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Things that the Deadzone RC are going to be looking at sorting out with the Deadzone beta:

- Height advantage returning.
- Blaze Away returning in a simplified form.
- Rebalancing Indirect and Blast (early playtests indicate that they're broken).
- Fixing the army list chaos (invisible grogans and polaris cannon zees!)
- Adding some background to the campaign section to better explain that it isn't just scavenging for bottlecaps.

Cards and Overwatch are things not likely to come back, the latter mainly because the new rules are very much focused on a mobile firepower kind of gameplay rather than static gunlines, and single model activations removing the need for it to some extent.

There will be a playtest survey for people to submit games launched very soon. For the time being post your games in this thread:

https://manticforum.com/forum/deadzone/deadzone-rules-discussion/263636-deadzone-redux-beta-feedback-thread

We will also be compiling a list of changes shortly for people to test and see if they like them.

Deadline for core rules changes is the end of the year, this is a fixed deadline. Army lists have another couple of weeks after that for balancing and points costs.

 Mymearan wrote:
Well I hope he's happy, but I'd call that a net loss for the industry. I still remember his wonderful articles about the ethos of army building!

I don't know him, but I would imagine being a postman is less about his pursuing his life's dream and more about the need to have a steady job that pays the bills and provides some security for the future as he gets older. If anything, it's a commentary on poor employment practices inside the gaming industry. One can't be 20something and live on peanut butter / vegemite / hummus and ramen forever.


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 scarletsquig wrote:
Things that the Deadzone RC are going to be looking at sorting out with the Deadzone beta:

- Height advantage returning.
- Blaze Away returning in a simplified form.
- Rebalancing Indirect and Blast (early playtests indicate that they're broken).
- Fixing the army list chaos (invisible grogans and polaris cannon zees!)
- Adding some background to the campaign section to better explain that it isn't just scavenging for bottlecaps.

You go, Squig and the RC commandos! Real United Kingdom Heroes! Fighting Cobra and Destro!

I just wish they'd allow you guys and playtesters some more time. Considering rules will directly impact the long term sales success of a game they've already invested so much in, you'd think they wouldn't rush the vetting process so much.

Those are some pretty huge changes for a beta, seems like its still in an early design phase if such things are still being considered? My impression of a beta would be that it's essentially feature-locked and more about refinement then development.
edit: Deadline end of the year? Honestly I don't see any way this could turn out well, except by accident. Introducing significant changes with a couple of weeks to playtest...

 scarletsquig wrote:
There will be a playtest survey for people to submit games launched very soon. For the time being post your games in this thread:

https://manticforum.com/forum/deadzone/deadzone-rules-discussion/263636-deadzone-redux-beta-feedback-thread

We will also be compiling a list of changes shortly for people to test and see if they like them.

Deadline for core rules changes is the end of the year, this is a fixed deadline. Army lists have another couple of weeks after that for balancing and points costs.

Well thanks to the rules committee for trying, but that deadline does seem more than tight especially with Christmas eating up peoples free time

 DaveC wrote:
The Miniatures same list as DZ:I going to PVC with a caveat "Figures not included in this list will remain in the material originally stated for now, but there may be a couple of changes to other models later in production." Still no word on price changes or extras due to the change from resin to PVC.

Pretty sure that means they're trying to find a way to avoid having to change some of the vehicle upgrade parts, ie the Polaris Guns on the Arbiter, from resin to boardgame plastic, because I can't see anyone having a good time at all trying to mate BGP to hard plastic. Just keep the kettle on the boil, we'll be here bending a while.

7 games in (and I'll get my thoughts better organized on the mantic thread once I finish the quick run through a campaign)

 scarletsquig wrote:

- Height advantage returning..

Really miss this. At first it was a "oh, I don't get a bonus anymore and that feels strange". Now it is a "Screw going up there to shoot things, that's where Frags and Blasts knock me off with no benefit. I'll hide behind this ruin under a bridge thank you very much"

 scarletsquig wrote:

- Blaze Away returning in a simplified form..

Missed this at first, still miss it only on the really bad models that can't do much otherwise now. I think the game is going to catch too much flak if there isn't some form of this in it anymore, I'm just not sure what the right answer is while maintaining balance.

 scarletsquig wrote:

- Rebalancing Indirect and Blast (early playtests indicate that they're broken)..

Right now Indirect in particular is super oppressive. It is far far too easy to launch an Indirect shot into your opponents deployment zone on the top of turn 1, which while it might not kill much it will throw off their positioning for the remainder of the game. The only variant rule I've tried thus far for one game was to make Indirect not resolve until the end of the turn (so you pick the cube and mark it then don't let the incoming fire hit and roll for scatter until later). It still might be too good, but it at least prevents the two big problems I've had with Indirect (neutered Deployment zones and the "Last Activation Indirect, First Activation Indirect and pin half your army for my Mawbeasts or whatever to now pick apart"). Blast wasn't too bad in one-offs, but it got almost as bad as Indirect once you start upgrading models with it and Deadeye in a campaign.

 scarletsquig wrote:

- Fixing the army list chaos (invisible grogans and polaris cannon zees!).

I've been avoiding doing the incredibly silly things as I assumed that there was some rule or table that just didn't make it. Still hard to tell if I can do things like Double-Drill Stalkers so I'm interested to see what format this fix comes in.

 scarletsquig wrote:

- Adding some background to the campaign section to better explain that it isn't just scavenging for bottlecaps..

Enforcers are looking for those Strategic Assets (which I love, btw). Sometimes you run into a walk-in clinic and only get a Medipack, other times you find a well-equipped hospital and you lock it down as your new FOB. Guess some people need it explicitly stated.

 scarletsquig wrote:

Cards and Overwatch are things not likely to come back, the latter mainly because the new rules are very much focused on a mobile firepower kind of gameplay rather than static gunlines, and single model activations removing the need for it to some extent..

Totally fine with both of these now. Mission cards needed to die, and Battle cards are implemented much smoother by Command dice. Stat cards were really nice (and I hope someone makes good ones to have on hand for one-offs), but printing out stat lines makes things much faster and versatile.
I do wish there was some sort of Overwatch option in very specific matchups (specifically Enforcers and Asterians against the fast melee troops of Marauders, Plague, and Veer-Myn) but any implementation is likely to be too complicated so I'm fine with it going away as the original DZ implementation wasn't filling that role well either.

 scarletsquig wrote:

Deadline for core rules changes is the end of the year, this is a fixed deadline. Army lists have another couple of weeks after that for balancing and points costs.

Haha, that's funny stuff there.

Apologies for my ignorance, but who's Nigel Stillman?

Nigel Stillman was one of the GW guys from the 90's. I mostly knew him as the terrain guy in White Dwarf but I imagine he had a greater influence in game design in general?

I think he did the first Bretonnian army book, right?

2 weeks to balance all army lists, abilities and points costs?

Yeah, good luck with that.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
The rules were primarily burdened with the sort of crap-ass editing and imbalance that's an inevitable result of every book being a rush job by a single man also juggling 3 other projects (and having a bit of an ego when confronted with criticism).

What needs fixing is the process, not the mechanics.

 scarletsquig wrote:
Deadline for core rules changes is the end of the year, this is a fixed deadline. Army lists have another couple of weeks after that for balancing and points costs.

Oh well. Maybe Mantic will learn something from the difference in reception between KoW2 and DZ2. But probably not.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:

 scarletsquig wrote:
There will be a playtest survey for people to submit games launched very soon. For the time being post your games in this thread:

https://manticforum.com/forum/deadzone/deadzone-rules-discussion/263636-deadzone-redux-beta-feedback-thread

We will also be compiling a list of changes shortly for people to test and see if they like them.

Deadline for core rules changes is the end of the year, this is a fixed deadline. Army lists have another couple of weeks after that for balancing and points costs.

Well thanks to the rules committee for trying, but that deadline does seem more than tight especially with Christmas eating up peoples free time

Agreed. I thought the KoW playtest/beta time was way too short. This is a joke, and like many of Mantic's poor choices, it'll bite them on the arse later on. I salute your valiant efforts, though Squiggy!

 Azazelx wrote:
I'll agree that the second KS cut short KoW's lifespan, since I did stop bothering to play KoW at the end of 2014 though, since it felt like there wasn't much point becoming more familiar with rules that were about to be superseded, but it was still longer than DZ1 which had a lifespan shorter than a mayfly. I think the problem is that Mantic don't playtest properly/enough/thoroughly enough and so we can count on most of their "new" projects having the holes picked out of them in the year or so following release - and hence a second edition. I imagine the same will happen in a year or so with a re-release KS for a rewritten DKQ.

I think Mantic got lucky with the original KoW ruleset being fairly tight, and simply have no appreciation of what's required (particularly in the area of exposure to the public) to develop a solid ruleset, which is why they keep releasing ones with glaring issues in (Dreadball, Deadzone).

 Azazelx wrote:
I'm quite happy to give the credit for KoW V.2 (3!) being as good as it is because of all the hard (unpaid) work that the Rules Committee put in, as well as their ability to open the rules up to the community for proper playtesting. Even so, I thought the time allowed for playtesting was woefully short, and I suspect that the two additional armies in the Not-Ravening Hordes book will suffer from a lack of public, open playtest and feedback like most of Mantic's other "closed" rules have.

I think the fishmen will be ok because the underlying principles are the same as all the other armies in the game, I don't think you'll find much imbalance in units individually across most of the lists, if there is some, it will apply equally to the same class of units in every army.

Nightstalkers not going full public test is a bit of a risk no doubt, however, we recruited our own team of playtesters from players across the globe, we didn't use any of the normal in-house team, Alessio's mates or Jake's mates.

 Baragash wrote:

I think Mantic got lucky with the original KoW ruleset being fairly tight, and simply have no appreciation of what's required (particularly in the area of exposure to the public) to develop a solid ruleset, which is why they keep releasing ones with glaring issues in (Dreadball, Deadzone).

Having read those games, the current DZ:I beta, and all the Dungeon Saga stuff that showed up this week, I've come to a conclusion about Jake Thornton as a rules writer: his final submission makes for a great first draft of a ruleset.

He's good at making a solid core rules system and decent at balancing the forces, but you can tell which add-on systems interest him and which parts were required deliverables that bored him or he disagreed with. For someone so imaginative with base rulesets, he shows a startling lack of imagination with scenarios and campaign systems (see the difference between the stock Dungeon Saga missions and the crazy Dungeon Journal character missions!) He also can't write clear explanations of how rules should work to save his life.

I think if Mantic continues to use Jake (and I think they should, as long as the following happens) they should resign themselves to either hiring an in-house rewriter or continuing to rely on volunteer rules committees and Kickstarter backer playtesting. I've spent my entire Dungeon Saga reading time thinking, "I'm going to have to do a lot of tweaking to run this game for my group. I really wish this had gone through a rules committee before getting to me."

 Psychopomp wrote:

 Baragash wrote:

I think Mantic got lucky with the original KoW ruleset being fairly tight, and simply have no appreciation of what's required (particularly in the area of exposure to the public) to develop a solid ruleset, which is why they keep releasing ones with glaring issues in (Dreadball, Deadzone).

Having read those games, the current DZ:I beta, and all the Dungeon Saga stuff that showed up this week, I've come to a conclusion about Jake Thornton as a rules writer: his final submission makes for a great first draft of a ruleset.

He's good at making a solid core rules system and decent at balancing the forces, but you can tell which add-on systems interest him and which parts were required deliverables that bored him or he disagreed with. For someone so imaginative with base rulesets, he shows a startling lack of imagination with scenarios and campaign systems (see the difference between the stock Dungeon Saga missions and the crazy Dungeon Journal character missions!) He also can't write clear explanations of how rules should work to save his life.

I think if Mantic continues to use Jake (and I think they should, as long as the following happens) they should resign themselves to either hiring an in-house rewriter or continuing to rely on volunteer rules committees and Kickstarter backer playtesting. I've spent my entire Dungeon Saga reading time thinking, "I'm going to have to do a lot of tweaking to run this game for my group. I really wish this had gone through a rules committee before getting to me."

.

It's good to have Jake on board but dangerous to give him the final say. He seems to have difficulty taking on board constructive criticism and rarely seems to act on decent suggestions- and his general responses to suggestions boil down to " no, we're keeping it as I wrote it, I'm right and that's that." I have a lot more faith in the RC than I have in Jake, though his work is great as a rough first draft to be refined and polished by others.

I'd agree with that. But there's an even bigger problem now with Jake's "draft" first going through the RC and then through some anonymous Mantic intern who makes a bunch of changes without consulting anyone.

What ever happened to the normal forgefather infantry? I cant find em on mantic's store!

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I'd agree with that. But there's an even bigger problem now with Jake's "draft" first going through the RC and then through some anonymous Mantic intern who makes a bunch of changes without consulting anyone.

His draft didn't go through the RC, they saw it the same time as the rest of us.

We've been very busy, this what we have planned to change for the next iteration of the core rules, expect very rapid updates and reactions to playtest reports:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/672886.page#8310467

EDIT: The RC's official playtest survey is now live, please use the v1.3 pdf rules, with the errata detailed in the link above for your games:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1ZTmINk_3c4MH8f0XlYn93jnTY9uK8pIpUsxiJ5647Do/viewform

I know we're not supposed to ask for news, but I'm going to anyway.

Anything new on the "mystery project"?

It's been a couple of weeks, right?

They might be saving the announcement for an Xmas email.

Is that a yearly thing with Mantic? (An xmas email surprise)

Sort of, but wouldn't that have been up by now? I mean, same with crazy bags/boxes; we're well past the point where it would have made sense to put those up, so those are likely not coming this year either.

Pretty sure I saw crazy boxen on Facebook. Something about boxing day.

...ah, so explicitly too late to order for under the tree even domestically. Mantic...

yeah, let's give them even more crap to do while they're already overburdened! haha

Sounds like time for another KS, this time for crazy boxes!
Impossible to pack wrong and they can throw in a free copy of the DZ 1.0 rulebook to clear those out.

Given how many people are complaining about mis-packs and unsent KS goodies, it was probably a wise choice to not add even more things to be shipped before Xmas.

Speaking of which, have folks finally started receiving KoW packages for list/misplaced wave1 shipments yet? It's fething December and I still haven't gotten a single thing from that KS -_-'

 Bolognesus wrote:
Speaking of which, have folks finally started receiving KoW packages for list/misplaced wave1 shipments yet? It's fething December and I still haven't gotten a single thing from that KS -_-'

I got my DS stuff, without even a mispack. But no, I still haven't received any KOW2 stuff, not even my wave 1 items. Rich emailed me recently to tell me they had been shipped or will have been shipped or something and that wave 2 heads out on the 14th. I guess we won't know for sure unless something arrives soon. Even then, it could still be an extraordinary mispack.

...Gah, not even that email on my end. Oh well.