 Last week I officially announced my next miniatures wargame ruleset, Earth vs the Invaders: Asymmetric Atomic Age Scifi Wargaming. You can check out the Beta Quickstart guide at my discord. Earth is a miniature agnostic game so you can use whatever miniatures you want to represent the various factions. They've been kept open-ended enough that there's a lot of room for creativity. And while the Human Forces faction is depicted as being from 1950's America (to fit the game's cinematic inspiration), there's nothing to stop you from throwing invaders at a more modern or WWI era military. Earth is also unique in its central Reinforcements system, which is a key part of each of the game's scenarios and allows both players to respond to a dynamic battlefield by bringing in the right unit at the right time. For this reason, it's helpful to have a "sideboard" of units to give you some more flexibility during the game. However there's no need to go crazy at the start and order five copies of every single unit (although we're all wargamers so who am I kidding). The purpose of this article is to help you get your armies started for the release of Earth later this year (don't quote me). The game was designed with 15mm figures in mind since many of the Invader models could conceivably be massive at 28mm. Some scenarios also involve a terrain component that could get expensive at 28mm. However, mechanically there shouldn't be anything stopping you from playing at 28mm, as long as you can clearly tell which direction a unit is facing for the purpose of movement and making attacks. In this article I'll stick with 15mm options; if you do testing in another scale please let the community know on Discord! Each faction's units are broken down by their level. In Earth, for most scenarios, Level 1 units can be deployed at the start of the game whereas Level 2 and 3 units usually can only be brought in on turns 2 and 3 respectively. The points cost of units increases along with its Level as well, so you will generally not need a ton of Level 3 units in your back pocket. In most 1 on 1 games of Earth, you will deploy 72 points worth of units throughout the game. So after listing units and discussing manufacturers, I will give a sample "list" of a bit over 72 points to get you started. No miniatures manufacturers are sponsoring this content or even know I'm writing about them. These companies are just what I have collected myself and can recommend. Human Forces Human Forces are essential to every game of Earth vs the Invaders as they are the brave men and women who go toe to toe with the worst baddies the universe can throw at Anytown, USA. Thankfully there are a ton of options out there for this faction since the equipment used by 1950's National Guard (or at least in 50's scifi movies!) is WWII era technology. Units
*Note about Level 1 Earth Forces: In some scenarios the Human player is allowed to start the game with Level 2 units, so they're not strictly necessary to start playing. So if you've already got a 15mm WWII army you can get going right away. Hillbillies and Police are a lot of fun to see on the table though and are also dirt cheap to bring in! Battlefront Miniatures and their Flames of War line is just about a one-stop shop for this faction. One "Rifle Company" box will provide enough Commanders, Rifle Teams, Machine Gun Teams, and Bazooka Teams for large 2-on-2 games of Earth.  Flames of War tank boxes probably have too many tanks since they are pretty expensive to bring in. Their jeep and truck boxes can be a good buy though. For one off vehicles, I suggest checking Etsy. There are some sellers there who do resin vehicles you can buy individually. Flamethrower teams are another item I had to get 3D printed. For the non-army units like Hillbillies, Police, and Hazmat troopers, take a look at Khurasan or Rebel Minis. Sample Starting Force: 4 units of Police 2 Troop Trucks 1 Commander 4 Rifle Teams 1 Jeep 1 Machine Gun 1 Flamethrower 1 Bazooka 1 Tank Total Points: 98 Giant Insects From the radioactive desert they emerge - gargantuan insects of nightmarish proportions! Giant Insects are a great opportunity to raid the toy section of the dollar store. They have the least amount of unit types in the game and are generally the most elite, fielding only a few monsters at a time. Units
As stated before, toys are going to be your best bet for this. The best ants I have found are from Archie McPhee and I use the red ants from this box as Spitters.  For Flyers and Soldiers, I have "liberated" a plastic wasp and some giant rhinoceros beetles from my daughter's toy box. Check your $ or £ stores. Sample Starting Force: 5 Workers 2 Flyers 2 Spitters 1 Soldier Total Points:86 Flying Saucers Strange meteor-like objects streak across the night skies, only to descend as colossal metallic discs of eerily geometric design! The Saucers and the various weird travelers within are a great excuse to collect some very cool minis. Scout Saucers are a staple, and any infantry reinforcements must be deployed out of the Scouts. Units
You have a lot of options for this faction, and my first stops would be Khurasan and Alternative Armies who both have expansive 15mm scifi ranges.  Khurasan's Itu'a Swarms, I'd multibase the little guys  Adorable Alternative Armies greys from my own collection Sample Starting Force 3 Scout Saucers 1 Saucer Commander 4 Saucer Infantry 1 Mechanoids 1 War Saucer Total Points: 87 The Culture Displaying a insatiable, virus-like drive to consume all organic matter, a mysterious bio-mass rapidly assimilates any unlucky vegetation or creature it engulfs. The Culture is based on a number of tropes like The Blob, Body Snatchers, and a couple more. I've done the least playtesting with them so far, so they are the most likely to have changes before the launch of the game! They'd make a great project for the sculptors and kitbashers out there since they're so, well, weird. Units
 Giant Amoeba from The Angry Red Planet As far as miniatures go, this one's a scratch builder's dream. Go crazy with Green Stuff. The 15mm manufacturers listed in Flying Saucers should also have some weird stuff that could work here too--in particular I'll probably use Rebel Mini's zombies as the Replacements. Sample Starting Force: 5 Large Blobs 2 Mind Melters 2 Replacements 1 Giant Amoeba Total Points: 84 As always, check out the Beta rules and let me know if you have questions in the Small Batch Discord.
0 Comments
There's not a lot of info out there for indie wargame designers, and so this article intends to shed light on my experience releasing my first game, Bronze Shield, Silver Coin. I'm going to go over the steps I took during the design and playtesting steps, preparing for launch, and post launch results.  Designing and Testing According to Google Docs, the first drafts of BSSC began in November 2023 and I released the game in November 2024, so almost exactly a year of writing and development. The game's working title was Misthios and one of the first steps I did was to write down the "core principles" of the game. This is a step that wargame designer and youtuber Vince Venturella suggests to help you understand what you want players to get out of the game. The original principles I had in mind were for a much more narrative type of game with lots of random tables (a la 5 Parsecs and 5 Leagues by Ivan Sorensen). If you've played or read BSSC however, you'll know that this original conception is quite different from the finished product. I'm fine with that and still consider it a success--I'm a big proponent of "finding the fun". After playtesting several iterations, I made a conscious decision to focus on what I was finding most interesting in the gameplay (tight, brutal combat and the intricacies of the Intrigue system) and focus less on the original conception of a RPG-lite game.  Original principles doc My next step was to outline out the entire rules doc, or at least what I could imagine needing at the time. Not filling in anything, simply listing out the section headers something like this, based on what I knew I would eventually need to make a working game:
As soon as I had just enough rules that the game wouldn't "fall over" as soon as I set it up, I got it to the table to test myself.  Guess what--it did fall over as soon as I set it up, but that's OK! My first few playtests were just me by myself playing both sides. After it was no longer embarrassingly broken, I coerced a friend to play with me (thanks Reid!). I asked him what he liked most and least about the experience. After the mechanics were starting to feel good, I tested with some other friends. I sent the working doc to a couple friends who had not played before and asked them to walk me through the game, in order to understand if my writing was understandable and the mechanics made sense to someone reading them for the first time. This is as close to true "blind" playtesting as I was able to get to. Optimally you would send your ruleset off to a pair of players and then be a fly on the wall while they try to figure it out. Because of busy schedules and finite friends this is hard to accomplish in "real life". In addition to testing with friends I brought the game to a local wargaming convention and got a couple of strangers to test out the game with me. Wargamer have a lot of opinions so I highly recommend this even if you don't implement every change!  A simple Tabletop Simulator mod I used for testing with remote friends Layout and Prep for Launch In June I bought the Affinity suite to start setting up the book's layout in Publisher. Up until that point the rules had lived as a Google Doc, which is far easier to edit. I highly recommend putting off layout as long as possible as you iterate on your rules. Affinity took a bit of getting used to. I am a digital designer "by day" so some of the concepts were familiar but I've never done print work or book layout. The software has a learning curve but if you've ever used complex creation software (video, audio, graphics), it's very approachable. If you're planning on publishing through Drivethru/Wargamevault, they also have templates that will get you going pretty quickly. I also want to shout out Icarus Games, a Youtube channel with a seriously helpful guide for getting started with game layout work. Find the video here. I went with WargameVault because they cater to wargamers specifically and also offer Print on Demand, as it was important to me that players could buy a printed copy. I play from printed books pretty much exclusively (pdf expansions are OK sometimes I guess) and so this was a necessity for me. I also do NOT want to deal with shipping or storage or anything like that myself--I went into this project as an extension of my wargaming hobby, and am trying to keep it fun. In the months leading up to launch, I started a spreadsheet of media and content creators who I thought might be interested in the game (everything from the print magazine Wargames Illustrated to Youtubers with a couple hundred followers). I also paid close attention to how other releasing projects were being advertised online and read articles about how video game producers prepare their product for launch (since there's really not much info on tabletop games). I created a sharable press kit in Google Drive with the following:
As launch got closer I tightened the list of publications and content creators to a shorter list that I:
I ended up reaching out to ten news websites, only one of which shared an article (wargameterrain.blogspot.com). I contacted two wargaming magazines (Wargames Illustrated and Wargames, Soldiers, and Strategy), who definitely appreciated the press kit and both graciously published reviews for BSSC. In the future I will reach out to these publishers sooner since they have the longest turnaround times. I contacted them 1.5-2 months before launch and it really should have been more like 3-4 months. I sent an email to 17 youtube content creators, several of which replied, with two publishing videos as of this date. Special thanks to World of Wargaming and Modelling for Advantage. I'm not really expecting more content at this time, it's a huge time commitment to create videos and most are doing it for the love of the hobby. Community Building Even early on in the design process, I wanted to start building up a community of gamers who would be interested in BSSC. I decided to host my community on Discord because it's the social media I'm most comfortable with and because I was inspired by being a part of Ivan Sorenson's amazing Discord community (amazing except for the brussels sprouts haters). On my discord server I also had a link to a "quickstart" version of the rules that I made sure to explain as a beta version. Downloading the quickstart was the incentive for folks to join the server (which is a much more committed act than, say, "liking" a Facebook post). I posted pics of my own painted minis in wargaming communities on Reddit and Facebook and mentioned that I was painting these for a game I was writing. I focused on Facebook pages dedicated to Ancients and Skirmish wargames. I put a blurb and a link to my Discord. These were communities where I was already active and sharing my paintjobs for other games and projects so this came very naturally. I didn't do Instagram, Twitter, or anywhere else because I don't use those services. I did open a thread at Lead Adventure Forum about the game. Slowly my own Discord community grew and by the time of launch I had about 80 people who had joined because of their interest in the game.  Since I have no life I also created a Youtube channel of my own last year, and posted battle reports of games that I enjoy. This grew to around 250 subscribers by the time I posted a flipthrough video and a how to play video for BSSC. Publication and Results On November 14, 2024 I released BSSC and posted in the same communities that I had shared my painting pics in. I published the rulebook flipthrough on Youtube the same day and made sure it was in the Wargamevault description for folks to get a better look. With 20 sales on the first day, the game rocketed to the number four spot on the Bestselling Titles list (which should tell you that Wargame Vault is kind of a sleepy shop most days).  So here's the business part--like I mentioned before, I consider this part of my wargaming hobby and my goal was to make some beer money! I decided to stick to around a $20 price point, in the range of some wargames books I consider similar in page length and "value" (whatever that means): Osprey's blue books and Snarling Badger games. I also wanted to make about $10 per purchase, which aligns with my "beer money" goal. So I priced the Softcover/PDF combo at $20 and after paying for the book to be printed and giving Wargamevault their cut I make $11.03 per book sold. I priced the PDF by itself at $15 and make $10.50 for each sale.  Sales in the first 30 days In the first 30 days I sold 76 copies, with the vast majority being in the first three days after launch. 57% were printed copies versus 43% PDF only.
In the first 30 days I netted $821.33. My total costs for creating the book were:
I hope this has been helpful to any aspiring game designers and has given you a better idea of what to expect and what strategies might help you self publish your own games! Now go join my discord |
Raymond WeilacherThe official blog of Small Batch Miniatures Games Archives
February 2025
Categories |
RSS Feed
© 2024 Raymond Weilacher