Stretch Goal - Bonus Promo for all backers!
about 2 years ago – Thu, Jan 18, 2024 at 03:21:31 PM

Greetings, Mayors!

As you all know you helped us blast past the stretch goal that earned all of you an additional bonus promo card with your orders. We're glad to reveal that the card you'll all be getting will be Fire Lily Perfumer!

Fire Lily Perfumer is an interesting tool for power players. Questing is an important route to any Mayor's victory, but being forced into doing it at inopportune moments...? That doesn't always end well!

There's still the community vote for an additional promo card to come soon, and don't forget about the League that we announced in our last post! People are having a blast building their own decks and practicing for it in our Discord server, come and get involved :D

Until next time, take care!

- Monster Channel

Adventure League: Goodbye, Namitori!
over 2 years ago – Fri, Jan 05, 2024 at 07:55:41 PM

Mayors!

We’re thrilled to announce Animal Kingdom’s first official event!

 Adventure League: Goodbye Namitori! will commence on February 1st 2024!

Adventure League? What’s That?

The Adventure League is our Organised Play format. It’s a narrative driven tournament system that allows you to participate at your own pace, rather than at a set time every week.

This special prologue Adventure League is a 4-week event designed to be a mini online preview of what in-store league play will be like! It'll be split up into four 1-week long sections, and in each week, there will be a variety of objectives that every player will strive to achieve. There will also be some more challenging objectives that mayors have the entire 4-week period to try and complete!

In this first Adventure League, matches are conducted digitally, such as webcam matches or through the official Tabletop Simulator module.

I'm New to Animal Kingdom! Can I Play in the League?

YES! We welcome new players! Anyone and everyone is free to enter, even if you're entirely new to Animal Kingdom. You don't need to have backed our project on Kickstarter to play. Join our friendly Discord community if you have further questions or would like to learn how to play!

How Does It Work?

Mayors will receive a Mayor's Journal which will allow them to track their progress throughout the Adventure League. Below, you'll find just a few examples of weekly and seasonal objectives!

Completing these objectives awards points to the Mayor that completes them. Earning points progresses you on your adventure, allowing you to move to the next location!

This map of Namitori shows you where you’ll be exploring on this adventure. Each stop requires a certain number of points to get to, and as each week ends you’ll be able to see how far along the adventure each participant is.

Following in Tomoe Suzaku's footsteps, you'll pass through various locations she visits in the story. Starting in the Palace Grounds, your ultimate goal is to reach The City Gates and escape from Namitori! Not everyone may get all the way there, but even just participating yields rewards. All participating Mayors will receive a unique Friends in the Forest promo card, and mayors who earn enough points to reach The City Gates will have their participation promo upgraded into a playset!

In addition to progressing through the Adventure League's map, special prizes are available for the top 3 players who earn the most points throughout the Adventure League season. Even if you reach The City Gates, keep playing and strive to earn more goodies!

1st Place

The 1st place prize will be a cool 15 Hero Packs, along with a one of a kind, handcrafted shadowbox version of a Starter Deck AM of the winner's choice, made by the very talented Pierrot Cards. You can see examples of their work here: https://www.instagram.com/pierrotcards/

2nd and 3rd Place

The 2nd place prize is 10 Hero Packs, and the 3rd place prize is 5 Hero Packs.

Speaking of the Hero Pack Cards!

We think it’s about time for you to play with them yourselves! The Print ’n Play download has been updated to include an extra sheet with all thirty Hero Pack 1 cards, as well as updated artwork for many Starter Deck cards. We’ve also updated the Tabletop Simulator module to include the new cards, so that you can all have fun using the extra cards to brew your own decks!

For this league, you will be free to create and play with your own decks using any cards you wish from the Starter Decks, along with all of the Hero Pack cards. Cards that we've revealed during our Kickstarter campaign or on social media but that are not included in the Starter Decks or Hero Pack 1 are not legal for play (ex. Foamcaller Meltem, Dishonourable Duelist, Bell Tonic).

A separate post will be coming very soon that goes into further detail about the specific rules of the Adventure League.

We can’t easily articulate just how excited we are to see you all be able to customise your decks and compete in our trial run for Organised Play! We’ll be keeping an eager eye on how you guys upgrade your decks and brew new ones, and we’ll look forward to joining in some games to see your decks first-hand!

Q&A

Q: This doesn't look like a standard tournament system, what gives?

A: That's right, this isn't a traditional tournament system like most games run. I (Mike Taylor, Project Lead) am an LGS owner myself, and I know how tough the fight is to get an LGS to set aside an evening per week for a new game. With that in mind, the Adventure League was designed so that games can be played any time during the week, and there's no stress for stores to have to set aside a night, or for people to make themselves free on a specific day each week. Once the Adventure League moves to in-store Organised Play, just roll up at your local store and play there anytime that's convenient for them and for you, and you can submit your results!

Q:Looking at the details, does winning matter?

A: The ultimate goal of the league is the achieve the objectives. A few of them are linked to winning matches, so whilst you don't get knocked out for not winning like in a regular tournament, you'll want to try to win in order to earn your league points! Additionally, tie breaks for overall points prizing will be determined by number of wins.

Q: Is this free to enter?

A: It is! Come and join us in our Discord server and get involved!

24 hours left on Backerkit!
over 2 years ago – Thu, Nov 16, 2023 at 05:41:53 PM

Good evening Mayors,

Just a quick announcement to remind you all that there is only 24 hours left to update your add-ons over on Backerkit! In exactly 1 day from now we'll be locking down orders, so follow that Backerkit e-mail and make sure that you've secured everything that you want!

If you're following us on Discord or Social Media you'll have seen the variety of spoilers we've been leaking for both the main set, and the Hero Packs. Since this is your last chance to secure extra Hero Packs from Backerkit, hopefully this easy-to-view graphic showing off all of the Hero Pack cards we've spoiled so far will help you to decide if you wanted to add any more!

Also a reminder that the Hero Pack prints won't all look like this. Cards in the Hero Packs will recieve treatments that they won't get in the main set!

If you're having any difficulties or have any further questions, fire us a message here or come find us in our discord channel - https://discord.gg/QJFsxkxCzP

Until next time,

Monster Channel

Shipping updates and Backerkit deadline!
over 2 years ago – Mon, Oct 30, 2023 at 03:54:23 PM

Good evening Mayors,

Thank you so much for your recent patience. As our initial shipping partner didn't quite meet our expectations, we wanted to make sure we found shipping solutions that worked for everyone. Unfortunately, that took longer than expected. We're now happy to now be able to show you a revised shipping estimates chart! Please note that these are still estimates: as we aren't charging shipping until next year we can't give you exact numbers now, but barring any global shipping emergencies these should be accurate.

If you've added a few smaller items through backerkit it won't make much of a difference to your shipping, but if you've added an entire tier, or several booster boxes, your shipping cost will rise in line with how close it takes you to the next tier. e.g - If you backed the Platinum Paw Tier and added 3 more booster boxes in Backerkit, your shipping estimate will fall between Platinum Paw Tier and Diamond Paw Tier!

As a token of our appreciation for everyone's patience, we've decided to bump up the 'community vote promo' stretch goal from a single copy to a full playset. Every backer will receive this with their order, and the vote will be happening very soon.

Since these shipping estimates are now available, we are confirming that the end date for Backerkit is NOVEMBER 17th, 2023. Please ensure you've finalised your add-ons by then! 

Hero Packs are also on the cusp of going to print, pending test prints and finalisation of some graphic design. As such we'll be sending out a brief Backerkit survey in the near future for you to confirm whether or not you want your Hero Pack add-ons delivered early.

Many thanks again for being along for the ride! We're looking forward to revealing lots of the cool stuff we've been working on behind the scenes, including more stories and a new method for playtesting online that will coincide with our organised play 'beta' league.

Until next time,

Monster Channel

Shipping/Backerkit update
over 2 years ago – Fri, Sep 29, 2023 at 03:17:28 PM

Just a short update today!

Unfortunately it's taking a little longer than we'd hoped to receive the new shipping estimates, so the final dates for Backerkit will be pushed back accordingly. We want to make sure that you all have time to finalise your pledges after we publish the estimates, so once we announce them you'll have 2 weeks to finalise your add-ons!

As soon as we have the information we'll be letting you all know, in the meantime thank you for your patience!

- Monster Channel