First, thanks for your patience! We needed a bit of a breather after the campaign, then had to catch up with admin and accounting, and also figure out how to set up the Late Pledges correctly here on Gamefound. But here it is:
LATE PLEDGES ARE IN SEASON!
Finally! Setting up the Late Pledges involved quite a bit more manual work than we had anticipated, but now it is ready at last. We will most likely keep it open until the end of the year. Once we send off everything to production, the quantities ordered will obviously put a stock limit on all products.
So, tell your family and friends that there is still some time to get the game and expansion and be in the first wave of shipping, but it won't last forever. The prices have increased a little bit for the newcomers, to honor our original campaign backers, but pledges still come at a discount compared to MSRP, with favorable all-in bundles also still available.
Essen Spiel 2024: Stand 3-S411 is where it happens!
We are going to share booth 3-S411 with Hegemonic Project.
It may not show on the official map yet, but we're in the system, and for sure, we're going to be there demoing ye ol' Europa Universalis, with a stellar appearance of the Defying Destiny prototype cards and map.
We will also have Flavor Pack 1: Britannia and Flavor Pack 2: Holy Roman Empire.
Be sure to download the Essen Spiel App on your phone, and mark Aegir Games as a favorite. Come say hi, come get Flavor Packs, come get your game signed, come get a Deluxe Edition copy if you want it now!
Also, please give us a Thumbs-up and Must have on the Spiel Essen 24 Preview List on BGG!
Roberto's Week in Oslo
Now for an update on how the project itself is moving along. We finished Flavor Pack 2: Holy Roman Empire, as you can see below:
Right-click and open in a new tab to see a larger version of this photo.
It has 5 new alternative Events for Austria and 4 new generic Events focused on the Holy Roman Empire. As with Flavor Pack 1: Britannia, it'll allow you to create more variation in scenarios that feature this region. Roberto is working on a PDF that will provide suggestions for how to implement Events from the Flavor Packs in our current scenarios, and we'll publish it on our website and on BGG.
We also brought the never-resting Roberto (Mikhs) over from Poland to help us do some writing and testing of new content, and he's here to tell you about that experience below. We look forward to making those new cards available for testing on Tabletop Simulator very soon. Once we return from Essen Spiel at the beginning of October and have spoken to our manufacturer there, we will come back with a detailed timeline and more complete project status update. Anyways, back to Roberto …
In his own words:
Eivind and Victor were generous to invite me to their office to work on multiple things related to the Defying Destiny expansion. 
The minion on Discord
We have been working on the Milestones, Ideas, and Action Cards for the expansion. The main effort here was to promote some new playstyles that perhaps were not that favored in the base game, like coring Areas and having Vassals, while in some other instances, it was about bringing more possibilities, like having some new Action Cards in the Diplomatic deck that dealt with Influence and Trading.
On top of that, we were also having a look at the final Events needed to complete the Expansion. While the majority of them were already created before the Gamefound Campaign, several additional Realms were unlocked as Stretch Goals: the Italian and Baltic Realms packs.
I guess I could highlight the brainstorming that led to the creation of a new type of Events with "Mercenary Leaders" on them. Note that this is still all work in progress that we will be testing, so things could still change before calling them "complete".
When working on the Events for the Italian Realms Pack, we started checking the different historical events and leaders that dealt with the Italian peninsula. Trying to narrow down the narrative to Milan, Florence, and Savoy, we wanted to make a feature of the plethora of interesting Condottieri leaders that, even if sometimes briefly, were able to carve out a Realm for themselves. Sometimes a particular leader was working for multiple Italian Realms during their lifetime, even changing between mortal enemies. Similarly, you could find characters that were working with one or more external Realms that tried to control Italy.
So.... Mercenary Leaders, you say?
In general, they won't look that different from your normal historical Leaders. The key difference is that they will have their name banner in orange so that you can distinguish them at a glance. They will have their name and the combat dice they provide there, just as the existing leaders. However, they will also have a Home Area listed, which will be key to understanding how they work.
Think about Home Areas as their base of operations, the region of the world where they are active, not their place of birth. Some of those Condottieri who served in Italy were not Italian. Examples of this could be Cesare Borgia, who was from Xàtiva.
Most of the Mercenary Leader Events will have an A option that will give a thematic effect, and a B option that will allow you to employ the Mercenary Leader as your General when taking the Event, sometimes with some condition, either a payment or that you follow a particular Religion (for example Skanderbeg will require your Realm to be Christian to become your General).
If you pick the A option (don't take him as your General) and your Capital Area is adjacent by Land to the Mercenary Leader's Home Area, the Mercenary Leader will become your new Ruler.
This opened up a lot of possibilities, since then we could do some "generic" Italian Events that would represent some of those famous Condottieri, that could be used by any Italian Realm. Not just Milan, Florence, and Savoy, but also the existing featured Realms of Venice and Papal States, and those not featured too, like Naples or Genoa.
You are likely going to see Cesare Borgia, Ambrogio Spinola, Andrea Doria, Bartolomeo Colleoni, Ferrante Gonzaga, and Torquato Conti, to name a few.
Soon enough we realized that this feature could be also expanded outside of just Italy. Skanderbeg and Vlad could serve as rulers for small Realms around them, like Albania for Skanderbeg, or Wallachia for Vlad. This way we can breathe thematic life even into the smaller Realms that still remain unfeatured.
Testing a new Scenario (I'm in the picture as well!)
Aegir InklusiveDuring the week when Roberto was here, a group of people from the Oslo Inklusive society joined forces with Aegir to set up a weekend-long marathon of EU:tPoP-gaming. Here's proof:
France ultimately claimed Mediterranean Dominance …
… while the Mamluks triumphed in Enemy at the Gates.
Meeple's Choice AwardsWe're also really proud that we got to the finals of the Meeple's Choice Awards in the Game of the Year category and even won the Silver Medal in the Brain Burner category, thanks to all of you voting for us. Also, we'd like to congratulate our friends at Hegemonic Project for winning the Game of the Year Award with Hegemony!
Joeri's Illustration Journey
Here are some fantastic new illustrations made by Joeri for the Defying Destiny Expansion, please check his other works at: https://joerilefevre.nl/paintings/intro/