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I’m interested, but not $110 interested.

I'm not crazy about the miniatures, I think the gameplay will more than makeup for that with this one though.

I've gone back and forth on this - I love the concept, but there is so much still to be developed, and other than the starter set the champions are quite expensive. Anyone else have thoughts?

Looks like they didn't anticipate the speed of funding. The stretch goal list goes to 227k (locked) but the current funding is at 313k. Someone must be feverishly typing up an update.

Also I'm glad that a few of the SGs are free teams and items for the base pledge. Like this one:

That's just due to the pounds versus dollars conversion - it got me, too

Next stretch is a new champion, the silhouette looks sweet:

Yeah it hasn't hit the next stretch goal yet, we're at 223k

And unlocked! They'll be previewing the model tomorrow, but revealed the art:



Next stretch goals are for four additional minions, one of which is about to be hit. Very happy with these new stretches

I'm very interested in the multiplayer potential for this game.

If you look at the current miniature wargame lineup, very few games out there can support more than one player intrinsically.

So yeah, I haven't watched the video or read into it. Anyhoo.. how is the gameplay? Is it kinda like Shadespire where you just have a set warband of 3-4 guys (hero + a few minions) that are always the same? Or can you make your own characters and stuff too?

I'm gonna pass.

Steamforged is too small a company to run Kickstarters of that size. The Dark Souls project is still ongoing, still has terrible communication and wave 2 isn't even delivered. The rules are quite boring, too.

Miniatures look kinda sweet, but it's PVC, so - eh.
Again comparing it to Dark Souls miniatures, which are average.

 Hanskrampf wrote:
I'm gonna pass.

Steamforged is too small a company to run Kickstarters of that size. The Dark Souls project is still ongoing, still has terrible communication and wave 2 isn't even delivered. The rules are quite boring, too.

Miniatures look kinda sweet, but it's PVC, so - eh.
Again comparing it to Dark Souls miniatures, which are average.

Guess I dodged a bullet with DS. Isn't wave 2 a year late at this point? I remember about a year ago when they delayed it until the end of the year.

 Mymearan wrote:

 Hanskrampf wrote:
I'm gonna pass.

Steamforged is too small a company to run Kickstarters of that size. The Dark Souls project is still ongoing, still has terrible communication and wave 2 isn't even delivered. The rules are quite boring, too.

Miniatures look kinda sweet, but it's PVC, so - eh.
Again comparing it to Dark Souls miniatures, which are average.

Guess I dodged a bullet with DS. Isn't wave 2 a year late at this point? I remember about a year ago when they delayed it until the end of the year.

Yes. There weren't supposed to be waves, but the original delivery date for everything was April 2017.
Core game shipped a few months late last summer.

 Necros wrote:
So yeah, I haven't watched the video or read into it. Anyhoo.. how is the gameplay? Is it kinda like Shadespire where you just have a set warband of 3-4 guys (hero + a few minions) that are always the same? Or can you make your own characters and stuff too?

Champion and Followers are a set (I believe I read that some champions can have a different set of followers, not sure though). The suggested game size is 3 sets of champions/followers per side. You can mix and match these sets however you like. From the rulebook, the game flows like this

"In the Strategy phase, an entire warband acts together, the First Player’s warband followed by the Second Player’s
warband. In the Tactics phase, each Champion and Follower unit activates individually, and activations alternate between
players. Models do not activate during the End phase."

Think of it kind of like a MOBA experience. It's basically a game of 3 characters that spawn trash mobs.

I backed, on the premise that even if the game fails, the buy-in is relatively low, and the models look goddamn amazing. SFG's PVC is kind of in that sweet spot of affordable, great looking, and well implemented. Better than a lot of the PVC models out there, and even some metal ones.

That being said, gameplay looks fantastic. I've been a huge fan of Shadespire so far, and this looks like that but with more depth. Combo'ing up champions means that games are going to be vastly different every time, and that there's a lot of depth to be had.

The kickstarter's already including 3 champions outside of the 4 core, so already about a ~$90 "bonus" in freebies, outside of alt cards and banners.

No-brainer imo. Worst comes to worst, I have beautiful display pieces to paint up.

I was originally turned off by there only being the 4/5 champions, but if they get several more added I could be more tempted. No one else in the area is really getting into it though.

For Dark Souls, I was hearing just the other day that part of the issue there was one of the partners leaving the company and taking a large sum of that game’s funding with him for some reason, leaving it short and needing to raise more money again via the company’s other offerings. I do not know the specifics of it however.

That is pretty worrying if true. After their recent behaviour with the OZ distributor I have pulled my pledge and will never give them another cent. It is bad enough we get to pay so much down here at the best of times but a 25% increase because they switched distributor and then lied about is pretty unconscionable.

I'm still backing but just for a pound at the moment to see how things develop. I didn't realize that the game is basically still being designed at this point, and while I think the concept has a ton of potential, it's a significant investment to get all the game content! So, I'll watch the progress and possibly up my pledge during the pledge manager if things look good, but I need to see more first.

I'm definitely interested in the game once it hits retail, but I really want to be able to pick the Champions that interest me and focus on them rather than wind up with a big pile of everything.

I'm still interested, but I had to drop .. wanted to support another campaign and can't afford both. Will still watch with interest and probably pick up a couple of sets at retail or maybe when they launch the PM. Might go back in for $1 so I can keep track of the updates till then.

I mean, it's an SFG game, the company's already well known for putting out tight and concise rules.

The majority of the game design looks to be completed. At this point, I think what's left is fleshing out scenarios, narrative campaigns, and legacy rules (for extended campaigns etc).

Perhaps another few characters here and there, but you're most likely going to get the game close to how it stands now.

Ajax, they've actually said the opposite - they're still adjusting core mechanics, like how attacks are made and resolved, and haven't even gotten to balancing of heroes / making terrain rules / much in the way of scenarios.

I'm very interested, but it's just so raw, that before investing hundreds of dollars (for all the champions, which I think you'd need to keep things fresh or to try "drafting") I just need to see a bit more first.

I hope it's awesome and I'll dive in fully, though

Tight and concise, sure, but not the best on balance.

Say what you will, but Steamforged has shown they will adjust balance within a much shorter time frame than most other games have.

Having small discreet champions and minions makes it much easier to balance within these smaller groups, even if it does mean there's a lot more interactions. Their use of standardized types helps.

I don't know about rules, the Dark Souls rules were pretty universally considered mediocre and unbalanced.

Can confirm that Dark Souls (gameplay) is garbage of the highest order.

Imagine that every combat encounter is played on what is more or less a 4x4 grid, with movement being trivial, and yet the rules think knockback is a big deal. The "AI" deck is just a few varieties of "rush a hero" or "huddle in the back corner" (which doesn't accomplish anything due to negligible board size).

Add to this that you have to grind these boring identical encounters 2-3 times each to hope to get enough loot for the boss fight.

Boss models are so big they cover several spaces although they're supposed to stand on just one (and usually hang off the board tile by a lot, too), so heroes adjacent to them have to stand on the boss's base and you have to pick up the boss to see how your hero can move. Then the boss does this repeating sequence of moves that would be pretty cool if they didn't keep slamming into walls because they're still on a tiny tiny board.

All of these are core conceptual issues that can't have anything to do with money.

Hope they use those hero dashboards for a real game someday, those are very clever.

I've backed this, super excited to try out the new champions. The early access pack was golden and I love it

The new champions do look awesome - the problem is all the ones I like are outside the core set, and so pretty expensive!

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Can confirm that Dark Souls (gameplay) is garbage of the highest order.

Imagine that every combat encounter is played on what is more or less a 4x4 grid, with movement being trivial, and yet the rules think knockback is a big deal. The "AI" deck is just a few varieties of "rush a hero" or "huddle in the back corner" (which doesn't accomplish anything due to negligible board size).

Add to this that you have to grind these boring identical encounters 2-3 times each to hope to get enough loot for the boss fight.

Boss models are so big they cover several spaces although they're supposed to stand on just one (and usually hang off the board tile by a lot, too), so heroes adjacent to them have to stand on the boss's base and you have to pick up the boss to see how your hero can move. Then the boss does this repeating sequence of moves that would be pretty cool if they didn't keep slamming into walls because they're still on a tiny tiny board.

All of these are core conceptual issues that can't have anything to do with money.

Hope they use those hero dashboards for a real game someday, those are very clever.

Did the game have the same team that were worked on Guildball behind it though?... wasnt it kind of a side project for steam forge with a limited amount of staff working on it?

I think the game was kind of rushed and I dont believe it had nearly the same amount of playtesting done for it that both Guilball received and Godtear has had and will continue to have in the next year until release.

Seems to me a lot more passion and time has been put into this one and for that reason I'm confident that it will deliver much like Guilball has.

Not to mention the parallels being drawn aren't quite the same. Dark Souls was a board game, and was never really meant to have the longevity that this game seems to be drawing.

This is SFG's newest IP, and support for this game can go far. Dark Souls was always meant to be a one and done kind of thing.

Definitely biased here because I'm already a backer, but I think that it's a safe bet that even if things aren't perfect on release, they'll be balanced in the future. Hell, even GB wasn't perfect when it dropped, but is now in a fairly balanced state.