Hey backers! Happy February! We’re here with an update you’re sure to love. Find out where we are in the writing process of the campaign and stick around to hear the ins and outs of designing the Tarrasque mini from Avery Howett! We also have a Big Bad Valentine's treat for you at the bottom of the update.

Writing and Minis Update

The first draft for many of the writing sections of the book is set to be complete within the next week or so! Two sections are getting a little more attention; the races, and the campaign itself, which the team estimates will reach first draft status sometime in March.

Miniatures are being prepped as we speak by our manufacturing partners for production! We're so excited to show off the production samples as they arrive.

Designing a Tarrasque with Avery Howett

When I took on designing the look of the brand new Dire Tarrasque for the campaign, of course, it struck me as a huge, towering task. After all, the Tarrasque is about as iconic of a beastie as it gets. It’s tabletop’s answer to Godzilla, the ultimate table-clearer and mini-destroyer, the condensed fury of a GM who’s finally decided to hit the nuke button on their table of cocky players.

IT’S. THE. Q@ACKING. TARRASQUE!

Not only that, it had to be more! It had to be DIRE! Thankfully, as someone who plays way too many tabletop games in my free time, I was used to taking on huge, daunting, and impossible tasks. Just like taking on an ACTUAL Tarrasque, it was going to be hard, but it was going to be a lot of FUN too!

So, first things first: You gotta pick out what makes the Tarrasque iconic and start from there. We gotta add a big maw full of NOPE, horns that could poke the gods themselves in the eyes in defiance, and way too many spikes.

Check! What comes next, then, is figuring out what to add. For that, I looked at that tail first: the O.G. Tarrasque has a whip-like tail, but as Felix and I played a lot of Monster Hunter, we were very familiar with how a hefty tail could be used to deal one HUGE dose of a reality check. So we decided to upgrade the tail to a big honking club.

The finishing touch was adding in all those spikes to really give it the appearance that it could sweep an entire skyline off the map in one motion. And while we are talking influence and nods to things we like: Felix is also a big Bowser fan (who he uses to pummel me into guard-rails whenever we play Mario Kart), so I added a bit of a Bowser-esque look to the Tarrasque’s face and prominent back spikes.

Lastly, are those details you get from the lore of the creature—probably my favorite part! The Tarrasque is a force of nature, an unstoppable monster of pure hunger with the ability to constantly regenerate any damage it takes (thanks for bringing that feature back, Felix). So, even its own exhaustion and the damage it causes to itself aren’t enough to stop its rampage! As such, the Dire Tarrasque is gnarly and mangled—as if it’s mutated into an even more terrifying form after millennia.

This behemoth has lost and regrown back spikes so often they have grown out twisted and uneven, and its teeth have been torn out and replaced so quickly they’ve started to bend outwards and grow through its skin! Yikes! Add in some rows of shark teeth and that ravenous vacant glare, and voila! We’ve got something that’ll send a shiver down the spines of even the most battle-hardened warriors. All that’s left is to draw the big bad beast in his chosen pose—the conqueror of carnage letting out a city-quaking roar—and hand it off to Thomas Choux, the amazing sculptor on the project!

There you have it, the new and improved Lord of Destruction, Terror of the Terra, the Dire Tarrasque! From our twisted minds to your table.

It's Tarrasques all the way down!

Check out what theMadMaker has been up to with the Tarrasque STL files! Through experimenting with 3D printing, he's been able to welcome (amass an army of?) several Tarrasques into his family.

Congratulations on the new additions! 

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Cheers,

Hit Point Press