Sine Tempore

After the storm
over 5 years ago – Fri, Nov 09, 2018 at 01:02:02 AM

Hi, Settlers!  

Here we are at the long-awaited update post-Essen!  

First of all in the name of the whole LMS team I want to thank all those who among you have managed to go to our booth to greet us and touch the status of the work of Sine Tempore. As always the Essen fair was exciting for us, and it was worth all the efforts we have made to organize it better. 

In the four days of the event anyone who has tried the game, or even seen the FINAL material that we had in vision, was very satisfied with the final result and everyone appreciated the game system and the dynamics created during a Mission. Seeing your happy faces has repaid the efforts of these months and this for a game maker, believe me, it is priceless!  

Of course, we also talked about the delays and problems we had during production, and even then you showed us your affection once you understand the reasons why we are putting so much care into the final product!

Essen has also brought a new number of Ashes with a special mission for Sine Tempore, which you will find online soon, and also a promo card with an alternative version of Rognon, which instead, as promised, will be included in the Black Hole Box and that then you will receive it with your shipment!  

I conclude this brief report of Essen 2018 thanking the 3 German backers who helped us with the demo tables during the days of the fair: Andreas Micheel, Niklas Fröse and Bernd Stumpf ... thank you thank you!  

 And now with Essen behind and the wind in the stern let's talk about the state of production!

During the days of the fair, we had several meetings with our Chinese partner to plan the next steps and better manage the mass production stage. We are more and more convinced that with their professionalism (already demonstrated with the excellent work they have done with the production of ST and BRW miniatures), we will be able to complete the work as soon as possible. 

Below are photos of the plastic tray of the various boxes. We have been able to touch the quality, and we are delighted with the final result, and their production has already started. 

However, some of these Plastic Tray have brought some boxes to be larger than expected (yes Black Hole Box will indeed be a big, big box! In every sense!). Just returned from Germany, we had to retouch the graphics files of the boxes that have undergone an enlargement, a problem solved quickly, and that will not lead to further consequences.

I conclude this update, anticipating that soon we will have the long-awaited video gameplay made on TableTop Simulator and that from the next update we will begin to describe in detail the materials that you will receive, to make you, even more, want to play ST!

Finally, I am happy to inform you that given the many requests we have received on our social networks and during the Essen fair, on the occasion of Black Friday (next November 23) we will insert in our Online Shop the possibility of exceptionally pre-ordering Sine Tempore and ordering bundles very advantageous Nova Aetas! The last chance for those who did not participate in the KS campaigns to grab some otherwise unobtainable materials!

As always, thanks to all of you and we feel on the board and in a couple of weeks for the next update!

Let's colonize Essen!
over 5 years ago – Sat, Oct 20, 2018 at 11:44:19 PM

Hi, Settlers!

Here we are at a quick update to tell you some important news!  

On the production front the final files were sent to the factory, and for the middle of November we should have the last graphics tests in our hands and if all goes well it will finally start the final phase of production and the most crucial step to get Sine Tempore in your houses it will have been done. From that point on, our task will be to monitor the quality and timing of mass production, but by now we will be straight! 

We will meet our Chinese partners in Essen, and then we will be able to discuss with them the most delicate aspects directly, and on the return from the fair, we will tell you everything!  

And speaking of Essen, we can finally unveil the surprises we have prepared for you all! 

The Demo table of this year will be dedicated to one of the most beloved Nemesis, and therefore the group of fearless Settlers will have to deal with the terrible White Bull-y, Rognon! You can then try out the mechanics of the Nemesis and try out 4 Heroes unlocked during the KS campaign!

But it does not end here, those of you who will visit us will be able to grab a copy of the new number of Ashes! A special issue created for the fair that will feature a special mission dedicated to Rognon and an enemy Promo card, also from our beloved White one, to be included in your Enemy deck!  

And if you cannot be with us in Essen don't worry! The issue of Ashes will be available in our downloads immediately after the show, and the Rognon promo card will be added to the huge amount of stuff you'll find inside the Black Hole box!  

I hope to see many of you to show you the quality of miniatures and materials of Sine Tempore and let you touch the commitment we are putting to get you a game that you will regret not having waited ... and then ... There is also Dungeonology...  

Keep an eye on our social pages for updates from the fair, and as always see you on the board! 

Stay tuned!

Autumn of fire
over 5 years ago – Tue, Oct 02, 2018 at 12:46:53 AM

Hi, Settlers!

Welcome to a quick update to inform you about the developments of production and a couple of other tasty little things, but do not waste time and go to the...    

Production report

We know that the last update has created a lot of discussions as you know we announced some problems in the production process that would have delayed the shipping date compared to the date announced last December.  

We worked hard to solve the graphics problems that we encountered after the first printing test, and we were able to solve all the visual defects by applying new corrections to the material in the times we had set ourselves. Now we are waiting for a new test to be sure of the quality of our revisions. 

The factory will send us all the material immediately after the Chinese holidays of these days, only after we can give the ok to start mass production of the paper material. We, therefore, plan to start the entire final production process by the end of October.  

In light of all this information, we can give with a new timeline for the end of shipments that at this point can take place between January and February 2019 depending on the area in which you are. This is an extremely pessimistic estimate, and we hope that the times can be shorter but I would like to be extremely sincere with you and not give you a new date again without being sure you can respect it.

We will use this time that we have available to make a new revision of the texts (also for the material in Italian and French, which will be printed together with the English) to take advantage of this delay to give you a clear and correct product in all its elements. It's the least we can do for you! 

 In the meantime, the production of the other materials is going well, below you can see some images of the fantastic dice of Sine Tempore in their semi-final version (there is still no inkjet to bring out the icons) and the samples arrived here at the studio they really made us crazy for their beauty and clarity! We can not wait to see them launch on your tables!

All the development team of Sine Tempore wants to thank you for your patience and for the words of encouragement you have given us, we will repay you with the final quality of Sine Tempore, that we are sure, it will not disappoint you!

 Essen Spiel 2018

But the LMS autumn of fire does not end here! Also this year we are pleased to announce that we will be exhibiting at Essen for the third year running.  

This year, thanks to our achievements, you can find us in Hall 2, booth C106.

 Many of you will be able to appreciate our efforts first-hand.

What’s more, we’ll be bringing all the ST material sent to us by the factory. We show you all the PVC miniatures and a good part of the game materials so that you can appreciate the final quality of the product.  

We will also release the second Special Fair Edition of Ashes with an impressive three promo cards, two new missions for NA and ST, plus a few bonuses for BRW.  

For Sine Tempore we will bring a demo table with Rognon's Nemesis Mission "the White Bully" to let you test this new mechanic and with the promo card you will have an alternative version to play in your normal ST missions!  

Who cannot be to the fair should not worry! We have a surprise for all our backers! But we'll talk about it in the next update!  

See you soon, and as always we'll see you on the board!

Report from the front!
over 5 years ago – Mon, Sep 10, 2018 at 10:27:11 PM

Hi, Settlers!

Here we are at the first update after this hot summer! We know that you are eager to see the state of Sine Tempore's production and so keep reading, we have many things to say to you!

Production Report

As you know, last week the ST development team was involved in quality control on all paper materials of the various boxes, which were delivered to the factory last month with a slight delay compared to the timeline we showed you in the previous months. Unfortunately, this verification proved to be less positive than we had hoped and we had to find problems that we could not ignore because, as you know, we aim to give you a game where the quality of the materials must be unexceptionable.

The problems we encountered are of a visual nature and were caused by stylistic choices that we decided to apply to cards and manuals, very beautiful to look at, but at the time of printing, they proved to be detrimental to the excellent use of materials. The most common problem is that the final layout and the choice of colors make it difficult to read cards in some cases.

Fortunately, the prints sent from the factory will allow us to remedy these errors and find solutions to change the appearance of the materials and make them more readable without sacrificing the very cool look that we decided to give our / your game.

As you may have already understood making these changes will require additional time compared to what we had planned to complete this phase of production. Our project and dream were to be able to deliver you ST for Christmas and make you a beautiful gift. Now, this project is not entirely blurred, but we have to admit that now is more likely that shipments can be delayed.

What you are thinking now is: 

"are you telling us that we will have a further delay in the delivery of ST?!?!!" 

And the answer is "yes but..," and I will explain why.

There is no doubt that this hitch will cause us a delay in delivering the final graphics files to the factory to start printing. But the graphic materials are only a part of the final production of ST, and while this is giving us problems, the rest of the production regarding miniatures, dice and other components such as boxes and punchboard has already started at the end of July and is not undergoing delays of any kind. As you can see from the example pic, the PVC miniatures are fantastic, and the molds are ready and in use for the prints, the same thing for the dice and the cardboard components, even the supercool dice bag is ready for the mass production.

We can, therefore, say that production is ready at 80% where the remaining 20% is represented by graphic materials such as cards and manuals.

So if we can deliver the revised and corrected files within a short time, by the end of September, it is likely that we will be able to limit or cancel the delay, since our factory has proved to be an efficient and reactive partner, we are sure that they will 100% to help us with our task.

At the end of September, we will have a more precise idea about the new delivery times, so I ask you to have some patience and wait for our next communications with the same trust you have shown us in recent months.

We will work harder than ever to meet your expectations! It's a promise!

In any case, in these months we will continue to show you the material of ST that you have not seen yet. We will publish on Ashes a new P&P and thanks to the fantastic mod for Table Top Simulator made by Ken Cunningham we will make video gameplay to show you more accurately the mechanics of the game!

Finally, to close this update today, we will talk about the...

Nightmare mode

This mode for 5-6 players was one of the things you asked for most during the ST campaign, and during these months of development, we worked to make it even more interesting than what we announced. In the beginning, the Nightmare fad simply had to be new enemy cards with higher stats to create a challenge suited to the higher number of players. 

This solution seemed a bit 'reductive, and we have turned into something more intriguing. But now the Nightmare cards give the enemies additional random bonuses that make them much more dangerous and therefore suitable to face a higher number of Heroes. When you decide to face a mission in this mode, you will need to draw a Nightmare card for each enemy type present in the mission, place it under the enemy card and apply all its modifiers. In 6-player games, you can draw two cards for each enemy.

The Nightmare cards can also be used in regular 4-player games to increase the degree of the challenge if you feel particularly brave!

Whether it's to increase the challenge or to play up to 6 players, Nightmare cards will improve your game chances virtually endlessly and put you in front of your worst nightmares!

For this update it's all, we see you again in 2/3 weeks for the next update and on the board for all your questions! As usual thanks for your patience and trust!

See you soon!

P. S. I left you with some pages extract from Black Rose Manual, enjoy ;)

Mission (almost) achieved!
over 5 years ago – Fri, Aug 03, 2018 at 01:28:01 AM

Hi, Settlers!

Here we are at the update that many of you have been waiting for, and we bring excellent but prudent news! But no more talk and let's start immediately!

Production Report

As you know, we are in the final stages of the mass pre-production phase. At the moment we have delivered to the factory all paper and punchboard files and the core box rulebooks, and we await the printing tests for the end of August. Expansion rulebooks still need to be delivered, on which we want to carry out further revisions and which we will work on in the coming days.

Yes, we are slightly late with the graphics part but the bulk of mass production work concerns the production of miniatures, where instead we have been punctual and with the revisions already finished, we know that the most delicate part of the production is already at an excellent point.

The factory has confirmed to us that the delay on the graphics side should not affect the production window in which they have inserted us in their programming, and so we are cautiously positive on the fact that the shipping date will not suffer further delays. Obviously, we will inform you if things change ;).

Regarding production, we inform you of two changes we have made to the material. First of all, we listened to many of your feedback on using enemy cards to perform Enemy drafts. You have informed us, in fact, that using the Enemy cards both to read the features and to perform the enemy draft, was very inconvenient. 

We have solved this problem by creating a new type of card called the Enemy Draft Card. Each of these small cards will show the name, art, and rank of an enemy and can be shuffled in place of the standard Enemy cards each time you need to do an Enemy draft, leaving the Enemy cards comfortably on the table. This new type of card has been added to all the boxes containing Enemies... we hope that this change will make you happy as it has made us proud to have made it!

The second change concerns the Punchboard of Black Hole Box. After receiving the Blank Proofs (see the last Update) we realized that the Barricade model (a 3d scenic element) did not work as we wanted. The model was too large and unstable and therefore did not pass our review. We have modified the model with a new smaller and more stable Barricade, and since we had more space inside the punchboard, we decided to add a second Barricade! So yes, you will receive two Barricades instead of one! Happy? We yes!

And now as promised, let's take a look at the Nemesis Missions!

Nemesis Mission

The Nemesis are Hunting missions against dangerous Enemies that can be met by the Heroes during their adventures. Each Nemesis is linked to one Nemesis Mission and can be played instead of drawing an Exploration Mission.  

A Nemesis Mission is unlocked and becomes available after that the Heroes have conquered an Area of a specific color (For example, Tiberius Nemesis Mission is unlocked after the heroes conquer one Purple Area).  

The Nemesis Missions do not assign the territory, in fact, they are special missions that lead the Settlers to move outside the places the Genesis scans them. The clashes with these powerful Enemies take place differently from the standard Missions. Each Nemesis has its card (Nemesis Cards) and a deck of action cards (Nemesis action cards).  

On the Nemesis Card, you will find on one side its Characteristics and unique Skills, which work similar to those of a regular Enemy.  

On the other side, you will find instead the list of rewards that the Nemesis will leave on the battlefield once defeated. The conditions for obtaining a given reward are different and vary from Nemesis to Nemesis.

Each Nemesis can be faced more than once, so regardless of the result of the Mission, you can play a Nemesis Mission again to obtain better results and better rewards.

Nemesis Action cards and Nemesis Deck  

Each Nemesis has a deck consisting of a variable number of Action cards. Each card reports the action that the Nemesis will play during its activation and its cost in AP. Apply the effect described in the card and then move its Activation Token on the Momentum as in regular activations. With each new activation draw a new Nemesis Action Card.  

The first time you face a hunting mission we advise you to keep the order of the Action cards, following the number at the top, to activate all the combinations in sequence. From the following hunts, you can shuffle the deck to increase the unpredictability of the Nemesis. 

If the Nemesis defeats you, or if you have not been able to kill her within the time set by the Mission, the Nemesis escapes by taking away the chance to get her rewards.

Are you ready for this challenge?

And for this update, it's all! We wish you a good summer and happy holidays! But, as usual, we leave you with new Miniature pics!