REDLINE April Update
about 1 year ago
– Sat, Apr 01, 2023 at 11:30:00 AM
Happy April!
Lots of good things to share with our players in this month’s REDLINE update. A recap of our recent Battle of Neom shipping and an update to our store website along with the announcement of our new REDLINE expansion!
Shipping Update
It’s been nearly a month since we’ve shipped REDLINE: Battle of Neom to all our Kickstarter backers.
By this time all US backers should have their orders by now and most international orders should be arriving soon or have already arrived.
If your US order hasn’t arrived yet, do let us know so we can address it. If your order is international and hasn’t arrived by mid April, please message us as some orders can take a long time to ship and we want to make sure everything goes where it belongs.
Again, all of us at Saving Throw Studios are extremely grateful to the amazing support of the REDLINE player base for the opportunity to make something awesome.
And as you’ll see, more awesome is just around the corner.
New REDLINE Expansion
Get ready! Our 3rd REDLINE expansion is deep in development and gearing up for a summer campaign.
REDLINE: Tactical Card Combat is getting ready to grow again with REDLINE: Payday!
Payday introduces 2 brand new factions to the game for our players to lead into battle! For the first time, players can take command of daring mercenaries as they battle for glory and profit! Or, cut throat industrial corporations as they fight to gain control of valuable resources. And even more profit!
With REDLINE: Payday, our players can look forward to more of everything you’ve come to expect from our recent REDLINE expansions. Each faction will introduce new distinct playstyles to the game along with an arsenal of new efreets, mechanics, and upgrades to play with and build around alongside them.
We’ve long wanted to introduce these two factions into the game and their unique abilities to round out player options alongside the UNE and CPM. Having four factions is crucial to creating proper game balance and a healthy meta for REDLINE’s future. And now finally, with your support, we are working hard to do just that!
Expect more details on REDLINE: Payday in the coming months as we get closer to our biggest player campaign yet.
Store Update
Finally, we want to wrap up this month’s newsletter with an update on our online store.
Now that Battle of Neom has shipped to all our backers, REDLINEgame.com is now stocked with both Battle of Neom expansion decks and the Battle of Neom minis. So, if you happened to miss out on our crowdfunding campaign or pre-orders, you can now order Neom product directly.
Battle of Neom is a great set, especially with the addition of the new scorched earth mission cards that take damage during the fighting. If you aren’t careful with your shots, it's easy to destroy the city and turn it all into useless rubble.
Aim carefully.
REDLINE February Update - REDLINE Relaunch!
about 1 year ago
– Thu, Feb 02, 2023 at 06:48:54 AM
Helloooo REDLINE Army!
Tons of great news to share this month with this super important update. EVERYTHING we’ve been working on in secret the past few months is revealed today. REDLINE is changing in a super positive way! Our REDLINE Relaunch is here!
Improved cards!
Streamlined rules!
Multiplayer!
Woot!
Starting today, REDLINE will never be the same again. We can't waste a single moment so read on!
Battle of Neom Shipping
First things first, Battle of Neom is stateside!
Backers, your product is here and we’re getting everything ready for our distributer to begin mailing out orders shortly. At the moment they have one large game in front of us, but after its finished, Battle of Neom is next to ship out.
We were given an estimate of 2 weeks before that time comes. When we have confirmation shipping has begun we will of course update again and notify.
The whole team at Saving Throw Studios is super excited to get our newest expansion in our players hands. We've spent over a year working on it and soon you can all finally play it. Battle of Neom is awesome!
Even better, Neom’s shipment was the exact moment we were waiting for to share a lot of the work we've put in over the past few months since our Battle of Neom Kickstarter campaign ended.
We dropped hints in our last update we had some big plans in store for early 2023 and now we can finally reveal them.
REDLINE Relaunch
Before we start, I would strongly advise clicking on our newest update article on the REDLINE Relaunch on our website here. It goes into much greater depth on the tweaks to the game and the reasons for them. Everything on today's update is more or less an abbreviation of the article so if you want to know exactly what the relaunch is about, go check it out.
The REDLINE Relaunch is many things, but a large focus was put on cleaning up the rules. You can view ALL the changes in their entirety with our updated games rules on the website here. As you'll see, the new version is nearly identical to the previous rules except for the new rule tweaks and the updates that come naturally with the inclusion of the Battle of Neom expansion. And don't forget our addition of rules for scenario play and REDLINE Scramble, our new multiplayer format that players have been asking for.
Still here? Ok then. Let's go!
When we first started making and designing the REDLINE: Tactical Card Combat Core Set back in 2020 we strived to make the game the very best we could. Since that time, the game has nearly doubled in size with 2 expansions and a 3rd on the way.
With that growth there comes a lot of 20/20 hindsight from ourselves. Add that to all the player feedback we've received and it was clear to us, though a blast to play, the game in its current state had some rough spots. Mainly we felt card playability could be improved and some rules were not as intuitive as we thought.
Taking everything to heart, we had now had a tough choice to make. Do we either keep the course and keep making a product we felt wasn't its best version of itself, or pull a course correction while the game was still young and right some wrongs before they compounded on each other?
Expandable card games like REDLINE are built around change as a key feature of their appeal. Nothing stays the same. Something new is always around the corner. However we know full well change can be a scary word to some. Which is why we want to make CLEAR that the goal of our REDLINE Relaunch isn't to invalidate any old cards or game concepts. Any older REDLINE cards are still as playable now as they were yesterday. The only goal was to simplify gameplay and tighten up some rough edges. And as you'll see, REDLINE's relaunch is like 96% the same as REDLINE was before.
That new 4% though.....
The new 4%, we feel, will make a world of difference. So with full embracement of that defining element that makes expandable card games so great, change, we are proud to share the following changes to how you interact with REDLINE!
Cards
Right away, starting with REDLINE: Battle of Neom, all future REDLINE cards will be printed to the following standard shown on the right below.
As you may have noticed, the newer version the HRS-19 Horus card on the right has bigger font (when applicable) and the introduction of symbols like recon shown here, but also damage and resources to save space and make understanding cards easier. You may not have noticed that we’ve changed some of the terminology (shots and acc are new terms) and added set symbols to the bottom right hand corner. Nice huh?
Again, our REDLINE Relaunch article goes into more depth on the why and how behind the redesign, but as you can see, the changes are minimal and for the better. They allow for much easier conveying of information while saving text space on the card itself which as the article explains,was a major concern for us since day 1.
Battle of Neom was printed to this new standard, so when our backers receive their orders, their cards will be updated with the changes in place. In the future, all REDLINE product going forward will be printed with the new standard as well.
Rules
When it comes to the rules for REDLINE, we understand they could be made slightly easier to work with. To make a long story short, to save precious cardspace a lot of the old rules were written to be implied when in effect. This wasn't a huge problem after having played the game, but for newbies, leaning the ropes weren't as easy as we would like.
So we've made a lot of little tweaks to improve quality of life and to reflect changes since the game has grown. For example, the original rules didn't state how many cards should be in the mission deck as there were only 20 printed when the Core Set was made at the time. Now there are 28 in print. What should players do? The old rules didn't address this. So we've tweaked mission deck construction rules to allow for a minimum of 20 cards at least and this is indicative of the majority of the changes we've made with the Relaunch.
We will share a more in depth update on the rules tweaks in our next update article on the website.
But we want to review the two biggest changes here as they'll have the biggest impact.
1. Attack, firing and shots - The OG rules were messier than we would have liked when it comes to this very important action in REDLINE. Attacking. To make playing easier we have clarified and separated how we speak about attacks when playing.
Starting with the release of Battle of Neom the following terminology will be used.
An attack is simply when an efreet is assigned to move to a mission during the combat phase.
Firing is the action of shooting at an enemy during combat to deal damage.
A shot is the actual dice roll made to determine if an efreet hits or misses when firing.
For example, under the new rules, a player would assign one of their efreets to attack a mission on the red line in hope of capturing it during their turn. During the attack it encounters an enemy and combat begins. The player decides to fire at the enemy and luckily, rolls high when taking the shot when they roll a 10 with the attack dice
As you can see, the combat sequence is exactly the same as it was before, it's just been cleaned up to make each step in the process easier to understand by being more clear on the steps involved. That is the REDLINE Relaunch in a nutshell.
2. Equipment - The other "big" change we've made deals with equipment.
The old equipment upgrade system proved to be counter intuitive. With that old system, players could basically pile as many pieces of equipment on a single efreet as they liked and it could take it. The equipment slots on each efreet simply give a 1 time bonus to equip matching cards cheaper by showing a unit had a certain affinity towards certain upgrades.
Most players thought the equipment slots instead limited what types of equipment an efreet could take. If an efreet didn't have a cannon slot for example, then it must not be able to accept cannon cards. That does makes sense....
Hence the new change. While the 1 time equip bonus is still active, efreets will now be limited by the equipment slots shown on the card. In addition, once a slot is filled, it can no longer accept anymore equipment of that type. This means the most pieces of equipment any efreet can take at the moment is four.
For example, a player will still be able to equip an overclocked laser to a EF-25 Hammer just as before. The Hammer has a laser slot afterall and the player can still deploy the card directly from their hand to the Hammer for 1 resource if they wish. However, now that the Hamer's laser slot is taken up by the overclocked laser, it cannot accept any additional laser cards. And cannons are out of the picture altogether, as the Hammer has no cannon slots at all.
Besides being how most everybody thought equipment works in the first place, the new system under the REDLINE Relaunch rules actually opens up a lot of design space with the efreets.
Before, efreets were all a bit of a blank canvas, in that they could all take any weapon with no real restrictions. We hope this new change will give them each a little more personality and allow for more unique designs and player decisions when building decks.
To compensate, you will notice many older efreets still have an open slot that will be allowed to accept any type of equipment just as before. However, once occupied, that open slot can't accept anything else. So while this change may nerf some efreets and equipment cards, it is a buff to others. XEF-53 Hellion we are looking at you!
You will also notice a new closed equipment slot was pictured above though no current REDLINE card has one. Yet. Do not be surprised if future efreets have a reduced capacity to carry equipment!
Again, we want to stress that every current REDLINE card is still fully playable with this new change to equipment.
For a full review of these new rules and the rest, click here.
REDLINE Scramble
Finally, the last part of our REDLINE Relaunch we wanted to touch on today is the addition of our often requested, patiently awaited, multiplayer format!
REDLINE Scramble!
REDLINE Scramble is a 1v1v1 REDLINE 60 card multiplayer format where each player races to secure and capture as many REDLINE missions as possible! Team up and make alliances! Then betray and break them when the time is right! REDLINE Scramble is a fast and fun kinetic free for all where anything goes!
Players have been asking for a multiplayer version of REDLINE since the game first launched on Kickstarter. At the time our main focus was on making the best 1v1 game we could, and so while we love multiplayer games ourselves, regular REDLINE wasn't really built for that. So multiplayer was kept on the back burner.
Luckily we had ideas on how to implement this and those ideas would become REDLINE Scramble. Even better, multiplayer REDLINE plays almost exactly the same as regular REDLINE, just with 3 times the fun. It's a seamless way to add an extra player in on the carnage.
When playing a game of REDLINE Scramble, players still take their turns and battle as normal. The only difference now is that when capturing a mission, instead of placing a capture counter on it to show ownership (and control of those sweet mission bonuses) the mission card is removed from the red line and placed at the players baseline. Once done, the old mission is immediately replaced by the next card in the mission deck. Once a mission is captured, it's gone! So if you see a juicy mission you want for yourself, you better scramble to go get it!
Once captured, that mission's capture cost is added to the owner's Scramble Count and all mission bonuses are active as normal. The first player to amass 25 points in their Scramble Count wins!
Scramble is a blast to play because a third player can really mess with some of your strategy when another wild card is added into the mix. And as the game progresses, the red line keeps changing as new cards keep getting added, and subtracted from it in a mad dash to gobble up as many missions as possible before your opponents do! If a strong mission appears during play, are you going to risk fighting for it before it's gone? Or will you take the opportunity to improve your position somewhere else with less action?
The new format plays fast because everyone is engaged at all times and combat is still simultaneous so down time between turns is minimal.
Give it a try and let us know how you like it! The full rules for REDLINE Scramble are listed in the new rules.
Ready to Relaunch
As you can see, the new tweaks we've made are poised to position the game for bigger and better things. The entire team at Saving Throw Studios is quite grateful for the opportunity to even be in a position to change the games rules. Many successful games over time have chosen to do similar revamps and in a way, the REDLINE Relaunch shows we are following an established path.
See you again when Battle of Neom is in the mail!
Cameron
January Update
over 1 year ago
– Thu, Jan 05, 2023 at 07:35:56 AM
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
The entire team at Saving Throw Studios wishes you a happy and prosperous 2023.
We have two big things we want to share with our players in this month's REDLINE update. First an overview of what we have planned for the game in 2023 and an update on Battle of Neom shipping for our Kickstarter backers.
REDLINE Resolutions 2023
We recently published an entire article on our website detailing a list of all the major plans we have for REDLINE going into the new year. We encourage you to click the article for a full breakdown on them all, but for a quick overview we'll share the general outline here.
- Battle of Neom KS fulfillment coming in Feb 2023
- Development of our 3rd expansion in early stages
- REDLINE "Relaunch" in 2023
- REDLINE Multiplayer coming soon
- Novela in progress
- Fingers crossed for a convention
Though it may seem like its been a quiet few months as we wait for Neom production and shipment, we've been busy behind the scenes preparing for our biggest year yet!
Again, I'd suggest clicking on our REDLINE Resolutions 2023 article for more details on the list above. Then stay tuned to our social media on Facebook and Twitter along with our monthly newsletters for more updates on each announcement as we get closer to sharing them.
2023 and REDLINE are gonna be lit.
Battle of Neom Shipping Update
As you saw above, Battle of Neom is nearly complete with printing and is due to be ready for shipment stateside soon.
To save time, we will be having it flown in from the factory so we can begin fulfilling our Kickstarter pledges and BackerKit late orders.
We will be notifying everyone when the freight is on its way and let you know when final fulfillment is ready to begin. As of this moment we are still on track to begin mailing out orders in February.
Currently we have 89% of all our orders locked in and shipping paid on BackerKit. However, that means 11% of our backers still need to verify their pledges and lock in shipping to receive their Battle of Neom orders.
If you haven't yet, or are unsure, please doublecheck your order on our BackerKit pledge manager to make sure shipping is accounted for and your address is correct. if you have moved recently you should be able to update your order on BackerKit with the new address.
We want to make sure everyone gets their orders on time and to the right location!
Thank you, as always, for your continued support of REDLINE.
Make sure to read our 2023 resolutions article for the full scoop of the busy year we have planned and see you soon as Neom gets ready to ship!
Cameron
