Senjutsu: Battle For Japan

Post KS Update #6 Sensō and an Important Retailer Message
over 2 years ago – Sat, Jan 15, 2022 at 12:11:36 AM

Good morning, afternoon and evening backers!

Here today to show off a little more of Sensō and with a message for our wonderful retailers. 

Sensō

Sensō is an Add-On currently available on BackerKit for Senjutsu backers and in our Pre-Order store.

It is a standalone game that does not require Senjutsu to play and is very compact, making it a perfect travel game!

Mechanically, Sensō is a light 'trick-taking' game with an area control twist. Seize control of Japan, wresting provinces from your enemies in this 'King Is Dead' meets Whist title.

Sensō comes with an all-new Battle For Japan standard 54 card deck, meaning that you can finally play Senjutsu Poker or even Senjutsu Snap with some of the highest quality cards available... 300+ GSM, full colour with a linen finish.

Sensō features 4 Clans, the Mōri, Oda, Takeda and Uesugi and is historically grounded and full of wonderful nods to Japan's Sengoku period. As you can see the artwork is really something special, with Raben hand painting a unique Royal for each Ace, King, Queen and Jack. 

Retailers:

If you are currently not on the Retailer Access Pledge please email me or put your Kickstarter access email in the comments. I will switch your pledge over or sign you up so you can access Senjutsu's retailer bundles. These bundles are discounted and free of VAT to reflect your retailer status. 

Please contact me via email directly if you want to place a larger order, I will be able to offer discount rates and shipping quotes bespoke to your order. 

Matched Play:

We have a fantastically exciting 'Matched Play' system launching alongside Senjutsu that will feature free Prize Support, free admin resources and free marketing material for your store so please make sure you're on the Retailer Access Pledge so you'll get the email with all that good info!

Sell Sheets can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ottvkunpjzlmu4c/AADSH69FJpBaZSAXkHekjm1Aa?dl=0

If you know a retailer who you would like to see carry Senjutsu in their store, please get them to email me at [email protected] and I'll be happy to chat!

In the following weeks, we will preview the rules of Sensō and try to shoot a gameplay video with the new team!

Until then have a great weekend!

Much love,

James (and Paul!)

Post KS Update #5 Daimyo News, Second Batch Surveys Out and Dan's Design Diary #1
over 2 years ago – Fri, Jan 07, 2022 at 12:49:19 AM

Good morning, afternoon and evening Senjutsu fans!

Daimyo News: 

We're delighted to welcome Martin Wallace to the design team for Daimyo: Battle For Japan. 

Martin Wallace has been the mastermind behind some of Paul and I's favourite board game titles, such as Brass, Ankh-Morpork, In Flanders Field, Few Acres Of Snow, Study In Emerald... the list goes on! 

Already we know that Daimyo will be a fantastic title and cannot wait to bring you more content as it releases. 

Second Batch Surveys: 

The second batch of Surveys has been released- if you are in the Deluxe All-In or Gameplay All-In pledge level you should have received that by now.

I am working hard to get your questions answered on these, if you have any issues please email [email protected] . 

Next Week's Update:

Next week I'll be talking about Senso (that little surprise game we've dropped into the Pledge Manager!), For now, feast your eyes on some new art from Raben! 

Much love,

James (and Paul)

Dan's Design Diary 1:

Greetings Samurai!

I bring great news! Alpha testing is proceeding at a phenomenal pace with the Core Set's base Ability Cards and four starting characters (Student, Master, Ronin, Warrior) are available for open beta on Tabletop Simulator with the Ninja and the Assassin planned in to go live this Friday!

The time has come for my Design Diaries. You will no doubt see on TTS that some of the cards we showed you during the campaign have changed. Some ever so slightly, others by a significant amount. 

The aim of these diaries will be to guide you through the design and testing thought process that has led to these changes (and others that are on the way).

Today I want to talk about Hobble and Crippling Poison.

If you look very closely at the images on the campaign page you can just about see these cards in their original forms. Here they are a bit clearer:

Originally Hobble worked just like a Stun but it did not count towards the Stun victory. Functional, but not very exciting. So we had to come up with a better, different effect. Since being hobbled can slow you down, we decided to move the effect of Crippling Poison to Hobble. We also felt that having it as a permanent -1 would be too harmful to a player, especially if they received more than one copy. To that end, Hobble became the first card that flipped over providing a “clock” to the effect.

Crippling poison now needed a new effect. Nothing shows a character being crippled and unable to act like losing the ability to play a card. So this became the Poison card you saw in the update for The Master. We wanted an effect that prevented the poisoned character from taking their turn, but we also wanted it to be at a random point in time as too much control over when it triggered would be too powerful.

Now we were on the right track. Hobble worked really well but Crippling Poison was a little underwhelming. What if you shuffled it all the way to the bottom of the enemy deck? It Wouldn’t see play at all. We wanted to make sure The Master (or any other poisoner) would reliably see it. We looked at making it the next turn but that was just too powerful. We looked at shuffling it into the top ten but that still seemed too long to wait if it was card ten. In the end we settled on the top 5. This creates a pile of 6 cards where any one of them could be a poison. It discourages card draw for a few turns and it turns up reliably in every game it is handed out. It is also still random enough that the poisoner needs to count the turns and play the statistics of when it may or may not turn up so that they can capitalise on the opening a skipped turn provides.

Further testing of Hobble however showed that it was little more than an inconvenience for a single turn. It flips the turn you get it and discards the turn after. Even if we had attacks that gave out 2 or 3 hobbles. It didn’t really feel like a threat and by extension didn’t feel like a viable strategy to go for when building a deck. 

This led to one final change. We already had a clock mechanism for Hobble, what if we extended that clock? Multiple hobbles gained on different turns would suddenly become something to avoid. Now, rather than flipping, the card rotates each turn counting down until it is discarded. This provides three turns of hindrance and allows them to stack more easily.

Now there may be some of you that are concerned that the “Shadow Under Steel” addon provides an additional 3 Crippling Poison cards and you may be worried that adding multiple copies into the top of a deck would make for a very unfun game for your opponent. You would be right and we’ve already made some changes there which I will cover in the next diary, For now though I’ll leave you with a sneaky peak of what that looks like:

The next Design Diary will talk through the new poisons, new basic defence cards and the “card schools” system. 

Until next week!

Dan

Post KS Update #4 First Batch Surveys Out + Retailer Access Pledge + Survey Timeline
over 2 years ago – Thu, Dec 23, 2021 at 04:26:51 AM

Good morning, afternoon and evening Backers!

First Batch Surveys: 

Phew! Sorting the BackerKit surveys has been a titanic effort but we're finally there. 

The first batch of surveys has been released- only a limited number of Backers will receive these surveys. 

Why do we do this?

• To troubleshoot any issues with the survey that have been missed by our team. 
• To make sure traffic to the Backerkit store is working as intended and that Kickstarter has sent over the right Pledge Info. 

If you have received your survey and have any questions, please reach out to Backer Support by using "Need Help?" link located throughout on the survey or email me at [email protected] .

Shipping fees will be added and charged after surveys and add-on orders are collected, sometime in the new year shortly before fulfilment. 

As soon as we have accurate estimates for shipping, I will put out a Kickstarter Update with that info. All backers will be notified before cards are charged for shipping costs.

Early Bird All-In Backers:

If you backed Senjutsu as an Early Bird Pledge then migrated over to the All-Ins, we have added a £10 complementary credit to your BackerKit pledge. This offsets the free Ghost In The Night Add-On (worth £10). 

If the above applied to you and you have received your survey, completed it and there's an issue- email me at [email protected] .  

Retailers:

If you are a Retailer and not part of our Retailer Access Pledge, just reach out to me via email and I'll get that switched over for you. 

The Retailer Access Pledge gives you access to buying Senjutsu by the case, you must be a verifiable FLGS / Board Game retailer / online retailer to have this option available to you. 

Survey Timeline: 

I will be keeping a close eye on any issues stemming from this first batch of surveys. If no major issues are found, we will release a larger batch of surveys next week and then the rest in the first week of the New Year.

Merry Christmas!

There is some gigantically amazing news for Daimyo on the way - so I will have to post an Update about that in the next week or so....

Until then I wish you a Merry Christmas on behalf of myself, Paul, Dan and the rest of the growing Stone Sword Games team. Please have a fantastic time with your friends and loved ones and I'll be seeing you in another Update before the New Year! 

Post KS Update #3 Senjutsu Testing Update + New Office + Pledge Manager News (Please read!)
over 2 years ago – Mon, Dec 13, 2021 at 10:48:53 PM

Good morning, afternoon and evening Backers!

It has been a huge two weeks at Stone Sword Games! Three big items on the agenda today: 

Senjutsu Testing: 

Dan, our brilliant first-hire, has been very active on Discord working with the Alpha Playtesters to get the Samurai of Senjutsu developed and tested. With his input and your fantastic help we are already seeing a lot of progress towards the Senjutsu final product. 

(I've also got a big backlog of emails to go through with additional feedback and I cannot wait to delve into that and see what those who perhaps don't have TTS or Discord have been able to work on!)

It is our ambition to have the free to play TTS demo of Senjutsu updated over the Christmas and New Years period to reflect the changes we have already made. 

As always, if you have any ideas please email me or [email protected] and we will be happy to give them a read! To thank your efforts, your name will feature in the final Senjutsu rulebook too! 

New Office: 

Paul and I have finally been able to make the leap into working from an office. No more working out of front rooms on our end! It's a great space and we cannot wait to start leveraging it for the benefit of Paul, myself, our growing team and yourselves, the fans and wonderfully fantastic Backers!

What do offices mean for you, as a Backer of Stone Sword Games products?

• Our Administration and Back-office organisation is going to move from "not very good" (frankly rubbish so far!) to a more streamlined, efficient mode of working. We have a very exciting new hire coming in January who will be able to MAX out what we can do!
• The parcel processing system will be overhauled with parcels being picked up on time, from our location and shipped directly to you (if you make an order through stoneswordgames.com.)This will vastly improve dispatch times.  
• Communication is going to be shaken up - the plan is to have a regular newsletter, active social media presence and a lot more collaborations with other creators, fans and charities! 
•  Our creative output for 2022 will be incredible- Paul and I have a huge list of amazing projects and ideas ready for fans of Senjutsu and using our new office we will be able to bring these projects and ideas into fruition faster and at a quality level beyond what we've already achieved. 

Pledge Manager News: 

The Pledge Manager has been put together and will be going live at the end of next week (unless we find any issues in the testing process early next week). 

Working in conjunction with BackerKit, Stone Sword Games is going to be doing something a little different with the Pledge Manager.

It will always be my intention with Stone Sword Games to be as honest, upfront and accessible as possible. For this reason we have decided to implement a new feature through BackerKit- the option to charge Shipping separately to the physical content of your pledge. 

Why are we doing this? 

I've always said it and I will repeat it, Stone Sword Games never makes a penny from shipping. This is something we have committed the company to and is something that we are living with for the shipping of Hogs Of War The Miniatures Game.

Shipping prices are a nightmare at the moment and the industry as a whole is suffering for this. Next year I am sure that prices will change and I think it is likely we will see some recovery from the current crisis- this means there may be the opportunity to pass those savings onto you, the Backers! 

We are not going to charge now and then profit off a fall in prices next year. 

Christmas is also expensive for many families and splitting the payment allows us to make sure you do not have to settle the whole thing in one go. You can save for it if needed. 

We hope you can understand and respect our reasons for offering this feature. BackerKit (and Martyn Poole our rep) have been very accommodating and understand why this fights for your corner against the global shipping crisis!

Paypal and the PM: 

There is one small complication with this feature, we will have to directly invoice you for PayPal payments IF AND ONLY IF you have to make the Payment via PayPal. If you don't need to use PayPal- this change won't affect your payment for Senjutsu at all. 

It is no issue at all our end. Just add what you want to the basket then email us and we will send you an invoice and add the credit to the BackerKit store ourselves! 

Much love and we hope you're as excited as we are! 

James (and Paul and Dan!)

Post KS Update #2 Stone Sword Games grows! + Playtesting + Pledge Manager Update
over 2 years ago – Sun, Nov 28, 2021 at 12:10:48 AM

Good morning, afternoon and evening Backers!

Small update for you this week as we head towards manufacturing. 

Stone Sword Games grows!

If you've been active in the Comments or on our Discord (https://discord.gg/5cRsFt4djj) you may know Dan (Whizzwang). He has been an absolute star throughout and post the Senjutsu Kickstarter Campaign, keeping everyone up to date with changes and helping little old me (James) with running the project. 

Dan came down to the Dice Cup Nottingham and after a little chat, Paul and I knew he was an undiscovered gem for the Board Game industry- it was an easy decision to invite Dan onboard as the first employee of Stone Sword Games! 

Congratulations Dan, your energy is infectious and we couldn't be happier to have you with us in the Stone Sword Games team!

Playtesting:

Alpha Playtesting has begun on Tabletop Simulator! Paul has been very busy behind the scenes updating the TTS with new cards. If you would like to play as the Master or the Warrior you can now find them on TTS for free! 

Their cards are currently being torn apart and tested by our expert Alpha Playtesting team- but please do send in any of your thoughts to [email protected].

Pledge Manager:

Kickstarter is still pulling through the data for Senjutsu and allocating the funds. In the background Paul and I are also working very hard to get the Pledge Manager loaded up and sorted. We are looking at two weeks until we can open it for you- contigent on Kickstarter having completed processing all your Backer data. 

If you have had a payment fail or lost your pledge (or want to back as a late Backer) then never fear! We can sort this for you when the Pledge Manager opens!