Bombshell Miniatures

There is still a bit of work to do completing the Crew Lists for the Lancers, Mekkus, and Neiran Empire sections of the Counterblast 2.0 rulebook. Frank has done a great job of setting up the lists in a comprehensive way using Google Sheets. Vicky and I are wrapping up the final details on those lists as Frank is working on completing the campaign section.

Crew list tables

Weapons lists

Gear lists

Files for the book layout

I have broken down all of the sub-sections of the book and have started the final process of adding art and graphics to the necessary pages. I will be photographing models and scenic vignettes this week to drop into the layouts.

In Design layout of the Vehicles section in the rules

Excerpt from the setting section

Excerpt from the setting section

There is a new 16-page section detailing all of the setting and background titled Earth and the Outer Reaches written by Vicky. She has also written 4 to 6 page sections of new material detailing each one of the faction that will be included in the crew list sections. Those layouts are almost complete and are waiting on the finalized crew lists.

We are getting very close to publication, and the big push is to have the printed materials  in to ship out all of the pre-orders before ReaperCon over Labor Day weekend.

–Patrick

Lots of progress on the Counterblast 2.0 book layout was made this week! The introduction and rules sections have been blocked out and formatted with all of the paragraph and object styles.

I built the table of contents so that it automatically updates as pages are modified.

Frank is still working on filling out the remaining crew list items so we’ll be formatting the stat blocks and cards soon. Blank space will be filled with diagrams and photos of models.

The Missions section has been formatted to make it easy to print the pages from the PDF so players can cut them out for easier reference.

Later this week I will be tackling the crew list sections which will be full of tables and nested layouts so it will be pretty labor intensive. More pics as it comes along!

-Patrick

Many of you are understandably chomping at the bit to get your new Counterblast stuff, and it has been very distressing to us at the huge delay in getting the game out. Many of you know our track record for fulfilling our seven Kickstarter projects in a timely and efficient manner. What we weren’t expecting this time around was to be able to move the production facilities to its new home at the time we launched the pre-order “Bookstarter” campaign last May.

Since purchasing the new property in September, there was a huge delay from the contractor in getting the building constructed in the first place. We weren’t able to start work on the interior until late November. While we were building out the interior in December and January, Vicky an I both became deathly ill thanks to the particularly resilient strain of influenza this season. That, coupled with torrential rain for the majority of February, has made any more progress on completing the interior of the shop impossible. This has been especially difficult to do since we haven’t been able to install our gravel driveway at the shop yet and access to the building has been ankle-deep mud.

This is the view looking south from the shop. Here the water has finally receded and allowed us to get inside, rather than sinking into the mud around the building.

We have had about 3 dry days last month where we were able to continue to move boxes from the garage at the old house to the new shop.  So, we set up a temporary station for Vicky to continue to take web store orders once I got the satellite internet system installed and working.

The contents of Bombshell Miniatures, including all of the Counterblast materials.

Satellite internet completely sucks when there is severe cloud cover and rainy conditions. Unfortunately we are at a remote location outside the city limits and there is no broadband or fiber service where we are, so we’re stuck with satellite for the foreseeable future.

Vicky’s temporary shipping/receiving area.

As for my working area and sculpting studio, there was supposed to be walls and an HVAC system installed by now. Currently I am working from a make-shift folding table in our master bedroom of the house until we can manage to finish building the interior of the shop. This task will be even harder now since we will have to constantly move and build around the contents of the shop.

My proposed corner of the building where the sculpting studio is to be set up.

This area is where I will also be setting up the photo pad and my computer equipment, which is still packed up at the old house and has yet to be moved to the new location. All of this will be necessary to shoot pics for the Counterblast rulebook as well as the scenic pictures and do all of the page and card layouts for the game.

So, as much as it has been stressful for you to wait as long on the Counterblast release as it has been, it’s multiplied even moreso for us here at the Bombshell Factory. Counterblast 2.0 is foremost on my mind right now and is a huge priority to get it completed and out to all of the waiting fans. It is huge disappointment that all of these delays have forced us to cancel our presence at AdeptiCon this year. We will miss seeing all of our fans and industry friends that mean so much to us.

But – hang in there. The sun is out today and March looks like it will be drying up enough for us to continue working on everything. I will do my best to post more frequent updates as progress continues both on the the Bombshell Factory, and the new Counterblast 2.0.

— Patrick “The Sculptdude”

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