Blood Oath is a three-player card game from SEDA Interactive. The core game has 54 cards per race, tokens, leader cards and specially designed play mats to facilitate the three-player battle. You can read more about it on Kickstarter.
SEDA are looking for $18,000 to fund the game. At the time of blogging there are still 30 days on the clock and over $3,000 in the bank. There are still limited Early Bird slots available which will get backers a copy of Blood Oath: The Beginning, access to high quality print-and-play, name on the rulebook and web page.
I’ll admit I’m a little uncertain as to whether any backing pledge unlocks a physical copy of the game or whether you’re to engage with a print on demand solution (the HQ print and play) and pay for shipping yourself. The latter is increasingly common in tabletop RPGs. SEDA do talk about previous experience in this area in their risks and challenge section; noting that problems in the past and that they know fully control Imperia Games and made a loss on fulfilment services in the past but have learnt from that.
I don’t think Blood Oath is going to win any awards for originality. We’ve Lucian leading the werewolves in rebellion against the vampires. That sounds like the plot from Underworld. The humans power up with godly magic and tech. I don’t suppose originality matters though. This is a game about dealing with a battle on two-fronts, you want a familiar setting so you don’t need to worry about it and then you want the card game to be good.
There’s already been requests from fans of SEDA’s Colony Clash for the game to be expanded. This is being considered but is not promised. It feels likely that (if successful) an expansion will add mercenaries and artefact cards but SEDA do admit to considering a different battle system that could increase the player numbers.
SEDA themselves are based in Manila in the Philippines and it is interesting to see whether the combination of cost-base and Kickstarter can spur the company on to greater things. The European MAGE Company springs to mind as an example of a game maker that has been able to accelerate scale and reach through crowdfunding.
