Faction Summary Sheets Updated
Posted on Thursday Aug 18, 2016 at 04:00pm in General
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:
Epirian Quick Reference Sheets
We look forward to hearing how the Karist Praetorians fare in battle against a fully equipped Epirian Contractor Suppression Team!
Tags: epirian expansionsprue karist pdf rules
Epirian Foundation Book - Free to Download
Posted on Wednesday Aug 17, 2016 at 07:00pm in The Epirian Foundation
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 :)
Tags: epirian expansionsprue pdf
Karist Enclave Faction Book - Free to Download
Posted on Tuesday Aug 16, 2016 at 06:00pm in The Karist Enclave
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 :)
Tags: expansionsprue karist pdf
New Karist and Epirian Models!
Posted on Monday Aug 15, 2016 at 10:26pm in Models
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.
Tags: epirian expansionsprue karist models
What Have Spiral Arm Studios Been Up To?
Posted on Monday Aug 15, 2016 at 12:10am in General
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 :)
Tags: epirian expansionsprue karist models
Welcome to the Comm Guild
Posted on Saturday Aug 13, 2016 at 09:30pm in Fiction
Welcome one and all to The Comm Guild - the official blog of Maelstrom's Edge!
After a year of operating maelstromsedge.com, coupled with recent changes in the way facebook works, we found that updates were getting harder and harder to share with everyone, and loads of casual bits of information and cool community items were getting buried rather quickly. JP proposed that we set up a frequently updated blog as the central point for our communications, and now you are reading it here at The Comm Guild.
Over the coming weeks, months and years, we'll be sharing everything from release news, to promotions, to fiction and artwork, to model breakdowns and more. Please bookmark us (CTRL-D), or add us to your blog reading list so that you dont miss anything!
You might have seen the name 'Comm Guild' crop up a few times in the context of Maelstrom's Edge. For those readers who are not already familiar with them, this is their story...
When the technology for the cybel network was first discovered and human explorers set off searching for new worlds to colonise, the practice was incredibly risky. Small ships were required to jump ‘blind’ into tunnels, with no idea where they would emerge. Many adventurous prospectors joined the rush to look for inhabitable worlds. Sending larger ships was not possible without a gate being present on the other side of the cybel tunnel, so the smaller scout ships would jump through with enough equipment to build a gate, allowing larger colonisation ships to come through. Over time this coalesced into an official organisation, encompassing the adventurous prospectors, the engineers of the gates and the staff that would run the completed gate space stations. Originally they were known as the Wardens or Gatekeepers, but gradually as the cybel network grew their name changed to the Comm Guild, to represent the main currency for the operators of the cybel gates: information.
One of the peculiar quirks of the cybel network is that it can often take longer to travel between a star and one of its planets by sub-light than it takes to travel to another star system by the cybel network. This has resulted in an elaborate system of communication and trade based around the space stations located close to the cybel gates orbiting a star. Most of the large trading vessels travelling through the cybel tunnels do not have a planet as a destination. Instead, they dock for a few days or weeks at the cybel gate, offloading and onloading passengers, freight, and information. The offloaded material is carried in system by sub-light transports, and new information from interstellar travel is beamed to the system’s planets from the cybel gate’s station.
In this way, the local Comm Net is updated with news and discoveries from other systems, whilst the departing ship will take a copy of the local information net with them when they leave which they share with others in the cybel network. Naturally this mode of communication brings with it certain inefficiencies. The further away an event, the longer it takes to reach a planet, and in some cases news can be second or third hand information. Worse yet, if the network links between two star systems are convoluted or disrupted news may go missing or never be transferred. Prior to the Maelstrom, there were hundreds of agreed trading routes, most travelling in a circular fashion out from the Capital Worlds to the inner rim, taking the shortest paths to each world. The Comm Guilds ran these touring craft, and became powerful players in the galaxy, trading information and resources to worlds across the Spiral Arm.
The Comm Guild and The Maelstrom
The Maelstrom ripped apart the lives of the Comm-ships, more so than perhaps any other group of people. Ships at the core were destroyed instantly, whilst others inadvertently travelled into the Maelstrom’s path as news of the destruction had not made it out. The trade and communication links that had crystallised out of millennia of using the cybel network were destroyed forever. Although attempts have been made to restructure the circular communication trading routes, it has proven impossible all along the Edge. With the onset of the Maelstrom the Comm Guild has begun to evacuate staff from gates near the Edge of the Maelstrom, leaving the previously sought-after assets abandoned or manned with a skeleton crew to keep the gate open for straggling stellargees. With the loss of much of their wealth and power the Wardens close to the Maelstrom have become more pliable to bribes for travel, allowing dangerous groups of pirates and cults to utilise the cybel network. Some of the more audacious pirates have begun to utilise larger ships and have captured significant gate stations. In addition, the closure of some cybel tunnels by the retreat of the Comm Guild has led to many evacuation ships and planet-bound refugees being abandoned entirely.
The Darkeners
Another facet of the Comm Guild are the Darkeners, a secretive organisation set up thousands of years ago in the aftermath of the vast and destructive AI wars that occurred shortly after the birth of the cybel network. During the AI wars, thousands of worlds and billions of people were killed by the whims of warring digital minds. The Darkeners are a small group of handpicked operatives who operate within the Comm Guild. They monitor the technological advancement of civilisations across the Spiral Arm, and send out clandestine strike teams to destroy any system that has the potential to become sentient. Extremely elite trained soldiers with advanced equipment and weaponry, the Darkeners utilise the information traded at cybel gates by the Comm Guild to watch for AI developments and act when warranted. As the Maelstrom disrupts this flow of information and the ability to travel across the Spiral Arm, the job of the Darkeners to monitor nascent AI becomes harder, leading to the possibility that the AI singularity might occur somewhere.
Tags: fiction first introduction thecommguild
