Surfing the Second Wave

The second and final wave of the Star Saga kickstarter is shipping.

The $100 core pledge shipped with the base game in the first wave, but the rest is in the second.  So what should you be expecting in the second wave?

Well first, of course, are more miniatures.  The kickstarter funded the new Nameless models after all.  Yes, they came out commercially for Deadzone first, but the second wave included three of each of the minions.

Ogre

Rifleman

Gunslinger

Assassin

Scuttler

Inker

 Plus a bunch of kickstarter exclusive mercenaries:

Blaine

The Fear (ok, he came in wave 1, but is now playable, as a boss)

Hacker Half-tail (Veer Myn)

The Survivor (Human)

Kira Nokolovski (Sphyr)

Of course just miniatures without rules don't do too much, so they created a full kickstarter exclusive expansion that uses them, The Fear in the Darkness.

What I was surprised to see was an actual box for it.  However I expect, like many kickstarter exclusive items, that this expansion will be available for points and at shows later.  I expect it will NOT come with the nameless minions however (commercially you would need the Terror in the Deep expansion to get them).

Cards for the mercenaries and boss

Rulebook

a sheet of new tiles

Minion cards for the Nameless

Nexus Cards

Item Cards

This also included the character and mission creator expansion.  This takes it from a board game to a light role playing game.  You can create your own mercenaries, and a Nexus player can then create their own adventures for you to play through.

Of course it comes with some new mercenary figures and their cards

Kr-Om3 (robot)

Orion (robot)

Shade (Orc)

Kizai Uru (Tsudochan)

Hund (Rin)

Kur Keela (Teraton)

their cards

It comes with a book describing how to make mercenaries and scenarios (though it is pretty thin).  I really like that they give you a small pad of blank mercenary cards, as well as a blank mission book to write your mission in.  It would be great if they came out with fillable PDF's for these as well.

rule book

blank mission book

blank mercenary cards

Then there are the other cards, and a lot of them.

The small cards are in four categories.  The largest of these are skills.  Much like in the base game, there are now more skills for each type, as well as feats, to give more variety to your characters, both custom and leveling up existing ones.

For the nexus player, there are more (and new) loot cards, as well as rare items.  When playing custom scenarios (or even if you wanted to add this to purchased scenarios) the mercenaries can also take secret objectives - hidden goals for a specific mercenary that may or may not help with the overall mission.

For the larger cards, there are five types of cards.  Nexus, Minions, Race, Attributes and Armor.  When creating characters, you use the race, armor and attributes cards (along with the skill cards).

Armor and Attribute cards

Each mercenary gets two attributes, one at a minor level and one at a medium level.  The attribute cards describe what each is.  They can also purchase armor to help their defense.  But before you do that, you pick a race.  There are 24 race cards (and since they are cards, there is no reason that number couldn't be expanded on later). 

Race cards

Then for the Nexus player, there are a 39 new minion cards for 7 races!  Of course you can also use the minion cards from the base set and any expansion set you may have.

Plague

Enforcers

Forge Fathers

Asterians

Marauders

Veer-Myn

Rebels

The additional nexus cards go with each race of minions, so the nexus player would add those when using those races.

I didn't like that there wasn't more on scenario creation, and especially creating new bosses for your mercenaries to encounter.  But generally it says to use the character creator to create an appropriate boss - just better than any single character (of course).

It is great that since this isn't a straight good/evil type of game, you have minions from across the spectrum.

Lastly, everyone got a Goliath, and the rules for it.  However the two scenarios for the Goliath are actually part of the Terror in the Deep campaign - which is a separate purchase.

Lastly, everyone received three of the newer plastic sprues - for Enforcer Pathfinders, Plague Zombies and Plague Gen 3's.

Emforcer Pathfinders

Plague zombies

Plague 3As

So that is pretty much everything you should be getting for the base pledge in Wave 2.  Of course there are still a couple of expansions - keep watching for those.

The character creator and new mercenaries look really interesting, and kind of get me excited for playing in a more RPG-style campaign.  My only regret is that I don't have the time right not to write one up.

Because it is all fun and games . . .