Happy April Gearlocs!

We hope you’re all staying safe out there. The contents of the Splice & Dice Kickstarter are making their way to CTG fans around the globe (for more on your region, check out our last update). We’re happy to hear how well it’s being received, but today, we’re here to discuss the latest product in CTG’s line. No, not Cloudspire: Ankar’s Plunder, though that is extremely cool, and why not sign up for the 24-hour email reminder here?

This product is something different, bold, and new.

The time is November 2019. We, like most of the world, it seemed, were absolutely loving The Mandalorian on Disney+. What part, you ask? All of the parts, and don’t interrupt us. We loved the practical effects, we loved the costuming, we loved the setting, we loved the inclusive take on all Star Wars lore past and present, and we loved Carl Weathers (even though he never mentioned the key ingredients for how to get a stew going).

But there is one part that we loved more than all the other parts. You’ve probably already guessed that yes, we’re talking about Baby Yoda.

Now, of course, of course, we know he’s not actually called Baby Yoda. Canonically, he’s referred to as “The Child.” But come on! It’s Baby Yoda! You know, from all those memes! We love the one where he drinks tea, or the one when he pushes a button, or the one where he moves his head funny. Or maybe the one where he does a combination of all three of those things? If the memes are to be believed, Baby Yoda’s routine doesn’t feature a lot of variety.

Now, many soulless corporations have jumped on this current trend for a quick buck. That’s not how Chip Theory Games operates. We are passionate about Baby Yoda, and we decided that rather than get into the Baby Yoda business when he still had cultural currency, we would wait until months after The Mandalorian’s season finale, when all Baby Yoda references had aged like a fine wine. We needed to do things right!

But even after we decided to work with the Baby Yoda concept (which again, we want to stress, was strictly a labor of love and not something Adam thought up after reading an article on “zeitgeist synergy”), there was still the question of how we were going pull it off. While we believe Baby Yoda is a massive enough cultural force to transcend such trivial boundaries like “language” or “borders” or “copyright law,” he is technically a piece of Star Wars intellectual property (crass as it seems to reduce him to such terms). And the Star Wars board game license, as many of you already know, is currently held by Fantasy Flight Games.

So, we did what anyone would in this situation: We decided to hire Andrew Navaro, former studio head at Fantasy Flight, to bring the Baby Yoda piece of the Star Wars license along with him to Chip Theory. Why Andrew, you ask? Well, our press release at the time cited reasons like his commitment to excellence and experience working on player-friendly designs, but now, we can be honest: His last name is Navaro, which is only a couple of letters different from the Mandalorian’s home base of Nevarro, and we thought hiring the person with the most Mandalorian-adjacent name would be our best bet of snagging that sweet, sweet Baby Yoda prize.

Unfortunately, none of this is how copyright or licensing works, which Andrew only informed us of after he took the job. Call it a very expensive oversight.

So, we didn’t have Baby Yoda, but we still had all of the goodwill and joy he’d placed in our hearts, and we needed to share that with all of you for, you know, very creative and organic reasons. So, instead, we’ve created the next best thing.

 The Gearloc Child

Allow us to introduce the featured (and only) product in our brand new Too Many Bones ManDaelorean line, The Gearloc Child! Please note that though this young Gearloc may look like Ghillie, it is not Baby Ghillie, nor it is Ghillie’s baby. It is a completely distinct and original concept not related to Ghillie other than that they are both part of the same rich fictional universe.

For the next 7 days, you can preorder The Gearloc Child here for $10 plus shipping. The Gearloc Child will then be made available during our standard holiday promotional window between Black Friday and New Year’s for $15.  Check out the gameplay specs below!

Setup & Gameplay

When playing a game of TMB with The Gearloc Child (shouldn’t we all play more games with our children), during setup you will shuffle five special loot cards into your loot deck. During your adventure, if one is discovered, you can choose to equip (although we prefer to use the term “nourish”) The Gearloc Child. If you do, The Gearloc Child functions as a heavy piece of loot, and you cannot drop him for any reason once you pick him up (and why would you?). As you find more of these loot cards (via rewards, trades and searches), you unlock The Gearloc Child’s skill dice, which can be used once per encounter, just like an adult Gearloc’s can. Awww… *sniff* He’s already growing up.

Skill Dice

Like Baby Yoda, The Gearloc Child is very cute, memeable, and in possession of a variety of cool abilities that could dramatically backfire when you least expect it. We think it marries the world of Too Many Bones with our boundless love of Baby Yoda and The Mandalorian as a whole. After all, both the game and the TV show feature hardy protagonists who, despite their cool loot, get absolutely wrecked by their opponents at every opportunity.

The Forceful Distraction skill die allows you to stay on the Battle Mat after being KO’d, healing yourself to the total rolled on the die.  Ribbits Snack is The Gearloc Child’s adorable (if a little misguided) attempt at restoring your health, providing you with an HP boost and a poison counter (clever Gearlocs know that they can use this skill to reduce their existing poison counters, but you’re also clever, so we don’t need to tell you that). Finally, Deflect Effect represents The Gearloc Child’s tendency to reverse the best laid plans of your foes, bouncing effects off of you and onto an adjacent enemy…hopefully? Want even more details? See the video below!

Now, we know what you’re thinking. Is this real? And the answer, in one sense, is that it’s very real, in that Baby Yoda and The Gearloc Child both hold treasured places in our hearts and give us the strength to get out of bed each morning. Then again, how real is anything these days? But also, in another sense, The Gearloc Child is very real in that if you owned it, you could use him in your Too Many Bones games and scold your friends when they accidentally refer to him as “Baby Ghillie” (which, we cannot stress enough, he is not).

However, while The Gearloc Child will be as real as a fantasy game character can be, he has not yet been made. How are Gearloc children made? Well, that’s a complicated subject that you’d probably be better off asking your parents about, but we can tell you that this particular Gearloc Child will be produced in a factory and sent to you when it’s done. Given current uncertainty about supply chains and current events, we can’t say with exact certainty when that will be, but we estimate The Gearloc Child will be delivered in November…if this is, in fact, real. By that time, the first season of The Mandalorian will be but a faded memory, allowing the precious cargo of The ManDaelorean to shine all on his own (with proper adult supervision).

So be careful out there! Lots of people are out to fool you today! Add a little love to your heart by preordering The Gearloc Child at the link below!…if it’s a real link at all. 😉

PREORDER THE GEARLOC CHILD HERE

A very special shout out to Ryan Howard, who wrote pretty much all of the humorous content in this post. If you found it amusing, give him a shout in the comments!

Josh, Adam, and Josh (Ghillie)