Pledge Manager and Chastity
over 2 years ago – Tue, Aug 23, 2022 at 08:20:55 PM

Hi guys, this update is almost the same as the newsletter we just sent!

We have too big of an update on manufacturing not to share it with you straight away :)

That aside, our Design Diary series will continue with our hero Chastity. Finally, we are going to remind you for the 700th time that our pledge manager is closing next week!

As a side note, due to our other activities, we had to take a break from online playtesting, we promise it will resume in September! To compensate, only few weeks after the move, Antonio is already spreading the word of Kabula in Belgium!

Manufacturing & Logistics

After much thought, we decided to change the company who will manufacture Kabula. We were drawn towards them by a great project manager who unfortunately quit right before our Kickstarter launched. After that, we changed 3 other project managers in the next few months and, every time this happened, our quote became more expensive.  Communication became a big problem as well and we could never seem to find appropriate solutions.

Long story short, Kabula will be manufactured by BangWee GM (they make In Too Deep!). They have a great track record and you can find testimonials from creators on their website. Overall, we really enjoyed communicating with them and they set a very realistic timeline for our project.
How does this affect you?

1) The only change in quality we forecast is a small increase in cardstock thickness (so it's a good one! We'll still use blue core cards)
2) With manufacturing scheduled for October, it is very likely that we'll keep the promise to deliver by February. Fingers crossed, we promise we are working very hard to make it happen!

Design Diary

After the chapter on Isolde in our most recent KS update, today we are going to talk about your favourite nun, Sister Chastity!

She will be included inside the core or huge box directly, and these packages containing her will be marked with an adhesive. Because of this, only one Chastity per package is allowed and she won't be available after Pledge Manager closes!

As soon as Chastity arrived to the Island and saw the monsters that inhabit it, she immediately "realized" what was going on: She had been sent to Hell to get rid of demons. With such a back story, Chastity couldn't but be the monster hunter among our heroes. Her blood thirst is ingrained in her gameplay mechanics. Her initial equipment includes the Holy Vengeance, a massive sword which gets stronger the more you use it. But here is the catch, to use it you need to discard one Part token, which means you'll soon run out of them. And what is the quickest way to get more Parts? That's right, butchering monsters!

Her unique power Bartering Paws and Tails leans in the same direction, she draws a common item any time she gets Legs or Butt at the roll for Aim, while attacking a monster.
Players can of course get a different weapon early on in the game and ignore these skills, but they are actually pretty fun :)

What about her three personalities? We'd say they are pretty divine.

Pride (generous/creepy): Delusion of grandeur can be pretty dangerous. With this personality, Chastity realizes that with the Kabula granting immortality, she can become a true Goddess. Her unlocked ability Domination allows her to "partially" control the Guardian attacks, and her new winning condition is eliminating all other heroes. She can speed up the development of this personality by attacking the Guardian, but do not overdo that, remember it is your future ally! If it dies, your winning condition can't be achieved!

Gluttony (lazy/practical): Well, this is just a normal nun!
Sorry, just kidding, I was actually at school with nuns, some are cool :) With this personality, Chastity gives herself up to the pleasure of food! And with her Imaginary Eating she heals every time anybody else on the map is healing. Isn't this OP? Well, all the powers are kind of OP, so it's kind of fine!

Lust (romantic/violent): Told you I was at school with nu...

...this is getting worse and worse!!
Chastity decides to scratch a hitch she couldn't scratch. Literally couldn't. Have we mentioned her armour is a chastity belt? Now you know! Metal Teeth always allows her to defend while also damaging the attacker. With this personality, she unlocks Guilty Pleasure, which means that every time she uses Metal Teeth, she Recharges a Part (maybe those same Teeth, so she can use it again?) and gets a Butt token (which she can use or discard the next time she uses her Holy Vengeance!)

A little curiosity: Chastity's miniature was heavily inspired by Guts swinging the Dragon Slayer. We consider it our little tribute to Berserk and Kentaro Miura.

Pledge Manager

Pledge Manager is closing on 31st August at 23.59 Pacific Time and we are still waiting for MANY backers to complete their survey. Unless something crazy happens, we won't send another update to remind you that, we know Backerkit is already sending plenty, but please hurry up :)

As usual, any support in spreading this link with interested people is hugely appreciated!

The next update is scheduled for September 5th, I guess we'll talk about Zack!

Thanks so much for reading, please comment for any question or feedback!

Antonio and the Kabula team,

at Stranger Games Studio

Isolde: Mother of 3D printed minis...wait what?
over 2 years ago – Tue, Aug 09, 2022 at 01:25:24 AM

Hello everybody, hope August is treating you good!

At Stranger Games Studio things are going well, Antonio started a job in Belgium and Miguel is enjoying some time in Spain with family. Mario, Kyriakos and Dario are about to be free for some weeks, so they'll work harder to compensate for the others!

If you haven't done so already please make sure to complete pledge manager and send our pre-order store link to your old high school teachers.

STL Bundle

Here you have some stolen pics to please your regal eyes (literally stolen, they weren't supposed to be included in the update).

If you got our STL bundle (or the Huge Package!) you will receive a link to a google drive folder with all the sculpts as soon as your card is charged, after we close Pledge Manager on 31/08. We'll try to have this folder ready by next week, so if you got it during the campaign and want early access just let us know :) Most likely there will be some issue of compatibility with some software/printer, but we'll be here to solve them and will keep updating the folder following your feedback in the next few months! 

Looking forward to see all your paint-jobs!

Design Diary

In the last newsletter we told you about the Aim System and promised you more info on the individual heroes. Today we are starting with Isolde! 

Isolde is one of our most iconic heroes, a pregnant mother carrying with her an endless swarm of children. She is quite a tank, starting with the highest HP among our heroes and a protective bib which is effectively a shield, but she has way more to offer.

Monsters love her kids, and for this reason her unique power is to use any monster action by spending ANY two Parts. Imagine you have a super cool familio but you already spent the Brain needed to activate the amazing action you wanted to use now. With Isolde, you can just spend 2 Guts and use it anyway!

Not too bad! (FYI Guts are everywhere...Brains are not!) 

This is just the beginning, let's have a look at her possible personalities.

generous/romantic: Obviously, we all want Isolde to get over her past problems and stop trusting weird men who end up letting her down... Then why are you collecting all those hashtags on generous and romantic?!

You can speed up the progression of this personality by tipping the hot shop-clerks she always meets when shopping. Once you flip the card, you unlock "The Pacifier". 

By discarding a Part (not spending, discarding!) you can give The Pacifier to a hero who didn't have it the previous round, and this hero (player or automa) cannot use any attack action for that round!

violent/naturelover: This is a pretty positive outcome, for Isolde's little family: Sail to unexplored lands...after sinking the Kabula. She cannot really risk one of her exes to be summoned to the Island like she was! If she unlocks this personality, her Wind of Change will add an extra PUSH to all her successful attacks, in a direction of choice. According to the position of the target, this can be very relevant: Most of the times you can add one unblockable damage or a nausea token. Considering that her starting weapon (the nappies) already give the target some nausea, this means even more unblockable damage after the attack.

creepy/practical: If she was maybe a bit naïve initially, she is definitely going too far the other way now. Unlocking this personality, Isolde lets her kids fight for her. The problem is that they only have 1 hp and this doesn't really grant them a long and happy life. She doesn't care though! She can spawn 2 of them every time she Rests (and if she soaks the damage herself, she can usually save at least one even if they are attacked before they activate, at the beginning of her next turn). Fun fact: To progress this personality faster, Isolde can send one probing kid before her when exploring dungeons (which cancels all effect of the traps but her max hp decreases by 1!)

Overall, Isolde is not the easiest hero to use. She starts with low movement (only 2 Legs tokens, try to go around carrying all those babies with you!) which means you have to plan your turns a bit more carefully but, oh boy, do these powers compensate for the slower start :)

Next Update

Hope you enjoyed the update! According to schedule, we have a newsletter coming on 22/08 and a KS update on 05/09 but considering that Pledge Manager will be about to close, we'll definitely have an update before that, most likely tied to the newsletter on the 22nd.

We will talk about manufacturing and logistics and share something about Chastity!

By the way, about the updates and newsletter 2 weeks apart, how is this system working for you? We are sharing different content but backers are always getting all the info they need, so hopefully everybody gets the amount of info they want? 

31st of August Pledge Manager closes
over 2 years ago – Mon, Aug 01, 2022 at 11:27:53 PM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Pledge Manager!
over 2 years ago – Mon, Jul 11, 2022 at 11:07:58 PM

Hi all!

Pledge Manager and Pre-order store for Kabula are now open and you should receive an invitation to the survey very soon!

We locked all prices for backers, so if you backed the campaign you can upgrade your pledge at the same discounted prices.

Please note: If you want to switch pledge level, instead of adding items on top of it, you should do so from this MICROSCOPIC LITTLE LINK on the first page of your survey!

Also, until you insert your address, shipping cost will default to the highest, do not panic!

Thanks to the backers who took part in the smoke test, it was thanks to them that we could spot these little bumps on the road!

A few updates:

• We are happy to offer the neoprene map as an add-on! Many of you requested it explicitly and we're glad we managed to include it! Note that this is an unlockable add-on but it only requires 30 copies to be booked which we should get to pretty easily! 
• Including the Weretesticle in the monster roster requires an extra mould, and we are already "personally" absorbing many expenses. But this will not stop us! We are determined to unlock it as planned, as a stretch goal! The goal is set as 55k EUR but this includes shipping and VAT (which we obviously cannot use in production), if you guys share a bit of Kabula love through socials and board game groups, we are sure we will make it soon!

To share the project with non-backers, you need to use the link for the pre-order store!

In case you missed these, after the campaign:

• We included extra cards in the Conspiracy Expansion: 10 encounters and 5 dungeons .
• We added an extra player mat in the Conspiracy Expansion, bringing the total to 6. (Game is officially for up to 5, but if you have Chastity you can now house rule 6 player games, we’ll give you suggestions on how to do it as well)
•  Shipping cost of the Huge Package is always lower than shipping the Big Package or the Core Game + Conspiracy Expansion, and sometimes lower than advertised during the campaign.

Information on offers:

• if you have a free Chastity extra hero, you should find it in your cart.
• If you are the winner of a giveaway, you should find it in your cart.
• If you 1) are getting a Huge Package and 2) shipping to your region costs 60 EUR or more, then you are entitled to a 10 EUR discount. We could only identify a few of you, the others need to contact us to enjoy this offer, unfortunately we could not automate this functionality before getting your address!

For any issue with the following, please contact us through Kickstarter and we’ll get back to you asap!

With this out of the way, we know many of you are on holiday, please do enjoy that and have a toast for us! No major hurry for completing PM, you have until the 20th of August and we’ll send other reminders on the way!

Speak to you on Monday for the usual KS update, talking about Hero Automa this time!

Neoprene Map unlocked//Hero Automa design diary//Share the love
over 2 years ago – Mon, Jul 11, 2022 at 11:07:38 PM

Hi all,

As promised, we are back with a "design diary", skip to the bottom for PM related info and some personal requests :)

Hero Automas

In our previous newsletter we wrote a massive chapter on the differences between our six Guardians, this time we are focusing on Hero Automas.

First of all, what are they? They are cards which replace a human player at the table. They can be used when playing solo, but also when playing at a lower player count.

Kabula is a chaotic game and we like to add one or two Automas any time we play a two-player game for example, to remove that chess-like feeling and add some random disturbance.

To reduce upkeep and set up time, they work with a single card and, similarly to wild monsters and Guardians (when they fight), during their turn they flip one or two coins to determine behaviour. HP and Farz are tracked with the dials of empty player mats, one per Automa.

Hero Automas are double sided tarot cards. Just like heroes guided by players, in the first part of the game Automas roam the board, powering themselves up and collecting #tags token related to their #traits. They do so in different ways depending on the hero! For example, the nerd version of Zack can Trade rare cards (flipping encounter pins on the board) to collect Brain, and each Brain on its mat gives extra power to his Placebo Block.

When there are three #tags tokens on the card, it flips to its other side. This is marked with a cute Kabula icon, as the Kabula is now the main target of the Automa!

Automa cards flip to this side also when someone else steals the Kabula, disregarding the number of #tags on the card.

Once this side of the card is revealed, heroes will either move towards the Kabula, if this is available, or flip a coin (or two, depending on the card!) and perform one of the combat actions.

When selecting their targets, unlike wild monsters and Guardians, which can be easily tricked by distance on the board etc, Hero Automas are "smart". If they have the Kabula they will do their best to put down the Guardian and win the game. If they don't, they'll ignore all other targets but the Kabula owner, to try to steal the tree.

Are they as smart as humans? Will the new Blade Runner be about Automa Cards developing consciousness? Most likely not. Nonetheless, they are often overpowered enough to win a game if you are not careful! Also, they never need to Rest, which is quite advantageous to the agendas in their little cardboard minds.

There are eight Automa cards available in the game and they all differ quite a lot. As you can see above, naturelover/generous Jessika spawns a lot of monsters and, although she starts with no defensive actions, she collects armour cards during the game. Naturelover/violent Isolde can explode Dungeons (pushing everybody around but also giving them items) and create encounter Pins, and she has massively powerful attacks when in combat mode. Body Guards will save the life of generous/lazy Clayton, while his cunning creepy/practical version may convince you to leave him alone and attack another poor target in range, instead. And yes, of course, practical/creepy Isolde uses her kids :)

With all game content now complete, we are keeping polishing and playtesting and slowly started to prepare the files for printing. Thanks a lot for your comments on the rulebook, we'll be back to it very soon!

Pledge Manager

Pledge Manager is going well and it has been super nice to talk again with so many of you!

The Neoprene Map was unlocked way earlier than we thought! With many backers still having to complete PM we are probably looking at doubling orders, not bad, not bad at all!

All the funds collected until now come from you guys, not just paying your shipping, but also upgrading your pledges, for which we really feel blessed, really appreciate all the support!

Starting this week we'll start pushing to get new backers for the pre-order store. 

If you do want to help, we would ask you to share our pre-order store link with one friend who you think may be interested.

If you are active on board game groups on any platform, and you want to share our project, that is of course really appreciated too!

With some help we are sure that we can unlock the next goal!

Speak to you very soon, we'll keep you updated on any relevant activity we do in this period in which we may need your input!

As a note: 

• A few backers ordered everything included in the Huge Package (or almost) but as individual items. In some cases it may be intentional, but if you hoped the order would automatically translate to a Huge Package, it's not the case. Please read the previous update on how to switch pledge level and save yourself some cash :) 
• We are arranging group collection in Milan and Palermo, if you live close to these cities and want to save some in shipping, please get in touch! If some backers want to arrange group collections in other cities too, get in touch and we'll help you do that!