought we'd share for a while. The video is the one that we made to show off the basic concept of Maelstrom's Edge to the many third party authors who have written for us. That compilation is currently scheduled for release in February, though we'll likely release at least one story from it for free on here before then.

Today is also the last day of the discounted expansion sprue before we start widely promoting it, so if you are one of our core followers, be sure to grab it before the 22nd!

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 :)

The final piece of the puzzle for the expansion sprue release is now available for download.

Simple visit the Unit Lists section of the Maelstrom's Edge website to see all updated unit cards.

If you just want to grab a high resolution copy of all cards, you can also download them directly in one big zip file. We plan to get these cards in to print before Adepticon next Spring, but there are a few more yet to come between now and then if our production stays on track!

You may note that a Subjugator bot is an option for the Epirian Contractor Suppression Team. The Subjagator is a scarecrow that is based around close range crowd control, and can be built from two scarecrow sprues as follows:

It uses one normal scarecrow sprue, and then the Clingfire from a second sprue, so building a Subjugator will still leave enough spare parts for a normal Scarecrow with Chemtek sprayer to be built.

Tuesday and Wednesday's free PDF army books are great for building a force and learning the rules, but when it comes to playing the game, nothing beats having a handy reference sheet nearby.

We've updated our reference sheets to include all the latest units, weapons and rules for both the Karists and Epirians. Now you can download them right here:

Karist Quick Reference Sheets

Epirian Quick Reference Sheets

We look forward to hearing how the Karist Praetorians fare in battle against a fully equipped Epirian Contractor Suppression Team!

Yesterday we gave you the Karist Faction book, today we have the same for the Epirian Foundation.

To help you build your forces up using the expansion sprue released on Monday, here is a completely free PDF faction book for The Epirian Foundation.

This book contains everything you'd expect from an army book, from the background and origins of the Epirian Foundation, to detailed, up-to-date force listings, abilities, equipment and points values and model stats, along with lots of lovely artwork.

If you have an Epirian army, you need this PDF, so grab it now, stick it on your phone or tablet, or just print a copy out as it is just 21 pages in all at time of writing, so fairly reasonable!

This book and the Karist one from yesterday will be going to print eventually, but not until we add a bunch more units next year, so it is digital only for the time being.

Enjoy :)

To help you build your forces up using the expansion sprue released yesterday, here is a completely free PDF faction book for The Karist Enclave.

This book contains everything you'd expect from an army book, from the background and origins of the Karist Enclave, to detailed, up-to-date force listings, abilities, equipment and points values and model stats, not to mention lots of lovely artwork.

If you have a Karist army, you need this PDF, so grab it now, stick it on your phone or tablet, or just print a copy out as it is just 22 pages in all at time of writing, so fairly reasonable!

Enjoy :)

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.