Pilot mechs and support units through 3D cities at the same time. Complete 20 minute missions to upgrade your team over the campaign.
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1,416
backers
$221,102
pledged of $75,000 goal
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Pilot mechs and support units through 3D cities at the same time. Complete 20 minute missions to upgrade your team over the campaign.
About this project
The First Of Its Kind!
Mech Command RTS is a real time strategy board game where all players pilot mechs, fire weapons, activate equipment and direct support troops simultaneously.
The first board game of its kind, Mech Command RTS has been designed to be fast to setup, fast to teach and fast to play. Featuring unique components like LED pointers built into each miniature's base to provide instantaneous line of sight as well as physical buildings to provide cover and a rooftop level.
Between the 20 minute missions, players spend their hard-earned rewards on upgrading their mechs and equipment. Construct your mech according to your play-style and team role. Over the course of the campaign, teams will strive to accomplish objectives for their faction to reclaim the earth.
We are excited to bring the first real time combat board game to the public. This campaign has been designed to provide substantial benefits to the KS backers primarily through lower costs. Backers will also receive priority delivery and some exclusive rewards. The goal is publicly launch this game August 2017 at GenCon with backers receiving their rewards a month or two earlier.
A destroyed Earth is recovering from a millennia of war. The vast clouds of radiation and deadly contaminants are receding, revealing long abandoned cities and industrial centers. The surviving factions of humanity now race to claim these areas’ resources, valuable salvage and advanced tech. Some to rebuild civilization, some to dominate it.
A True RTS Board Game - No Dice, No Turns, No Waiting
Mech Command RTS is the first real time strategy board game of its kind. Move your mech and support units at the same time as your opponents and team-mates. The basic mechanics are simple: call shots on your enemies when you have line of sight, then spend energy to activate weapons to destroy them. But the tactical choices grow deep as you attempt to accomplish a wide range of objectives.
20 Minute Missions - Week Long Campaigns
Mech Command RTS is a campaign style game. This means the missions are played separately but are linked together to form an ongoing game that can be played over the course of days or weeks. The core set includes a mission pack with a 12 mission branching campaign with each mission’s parameters changing substantially. Within a mission, players might compete to mine resources with their support units, destroy the opponents' forward base, carry salvage to drop zones, activate up-link points and more.
Completion of objectives brings currency, prestige and access to advanced tech. Thus players evolve and grow stronger over time. The campaign winner is the first team to collect the victory requirements of their faction; a unique combination of successful missions, prestige, resources and tech. But those rewards must often be spent along the way to stay competitive. Do you bank your rewards for campaign victory, or invest them into better equipment now?
Elegant Customization & Action Tracking
The player's mech sheet and cards serve as their control panel throughout missions. Energy gems are placed on the mech sheet to move, and onto the cards to activate weapons, boosters and equipment. This auto-tracks every action that is performed and allows players to clarify any questions that might arise.The elegant slot system streamlines the intense customization of the video games; making it accessible to casual and new players while providing depth for hard core strategists.
Over a Hundred Unique Weapons, Boosters and Equipment Items
The equipment and weapon cards have been designed to have their key stats read-able from across the table and each plays differently. The activation costs, ammo type, recharge rate and overheat levels of each piece of equipment adjusts how quickly and how often it can be used. For example. some weapons can burst down an opponent but take a long time to recharge, while others provide steady damage over time. Specialty weapons abound; energy blades are devastating but require melee range, wire-guided missiles can be fired around corners while some ultimate weapons exhaust a mech's ammo supply in one shot.
Physical Customization
Swap out your arm and weapon sets between mechs to better represent your load out. Remove arms when they are destroyed to represent damage. Legs in particular have a large impact on gameplay and so are represented physically with interchangeable models. Reverse jointed mechs for example, have bonuses to booster movement (and usually reduced armor) while mechs from the tank category can plow through buildings but cannot boost to the rooftop level.
These high quality miniatures have been designed by a team of sculptors led by Sergey Kolesnik and Galen Tingle.
Battle on the Streets and Rooftops
The buildings of Mech Command block line of sight and create 2 levels of play on the map; ground and rooftop. Only special weapons can target between levels so boosting to the rooftops can provide a temporary respite from fire; at least until an enemy pursues you to the higher level. Light armored scouts often traverse the map by rooftop alone, flanking their opponents and assassinating support units.
Destructible Environments
On many maps, players can also destroy buildings, so eventually your perch may be shot out from underneath you. As more buildings are destroyed sight lines increase and mechs become increasingly exposed, making missions more dangerous the longer they last.
Smooth & Steady - One Final Note
This board game condenses into 20 minute missions what takes traditional strategy games hours. Despite this, Mech Command RTS is not a frantic game; it has been designed from the ground up to provide smooth and steady game play. Quick reflexes are not required!
We will be updating the KickStarter campaign page with several tutorials, gameplay videos and rules. This initial tutorial covers all the basics to start playing.
Every add-on available during the KickStarter incorporates substantial additions to the core game-play. They do not just represent more miniatures but also advanced mechanics and rules, as well as their requisite components.
To reserve an add-on just add the amount to your pledge! Alternatively you can reserve every add-on and expansion in one stroke by pledging for the Ultimate Bundle. We are not adding a lot of add-ons as ensuring our delivery date is the highest priority. We are going to keep this campaign clean and streamlined.
Note that the KickStarter exclusive add-ons' mechanics and requisite components (like tokens, shield walls, mine counters etc...) WILL be available eventually at retail but without the unique add-on models.
Play Solo or with a Team against the A.I. The cooperative expansion adds new rules, missions and components designed to allow players to challenge the game itself. Using a special A.I. card deck enemy units are given behavior patterns and target priorities when they are produced. This rule-set features 3 categories of enemies each with their own unique mechanics; automated turrets, seeker drones and AM's (automated mechs). Plus a unique boss that is revealed in later missions.
4 Additional LED Laser Miniature Bases!
4 Automated Turret Models
6 Seeker Drone Models
Giant BEHEMOTH Boss Model
60 Card A.I. Deck
Energy Wall Chipboard with Stands
New mission objectives and tokens
Cooperative Mission Campaign Book
Additional Gems, Damage Blocks and Tokens
More Parts, More Pilots
The 5-6 Player Expansion introduces the White and Violet pilots. This dramatically increases your range of tactical options, load-outs and strategies as a team. A board extender increases the size of your possible maps and most missions will include 5-6 player variants. This expansion also contains an extra set of every model, mech board, equipment cards, gems, blocks and more found in the Core Set.
8 Core Set Mech Models
Purple & White LED Laser Bases
Purple & White Damage Dishes
Board Extender
Additional Set of Equipment Cards
Additional Set of Mech Boards
Additional Gems, Damage Blocks and Tokens
Advanced Recon Pack. Every add-on available during the KickStarter incorporates substantial additions to the core game-play. The Advanced Recon Pack adds stealth, lazing targets for indirect fire and special damage types. Includes a Black and Dark Brown model of the WDOW Elite Light Chassis with mech boards and 24 special weapons and equipment cards. Cloak generators allow these Elite AC's to become immune from targeting at long range.
New damage blocks change the way damage can be inflicted. Ion weapons use the blue damage block and cannot be shielded during the damage phase. Green Corrosive damage that is not shielded is returned to the target's damage dish to cause more damage the following round.
2 x Elite Stealth Models
2 x Stealth Mech Boards
16 Corrosive Damage Blocks
16 Ion Damage Blocks
24 Card Special Equipment Pack includes 2 or more card sets for Cloak Generators, Stealth Disruptors, Smart Missiles, Smart Guns, ECM Missile Jammers, Corrosive & Ion weapons, the Assassin Blade and its Elite Variant "Moonlight".
Tactical Warfare Pack. Become a master of the battlefield by constructing mines, ammo bots, seeker drones, energy walls and more. The special NGNR Elite Medium Bi-Pedal chassis specializes in supporting his team, constructing defenses and laying traps. Most of the NGNR mines and traps look identical on their reverse side as mission objectives. This combined with an abundance of dummy and magnetic spike traps the NGNR can scatter the battlefield with unknowns creating choke-points and controlled areas. Note that some tiles may be upgraded to 3D miniatures over the course of the KickStarter.
2 x NGNR Elite Medium AC's & Mech Boards
4 x 90mm x 90mm Shield Walls with stands
6 x Mine Tokens & 8 x Dummy Mine Tokens
6 x Magnetic Spike and Broken Terrain Tiles
6 x Seeker Drone Tokens & 4 Sentry Turret Tiles
2 x Ammo Depots, 2 x Support Bots
28 Special weapon cards including 2+ copies of light and heavy Turret Launchers, Mine Layers, Construction Arms, Drone Launchers, Shield Arms, Reinforced Armor packs, Extended ammo racks and more.
Based on the past experience of our team, consultants, and board of advisers we will be charging shipping after the KickStarter concludes based on the actual costs incurred to ship. We will collect this via our pledge manager after the campaign ends. This will allow us to provide specific shipping costs rather than one-size-fits-all rates. We will ship your rewards at our cost to Amazon warehouses in the USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany and Hong Kong.
Following is a list of rough estimates for shipping a standard game package (4.5 kg). Keep in mind these are just estimates, and costs may rise based on weight increases from unlocked stretch goals and any optional buys you choose. We will ship to other countries not listed here; the rates will be typical of what you normally pay for a similar weight package from one of our hub countries.
USA: $10-$15 to most states.
$24 to Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.
UK: $12-$15
CANADA: $10-$20 to most cities.
AUSTRALIA: $14-$22
EUROPE: $12 to Germany. $15-$30 to most other countries.
KS BACKER GUARANTEE: Every backer will receive their rewards before the game enters normal distribution. The first public sales are scheduled to begin at GenCon 2017.
Although we do not offer a Retailer specific pledge, we will support local game stores! Part of this KickStarter is about providing the game at near wholesale prices to backers but we will develop a package for you that makes it work. Retailer Backers will receive rewards with the same priority as other backers, months ahead of regular distribution. Retailer packages will also contain extra sets of any applicable stretch rewards and KickStarter exclusives. Please message us with your interest, contact information and link to game store.
Many individuals and organizations deserve our gratitude for their assistance over the past two years, but we want to especially call attention to:
Utah Board Game Designer's Guild for maintaining such an open and helpful community for game designers.
Jamey Stegmaier from Stonemaier Games for providing his hundreds of valuable KickStarter lessons that have helped guide this process over the past two years.
The Responsibility Foundation for providing valuable insights, advice and examples.
The Utah Micro Loan Fund for providing exhaustive business support and counseling.
Board Game Geek and its community for providing a positive nexus point for board gamers, designers and publishers.
Our wives for two years of late playtesting nights, endless discussions and general obsession.
Risks and challenges
While this is Bad Crow Games first campaign, key members of the team helped publish Serpent's Tongue, Sakura and have sourced products from over-seas manufacturers before.
We have applied every hard won lesson from these previous projects while developing Mech Command RTS and feel confident in our delivery date of July 2017. As most experienced board game publishers will tell you there are always some vagaries in terms of timing when it comes to anything produced in China, especially due to: Production delays, Shipping delays and Customs delays.
These are our strategies to avoid those:
1. Samples in hand. One of the key lessons we have implemented to help reduce the above risks and ensure delivery is obtaining final samples of as many components as possible prior to launching this campaign, including the miniatures, buildings, cards, LED bases, gems etc... This is why many of the game images above are actual photographs of final or near final samples from the manufacturers. Some stretch rewards may require additional design or sampling, so an extra 4 months after the has been allotted to cover this need.
2. Quality Assurance. We have a full time sourcing liaison in Hong Kong that will be interacting with the factory throughout the process and will be physically present for Quality Assurance checks as the components come off the line. She speaks fluent English, Mandarin and Cantonese. She has already lined up safety & product certification services.
3. Customs brokers and Amazon distribution hubs. We have already obtained broker services for each of our international distribution hubs. We are utilizing Amazon warehouses around the world for shipping all rewards. We have worked with Fulfillment by Amazon extensively before and we love this company's professionalism, speed, tracking and returns service.
4. 60 Day Buffer. Our schedule includes an extra 60 day buffer to help account for any unforeseen delays.
REFUND POLICY
We will refund your pledge, no questions asked, until 30 days AFTER REWARDS SHIP. Backers will be able to return rewards to the closest Amazon warehouse.
The amount refunded varies depending on the time frame:
0-60 days after the end of the campaign: 100% refunded.
60 days on: 92% refunded (this is because of the approximately 8% and processing fees that are non-refundable past this point).
Up to 30 days after you receive your rewards: 92% refunded plus you may be required to pay for the Amazon return shipping label, this will be decided on a case by case basis.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS
We will send a confirmation email survey approximately 90 days after the end of the the campaign . For final distribution we will use a 3rd party pledge manager.
By pledging to this, you acknowledge that the final look, materials and content of the rewards are subject to change and may differ moderately from what is presented while the project is active.
You agree that our responsibility to you is to ship your order as entered into our pledge manager system, that title and risk passes to you upon delivery to a common carrier for such shipment, and you are responsible for import duties or any other duties that may be payable to the relevant tax authorities, providing correct address information and ensuring this address is deliverable by normal methods. Unfortunately we are unable to ship to PO Boxes.
If you do not accept these terms, please do not pledge on this project and wait for the retail release.
Learn about accountability on KickstarterFAQ
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YES there is: https://badcrowgames.zendesk.com/hc/en-us
We opted for a 3rd party hosted FAQ in order to make it searchable and more organized. This should be updated with questions from the comments section and messages.