- Enhanced Game Play – Faster to play, simpler to learn and easier to collect, the new edition will streamline 6 seasons worth of rules, FAQ and errata without losing any of the soul of original DreadBall.
- A New League System – built from the ground up, offering unprecedented options for team building
- Improvements based on your feedback – Reworking Jacks, Giants and MVPs to become central to the game are high on our priority list!
-Balanced Teams – each team will have a unique play-style and will be fairly balanced for competitive gaming.
DreadBall 2nd Edition will be spearheaded by a new 2nd Edition core game, which will include the new rulebook, an up-sized pitch and two new teams. The tooling and production will be funded on a simple, short Kickstarter in July, which also builds awareness of its retail launch in 2017. You’ll get updated rules for every team and Dreadball Ultimate will also get the 2nd edition treatment.
Before anyone gets worried about all their beautiful teams getting discontinued – the focus is on the rules and balance – and while we will add a couple of new teams to the core game (which will come as 1 piece figures to open the game up to a wider market) all the teams will be valid with the next edition. We just want to sort out the rules, make those improvements and get it growing all over again.
Dreadball v1 wasn't a mess and was very successful, and is still great fun to play.
At this point it's a case of the game having expanded a little too much, too quickly and needing to consolidate all of the expansions into a single book, as well as carefully fine-tuning what is already there.
Closer to what happened with Kings of War v2, that wasn't a broken system in v1, it just needed some refinement and careful game balance to turn it into the excellent, really well-polished game that is v2.
There won't be sweeping changes to the rules or lots of new teams released, just a case of polishing the game and tidying it up, at the moment the rules and army lists are spread across 8 different books which isn't great.
DBV1 was a mess, 6 seasons and what 24(?) teams. As you say to much to quickly. Teams were not balanced enough and it got to the point of.....that team does what now? Just seems at this point absolutely pointless to back a Mantic KS first time round as they will be back on KS to 'tidy up' the rules!
Traction in gaming stores isn't a thing anymore? I know a few stores that got burned on Dreadball that likely won't buy in after all the people really interested in the game back the kickstarter.
Dreadball was a 2012 game. This is a Kickstarter to consolodate 8 books worth of rules, rebalance teams, create a new bigger pitch, and new plastic minis to be released 5 YEARS later. I'm not seeing a problem with this.
I'd have been thrilled for a New Edition of Bloodblowl every 5 years that came with new a pitch and miniatures.
Also, as to the point of it: new plastic toys. All your old models are still good, just a new book to go with it. 5 years for a new edition isn't awful. I would see it as a bad thing only if you were forced to ditch your old teams. Personally, all my extreme stuff is sitting in a box, doing nothing. I tried to get traction for the game, and my friends went for guildball. So I'm probably sitting this one out. Not for being burned by Mantic, but friends with zero interest.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also, as to the point of it: new plastic toys. All your old models are still good, just a new book to go with it. 5 years for a new edition isn't awful. I would see it as a bad thing only if you were forced to ditch your old teams. Personally, all my extreme stuff is sitting in a box, doing nothing. I tried to get traction for the game, and my friends went for guildball. So I'm probably sitting this one out. Not for being burned by Mantic, but friends with zero interest.
I finally managed to generate some interest locally. Hopefully none of my DB stuff (pitches specifically) will be made completely obsolete by a new edition.
I always wanted to try DB, so went in for a fair chunk with DBX, as my family is far more interested in violence than they are in sportsmanship.
We have yet to play a single game, and own a fair amount of teams across us.
If it makes things as smooth as the new Deadzone rules, I'd give it a shot.
Hopefully Mantic doesn't overdo it in terms of stretch goals and promises for things that don't come to fruition (DUNGEON SAGA GAME BOOKS, I'M LOOKING AT YOU.)
I'll wait for retail then decide. Only because i like to know what I'm getting, and as I understand when Mantic ran a KS to fix up the DZ rules, the end product was very rather different from what was described in the KS.
Not saying that this was necessarily BAD (i hear DZ 2.0 is good) but as a process i just don't have the time to follow games that closely anymore.
Deadzone didn't end up all that different than what they had originally set out to fix- at least in my eyes.
The fact that they're going to go back and tighten things up with Dreadball, as they have with Deadzone and Kings of War, at least gives me a glimmer of hope that Dungeon Saga's more ambitious parts might someday see a good revision (or at least a strong fleshing out).
It just annoys me that the revised DS rules will be a kickstarter with all of the same ridiculousness in order to get tighter rules and what should have been/was promised for the Adventurer's Guide in the first place. Proofreading notwithstanding.
Another kickstarter, well i'm sure mantic must have a lot of data from the previous ones that shows they have a core group of fans who will back whatever game they put out ( I don't mean that in a bad way). Maybe they feel they don't need an LGS to sell there products when they can go right to the gamers themselves.
scarletsquig wrote: At this point it's a case of the game having expanded a little too much, too quickly and needing to consolidate all of the expansions into a single book, as well as carefully fine-tuning what is already there.
Closer to what happened with Kings of War v2, that wasn't a broken system in v1, it just needed some refinement and careful game balance to turn it into the excellent, really well-polished game that is v2.
Funny that you didn't mention Deadzone, that was the exact sales pitch for DZ2 too but you obviously know that none of that was delivered.
That's why I didn't mention Deadzone, that game needed a rework from the ground up because it was dead in the water 6 months after release, whereas Deadzone v2 is getting a lot more interest.
It's true that the Infestation Kickstarter was pitched as a minor update to the rules rather than a second edition. I would hope the same route isn't taken with Dreadball since it is still being played and has a healthy tournament scene. Basically everyone wants them not to mess around with things too much, there have been ides floated around like a move to d8's that have overwhelmingly been shut down by pretty much everyone who plays. d6 works with hexes and makes the game very approachable.
I think if Mantic were serious about re-balancing they could just publish a living team registry. But in view of previous campaigns I expect there to be enough changes that any previous play experience is rendered meaningless, thus team balance will have to be playtested again from scratch, thus not accomplishing any damn thing, and it'll be printed in hardcopy, so necessitating another rebalance project a few years down the road. KOW got away with it because of the insanely dedicated RC and several months of public testing, DZ did not, DB will not.
I enjoyed what I played of DB1, but will be waiting for retail. Mantic are making huge improvements with their board game material but their customer service and fulfillment record still seems like a borderline joke if any of the multitude of DZ Infestation complaints are anything to go by.
What dreadball really needs is a good quick start guide. The current rulebook is not that easy to understand and it is making playing the first game unnecessarily complicated. Reference sheets for actions is also sorely needed. I haven't played it much because of this, since it makes it a lot harder to entice casual gamers like my girlfriend to play it.
I hope they release a cheap rulebook so you can use your old game.
As I posted on the Mantic blog, my participation in this KS depends on three criteria:
1) I want a simple, rules + the absolutely necessary accessories update bundle for current owners.
2) I want either backwards compatibility for my existing pitch, or have any new pitch included in the update bundle listed above.
3) I have to be made confident that Mantic will include rules for the Martian team early on, given the fuzziness of where they stand with that license. I bought two boxes of that team, I enjoy playing it, and it's my main team. I don't want to have to sit waiting for the Martian rules after the Kickstarter arrives like I am with DZ 2.0. (Martians were my main DZ 1.0 force, too.)
If these criteria are met, sure, I'll toss in to update my core set. But otherwise...man, DB has been idle on my shelf for so long, it won't kill me to wait til retail...to make the decision whether or not to bother updating.
decker_cky wrote: All the changes sound great, but this didn't need to be kickstarted.
Why not? Kickstarter is a great way for people who *will* buy the game to get it at a discount + free models. I'd love for all board games to be kickstaters (assuming they don't screw up the shipping).
scarletsquig wrote: ...Basically everyone wants them not to mess around with things too much, there have been ides floated around like a move to d8's that have overwhelmingly been shut down by pretty much everyone who plays. d6 works with hexes and makes the game very approachable.
More games need to use the redheaded stepchild of dice world: the D12! Does everything a D6 can do but with more variation possible for stats and still works for hexes. Would be nice to use those things for more than just greataxes. Never gonna happen, but that would instantly make me more interested in the game, D6s are boring as heck and the more games that move away from them, the better
Thraxas Of Turai wrote: I enjoyed what I played of DB1, but will be waiting for retail. Mantic are making huge improvements with their board game material but their customer service and fulfillment record still seems like a borderline joke if any of the multitude of DZ Infestation complaints are anything to go by.
On that - I got my "last" missing DKH items about 5 weeks ago (after a 4-month wait), but didn't open them until just now since I had some serious personal stuff upfront at the time. They sent me replacments for the missing parts, but not the damaged/broken/miscast parts, which they seem to have just ignored. I've had to reopen the ticket. So no, their KS customer service is still in the toilet, which is enough reason to wait until retail (discounted retail?) with free shipping over paying their huge KS shipping costs and dealing with their awful, awful customer service.
The fans have spoken! DreadBall – The Futuristic Sports Game is coming to Kickstarter in late July and we recently asked what you wanted to know about 2nd Edition. Below is our question and answer session.
What are you doing to make it more worthwhile to bring star players? They are too expensive and unavailable during normal play, and leave your team too fast, and they eat up XP that could have gone to players you would keep.
There are a couple of suggestions to make it more worthwhile to take your star player miniatures. The first is the introduction of Team Captains as upgrades your team can take.
We’ve effectively got one MVP of the same race as a team, and each is suitably in a unique and heroic pose, so those miniatures would be repurposed as Team Captains – meaning you actually get to play with those miniatures! For example Riller would become a Team Captain upgrade for the Zee team.
They’ll keep their identities so all the background will continue to exist, but they’ll likely have their benefits toned down for balance’s sake.
Those miniatures that don’t go on to be Team Captains, for example Number 88 or Grak, would then be our Star Players – and they will be special. We’ll rework the way they can be included in your team so that they are worthwhile.
I want to know if we will be seeing more teams in hard plastic or resculpts (in resin or restic or metal) and will there be more teams (stands at 25 right now if you include Martians… what about the Martians!!!???!!!)…
With this next edition of DreadBall we want to take the need to assemble your miniatures away so we won’t be doing hard plastic. Instead we’ll be using the same material as The Walking Dead miniatures and figures like the Veer-myn Brood Mother and Night Terror. The plastic is awesome and great for the take-out-the-box match ready figures we want to offer!
There will be at least 2 new teams for the new starter game in this material – but we don’t want to go crazy. We’ve got plenty of teams already.
Would it be possible to include a pdf of the pitch as it’d be great to print it on various materials?
I’m sure we can do something like that at some point!
Will there be changes made to cheerleaders? Currently there are of little use other than to spend left over mc on in a league.
The way Cheerleaders and Coaches are used will be looked at. The great thing about revisiting this game is we’re not adding rules – all of the ideas are in front of us. So this time we know what we’ve got to play with so we can bed it all in right from the get-go. Cheerleaders, which were originally a bolt-on, is just one aspect of the game that will benefit from this approach.
Who is involved, who isn’t, what is the overall process and timeline to get from here to release?
Will it be a transparent process as rules get finalised?
Like Kings of War 2 and Deadzone 2, 2nd Edition DreadBall is ultimately an editing and balancing job and so we’re working with our DreadBall Rules Committee – who better to streamline the game than those who’ve played it the most!
The RC have been given a brief of what we want to do to the game and milestones for deliverables, including playtest events and when it needs to be ready for public beta. We hope to have it all written by the end of the year.
1. New teams ?
2 new player positions?
3. Deadzone style command dice ?
4 d8?
5 When’s the Kickstarter start?
1) Yep!
2) Nope
3) Nope
4) Nope
5) End of July
Are DreadBall Cards still there, or disappear for some Coaching Dice system – like Command Dice in Deadzone 2 (or anything else) ?
The DreadBall Cards aren’t going anywhere ☺
If you could point 3 changes. What would they be?
– A new league system
– Revisit Jacks/MVPs/Giants
– Rebalance the Teams
Those are our focus as well as generally streamlining the rules so they are easier to understand and easier to find.
Will we get to beta test any team changes before they get made official?
Yes.
Will there be a single compendium with the full rules and the stats for every team? What will happen to Dreadball Ulitmate? Will there be expansions?
1) Yes
2) It is actually being revisited at the same time – there will be a DreadBall Ultimate 2 as well!
3) That remains to be seen
Are there any plans to offer conversion stats or endorsed use of the Xtreme sponsors and/or Medi-bot?
Not at the moment.
If cards are returning, can they have full art? It’s a great way to communicate the universe.
We think that’s a great idea! This is exactly the thing that Kickstarter would allow us to improve. We’ll see what happens!
Will shock collars be reviewed? As it sits now they are too powerful and unbalance the game.
All of the special abilities will be revisited.
Will you be able to make free agents less random for those without the whole range.
That is something that will be reviewed.
What steps are being taken to restore balance to the various teams?
We’re reviewing the team and defining their playstyles in more detail whilst reviewing how we can make each of them unique. We’ve some cool ideas on that (more to come) and then they will all be playtested at the same time – the thing with original DreadBall is that Seasons 4-6 were playtested at different times to Seasons 1-3
All the rules in 1 book?
Kind of – with the amount of stuff the game has one book would be quite unwieldy. But there certainly won’t be more than 4 I don’t expect:
1 core rulebook,
1 advanced rulebook,
1 ultimate rulebook
1 team book is the current plan.
What are you going to do to support players that already own all the Mk1 stuff? Will there be an upgrade pack? I saw mention of a bigger board. Does this mean there are more hexes, or the same number but each hex is bigger? Right now models overlap between hexes so larger hexes would be very helpful (On a cloth mat of course). If its a whole new pitch then a KS pledge level of that, any card sets, pdf and hardcopy of the rules would be very helpful.
On the Kickstarter the main pledge level will give you everything you need to upgrade from 1st to 2nd edition – we expect that when you see it, existing players will want to get the full bundle.
The bigger board will have slightly bigger hexes, much like the Grubatek pitch has slightly bigger hexes than the board in the base game. The size and shape of the board will not change.
Are you moving up to the d8 system like with deadzone?
Nope.
I am excited about this, but have few “concern questions…” (1) Will you be upgrading to d8? Please! Gives more spread for teams… (2) Can we use all our old teams in v.2 without any extra purchases? (3) Will you be streamlining cards? (Command dice like DZ seem like an option to consider?) (4) Will you be taking your time on beta testing of teams, before printing?
1) We will not be upgrading to D8, though we recognize the need to ‘give more spread’ to the teams. We are testing a system for this and will let you all know how it goes.
2) No, you’ll need the rules and the stats for your team for a start!
3) The card system will not be replaced, the cards themselves will be updated and be made more interesting.
4) Yep! We’ve got a group of passionate DB players behind this game and lots of playtesting is planned. We hope that the community will help with this as well.
Are you doing anything to speed up the between games process so you can level up your team in a 1 day tournament without slowing things down? Team development is a key part of the game, as is the individuality of the players. Playing a BNIB team is not what we play for.
An app that manages your team might be a way, if it auto does all your maths, and assigns new skills, and keeps you informed what they do.
We are reviewing the entire league system including what you do between games, in part to make it quicker and more interesting. It’s unlikely we’ll totally rely on an app for this, it should be quick without one, but it’s possible there will be one as a game aid.
Would be nice if Forgefathers were a bit more competitive this time.
All of the teams will be reviewed and, as far as is possible, each will be competitive in their own way.
Will the STR stat finally be useful for Strikers?
It kind of doesn’t need to I don’t think, a Strikers primary role is to score using its skill and agility. With such soft armour you probably don’t want them to be in a position where they could use their Strength stat so I don’t think we’ll go out of our way to find a reason to use it.
Will the new teams be given dbx stats as well?
Good question and I would have thought so – at least as digital downloads.
Four Rulebooks is three too many.
Mantic Games
June 27, 2016 at 4:04 pm
I think that one 200+ page plus book is too much, particularly for a new player.
The idea is to have:
1 Core Rulebook – containing the core rules for play a standard game of DreadBall. The bit that most vets will never look at again.
1 Advanced Rulebook – containing the league rules and advanced rules like coaches or mutations
1 Team Guide – containing the stats and special rules for each team. The idea is to have a team’s stats and special rules sheet included in the team box at retail but we need a product that existing players can purchase.
1 Ultimate Rulebook – because it’s a separate product it gets its own rulebook.
The core of 2nd edition revolves around a new 2-player boxed game. It’ll contain the rules, pitch, counters, dice and all the usual gubbinz you need to play but there was also opportunity to review the teams that most people are going to start playing the game with.
We’ve learnt a lot since we did original DreadBall – we’ve discovered new sculptors, new plastic manufacturers, and wanted to employ this learning by introducing two new starter teams, getting away from the Human vs Orc scenario.
It allows us to continue to develop our backstory, and has the added benefit that if you decide to pick up the new boxed game, there won’t be a single design of component you’ll already have, everything will be new – from the teams to the RefBot MKII right through to the pitch and card designs.
The new teams will also come pre-assembled, making the game truly pick-up-and-play, which should help anyone familiar with board games, and will come in the same plastic as The Walking Dead miniatures.
With the notion that we wanted at least 2 new teams adding to the range we went to concept artist Roberto Cirillo with some ideas about what we thought would be appropriate.
Sports Robots
DreadBall is a futuristic sports game, so any team that went into the core game has to scream sci-fi. My first port of call was a new robot team – not one that transforms and not one from the junkyard that you can build yourself, but one with an American Football-style look. It says futuristic. It says sport. And the figures can be a little bigger than the human team making them more tangible, without introducing scale creep, making them consistent with the range and easier to paint if you so choose to paint them.
Here’s the first look:
Yndij Team
To counter the slightly bulkier, heavier sports robot, we felt an agile team would make a good opponent. Rather than create a new race, we thought why not develop the Yndij into their own team? They’ve been on the periphery of DreadBall with the A’teo MVP in Azure Forest and the Yndij Reaver in the DreadBall Xtreme, and now Roberto has provided some concepts of what a team player might look like.
We’ve got some other designs in development – what can only be described as Sumo Alien Lizards and some Cyborg Living Dead (DeadBall?) players – too. As we get more through we’ll share them with you. We’ve also Team Captain designs for each being drawn (what are Team Captains? See our Q+A), RefBot MKII and maybe the odd surprise for anyone who backs the Kickstarter.
Which two teams get included in the starter set is still up for debate, but if you’ve got any thoughts about the concept art let us know
And I finally got my final missing (replacement for broken) Dungeon Saga bits this week. No sweetener, though - and given how long ago DS was supposed to have finished, I'm not inclined to go in on any new campaigns.
While I don't need any more DB teams, "Not Borg" have me sold. Also new pitches with large hex's are welcome, some of the models just don't work on the current pitches.
DreadBall - The Futuristic Sports Game
DreadBall is the only futuristic sports game where your team can take on the best players in the universe – and the galaxy’s greatest sport returns to Kickstarter on the 22nd July with a brand new edition.
Both DreadBall and DreadBall Ultimate will get updated for 2nd Edition.
What is DreadBall?
DreadBall is the futuristic sports board game for 2 players. Take on the role of head coach and attempt to outscore your opponent by playing in one-off exhibition matches or galaxy-spanning leagues that showcase your grasp of strategy and tactics.
Whether you're new to the world of futuristic sport or a seasoned veteran, with 2nd Edition you can expect:
Fast Sports Action: Play against your opponent using updated rules that improve the speed and simplicity of the game.
Match-ready right out of the box: No assembly required, just pick up and play.
Competitive, Balanced Teams: Including new additions like the Yndij and Sports Robots.
The Pitch of the Future: an all-new design with larger hexes – for bigger and better games!
Advanced League System: Compete against your friends using a brand new sets of League rules that will advance your players and resources.
Beyond the Boxed Game: Choose from over 25 Teams, Team Captains, Giants and MVPs as you assemble your own galaxy-conquering All-Star DreadBall team.
Why Kickstarter?
DreadBall 2nd Edition will enable you to play exciting pick-up games and unlock epic leagues that will be talked about by your gaming group for years to come. Our plan is that it’ll let you enjoy the galaxy’s greatest sport whilst reinvigorating the DreadBall scene for the vets, and bring in a host of new players.
DreadBall 2nd Edition will be spearheaded by a new boxed game, which will include the new rules and two new teams. The tooling and production of this will be funded by a simple, short Kickstarter launching on the 22nd July, which also builds awareness of its retail launch in 2017. If you take part you’ll get updated rules for every team and Dreadball Ultimate.
Before anyone gets worried about all their beautiful teams getting discontinued – the focus is on the rules and balance – and while we will add a couple of new teams to the core game (which will come as 1 piece figures to open the game up to a wider market) all the teams will be valid with the next edition. We just want to sort out the rules, make those improvements and get it growing all over again.
We hope that you’ll join us for a new season of the galaxy’s greatest sport. The Kickstarter goes live Friday 22nd July at 1:30pm (GMT), and closes at midnight (GMT) Sunday 7th August.
I played 5 games with the starter and it was good, but by the time the rest of my stuff arrived, I was already busy with the next kickstarter-of-the-month. Now I'm no longer even in a financial position to stockpile games just to own, so I'll be skipping this one.
I'd honestly love - not resculpts - but retools/redos - of the original teams in the new DUST Studios plastic. Those original Remy Tremblay sculpts are fantastic and the PVC plastic doesn't do them any justice. Either that or offer a limited release of them in resin.
Smart move on Mantics part given the looming shadow of Bloodbowl, I'll go in for some stuff as even if I don't play the game these minis are ace for Sci-Fi gaming and RPGing.
I'm interested, especially if they go the Deadzone Infestation route of using that Dust- style PVC. That material worked really good for the special characters they did.
Also sumo reptiles.
Have Mantic mentioned if the new stuff will be cross- compatible with Extreme?
DBX remains as it is as a separate way to play and will not be updated
Will the new teams be given DBX stats as well?
Good question and I would have thought so – at least as digital downloads.
The main pledge level is $100.
They have decided that the Sumo Lizards will use the mostly unarmoured concepts rather than the Samurai type.
If enough people ask for it we can certainly do a pack that will include everything you need to play (the new rulebook, team guide and custom dice set) – whether that’s on the Kickstarter or on our webstore we’re not sure. It’ll probably be around $70-75.
We’re really looking at funding production of the new boxed game, which will be part of our $100 pledge level and include 2 $30 teams
We are not altering DBX as part of this development work.
DaveC wrote: They have decided that the Sumo Lizards will use the mostly unarmoured concepts rather than the Samurai type.
Are there Samurai armor concepts of the lizards out there too, or was that just a word-choice thing? All I've seen are the naked vs. Sumo loin-clothed reptiles, none with Samurai armor.
No problem, I prefer the unarmoured look, but they have said at least one miniature will keep the Samurai armour probably the Captain (new position for DB2 taking the place of MVPs for the most part).
I hope they do an upgrade only pledge level. I'm not sure I want to put another $100 in for yet another box set and more teams - I have 24 already and only the Yindij interest me (and probably more for DZ conversion)
Yeah, lots of good stuff in there for deadzone conversions, the zees and crates work well too (if only they'd done a hard plastic crate sprue for deadzone..).
In response to community feedback, the proposed Core Rulebook and Advanced Rulebook will be combined into one book, not two – so handily we only need one piece of art for this!
Yndij Team
We developed the concept further taking into account some of the community feedback. There’s more skin on show – the tail is now unarmoured and the face is on show. So too did we integrate some of the tribal elements from A’teo’s design and armour. The centre piece of the armour is lifted straight from the MVP’s armour and the feathered helmet and winglets on the shoulder pads are also a nod. There are some tribal rings and a feather on the tail, whilst the bare feet help emphasis movement and agility.
I spoke originally about the Yndij as being quite dynamic and the helmet design is actually influenced by cycling helmets, with that long crest.
We’ll be going with Option 2.
Sports Robots
The robot concept work has continued as well – Roberto has worked up some sample Strikers, Jacks and Guards, as well as a Team Captain and 2 different DreadBall glove designs.
Sumo Lizards
Once again taking on your feedback, there’s been more work on the Sumo Lizards. They’re now less armoured and removed from the samurai armour idea. They look more like sports players than they do warriors. The V wing is a neat little idea and will likely get incorporated to help differentiate Guards from Jacks.
RefBot MKII
With new rules comes a new RefBot – and she’s had an upgrade. She’s a bit beefier now, the old model could snap at the ankles and so we’ve strengthened that area a bit. We also figured that there are a lot of big, bulky players that would probably just rip her apart when angry, so the DGB have given her some extra armour as well.
Finally, the rules. The rules development is going very strongly indeed and the Rules Committee will be putting together a post that shows off what we’re intending to do.
One of the most positive changes is to Jacks, which in the current playtest document can make a full move when throwing and slamming, just like a Striker and Guard. Their usefulness has grown massively as a result.
We’re also spending a lot of time on how we differentiate the teams from each other. D8 isn’t the answer but we’re experimenting with a few options that no doubt we’ll be able to show off soon. Stay tuned!
Normally I'd roll my eyes at RefBot's G-String and pasties, but with that gigantic visor and roller heels nothing else would work so perfectly.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I hope they keep the Saturn knee pads. I also want the visor from the left one with the Centauri crest from the right one.
Only thing that worries me about the sumo lizards is them actually fitting on a regular base and not seriously overhanging it.
Of course if they went and made a team of giant sumo lizards, I'd be alright with it. They'd make some good Reb muscle and all around useful space thugs!
highlord tamburlaine wrote: Only thing that worries me about the sumo lizards is them actually fitting on a regular base and not seriously overhanging it.
Of course if they went and made a team of giant sumo lizards, I'd be alright with it. They'd make some good Reb muscle and all around useful space thugs!
I just hope their faces are deep enough. I want kaiju, not Amazing Siperman villains.
The humble DreadBall gets a redesign in the new core game. It’s slightly larger than before, so it’s less fiddly, and you get more of them in the box.
Also, it is detachable from the base:
… why you might ask?
Well, we’re also re-tooling the DreadBall hex bases. Don’t panic, you don’t need to cut your models off their old bases and replace them with new ones, it’s just an example of where we’re trying to improve the original contents.
The new hex base is still 25mm across but comes with the threat hexes marked on the base, which also helps for determining direction. There’s also a hole in the top of the base, where you can plug in the ball, which means no more balancing it on top!
The new bases will be included in the core game, in team sets re-released alongside the core game in 2017 and I’m sure will be available separately too.
Question: does Mantic expect to stop manufacturing the original bases and balls?
I suspect we won’t produce any more hex bases because we do have a lot of stock of the existing ones, so there’s plenty if anyone wants to stock up now.. Regarding the balls, each team we produce the Corp and Marauder teams, we get an old RefBot and 2 plastic balls, and we’ve got a metal mold of the ball too, so I’m sure the old design ball will stick around
That's a good idea for the hex bases. Good thing I never bothered gluing anyone to them, especially if they include enough in the new version for at least two full teams (which I imagine they would).
Having a hard time telling the difference in the artwork between the striker and jack robots. Hopefully the poses further clarify as well who is who, because the differences there seem to be very subtle.
DreadBall Team Guide: Containing all the rules, background and stats for every team, team captain and MVP.
DreadBall Ultimate expansion allows up to 6 players to play DreadBall at the same time and includes rules booklet, counters, and card deck.
There’s even a newly artworked ultimate pitch design, included on the reverse side of the standard pitch. Now you’ll only need to carry one pitch around!
Exclusives
DreadBall comes with two from the off: Fergus, an offensive coach and Tracer, a Support coach.
Tracer
DreadBall: The Futuristic Sports Game core set includes
Core Rulebook: with everything you need to know to play plus League System and advanced rules for cheerleaders, coaches and more.
New Teams: the Draconis All-Stars robot team and Ninth Moon Tree Sharks Yndij team.
DreadBall Pitch: with new artwork and location zones for cards, action tokens, discard pile and an in-built scatter diagram (as requested by the community!) The hexes on the pitch are a little bigger at 28mm rather than 25mm to give some room for arms and tails.
Everything you need to play: Revised cards, counters, dice, redesigned roster pad, RefBot MKII and lots of newly redesigned DreadBalls.
Early Yindij render
What is the pitch made out of?
Card Board, like the original
Will the zombie and sumo teams be part of the $100 pledge? Stretch Goals? Add-ons? How are they obtained?
Stretch goals that get included in the pledge, should they get funded.
Indeed, Mantic benefits greatly from the weak pound (although presumably manufacturing in China becomes pricier as well), the sizeable UK backer base does not! Will be interesting to see if this makes things more muted.
I'm not opposed to Mantic chasing the dollar by offering up all sorts of bonus freebies like they used to.
They want me to back, they're going to have to earn my money. I am easily swayed by piles of figures however, and if the models move to the newer Deadzone plastics, they should be quite nice.
6 new teams or 6 in total? How many would that bring it up to, 22? 28? As the original amount of teams was to many anyway.
Automatically Appended Next Post: It would also have to offer an amazing amount of product for the $100 price tag as you can generally find Mantic games products in the bargin bin now.
4 teams have been announced for 2nd Edition - Space Robots and Yindij in the box plus Sumo Lizarrds and Cyborgs for stretch goals. I'm not sure they'll get further than that especially if there is no upgrade only pledge. They'll fund the new core game and some extras but I don't see a lot of people backing for a full boxed game again - I know I'd rather just an upgrade kit for $50 I have 24 teams (most still in a box) I don't practicularly want to spend $100+ on a new set the new teams just don't appeal to me all that much.
overtyrant wrote: 6 new teams or 6 in total? How many would that bring it up to, 22? 28? As the original amount of teams was to many anyway.
Automatically Appended Next Post: It would also have to offer an amazing amount of product for the $100 price tag as you can generally find Mantic games products in the bargin bin now.
This is unfortunately true, huge pile of dreadball on firesale at my local and it's been sitting there for months even at firesale prices.
Not due to lack of demand either since we had the biggest regional in the UK hosted there last year, people still play the game and it is popular, but at this point everyone just has more teams than they can ever play, or got what they needed from the two Kickstarters.
After this KS, there will be around 29 teams and ~70 MVPs. Even the most hardcore players at this point are realizing that owning all the teams is not necessary since they'll never get around to playing them all. I'd like to have them all just to paint and display, but that's a bit of a pipe dream at the moment.
I'd have thought adding new options to existing teams would produce better results than creating new ones. Make 100 mc the default "army list size" for a dreadball game, and include a lot more options to take in terms of player types, different varieties of jack striker and guard to choose from.
A Rebs team with about 12 different model options and types of alien to choose from when building your team would be awesome.
Instead of 4 sculpts per team x 4 for a full team of 16 (with 3 options to pick from), there could be 8 sculpts and at least 6 model type options. Fewer teams, but better teams with different build options.
I'm looking forward to the Yndij to convert for deadzone/ warpath at least.
I love the variety of aliens that Dreadball put on the market. Unfortunately for Mantic, they need to compete with their own products from the bargain bin.
This is a pipe dream, but if they had some sort of Deadzone Booster pledge level, that was a selection of models to expand the various Deadzone forces (some of those Yindij look likely), I would be in for that.
But I'm pretty sure something similar was suggested during Warpath and I don't believe it ever came to fruition.
I begged begged BEGGED during the Extreme campaign to get them to do some sort of Deadzone conversion bits.
I would take a bag of (sprue would be nicer) of just hands holding Mantic style weaponry to arm up some teams. Something.
It's such a wasted opportunity as a lot of us are going to end up converting bits and pieces of teams (especially if you end up with full 16 strong teams and only run 8) Mantic might as well get in on the action.
Ideally since they're doing the Dust style PVC, and more than likely everything will be CAD sculpted, do a stretch/ add on for sculpted arms holding weapons! If the parts slide in as nicely as the Infestation stuff did, you could probably get away with not even having to magnetize.
I'd love for those sumo lizards to have a guy carrying a tetsubo around to smack up jacks and strikers getting too close to the goal... or possibly enforcers trying to reach an objective in a Deadzone...
overtyrant wrote: 6 new teams or 6 in total? How many would that bring it up to, 22? 28? As the original amount of teams was to many anyway.
Automatically Appended Next Post: It would also have to offer an amazing amount of product for the $100 price tag as you can generally find Mantic games products in the bargin bin now.
That's a factor - plus the amount they've been charging for postage in recent campaigns.
As I was moaning in a chat just now, I'm already about ~$800 into DB for what is not a particularly well balanced system that's having some fundamental changes to it.
So Mantic want my money at this stage it needs to be an upgrade pack and get the public beta going.
$90 EB is pretty good, makes it an easier decision to back.
Hopefully they stick to a single fixed $90 with all the new minis in there and limited add-ons for deluxe components.
The new plastic they're using is fantastic, they finally have something that actually woks, doesn't warp, holds good detail and doesn't have much flash.
Fits together really well too, I noticed my deadzone v2 stuff was all able to slot together and hold without glue since the fit was so good.
As for the rules, they're getting a lot of work by the rules committee which has been expanded (3 people from the deadzone committee are on it as well).
From what I've heard, they're moving to a TWD-style system that keeps d6's, but has different coloured ones showing successes, which allows much greater granularity of stats without the need for d10's or d12's (and actually offers better granularity than a d20).
For example, a white dice might have 4 blanks and 2 success faces on it (equivalent of rolling a d6 and needing 5+) blue dice might have 3 blank/ 3 success (equivalent of 4+) and so on.. and then from there they can keep the existing balance of the current teams as a baseline for balancing and make small tweaks... e.g. if they want to improve a model that had 5+ speed in v1, they could upgrade it from 3 white dice (5+) to 2 white dice (5+) and 1 blue dice (4+).
Much better system and plays faster when you have the dice in-hand as well.. naturally they will be keeping an "explode" on one face as the "6".
So, d6 format is staying, and being improved upon, and fixing the #1 problem people had with it, too many "samey" profiles in the game due to all stats being either 3+,4+ or 5+.
The game is getting a complete statistical overhaul and rebalance, one of the members of the dreadball RC is an expert statistician when was able to do things like ensure an even distribution curve of net RP gain on the deadzone d88 exploration table.
I've backed for $90 because I love Dreadball, and a cleaned up revised edition is worth my support for such a good game.
BUT They really should have a "upgrade" pledge for those who just want the new rulebooks, board, cards - no box or minis, etc. "Upgrade your Dreadball 1 to Dreadball 2"
The new DZ plastic does go together wonderfully, but if I understand correctly, these figures will be either single-cast or pre-assembled, so that's not really an issue.
I don't intend to back this one, but wish you all luck with it. (I have enough DBX figures to convert for Deadzone.) I'd like to see DB improved, but I think the question Mantic will need to answer is, why should I pre-invest in reworking DB, rather than wait until it's out and reviewed? The traditional answer is to get lower prices and / or exclusives, but I'm not very trusting about the pricing at this point, as Mantic games don't reliably hold value for long. So if I were Mantic, I'd pack this KS with exclusives, and I'd make them in plastic (no metal), and I'd make them good. KS exclusives are controversial, they bother some people, and they also regularly propel CMON to large KS sums the like of which Mantic has never seen. "Moral" issues of retail buyers missing out on KS exclusives aside, from a funding standpoint, the choice seems clear to me. In terms of selling the base game at retail afterwards, that's down to making a good enough game that's worth the money at retail. Zombicide seems to manage that just fine.
Doing a lower cost upgrade pack for existing players makes sense, but I don't see Mantic doing that, as they'd see that as eating into their higher base pledge sales.
But would swap it out for an upgrade package in a heart beat. I likely won't keep the EB to be honest. We'll see what the final 'value' looks like to me and I may sell off everything BUT what I need for an upgrade package.
I am really liking the Jet Set Radio vibes given off by Tracer. So the funding goal has been hit already, and it will probably easily beat 100k today. What kind of total do people see this reaching?
I was on the fence, but I was able to snag an EB pledge.
It looks like the early stretch goals will fill both teams out to 12 player teams, plus 2 coaches, and downed player markers, which would probably be at least $90 retail anyways
Hard to tell without seeing the full opening day data. DBX did $575,605 over 24 days with an opening day of $251,616. Currently at $92k might get to $200k today but might not - it's still early in the US and work time in UK/EU. I just don't see the current 2nd edition doing as well with the all or nothing set up and no upgrade pledge which may prevent backers who have no interest in more teams and miniatures from backing. Gut feeling says $350k - $400k.
EDIT: DBXs opening day is a bad one to judge by as many backers double pledged not knowing if Rampage or Frenzy was the better option which caused problems later in the campaign.
Sumo lizards will keep me in if they're a stretch. Especially if they end up with a giant or a swanky captain/ mvp type. I picture those lizards having a Godzilla- like giant to play with.
The new dice sound intriguing. Makes it sound even easier to play. The kids have no excuse then!
Retailer pledge at a decent price, step in the right direction. Not that any retailer will be able to sell when all people interested have already got the KS.
I feel I should justify this negativity, as I moan when others do it.
Mantic are really damaging retailers, and it's not on. Ronnie seems to say one thing then does another. He made plenty of noise about not doing KS constantly, then it's one after the other.
I know Mantic read the forum. Stop preaching about being the friendly alternative to big companies like GW, then doing your best to piss off the FLGS by taking business away. I know a few stores which aren't going to bother stocking Mantic. Please start thinking about things better, before you end up completely reliant on KS to stay alive.
If we hit this stretch goal we will upgrade the card counters in the DreadBall core game (included in the Striker $100 and Early Bird pledge levels) to 3D plastic counters. You will get 5 Home Action Counters, 5 Visitor Action Counters and 1 Special Event Counter.
In addition, we’ll do something a bit special with the Score and Rush trackers… we’ll upgrade them to full models!
The Embers
The Embers are the burned remains of the Iskali Ravens’ kit after they lost the first Challenge cup by a huge margin…. And possibly their coach, too.
Replacing the Score Tracker is ‘The Embers’ – a characterful and fun DreadBall Trophy!
The Eye in the Sky
The Eye in the Sky is a RefBot that see’s everything – and now it has been realized as a fully 3D miniature. Oozing character, this fun addition replaces your Rush Track Counter.
CptJake wrote: Has Mantic released any game without a KS in the last couple of years?
(not sarcastic, genuine curiosity)
The very early editions of KoW and Warpath were created in house, but were never printed. The original batch of plastics (Elves, Dwarves, Undead, Orx, and Forge Fathers) were all produced with their own capital, as were the metals that went with them.
Since then, they've mostly released things that had been Kickstarted, but earlier in 2016 they did release some KoW models that they funded. Things like the Ogre Hunters, the Goblin Biggit, and Undead Wights. Now they're also releasing Kingdoms of Dust.
CptJake wrote: Has Mantic released any game without a KS in the last couple of years?
(not sarcastic, genuine curiosity)
The very early editions of KoW and Warpath were created in house, but were never printed. The original batch of plastics (Elves, Dwarves, Undead, Orx, and Forge Fathers) were all produced with their own capital, as were the metals that went with them.
Since then, they've mostly released things that had been Kickstarted, but earlier in 2016 they did release some KoW models that they funded. Things like the Ogre Hunters, the Goblin Biggit, and Undead Wights. Now they're also releasing Kingdoms of Dust.
But as for a game? Nope.
Project Pandora and Dwarf King's Hold (and its two expansions) were self-funded. But they were also very low quality with black and white, staple-bound rulebooks, thin card and re-used KoW/ Warpath minis.
Kickstarter isn't required to release product, but it is required to make a quality product.
They're really getting there with model quality now, the switch to Dust Tactics plastic is the best move they've done in a while, now they just need to phase out metal for new releases wherever possible.
Dwarf King's Hold (3 versions) and Project Pandora were boardgames released pre-Kickstarter. They were low budget efforts to put it mildly, reminiscent of the original GW lost patrol - recycle existing plastics, add minimal cardboard, handful of D6s and a rules booklet.
Kickstarter has certainly enabled/encouraged them to take greater risks on launching bigger products more regularly, that's for sure. Good thing or bad thing, that's more down to personal opinion!
Kickstarter isn't required to release product, but it is required to make a quality product.
And yet I own many, many quality products which were never crowd funded in any way.
Unless you meant Mantic cannot release quality products without KS. Even then, I suspect they could if they changed their business model a bit. At this point it would be nice to see them mature and evolve as a company and get rid of the KS crutch they lean on so heavily.
Thebiggesthat wrote: Retailer pledge at a decent price, step in the right direction. Not that any retailer will be able to sell when all people interested have already got the KS.
to be fair, Dreadball 1 core game went thru... 8? additional printings after KS release.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Azure Forest was a non-KS release right? I bought that in a store.
Yeah azure forest was a store release. This is the thing though. With the new cars, isn't Azure Forest now redundant?
I'm really annoyed that my Acrylic Ultimate pitch is now redundant too.
Kickstarter isn't required to release product, but it is required to make a quality product.
And yet I own many, many quality products which were never crowd funded in any way.
Unless you meant Mantic cannot release quality products without KS. Even then, I suspect they could if they changed their business model a bit. At this point it would be nice to see them mature and evolve as a company and get rid of the KS crutch they lean on so heavily.
Sorry, but it's been well covered in several threads that KS can be an incredibly sensible choice for a company, even if it's a choice rather than a necessity. It smooths the spike in cashflow needed to develop a new product, it carries less obligation and is potentially cheaper than a conventional loan, doesn't require the loss of equity that outside investment would likely require and it appears on a site that acts as a pretty decent marketing platform.
There's nothing immature about using KS, nor is it a crutch, it's an incredibly attractive way for a company to expand and grow using other people's money, which is something you should always do if you can.
It removes a bunch of risk too for established companies. - For example by avoiding a "Dreadfleet" scale incident that GW had. Or worse, The Hobbit...
Something like that would probably have sunk Mantic a few years ago... So even if (well, when) Cryptozooic torpedo Mantic's Walking Dead game popularity wise, their not going to have lost significant sums, proportionally speaking.
My problem with companies using kickstarter is when they use it as a way to leverage fan interest to be able to make a risk free product. A fairly large company like PP kickstarting a frigging board game was little more than a long range pre-order. Large companies can certainly use Kickstarter to finance capital spending in a way that's good for them, the consumer, retailers, and the hobby market as a whole: look at the Reaper Bones kickstarters. Customers got a good (but not ludicrous) deal, reaper dramatically expanded it's bones line, and Retailers are still able to sell the products at MSRP.
Dreadball, probably more than any other Mantic Product, is really saturated in the market. That implies that there isn't a growing demand. I think that going back to the Kickstarter well does indicate that Mantic isn't ready to start relying on the traditional distributor to FLGS channels to grow it's products. And that's fine, but I think it's going to depress the zest for the game when it emerges.
OTOH, they've already sold out of early birds, and are bringing in a ton of money, so it's clearly a model that works for them.
I think we shouldn't ignore the fact that there's a lot of times when the lump-sum up-front influx of customers' money -10% Kickstarter fees is just going to be more risk-free than a short- or long-term bank loan to fund a project. If you need extra cash to start the next major project, a method that doesn't require collateral, has no risk of foreclosure on said collateral, *and* inherently gives some form of customer interest gauge is going to be attractive to small companies.
Not to mention the other possible advantage: While many of us fall into the habit of viewing Kickstarter as a wargaming mass pre-order tool, it is technically still a project investment platform. While we've grown accustomed to receiving product as a return on investment, if the project fails for some reason, the company isn't really on the hook for the money - the risk is inherent to the investment. That's not going to be the case for a bank loan. For a small (or even large, by wargaming terms) company that *can* self fund a project, that's going to be more attractive than risking your own operating capital.
There's lots of reasons to use Kickstarter. It's just unfortunate that the current "It's my favorite way to pre-order wargames at a discount!" mindset is hurting the retailers.
How many products that were kickstarted have been really successful at retail? Reaper Bones comes to mind, as does KOW second edition (rules, not minis), but I don't know enough to really track this stuff.
With regard to retailers, I think they have plenty of stuff to stock. Especially with Guild Ball as a success, I don't see Dreadball really competing for shelf space even if it wasn't kickstarted.
But I also vote with my wallet. When you start looking at year plus fulfillment dates, the discount had better be amazing for me to take the risk on the final quality. it's why I didn't drop $200 on a GCPS army. I'd rather pay more later if I really like the models, than have the money tied up forever while not knowing if you'll get ForgeFather quality, or Basillian Man at Arms quality.
Zombicide everything has been very successful at retail. I'm not sure how "successful" it has been, but I've seen Secret Weapon's tablescape tiles at a few different stores.
It's my understanding that Mantic haven't sold less than 4x the number of units to retail of any Kickstarter versus the number of units they sold in the KS (not including DBX because I don't know about that).
Azazelx wrote: Zombicide everything has been very successful at retail. I'm not sure how "successful" it has been, but I've seen Secret Weapon's tablescape tiles at a few different stores.
Good call on both of those. I never followed Zombiecide, but I know that the Tablescapes KS was the ultimate "true believer" kickstarter. Several years of lead time, and only the early birds got a discount off of retail.
Today's data will be quite telling. The add ons aren't really doing anything for this so far and I don't see them giving much of a bump.
The EBs went quick enough but it's struggled to add backers after that. I think Mantic have misjudged this one, most people have what they need miniature wise and just want the updated rules, they aren't looking for a boxed game again.
The lack of 3D renders, lack of solid information on the actual rules updates and poor KS video highlights that this wasn't well planned in advance.
Still time to right this, wait and see how it pans out.
regarding the upgrade pledge I think it will be more expensive than people are willing to pay right now
Mantic - 23rd July - we're looking at it an option. The components will definitely be available separately at retail, but if there's a lot of demand for a smaller pledge with 'just' the bits you need, then we'll look at doing it. What it will do is enforce the value of the main pledge.
Hypothetically, an upgrade pledge, would encourage more backers to that, thereby increasing the total, thereby unlocking more stretch goals to improve the main striker pledge... Which may tempt people to increase their upgrade pledge to the main pledge.
One would think Mantic know how to play this game by now.
Baffling that an upgrade pledge wasn't available from the start.
Compel's right on the money though- start with a reasonably priced upgrade pledge, and sweeten the package pledge so that people make the inevitable jump to the higher priced tier.
Enough new teams and goodies people will make the bump. They always do when there is the lure of fresh new plastic to play with!
Polonius wrote: Is it possible that they want to save "upgrade" sales for retail?
Doesn't seem like they're too concerned with retail, seeing as they're offering their entire back catalogue here. I'm sure all the LGS owners with dust-covered Dreadball stock in their bargain bins appreciate today's add-ons.
I'm not surprised this is going nowhere. No upgrade pledge, most people interested probably already have all the minis they want from before and imho the game works fine as it is. Not to mention their handling of DBX probably left a lot of people with a bad taste in their mouth.
This did not need to be a KS in the first place. They could've gone straight to retail with an upgrade kit and or with either two of the current teams in their one piece BG plastic or two new teams in a new boxed game.
Azazelx wrote: Zombicide everything has been very successful at retail. I'm not sure how "successful" it has been, but I've seen Secret Weapon's tablescape tiles at a few different stores.
Good call on both of those. I never followed Zombiecide, but I know that the Tablescapes KS was the ultimate "true believer" kickstarter. Several years of lead time, and only the early birds got a discount off of retail.
Because of timings, Tablescapes ended up saving me a chunk of money because it was part of that early wave of KS that included free shipping worldwide, and also because of currency exchange vs local ripoff retail.
Azazelx wrote: Zombicide everything has been very successful at retail. I'm not sure how "successful" it has been, but I've seen Secret Weapon's tablescape tiles at a few different stores.
Good call on both of those. I never followed Zombiecide, but I know that the Tablescapes KS was the ultimate "true believer" kickstarter. Several years of lead time, and only the early birds got a discount off of retail.
Because of timings, Tablescapes ended up saving me a chunk of money because it was part of that early wave of KS that included free shipping worldwide, and also because of currency exchange vs local ripoff retail.
Nice! I forgot about the whole shipping thing outside of the US.
When I want Tablescapes (I'll need gaming table, and I'm still not sold on them over a good mat), I can grab one off the shelf at my FLGS or Adepticon, usually with 10% off. I actually tried looking online, and I didn't see any online retailers with them.
OTOH, getting Victoria Minis has to be easier down under, right?
Compel wrote: Hypothetically, an upgrade pledge, would encourage more backers to that, thereby increasing the total, thereby unlocking more stretch goals to improve the main striker pledge... Which may tempt people to increase their upgrade pledge to the main pledge.
They're probably (rightfully) concerned that an upgrade pledge would cannibalise their Striker pledges. Not to mention the number of people who would sit on one of each, only to pull out.
Polonius wrote: Guild Ball taking off is also not a great sign for Dreadball as a franchise.
Not to mention that we all know the new edition of Blood Bowl is on it's way. Straight to retail (so the main game will probably in-hand before this is - and certainly in-hand before this completes with delayed items, wave shipping, and Mantic's slow KS missing parts service) and with what are supposed to be quite lovely models. In HIPS. And several expansions.
OTOH, getting Victoria Minis has to be easier down under, right?
I don't really bother with local retail for the most part (a little, but not much) as there's no real benefits, and I don't think many carry Vic's stuff anyway. Ordering from her is kinda pointless, since she's set up primarily for US sales - her prices are all in $USD as is her free shipping threshold. Her stuff is pricey at the best of times, but with the AU$ dropping in the last year - just not worth it for the numbers you need for IG. And now with Brexit, Forge World is a much better deal for Aussies for the most part than Vic.
Polonius wrote: Guild Ball taking off is also not a great sign for Dreadball as a franchise.
Not to mention that we all know the new edition of Blood Bowl is on it's way. Straight to retail (so the main game will probably in-hand before this is - and certainly in-hand before this completes with delayed items, wave shipping, and Mantic's slow KS missing parts service) and with what are supposed to be quite lovely models. In HIPS. And several expansions.
In that case, a kickstarter makes sense! Get the money now, while people are still a little interested, let the game stall while the players await the new edition, then leave for other games, so that nobody cares by the time fulfillment rolls around. I kid, of course. But only a little.
thinking about it, I wonder if this isn't an attempt to cash in on the interest while they can? Bloodbowl restarting could be huge if the game is even playable. I just don't see room in the market for three Sports Minis games (I'm not sure I even see room for one, but people just freaking love Bloodbow.
At least it sounds like there will be an official upgrade pledge. Which there should have been in the first place. With more goodies thrown at the new boxed set pledge in order to entice us to upgrade.
Blood Bowl's minis look great; but as a 20 year veteran player of Blood Bowl (well, 17 years, as I haven't played it since I got Dreadball), I cannot stand the rules any longer. The single greatest disappointment was hearing that it would not have a redesigned ruleset. I lost complete interest at that point.
Nostromodamus wrote: Not to mention their handling of DBX probably left a lot of people with a bad taste in their mouth.
I'm genuinely curious about this; what the heck happened that made everyone unhappy? Any chance someone would care to enlighten me or point me to an article telling me about it?
Nostromodamus wrote: Not to mention their handling of DBX probably left a lot of people with a bad taste in their mouth.
I'm genuinely curious about this; what the heck happened that made everyone unhappy? Any chance someone would care to enlighten me or point me to an article telling me about it?
Gave us teams but no rules to use them in Extreme until final shipping wave. Forgot about one of the coaches and hastily made rules for them to be an MVP at the last minute, trying to claim that was the plan all along despite hard evidence to the contrary. The usual poor CS issues. Did we ever get the zombie pitch invasion rules? Probably more that I'm forgetting.
I actually really like the game, but Mantic basically treated it like the red-headed stepchild that they probably wish they never made.
There was supposed to be a zombie pitch invasion? That sounds great. I must have completely forgotten about that.
There were also a lot of people that got the wrong teams in Extreme. I somehow ended up with at least 4 teams I did not ask or pay for but was told to keep anyways.
judgedoug wrote: Blood Bowl's minis look great; but as a 20 year veteran player of Blood Bowl (well, 17 years, as I haven't played it since I got Dreadball), I cannot stand the rules any longer. The single greatest disappointment was hearing that it would not have a redesigned ruleset. I lost complete interest at that point.
You mentioned that earlier, but my point isn't whether or not Doug or even I like it either way - it's about a much, much bigger dog on the horizon that everyone knows is about to return to the playground.
Compel wrote: Yeah azure forest was a store release. This is the thing though. With the new cars, isn't Azure Forest now redundant?
I'm really annoyed that my Acrylic Ultimate pitch is now redundant too.
Your pitch will still be usable, they've thought of that and the mantic blog post about the new rules mentions it towards the end:
We will, of course, include rules for using the existing pitches with the new cards and rules – after all, Gruba-Tek is going to want ROI on all those new Ultimate stadiums they built…
Nothing from v1 is being made redundant.
As for the Kickstarter, the add-on pricing for teams is extremely poorly calculated. The teams are $25 each which is £19.05 at current exchange rates. The RRP on them is £18, with many places offering a good discount on that. They do come with an MVP, but that's really nothing special.
$45 Jack - DreadBall Veteran Pledge Level goes live at 8:00pm BST
Having spoken and listened to the community, we know there are a whole bunch of players who are eager to participate in the Kickstarter with a pledge that boils DreadBall 2nd Edition down to the essentials, and so at 8pm BST tonight we’ll release a new pledge level that does exactly that.
The DreadBall Veteran Pledge Level will include the Core Rulebook (MSRP $25) and the DreadBall Team Guide (MSRP $25), both physical and digital, as well as the revised DreadBall 2nd Edition Card Deck ($5 KS add-on), which has new action and event cards. There’s also a set of card counters that will be immediately upgraded to the new 3D plastic DreadBall counters ($10 KS add-on) the moment they are funded – because they are fun and add extra value to the pledge level.
DaveC wrote: Upgrade pledge goes live at 8PM BST $45
$45 Jack - DreadBall Veteran Pledge Level goes live at 8:00pm BST
Having spoken and listened to the community, we know there are a whole bunch of players who are eager to participate in the Kickstarter with a pledge that boils DreadBall 2nd Edition down to the essentials, and so at 8pm BST tonight we’ll release a new pledge level that does exactly that.
The DreadBall Veteran Pledge Level will include the Core Rulebook (MSRP $25) and the DreadBall Team Guide (MSRP $25), both physical and digital, as well as the revised DreadBall 2nd Edition Card Deck ($5 KS add-on), which has new action and event cards. There’s also a set of card counters that will be immediately upgraded to the new 3D plastic DreadBall counters ($10 KS add-on) the moment they are funded – because they are fun and add extra value to the pledge level.
Probably to keep the cost down both contents and shipping wise. If your upgrading you probably have a pitch already granted it has smaller hexs but it is still perfectly playable.
I'm thinking upgrade set now and pick up a Yndij team later at retail no interest in the other teams revealed so far or in updating Ultimate. I have a Gruba Tek pitch so covered there
I think Dreadball is a good game. And the choice of a scifi setting instead of another fantasy football game was great, too. They succeeded in adding many interesting teams and races which is also benefital to their Warpath universe.
The miniatures are limited quality-wise but which company's arent? Even GW's new Blood Bowl miniatures shown so far arent multipart and it seems there will be dublicates.
What I always liked about Mantic, and which is easily forgotten with all the hundreds of kickstarters during the last four years, they were taking a lot more risk than GW and other companies by releasing product the latter had abandoned and left starving.
In case of the Forgefather range I think they have done a really good job, not all but most of the original WP FF miniatures were good, the Dreadball players and teams too, and the new Deadzone range is surprisingly excellent.
Except for a very few Space Dwarf/Squat miniatures released over the decades - often only available for a limited time, like Fantastic miniatures (Bob Olley sculpts) in the US, Bob Olley's 'Great coat' Space Dwarfs and a few more - this was an abandoned faction. If you were interested in expanding your collection there was only the second hand market for GW miniatures. In some cases it was ignorance but in most economics why product like this was left behind by companies.
Mantic is still taking risks with their product - the Army of Nature for example. It makes sense they use crowdfunding to balance it out as much as possible. I dont think sports tabletop games was that big of a market back when they did DB. Except for the Blood Bowl fans who took control of that franchise for a while and continued supporting it. When Dreadball and Project Pandora were introduced there werent many tabletop/games manufacturers (if any) offering similiar products.
I still rate Mantic high for this and buy their product when I feel I want and need it. They have revisited and revitalized quite some dead game types, miniature ranges and brought new concepts for scifi and fantasy races to life. During the last years not them alone of course but their's were easily available and offered at brick&mortar stores.
GW has now returned to most of its classic designs and products. Genestealer Cults, Harlequins, board games, Adeptus Titanicus. Who would have thought five years ago?
What Kickstarter in my opinion damaged a lot are translated versions of games. They dont make sense financially anymore - which means those games do not stand a chance in countries like Germany.
The 'hardcore' tabletop gamer here buys english editions during a kickstarter. German translations if available are starter sets only, released much later and dont sell enough to allow for expansions to be translated. Who buys german core rules if you need the english ones for expansions? Not that many. Mantic has quite some problems selling in Germany in general from what I read and heard from shop owners. Players are rare. Even for Kings of War. You loose out on many customers if you do not offer translations early on - especially if you do kickstarters - as the initial sales are a big part.
GW is benefitting from these 'left behind' customers offering their games translated day one. BB will take over easily here. Ruleswise DB is much better than BB, so this is a sad situation. But you cannot fix it by doing kickstarters the way Mantic does. This is not building up and strengthing local scenes. And the german market (like the french and spanish) is not a small one.
So I fear Blood Bowl will take large bits of foreign DB scenes, maybe not the Guild Ball one as it is a much different game and its players arent 'casuals' anyway, but probably the DB one. Day One translations are what DB2 needs the most and would have meant a chance to expand its market. It would be good if Mantic is taking this into consideration. Outsourced, later translations dont work well anymore.
Warhams-77 wrote: Day One translations are what DB2 needs the most and would have meant a chance to expand its market. It would be good if Mantic is taking this into consideration. Outsourced, later translations dont work well anymore.
Not much chance of that with Mantic. Their first editions seem to have some serious issues on a consistent basis with a few exceptions, and they rely heavily on volunteer labour (the Rules Committee) in order to come up with balanced and playtested rulesets. The chances of getting a properly-translated set of rules created in that kind of situation - especially Day One - are slim to none.
US$45 plus postage? I may as well wait until it hits retail and get it at a discount with free postage. A refbot figure doesn't mean much in this context.
Upgrade pledge is now live. - I'm one of 10 backers so far. Kinda sad about the lack of "Ultimate board" but if the old ult board is allowed in a variant I can live with it
Ultimate has been redesigned but there will be rules to use the old pitch
DreadBall Ultimate
Finally, DreadBall Ultimate will be given a fresh breath of life, with a new pitch designed to eliminate ‘dead’ areas of the board and keep the focus on the action.
Ultimate was a popular way to play the game, and made for an excellent capstone for a league or great way to spend time with your mates over beverages and pretzels. The most frequent complaints we heard from Ultimate players, though, were twofold:
At smaller player-counts large sections of the board never saw any play, and a ball could get lost in the weeds if launched in the ‘wrong’ direction.
Long wait times between your turns sometimes meant you spent more time shooting the breeze than shooting for Strikes.
The new DreadBall Ultimate pitch is designed to solve the first problem: Each team has a Strike Zone that they must defend in the usual way, and a Strike scored in a team’s Zone will ‘steal’ points from them as it does in standard DBU play.
However, there is a central, shared strike zone in the center of the pitch. A Strike scored in the center zone will earn you one point that is not taken from another team. The center hex also doubles as the Refbot hex.
What this allows us to do is to shut down the sections of the board that are not in use. Instead, the ball will bounce off of a low-power force field erected at the border of the unused section, and any players that stray over this line (or are pushed out) will be committing an Out of Bounds foul, and potentially sent off. This means that the balls cannot wander off into the wilderness, keeping the action focused.
As for the second problem, the new DBU card deck will contain new ways for you to act in an opponent’s rush. This will mean you have to keep an eye out for opportunities and openings, and watch out for your opponent’s tricks and schemes while planning your own Rush.
We will, of course, include rules for using the existing pitches with the new cards and rules – after all, Gruba-Tek is going to want ROI on all those new Ultimate stadiums they built…
Compel wrote: Yeah azure forest was a store release. This is the thing though. With the new cars, isn't Azure Forest now redundant?
I'm really annoyed that my Acrylic Ultimate pitch is now redundant too.
Your pitch will still be usable, they've thought of that and the mantic blog post about the new rules mentions it towards the end:
We will, of course, include rules for using the existing pitches with the new cards and rules – after all, Gruba-Tek is going to want ROI on all those new Ultimate stadiums they built…
Nothing from v1 is being made redundant.
As for the Kickstarter, the add-on pricing for teams is extremely poorly calculated. The teams are $25 each which is £19.05 at current exchange rates. The RRP on them is £18, with many places offering a good discount on that. They do come with an MVP, but that's really nothing special.
They aren't supposed to be anything special. Mantic has gotten absolutely panned in the past by game stores for consistently offering their catalog at firesale prices during later KS projects. I honestly think this is a far more responsible move to not undermine their exposure yet again. The problem with many TT games is that you have to have a community around to actually have them work. If you never allow for that community to assemble, the game dies. This is honestly a step in the right direction in my opinion.
If you are buying the old catalog items for the project, buy them to support the project. If you are buying older stuff on the cheap, go to the local stores to get them on the cheap.
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Warhams-77 wrote: I think Dreadball is a good game. And the choice of a scifi setting instead of another fantasy football game was great, too. They succeeded in adding many interesting teams and races which is also benefital to their Warpath universe.
The miniatures are limited quality-wise but which company's arent? Even GW's new Blood Bowl miniatures shown so far arent multipart and it seems there will be dublicates.
What I always liked about Mantic, and which is easily forgotten with all the hundreds of kickstarters during the last four years, they were taking a lot more risk than GW and other companies by releasing product the latter had abandoned and left starving.
In case of the Forgefather range I think they have done a really good job, not all but most of the original WP FF miniatures were good, the Dreadball players and teams too, and the new Deadzone range is surprisingly excellent.
Except for a very few Space Dwarf/Squat miniatures released over the decades - often only available for a limited time, like Fantastic miniatures (Bob Olley sculpts) in the US, Bob Olley's 'Great coat' Space Dwarfs and a few more - this was an abandoned faction. If you were interested in expanding your collection there was only the second hand market for GW miniatures. In some cases it was ignorance but in most economics why product like this was left behind by companies.
Mantic is still taking risks with their product - the Army of Nature for example. It makes sense they use crowdfunding to balance it out as much as possible. I dont think sports tabletop games was that big of a market back when they did DB. Except for the Blood Bowl fans who took control of that franchise for a while and continued supporting it. When Dreadball and Project Pandora were introduced there werent many tabletop/games manufacturers (if any) offering similiar products.
I still rate Mantic high for this and buy their product when I feel I want and need it. They have revisited and revitalized quite some dead game types, miniature ranges and brought new concepts for scifi and fantasy races to life. During the last years not them alone of course but their's were easily available and offered at brick&mortar stores.
GW has now returned to most of its classic designs and products. Genestealer Cults, Harlequins, board games, Adeptus Titanicus. Who would have thought five years ago?
What Kickstarter in my opinion damaged a lot are translated versions of games. They dont make sense financially anymore - which means those games do not stand a chance in countries like Germany.
The 'hardcore' tabletop gamer here buys english editions during a kickstarter. German translations if available are starter sets only, released much later and dont sell enough to allow for expansions to be translated. Who buys german core rules if you need the english ones for expansions? Not that many. Mantic has quite some problems selling in Germany in general from what I read and heard from shop owners. Players are rare. Even for Kings of War. You loose out on many customers if you do not offer translations early on - especially if you do kickstarters - as the initial sales are a big part.
GW is benefitting from these 'left behind' customers offering their games translated day one. BB will take over easily here. Ruleswise DB is much better than BB, so this is a sad situation. But you cannot fix it by doing kickstarters the way Mantic does. This is not building up and strengthing local scenes. And the german market (like the french and spanish) is not a small one.
So I fear Blood Bowl will take large bits of foreign DB scenes, maybe not the Guild Ball one as it is a much different game and its players arent 'casuals' anyway, but probably the DB one. Day One translations are what DB2 needs the most and would have meant a chance to expand its market. It would be good if Mantic is taking this into consideration. Outsourced, later translations dont work well anymore.
Anyone who didn't think the KS upstart craze was going to be a short-lived gaming fad (in the grand scheme of things) was sorely mistaken. Eventually you realize you need other players to have a good time, and so naturally everyone gravitates towards the most popular games and companies for no other reason at times but to actually be able to play the game.
It seems at least 90% of miniature/board game KS projects fail at retail because anyone who wanted the game got it, and the handful looking into the game can get it from e-bay offloaders.
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overtyrant wrote: This did not need to be a KS in the first place. They could've gone straight to retail with an upgrade kit and or with either two of the current teams in their one piece BG plastic or two new teams in a new boxed game.
I absolutely agree with this. Mantic has yet to figure out that if they NEED to do a KS project for an existing line/game, there is something inherently wrong. There is no reason you should have had to do a project to update a rulebook if your game is popular. They need to reassess their strategies. You can hate capitalism all you want (which is apparent given their lore background) but you have at least understand it.
Now that is not to say I won't give them one last chance on a single wave KS with rules put together by someone other then Jake (nothing wrong with the guy, but there has always been too much on his plate) and an OBVIOUS showing that they've had their ear to the community on what needed to change. Now all we need is for a few of their business practices to change. At times, you can't listen to a bunch of fans that are only in it for themselves to get your stuff at firesale prices if possible. This causes so many extra models to be floating around anyways and for a year after you ship, people are buying your stuff off ebay anyway and not from you or a vendor.
Mantic has too many model lines to continue to have to use KS if they were actually as popular of gaming company as I'm sometimes made to believe. Existing revenue streams should be taking care of this stuff.
judgedoug wrote: Blood Bowl's minis look great; but as a 20 year veteran player of Blood Bowl (well, 17 years, as I haven't played it since I got Dreadball), I cannot stand the rules any longer. The single greatest disappointment was hearing that it would not have a redesigned ruleset. I lost complete interest at that point.
You mentioned that earlier, but my point isn't whether or not Doug or even I like it either way - it's about a much, much bigger dog on the horizon that everyone knows is about to return to the playground.
It's particularly frustrating because Deathwatch Overkill and Warhammer Quest Silver Tower are so good and a nice return to form for the GW that I fell in love with. I want to love Blood Bowl again but not when there's been several other games released in the last many years that are just... better.
Compel wrote: A suppose another 37 or so backers on the Jack pledge level is enough to make it sort of worthwhile, right?
Sure, but that's how must new pledge levels go. Backers beg for certain pledge levels like they are going to cause this massive influx, and its always marginal. It helps, but the community exaggerated how much it was going to help like always.
Just another one of those "Well I want it, therefore you'd be a fool not to offer it" sort of things.
judgedoug wrote: Blood Bowl's minis look great; but as a 20 year veteran player of Blood Bowl (well, 17 years, as I haven't played it since I got Dreadball), I cannot stand the rules any longer. The single greatest disappointment was hearing that it would not have a redesigned ruleset. I lost complete interest at that point.
You mentioned that earlier, but my point isn't whether or not Doug or even I like it either way - it's about a much, much bigger dog on the horizon that everyone knows is about to return to the playground.
It's particularly frustrating because Deathwatch Overkill and Warhammer Quest Silver Tower are so good and a nice return to form for the GW that I fell in love with. I want to love Blood Bowl again but not when there's been several other games released in the last many years that are just... better.
I do believe in this case there is plenty of room for both. They have very different styles in play, setting, fell, and look. Dreadball is also cheap enough that players wouldn't have to invest too much. This would be doubly so if Mantic offered a playkit minus teams so you could pick your own.
Nostromodamus wrote: Not to mention their handling of DBX probably left a lot of people with a bad taste in their mouth.
I'm genuinely curious about this; what the heck happened that made everyone unhappy? Any chance someone would care to enlighten me or point me to an article telling me about it?
In short, DBX was just a nice box cover for what was really DBO seasons 4-6 to sucker in people who didn't already own DBO. Once Mantic had the money, they pretty much forgot DBX as a game existed and put all their effort into integrating "DBX" minis into DBO, to the point that they shipped the miniatures with only DBO rules and forgot to release DBX rules for them until something like half a year later. I even emailed the designer of the game if he could at least post them online while Mantic is durdling with the book so we'd actually have something to do with the minis that didn't include going out and buying DBO and he said he didn't even remember where his DBX files were. That's how much they didn't care about it.
The 'hardcore' tabletop gamer here buys english editions during a kickstarter. German translations if available are starter sets only, released much later and dont sell enough to allow for expansions to be translated. Who buys german core rules if you need the english ones for expansions? Not that many. Mantic has quite some problems selling in Germany in general from what I read and heard from shop owners. Players are rare. Even for Kings of War. You loose out on many customers if you do not offer translations early on - especially if you do kickstarters - as the initial sales are a big part.
This is a good point and one that I relayed to Mantic, the German market is huge and very important, especially for a game like Dreadball that can be put in the board games category.
Compel wrote: A suppose another 37 or so backers on the Jack pledge level is enough to make it sort of worthwhile, right?
I'll be dropping my Early Bird before this is over. Not sure if I'll pick up the Jack pledge or not. Frankly, it is not that great a deal when I add id the unknown shipping. I suspect I'll be able to pick up the books/cards for about the same price post KS from an online retailer and get a better shipping rate. Mantic hasn't done enough for me that I feel obligated to pay more for their products than I have to.
Earth Dragon wrote: They aren't supposed to be anything special. Mantic has gotten absolutely panned in the past by game stores for consistently offering their catalog at firesale prices during later KS projects. I honestly think this is a far more responsible move to not undermine their exposure yet again. The problem with many TT games is that you have to have a community around to actually have them work. If you never allow for that community to assemble, the game dies. This is honestly a step in the right direction in my opinion.
If you are buying the old catalog items for the project, buy them to support the project. If you are buying older stuff on the cheap, go to the local stores to get them on the cheap.
The David Brooks of miniature gaming returns! Where have you been, guy? I thought you'd moved on from gaming to investing your money in something responsible and boring, like stocks.
I'm curious as to what you think of the CMON / Zombicide model of success and whether it would be a good way to bulk up Mantic's KS campaigns or not. It may be virtuous to support a game like DB because it's just good, but I think most pledgers want a "deal" of some sort. Mantic used to make very attractive bundle / price deals with free shipping, but they've moved away from that. The other common way to make people invest in a campaign is to load it with KS exclusives, which is what CMON do with Zombicide, Massive Darkness, etc. This creates the backlash from some that it's a turn off to retail customers who can't get that KS exclusive stuff later (except at scalper's prices on ebay), but CMON's games seem to sell well at retail despite the exclusives.
Speaking from a "smart investment" standpoint, CMON KSes are pretty reliable for making games that hold their value, and generating exclusives that can be sold afterwards to hedge your investment bet if the game is disappointing. (And Black Plague was, for me, extremely well produced and a lot of fun to play, so pretty much a win all around.) Mantic games generally don't hold their value, in my experience, and often end up being clearanced a year or two later, such that a person who sits the KS out often doesn't miss any savings and often beats the KS price in the end.
What's the answer? Does Mantic just need to put out games with better tested rulesets from the get-go? Do they need to produce a mountain of exclusives for their campaigns? I don't think cutting back on exclusives and cutting back on bargain / bundle pricing and charging shipping, as a strategy, has increased pledging interest. And on the face of it, raising prices and cutting back on benefits may protect Mantic somewhat and possibly helps at retail down the line, but it's also business 101 for attracting fewer customers during the campaign, isn't it?
When Deadzone 1 launched and made over a million, Beasts of War was speaking of Mantic as KS pros who knew how to run a successful campaign. I don't think that can really be said anymore.
Mantic can't seem to decide whether they want community/FLGS support or massive KS money. At least they realize you can't have both unless you're CMON and peddling zombies. But giving up the latter doesn't guarantee the former. Once bitten, twice shy. How many FLGS still have heaps of languishing Mantic boxes?
Like with their rules and miniatures, Mantic's market successes seems to mostly occur as a result of blind luck rather than any intelligent agency.
The 'hardcore' tabletop gamer here buys english editions during a kickstarter. German translations if available are starter sets only, released much later and dont sell enough to allow for expansions to be translated. Who buys german core rules if you need the english ones for expansions? Not that many. Mantic has quite some problems selling in Germany in general from what I read and heard from shop owners. Players are rare. Even for Kings of War. You loose out on many customers if you do not offer translations early on - especially if you do kickstarters - as the initial sales are a big part.
This is a good point and one that I relayed to Mantic, the German market is huge and very important, especially for a game like Dreadball that can be put in the board games category.
Thank you
It would be a good thing if Mantic offers a stretch goal for translations in future kickstarters like video games do. They aren't that expensive. Mantic could put some stickers onto the foreign edition boxes if producing more than english ones is too expensive. I think translating the manuals and some reference sheets wouldn't be more than 1 week of work (if at all) and this does not delay a release for long. Currently german companies like VME, Ulysses, Miniaturicum, Radaddel and a few others are translating most tabletop games and then sell them under their own lable. They are usually far behind the english releases. It's still like the 70s and 80s
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lord_blackfang wrote: Like with their rules and miniatures, Mantic's market successes seems to mostly occur as a result of blind luck rather than any intelligent agency.
Compel wrote: I think it's maybe 65% knowledge and experience, 35% blind luck
I agree there is a chunk of blind luck at least. Mantic can't go a month without pulling a hand scratcher that usually doesn't work but occasionally does that would leave even the experts at Harvard Business school bewildered.
In general they are a typical GW chaser. They try to do certain things the same whether because they like them or because they are familiar, yet change enough to be different whether because it was broken or because they just didn't like it. The problem is what to keep and what to change is obviously a matter of taste, but in Dreadball and Deadzone, two of their big KS successes, they got the combo wrong in what is the staying grace in games like these: campaign play.
Baragash wrote: They don't give enough respect to making sure the rule-sets are well-tested and balanced, it's a pretty straight forward problem.
This.
I eagerly awaited Warpath for years, but when the kickstarter happened it was obvious that the rules were still no where near finished, and it was a HUGE turn off.
I understand there will be a turn around time to produce and ship their products, but they should at least be finished products before we start throwing money at them, at least rules wise.
Mantic themselves have said that they would be happy with $200k and that's probably where this is headed now. That's probably enough to fund the boxed game and a few other bits. It's been mentioned before that board games cost in the $200k - $300k range to make and creators typically set a low funding goal to get funded and then they make up the funds near the end. Dreadball isn't as content heavy as some board games as there is only so many miniatures and parts required so it probably costs on the lower end of the scale, they can get 2 teams on 1 mold.
They've shortened the goal to get the extra Matsudan miniatures in and they'll will probably fund the Cyborgs in the next $60k- again 2 teams on 1 mold so they have to fill that mold regardless. They may have to put some of their own funds in to get everything done and get it to retail.
The problem seems to be most people have all the Dreadball they'll ever need and they are prepared to wait for retail to upgrade the Jack pledge at $45 doesn't seem any cheaper than discounted retail will be and retail may well be cheaper. I can't see Mantic doing much in the next 7 days to change that. I myself remain to be convinced that backing the KS is the way to go rather than hold off for a year and see how things turn out. None of the KS exclusives give much incentive to back right now, more coaches I have loads, the commentary team look cool but don't serve a game purpose so can be skipped.
This is a mini-kick, we were never expecting hundreds of thousands of $. We're over 160% funded, that's a great result - anything over $200K would be a fantastic result as far as I'm concerned
I never got around to assembling my Dreadball stuff. Real life got in the way. I am actually trying to get rid of my DB stuff to make more space. But if no one is interested (had a few threads in the swap shop), I may just pick up the Jack pledge
I wonder if it'll actually hit that $200k? I also wonder if Mantic are going to get the message about rebooting their games every two years?
Aside from the other various issues with Mantic - even if I were willing to back their campaigns for the models, I wouldn't buy into them on the rules anymore. We know WarPath is going to get the same treatment, ans probably Dungeon Saga as well, given Jake's lacklustre efforts once he got past the stuff he really wanted to do...
it's not really taken off today but signs are it will easily beat yesterday - Cyborgs might be a close run thing but they have said pledge manager funds will count to unlock them.
You may seen it shared on our newsletter and facebook page but we’re also going to include Elmer and Dobs into Jack when it’s funded too.
Definitely. Skip new teams, just balance the old ones. Done. Maybe update a couple designs if youre feeling fancy. The KS was absolutely unnecessary. I actually kind of hope they dont hit 200k, even in the pledgemanager. Id like to see what theyd do. <.<
Stuck at around $185k and has slipped a bit. It won't see $190k let alone $200k. This probably should have just gone straight to retail alright, new rulebook and cards as a stand alone set and a reboxed version with 2 existing teams, it wouldn't have cost them much.
Tyr13 wrote: Definitely. Skip new teams, just balance the old ones. Done. Maybe update a couple designs if youre feeling fancy. The KS was absolutely unnecessary. I actually kind of hope they dont hit 200k, even in the pledgemanager. Id like to see what theyd do. <.<
They will magically make up the difference in the PM to include everything they intended to make from the outset. Nobody can prove shenanigans because we aren't privy to that data, but shenanigans will ensue to make the Cyborgs happen.
Good points are the quality of the new miniatures, sculpt variety, new board, better counters and team balancing etc.
Bad points were the lack of painted minis to show off, nothing but sketches and a render or two and that was it.
Also, no new rules previews, or any real explanation of how the game was being improved, the new agility stat just sounds like more complication.
The rules update is very, very conservative and nowhere close to what KoW2 and Deadzone v2 got, it will be more of a compendium than anything else.
It is ultimately a single board game with way too many expansions at this point, far more than anyone can possibly own or paint, at which point, completionists don't buy in, and people just get a team or two to play the game with.
Unlike wargames, there is a hard upper limit to the appeal of a game like this, and it isn't enough of a board game to appeal to board gamers.
Then there are external factors like the horribly $ to £ ratio currently.
I dropped my $90 pledge last night. Don't get me wrong, I thought what they were offering was a good for $90, but frankly that $90 gets me a Death Masque box next week instead of a Dreadball 2.0 a year from now.
I already have more teams than I know what to do with from the previous DB kickstarters. This purchase will just wait until retail next year to get the updated rules.
scarletsquig wrote: Good points are the quality of the new miniatures, sculpt variety, new board, better counters and team balancing etc.
Bad points were the lack of painted minis to show off, nothing but sketches and a render or two and that was it.
Also, no new rules previews, or any real explanation of how the game was being improved, the new agility stat just sounds like more complication.
The rules update is very, very conservative and nowhere close to what KoW2 and Deadzone v2 got, it will be more of a compendium than anything else.
It is ultimately a single board game with way too many expansions at this point, far more than anyone can possibly own or paint, at which point, completionists don't buy in, and people just get a team or two to play the game with.
Unlike wargames, there is a hard upper limit to the appeal of a game like this, and it isn't enough of a board game to appeal to board gamers.
Then there are external factors like the horribly $ to £ ratio currently.
It has done well considering!
I suspect there are also a good number of past Manctic KS backers burnt out by the frequency of their KS campaigns, cheesed off by treatment of KS backers, and the overabundance of Mantic products being sold at comparable prices at retail.
I held onto a pledge for a while, but in the end couldn't even justify a Jack pledge in my current situation. Better off waiting, and actually using some of what I already have after getting too much in DBX.
The lack of other uses for the minis is also a factor I think. They're useful for Dreadball and nothing else, even if you play dreadball every week, you're not going to use them all, or paint them all. Which renders the bulk of the range of interest to collectors or painters only, and that's a very limited market.
Whereas with everything else they make, there is crossover, Dungeon Saga models have been great for using in KoW games, and the sci-fi games are all cross-compatible (even mars attacks!).
Their next Kickstarter will probably be sci-fi Dungeon Saga, and if done correctly, the minis made for it should also be compatible with Deadzone, Firefight and Warpath.
Could be a really good way to release full GCPS and Zz'or armies in hard plastic, and have a proper boxed board game like the ones GW has been releasing recently.
It all depends on how they approach it, but their core sci-fi and fantasy games are probably the ones to focus on at this point. KoW and Deadzone are doing great, Dungeon Saga was a huge success as well.
I think they can do well with some consolidation at this point, really focusing on great new releases for the core games, with cross-compatible models / IP across all the sci-fi and fantasy games.
Well they did say this yesterday (about Sci-Fi DS)
You'll have to wait and see. It's not Corp v Veer-myn like Pandora, it's something else
It should be far more usable with both Warpath and DZ.
It's probably about 2-3 months away
Oh, and Blaine has just been offered a contract. Seems like someone on the Council of Seven has a messy and dirty job they want doing...and looks like they need credible deniability and expendable assets! Watch the social media channels in a few week’s time for more!
Ultimately I decided against getting in on this, even for just the book to play the new version. I expect it's the sort of thing I'll find floating about for sale in a year or so for cheap.
I found this KS skippable, so I skipped it. I have little doubt that I'll be able to pick it up later for the same price or better at retail.
I hope Mantic will knock Sci-Fi DS out of the park, but they either need to re-learn how to offer genuinely good deals, or they need to bulk up on great KS exclusives so that their campaigns become "can't miss" again. From what I've seen, they've gotten better at covering their own risk by offering less for more, and the diminishing pledger interest has been entirely predictable.
