Deus lo Vult Board Game Unboxing

Pax vobiscum!

Here's your long-anticipated dessert: unboxing and some photos of your shining treasure that is just a few days away from starting it's travel to you.

The Gilded Box

a full-color manual presenting the Duel Rules 1.0 for 2-4 players. or is it an art book? we're not sure.

560x740 mm / 22x29 inches double-sided gilded game board with 1000 backers names and portraits on the reverse

100 double-sided unit tokens, 45x45 mm / 1.8x1.8 inches 

12 double-sided city quarter / refugee tokens

4 camp cards

12 Amenity tokens for use in Campaigns

24 Stretch Goal Tokens for Campaign Game Mode

36 Golden Coins and gilded-edge deck of 48 Divine Will Cards 

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Deus lo Vult Add-ons

Also, here is how Deus lo Vult Add-ons looks like. They all are individually packed, and all add-ons fit in the base game box.

Specimen #1 Preview!

Here is it – The Deus lo Vult Board Game Specimen One!

Please, enjoy the show, and we will post updated unboxing video shortly!

Specimen Zero Review!

Urbi et Orbi!

Pax Vobiscum!

As many of you already know, our Sample Box, a.k.a. Specimen Zero, arrived along with the offset print proof sheets. These were opulent but not perfect; thus, we had to rearrange background textures and patterns and then make another sample print, and this last one was eventually considered to be perfect enough for mass production. Unfortunately, we've got into Chinese National Holiday with this order, so everyone on that side had a full week off, making it unable for us to have the updates on this in time. But now we got it all, so let's take a look for yourselves:

These above are cold foil industrial print proofs. That is how all your units, amenities, camps, box and game board will actually appear. Also, we've been asked repeatedly about this, so I guess I should note this once again: this Gilded Box is what each one of you will get, not the Glory Boxers only!

Now, about Specimen Zero. Let's have a closer look here:

The first thing I'd like to remind now is that this one is DIGITALLY PRINTED and MANUALLY ASSEMBLED, which means it is but a prototype to present the actual box's size, weight, and inventory - but not the actual look of the game (because this is what print proofs were made for). Since there's no such thing as a digital foil, all assets elements to be guilded, were printed for Specimen Zero on a regular paper with neon orange color to show where the foil will be. Also, you could notice some tokens in this prototype have some cut-out biases due to manual punchboard creation (humans are no match to robots, apparently). But these are the Specimen Zero specific flaws, and they won't affect your Gilded Boxes quality, so please worry not, O Noble Congregation!

First, we'll look at the box itself. It is 300x300x65 mm (around 12x12x2,5 inches), and its weight (with all the addons included) is 3.90 kg or 6.6 lbs. It is gilded all around and has a book-like cover with two magnetic locks on one side. The only sad part about this box is that we had to drop the plastic organizer because it simply won't fit in with all the assets, and if we'll make boxes an inch deeper to fix this issue then we won't fit into 20' shipping container with all our shipping stock. 

BTW, the separate delivery from Shanghai to Kyiv for this parcel cost us $80, so the bulk container shipment plan totally was the right one!

Now, the Unit tokens and the Camp cards. There are 124 tokens in a Base Game (and yet another 114 in addons altogether), and a Camp Card for each army. All these are foiled and gilded on both sides; they have pleasant substantial weight and convenient 2,5 mm thickness for easy pickup.

The next thing is the game board. It is the 3 mm thick, 560x840 mm (or 22" x 33", if you like) six-fold piece,  also gilded on both sides, with the battlefield and the purgatory on one side and colorful collective portrait on other. 

Also, there are our Advanced Game Assets - the Amenities and the Divine Will cards. These could frankly be called "the mission builder," for they allow you to build kinda historically correct campaign set-ups  by adding the "god's will acts" such as heat, cold, storms, epidemics and so on. Certain trigger events could activate these disasters, or you can go directly by the schedule, i.e., use Heat, Cold, Rain, and Storm cards in rounds to imitate the seasonal weather changes that affect the warfare. Or,  you could apply the Sanitation Rule, which starts the Plague or Cholera outbreak when too many units are crowded inside the Camp, and so on. We'll plan to start publishing various Crusades campaigns in DLC pdf format soon, and you're welcome to share your ideas on what you'd like to see first!

These cards are 65x100mm, printed on a fine texturized designer paper, with golden and silver prints on both front and back sides. Also, they all will have a gilded edges like these:

Last but not least, here comes the main asset and goal of every war ever fought on this Earth - THE GOLD. Each game box will hold a treasure of 36 extremely shiny Saracenic coins that are exact replicas of a golden dinar from the XI century, defaced with the word "LO" in the center of each one. 

All these are being signed to production while you read this update,  so we could expect the printing and assembling to be done in 30 days or so.  We'll keep you updated, just as usually. 

What else is here to say? European VAT is almost fully collected (please hurry those who didn't do it yet), while USA VAT just does not exist (and we hope the Orange King will not apply his anti-Chinese custom fee for board games before we'll deliver). All other countries residents will have their boxes delivered separately from either US or EU fulfillers hubs, so they should pay their local fees and taxes on their own (if applicable), just as usually.

Divine Blessings upon all of you, O Noble Congregation! 

Stay awesome, eat vegetables and love each other!

Richard the Lionheart Special Unit Highlight

Richard I, known as Richard the Lionheart because of his reputation as a great military leader and warrior. During the siege of Acra, Richard ordered to massacre 2,700 prisoners because he didn't want to be burdened by them.

He fought endless battles but found his death while besieging the puny and virtually unarmed castle of Châlus-Chabrol, being shot in the neck with a crossbow bolt by a ridiculous poor knight who reportedly had a frying pan for a shield. Read more

Urbi et Orbi!

923 years ago, on this day, 27 November, the "Deus Vult!" motto was initially coined by Pope Urban in his sermon at the Council of Clermont in the year 1095 AD. The Age of Crusades began.

Done working on "wounded" side of Knights Templar Grand Master unit token.

Knights Templar Grand Master Unit Highlight

This wounded Outremer archer gives a very accurate idea on what October mornings make me feel like.

We continue posting a series of our How-To videos explaining the Rules and Core Mechanics of the Deus lo Vult game. Today’s video is about Movement. How soldiers are move around the battlefield, how they attack and retreat.

The safety is in numbers, so in the Deus lo Vult, units can only move in bands (i.e., groups of two or more units of the same army). You can move the band across the board, moving units from one side of the detachment to the other.

A single unit can’t move and must wait for reinforcements to arrive or be evacuated by rescue card or certain camp amenity effect.

Do not forget to subscribe on our social media and share it with your friends, 'cause we will unlock a few Social Stretch Goals soon. Also, stay tuned for an announcement of a first gameplay Live Stream on Kickstarter and our Facebook Page.

We want to start posting a series of our How-To videos explaining the Rules and Core Mechanics of the Deus lo Vult game. The first video is about Health and Wounds. How soldiers become injured, how they attack and how they die.

Each Unit token has two sides, “healthy” and “wounded.” When a healthy unit is being hit by an enemy, it must be tapped to the “wounded” side. Most units have no attack signs on their wounded sides, and their defense is weaker, too. If an already-wounded unit takes another hit, it dies and goes to Purgatory, regardless of its nationality.

All units and city tokens have special symbols on them.

To carry out an attack, you place your unit so that its attack side contacts the vulnerable side of the enemy token. Depending on the unit type, the effect of the attack may be damage (Saracens), mugging (other Crusaders) or plundering (cities).

In order to perform a successful attack, the player must place his or her unit next to the enemy unit so that its ATTACKING SIDE is placed against the enemy’s undefended side.

Do you like this update? Do you want us to make more explanatory videos? What do you want to know about in the next video?

Also, we almost finished shooting our big promo video! So stay tuned.