Black Rose Wars

Sator Box first meet!
about 4 years ago – Sat, Jan 25, 2020 at 12:49:17 AM

Hello, Magisters!

Here we are at the first update of 2020, happy new year to all of you!!

Sorry if it took some time, but we were waiting for a very important package from the factory to show you the images that you can admire by continuing to read!

 As you can see, we received the final sample of the Sator Box plastic trays full of their miniatures!

Guys what a wonder! This box will be truly giant! And also quite heavy considering that only with the miniatures we are already at 1.9 kg without considering all the paper material and the punchboards!
I believe you will have to make a lot of space in your Kallax!

 As you can see from the images, we have taken a significant step forward in the creation of plastic trays, and now the many miniatures are safe in their niches. All your tokens will also find their accommodation without risk.

On the miniature front, if you follow the updates, you know that we have reached the state of the art of PVC miniatures, and the models arrived yesterday confirm a quality of detail that will leave you speechless! Do not worry; we will continue to show them to you in the next updates, as we illustrate all the new schools and exclusive content!

Ok, now that we have put the monkey on your shoulders, your question will be: What is the situation with the production of wave 2!?!?!?

More than fair question and then let's move on to...

Wave 2 Production Report

We are happy to inform you that the production of all the miniatures (including Hidden Thorn's reprint) has been completed. So we have left behind the longest and most delicate part of the production process.
For the paper side, we are finishing the layout of some of the translations, but we should complete all the graphic work in the established times, and even the Chinese New year should not affect the timing that we had estimated for the end of the production.

These are all great news, and we are thrilled that soon you can get your hands on all the wonders of Wave 2.

But as you know, we want to be as transparent as possible with all of you, and I want to inform you that we have decided to give more time to the factory to carry out more accurate quality checks.

For Wave 1, we have received a large number of requests for replacements, higher than the percentages that usually are estimated for a project like BRW, and we are working hard to satisfy all your requests.

With the arrival of Wave 2, we absolutely want to prevent the same situation, also because we are talking about a wave that will contain triple the material of the first.
For this reason, it is imperative for us that the factory carry out much more accurate quality control, such as they carried out for Dungeonology, but to do this, it will take a little more time.
This will be a relatively short delay compared to the ETA that we communicated to you a few months ago (end Q1 2020), which will, therefore, move to June 2020.

We are sorry to ask you to wait any longer, but we are sure that you will understand our choice, we will ensure that this wait is adequately repaid!

Obviously, we will continue to keep you updated on the progress of the work, and soon we will publish the rulebooks in all 5 languages ​​to allow you to start studying the many new rules of the Sator Box and Inferno!

Replacements and Canadian issue

As I mentioned above, we are completing the shipments of replacements, and we plan to end next week. We are contacting all the backers whose requests for replacements have some problems to inform them about the status of their shipments.

We also have good news for the approximately 20 Canadian backers who are waiting for their pledge! The pallet with their pledge from Europe passed the Canadian customs two days ago so, fulfillment procedures will begin from the Canadian hub next week. Another little patience and you too can challenge yourself inside the Lodge.
The other shipments are 98% complete; we are following shipments still suspended on a case by case basis to resolve the problems that have occurred.

As always, for any problem I invite you to write to me at this link:

https://ludusmagnusstudio.com/contact-us/

That's all for this update! We will meet again soon to resume the analysis of the contents of the Sator Box, but I greet you with a little spoiler... who said asymmetric Mages?

See you soon!

Fireball!!!!

It's not Christmas without ... cards!
over 4 years ago – Fri, Dec 20, 2019 at 11:54:36 PM

Hello, Magisters!

Welcome to BRW's Christmas Update! In addition to saying goodbye before the holiday break and giving you news about replacements and expeditions, we will talk about one of the new Wave 2 schools.

And given that in Italy during the Christmas holidays we play a lot with cards, the perfect school for this update could only be Cartomancy!

But first, the serious things!

Shipment and Replacements

 At the moment, Wave 1 is delivered to almost all backers.
 We know that there are cases where the game has not yet been received due to shipping problems, but we are dealing with solving these individual problems where they occurred.
The still unusual situations are for the RoW destinations and some Canadian Backers (about ten).
Some areas of RoW such as Latin America have yet to receive the game, mainly due to the long journey and more lengthy customs procedures for these countries, but we count that they will receive packages by January 2020.

For the group of Canadian backers who have been left with no game. Due to a logistic error in the Canadian hub, not enough copies of the game to send it to everyone.
We are providing to ship the missing goods from the European hub. Still, it is not a fast operation. We are counting on starting the products from Germany in the next few days, so you will probably receive everything towards the end of January 2020.

For the Replacements, we know we are very late, and we apologize for this, but these days we have prepared and sent many packages, and we hope to finish all the replacements by January 2020.

As always I invite you to contact me for any problem, and I assure you that I will reply within 48 hours!

Contact Luca

The cards know your destiny

The school of Cartomancy will offer many new options to all the Magisters who want to try their hand at polyhedral cards suitable for any occasion. The names of all the Spells of this school are inspired by the Major Arcana of the classic tarot and will provide you with new mechanics and endless possibilities.

 The World, The Lovers, and The Tower are the 3 most special cards of this school since one of the sides, instead of giving you a Spell, will provide you with in effect, a Quest to solve. You will have to place the card as usual on your sheet, and instead of revealing it, you will have to declare that it is a Quest and leave it covered. The moment you solve it, you can reveal it and collect the reward! 

For example, The Tower (in addition to summoning the Minotower, if played from the other side) can be resolved by inflicting 4 Damages to a Mage during the Action phase, and it will reward you with 2 Power Points and the possibility of taking back this card in your hand.
 These cards will allow you to earn a lot of PPs even if obviously they cannot be added to the final count to determine who has solved more Quests.

This school also offers 2 Traps and 1 Protection to safeguard the health of your Magister.
With The Death, you can take care of damage to a newly defeated wizard, to gain 1 PP and draw a card from your library, or you can save a Mage by taking care of the last Damage left by discarding a card from your hand and gaining 2 PPs.
The Hierophant, despite being a Protection, will instead aim to make you draw new cards based on the damage suffered.
Although not a particularly offensive school, Cartomancy offers 2 offensive spells of all respect: The Strength can inflict 5 Damages if you discard 3 cards from the hand, or as much damage as your contingencies in hand (max 4). The Fool will inflict Damage based on discarded or revealed cards.

Finally, among the Contingencies, we find perhaps the most useful cards of the whole set: The Hanged Man will make you reactivate any Room already activated. The Emperor will give you immediate control of any Evocation in the Lodge and, finally, my favorite, The Chariot that will have you draw 3 cards from your Grimoire and earn 1 PP!
We conclude the overview with Baba Yaga and The Minotower created by the fantastic pencil of Paolo Parente!
The Minotower is the only Evocation of the school, and since it is a unique model, it can only be summoned if it is not already in the Lodge. This big guy has movement 1, but his attack can also affect adjacent rooms and inflict damage to all models in the target room.

Baba Yaga, besides being terribly sexy, can take advantage of her personal Spell: The Hermit.
With this Contingency, Baba Yaga may discard 3 cards from her hand to earn 3 PPs, or she may lose 1 PP to play a Contingency directly from the hand, which will allow her to play the Spell most suited to the situation.

Finally, Cartomancy is an excellent support school that will provide you with many useful cards for drawing and discarding cards, which will allow you always to have many cards in your hand and facilitate the purchase of the Forgotten Spells, in addition to running a lot your Grimoire.
This factor makes it very versatile and can be easily combined with any other school of Magic.
If you want to focus your strategy on solving Quests, you can combine it with Divination, and you will get a deck that will earn you many immediate PPs as well as easily winning the ultimate prize for the largest number of solved Quests.
On the other hand, this school does not offer many possibilities to place Instability or Defeat other Magisters.
What do you think? Are you ready to reads some cards to your enemies?

That's all for this update! The whole LMS team wishes each of you and your families a Merry Christmas and a happy new year, and we sincerely hope that you will have fun playing cards during the holidays ... maybe even with BRW!

 Fireball! (oh oh oh oh)

A Rose for the Black Friday
over 4 years ago – Fri, Nov 29, 2019 at 01:44:42 AM

Hello, Magisters!

While the fulfillment of Wave 1 is about to end, we give you good news, especially for the many of you who have asked us to reopen the Pledge manager to add Inferno or the Pets to your order!

Unfortunately for management reasons, we cannot re-open the PM, but the good news is that from tomorrow, our online web store will be operational again on the occasion of Black Friday!

From tomorrow and for two weeks all the BRW Backers (even those who have made a Late Pledge) will be able to buy Inferno and Pets through our shop at the same price as the KS, and all purchases will be added to your Wave 2 so that you don't have to pay new shipping costs!

We hope you do not lose this possibility, as it will be the last chance to buy Inferno at this price!

To add Pets and Inferno through our Store, you will have to follow the instructions that appear and choose the method of shipping reserved for backers highlighted in the figure below, and also choose the language!

In addition to this, the store will provide a preorder to buy the latest copies of BRW available and purchase the Sator Box In preorder at a price obviously higher than that of KS. It will be the last chance to buy BRW and the Sator box; after this, both boxes will no longer be available!
So if you have friends who have fallen in love with BRW, you can tell them about this last chance!

It will also be an excellent opportunity to grab the latest copies of our previous games like Nova Aetas, Sine Tempore, and Dungeonology!

The store will be online from Friday 29 November to 10:00 AM (CET).

You can visit the store following this link, but ATM is still closed!

shop.ludusmagnusstudio.com

Wave 1 Fulfillment

As far as the Fulfillment is concerned, only a few packages for the RoW and some Canadian Backers remain to be delivered.
As I said in the last update due to a sorting problem, the Canadian hub was left without any core boxes and could not finalize all orders.

We are sending the missing boxes to the Canadian Hub so that they can complete all the missing orders. It will take a few weeks to complete this process, so we ask you for a little more patience, and we sincerely apologize for this delay.

All backers who have not yet received their pledge can contact me by following this link, and I will personally deal with resolving the situation!

Contact Luca

Replacements

We are continuing with the shipments of the Replacements, and we hope to resolve a large number of requests by December. We know we are very late, but we are trying to do our best to recover the gap.

If you have not already done so and you need to know the status of your requests, you can contact me by following this link, and I will help you:

Contact Luca (I'm not Mr. Wolf but I can solve problems too)

For this update, it's all! Before wishing you a beautiful Black Friday, and a great thanksgiving day for our Americans friends, we greet you by previewing Inferno's plastic trays just arrived from the factory!

Fireball!

About Wave 1 Fulfillment, and other useful stuff
over 4 years ago – Sun, Nov 17, 2019 at 12:32:02 AM

Hello, Magisters!

With this update, we want to inform you that the fulfillment of Wave I is 95% complete.

According to our data, almost all backers around the world should have received their package.

Some shipments to South America and Australia are still to be delivered, which are traveling at the moment but which will be delivered within the next two weeks.

Some Canadian backers may not have received their package yet. This delay is due to a Logistic error in the American Hub that received fewer boxes than needed.

In the coming days, we will receive the complete list of these backers (with some of them we are already in contact and know the situation) and we will contact them all to inform them that we will arrange a new shipment directly from Italy as soon as possible, hopefully within a couple of weeks.

In any case, we call for all backers (of any area) who haven't yet received anything, to contact us on the following link to recover the shipment and resolve the problem:

SUPPORT CONTACT

We will keep you updated on the development of these situations and about the completion of the 100% Fulfillment.

Replacements and missing Boxes

With the stuff arrival, I remind you of our contacts for missing boxes and Replacements.

(I apologize if I copied/pasted the text following the previous update, but we know that many Backers do not read all the updates, and this information is really important. By repeating them, we increase the chances that more backers will read them.) 

- If your order is missing any items, open a ticket using our Support Page.  The missing item will be sent to you directly from the reference HUB in your area.   - If you find damaged or missing material inside a box, submit a request using this FORM. WARNING! Once the form has been filled in, your request is automatically accepted by our support service, without any further communication. The support service will contact you only if there is a problem or if we need further information from you regarding your request.  A note about the many replacement requests we are receiving for miniatures with bent parts.  This type of problem is very common in hard PVC miniatures, even if of excellent quality like those of BRW, and you could probably find it in models like the Rebecca or Medusa, but fortunately it is a very easy problem to solve even for those who are not expert modelers.

Here you will find many guides on how to do, and with a few simple steps, you will have your miniature as new, without having to wait for the replacement times, which as you know are not yet short (we are trying to improve that ^^').

Crono and Hidden Thorns replacements

The replacements requests for the Medusa (Crono) and the two Hidden Thorns Mages miniatures are proving more numerous than expected. It is clear that there has been a problem with the factory in the boxing phase of these two expansions.

At the moment we have finished the pieces at our disposal for the replacement of these miniatures, but we have ordered a reprint of the miniatures of Hidden Thorns and Crono together with those of the II wave. To optimize the process, anyone will request or have requested, a replacement for these models will receive them directly in their II wave box. We are sorry for this issue, but we are trying to solve it in the best way. Meanwhile, you are allowed to proxy these Mages in the way you prefer during your games!

The above applies only to the Miniatures indicated in the two expansions, the rest of the material (punchboard or even Crono itself) will be replaced regularly!

Missing Hidden Thorns

Now that shipments are underway, we have received reports that some orders are missing Hidden Thorns despite being purchased during the PM. Unfortunately, due to a problem that arose during shipments from China, the quantities of Hidden Thorns arriving at the hubs are lower than those established, with the result that some of you have not received Hidden Thorns.  We are not able at this time to recover the missing copies, but we will insert them in the Wave II orders. So those of you who have not received Hidden Thorns will receive it with the Wave II, without having to submit any request for replacements, the fulfillment companies will provide us with a list of backers who have yet to receive it. We apologize for this inconvenience.

(Note by Luca: After your feedbacks, the next week will make an official statement regarding our support service)

Rules Support

If you need help with the rules, you can consult our Support site or consult the BRW BGG page, where you can find the answer to all your doubts and numerous files created by us or by other players that will help you in your first steps in the Lodge!  Fireball!

ESSEN Spiel 2019!

  Also, this year, the Essen Spiel was a great adventure. For the first time, LMS participated with a bigger booth than usual to host the demo tables of Sine Tempore, Divide et Impera, Dungeonology, and of course, BRW!
  Four days were full of interviews and demonstration games for the Grand Magister Marco Montanaro, during which we gave the chance to try three magic schools of Wave 2 (Void, Chronomancy, and Bardic). Still, above all, some lucky BRW veterans challenged Lucifer in an Inferno game!

  We can state without a shadow of a doubt that BRW was one of the most anticipated games of the convention, and the feedback we had was fantastic. The showcase with all the miniatures of wave 2 impressed everyone who was approaching!

  Here is a small selection of images of these four fantastic days!

A big thank you to all those who came to us for a greeting and to Oscar, Oliver, Edward, and Nicklas for the help they gave us!

D.E.I - Divide et Impera

  We greet you remembering that these days, LMS is on KS with its new project D.E.I. - Divide et Impera, a strategic game with miniatures set in the post-apocalyptic future of the world of Nova Aetas!

Visit the Kickstarter page!

Take a look at it and even if it's not the game for you, help the backers achieve the Social Stretch Goals by joining the Facebook group and putting your like on the BGG page of the game!

That's all for today! from the next Update, when the dust of the shipments will have settled, we will continue our journey among the news of Wave 2, going to study the school of the Chronomancy!

Fireball!

Embrace the Void
over 4 years ago – Sat, Oct 12, 2019 at 02:55:11 AM

Hello, Magisters!
   While the BRW expeditions are in full swing, here we are with a new update where we will talk about a lot of things!
   After the in-depth exploration of Inferno in the last months, we leave the home of Lucifero to analyzing the Schools of Magic that you will receive with the Wave II, starting with the disturbing Void School.
   We will not only talk about that, but we will also update you on the status of the shipments, on the production of the Wave II, and we will give you some other relevant information!
   So many things to talk about and so we don't waste time and start now!

The Void School

"The Void is looking at you. The Void awaits you. Essential, terrifying, inevitable, abandon yourself to it and forget the death." - Howard, Void Mage.

The Mages who approach the powers of Void are ready for anything, even to lose their soul, to acquire an unattainable power.
   The spells of emptiness cancel the reality and are particularly useful in generating Instability, through which the Magisters of the void disrupt the world as they pass. The Void also allows the distortion of space, allowing those who exploit them to move from one place to another in the blink of an eye.

 In terms of play, the Void School can be considered as a Swiss Army knife, thus offering a range of spells for every occasion; but with a propensity to manipulate Instability and Evocations.
  The "Abysm" Trap will trigger when a Wizard is defeated and will allow you both to place Instability and to do extensive damage to other wizards remaining in the game.
  With the Protection "Shub-Niggurath Embrace", you can prevent damage and place Instability or, in the case an Evocation has attacked you, you can destroy it and inflict damage to its owner! 

Obviously, we don't miss offensive Spells like "Azthoth Chasm" and "Eldritch Tentacle" that will allow you to move and damage enemy models with powerful area attacks. The tentacles, in particular, will go into a combo with one of your Evocations, making it move in a room, damage all the models inside it, and finally, your creature will also be able to make an attack... indeed devastating!
 Among the utilities, as well as many cards that will make you generate Instability or complete quests, my favorite is "Nightmare Absinthe" which will protect you from enemy spells for a turn or whenever a Spell targets your Mage; you will place an Instability in the room where you are!

By the way, the most daring Void Mages manage to manipulate it, giving shape to Dagon, a nightmare creature capable of erasing the reality. "Consume the Void," "Legacy of the Void," and "Echo of the Void" will allow you to summon a Dagon, or to perform additional actions with any Demon (not necessarily under your control!) creating exciting shenanigans!
 Dagon itself is a Demon, and despite not being particularly dangerous, it will increase your instability in the rooms where it is located.

If you decide to use Howard as your Mage, you can also have his Custom Spell: "Nightmare," with which you can protect poor Howard from enemy spells or copy one of your demons and immediately attack with it!

Speaking of synergies with other schools, you have already realized that combining the Void with Destruction and Demonology will lead to the creation of a deck full of devastating combos but also terribly fun. But even with Transmutation, you can push on the destruction of the rooms generating a ridiculously high amount of Instability!

How about it? Could the Void School become one of your favorite schools? Well, if you come to visit us at our Essen Spiel 2019 booth, you will have the chance to try the Void school on our BRW tables! But not only that, and in fact, we immediately talk about...

ESSEN SPIEL 2019

As you know, LMS will be present even this year at the Essen Spiel from 24th to 27th October. You can come and visit us at our booth 2F112 in hall 2; we will have many surprises for all BRW players and backers.
 First of all, as mentioned above, it will be possible to try a preview of 3 of the new schools: the Void, the Chronomancy, and the Bardic. You could then be among the first players to try these three phenomenal schools.  

Also, hold on tight, there will be the possibility to try Inferno in preview, playing a game with Marco Montanaro, the author of BRW! Can you defeat Lucifero side by side with the Grand Magister himself? The answer is only one... Fireball!
 It will also be possible to admire the entire range of Wave II miniatures (prepare the cameras) and purchase the exclusive BRW Playmats! But you will have to hurry, the quantities available for the Fair will be very limited!

 Finally, if you have had show BRW to your friends (brazenly bragging), and now they want a copy of it, you can tell them that we will have some copies for sale, but even here, the quantity will be limited!
 What can we say then? We are waiting for you !!!

LMS Shop (re) Ouverture
 We are happy to announce that from Monday, October 14th, our web-store will be online again!
The first initiative of this relaunch will be the possibility of buying some products and booking the retire at Essen Spiel 2019.
 Among these products, you will find sleeve cards, bowls, deck holders, and also the fantastic BRW Playmats that we have just shown you.
 In addition to this, we will also have a limited amount of our games: Nova Aetas, Sine Tempore, Dunegonology, and of course, Black Rose Wars!
 Save the date!

Wave II Production

The production of miniatures has begun these days, and we are confident that the end of November will complete it.
 The translations of the material have started, and we will soon put the Inferno and Sator Box rules online so that you can give us your feedback.
 I know that all of you are upset about having the Wave II, and we will do everything we can to make you wait too long, but at the moment, we can set an ETA for Q1 2020. I know it seems like a very long time, but we need this time to finish the production of the massive quantity of stuff from which the Wave II is composed. In addition, we asked the factory for more considerable attention to Quality Control. The first wave proved very disappointing in this aspect, which resulted in the enormous quantity of replacements request they are coming to us these days.
 For this reason, we are very happy to have been able to deliver the Wave I to everyone, to make waiting for the Wave II a little lighter!

Wave I Shipment

A brief update on the current Wave I delivery:

USA & Canada - Deliveries are almost over, and 90% of backers should have already received their package.

EU - Deliveries are completed in Germany and are in progress for all other countries, Spain, and Eastern European countries will be the last to be finalized.

UK - After solving the problem with Game Quest, shipments have started in the past few days and are currently underway.

RoW - These shipments will start as soon as those in the EU end, probably within two weeks.

Asia - Shipments are in progress. Unfortunately, we have had to resolve some bureaucratic problems with VFI and Enjoy Games, and this has delayed the departure of packages a little.

Australia - We are waiting for a report from the Fulfillment company, we will update you as soon as possible!

Replacements and missing Boxes

With the stuff arrival, I remind you of our contacts for missing boxes and Replacements.

 - If your order is missing any items, open a ticket using our Support Page.
 The missing item will be sent to you directly from the reference HUB in your area.

 - If you find damaged or missing material inside a box, submit a request using this FORM.
WARNING! Once the form has been filled in, your request is automatically accepted by our support service, without any further communication. The support service will contact you only if there is a problem or if we need further information from you regarding your request.

 A note about the many replacement requests we are receiving for miniatures with bent parts.
 This type of problem is very common in hard PVC miniatures, even if of excellent quality like those of BRW, and you could probably find it in models like the Rebecca or Medusa, but fortunately it is a very easy problem to solve even for those who are not expert modelers.

Here you will find many guides on how to do, and with a few simple steps, you will have your miniature as new, without having to wait for the replacement times, which as you know are not yet short (we are trying to improve that ^^').

Crono and Hidden Thorns replacements

The replacements requests for the Medusa (Crono) and the two Hidden Thorns Mages miniatures are proving more numerous than expected. It is clear that there has been a problem with the factory in the boxing phase of these two expansions.

At the moment we have finished the pieces at our disposal for the replacement of these miniatures, but we have ordered a reprint of the miniatures of Hidden Thorns and Crono together with those of the II wave. To optimize the process, anyone will request or have requested, a replacement for these models will receive them directly in their II wave box.
 We are sorry for this issue, but we are trying to solve it in the best way. Meanwhile, you are allowed to proxy these Mages in the way you prefer during your games!

The above applies only to the Miniatures indicated in the two expansions, the rest of the material (punchboard or even Crono itself) will be replaced regularly!

Missing Hidden Thorns
 Now that shipments are underway, we have received reports that some orders are missing Hidden Thorns despite being purchased during the PM. Unfortunately, due to a problem that arose during shipments from China, the quantities of Hidden Thorns arriving at the hubs are lower than those established, with the result that some of you have not received Hidden Thorns.
 We are not able at this time to recover the missing copies, but we will insert them in the Wave II orders. So those of you who have not received Hidden Thorns will receive it with the Wave II, without having to submit any request for replacements, the fulfillment companies will provide us with a list of backers who have yet to receive it. We apologize for this inconvenience.

Rules Support

If you need help with the rules, you can consult our Support site or consult the BRW BGG page, where you can find the answer to all your doubts and numerous files created by us or by other players that will help you in your first steps in the Lodge!

WOW, one of the longest updates I've ever written, but the things to say were so many! I hope you didn't get too bored reading it!
 I leave you with the miniatures of the two protagonists of this update: Howard & Dagon!
 See you on the board!
 Fireball!