The Detached are joining the Swarm!
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After the very positive responses to the Hive faction, the second faction for Swarm Mode is getting its shape!
Wait - what is Swarm Mode?
Imagine Full Spectrum Dominance, where in order to play solo/Co-Op there is a new device in place, the Collective cards, that describe the opponent's behaviour. You Roll the ADs for the opponent as well, and pick whatever dice to place on the cards, always trying to go for the lesser evil for you.
No "play-pretend", the game remains competitive and you play to win: the enemy actions are chosen by you among different options, but if you mismanage their ADs you will end up swarmed by enemies, and most likely out of action.
The Detached
Remember the Tech?
After the war with the Tech, most of the hostile forces retreated, and some were left to patrol the planets. Some pockets of robots, however, got completely cut off from the Hive Intelligence link, and their Sentient Cores started to deteriorate.
Within the decades that follow, the bands of now Detached robots started to become a hazard on its own, moving in... swarms (see what I did here?) across the various planets, attacking everyone and everything.
In terms of models, the Detached only use a subset of what the Tech had:
As a core set of Units, therefore, I had to sculpt one Socrates, three Zenos, and some poses for Light and Heavy Battle Robots, and Light and Heavy Spider Drones.
All in all, a good half of the Tech models were to be used, and I did not want to use the old sculpts, which at this point are outdated to say the least.
New Sculpts
So - I needed new base meshes to apply the damage and weathering needed to represent the Detached. It felt like a good excuse to revamp the old models. My priority is to get the models for the Detached done, but an obvious stretchgoal for the campaign will be to upgrade the models with enough poses for the Tech players too!
That's right - everyone who purchased the Tech will receive the updated robots!
Starting with my beloved Zeno (to this day possibly my favourite sculpt ever!), I started working my magic with Plasticity to recreate the shapes of the old mesh.
Next step is to actually... improve the model. No more random blocks intersecting each other to represent mechanisms - and neat separations before objects of different materials such as the lenses and the front hull.
And what was before a cute but quite underdetailed model, is now on-par with my recent releases:
...in colors too.
Spiders!
The spider droids were next. Again, a clear improvement in details for these sub-centimeter size robots.
They are still not posed, but the render shows what they can offer.
The Socrates Rig
Now, this used to be a multi-part kit with several options, and for now I only sculpted the one pose version I will need for the Detached (after damages and weathering).
Like the models above, the details have been upped on all sides.
And here we are: a new happy Tech family, ready to be wrecked into Detached wanderers!
The Upcoming Campaign
After planning together with the MMF team, we've decided to set the approximate date for the campaign in early January. I will put a pre-subscription page out soon enough, and i'm quite excited - and scared - for this new little project: it's smaller than the Third Wave, and it's a game expansion rather than new playable factions so.... let's see how it will go!
Keep an eye on this space - I will post a lot more about the campaign to come!
Jack