Deneb

College Armand was the first of its kind built by the Tower. In fact, it was this building that earned the splinter group from the Salbei Sages their name. Armand was a Salbei Sage and court mage to King Hugo of La’Certa over 1,300 years ago. Armand wanted a tract of sovereign land, and resources to build the college. King Hugo agreed in exchange for the slaughter of the Pegasus Nakbeast tribe, who had recently inflicted a stinging defeat against Hugo’s armies. Armand and some like-minded Salbei Sages agreed to the terms and used their mastery of magic to commit an act of violence that the modern day Tower would perhaps prefer was forgotten.

Based in the pleasant climate of Southern La’Certa, halfway between the Capital and the city of Bourbon. The open plains and farming country of La’Cera stretch far out to the east. To the west, and much closer, are the foothills of the Typhon mountains.

The College Armand is now the most prestigious place in the world for students to study the art of Aethermancy and be inducted into the ranks of the Tower.

The Tower are one of the playable factions in Deneb and will be one of the factions included in the starter set.

This is one of the many specially created pieces of artwork for Deneb. This is part of a small selection of pieces aimed at revealing a little bit more about the world itself and some of the key locations.

Key dates in the history of “Tower College Armand”

This was making it difficult to browse the whole project, so moved to the comments on this post for anyone who is interested.

On the continent of Xi, the Black Oak Grove is located in the Pallas Forest, a huge forest that separates that nation of La’Certa from the Dying Wastes.

A clearing in the heart of the forest. At its centre, the massive, ancient oak tree, dripping with black-green sap. The clearing is lit by a metres high intensive bonfire. It’s a night with minimal moonlight and the flames cause shadows to flicker everywhere. A few figures are roughly silhouetted around the blaze. The Coven leadership meets here once a year to resolve disputes amongst their members.

The Coven are one of the playable factions in Deneb and will be one of the factions included in the starter set. 

This is one of the many specially created pieces of artwork for Deneb. This is part of a small selection of pieces aimed at revealing a little bit more about the world itself and some of the key locations.

Key dates in the history of “Black Oak Grove”

This was making it difficult to browse the whole project, so moved to the comments on this post for anyone who is interested.

Just a quick update to say that the v0.9 version of the rules have been released and can be found here

Main changes from the v0.85 release

• All the unit cards have art now for all units in all factions.
• Many minor wording tweaks from playtesting.
• Some minor re-arrangement of content in preparation for final art pieces.

Worth noting this is a heavily compressed PDF from the print version, so images lose some sharpness and there are some minor visual artefacts.

37 of 37!

This last one is the mysterious Nautilus Crystal, from the unaligned faction. A collection of models that can be used by any core faction strike team to supplement their force.

All the crystals are an interesting option for players who want something a little different. They are immobile so choose their initial deployment well. They grant an action to every other member of the strike team and generally have an aura of effect that can grow throughout the game if their charge criteria are fulfilled (in this case killing enemy models with the “Tower” keyword).

The Abyssal Wave action granted by the Nautilus Crystal allows your strike team to crash waves of water into their enemies. Forcing them to either stand fast in the brackish assault and suffer damage or give way to the tide and be forced where you want them.

Please let me know your thoughts on either rules, art or anything else!

So whilst focussing on all the art and mini’s is great, we are continuing to playtest the game. It’s a funny thing when you’ve been playing a game a lot. I kind of realised we had gotten to the point where we were playing the game from memory and the cards, and not really looking things up. This is a good thing, but it also means there is a danger that we’re playing and going “oh yeah, we always play that rule like that”, and that isn’t what’s written. Alex did some great work on rule-edits, and a few other tweaks have gone in over the other play-testing, so good time for a different kind of play-test.

Played a game today with a full 5v5 all the models in the starter-set game. Actually nice to have prototypes here for all but two of the models, and 99% cards and tokens from a proper prototype print of the starter set. Making sure to read the rules in the book and on-card before taking each action. The goal being that someone else who reads the rules should actually play the same as we have been when playtesting!

As requested by Ben on the hobby hangout, here are some pics of prototype mini’s. I did post these deep in the old forums, but good to include them here to make it easier for folks to see.

I stress these are prototypes, there is a bit of a scale issue with the enchanter that needs addressing.

I have recently managed to arrange professional painting services for the starter set models, so I hope in I guess a month or so I shall be able to share some nicely painted versions of these!

Well, here it is, number 36 of 37. Very soon that will be all the unit cards done!

The rules have been done for quite some time, but the art has taken longer 🙂

This one is the Wyrm Fury Crystal, from the unaligned faction. A collection of models that can be used by any core faction strike team to supplement their force.

All the crystals are an interesting option for players who want something a little different. They are immobile so choose their initial deployment well. They grant an action to every other member of the strike team and generally have an aura of effect that can grow throughout the game if their charge criteria are fulfilled (in this case killing enemy models with the “Coven” keyword).

The Beserker’s Fury action granted by the Wyrm Fury Crystal is a risky tactic. It can allow your models to deal a lot of extra damage, but they are quite likely to get killed from the damage they take themselves in the process.

Please let me know your thoughts on either rules, art or anything else!

**EDIT**

So I couldn’t figure out how to post images in the comments below, but to respond to @oriskany and help give an idea about the size of these cards, here is a picture of me holding some. They are roughly a little smaller than A6, and double-sided.

So I am continuing to document my work on creating the game Deneb which has been my primary hobby focus for quite some time now. As soon as the old archived forums are back up and running I’ll grab some of the key intro bits from there on what the project is about, but to help anyone new looking at this…

• The key mechanics are around choice rather than randomness. A game of Deneb has at most, two coin-tosses for random elements, and everything else is down to player choice.
• It’s a skirmish-like game, but it uses tiles (which have built-in rules for elevation and other terrain effects) to build a grid for gameplay, and all movement and measurement is tile based.
• It’s quick to play, with the smallest size games taking 30-60 mins, and the biggest 60-90 mins.
• All the core rules are written, plus unit rules for 4 factions (plus an unaligned collection of models), these have been through a chunk of play-testing, and it’s down to number crunching and wording tweaks at this point. The art has been created fully for 35 of the 37 units, the last bits of art are in progress.

Lot’s of info can be found on our official website here

https://www.deneb-skirmish.com

Also you can download the v0.9x beta version of the rules here

Quick references, quick-start rules, standees can all be found on the website!

More updates soon, in the meantime, enjoy some unit card art