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 Orlanth wrote:

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
I really like what Mantic do and want them to succeed but their general lack of quality control and ability to make the most elementary of mistakes makes them quite difficult to support. It is usually the early adopters that help fund the games that get the majority of the issues to deal with.

That is not entirely fair, and I will explain why.

The packages containing failed deliveries are sealed in the factory in China. The factory doesn't belong to Mantic and as with a lot of outsourced materials doesnt care at all if they do a half arsed job.

Mantic are responsible for some other failures though, notably the printing farce.

I guess that is kind of fair, but If I were Ronnie however "Chinese Factory X" behaves it is ultimately Mantic's name, and reputation, on the box. If it is the same factory that has been responsible for other issues maybe it is time to change producer or the contract they have.

The Kickstarter comments are a litany of people with missing pieces (such as a dragon wing going awol), additional local taxes and calls of "bait and switch" over pieces such as the resin counters. Admittedly KS comments sections are usually more of a moaners charter rather than a place used to give positive feedback, so it may be misleading as to overall feelings about the game. Hopefully the game itself is strong enough to overcome these issues.

I am considering making a thread on the Mantic forums about the hardback book and one or two other KS issues.

Missing pieces don't need any threads beyond reporting for correction, those things happen in distributions at this scale.

My main beef is twofold.

1. The resin bone piles.

You get 12, the set has 24 counters. Therefore it needs 24 counters, so if you have a resin bone pile set you wont have enough for all scenarios. I would have bought 24 if it needed 24, but as they are KS exclusive you cant anymore. Secondly they don't look anything like the originals, which were level and square, so they fit on squares and things can fit over them. Pics I have seen of the resin counters make them larger than the squares, and thus hard to base together.
I wish they had stuck with what they had orginally promised us.




Mantic can fix this by:
Allowing backers to buy an extra 12 resin bone tiles to make the set, post Kickstarter. It would make sense to increase the wound counter totals from 16 to 25. This would allow 4 for each hero and 9 for the dragon. Which is the most you will need in a single game.
I would settle for an extra set at $10. Though I would want to check the counters first and see if they are indeed large splats that would get in the way of adjoining squares.


2. I pledged over $200 in order to get the free hardback book. I would have pledged $175 without the free hardback book offer, on the base pledge plus three expansions. And got Carton B (which ironically would have included it). I bought Black Fortress and resin counters mainly to unlock the book.

The images of which showed a substantial hardback book possibly worth $30. The crap we get is not worth $30 even if it wasn't full of typos, page X and mislabeled contents. It doesn't contain half of what we were promised and providing it later by e-document doesn't cut it.
This issue does matter as I am not alone in deliberately upping my order to include it, and many backers pledged exactly £200 or just over to do so. Possibly indicating they were pledging more than they otherwise would.



Mantic can fix this by:
Having a penitent edition of the Collectors Edition hardback.
Filled with all the things the Hardback should have, and post any errata from the first few months of play. Mantic could sell this normally, but backers should get a free copy in exchange for trading in the hardback leaflet 'Book of Noob' we actually got.

I've done my rebending and got my models together now.





Naturally, I've still to put all my resin models together and sort out my doors.

I do really like the models though, dragon too.

Only concerning thing is, that's another barrier removed from me contemplating one day running a DnD game...

I received a PM just now about how Mantic might acrus too many costs replacing the Hardback Books.

It is my suggestion they do not try. they make and sell a hardback book, about March would be good as any bugs and imbalanced scenarios will have come to the fore by then, The book can fix anything that needs fixing, and possibly contain scenarios for all the expansions etc.

Backers who are unsatisfied with their hardback leaflets can attend and Mantic venue where they have a stand with their old collectors edition hardback and can trade it in for a new one. $30 to anyone else.

 Compel wrote:
I've done my rebending and got my models together now.

Almost all. One of your zombies didn't get the memo.
Or has a bad case of the funk and likes to boogie down.

Nice photoshot though. Enough to make a non-backer kick themselves jealous methinks.

I like the idea of seeing a 1.5 hardback offered up to backers somewhere down the line, but seeing as how it won't be until God knows when the boxes even arrive in the US, it's just more time for us to stew over things.

I don't know if I would have pledged as much knowing the book would turn out the way it did.

I had to go buy some Bones scenery while I wait for all my plastic pieces to stop hanging out around Japan.

Alrighty, I've sorted out and organised my terrain now as well.



The books are in the wells, in the faint hope I don't lose them...



Only thing left to go through really is the resin minis.

Those book pieces are rather small and fiddly

My take:
Glue one of those books to its lectern. So you have lecterns with and without. Glue a second on a bookshelf to variate them. Keep the third loose.

That's a pretty awesome idea

I got 4 books. Bwahaha!

 Orlanth wrote:
I look at that dungeon layout and I hear Admiral Akhbar in my head.

First turn, archer stands on the bone pile and shoots, warriors advance as far as possible, engage first undead. Wizard advances far and finishes off.

Head through double doors, avoid side doors, stay together clear next room and then head south.

There are in this map.
It's also an 11 turn scenario with several 3/3 doors, and a 4/4... Not the hardest, but certainly run run run.

We had it explained that these tighter levels are designed to be played much like videogames, you learn and learn and beat it after 3-4 attempts.

Unfortunately we're yet to meet anyone who's beaten Well Met (first full adventure) when facing a competent Overlord. I've run it four times and I'm not a well organised villain. It's come down to time 3/4 times and once down to a new player not keeping the elf safe.

I love this game so much, I'm not even sad at rerunning it. Nor are the players - I ask every time if they want to skip it, but they want to try beat it again.
At Christmas I am going to take it to play with my parents, they aren't gamers. Mum played AD&D a lot, that's about it. Dad likes Yahtzee.

I really really regret not going for the KS dice upgrades and markers. If anyone picked up a spare set just to up their pledge, drop me a line. We've got a spare Dragon expansion at this end and could maybe work something out, or I'd happily pay.

My only real woe is my book box is badly crumpled on all four "cover" corners, and has glue spilled down the back. Also my rule book is missing a corner and looks like it was nibbled by a mouse. I'm sure when it's quieter I could get these fixed.

 SilverMK2 wrote:
I got 4 books. Bwahaha!

O'Brien (and the Cardassians) do not believe you.

<Whack!>

Look again.

<Whack!>

Ever since Deadzone, acrylic counters have been a major "nope" for any Mantic Kickstarter.

Don't know what went wrong, the dreadball ones are great.

So, the adventurers companion (and the hardback?) is unfortunally riddled with errors it seems. Mainly every page reference just says XXX and there's some entry that's been replaced with another etc.

For those of you who has the game. Is the basic rulebooks faulty as well or is just the companion/hardback?

I've been looking forward to getting a box of the main game but would hesitate buying a faulty product. I'm in no hurry to get the companion though so I have no problem waiting for another print.

Just the companion that I've seen so far. Everything else looks fine to me

The acrylic counters are ok. - Nowhere near as good as the dreadball ones, but you can make out the images on the ones that have images, unlike Deadzone.

They're also far, far better than the "Early learning center" style plastic of the Kings of War ones.

One thing though, there's a lot of kind of meaningless shapes in them.


Overall, it's a case of, "I'm not angry I got them, but if I saw them again, I wouldn't buy them."

 Compel wrote:
Just the companion that I've seen so far. Everything else looks fine to me

Awesome. Then I'll most probably get me a set once it lands in my FLGS.

Then I guess it's mostly the KS backers that'll suffer for this mistake, unless they printed up a lot of companion sets for retail at the same time.

The Companion is a Kickstarter special item, so retail purchasers wont get offered it.

Just as well really.

So it's the book with the extra rules and missions (like from the old DKH games and what not) that has the errors? I guess that's a better place than in the main rulebook.

No, that's the Dungeon Journal.

The Adventurers Companion is the 'main' extra book, with the 'create your characters' and the 'build a dungeon' type rules.

I imagine, however, that in the retail release, it's going to be in softback, not like the hardback we have.

Ahh. Well typos are lame as hell and I do not approve. However much I like mantic, DS is something that could be a flagship product selling in big box stores and so on... Shabby shoddy nonsense, can not possibly cost that much to hire a proofreader or three to get these things before they hit the wild.

Oh well. Still looking forward to the thing with the plethora of extra missions , to read through them if not likely to play them all.

I imagine they did have a professional proofreader. They also probably spotted the Sylph / Salamander typo too.

What this smacks of, to me, is someone sending the wrong file version to be printed.

 Orlanth wrote:
The Companion is a Kickstarter special item, so retail purchasers wont get offered it.

Just as well really.

Really? It's referred to in the rulebook, I thought?
Something about symbols on the spell cards are expanded on inside it.
I might be thinking of something else.

The Adventurer's companion will be availible for retail. It's up for preorder now: http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/dungeon-saga.html
(Though I imagine it'll sell rather poor until they make a new print which fixes the mistakes). Although since the KS backers have gotten a Hardback and the retail version is a softback, there might have been different prints and a chance to correct the softback version?

The KS exclusive book is the Dungeon Journal (see Compel's post).

Got the softback (didnt feel like buying more than two expansions... IC just didnt look terribly interesting), the errors are the same in both books. Theyre really going to regret sending it off to print... :/

wonder if i shoot them an email requesting to cancel my order what would happen......

I mean it's not like are delivering quality with the order, plus they hate me already. Wouldn't matter, my order would probably arrive before they got to the email.

Already on the boat for sure.

Got my non carton B add ons today. Just the black fortress tiles and plastic scenery. Oh and the dice bag.

I need to get the tile set out and look it over, anyone want photos?

Dice bag is a joke. Probably the thinnest cheapest specimen I've encountered. The lettering literally flakes off at the slightest touch. It's pretty, but that's all it's got going for it. I will probably hang it from a nail as a decoration as even cinching the bag will probably ruin the lettering. I didn't expect the moon for $5, but this is just silly. It has probably turned me off of ordering the Mantic tape measure from warpath, and I was kind of excited to have one.

I'd like Black Fortress photos Grim, if you're feeling generous!

Generous always, time to do anything about it... occasionally at best!

But today you are in luck, kind of, as I managed to snap a few hasty photos. Sadly, the fluorescent lighting in my game room makes a nasty glare on the tiles.

Photos first and then some thoughts if time, spoilering since 7 photos:



So the card tiles seem thick enough to me, right as thick as battle systems card. However. They're not as dense or hard as battle systems tiles so they're probably not nearly as hard-wearing. I'm still pretty sure if you go over the edges with superglue (probably a good recommendation for any kind of card stuff like this for longevity) that the tiles will do just fine. The clips... some of them seemed pretty good others didn't seem like they had the tolerance right and were too loose. I didn't use the clips when I did the layout in the photos to save time. I have a feeling that any clips that end up being too wide for proper use can be sorted by applying a layer of glue (super, or maybe even PVA/tacky glue or whatever) or two to the inside of the tile-gripping surface, to increase the thickness. One or two coats maybe, the loose ones were only just loose, not terribly so. Obviously let those dry before you use them again

On the design. Comparing it to something like battle systems (apples and oranges as its flat vs 3D, but both come on A4 sheets and are card terrain so kind of germane) I think the art and layout fall short. For one thing, the tiles are double sided which is great... if they didn't print exactly the same art on the reverse side. I feel that this is a massive wasted opportunity and they could have totally made these (and the main game set which is probably the same way, at least at a guess) TWICE as versatile. It wouldn't have cost twice as much either, I don't think, as the tooling for the cuts and stuff wouldn't change, they'd just have to pay for more art and then there'd be a step in the process where they have to finagle the sheets to do the other side or something... but yeah little disappointed. Still perfectly serviceable, but definitely not top of the line. There are also a lot of repeated tiles, only a couple three different art types for the smallest most numerous pieces, a bit of a drag but if you space things out cleverly, it doesn't get *too* samey.

The set definitely looks black. And fortressy. I mean, there are only one or two clean (of bodies) tile arts in the whole set. Some tiles have several corpses, others have at least one packed into the corner. I think you'd have to make a movement test to not trip over them, throughout the entire dungeon

None of my clips actually hold the boards, and cause more issues than not using them.

The main game set is different on each side. Dungeon and lava/earthquake.

Ahh. I wonder then. Maybe black fortress isn't going to reach retail so they skimped on it. If the main set is double sided then I'm happier. I still think it was probably worth the $25 with only one texture, should vastly increase the variability of the dungeon layouts.

i was rather surprised to have the valendor expansion show up in the mail today
based on the shape his spear was in, its clearly made out of a pool noodle, larp style