Infinity Defiance

Spanish miniature maestros Corvus Belli have launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund develoment of a dungeon-crawling boardgame set in their Infinity science fiction setting, Infinity Defiance.

Now Infinity is a setting & system that I've wanted to talk about on this site for a whille, as the team at Corvus Belli have never been shy about talking about how anime & manga has had an influence on the development of the Infinity universe (at least in its aesthetics), with tributes liberally dotted throughout the (gorgeous) miniatures range to various characters and series, and the core game itself is one of the more interesting skirmish games out there with a deep ruleset that allows for incredibly cinematic gameplay. But Infinity Defiance represents something a bit different to the norm for boardgame Kickstarters:

• Metal miniatures - CB have in part made their name off of stunning metal miniatures and have kept to that material over resin or metal as they believe it is the best medium for their sculpts ot be realised in. They dipped into plastic for the Aristeia! game, but have made the choce to stick with metal for this campaign to ensure maximum fidelity to the sculpts, and to allow seamless crossover between Defiance and the existing Infinity range. And if yo uarenew to metal fear not! The team have worked to make the Defiance minis some of the easiest to build.
• In house development - Corvus Belli are based out of Vigo Spain, and this includes their entire manufacturing operation & foundry. What this translates to is that once the campaign is over CB are not beholden to overseas factories and their operational priorites. In fact they have devoted a signifigant portion of their in-housetalent to working on Defiance already, so thetime between campiagn end and fulfillment should be far, far less than most.
• Scale - Corvus Belli are, for all their success with Infinity - fundamentally a small company compared to the likes of Games Workshop. Therefore to get a project of the scope of Defiance to people crowdfunding was really the only way to bring it to market without compromising the final product in some way. This is very much the sort of product Kickstarter and it's ilk were intendedto be used for.

On the flipside, Corvus Belli currenlty do not have plans to bring Defiance to regualr retail (although they are discussing options with interested retailers) so at this point it is very much a Kickstarter Exclusive product, which I know can rub some folks up the wrong way. Additionally the pledging options of $100 for the Core game, $160 for the Collectors edition and then $180 for the Deluxe bundle, with more available in add-ons, may seem a tad eye-watering, but so far in the campaign even the core box is looking a very attractive prospect, including a spread of Heroes drawn across the factions of the Human Sphere and the Combined Army/Shasvastii elements make most of a 300 point force. Not a bad start, and at which point the whole board game bit becomes almost a bonus....

Anyhow, if this has tickled your fancy at all then follow the link here to visit the project page on Kickstarter, the On Tabletop/ Beasts of War team are running a week of features dedicated  to Infinity Defiance, joined by CB's irrepresible Carlos aka "Bostria" , several of which are linked to here, here, here & here, and there are supporting videos and podcasts out there from Guerrilla Miniature Games and Mayacast respectively giving their respective hosts opinions on the game, how it plays and the quality of the prototypes they had to try out.