devising
an Adventure Showdown
‘of Shot & Blade’ would take players across the wildlands of Edath on missions for their clan.
This prototype boardgame had squads of paper-minis crossing various maps, overcoming obstacles and adversaries using the skills of agents, wildsmen, traders, combateers and others to gain advantage versus the final objective.
Episodes
Episodes
Episodes
Squads
Episodes
Episodes
Maps
Episodes
Minis
Minis
Episodes
Minis
Wildland Explorers
Conscripted Paper Minis
To back up the skirmish campaign rules in the book ‘War Unleashed’ we had a bunch of paper minis on the website for players to download.
For ‘of Shot & Blade’s development we brought a few in to represent the faction’s squads on the map mock-ups. Coming from a battle card game, they ached for combat, but the boardgame kept insisting they use other skills, such as negotiate, outfox, enchant or ‘mind-hack terrain’.
Occupational Hazards
As different obstacles were encountered, the skills that could be used to overcome them would determine which skill class could be assigned to do so. Other squads could then act in support or be assigned to other obstacles and hazards.
These skill sets defined the different faction cards: their stats and the look of their team.
Blazed Trails & Other Signs
Each skill class required an icon for easy reference. Icons for these and the kinds of obstacles and more would be used across the game components. This included the Adventure Episode booklet, which was kept very simple and clear despite bringing together the various bits of information needed to play through the episode.
A bold difference between player and opponent actions was then devised (parchment colour vs deep red) to make things clear on the maps and parchments.
Journal of the Wild
Back when a good thematic desktop domain was the grail, Ash put together a wordpress site to let followers of the Edath series know more of what was in the works.
The site was crafted around a blog that outlined the different aspects of the prototype, introducing the overall concept, the game’s art direction and how the character classes had established the cards.
It too passed into the West after the project was shelved but a few screen-shots remain.