We said we’d let you know when the proofs were right. Well, the proofs are right. The refreshed Salt Mystic Starter Set is live!
If you’ve been following along, you’ve already heard me confess to some questionable decisions about the old card art. Turns out learning a new trick in Blender and needing that trick on a game card are two entirely different things. It took me an embarrassingly long time to sort that out.
The new art had a better question to answer. What would make you pick up one of these cards and want to know where that gunslinger came from, or what happened in the patch of ruins they’re fighting over?
So what’s in the box?
We’ve repackaged the game into a single 72-card Starter Set featuring Karak: The Hammer of the Red Witch and his Mountains faction versus Segmond: The Loreblade and his wily Salt Flats faction.
Karak’s Mountains deck and Segmond’s Salt Flats deck are both in there, along with terrain, measuring cards, and player aids. The Start Here card has a QR code for the refreshed rules, and First Clash walks you through your first fight.
If you’re new around here, Salt Mystic is a science-fantasy skirmish game where you move the cards around the table. Turn a gunslinger to face a threat. Tuck them behind a rock outcropping. Get cocky about how far away the other guy is and find out exactly what a ball lightning carbine can do.
Where can I learn more?
By the way, we’re celebrating all this by way of a very special reunion with an old friend.
Oh yeah, who’s that?
Brian here. One of my personal favorite characters in all of the Salt Mystic universe is a volatile powder-keg fellow named Cyprian. The image of him has been with me since the original novel, Tearing Down the Statues: the thing that started all of this. Unnaturally tall, in a long leather coat with heavily tattooed hands in red & black, and with the illusion of flames erupting from black shoulderboards, he’s unpredictable and deadly with the signature weapon in Salt Mystic: the ball lightning carbine.
I thought it would be awesome to 3d print him.
Ooh, is there a model?
There’s something funny about spending all this time getting plasma gunslingers to look right on flat pieces of cardboard and then turning around to see if I can get one of the first people in this world to stand up on the desk. I’ve known Cyprian a long time. I want to see how that coat looks when I can turn him around in my hand.
I uploaded the text of Tearing Down the Statues to the Pro version of ChatGPT and asked for a better illustration than I would be able to come up with. It took a few passes to get it right but when it finally landed, I was very, very impressed! You can see the tattered, weathered coat, the carbine shield, that deadly ballistic knife he carries, and those amazing shoulder boards. Very cool.
Then I converted that illustration to a new image appropriate to load to Meshy AI: a separate AI tool which generates 3d models from images. I had it add a base, remove the color, and emphasize some geometry better so Meshy would pick up on it. Then I took that to Meshy and got the STL file.
It took me forever, back in ChatGPT, to close some shell holes and fix some errors Meshy left procedurally. Then I spent forever in Chitubox trying to get the supports right. I never did successfully address some internal cavities but the supports wound up great. I’m not a 3d modeler, man. Not at all. And I don’t have the patience to find all those overhangs and fix them one by one. So I just printed it and hoped for the best.
I’ll be honest, when I scraped that thing off the printer plate for the first time and saw that guy there in my hand, a character who existed only in my ghostly imagination for over a decade, I got emotional.
It was really great to actually meet him.
I uploaded the pic of the printed model and had AI generate the paint scheme, which is portrayed here. I didn’t paint that, thought I’d love to pass that off as my handiwork. I wish I could tell you my paint job was that awesome. Unfortunately, no.
But anyway, I liked what I saw and read off all my acrylic paint colors from old sets I had lying around and some Privateer Press colors. Plus, I bought some metallic paints from Amazon back in the day which always turned out well. That way, ChatGPT knew what specific colors to use in its step-by-step painting instructions. Very prescriptive and helpful.
And nuln oil. I love nuln oil. It forgives all sins in bad paint jobs by making shadows in crevices. I totally need that sort of magic in painting models.
And there’s my guy. Cyprian. In my hand, pointing his gun at me from my bookshelf.
Maybe this doesn’t mean anything to you and you can’t relate to why I’d be excited. But I hope that’s not the case. Fifteen years ago, I wracked my brain to come up with a cool aesthetic for this guy. I remembered Firestorm from the old DC comics and his flaming head illusion. I remembered old John Wayne and Clint Eastwood movies. I gave him a scar on his face just to give him a history and thought bright red & black tattoos on his hands would be unique.
It was me trying to dream up a fascinating character and summon imagery without being able to really see the guy.
And here he is.
Anyway, your takeaway should be that the Salt Mystic game is renewed and repackaged for easier entry to this world and you should check it out.
Your second takeaway is this author guy wrote a book with a character important to him and through modern wizardry is holding an accurate model of him in his hand. If we had flying cars, I’d truly agree we’re living in the future. I thought I’d share one of my favorite scenes from the book with this guy, Cyprian Talgo, to give you some context so the celebration makes sense. He’s in a corridor in an undersea complex surrounded by four gunfighters who’ve made the mistake of telling him they’d like to see what he can do with that weapon.
Click the arrow to expand the scene.
“You want to see something amazing?”
“Did I upset you, lapdog?” Cyprian’s voice was soft.
“You can’t just threaten them like that. Jeopardizes the whole structure we’ve got here. You brought it on yourself, honestly. And I’ve got a lot of anticipation here; because I was just going to have someone put a slug in your forehead on the ship. A couple of the guys thought better of it to see what you could do.”
“Risky.”
“I don’t know about that. Fascinating though. Nobody’s going to start a war over you…the world isn’t like that anymore, Talgo.”
“Less chatter!” The guy behind Cyprian spat this out.
“You want to see something amazing?” Cyprian’s grin was sinister. Thrilled.
Another of those surrounding Cyprian, the one with a burn on his cheek, smiled wickedly, “Whatever. Rich boy.”
The young Talgo watched the face of the one who’d last spoken, the one excitedly awaiting a show full of drama and color, swirling action and a thrilling recount for his friends. He did the same for some of the others and saw the same eagerness, a boyish delight in a playground brawl with the biggest kid in school. He had clearly seen this before and was maybe surprised at how alike these sorts of people are.
“I know your tricks, jay bird.” A darker man to Cyprian’s side spoke, one with an eye squinting more than the other. “Two breakers in your carbine – fires twice as fast. You prance around like a dancing idiot while we panic and try not to shoot each other because you’re you. They write books about you.”
Ventrey had been watching the olive man who’d spoken, then at last turned back to Cyprian, “Give me back my gun.”
Cyprian kept silent. He turned his eyes to each of the men about him, waiting on one of them to do something other than threaten. Impatiently, he raised his eyebrow and gently shook his head as if to signal ‘well, I’m waiting’. Perhaps they were only blustering. At any rate, when he moved, it was with ferocity.
Like a crocodile attacking, Cyprian leaned in and thrust his right heel behind him, crunching backwards the knee of the man approaching him there. The fellow quickly went down grunting like an animal and collapsing around that knee. Before he had even fallen, Cyprian had shifted his carbine to his forearm and slung a ball of lightning through the falling man’s forehead exploding it in charred and smoking fragments.
Smoothly as if he’d seen their return fire in slow motion or on game film beforehand, Cyprian twisted the insulated shield of his carbine through the air blocking their shots in sequence. He spun a full circle throwing his carbine arm out to smash Ventrey’s jaw with the barrel, drawing out a tooth and fired multiple precise shots off, throwing the others into defensive moves shielding themselves. Lightning popped and rushed around them and hissed as balls popped out of existence in searing flames.
— Tearing Down the Statues, Chapter 4
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That’s what I wanted to share with you today. I’d be highly honored if you checked out the new game and let us know what you think. It’s been years of work culminating in something everyone involved with Grailrunner is very proud of.
Till next time,
