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A slightly different take on the usual 'fantasy or sci-fi sport'

Kickstarter page




"After 12 months of development, Mat Hart and Rich Loxam are pleased to present “Guild Ball”, a tabletop medieval football wargame. Playing the role of the team coach, you will take control of a Guild Ball football (soccer) team and with a combination of tactics and strategy attempt to outscore your opponent whilst simultaneously trying to achieve additional secret political objectives and agendas.


Guild Ball takes place in a land now known as the Empire of Free Cities; it’s essentially a pseudo-historical setting with strong European flavours. The lands of the empire are made up of a huge variety of climates, cultures and landscapes each controlled by a sovereign City.

Mob football is a game generally played between neighbouring towns and villages on feast days (hence the popularity). The game was originally played in the middle of towns and villages where the objective was to take the ball to the opposing side of town. But to prevent the inevitable collateral damage it rapidly evolved into being played in the surrounding countryside, often in a special field set aside for the purpose. At its core, players on opposing teams, clash and struggle to control leather wrapped inflated pig's bladder and attempt to kick it into the opponent’s goal. Over the years, rudimentary leagues and tournaments have sprung up, there have even been some national level games between city states.

The Guilds have taken advantage of the huge popularity of the sport and have invested vast sums of money, creating professional teams and structured leagues. The public went crazy as the game was elevated to new heights of spectacle. Guild Ball was born amidst a blaze of interest and publicity and with it, a whole new business and revenue stream for the Guilds. Games are now played out in front of vast crowds of fans, whilst behind the scenes the results can mean fortunes are won or lost on the kick of a ball.


The game has been built from the ground up using modern design principles and philosophy resulting in a game that is supremely intuitive to learn and yet possess vast depths of complexity and tactical choices. Success comes with carefully constructed ‘plays’ and counter ‘plays’ with emphasis on anticipation, positioning and resource management."

Key features:

Tabletop sports wargame…

Guild Ball is a pure skirmish level wargame, not a boardgame. Players will enjoy the freedom of movement and complexity of decision making this entails. Additionally, uniquely for this genre of game, terrain can have a major impact on the gameplay.

Football Pitches…

Guild Ball is played in all across the Empire of Free Cities encompassing a wide variety of terrain which in turn allows for huge variety of playing surfaces and landscapes. Guild Ball is a 28mm miniatures game played on a 3x3 tabletop and so you can use your existing terrain to create exciting playing areas (no grid system).

Fast Resolution Hit System…

Guild Ball’s core dice engine is designed to be fast and easy to perform, makes the game silky smooth to play. Using classic D6’s with an intuitive dice pool system, hit resolution is lighting fast with minimal computations.

Playbook…

Whilst the hit resolution system is fast and intuitive, the playbook allows for a huge variety of outcomes to each dice roll. You decide the in-game effect you need to deliver success…if you get enough hits of course!

Influence System…

Guild uses a resource management called Influence to control actions and movement each turn. This leads to an intense bluffing and counter-bluffing meta-game as well as a need for deep risk management and turn planning.

Momentum System…

Guild Ball features a unique system that reflects the ebb and flow of a football match. As players perform and achieve in-game actions they generate Momentum which can in turn be spent on triggering special ‘plays’, shooting at goal or out of turn reaction moves. Any momentum left over at the end of the turn translates into a massive advantage on determining initiative the following turn.

Combo Play…

Guild Ball models are carefully designed to play off and feed into each other. Clever players will discover a huge depth of strategy available to them, which will be reinvigorated each and every time a new model is added to the Guild’s roster of choices.

Kicking/Passing…

We’ve designed Guild Ball to encourage kicking and passing the ball. The game actively rewards you for doing so, which results in a fast paced dynamic game flow. Like all our game mechanics, kicking the ball is fast and simple to do.

Build the team you want to play…

Guild Ball uses a fast team sheet generation approach with built in customisability for each model which allows you, the player, the maximum amount of control over flexibility of options versus simplicity of models abilities. You decide your strategy and the team you need to deliver on it.







Pledge Levels

All come with PDF Rulebook, Access to Post KS Field Test and Post KS Private Forums.

Single Team - six Metal models, ball and 50mm Resin Goal, 6x Resin Bases, PDF Rulebook £30
Add +£18 to upgrade teams models to resin from metal.

Two Teams EB - Two teams of your choice (six models each), 2 balls, 2 goals, 12x Resin Bases £50
Add +£35 to upgrade teams models to resin from metal.

Two Teams - Two teams of your choice (six models each), 2 balls, 2 goals, 12x Resin Bases £57
Add +£35 to upgrade teams models to resin from metal.

Three Teams - Three teams of your choice (six models each), 3x Balls, 3x Goals, 18x Resin Bases £82
Add +£52 to upgrade teams models to resin from metal.

Four Teams EB - Four teams of your choice (six models each) 4x Balls, 4x Goals, 24x Resin Bases £100
Add +£69 to upgrade teams models to resin from metal.

Four Teams -Four teams of your choice (six models each) 4x Balls, 4x Goals, 24x Resin Bases £105
Add +£69 to upgrade teams models to resin from metal.


Add Ons

Dice Set +£8

Token Set +£8

Additional Balls +£4

Additional Teams £+30/team (only on Pledges at FOUR TEAMS level or higher. Can upgrade to resin for +£18)

Printed A5 Rulebook +£10

Resin singles of each of the figures are also available to purchase. Prices from £8 to £12 depending on the size of the mode.


STRETCH GOALS



I have pledge for EB on Two Teams as this seems fairly reasonable. I'm not sure about £40 per six man team for retail, mind you. That seems a little high.

I will obviously be watching DBX closely as I only have the funds to back one project. :(

Backed!

Glad somebody volunteered for the first post

The project creators are currently on Twitch.tv

http://www.twitch.tv/guildball

 Zweischneid wrote:
Glad somebody volunteered for the first post

The project creators are currently on Twitch.tv

http://www.twitch.tv/guildball

Lot's of insight to the KS campaign, design, world, and rules.

~iPaint

The art looks great, but there's no gameplay video and hardly any info on the gameplay on the page. The early bird is only a 2 or 5 pound savings, depending on the level, so I'll wait to see more.

Looks like it's going to reach it's goal quite easily at this rate, but I just need to see more about the game before being really tempted.

This looks pretty neat. I'm not sure if I need another fantasy miniatures sports game in my life, but the models look pretty awesome.

I might grab a couple of teams to use as in a Fantasy game. It'd be great to have the players sell the meat of that random monster they slew, only to be confronted by enforcers from the Butcher's Guild, wanting their cut.

Cool concept, I wonder how well the measuring instead of grid will work. The grid does have some advantages and speeds up play. I can't see this getting as big as the more boardgame sports games that come in a box with a pitch . With guildball you will need terrain and you have to assemble the miniatures instead of the pick up and play approach that most of these games has.

The minis look nice though, and i have a lot of mordheim terrain. I'll keep an eye on this one.

Really like the concept for the Fisherman Guild. I'll wait a bit and see how things progress before forking my CC info to KS.

Nice artwork and those two renders are shiny... one to watch.

Backed this, The company did a great job at listening to feedback from the community right before the launch, and Improved the KS to the state we see it now.

If they're willing to admit they had areas to improve in after feedback, and make those changes within a day, I feel confident in helping them with their project hands down.

It helps that the concept of the game looks great too. Loving that Fisherman's Guild, my girlfriend is getting the Morticians Guild.

I may back this one simply because the dude running it is an actual PM so that means it should be relatively on time.

That and I really, really like the concept art.

Once I see some gameplay examples and maybe an actual sculpt or two, I should be on board.

The only thing is, though, I think the person behind Torn Armor was also a Project Manager, although perhaps not in such an applicable field as video game design as this guy is. It is helpful, but I think most important is experience in making miniatures... they do seem much more plugged in on that front, though, which is a good sign (despite not having direct experience themselves).

Aaaaaand Funded.

Also to Torn Armor: Was she? I did not realize that.

Awesome that this funded so quickly

(cincy: Yeah, she described herself as such at the bottom of the KS page... spoilered below. I don't think we need to discuss her further here as I think this creator's experience is more directly applicable, since it is in the video game industry, but I just wanted to mention it)

Resin masters of the first two renders posted (on my phone so I'll leave the update for someone else to post).
They look excellent, proof is in the casting and material choice for the actual minis of course, but they seem to be really on the ball (!).

I love games with a cheap rules pledge. I'm curious about a sports game on a normal wargaming table, so for two dollars it should be worth it for the read alone.

They announced an update, an A4 rulebook is available as an addon now which is great.

Updated the first post.

Hi guys, Guild Ball here - thanks for the support. We are long time lurkers of Dakka Dakka and its great to read the discussions your having about our game!

We still in a state of shock over the speed this has funded, all down to the community backing us.

Any questions feel free to ask - although we have to be honest so much is going on at the moment it might be a touch delayed in response!

This is looking very interesting so far.

I'm in for this at the two team level - very interesting. I think it should be doing better though!

I thought it would be going higher a bit faster as well, however with Dreadball Xtreme in the process as well, that soaks up a lot of potential backers.

To be honest though, the concept and setting of this game has me hooked, it could end today with just the one stretch goal reached and I'd still be happy.

Having said that though, I hope a lot more jump on board, these guys have a solid idea, and the sculpts shown so far are great.

I think you guys have too high expectations for this. I mean, this is the company's first product, a company that is never heard of before, with very little promotion, and with a game idea that is a bit niche-piece of the market. If this game survives for about a year, I would then expect it to reach a lot higher on an expansion. But for now, I think this is doing extremely well!

Nm, the quotes got me messed up.

It's sad that this is doing worse than Drabball Extreme.

Seriously, have we not all learned yet about Mantic cast quality?

£48 for 6 minis might have a little more to do with it than what Mantic is or isn't doing.

Seems to be doing extremely well for a two-man operation with a huge profit margin. Just different markets, really.. the niche boutique market tends to do really well on KS and this is no exception.

Might back this for the rules PDF, for £1 why not?

 cincydooley wrote:
It's sad that this is doing worse than Drabball Extreme.

Seriously, have we not all learned yet about Mantic cast quality?

I have to agree.

I'm at the point now where if it is from Mantic and it isn't 'hard plastic', I'm not getting it.

I'm not a huge fan of metals either, and the 'resin' upgrade here is a bit steep.

I'm on the bubble still though, as the miniatures they've shown so far look quite nice.

I swung for this over DBX because the casting quality in my DB starter set is absolutely awful. I'm not usually fussed about mould lines, but these look like extra limbs!

And the Ref Bot was bent nearly 90 degrees at the ankles.

These GB look like great mini's, and the game seems to be different enough to avoid any BB/DB comparisons.

I wonder if someone should point out to them that historically, guild names were in the plural. I.e. "Fishermen's Guild", not "Fisherman's".

I'm extremely interested but I'm juggling a lot of kickstarters. I'm in for £1 and hopefully I can up to the resin minis if I have enough time with the pledge manager.