Emerald Legacy – What’s Next?

We released a bunch of packs already, crafted our own world, and even got a podcast up and running that’s telling our stories. So here’s an outlook to what might come – or maybe might not.

Looking at our sets on display (I’ve got physical copies of Through the Mists, Restoration of Balance, and Ancient Secrets in front of me, as well as all the promos), I feel super proud of what this project has achieved and I’m honoured that I was chosen as project coordinator a few years ago. I’d love to also have a box with our core set and all its cards in front of me, which would allow us to really create visibility and bring our beloved game to a host of new and returning players.

A Piece of Art

However, we’re far from having this become reality. We’re currently at 100 artworks of 260 required (38.5%). Despite new artists entering our project and other project members all of a sudden turning into artists (💜), we’re still 160 pieces of art away from releasing the core set as a physical product. We won’t start with the development of the next set(s) until we hit at least 50% of art of our core set. At the current speed, that would be at some time in October to December, about one year after the digital release of the set. Whilst this is even faster than with all our previous sets, it is too slow to really save the game and attract new players. With the completion of the art of the core set, we can eventually offer our starter decks as separate products people can purchase to get into the game.

We do have several things planned for the future. We’re preparing our sets to be released in Chinese (and any other language if you want to help!). Remember Rob’s Mantis deck at last year’s Kotei in Nuremberg? Well, it might become a thing if all goes well. Additional clan packs as you know them from former times? Maybe not, but something different and thus cooler! Our play testers are eager to test new sets for you. But…

We need more artists in this project. We could easily change to AI generated art and fix this. But to our mind, this wouldn’t be a fix. We still strongly stand against using AI art, and will continue to offer our game as a platform for both new and established artists to showcase their skills and their artistic style. Just look at all the different pieces of art that are on our cards! It is so beautiful to see people improve over time, dedicating their skill and time to the project, crafting unique artworks. Thank you all so much for your contributions, you really make this game shine!

Yet, we do need many more artists. So when you’re reading this, please try to help us. Are you an artist who’d like to contribute? Please send us an email or get in touch on Discord! Do you have siblings, relatives, or friends who are artists? Show them our project and ask them to join! They don’t need to know the game or the setting, many of our artists don’t. Do you have relations to art universities or art projects? Please tell them about our project or get in touch with me for an “artist advertisement” poster. No, we cannot pay artists. All our artists donated their art for free (or their art was donated to us by others), we’re one hundred percent non-profit. Volunteers, fans of the game, trying to craft something unique and beautiful for the fans, for us.

This is a community driven project. It needs the community to grow, improve, and shine! Please try to help us if you can.

It’s a Physical Game

Just a minute ago I got the confirmation by Tesseract Games that my order of Emerald Legacy dividers has been shipped. I’m going to use them as prize support at the Nuremberg Kotei (amongst other things 😉 ). We’re going to have another Kotei this year in the US (news will be posted soon). This game is best played offline, so if you do want to host a Kotei (including promos, playmats, story prizes, and more!), please do get in touch! I can’t fly to the US and organise a bunch of Koteis there, it needs you, the community, to help us organise some. I’ll take care of prize support, but the actual event has to be done by others. Maybe this is unbeknownst to many of you, so now that you know, spread the word!

Our cards are available on DriveThruCards and Azao, and we will offer our core set there, too, once it is available. We also offer promo packs from time to time which can be used for local tournaments or league-like events.

A Story to be Told

If you are following our stories (I hope you do!), you will realise that the clans slowly settle down in their new environment, adapting to their surroundings. We’ve got so much more planned, story wise, but this also requires the successful continuation of this project. We have a lot to tell, and a lot of decisions you can make by winning story tournaments and Koteis.

Our story podcast will continue at least for this year, with all the stories that are already out there and those that are currently written.

A Legion of One

You might have realised that I’m doing quite a lot of things (this is not supposed to be a boast!): I’m doing all the article releases, I take care of the card production, I communicate all the news, I try to help new players, I try to organise more artists, I try to bring people together, I remind people to do things, I organise the Kotei stuff, I design the promos, and I can even go on. That’s a less than ideal state for this project, to be honest. I somehow turned from “the guy who helps with WordPress” to the biggest single point of failure.

Again, I do not want to brag with this. Not at all. I just want to highlight that we do have an issue here. I love the project, I love the work I do for it. However, my time is unfortunately finite, and there is only so much that I can do for the project. So we should work on this. Find one ore more community managers. Find someone who’s going to be a proper head of art (and not a naïve noob like me). Find more people who want to help with the Asciidoc stuff. Technically it boils down to: find more people (also for art 😉 ). So if you do want to join our project for any of the positions I mentioned or if you have any other ideas, please get in touch!

This project is by the community, for the community. It needs you. More than ever.