Geist  from Hand Cannon Online here with Deke and John the men behind Soda Pop Miniatures, as well as Ninja Division.

You guys have been really busy with getting the Relic Knights kickstarter ready to ship out. Once it is released will we see some sort of league or events for people to come out to stores and play in?

The Relic Knights Kickstarter is very close to delivery and we couldn’t be more excited! As a special thank you to our backers we are creating a special Candy Heart model that we are giving all backers a $15 credit towards. She’ll be usable in the game as a Radiant Unique. We’re letting people chose which pose we manufacture for her. The poll is currently open on our forums if your readers want to take a look and vote on their favorite!

For organized play, we are launching our new volunteer program, Ninja Corps, through Ninja Division this week. It will manage organized play for all Soda Pop Miniatures, Cipher Studios, and Ninja Division products.

As part of this we will be turning Super Dungeon: PVP Arena into a full living ruleset. Our plan is to engage the community to help develop PVP Arena into an alternate game mode that players can really feel some pride of ownership with.

Relic Knights will be getting its first tournament system and build campaign so that backers and retailers can encourage their friends and backers to join in the launch.

Hell Dorado, which just launched its first expansion, will also be running a campaign through the Ninja Corps.

This is great to hear as someone who love to share great games with others I will definitely be looking forward to the organized play as well as look into joining the Ninja Corps.

Now aside from Relic Knights you also started up Ninja Division and teamed up with Palladium Books to produce Robotech RPG Tactics. How is that one coming along?

Robotech is coming along well, the sculpts have finally all been approved by Palladium and Harmony Gold and tooling has begun. It won’t be too much longer and everyone will saving the Earth from the Zentraedi.

Do you have any plans for organized play for this game as well?

Palladium Books is the publisher for Robotech RPG Tactics so they will be managing any organized play they want to do for the system. Ninja Division was hired to do the sculpting, help design the game, and run the initial Kickstarter for them.

Moving on to future projects I have seen you have a new kickstarter in the works for your Super Dungeon Explore game. I have to say I am really excited for the Forgotten King. What makes you the most excited game play wise with this next release?

Oh where to start!?

Even though it’s not gameplay we first need to mention the models. We’ve always prided ourselves on the quality of our models and we can honestly say the Forgotten King models blow our minds. They are a whole new level of awesome.

For gameplay we’ve really paid attention to our community and what they’ve been asking for: revised rules, cooperative play, new tiles, and more RPG style elements.

The first Super Dungeon Explore book was our first published rules system and we’ve learned a lot since then—including building the monstrous 272 page Relic Knights rulebook. We’ve taken what we’ve learned and completely revised and expanded the rules. The new format is easier to follow and still packs in more stuff for players to do. Including some new unit types such as pets and creeps.

The rewrite also let us get rid of a lot of extraneous upkeep such as the Power Gauge and Loot-O-Meter. This keeps the action on the table and moving quickly.

The new game mode Arcade, is the biggest addition. It takes control of the dungeon out of the players’ hands and moves it to the Arcade Deck so that players can all explore the dungeon together as Heroes. The basics of the system are really simple: each spawning point or boss monster has an Arcade card, that specifies the actions the monsters take when a card from the Arcade Deck is drawn. 

Forgotten King will include all the Arcade cards for the monsters in the box. For the veterans we will have three upgrade card packs: Dragonback Peaks, Caverns of Roxor, and Von Drakk Manor, that include Arcade cards as well as updated unit cards feature errata and some rebalancing.

Our new set features six new double-sided tiles. That are not only beautiful but provide a lot of new gameplay dynamics such as poisonous brambles, Goddess Shrines, Sentinel and Champion statues. We’ve also better defined what is on the tiles so that everything no longer counts as just a “wall.” Now there are structures and chasms that cause different effects in the game.

RPG and campaign elements are something people have been wanting for a long time. Ultimately, we decided we couldn’t do a campaign justice by just having it as a secondary small booklet like many other dungeon delve board games do. Instead we laid the groundwork for a campaign system with new features like Princess Coins, dungeon keys, backpacks, and the Explore Deck. These all provide a richer dungeon exploring experience and leave the heavy lifting of a full campaign to our future expansion Super Dungeon Legends which will blow the doors off questing in Crystalia.

You have also put out a PDF for Arena Battles. I managed to catch a few games at Templecon and I have to say it looked like a total blast. Is this a new game event we will see at conventions with you guys?

Absolutely! As we mentioned above we plan on turning PVP Arena into a full living ruleset. It is a perfect event for conventions such as Templecon and Adepticon where the emphasis is on players bringing their armies to do battle with an opponent. We’re also planning on producing a full line of the PVP Arena battlemats we had at Templecon, so be sure to keep an eye out for those in the near future!

I have always loved my Super Dungeon Explore miniatures and you seem to be opening up all sorts of game play potential that will appeal to a variety of gamers, I think 2014 is going to be an amazing year for you and your fans.

Before we finish off here, is there else anything on the horizon or anything you want to tell all the fans of your games?

We’re very excited to be moving to self publishing all of our products. We have a lot of great plans and are looking forward to taking this next step to bring our games and universes to your tabletops and game shops.

Of course we couldn’t do it without our extraordinary community. A huge thanks to all of you!

Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk with us!

And for those of you who would like to check out more information on the Forgotten King game click on the Kickstarter preview below to be taken directly to the KS page.

http://handcannononline.com/blog/2014/03/20/soda-pop-miniatures-interview-deke-john/