Spicy Hot Update! New Miniature Pictures!
almost 2 years ago – Mon, Jul 04, 2022 at 03:45:02 AM

Happy Friday Badasses!

We hope your June was filled with unrelenting hot sauce and that our Canadian and American friends are looking forward to some epic weekend pyrotechnics. We have some fun items to share with you in this update. So lets get to it!

MINIATURES

A few updates ago we shared some images with you of the engineering passes that miniatures go through at the factory to ensure we get great miniatures that can be successfully cast in massive quantities. After that approval step, the factory then creates "Red Wax" masters for the tooling process. The factory has sent us a steady stream of these masters and we wanted to share a couple with you today.

Please Note: All of these pictures were taken by the factory at China. While we gave the pics a cool graphical overlay, we did not control the angles, lighting, etc. of the pictures.

And just in case you were concerned that Psychoreaver wasn't imposing enough. Here is a scale shot of him.

We certainly don't want to get hit by him. (And, in fact, have died many, many, many times to him. He is a Certified Vault Hunter Murder Machine.)

Speaking of ...

HUGE MINIATURES

The factory just sent us this video of Badassasaurus. This video is the factory's engineering prototype to determine parts and assembly breakdown. The final model will come fully assembled with a moveable head and neck.

Layout

Our graphic design team has been keeping busy as well as they layout the massive number of cards, tokens, and tiles. We have the lion's share of the core games decks finalized and ready for production and thought we'd show you some samples of the decks that have completed layout. 

The above doesn't include the Announcements, Events, Skill Trees, Spotlight, Vault Hunters and more that are also complete and in final approvals process before production. 

It's not just cards we're working away at. We're happy to say that ALL hex art is complete (and in approvals process), both for the core game and all the expansions that include hexes. Here's a couple of of the hex sheets that come with Skags at the Gates. These hexes have extra environmental hazards as befits the elemental badass skags and their packs, as well as a massive den for Skagzilla.

We still have content to build, but we are diligently mowing through it like Salvador wield two dual-barrel Bezoomys! (Bezoomies?)

We also asked our Rules Monsters to give us a few words on Bounties, one of the ways you can go on "side quests" to defeat mini-bosses and further power up your party before facing Psychoreaver.

Take it away Rules Monster!

Bounties

Today in design I want to talk about Bounties. In Mr. Torque's Arena of Badassery, you and your friends will play through a series of scenarios devised by Mr. Torque to pit you against blood-thirsty psychos and bandits for entertainment and profit. But, sometimes, you will get to go on a Bounty Hunt to claim some awesome loot just for yourself, away from the roar of the arena.

As you take out enemies, you will gain loot in the form of randomly-drawn loot tokens. If you get the Bounty token, after the scenario, you will have the opportunity to go on a Bounty Hunt. This is a quick, bloody side-quest that you may choose to take up. You have gotten info on a lucrative Bounty and it's up to you whether you want to collect.

If you and your friends decide to do it, you roll a D10 to determine which of the ten unique Bounty maps to play on. Then you will randomly draw one of 20 Bounty cards (that's just the core game, there are plenty more in expansions). The Bounty card will give you the rules of the Bounty, the enemies that spawn, and how to win. Most Bounties revolve around a mini-boss, a unique enemy you need to take out to complete the Bounty. If you win, you get some awesome Legendary loot!

Bounties are fun side-quests that provide tons of new experiences, potential loot, and fearsome enemies. Just one more thing to make a campaign worth playing more than once.

Wrap Up

That's it for this update. We are having a blast watching (and making!) Mr. Torgue's Arena of Badassery come to life and hope you are as well. 

Until next time, 

EXPLOSIONS!

LAST MINUTE UPDATE TO THE UPDATE!!!

Our friend Aaron over at Jolly Lark just let us know that he just posted a how to paint Iron Bear video on this youtube channel. Definately worth checking out!

Aaannnd boom goes the dynamite!
almost 2 years ago – Thu, Jun 02, 2022 at 07:10:41 AM

Greetings Badasses!

It's time to tear yourself away from your latest Tiny Tina's Wonderlands session to read about some tabletop mayhem! (Then you can pick your controller back up, we promise.) That's right, we're back with another blistering bombardment of badassitude!

Pledge Manager Now Closed!

If you didn't already hear, we have now closed the pledge manager for all those interested finalizing their pledges as well as keeping the door open for any late-comers. But we can't wait anymore, we got games to make! 

Tooling

The manufacturer continues to move through all of the miniatures performing engineering passes. Typical engineering changes for a miniature are slight twists and turns of weapons or arms, to make it so that the molds can be tooled to ensure perfect release of the miniature. As you can see with the psycho's buzzaxe in the image above. As we receive engineered files we check them to make sure they meet our requirements and then send them through for final approvals.

In addition to the miniatures, dice have begun tooling and we literally today received images of the engraved template for approval. We can't wait to roll fistfuls of dice in our quest for cooler and cooler loot!

Development

Speaking of loot, the studio continues to put the game through it's paces. One of the areas that has seen a lot of work is gear. While Borderlands is often focused on its giant array of weaponry, it is far from the only gear that makes your Vault Hunter a true badass.

Shields

Shields play an important role in Mr. Torque's Arena of Badassery! Just like in the video game, they can absorb damage and deflect attacks. Each Shield will start with Shield tokens that are either RED, YELLOW, or GREEN. When your Vault Hunter is attacked, you may defend with your Shield and roll a die that correlates to the color of Shield token used (RED Shield tokens allow you to roll the RED six sided die, YELLOW Shield Tokens the YELLOW eight sided die, and GREEN Shield Tokens, the GREEN twelve sided die). Best of all, even if you fail while using a Shield, you just exhaust the Shield Token rather than taking a wound (though that means you can't use it later).

Of course, Shields also have all sorts of other fun capabilities. Take the Alternating Phase Shield below:

This Shield offers a RED and GREEN token to defend yourself with but, in addition to that, when these tokens are exhausted, your Vault Hunter may switch places with another Vault Hunter. This is a great way to get out of harm's way or, used cleverly, to get a Vault Hunter that is carrying an important objective farther into the arena!

This is just one example, there are tons of amazing shields, from Absorbing Shields that allow you to use their Shield Tokens to make [RE]Actions to Nova Shields that detonate when they are exhausted!

Mods

Mods will be familiar to anyone who has played Borderlands, and of course they are part of Mr. Torgue's Arena of Badassery. Mods are cards that are found in the Ammo Dump and Zed's Meds decks, and each Vault Hunter may equip up to two. Mods don't have any specific function, but each one modifies your Vault Hunter in a unique and useful way. Some basic Mods may give you a simple stat increase. For example, the Brawler Mod gives you +1 to your Melee Skill. This is incredibly useful, but fairly straightforward. However, there are tons of Mods that alter your Vault Hunter in even more interesting ways. Take for example the Spawnkill Mod:

With this Mod equipped, you get to make free attacks at enemies, gunning them down as they spawn. This can change up how you want to play your Vault Hunter, maybe venturing closer to spawning zones than you normally would, and it is something that will be totally unique to you as there is only one of each Mod!

Shields and Mods are just two of the interesting and varied card types we have in store for you, there are plenty more to come!

With all of the gear decks having been finalized, we are currently in the last throes of layout. We are so appreciative of your support through this time to get solid and well developed product ready for production. We look forward to updating you with more details as we continue our trek towards manufacturing and putting games in your hands! Until next time!

Arena of Badassery Graphic Design Spotlight!
about 2 years ago – Wed, May 04, 2022 at 12:44:55 AM

Greeting Badasses!

Things at the Monster Fight Club studio have been extra EXPLOSIVE since our last update. Our team has been putting the scenarios and campaigns through the paces on a carnage filled adventure to slay Psychoreaver. As playtesting and development finalize aspects of the game, our designers turn all those wonderful concepts into reality. So we wanted to take an opportunity to show off some of the finalized designs for your game components as well as preview a few cards.

Tokens!

Mr. Torgue's Arena of Badassery has a LOT of tokens. And we're finalizing the designs of all of them to make sure you have plenty of variety in your scenarios. The Borderlands are lethal so you are going to want to make sure you find and equip a shield as soon as possible. Shields grant you dice of the indicated color that you can use to defend from attacks without risking your precious action tokens. When a shield is depleted you flip it to the grey expended side, until you can get a recharge. Getting shot, bit, chopped, and exploded aren't the only ways to meet your end in the game, which is where the handy Status Effect tokens come in. They provide you with the opportunity to get corroded, lit on fire, frozen, slagged, shocked, and irradiated into an untimely trip to the New-U.  The arena and its scenarios are full of interactive elements, and above are just a fraction of the chests, bombs, tires, barrels, skag piles, and buttons that you probably shouldn't push when battling through the arena. 

Equipment Upgrade!

Equipment card design was still in early phases of the Kickstarter and our graphic design team has taken the opportunity to clean up the design and make it sleek and really shine. Elements such as the value/resale value have been better integrated into the look of the card, and the patterned backgrounds have been toned down to give better focus on the equipment. Our personal favorite touch? The manufacturer has been fully integrated into the look of each card.  If you fancy yourself an Atlas or Maliwan loyalist you can dress yourself in gear appropriately and look extra stylish while doing it! (Torgue would be very disappointed in you though.)

With the designs set up we're now laying out all the loot. Lootsplosions happen daily as new loot is prepared for print.

The Ammo Dump is chocked full of grenades. Our game designers have been having far too much fun thinking up new game effects that can accompany an explosion. The cackling is unnerving. The heavy metal soundtrack, rewarding.

Torgue's vending machine is well stocked with enough overpowered loot to turn even the most badass enemy into a quivering bowl of meat jelly. The joy of a rocket launcher into a mob of psychos is not to be underestimated. 

Some of the decks, such as Spotlight, are nearly complete and are now in the final stages of being laid out. In future updates we'll dive into these decks in detail and some of the fun effects they can have on the game. The Spotlight deck and the sample cards above, show you a few more ways that you can manage the Spotlight (and thus which Vault Hunter is being targeted by enemies).  Managing who has the Spotlight on them is a key to keeping your Vault Hunters alive and not becoming overwhelmed by mobs of enemies.

Rulebook Layout

Like the equipment cards, the rulebook has received a number of design tweaks to clean up the look and make it more visually interesting. Playtesting has necessitated a few minor tweaks to text and diagrams and, just like cards, are being laid out and finalized.

We're having a blast putting together a variety of scenarios to make your game in Mister Torgue's Arena of Badassery a bullet drenched ballet of badassitude.  Scenarios will be pivotal in how your Vault Hunters advance through play, setting objectives, enemies, and loot in your path to ultimate glory!

Let us  know in the comments below anything you want to see as we progress with our final playtesting and component layouts. And remember, the pledge manager is open for only a while longer, so be sure to get in and finalize your pledges. If you know anyone who's life will be made better by owning a badass game like this, then please point them to https://borderlands-arena-of-badassery-late.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders 

Until next time!

P.S.

Explosions!

April Showers bring May EXPLOSIONS! - We think that's how it goes...
about 2 years ago – Tue, Apr 05, 2022 at 03:01:18 AM

Explosion Update!

The explosions from the studio have been extra loud the last few months, so we duct taped a bunch of bandits to our armor as extra blast protection and waded into the fiery inferno for an update.

SCULPTS!

First, the news you really want to hear: all of the sculpts are at the factory and undergoing their engineering passes for tooling!

It also came to our attention that we had a few sculpts that you hadn’t witnessed before. So without further ado here are Aurelia and Captain Flynt!

Aurelia is one of your free stretch goals, while Captain Flynt is available in the Best Minion Ever expansion add-on.

 Hex ART! 

Our skilled artists are also hard at work making the game hexes extra badass. Here is a picture of some Pandora badlands hexes.

While most tiles are open, some tiles are designed as specific rooms, such as this medical room.

*Please note that these tiles are still in progress and may be slightly different in the final version.

These rooms can act as generic hexes but also perform specific functions in some scenarios. We’re sure Dr. Zed and Tannis (shudder) will love their new digs. Speaking of scenarios—

RULES!

Rules development is going great! Right now we are focusing on the balance of the core box contents. The core box is so important because it provides the rules and most of the cards you will need to play the game. Once we have a good, solid base to build from in terms of the core box, we are going to focus on all of the amazing expansion content. In fact, keep an eye out for a Kickstarter update announcing a playtest of the core box contents coming soon.

But, in the meantime, we want to let you in on some of the cool mechanics we are hammering out for this game. One thing that we really wanted to get right, was losing.  We don't just mean losing a single scenario, we mean what happens when players lose the entire campaign? Should they have a set number of chances to win the current scenario and advance? Should they always advance regardless of success in the scenario but with maybe a penalty for the loss? Nobody wants to lose, of course, but without the danger of it the game isn't much of a challenge.  We wanted the manner in which players lose the entire campaign to be something that is really fun and thematic to Torgue's particular personality.

So, during the campaign, whether you win or lose in a scenario will determine the next scenario you play. If you lose, Torgue will yell at you for being a weakling, and send you on a humiliating task. Every time you lose, you will then have to play one of the three "Grunt Work" scenarios. They are: Fetch Me a Sandwich, Explosive Encouragement, and Skag Stew. If you win the Grunt Work scenario, you can then continue on the main campaign line. If you lose, well, you have to play another one. You may not play the same Grunt Work scenario twice in a single campaign. If you lose a scenario and you have already played all three Grunt Work scenarios, you will go immediately to the "Here, Have a Psychoreaver" scenario, in which Torgue gets bored of you and tosses you to the Psychoreaver. Win that one, and hey, you win the campaign. But more than likely the Psychoreaver will pulverize you while Torgue laughs (that'd be game over).

Alright, enough about losing! Let's talk about leveling up. There are two primary ways your characters will get better as the campaign progresses: modding your skill trees, and collecting awesome loot! Today, let's talk about Skill Trees (we can cover loot in another update). Every Vault Hunter has three Skill Tree cards. Each card has six slots, arranged into three tiers: one tier 1 slot, two tier 2 slots, one tier 3 slot, and two tier 4 slots. When you get an opportunity to mod one of your Skill Trees, choose one of the three Skill Tree cards available and place the mod on its lowest tier. Your Vault Hunter now has the ability listed there. For example, one of Mordecai's tier 1 slots says "Your Bloodwing attacks gain Deadly Crits." From then on any Crits Mordecai does with Bloodwing will do more damage. These skill trees are heavily inspired by the video game. For example, Mordecai has one tree focusing on Bloodwing, another on being a sniper, and a third that has to do with pistols. In this way each character is totally unique in a way that keeps them linked to their video game roots that we all know and love.

You will get an opportunity to mod your Vault Hunter and level up in a number of ways. The first and most basic way is when you win a scenario. All scenarios have an "after the game" section which lets you know what happens as a result of the scenario. This section will tell you which scenario comes next and SOME scenarios will allow all Vault Hunters to mod a Skill Tree if they won (or maybe accomplished some secondary task listed in the scenario). There is also a mod token in the loot tokens that are randomly drawn when enemies are killed. It is rare but, if it drops, you can mod your Skill Tree in the middle of the game! Finally, there are some mods in the various decks of loot cards that may be randomly drawn. By having a few different methods of leveling up, characters can progress at a relatively steady pace just by winning scenarios, while also having those fun, surprising in-game moments when a mod drops.

This section is getting a little long. Sorry about that! We just have so much to cover with this awesome game! 

Until next time EXPLOSIONS!

One More Thing... Eye Candy!

Here are a few images of a MasterClass painted Iron Bear from our upcoming "How to Paint Borderlands Series" we commissioned from Angel Giraldez in Spain. One of the videos is live now on Angel's YouTube Channel if you'd like to check it out. Enjoy!

Make that two more things...

PLEDGE MANAGER

We have had a few people asking how long the pledge manager is going to be open. We decided since there are still MANY people that have not done their Backer Survey and the fact that there are still a lot of late backers coming in everyday, we will be leaving the pledge manager open until the end of May. At which point we will confirm the final size of the print run and start the presses!

March is upon us, greetings Vault Hunters!
about 2 years ago – Sun, Mar 06, 2022 at 01:37:13 AM

Greetings Vault Hunters!
Since we are all in the company of amazing badasses like yourselves, we wanted to respect that special status with a collection of updates to bring you up to speed on where we are with the project.

The internal Monster Fight Club studio has been finalizing everything from refining miniature sculpting, rules writing for the hundreds of cards, characters, weapons and scenarios, and prepping layout of the rulebook since coming back from holiday. This phase is exciting as it starts to bring together the prototyping of all the physical elements that make up your pledges. In the weeks and months to come we will be sharing images of that work with you. 

Speaking of sharing images, we are starting to get some of the pro-painted studio models back in the office that we are going to be bring with us during our conventions this year. Our master plan is to have final production samples to demo on at Gencon and we wanted to take it to the next level and show off a fully painted master game complete with a fully painted 3d table and terrain.  

Here is the first images of painted Mordecai and Bloodwing!

Making your minis shiny

We are also excited to share more great and inspirational painting videos and content with you as we are pushing out some early prototypes for world class hobbyists and painters to start generating some content for you to enjoy while you wait for your pledges. Don’t already paint? Well, now is a great time to get some basic materials together and practice with the pros online before your minis arrive! 

Psycho Krieg by Angel Giraldez

Spitter Skag by Jolly Lark

Upcoming Milestones

Our next major milestone is the final sign off on all of the miniatures as the factory completes their split lines for tooling. As we sign off on each model the factory is given the green light to start making tools and when the tools are all finished they will start making all of the plastics. This is currently underway and we hope to have this completed in April. 

Along with the tooling currently underway, and all of the graphics work, we are very busy writing and play testing all of the scenerios that our backers earned during the campaign.  There is still a mountain of work to do but we have a plan and we are on track.

Until next time!