SLA Industries: Cannibal Sector 1

An update from Nightfall Games
over 6 years ago – Mon, Apr 09, 2018 at 04:32:12 PM

As some of you don't use Facebook, we are reposting Nightfall Games's update on the creative work going on to bring you SLA Industries: Cannibal Sector 1, just to keep you up-to-date and show how their progress is going. Here, at Daruma Productions, this is one of the pieces of the Kickstarter that we will be delivering, and it's great to see just how much progress (no pun intended) has been made.

Originally posted on SLA Industries Diary.

This diagram is Dave's art progress chart. Orange squares are all pieces of art that have been produced for the SLA Industries: Cannibal Sector 1 kickstarter, including card art and, mostly, interior art for the big book. The remaining stuff to do is as follows:

• Orange: Completed
• Grey: Environments 
• Blue: Combat scenes 
• Red: Chapter headers 
• White: Cover

The cover and chapter headers are referred internally at Nightfall as "The Nine Bastards" and they won't be started until the writing is finished. The writing? I'd say we're almost complete on rough text and well-past the halfway mark of finished text. It's looking good.

The art was, of course, the biggest piece of this project for Nightfall Games, and has all been done in-house by Dave Allsop, working almost every day since before the project was announced.

Yes, this is taking a lot longer than anticipated because, as a miniatures game, everything needs to be designed. Everything. No longer could we get away without having even a full body picture of a Shaktar in the big book, because you can't make miniatures without full pictures. Or, as Dave put it amusingly one day, "everything has to have an ass. I've been designing asses."

So, with every gun needing designing, every armour type needing putting together, every creature miniature ready, and a lot of aforementioned asses, this has been a massive project. Adding to the workload was the fact that every picture had to be full-colour, which takes a lot longer than our usual monochrome art as you need colour so you can see how to paint the miniatures. Still, we're on it and it'll get finished, but don't expect it this week.

As this took longer than anticipated, this impacted our other careers, with rent/mortgages still needing to be paid, but luckily, we're committed enough to this project here at Nightfall Towers[1] that we're still filling every spare hour doing this.

While the Kickstarter is obviously our main focus, we can hopefully release something RPG-related to keep fans of the RPG happy before the year is out. If nothing else, take solace in the fact that the vast amount of art serves as a style-guide for future SLA Industries books and that there will be a lot of RPG stuff in this massive new miniatures rulebook, even if the A5 "no fluff, just rules" book is miniatures-only.

[1] If you imagine a bat-filled tower, with cackling witches and lightning strikes, you'd be … well, let's be honest, it's nothing like that - more like a Glasgow flat and Scottish village bungalow, but they're not as romantic-sounding.

Puddle Hermit - page sample
almost 7 years ago – Sat, Feb 17, 2018 at 06:02:41 PM

Hi, it's Jared again, with another update on the design work that's going into SLA Industries: Cannibal Sector 1. 

This is a bit different, though. After hammering out the design for the A5 booklet (coming soon, nearly ready), we realised that the design we used for legibility at the reduced size of the A5 rules would transfer to the full-sized core rulebook for Cannibal Sector 1. So, we gave it a go.  

We've included a two-page PDF so you can see what it'll look like if you print it out. The cover is just for fun, of course, but there you go. One critter with revised RPG rules (The SLA logo instead of the CS1 logo shows that those are RPG stats, not skirmish stats) and one of the hundreds of illustrations that will be in the finalised book.  

Grab the PDF here: https://cdn.23x.me/nightfall/Puddle%20Hermit.pdf

A5 Rulebook - a little look..
almost 7 years ago – Sun, Feb 04, 2018 at 02:18:23 PM

 Hi, Jared here to show you a work-in-progress. As part of the SLA Industries: Cannibal Sector 1 kickstarter, we offered an A5 book with just the rules in it as a reference. As this amuse bouche of a book nears completion, I thought I’d share some early images of the interior. As this is a smaller book than the huge monster that Dave and I are still writing, there are a few design decisions that are dictated by the size.

 In that respect, you can expect the final SLA Industries: Cannibal Sector 1 rulebook to be vastly different, even if you’ll recognise some of the flavour in this smaller book. Originally, the A5 book was specced out to be black and white with no art, just to get the rules into the hands of the players, but as I started laying it out, I couldn’t get away from the fact we had all this beautiful Dave Allsop art just lying around, over two hundred and fifty pieces, and, apart from making books look nicer, art makes books so much easier to navigate. You’ll remember the rules for shooting things in the face are near the picture of the FEN AR, or that the section on Patrols has a Shiver in it.

So, I’m sorry we’re not going to deliver a boring quick reference guide, but instead, we’ll let you enjoy some lovely art with your crunch. And maybe a bit of fluff …

Bridgehead Shiver
almost 7 years ago – Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 05:23:11 PM

 "This is Report From The Bridgeheads and I'm Eloise Garcia for Channel Yeah."

Commander Cradle's tactic to reclaim the cannibal sector was just what was needed. 

He designed a system of portable structures that would become known as Bridgeheads. Each formation is made of lightweight plates of ceramic composite laminate that interlock to make a basic construction of walls and foundations that can be layered over each other to make a defendable fort in very little time.  

Locations for Bridgeheads are scouted out in advance by Shiver Elites who look for the old power supplies, still active from before the fall of Salvation Tower, to power up the construction supplies they bring with them. Getting power is the essential first step of creating a Bridgehead, and securing the area around the best place for the new camp is often done under fire as even the cannibals and carrien understand the danger of letting a Bridgehead get installed. Once the first bricks are powered up, fanning out to become walls, the tide turns in favour of SLA Industries.  

Once a Bridgehead is built from the packs carried by the Shivers, it first becomes a basecamp from which squads of Shivers can mount excursions, knowing they have a base to come back to, and then expands over time. They start off the size of a small camp, with enough room to house a squad or two in minimal comfort, but slowly grow, module by module, expansion by expansion, storage shed by storage shed, into small towns, with gates, ramparts and towers to keep the area around them clear.  

With this system, Cradle ensured ground taken would be held and that supplies could be taken from Mort right out to the furthest Bridgehead, shipping food and ammunition from Bridgehead to Bridgehead. When SLA Industries started using Shivers in the Bellwood Campaign, cladding them in grey and giving them lethal ammo, they took on the name of these edifices, one of the most important tactical things to happen in the World of Progress in almost fifty years, for themselves, becoming Bridgehead Shivers. SLA Industries finally had a foothold in the Cannibal Sectors.

Lets try that again..
almost 7 years ago – Sat, Jan 06, 2018 at 03:41:51 PM

Many apologies, the image on the last Update was a little small - try this instead!

http://darumaproductions.com/ksupdate/Daruma_KS_Update_106.pdf

Regards!