Fallen Frontiers from Scale75 is coming back to Kickstarter this week on Friday November 14th 2014 at 19:00 GMT and they're bringing some of the coolest looking miniatures together for what should be an ace campaign...

Update: We've got an awesome exclusive look at one of the new miniatures for the Fallen Frontiers Kickstarter that is happening this weekend. See what you think of the background and model for Sphynx!

Here is a little bit more about him...

"Jeff McKinley was a Sayx soldier assigned to the Tharken campaign. When the alarm went off, the second night after landing on the planet, he barely had time to run to the armory and rush to defend the perimeter of his assigned sector.  Just seconds after leaving the facility a sudden shock left him unconscious on the floor. When he regained consciousness he discovered a devastating scene.

He was surrounded by a pile of corpses of his fellow soldiers while nightmarish creatures were searching for survivors. “Don’t move”, he thought to himself, “They will think you are dead and leave, just don’t move a muscle”. “I am a stone, I am a sphinx made of stone and I won’t even move by an inch”. He repeated these words to himself constantly. He was still repeating those words when a mechanical claw caught him along with several of his dead comrades, and lifted them into the air towards the center of the necroprocessor.

“I am a sphinx... I am a sphynx... I am sphynx... I am sphynx, and I am ready to execute the annihilation protocol...”

I think it would be remiss to not talk about some of the different factions in the game so without further ado lets get stuck in with the first of them, the Harvesters.

"The Harvesters are still a mystery. They attacked Earth without warning and destroyed all communication with Earth colonies. We do not understand their behavior, it appeared to us they were collecting living things and assimilating them into their ranks. However we were wrong. When they attacked the Earth their goal was not to harvest humans but to simply destroy key targets. It is clear that there is a plan behind their actions, but we are far from knowing who or what it is."

...sounds like my kind of faction! I love the aesthetic of this force with this combination of the synthetic and the organic. The fellow on the far right in the segmented armour is quite impressive.

"This civilization of aliens designed to look like super-humans is divided into two factions: The "Operators" who serve unidentified masters and The "Ares Condominium" who have been released from the control the masters held over them. The Ares Condominium are creatures with a strong sense of individuality probably generated by their former life as slaves. They have fought hard for their independence, survived a civil war to get where they are, and nothing in the universe will take their freedom."

Everybody loves some superhuman looking warriors of the far future and what's nice to see is that they've not only got male soldiers but female ones as well in the form of Bitsie above.

"The Riff are an ancient race, much older than humans. They expanded in a nearby galaxy and quickly learned the horrors of excessive ambition. They saw their own civilization rise, evolve and fall."

A very cool alien race that play on the interesting 'uncanny' look that people love in Sci-Fi. It's neat to see humanoid looking races that have so much similar to us but with a few tweaks and changes to make them unique. Fink is awesome but of course you can't beat the brutal looking Sihlas!

"In the new order of the galaxy, you are most probably a human who lives on the hive ships of Sayx Enterprises, where there is limited space and there are no families, with reproduction following the interests of the company. After applying Ares genetics for the betterment of the race people are selected by their potential skills from birth, and if you are lucky you may serve in the Sayx army where death is a reward all its own."

I could see this almost imperialistic looking faction being quite the draw for a lot of people getting into the game. Unlike Ares they've got more recognisable looking kit which is cool and a near-future feel to them even in the depths of this High Sci-Fi realm.

The game is going to use 35mm scale miniatures, you can see a reference of the sizes above. This, according to Scale 75, will allow them to retain realistic proportions on their miniatures without sacrificing detail and ease of painting. Nothing worse than not being able to make something look like the right part of a body! You'll have no cartoonish looking heads and hands either!

Material wise the miniatures are going to be made out of Polyurethane Resin allowing them to maintain detail and also keep production costs low which is obviously something that benefits wargamers as well as the production of the game as a whole. It certainly looks like it's going to be spot on. There is also a video linked at the top of this piece on the resin casting used for the game.

In terms of rules, which of course is something we're all interested in, there will be more information on that later on tonight. Keep an eye on the website and we'll let you know when it's up!

The Rules

The latest update to the news on Fallen Frontiers comes in the shape of a bit of a rules sneak peek...

"During our past campaign we had posted up our work in progress rules already, however they were not translated properly which caused a lot of confusion. Over the past months we have been working hard on tweaking the rules and getting them properly translated, and we have been playtesting with people from all over the world to ensure a well balanced, fun and competitively sound game.

In a nutshell the game focuses on small forces fighting over precious resources whilst being lead by heroes that influence how units behave. The game is played with 10-20 miniatures per side at its base, but can easily be expanded to have larger games with 40-50 miniatures per side.

At its core there are three pillars: heroes & units, resource collection and a deck of cards. Heroes are powerful characters that boost the performance of the units they are leading, and that bring powerful weaponry or army-wide special rules. Resources are collected actively by capturing areas of the table to harvest Krithium, and passively by backing your army with a good leadership to receive Command points. These resources can then be spent to do various things, from boosting your dice rolls to playing powerful cards that can change the outcome of battle.

The game is still in development and some details may change, but these core elements will always remain. We will make sure to provide you with an early look at the rules as soon as possible!"

I'm personally a big fan of skirmish level games like this which hone in on that magic model count of around ten to twenty models. It's what draws me to skirmish games like Malifaux, Infinity, and to a lesser extent even new games like Warzone: Resurrection. It also means you have less to paint and those you do paint are in more detail!

Here's hoping we get some playtest rules to look at soon!

Do you think you'll be backing Fallen Frontiers?