Swords: Cut the Deck

Now The Real Adventure Begins
almost 2 years ago – Tue, Jan 14, 2025 at 04:00:15 PM

Production... has wrapped! Cut the Deck is real!
We've been holding our breath for that final confirmation a while now, but it's time to press on! Almost 5000kg of cards are on the move!

The stock is now on a freighter to us so we can send it to you.  If we had to make an estimate based on what we've been told (and not accounting for any ships going sideways in any canals)... the game could start shipping 3-4 weeks from now.

The US-based deployment company we were going to use to make the next part easier unfortunately ghosted us(!), even after we cast "Speak With Management" (and subsequently rolled a 1).  So we're rolling up our sleeves and doing the shipping DIY. It's a little more blood, sweat and tears on our end - but we owe you that much. You've all been very patient with us.

Thane and I will be splitting the workload, so most stock is headed to him and I will be taking care of the NZ/AU orders. We'll both have extra stock of everything, so you'll have an opportunity to adjust your orders and lock in before we send everything on its merry way. Then we'll ship the dice first, to get over any little logistical hurdles that might appear, before the bigger parcels go out straight after.

On the plus side, this gives us an opportunity to add some little personal touches to each order. We'll do our best to make it exciting for you.

Going forward, if you have any questions or concerns, you should email us at:
[email protected] - New Zealand and Australian orders
[email protected] - Worldwide orders

I just want to take a moment to thank the people who have been choosing to be kind and supportive of us while we clear these last obstacles. I know a lot of you are sick of waiting! Frankly we are too! We've had to redo all sorts of things - the box art, the playmats, the dice, the color grading and wording on pretty much every card and the artwork on plenty of them too... But the result is a better product. We've learned a ton for the future. To the people who have had lots of nice things to say : you're great. We see it and we really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

To own one of our many missteps throughout the development of Cut the Deck - we recently announced that we had adjusted the number of Move cards in the box from 6 sets to 4; and 8 sets to 6 in the Kargob Edition, to accommodate more Hero and Sword cards. Since we've had a lot of feedback from people wanting more stuff, and to be more accommodating to one-player content, we overlooked that some people were happy the way things were.  We'll have the following options available at launch:
- Printable .pdf Move Cards
- An interactive, browser-based move card set on the website
- The option to purchase a set of 12 Move cards (at cost price) with your order. We're ordering these from a different manufacturer, so the quality may differ ever-so slightly; but since each individual player always uses the same set of 12, we don't foresee this negatively impacting the game.  We considered giving them a different design, but we're not trying to capitalize on our own faux pas by making something desirable.

That's all for now. As always, more news when we have it.

Thank you everyone!

Matthew
God Of Bubble Wrap

Thane
God Of Postage Stamps

A 4240kg Update
almost 2 years ago – Thu, Nov 14, 2024 at 04:05:56 PM

Dear swordmasters,

Manufacturing is currently in full swing!

The bad news up front: we're not going to get copies out to you in time for Christmas.  We tried our best.

4240kg of product. 24,000 dice. That's over 2000 great swords worth of gaming. It's going to take a while longer to get from the factory to the distributor and then to you.

If you preordered via BackerKit instead of Kickstarter and haven't been charged for it yet, we are going to charge you over the next few days - this won't include shipping which will come up later on, but it's going to help us keep things running smoothly.

In the meantime, here are some of the things going on:

There is a small manufacturing faux pas with the Hiltshire Edition, which is that the box doesn't close flush because of the folded token bag inside (which wasn't accounted for in the box dimensions). Shipping the bag separately will cause other unnecessary delays. It's the final sprint and we're making tough choices.

Each copy will be shrink wrapped and will close correctly once you put your tokens in the bag, but we apologize for the fiddliness.

There have been quite a lot of changes since we ran the campaign over a year ago, so here is a list of patch notes:

Notably, we removed the Crowdfunder card and the Location cards that we added during the campaign as stretch goals - they weren't that fun and kind of weighed the game down with extra steps, as we've discussed before.  We've added a new downloadable .PDF that includes Locations with some flavour text and extra rules. We think this makes them a bit more optional for galaxy-brained players who want battles with extra quirks, without upsetting the flow of a regular match by having someone play a disruptive, complicated card.  It also opens the concept of Locations up to homebrewing in the community and we'd love to keep expanding on that idea with future official .PDF updates.

We cut down the number of Move cards in the bigger editions of the game to make room for more Sword and Hero cards.  You have enough Move cards in the Hiltshire Edition for 4 players, and 6 in the Kargob edition (which is quite fitting if you're down with the lore).

We've also supplied a Foil and a Non-Foil version of every Guest Artist card, to deal with concerns about Foil cards (potentially?) bending over time.  For the people worried about that sort of thing, you can keep your foil cards pristine and play with the non-foils, and for everyone else you just have more Heroes to play with!
You also get a Foil duplicate of each panDEMONium backers Mystery Sword card in the Kargob/God of Darkness Edition, because those people deserve their card to be shiny.

Other changes:

Dice from the new manufacturer are in more canonical colours now, and have the Swords font for numbers.  We're using white instead of gold now.

You might see some pictures of me playing with a playmat that has the zones labelled on it - we've removed those from the artwork so you can just enjoy using it as a mousepad like Thane currently does.
In the original campaign it was going to be single sided, but it is now double-sided with Quest Sprout and friends on the back.

It took some trial and error on our part, but tokens are now sword shaped and armor tokens are shield shaped!  They're a lot more fun now. Just don't get distracted having tiny sword battles instead of playing the actual game...

And there are still some unrevealed secrets in the box!

Finally, since we've got a bit more time, I'll be working hard on more PDF modules over the holidays to prepare for a solid launch.

I've finished work on a small expansion for the game that won't be part of this campaign. We will wait until the core game has shipped and we've gotten feedback before doing anything else - but just know that we're ready and willing to expand your deck, with plenty of lessons learned and a much shorter turnaround time.

As always, if you're just learning about the game now, you can preorder the card game or the dice set on its own through our BackerKit page.

If you are based in Wellington, New Zealand, Caffeinated Dragon are opening their new store today on Manners Street - let me know if a playtest of Cut the Deck in the near future would interest you and I'll see if I can get something set up!

In unrelated news, Patreon now allows you to gift memberships to people, so the first 100 people to click this link will get 1 month of free access to the swordscomic Patreon - just a small way to show my gratitude that you've all been so patient with us.

Thanks! We'll talk again soon!

Matthew
Six Eyed Barbarian

Thane
Eight Eyed Librarian

Wow! It's a Time Crunch!
about 2 years ago – Tue, Oct 01, 2024 at 06:08:28 PM

Hi everyone!

OUR CARDS ARRIVED!

...And we FOUND A MISTAKE!

This is exactly the kind of thing we needed to see for ourselves before pulling the lever.

Card art issues are an easy fix that won't stall progress, but we'll be spending the next 48 hours checking every card thoroughly to make sure they're the best they can be.  We only get to launch once!

The factory is ready to get to work, so we'll confirm a release date quickly after that.

And the foil cards look amazing, by the way!  Photos don't really do them justice!

PS. You can preorder on BackerKit if you're just tuning in

See you soon!
Thanks!

Matthew
Quality Assurance Expert

Thane
Fine-tooth Comb Technician
 

Still Waiting
about 2 years ago – Mon, Sep 09, 2024 at 06:04:37 PM

It's been some time since our last update. We've been delaying this post because the factory has promised to send us our pre-production copy of the game "soon" for about a month now, and we wanted to share the good news and photos of that copy. It still hasn't arrived, but we really can't keep you all waiting for an update any longer.

Our manufacturer is a large, reputable company and we've already paid them, so we're not in any danger of cancelling the project - but we also cannot give a firm estimate of the final production schedule until we've seen the final pre-production copy. We're in regular contact with the factory, so it's not like they've ghosted us.

We're frustrated, and I know you're frustrated too. Please hang in there, we expect to have good news and pictures soon!
 

There are 115 God of Darkness Editions of the game available on BackerKit if you're just tuning in and want to help us have a smooth launch with no leftover stock to find homes for.

Thanks!

Matthew
King of Redrawing Cards That Weren't Bad To Start With

Thane
Earl of Sending Follow Up Emails

4th of July Update
over 2 years ago – Thu, Jul 04, 2024 at 05:55:18 PM

Happy 4th of July!

We are... almost there!

Some updates:

- All of the materials on our side are done! Some last-minute feedback is still coming in from our panDEMONium backers and I will keep tweaking things for as long as I am able to for them, but that window is closing fast

- We are currently waiting for an updated timeline from our manufacturer - there's been a lot of moving parts but we're clear of any issues (that we currently know of)

- You will have an opportunity to update your address again

- We have two new guest artists: TheSketchGoblinand TheImmortalThinkTank! Two great New Zealand artists who I'm excited to have on board!  Baltad, God of Fire is exclusive to the Kargob Edition of the game, while everyone will be receiving Saber Snake.

- This brings the total exclusive foil cards in the Kargob Edition up to four:
- Kargob, God of Darkness
- Kargob's Fang
- Baltad, God of Fire (by TheSketchGoblin)
- The Birthday Blade (which you can only use on your birthday)
These are all heavy hitting cards that cost more to use than any of the Heroes or Swords in the base game. The Kargob edition also includes a handful of extra Mystery Swords

- We have had lots of requests to make the extra Mystery Swords available separately, but if we do, it will be in a future expansion - I'm also not ready to commit to a new expansion until we've done right by everyone and gotten them the base game, collected feedback and improved the formula. We've been learning a lot, and we have a good relationship with this manufacturer now, so making an expansion will also have a much faster turnaround

- Foil masks are currently being checked over by the manufacturer

Move cards:

I've had some requests to talk more about the game mechanics, so today I'm going to talk about Move cards:

During the course of the game, players pick 3 move cards, which they then reveal in sequence.  Each card interacts with its opponents move card to create an outcome, and those outcomes can be modified by the effects of a players Hero or Sword.  Damage is done to Hero cards, effects are resolved, and then the next round begins until somebody has no Heroes left.

Predict your opponent's strategy, bluff your way to victory and gain the upper hand by executing sick combos!

You have 12 move cards in total - 6 Basic Moves (3*2) and 6 unique Special Moves:

Basic moves have a silver band across the centre, indicating that you have two of them at your disposal.

Attack! - Does damage to the opponent equal to the value shown on your Sword card; unless they Block! it

Block! - Stops an incoming Attack!

Buff! - Leaves you vulnerable to an Attack! but adds a Buff token to your Hero, which you can use later to do extra damage

Special Moves have a golden band, indicating that you have one in your arsenal and can only play one of these per bout.

Parry! - Blocks the opponents Attack! and then acts as an Attack! if that block was successful

Power Gambit! - Adds 3 Buff tokens to your Hero, but if you are attacked you get nothing AND you take double damage!! A high-risk play!!

End Them Rightly! - Does exactly 1 damage and only works on an opponent with exactly 1 health remaining. A final, dramatic blow mostly for gloating rights! It can slip past a Block! though...

Cleave! - Cleave negates an opponent's Block! and then applies any Buff tokens you have as bonus damage. If they weren't blocking, they take Sword damage too! A powerful blow to shatter defences.

Remedy! - Heals damage or removes status tokens but leaves you wide open for an offensive!

Swap! - Swaps out your current Hero or Sword for one in your Waiting Zone. Turn the tide by bringing out a fresh fighter! They'll be vulnerable to an attack, though...

The Stabastian card has the special ability to let you play two Special Moves in the same bout! There are other cards that modify these moves to have lower requirements or do more damage. You might be able to come up with some strange new strategies we haven't thought of...

 - We may have shown off a Disarm move card in the past - we decided it wasn't working quite how we wanted, so it's going back in the forge for a future expansion maybe

If you are just tuning in, preorders for the game and for dice packs are still up on BackerKit.

In other news...
Pest Sprout is returning to Makeship in 3 days for the Time Warp 2.0 event! If you missed out the first time, this might be your last chance to get one(?) Some of our guest artists have returning plushies too!
 

Thank you again for your kindness, patience and eagerness to jump in!

Matthew
Lord of the Sword Fjord

Thane
Baron of Blades