Friday April 08, 2016

At the GAMA Trade Show, Upper Deck‘s Jason Brenner discussed how the company is adding original intellectual property to its portfolio of games (see “Upper Deck Teases 'Dungeon Draft,' 'Dingo Ate the Baby'”), and shared information on an upcoming miniatures game Deus Machina.

The game is designed by Carmen Bellaire. “He’s done a lot of work on old style RPG games,” Brenner shared. “He’s done some work for Palladium. He’s done a lot of sourcebook writing, he’s a really talented guy. He’s designed a pretty good system here as well.”

What differentiates Deus Machina from other games is the modular miniatures themselves. “What we’re trying to do is bring an element of visual changes to the minis as they play, meaning if someone’s playing, they roll a 20, they hit a crit, you knock an arm off of the mech, and that arm’s going to come off of the mech,” Benner explained. “It’s a very kinetic feel. As the battle goes on a lot of things are going to change on the miniatures themselves.”

The 3” miniatures will be customizable, with additional parts and cards for individual modification. Upper Deck plans to sell blind-package boosters to allow players to accumulate additional parts for their mechs. The mechs will be fully painted and playable out of the box, and the base set will include a limited amount of terrain to decorate the battle fields.



“This is going to be the biggest product we’ve put out. This is coming out hopefully at Gen Con ’17,” Brenner said. “We’ve got a ways to go, but as you know, miniatures is not a quick endeavor. Because we’re trying to make this very modular, we have to do this right.”

There are possible plans to introduce the game via a Kickstarter campaign. “Not guaranteed, but I want to do it,” Brenner said.