A NEW HOPE

Unexpectedly, the 16th We had an update in the forums from Spartan Games after months of  silence. Basically the post said we will see some rules at the end of this year as a free PDF download. Also it states the UCS is not dead but "on hold" and even has some sculpts under development.

This was the full post:
"
Hi all,

​We understand there's been some confusion on where Uncharted Seas currently lies, and we're very sorry to hear that some of you have been so unhappy and confused with the stance we've taken on this. In no way do we mean to imply that we don't care, or your reactions are unimportant to us. As we've undergone some changes within the team lately, our forum presence has been somewhat hit-and-miss and we understand that, and are dealing with it. This is not at all a reflection on Uncharted Seas, as it has been forum-wide and not just within this conversation. With the regard to the game itself, the following is an official update from Neil himself.

"As you all know we withdrew the last models from mail order sales a few months ago. We currently have no plans to sell these models again and have effectively retired their moulds from manufacturing.

We had been working on an updated set of rules for the models gamers currently own, and we are hoping to release these later this year as a free PDF download. We had also been working on new model sculpts, but this project is on hold while we focus on Dystopian Wars and Firestorm Armada projects.

As soon as any of these plans change we will update you via our forum.

Best regards,
Spartan Neil"

​We hope that clears up any questions on the future of the game, but if you do have any others, or any comments you'd particularly like to share, please do feel free to email a member of the team.
"

---------

This also has been confirmed by Spartan Beth. So, I think these are good news!!. We are getting new rules
and Spartan has not completely 'discarded' the game. They will be focusing on their main games and there is a possibility the game (or a similiar game) returns in the years to come.

A SAFE HAVEN

As the first entry of the year I wanted to dedicate The Gate of Suns to some download resources, so they can be accessed easily if for some reason you lose the files and Spartan Games decides to retire all those free stuff from their Uncharted Seas Download Resources Section, you have a "safe haven" to recover the lost files of this game. (and is kept alive!) Remember: It´s the first entry of 2016 ;-)

Uncharted Seas Basic Rulebook

The book is the latest update of the rules but it comes without the fleets, so I also made links for the fleets

The Bone Griffons
The Dragon Lords
The Imperial Humans
The Iron Dwarves
The Orc Raiders
The Shroud Mages
The Sky Pirates
The Ralgard
The Thaniras Elves

Finally we have some various stuff for campaings, background etc...

Introductory background for Uncharted Seas
The Cauldron of Silence scenario set

Uncharted Seas Map

UCS Territorial Map


And as a final comment...

Apologies for posting that late, but I have temporarily stopped painting my IH fleet just because It has been recently my birthday and a friend gave me some Firestorm Armada stuff. so I found myself under the "new toy synfrome"  and resuming painting Directorate. add on top of this the last film of Star Wars (I am a fan) and you know. those storm troopers shaking in the transport.. they look like Directorate troops on a Haunter... lol so I will be busy for a while with Armada stuff before I get back to IHs and those nice ships. I will be writting articles about tactics and stuff from time to time, I promise ;-)

A SMALL BATTLE REPORT BEFORE THE END OF THE YEAR

A 1v1v1 BATTLE REPORT (Sky Pirates vs. Imperial Humans vs. Shroud Mages

This is a battle I had the other day with three friends and we all used cards (more testing for SP cards). I was playing the Imperial Humans (IH) and it was a "basic" engagement with each side having a Battleship, 3 cruisers and 2 squadrons of 3 frigates. I was unable to take pictures (forgot to bring my camera and I have and "old school" movile phone with no cam), it also was an introductory game, and had to spend some time in explaining the game (The UCS is the best game to introduce ppl to other SG games)

So what follows is just a small description about how it went:

- The table was very long but had not enough widht. The SP and IH deployed on the short edges and the SM just entered the game through the middle of a long table edge by placing the models touching the edge. The center of the board had a lighthouse and some sand bars around it. There were some medium-sized islands closer to the short board edges.

- One of my friends "convinced" the other to deploy the SM Battleship closer to my newly painted IH batteship and crippled her with extreme lucky dice rolls -____- #

- To make things worse he summoned a reef in front of the lead hawk cruiser (or removed the illusion that was hidding teh reef to be more precise) while the squadron was sailing in line astern formation. In the end the "tailing" cruiser hit the reef an went out of formation, islated from the rest of the squadron. I had the Battleship close to the squadron but already spent the Admiral order to save the middle cruiser from colliding with reef (I had very bad die rolls I know)

- I returned the favor by changing the wind agains the SP and convinced the SM player to deploy the cruiser near the SP to trouble them.

- In the end the SM won the match. We thought (me and the SP player) that the SM player was going to be "sandwiched" between the two fleets (IH and SP) but in the end the SM player found a "target rich enviroment" played a lot of repair and protection cards and with very good dice rolls was the player that killed the most ships (two cruisers and a bunch of frigates whiele we just killed frigates, not to mention the crippling of my BB)

- The IH (me) was the fleet that got mauled the most (lost all frigates, one cruiser, BB crippled and the two suriviving cruisers were isolated from each other (I should have avoided the reef). T__T but we had a lot of fun :)

Hope you liked

Dan ^_^

MERRY XMAS AND HAVE A HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!

Winter has come and the mad weather I was having in Spain changed radically, dropping from almost 20º C to 10ºC in a single evening, and caught me unprepared so I ended up having a very virulent form of a shore throat, and the next day my voice got affected too and was unable to say a word until the next two days. I finally have recovered (almost), but anyways I was unable to dedicate time to the blog,. specially when I had to look after my nephews last three days (who took over the computer lol)

Anyways Santa managed to hand me a little present for you to download: The Sky Pirates cards (#14-26) ) for sleeving them into some other Uncharted Seas card deck. The cards are Printer friendly (black and white) with no background or icons, but I have plans to make them look more professional when I find some time (and health) to use Photoshop.

The link is here and is lthe last updated iteration with some minor changes.

I hope you find them an use ;-)

Dan

FIRST BATTLESHIP FINISHED!!

I took me three days before updating the blog but it was for a good reason: Finally painted my the first of two Imperial Human Battleships!

Here are some pictures I took today, just after the finishing touches

Those festive days are making me difficult to updatoe the blog so in case I can´t update the blog, Have a very good Christmas time!!! ;)

BATTLESHIP PAINTING UPDATE

Hi there! My battleships are taking forever to get finished!

 Managed to paint the sails of both but i only will focus on one of them due to lack of time and, for a short game I just only need one Imperal Human battleship to be finished.

So this is how the BB is looking so far (sails painted):

I need this ship finished before the end of the year, and the monster Crocidon for an scenario I want to play with my friend.

Speaking of the Crocidon he is giving a helping jaw (or is it an unhelping jaw???)) What do you think? :-)

 

IMPERIAL HUMAN CARD DECK

While woriking on the making of the Sky Pirates card deck did some analisys on the Imperial Human (IH) card deck. I am not sure if I can name each card and write about what it does, so I will write abut them briefly:

The IH have 4 magic cards, 7 counter cards, and I think is the "typical deck" or reference deck for an UCS faction when comparing with others as the "race speficic cads" (cards 14 to 26) just expand the common cards (#1 to 13) in the deck. They just add the "sacrifice" cards that allow you lose crew or ship to cause more damage back to the enemy fleet.

There are 5 "attack" card, 4 "defensive" card and 4 "tactical":

- The Attack cards are those which increase AD, MD or just throw or re-roll any other kind of dice to inflict damage to hull, crew or improve a critical effect. in the IH deck we have cards #14, 16, 17, 19 and 20 wich add extra MD, AD, cause the exploding critical when a ship is sunk (a sacrificial card), improve a ramming attack and even a direct magical attack that causes 8 AD!

- The defensive cards (#18, 21, 22 and 24) heal crew, make a ship difficult to be hit and change a critical effect deal to your ships.

- The tactical cards (#15, 23, 25 and 26) change wind direction 1 or 2 steps, add extra movement, improve turning template.

We just need to throw in the common card deck with another wind direction changing card, several AD increas card, one that kill crew, the "tally ho!" card (dual activation) and the tricky card that changes a critical hit dealt but we will cover that later ;-

Dan ;-)