We thought it would be a great idea to give you guys a bit of back story about Pillage. How it was created, how some of the illustrations were created and the plans for the future!

Pillage began as a passion project of Guillaume, a French author who during Covid, wanted to develop a ruleset that he could end up playing at his wargaming club.

Guillaume did incredible job at creating a book from scratch. Writing it, editing it, drawing diagrams, building all the terrain and doing all the miniature photography himself etc, all on a small budget, not ever intending become a commercial venture. If you’ve ever read the book, you will know he did an incredible job, the miniature photography alone is some of the best we have seen in a book. 

We (Victrix) became aware of Pillage after seeing countless images online by Guillaume of Victrix figures on incredible terrain pieces. As the rules were originally written in French, we reached out to Guillaume, and we quickly agreed it made sense to get the rules translated into English. So we did just that!

Being a graphic designer himself Guillaume did a lot of the illustrations himself, and an illustrator was also hired for some of the illustrations. Due to budget limitations, Guillaume decided to use AI to help aid with some of the illustrations. It was used to help add some atmosphere to some of the pages. Whilst AI was used, none of the illustration are 100% AI, all images used were reworked in some way. 

A lot has changed over the past few years, and our understand of AI and the ethical implications of it have changed dramatically. Our hobby is hands on, creative outlet, and human artistic side to it must be protected. Because of this, we will be releasing a revised edition of the original Pillage ruleset, with only human made art. 

It goes without saying that going forward, none of our projects will ever contain generative AI.

As you will know we have already started on multiple new things. Both the Pillage Intro Set and the Siege rules include incredible artwork talented artists. The Siege rulebook contains artwork from no less than 7 artists, these include: Ayman El-Sakrane, Even Amundsen, Gabriel Pissondes, Jonny Sun, Leslie Biao, Prosper Tipaldi and Stijn Windig.

A note from the Author Guillaume:

“Pillage has been a public project in France for several years. I documented the creative process on my YouTube channel, because Pillage
wasn't initially a commercial project. It's a set of rules I wrote for my club, which I shared on social media, and it enjoyed a little success.

Being an artist myself, I always dreamed of making my own book. So I decided to launch a crowdfunding campaign with my small community. I thought I would sell 150 copies to cover the printing costs, but I sold several hundred, and that's where the success began.

But the book was made in my personal time, with my personal budget. I bought the figurines, painted the scenery, took the photos, wrote the text, drew the diagrams, did the layout and designed the cover. I paid an artist to do some of the illustrations in the book, but I didn't have the budget to do much more, as I was convinced that the crowdfunding would be a failure (I had produced almost the entire book before even launching the crowdfunding campaign).

So I used generative AI to help me with some of the illustrations, but AI has its own limitations and is incapable, for example, of producing a historically accurate warrior. So, as much as I could, I tried to retouch all the images produced so that they were at least satisfactory. I wanted to create a beautiful, enjoyable book, and I didn't want to ruin the layout and all the work I had done over several years by depriving myself of illustrations that would make it more readable.

Today, Pillage is a success. That is undeniable. And the money generated will allow us, as Victrix says, to pay real artists. We are already in contact with some of them for the future, which is great because I will be able to work with people I have admired for a long time.

All the money generated by Pillage so far has been reinvested either in the project or in the YouTube channel, which is also my passion and allows me to talk about Pillage, make scenery tutorials for the community, battle reports, etc. It's a personal project that feeds another personal project.

Pillage is ultimately the result of the work of an enthusiast, someone who wanted to produce his own book without knowing if it would be a success or not.

I am very proud of it, and if this success now allows me to pay artists I admire, I am very happy.

Thank you to everyone who supports Pillage and makes this dream a reality.

Now, I'm going back to work, I still have a lot to do!”