The Best Damn Gaming Coins Ever...TWO!

Funded Baby!
over 8 years ago – Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 01:21:43 PM

Thank you beautiful backers for backing our beautiful coins. Under 48 hours and we are already live!  We’re incredibly grateful for all of your support and faith in us. The Best Damn Gaming Coins Ever are heading your way soon and you are going to be delighted.

But why stop with coins we asked ourselves when we were designing stretch goals. And it’s time now to talk about stretch goals. Why stop with coins indeed?

Don’t get us wrong - we love our coins. Sweet jingly bits of gorgeous gaming goodness jangling around in the palm of your hand. But some games don’t use coins at all. For these we need… paper money. And so, with your help, the Best Damn Gaming Coins Ever are going to be joined by the Best Damn Gaming Money Ever!  Bills beautiful backers. Thick lovely beautiful bills.

So stick around, tell all your friends, and let’s go bring on the bills…

Thank you again for your support.

- Team Artana

Coin Stories III - A Tour of Persia and Asia Minor
over 8 years ago – Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 01:11:41 PM

Greetings beautiful backers!  Heading into the weekend, we thought we'd continue our coin stories updates and turn this time to Persia and Asia Minor.   Enjoy!

These areas, now known as Iran and Turkey respectively, have been important sources of arts and sciences for millennia. The coins in this set depict rulers from several empires : King Khusro, a ruler featured in many Persian classics including the famous collection of folk tales One Thousand and One Nights, and Suleiman, the Sultan who lead the Ottoman empire at the height of its glory.

Tiny - Elymais  
Little is known about the Elymais, a small state located at the head of the Persian gulf that was under the control of the mighty Parthian empire for most of its history. The design of Elymyaisian coins is borrowed from Parthian coinage. A portrait of a king is engraved, but it’s not known whether he is a Parthian or Elymaisian king. Some historians speculate that the Elymaisian engravers couldn’t write in Greek and merely copied the letterforms from the Parthian coins, resulting in the elongated dots on the back of this coin.

Small - Parthia   
The Parthian King depicted on this coin, Volgases III of Parthia, claimed the throne to an empire that stretched from the center of modern-day Turkey to the eastern edge of Iran. First acceding to the kingship in 105AD, Volgases took control of all Parthia around 120AD after a years long civil war with other Parthian rulers who also asserted their right to rule over the empire. This coin’s face sports a Greek-style portrait of Vologases, and on the reverse is a seated archer, thought to be the founder of Parthia Arsaces I.

Medium - King Khusro II  
Known as the last major king of Persia before the Muslim conquest and subject of several classic works of Persian literature, King Khusro ruled the Sasanian Empire from 590 to 628AD. His relationship with his wife Shirin is mythologized in the tragic romance Khosrow and Shirin, an epic poem telling of their royally tempestuous courtship.

Large - Sultan HusaynThis ruler reigned over Persia from 1694 to 1722. Legend has it that his father, on his deathbed, had his court eunuchs choose his successor from his two sons. If the eunuchs wanted to make the Safavid empire more powerful, he told them, they should choose his son Abbas, but if they desired peace they should choose Sultan Husayn. Nicknamed “Very well!” after his laid-back approach to governance, Sultan Husayn presided over the fall of the Safavid dynasty. 

Jumbo - Suleiman 
The longest ruling Sultan of the Ottoman empire, Suleiman the Magnificent is known for his military adventures expanding his territory in all direction - establishing control over vast swathes of the Indian and Mediterranean ocean, sending armies into Eastern Europe, Northern Africa, and also against the Persians. But Suleiman also presided over a golden age of Ottoman culture, sponsoring the creation of mosques, palaces, and bridges intended to thrust his empire into the center of Islamic civilization. 

Happy weekend all and thanks for your support!

- Team Artana

Another Stretch Goal Unlocked - Paper Money BillBundles!
over 8 years ago – Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 01:05:39 PM

Thanks to all of your support we’ve unlocked another stretch goal - you are amazing!  In addition to 20 themes and over 100 different coins, we now also have paper money available in the campaign. Introducing BillBundles – packages of beautiful ultra-premium paper money printed on thick luxurious cardstock. Each BillBundle contains 60 total bills of varying denominations including:

• 20 One Dollar Bills 
• 10 Five Dollar Bills 
• 10 Ten Dollar Bills 
• 10 Twenty Dollar Bills 
• 10 Fifty Dollar Bills 

To keep it simple, we’re treating each BillBundle as equivalent to one PiecePack of the coins for pledging purposes. Pledge $5 and you can get a PiecePack of coins or one BillBundle. Pledge $25 for a 6-pack theme reward and you can get 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 BillBundles along with your coin PiecePacks as long as the total is 6 items. For example, pick 2 BillBundles and 4 PiecePacks, 3 BillBundles and 3 coin PiecePacks, etc. A 12-pack collection for $50 lets you pick any combination of 12 PiecePacks or BillBundles.  Overpledge at the $50 tier for BillBundles just as you would for PiecePacks.

 We already previewed the bills to you in our last update and we’ll be incorporating them into the campaign page so that’s all for now. Next stretch goal: paper money featuring famous women of history.  Here come the ladies!

 Thank you all for your support! 

 - Team Artana

Bills are getting closer...
over 8 years ago – Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 01:03:51 PM

As we approach our next stretch goal being unlocked, we thought we'd share a preview of the goodies to come.  The history of the bills is related to the feedback we received about the money in our recent Tesla vs. Edison game.  Backers have been incredibly enthusiastic about the overall quality of the bills there and people have been asking us repeatedly if they can get them anywhere. Well now they can. These are going to printed on thick luscious cardboard with a beautiful finish - no flimsy money here!  This first set of bills is based off of our TvE bills with colors modified to track the color scheme of the coins.  All of our Best Damn Ever is designed to work together.  

Once we unlock these then it's on to the ladies. We've created a set featuring amazing women from history that we think you're going to love even more!  

Thank you again for your support - you make this all possible!

- Team Artana

Caveat and the usual disclaimer that these are still being tweaked so you may see some small changes in the final versions.

Coin Stories II - Mongols!
over 8 years ago – Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 12:58:11 PM

Thanks again for your continued support.  This latest update continues our exploration into the history of the Best Damn Gaming Coins Ever - TWO!  Today we feature our selection of coins from the Mongol empires.

Mongol Theme

The Mongols held one of the most expansive empires in mankind's history, and exerted control over largest contiguous territory ever recorded. This set includes coins dating from the height of the Mongol Empire, during the reign of Kublai Khan, and its dissolution under the rule of Toghon Temur.

Tiny - Zhi Zheng Tong Bao
The design of this coin was created during the Yuan dynasty or the rule of the “Great Yuan Great Mongol State”, an empire established by Kublai Khan in 1271 that lasted almost one hundred years until 1368. It was minted under the rule of Toghon Temur, the last “Khagan” or emperor of the Mongol Empire. In 1368 Toghon Temur was overthrown by members of the White Lotus Society, a millenarian religious movement of Han Chinese who worshipped Wujimu “The Mother of The Unlimited” and believed that the “Maitreya”, essentially the return of Buddha to regenerate a spiritually depraved world with his wisdom, was imminent.

Small - Qara’unas
This coin dates from the great Mughul Empire, which, at the height of its power extended its control over the majority of the Indian subcontinent. Muslims who claimed to be related directly to Ghengis Khan, the Mughal rulers practiced a type of governance typical of Mongol empires: they did not intervene in regional affairs directly but balanced the interests of local rulers within a highly centralized bureaucracy.

Medium - Kublai Khan
Kublai Khan’s massive Mongolian Empire stretched east to west from the Pacific ocean to the Black sea and north to south from Siberia to Afghanistan. It was at the behest of Kublai Khan that the merchant Marco Polo first traveled to China—he had never seen Europeans before, he said, and he had many questions about European political and legal systems. After meeting with Marco Polo, Kublai requested that he deliver a letter to the Pope, requesting 100 Christian trained in the Seven Arts: grammar, rhetoric, logic, geometry, arithmetic, music and astronomy. The attempt to fulfill this request prompted Marco Polo to begin his 24 year journey throughout the Central Asia and China. 

 Large - Hulago Khan
 Under Hulago Khan’s leadership the Mongol Empire underwent massive changes, expanding its territory and influence throughout the east establishing the Khanate of Persia and setting the foundations for the Safavid Dynasty. His epic vision for the future of his empire led him to extend an invitation to the French King Louis IX to join forces in a strategic alliance to crush their mutual enemies the “Saracens”, or Muslim tribes, that controlled the holy land of Jerusalem. On the coin’s obverse side, a representation of a hare can be seen jumping over a moon, and on the reverse is the Shahada, an Islamic creed known by all Muslims, “There is no god but God. Muhammad is the messenger of God.” 

 Jumbo - Mahmud Ghazan
 Mahmud Ghazan ruled the Ilkhanate, a breakaway state of the Mongol Empire that was based in present-day Iran, from 1294 to 1904. Renowned as a reformer, Ghazan standardized Ilkhanate currency and set the Mongal Empire’s fiscal policy , built hospitals and schools, and created military units of “redeemed” Mongol boys rescued from slavery. The front of this coin reads “There is no God but Allah, Muhammad is His Prophet/ Minted in Tabriz in year seven xxx” and the back reads “By the strength of the Heaven/ Ghazan Mahmud/ Coin struck for Ghazan”

- Team Artana