When we started designing Incursion: America, we wanted to incorporate design features of our favorite games. An aspect of Games Workshop products that I really enjoy is being able to customize minis. Their vast number of parts allow me to build an army where no two minis look the same. We wanted to bring this aspect to our game. Our first personnel game pieces we designed had a variety of pieces for customization. The image below shows the variety of parts we originally created for our US National Guard soldiers. You can find other references to our past customizable minis in posts such as “US National Guard Troops Deployed” and “3D Model: Russian Pilot Face“.
A problem with this approach is it causes some unnatural poses because pieces (usually arms and weapons) cannot rest up against the body the way they would in real life. Some combinations of parts looked awkward. Though we were concerned, it wasn’t until Youtuber and gametester Crabbok pointed it out that we we decided we had to do something about it.
Polling Results: Static vs Custom Mini Poses
We did some polls on Facebook and Reddit gaming related forums. 90% of respondents favored static poses. Only 10% of the people wanted the ability to customize the pose for their minis. Many people also commented that they preferred games that used meeples, standees, and other simple game piece options, further enforcing that mini customization wasn’t a priority. Thanks to the folks on the Facebook Board Game Revolution, Reddit r/boardgames, and others for your help!
A Change of Plans
At this same time, we were starting the 3D modeling for our Russian elite RATNIK soldiers. This would be our first experiment in creating game pieces with static poses. We were very pleased with the way they turned out. As you can see from the 3D model images below, it would have been impossible to make individual pieces that would allow you to build these poses from separate parts.
RATNIK MINI GUNNER 
RATNIK SQUAD LEADER 
RATNIK RIFLEMAN 
RATNIK BREACHER
This forced us to change our approach and rework all of our personnel minis. Here are some of the new US National Guard minis. As you can see, minis like the machine gunner in the prone pose wouldn’t be possible if we were using separate parts.
US National Guard – Machine Gunner 
US National Guard – Javelin 
US National Guard – Rifleman w/Grenade
Kickstarter Launch Pushed to Summer 2020
This rework has forced us to push back our Kickstarter launch date to the Summer of 2020. While we are not thrilled with the delay, we are wanting to bring you, our player comminity, along on this journey with us. We take your comments seriously and are using them to build a game that you want to play. Thanks for hanging with us! And keep that feeback coming! Together, we will design a game that will be awesome!