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Achtung – Efreets!

What’s twenty feet tall, weighs fifty-five tons, runs at sixty-three mph and is armed to the teeth with enough firepower to level a city block? Why REDLINEs efreets of course!

When we set out to create the world of REDLINE probably the very first thing we did was design the style of units we wanted in our game. Now, any good sci-fi world worth it’s salt always takes care to have its own distinct and memorable mechs and we wanted REDLINE to be no different as I strongly felt the success the game would rely heavily on the strength of ours.

But how did they come to be? What makes them different from the mechs in other sci-fi? And just what the heck is an efreet anyways? Read on as this week’s article is the story of how our efreets were born.

What the heck is an efreet?

It’s one of the questions we’re asked the most about, what exactly is an efreet and how did you decide on that name?

I remember, once we had the idea to actually create REDLINE, one of the very next steps involved naming our mechs. It was that important and came before work on anything else really had begun. As I mentioned above, every good sci-fi property always comes up with a unique take on their mechs and that also included names. There are tons of memorable names all the types of mechs out there that give them their own distinct flair. From Battlemechs, Gundams, Gears, Zords, Armored Cores, Veritechs, and VOTOMS, the list goes on and on.

To find the ideal prospect for this ultra important decision, I simply fired up Google and started searching for catchy names that hadn’t been used yet but felt strong. (I actually had a small list, that has since been lost, of possible names which I wish I had held onto as I’d love to go back and see what was written.) Eventually my searching stumbled into mythology and while browsing the Wikipedia page of fantastic creatures and beasts, I stumbled across the entry for an ifrit.

Also spelled as efreet, the ifrits were mythological Islamic demons that lived in the underworld that possessed some genie like qualities. That was a good start to be sure. Even better, at this early time in development it had been suggested REDLINE look into adopting an Indian and Middle Eastern culture in its aesthetic as a way for our sci-fi world to stand out. Eventually that idea merged into the BRIMEA, (Brazil, Indian and Middle Eastern Alliance) a wealthy and scientific powerhouse that developed many of the advanced technologies in REDLINE lore. After all, it only made sense that if it was the BRIMEA engineers and scientists who helped to create the very first efreets in the game that they would grant their new invention a culturally appropriate name.

And so like that, the term efreet stuck. It sounded cool. It was unique. And naming our war machines after frightful demons was exactly the type of vibe we wanted.

Even better, the term reminded me of one of my favorite television shows growing up as a kid. In the criminally underrated 90s cartoon, Exo-Squad, the pilots all fought in these really cool power armor suits called Exo-Frames, or “eframes” for short. Think Ripleys power loader from Aliens but militarized. The fact that the efreet name instantly hit me with a dose of old school nostalgia was just an added bonus. And having the hard “E” sound at the beginning just naturally sounded techy so it was a win-win.

Now that our mechs finally had names we had to figure just what an efreet was.

A question of scale

Any fans of mech based games or anime knows that they come in all shapes and sizes. From huge and lumbering weapons of war to nimble power armor sized suits of armor and everything in-between. There is a surprising amount of variety in what is essentially giant walking robots.

If you read my earlier design articles, you’ll know growing up I played a lot of Battletech and the game had a huge impact of my youth and the development of REDLINE. But one thing that always bugged me with the game and its Battlemechs specifically, was how inconsistent their size and scale fluctuated. At times art from the game depicts them towering over city buildings and through forest canopies while others may show them darting down an alleyway. Add to the fact that many of these giant metal monsters often weighed over seventy or eighty tons, which sounds impressive on paper, but when you realize the weight of an M1-Abrams tank is just over sixty tons and small enough it can be airlifted it gets messier. Granted, yes, I know, the future materials that Battlemechs would be made of would be super lightweight to offset this, we’ll come back to this, it still always bugged me as a player entrenched within the lore.

So with that in mind, we had a simple idea. Sixty tons you say? Ok, so what if you simply took an M1 tank and just stood it up on its rear? Imagine doing so and you’ll be very close to the size and scale of the efreets in REDLINE. Granted, some of the lighter efreets may be a bit smaller and a few of the bigger ones may reach the height of a third story apartment in size, but for the most part they are all probably smaller than many of the more popular mechs in media. And that’s good, because we wanted them to be realistic weapons of war.

A problem a lot of mechs in sci-fi have is there impracticability. The larger ones are too cumbersome to ever be deployed and are sitting ducks in the world of smart weapons. Smaller ones have have more use, but are overly expensive and complicated for what they are. Besides, rare is the situation where an engagement wouldn’t be better served by committing tanks or infantry to the scene.

But in the world of REDLINE, efreets were made to combine the best aspects of infantry and heavy armor and carry with them the best aspects of both. Their smaller size means an efreet can still easily fight in enviroments like urban warfare without leveling the city in the process, but still have the firepower to devastate any enemy unfortunate enough to cross their line of sight. They have the speed to be rapidly deployed in any theater of war and the versality to fight in any environment, even overcoming the obstacles of space if need be, which in REDLINE’s near future world, happens often, Efreets can effectively hold territory as large metal boots on the ground or be sent deep behind enemy lines on special forces missions by blending into the terrain instead of dominating it.

Logistically they require little more effort to field than would a platoon of tanks. And for situations where insertion may be difficult, well in a sci-fi setting, orbital drop pods solve a problems.

Nuts and bolts

Now that the efreets were starting to take on an identity of their own, we wanted to flesh out what these things should actually look and how they function. This was a lot of fun to create and resulted in pages of design documents and notes that explained things like what powered an efreet and what they were constructed of. You know, all the important geeky stuff.

It was during this process that we first started to lean heavily into keeping the look and feel of REDLINE as near future as we could. The game takes place in 2060, only forty years from now, so what technologies could we expect between now and then that could realistically take us to giant walking robots?

Here are a few of the concepts we came up with to answer that question.

Almost all efreets are powered by miniature cold fusion (CF) reactors. We thought about nuclear for a time but the idea of leaving small radioactive clouds behind every time an efreet was destroyed in combat was not very environmentally friendly. But if the concept was ever developed, CF reactors could be powerful enough to drive a power hungry efreet while still fitting inside one. Practically this made sense and so cold fusion exists in the world of REDLINE. Thanks BRIMEA!

In addition, we wanted some fantastic sounding materials to make the efreets out of. It only made sense their chassis would need to be extremely strong to support all the weight of their armor and weapons while keeping them relatively lightweight. Modern materials could not take the stress, so foam steel, based on some of the foamed metals in development today sounded cool and plausible so that’s what we ran with.

efreet hangar
Efreet Hangar by Evgeny Bubley

The armor used on efreets ended up being the easiest to conceptualize. Some of the armor being fielded today is extremely durable but would not survive in the year 2060. But carbon fiber and nano technologies today already promise extreme flexibility and strength with lightweight and formability. This makes sense for the substitutes for armor in the year 2060 and so again, we ran with it. Instead of todays heavy armor plates, efreets are covered in molded materials more like a solid form of Kevlar weave.

For the type of limber movement we wanted the efreets to have regulars servos and small motors wouldn’t cut it. So the efreets all use shape memory cables as a synthetic type of muscle that expands and contracts with all the energy generated from the cold fusion reactor onboard. Again, this is also a future technology based on real world research so not as much of a stretch as you may believe.

For the cockpit and controls of an efreet we didn’t need to look far for those ideas as virtual and augmented reality cockpits are already in use with many modern day jet fighters.

When it came to the appearances of the efreets we wanted to try and stay as grounded in reality as possible. We took a lot of inspiration and visual cues from modern day military hardware and went for a more boxy and chunky aesthetic than some of the more slender and organic type mechs popular in various forms of media today. This is why if you look, you may notice some efreet designs have senor blisters, air intakes, and even flood lights to try and keep them looking like real functioning military machines. They all also have some form of cockpit for the pilot instead of some giant robot head with eyes and a mouth. That’s just creepy.

But we also wanted the efreets of each faction to have their own distinctive look to help visually separate them from both sides. This is why many of the United Nations of Earth efreets have smoother lines and shapes to resemble the high tech modern weapons and stealth fighters of western powers. Conversely the efreets of the Crimson Pact of Mars are much more rustic and boxy, often coming across more like old farm equipment than military hardware.

CPM efreets by Stephen Huda

The last efreet box we needed to check on our list was deciding what kind of weapons we wanted to mount on them. Because we wanted to play in that near future world, recognizable weapons like cannons and missiles are widely equipped but we also dipped into some of the fantastic with efreets waging battle with deadly lasers and plasma cannons. Together, cannons, missiles and lasers make up the three different type of weapons you can equip your efreets with in the game.

What you won’t see in REDLINE are weapons like shields and swords, things like tractor beams, or giant efreet sized handguns. Deploying into battle with a giant shield and sword may look cool for some types of anime but didn’t really fit the military style we were aiming for. Really fantastic and far flung technologies like tractor beams or shields also don’t quite fit in the year 2060 and so are absent. And finally though it’s just a design aesthetic, I never personally like the visual of a mech holding a ten foot cannon in its hands. It always seemed slightly cartoony to me and so every weapon in REDLINE is efreet mounted.

Some do have hands of course for the manipulation of their environment, but not to pick up and reload a heavy machine gun haphazardly found on the side of the road, for that would imply somebody actually designed and built such a giant machine gun and that is just silly.

REDLINE Digital Readout

When all is said and done, we’re extremely proud of our efreets and will put them up against any other mechs in any other property. Though REDLINE is a card game, we treat our efreets as the main characters within it. The stars of the show.

And that is why we are excited to share we’ll soon be releasing the REDLINE Digital Readout!

As a free and downloadable e-book and website supplement, the REDLINE: DRO will contain stats, facts, info and lore on all fourteen of the games current lineup of efreets. As you can see, we put a lot of thought and energy into the creation of the efreets and we want to share that with as many mechs fans and gamers as possible. Look for it this spring!

Making the efreets was incredibly enjoyable and one of the best things about being an expandable card game is having the ability to make and create even more! We hope you’ll become as attached to them as we are when playing and building your own personal decks.

Until next time, do things your way.