Sud is busy making the base tile

Drilling 4 equidistant holes

Drilling 2mm holes on the sides

Pasting in some magnets alternating N and S

Pushkar has been saying for a long time that we haven’t worked on the box for Kotay. We had made some rough measures in the past and come up with some arrangements.

When we met last, we had discussed making a treasure chest like box. With only “Kotay” as the lettering on top.

Last Sunday we went to Itsy Bitsy and got a empty chest made of -what feels like- low density plywood.

Sud likes the idea of a flat treasure chest more. Intially I thought the curved surface was better for squeezing in the terrain bag snugly, but now, I too think it should be flat chest. We do need to attach handles on the sides for ease of use.

Resource Structures/Buildings

For the resource structures, we wanted to capture something that connected us with rural India. Chris (@zombieking) was able to work from those ideas to bring to these pieces to life – some which, I feel are spot on.

In the first piece on the left, the face of the house has the traditional ‘tinnai’ for people to sit, gossip and play cards. The other facade on the right actually looks a bit like a well.

The utensils themselves help me complete the scene of food being prepared in a small household.

I love the sack of grain (above, extreme right) particularly the one in which the grain is flowing out. There is a sense of action and flow.

The lumber camp, especially the one with the ax on the tree stump looks good. I do feel we need to think about something more reminiscent of the everyday lives of the people who collect firewood for example. Chris had made a bundle of twigs, which looked interesting. We will be exploring more soon.

Character Pieces

Explorers, Cavalry and Cannon

Right now we are making these pieces as actual characters rather than symbolic objects.

Finding “Her”

The explorer in Kotay is also the builder.  When I explain the game to people, I always assume that the explorer is a “he”, just like every piece other than the Queen in chess is implicitly male in my head.

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So, the explorer and builder in Kotay will be female. We are working with that in mind now.

Cavalry likely to become Archers

We haven’t really got far into thinking or building the cavalry. Although we have thought of converting this piece to an archer, to make it consistent with the way the piece attacks.

Cannons – Zamburak (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zamburak)

I only mentioned cannons on camels and elepahants in passing to Chris. He seems quite taken by the idea. Who wouldn’t be :)!

So we might model cannons as Zamburaks – camels mounted with guns. Used mainly by ancient Iranians is war.

Famously, used in the Battle of Karnal(1739 A.D.) between Nader Shah and the Mughal Emperor Muhammad Shah – at the end of which Delhi, the capital of Mughal Empire in India was ransacked and areas to the west of the Indus river were annexed to the Persian empire. The persian army with its hundred of cannons and zamburaks was victorious over thousands of cannons and war elephants. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Karnal)

<Image Atribution: MohammadReza Domiri Ganji (Own work) via Wikimedia Commons>

The structure of the piece itself

Kotay Ver 1.0 had character pieces standing on top of buildings.

In Kotay Ver 2.0, ZombieKing is building a co- occupancy model, where the building is actually a facade, leaving enough space for one character on the tile.

We are still deciding whether the base for the buildings should be square or circular.

Capitals and Kotays

We want the capital to look like an Indian palace or forts. Mostly inspired from palaces in Rajasthan. The Kotays should be more imposing military structures – and the Capitals more ornate. Balancing the Yang and Yin, if you will.

This the first piece ZombieKing made

and he is now working on version 2.1. The picture below is the beautiful work in progress, it will get more domes and so on.

Chris and I talked about the design for Kotay yesterday. We want to make some nice stylized 3D pieces. Also want all the bits of the game to feel like it had a theme.

Some Sculpting Materials

Polymer Clay: brands like Fimo and Sculpy. Nice to work with – can be baked at 130C in a regular oven. Then can we worked on with sculpting tools for details.

Or we could add some details made out of the air drying material below.

Green Stuff – Feels rubbery. Hardens in 30 -60 min (http://www.greenstuffworld.com/en/55-green-stuff).

Milliput – brittle/cracks, hardens in 6 hours.

A combination of green stuff and milliput – better texture to work with and reasonable drying time.

Terracotta clay – air drying (I has this and tried my first set of frightening sculptures with it!) – brittle, not easy to work with, smelly. Clings on to your skin.

Design ideas

Laser cutting the tokens out of acrylic sheet. Shapes like clover trees, round coins and fish/mangoes food.

Making a seamless theme – we want to root the designs in India. The idea is to do bunch of sketches as a starting point.

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