We love keeping an eye out for new games that grab our interests and whilst this is more of a historical wargame rather than the Sci-Fi/Fantasy titles we usually play, we have been grabbed by the beautiful miniatures and what it promises to bring to our table.
With the kickstarter having just gone live. You can support the game here.
Whilst he's permanently busy we were lucky enough to grab some time with Chapter Master Valrak to get an indepth interview about the game and inspiration behind it:
Totally Pawsome: Martyrdom has been a passion project for you for a few years now. With such a rich history for the Crusades you're starting with the first one. How do you see the future progressing and are you looking at visiting each one so that you can add more and more troops to the armies or are you going to be staying within the first crusade for the game?
Chapter Master Valrak: For me the First Crusade was the obvious place to begin. It's a period I feel has been badly under-represented across games, film and TV, and it's where the whole story starts. At launch we're focused on the Crusaders and the Seljuk Turks, the two armies that clashed at Dorylaeum, which our starter set is built around. If the Kickstarter goes well, the Fatimids and the Byzantines are top of the list next, alongside expanding the Crusaders so players can field the People's Crusade. Longer term, the plan is to keep moving forward through the crusades, expanding as we go. Each turning point in that history gives us the chance to bring in new forces, and those forces open the door to conflicts beyond the Holy Land. Bringing the Mongols into the story, for example, would let us go on to explore the many other cultures and peoples they came into ‘contact’ with. It's a long road, and the aim is that every step adds to the armies players already own rather than replacing them.
TP: Finding information on the nobles and other leaders is a little easier than that of the standard soldier, how have you discovered what was available and then modified your miniatures so that they fit in to the look to carry it across each force? (For example in your video you said that chainmail was a problem for plastic so you went for the surcoats.)
CMV: We've been lucky to work with Dr Toby Capwell and Joseph Wragg as our historical consultants, and their input has shaped a lot of how we approached this. With this period you have to do a fair amount of reading between the lines. Very little artwork survives, and what was produced reasonably soon after often shows completely the wrong arms and armour. So a lot of our work came down to plausibility: what equipment was actually possible given the technology and metallurgy of the time? Cost was a big factor too. Armour was expensive, and the ordinary soldier would often have had older gear handed down from his father or picked up second-hand. We've represented that on the models. The higher a figure's status, the better the quality and fit of their armour, and the more important the character, the more up to date their gear. Most of our levy spearmen have no mail at all for example, and the few who do wear it have ill-fitting and baggy coifs around the neck. Then if you were to move all the way up to Bohemond he has much more mail, closely tailored to his body. We wanted the armour to try and tell a story about each model and feel this approach has managed that well! For the Seljuks, their nomadic background helped us a lot. Their numbers were drawn from many different cultures, so we could look across those neighbouring peoples for source material rather than limiting ourselves to one group of Seljuks in one place at one moment. That gave us a much wider and believable picture of how they would have looked. With regards to my video you mentioned, the texture of mail can soften in plastic, and lose significant detail along a torso’s sides to the point of almost smoothing out completely, we ended up making the decision to over represent surcoats for this time period to try and get around this while keeping the quality of the models as high as possible, but this is not the end of our journey with mail of course and it’s something we will look to improve on and develop alongside our partners at Archon Studios. As we continue to try and push the envelope with how good chainmail can look on a miniature, we aim for future releases to carry us towards models clad entirely in mail whilst retaining exquisite detail for every ring.
CMV: The context of my thought process matters quite a bit here. I'm not careless about the outcome of this project, I just didn't want fear of failure to stop us making the game we actually want to play. That attitude has helped us aim high and be ambitious, we’re trying to make the best system and models we can and don’t want reservation to get in the way! It also doesn't mean we'd walk away if things don't go perfectly. We've deliberately aimed high with our Kickstarter goals so we have a clear roadmap for if the campaign does exceptionally well. We've watched other crowdfunded projects get caught out by their own success, so we already have plans for where extra funding would go, mainly into more plastic. If some stretch goals aren't met, we've already mapped out how we'll keep moving forward. Either way, we've planned for it.
CMV: The team, first and foremost. Faca, Santi, Joseph, Ollie, and Patrick. We’ve spent near enough all day, everyday, for over the last year working towards this shared goal. It’s been a massive task to get completed in what is ultimately a short amount of time, and anytime my energy dips I just need to have a look at the work going on to get fired back up again! Then there's Graham McNeill who was an absolute gentleman, we were fortunate enough to sit down with him and explain our goals and hopes with the project and he was kind enough not only to share some of his experience and advise, but even offered to get involved himself in writing up our narrative introduction to the setting. Warlord Games deserve a big mention too. John Stallard, Jim Butler and Pete Gosling have an open door attitude in their office, and are happy to show visitors their processes, the studio and the factory. Seeing all of this first hand is what convinced us this was genuinely possible. They've been really supportive, and the advice they've given us has been invaluable. And of course the community. The support from my own channel's audience and the wider wargaming world has been incredible, and every message from someone saying they've been waiting for a game just like this keeps us going.
TP: With being a keen wargamer across multiple systems, what has been your biggest bugbear with miniatures and how have the miniatures for your game been adapted to go against this?
CMV: The big sci-fi and fantasy systems we all know have fantastic models, with admittedly huge companies behind them. But the dynamic poses, loads of options and real character in every model is something I became very accustomed to. But then in the historical periods I was interested in, I kept finding that ranges didn't offer those in quite the flavour I liked. They either weren't available in multipart plastic, didn't have much variety within a unit, or didn't have the heroic presence I'd grown accustomed to. So we set out to make the models we wanted: heroic 28mm figures with the character and dynamism of the big sci-fi and fantasy ranges, but grounded in proper historical, in plastic, and with enough variety that a unit looks like a crowd of individuals. Being a creative and fairly daring bunch, we thought we’d just have a go ourselves. Along the way we found that a lot of other people were looking for exactly the same thing, and that's what turned a small project, making a few models for some games between mates, into the Martyrdom you see today!
TP: The Crusades are a series of stories that bring some real characters to life and you've said that you want to bring the history to the gamer and inspire a passion for discovery that will go beyond the game board. Who is your favourite historical character that you've discovered to date and Why?
CMV: For me personally, and the team will call me a simp for this, but it has to be Bohemond. He's basically a Space Marine. He was a giant of a man by the standards of the day, a Norman warlord who had already spent years fighting the Byzantines before he ever took the cross, and he was at the heart of the First Crusade's biggest moments, from Dorylaeum to the siege of Antioch. Ambitious, ruthless, brilliant on the battlefield and absolutely convinced of his own destiny. If you wrote him as a fictional character, people would say you'd overdone it.
TP: Your Cavalry is heavily modifiable with the various options to change weapons and upper bodies to each, how does this transfer to the other troops or is it purely that is for the mobile units?
CMV: It carries across the whole range. When you're fielding models in ranks, you need variation in the sculpts, otherwise it looks like the same three or four guys on repeat. Plastic tooling is expensive, though, so we've set things up to get as much customisation as possible out of each kit while trying to keep the price to the customer as low as we can. The aim is for units that look like a natural body of men rather than a row of clones. We're still fine-tuning the tooling, so I can't go into the specifics of how every model goes together just yet. But as an example, separate hands mean you can angle spears slightly differently to break up any uniformity, and on the cavalry you can put any rider on any horse pose, all these little things really add up when you’re building a block of 20 men!
TP: You've always promised that the rules for the game are going to be free online what made you decide that?
CMV: Rules shouldn't be a barrier to trying a game. If someone is curious about Martyrdom, I want them to be able to read it, play a few games and decide for themselves whether it's for them. There are also lots of great rule systems out there already. If people like our miniatures but want to use them in another game, we're all for that. The same goes the other way. We've made Martyrdom in the style we enjoy playing, and if someone wants to try it with models they already own from another range, we'd love for them to. Free rules let everyone get involved in whatever way suits them.
TP: With the basic troops all ready to roll and you working on additional pieces such as the camp followers, how are they going to play a role in the game?
CMV: "Camp followers" is very much a working name for that unit, but the idea comes straight from the Battle of Dorylaeum, which our starter set is based around. The chronicler Fulcher of Chartres describes how the women of the camp carried water up to the fighting men during the Crusaders' last stand, and helped pull the wounded back from the line. We wanted that part of history in the game, and that's where our unit "attachments" come in. Our rules include a fatigue system, and camp followers attached to a unit can help it keep fighting. Just as you might add a banner bearer to the formations on your flanks to help them hold the line, or perhaps have a relic bearing Priest inspire those around him.
CMV: It's points based, so you build the army you want. You choose your force and a commander, then build it from units ranked as Levy, Battleline or Elite, with special rules and upgrades that adjust their cost. We've also developed a list builder to make putting an army together quick and easy. The idea is to give players the tools to play however they want. If you want to recreate a particular historical battle, you can. If you and your friends want to see what happens when a band of Norman knights runs into a horde of zealots in the middle of nowhere, go for it. And once the Kickstarter is a success, there'll be plenty more units and armies to follow allowing players to push those ideas and settings even further. Martyrdom launches on Kickstarter at the end of the month, so head over to our Kickstarter page and hit "Notify me on launch" so you don't miss it. You can also find everything about the game, and sign up to our newsletter, at martyrdom.co.uk.
More news as we get it,
ThunderMouser
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