Mantic Games - Sci-fi News & Rumors: Sci-Fi Zombies released.

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**GrimDork**

AI deck... lemme find a picture or update...

I can't find a decent blurb, but during the campaign we unlocked a solo zombie campaign and an AI deck so you can play by yourself. There are also rules coming for larger battles involving multiple mats and multiplayer battles. Unless they fail to deliver, I'll have to assume they're coming out later on for retail, starting to wonder if they'll even have everything stuffed into wave 2 or not.

**highlord tamburlaine**

I thought the multi mat rules and all that were going into the compendium we were supposed to get. Wasn't that supposed to be in Wave 2?

Don't forget we've also got an AI coming for Mars Attacks- that one doesn't involve undead either, as far as we know.

**GrimDork**

Dz is supposed to get multimat, multiplayer, zombie solo campaign, solo/ai deck. Its all due to go into compendium and that should come in wave 2... we just haven't heard a thing about it lately and it takes time to get paper books printed. It all should be in the second shipment, yes.

**scarletsquig**

Hopefully they'll throw some .pdfs at us before it ships.

**GrimDork**

^such a thing would be lovely. I just hope its not done because the book will be delayed. Not sure why I'm quite this pessimistic about it.

Soon enough I'll have my precious solo rules, and a zombie horde to go with them bwahaha.

**timetowaste85**

I can't wait for wave 2 to ship. I definitely want the Merc deck. Blaine is joining my Reb list, meanwhile Howlett might be hitting my Enforcers quickly. But...since both are being painted as different versions of Wolverine...what do I do if they match up against each other ever?! Argh!! Also, Stew was totally understanding of switching my address (for the 5th time since Mantic kickstarters began, no joke). I swear, I make his life a living hell at times.

Also, I got my new game store to try it out, and I have two people who tried it and want to keep playing, and a full group of ex-Necromunda players chomping at the bit to play on Sunday. Can't wait!!

**Yonan**

Theophony wrote:
Been thinking of getting into dreadball , looks like a good deal for the bundle. Might justify it as a birthday present to myself.

Do it! Dreadball is a great game. Fast games, lots of strategy, lots of teams... mostly balanced ; p

GrimDork wrote:
Is anyone else really excited for the dz solo deck? I could see folks creating "dead mans hand" esque scenarios where its almost impossible to beat the AI's superior force unless you move the right way (and get lucky).

Plus I'd like to get a game in

Myself as well! Was really excited when they added that, was a big part of why I went in big. It also means you and a mate vs "the enemy" and so on, which is great as I'm a big fan of co-op play.

**Talking Banana**

Yonan wrote:

GrimDork wrote:
Is anyone else really excited for the dz solo deck? I could see folks creating "dead mans hand" esque scenarios where its almost impossible to beat the AI's superior force unless you move the right way (and get lucky).

Plus I'd like to get a game in

Myself as well! Was really excited when they added that, was a big part of why I went in big. It also means you and a mate vs "the enemy" and so on, which is great as I'm a big fan of co-op play.

Yep, me too.

**Azazelx**

Yonan wrote:

Myself as well! Was really excited when they added that, was a big part of why I went in big. It also means you and a mate vs "the enemy" and so on, which is great as I'm a big fan of co-op play.

You know, that hadn't occurred to me, but it's an excellent option and selling point!

**Yonan**

Damn straight, I hope it works well. Quirkworthy seems pretty good at writing rules, so I hope he's done a good job on it and it's fun to play like that. Think of all the narratives you could forge!!!

**GrimDork**

Definitely cool, combine it with multi at and multiplayer to generate some fairly epic scenarios like base assaults or larger scale engagements.

**Paradigm**

I too hope the solo rules are available at retail. I mostly play against myself anyway, so elements like keeping cards/missions secret is an issue (unless I get my left/right eye to look the other way

) and a good old Firefight-style mission of Mercs vs Zombies would be a great way to kill an afternoon.

**Daedleh**

Quick update from Ronnie about the Azure Forest limited edition set: http://manticblog.com/2014/06/17/azure-forest-ltd-edition/

Hello everyone, Ronnie here. I meant to post this on Friday, but it’s been so hectic here since the move. But what a move! We’ve got internet that’s faster than a snail’s pace, plenty of space for everyone, and so much news coming over the next days and weeks, you won’t believe it. We’ve also got a special surprise up our sleeves for you. Apologies that this didn’t appear on schedule though.

DreadBall is currently Mantic’s bestselling game to date; although it is rapidly getting caught up by Deadzone and Mars Attacks (MA looks on course to be the biggest outright, simply by its launch!).

What is the Azure Forest Limited Edition of DreadBall?

This summer, DreadBall will be getting its 5th printing, which is an amazing achievement for any table-top game, and it’s all thanks to you guys!
Interestingly, only half of the first print run went to Kickstarter backers – all the rest have been sold by our independent stores, with a few going from Mantic directly at shows or online. Every single one of those 5 print runs have been packed here in the UK, and then shipped around the world. The components have come from many different suppliers, all around the world, including the UK, China, and Lithuania. It has been a fun challenge bringing in all the bits needed for the game from so many places and keeping it in stock for the past 18 months (that’s right DreadBall is only 1 ½ years old!!!!) but now, it is time for a change.

At the end of summer the 6th Edition will be printed and packed by the same company that handles DeadZone and Mars Attacks. They can now source all of the components directly at the quality we need.
DB-Box-Lid-azure-forestThis has the added advantage of allowing the team here in the UK to concentrate this summer on packing (carefully!) and shipping nearly 7500 Kickstarter orders, plus all the usual trade and mail orders! We are expecting to be busy! We will get delivery of the 6th print run of the main DreadBall game in early autumn (or fall depending where you live). Oh, and we will no longer need to call it DreadBall Deluxe – it will be back to the original-is-best plain DreadBall. DreadBall Kick-Off will continue to run down over the summer, and will be discontinued at the end of this print run, so if you want a copy, now is the time to grab that.

So to celebrate the fifth printing we have decided to do a very cool one-off only Azure Forest Edition – celebrating this year’s expansion – and perhaps a nod in the direction of another major sporting event in a rainforest this summer

Kickstarter backers, and other Azure Forest previous purchasers, we’ve got you covered too! The pitch is available as a separate purchase, for those that want it.
This Azure Forest boxed set is strictly limited to just 750 copies, and we have produced it for 3 main reasons…

It will celebrate the fifth and final packing of Dreadball in the UK and be a fitting way to end the production here.
- It will mean that people can buy DreadBall in 2 ways over the summer:
The Kick-Off version (if they want to give it a try for the lowest cost possible – and then come back to upgrade it later, of course!!)
OR
The Azure Forest Edition which has all of the basic game components – AND includes the Azure Forest book, cards and pitch – plus A’teo “The Savage”, the MVP from the expansion.
3724.1.600.600.FFFFFF.0 The Azure Forest version will also come with the very cool Azure Forest arena pitch – and will look very much like this…. and its own unique limited edition box.

It will allow us to print the Azure Forest pitch, which a number of people have been asking us for since we did the expansion earlier this year. We will be able to make that available separately for anyone who doesn’t want a full new version of the game too, although again that will be in very limited numbers.
This is made up from the last of the print run of the Azure Forest books, and once it’s all gone, it’s all gone. We’re not reprinting any of this once it goes out of stock, so please do grab a copy as soon as you can.
Oh, and it is cool – I know that makes it 4 reasons, but you know, what the heck!
I am sure this will mean DreadBall continues its march to top of the leader board and remains entrenched as a fan favourite for Mantic Games. It is a great celebration for our first game to sail pass the 10,000 copies mark, and keeps the attention focused on this most special of games – ahead of season 4 and Xtreme later in the year!

Best wishes and thanks for reading.

PS. Look out for other big news over the coming week – we’ve got some really great stuff coming up for you, and we couldn’t do it without you all, so thank you for supporting us and allowing us to bring you great games for everyone to enjoy.

**warboss**

Interesting to hear that MA is on track to be the best selling... I would have thought Deadzone (at least until Warpath) would have that locked in but that might be my own bias at play.

**Bioptic**

I think it's a distribution issue - it's much easier to convince boardgaming shops to carry 1) a licensed IP, and 2) a smaller starter box. They may have changed the non-Kickstarter packaging for Deadzone, because you could crush a small child with that box - and it must have taken up the shelf space of 3 equivalent boardgames!

**SeanDrake**

warboss wrote:
Interesting to hear that MA is on track to be the best selling... I would have thought Deadzone (at least until Warpath) would have that locked in but that might be my own bias at play.

MA has been picked up by 2 large euro distributor's who are also translating it into there native languages Spanish and German I think. This is a pretty big deal as it means it will be available in mainstream stores in those countries.

**scarletsquig**

It's the pre-assembled thing that's why the distributors went for it.

Any assembly at all = forget about it, as far as euro board game market goes.

And the bag of tiny little restic components thrown together like you get in, say, Dreadball (All 16 minis and the ball come in the same bag with lots of sub-5mm sized bits and no instructions at all) is even more of a death sentence from that perspective, distro won't look at it.

It's not just Dakka that gives a big "nope" to restic and all that is involved with it.

**Talking Banana**

warboss wrote:
Interesting to hear that MA is on track to be the best selling... I would have thought Deadzone (at least until Warpath) would have that locked in but that might be my own bias at play.

Yeah - if consumer demand matches the retail orders, then a second Mars Attacks KS won't be looking like such a long shot after all.

**Yonan**

I want the Azure forest stuff, but it looks like there's no option for all the azure forest stuff in a bundle without getting all the rest of the starter stuff too which is a shame. I'd like the pitch, book, cards and MVP, but already have the starter and ultimate so don't need either again. Posted on the blog to see if that is, or might be an option.

**warboss**

SeanDrake wrote:
warboss wrote:
Interesting to hear that MA is on track to be the best selling... I would have thought Deadzone (at least until Warpath) would have that locked in but that might be my own bias at play.

MA has been picked up by 2 large euro distributor's who are also translating it into there native languages Spanish and German I think. This is a pretty big deal as it means it will be available in mainstream stores in those countries.

scarletsquig wrote:It's the pre-assembled thing that's why the distributors went for it.

Any assembly at all = forget about it, as far as euro board game market goes.

And the bag of tiny little restic components thrown together like you get in, say, Dreadball (All 16 minis and the ball come in the same bag with lots of sub-5mm sized bits and no instructions at all) is even more of a death sentence from that perspective, distro won't look at it.

It's not just Dakka that gives a big "nope" to restic and all that is involved with it.

Interesting... I guess it my preference for hobby style assembly required (within reason... see the robotech original 30+ piece spartan model prototype for how NOT to do a terminator sized model) type games that caused my bias. Good for them; I sincerely hope they *don't* run into the same issues with PVC and hard plastic that have plagued them. I'm not a fan of the MA art style (or the movie) but a popular mass market game is good for the hobby.

**Pacific**

Great news that the Azure Forest board is now up for pre-order separately (they must have seen my previous post!

)

For a tenner that's a no-brainer

http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/pre-order/dreadball/product/limited-edition-azure-forest-pitch.html

**Talking Banana**

I wouldn't mind seeing Mantic do a line of licensed, Deadzone-based skirmish games, if there's a market for them. But only if they do alternate DZ decks for all of them, to make them cross-compatible.

**Yonan**

Vermonter wrote:
I wouldn't mind seeing Mantic do a line of licensed, Deadzone-based skirmish games, if there's a market for them. But only if they do alternate DZ decks for all of them, to make them cross-compatible.

Starcraft Deadzone yes please! My life for Aiur!

**privateer4hire**

Sales, Overwhelming!

**Cosmic**

+1 for 28mm Starcraft Marines... and Zealots... and Hydras... and...

**timetowaste85**

Titan AE source material!! A Dredge team, and a Captain Corso model!! Don Bluth, eat your heart out!!

**overtyrant**

Is the LE pitch a board like the original, or a rubber backed mat do we know?

**Yonan**

It's a board like the original.

**Pacific**

Awesome stuff, got that new board down on pre-order!

Has anyone played with the Azure Forest expansion, does it make much difference to the game?

As for a team - would probably have to go with 'Brutal Deluxe', the team from Speedball 2, although I guess you could argue that with the Corp team and actual Speedball 2 MVP it is already available..

**pretre**

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1744629938/deadzone-the-sci-fi-miniatures-board-game/posts/881761?ref=dash

Hi everyone it is Ronnie here.

Let’s start with the serious stuff, and an apology and a promise.

First the promise - we have spent most of May moving to the new building. There have been lots of reasons for the move, but one of the main ones is in order to send the second shipment of Deadzone in a far more organized, professional and well-packed way than we did the first wave. While the boxes we dispatched were huge and filled with lots of great models, scenery and the game itself I know the packing materials were inadequate and the accuracy was poor. There were too many bits missing and in some cases damaged.

This is ultimately my responsibility.

The sheer scale and enormity of the job caught us off guard. This will not happen on the second shipment. We have dedicated space to pre-pack complicated sets. The contents will be marked more clearly and faction starters will be pre-packed, as will the Battlezones scenery. We will have more staff, a checking area and we will just take longer to do each order carefully and completely. Of course there may still be individual errors – when you send out 4500 orders with 100’s of individual components in each something always goes wrong – but it will not be because of how the product is packed or the people doing it.

Our commitment with the wave 2 shipment is to include as much fun and great product but in a more organized and well packed fashion.

We've got top men and women lined up to work on your packages (pic is actually of painted Strider Pilots without the canopies on, which is why the controls are kinda floating in mid-air.)

We have now sent out packages with missing items and most people now have got their issues sorted. However, I have spent part of this week personally chasing down some outstanding missing items for people who have contacted me on email or via Facebook. While I have seen a few, I know there might still be a few more. Please send us a gentle reminder (via Kickstarter PM) and I will personally make sure any outstanding issues are sorted, or email sarah.clark at manticgames.com.

We lost a few weeks because we put more products over into hard plastic, but we look to still be on course to start shipping in July. For a moment there it looked like it might go earlier, but this is a Kickstarter after all and that never happens

Thanks for being patient with us, now let’s get on with the good stuff. I think we’ve been good on some details and showing off new pics as and when we get them but I’m sorry that I’ve not had the clarity to tell you the overview more exactly. Now we know more we can get on with it!

First up our warehouse is filling up with Zombies, sprues and very soon books…

Some sexy proofs

We have just sent the Contagion and the Incursion books off to print. They look fantastic and digital copies will be sent to you ahead of the physical dispatch so you can have read up on your new arrivals and prepare colour schemes.

The Brokkrs, Asterians and Zombies have all had a terrific response in the comments section on their respective updates and we are expecting a box with final test shots of the new hard plastic sprues any day now. We will get photos up as soon as we have them. We will quickly bring in the quantities of models and books we need to be able to dispatch your pledges, otherwise everything we need for wave 2 is already in the warehouse.

Also, a few weeks ago we sent out the Deadzone collection of short stories.

I asked at the Open Day who had seen it and it became clear that while many people had gone and downloaded the compendium not many had actually read it. Please. I really urge you to read the stories. Each one is the perfect length for about 15 minutes of quiet time. It’s very easy to get onto the iPad and iPhones – just visit Mantic Digital and the site will automatically adjust to fit your screen if you read it online. Please, please have a read. The stories bring Deadzone to life and inspired me to get on to gaming.

The link to the download is here - don't forget to use the code we gave you in a past update.

In the warehouse we have the Secret Weapon tiles too (and they look so good I have bought one myself and have started building my own Deadzone table on it).

We have also generated a few videos about assembling the buildings…

... and how to get started playing Deadzone by stripping back the contents a bit:

Sorry these are a bit rough and ready (and a tad long!) but in a few weeks time we will have a quick start video to help people get playing Deadzone. Until then we thought why not get stuck straight in?

Once you have played Deadzone it really comes to life, but actually getting started is the hardest part. The quick start guide will strip away everything down to the basics to get you playing – and then the extra layers can be added back in as your experience grows. We will get a full video up soon in conjunction with our friends at Beast of War so anyone who still has to play the game can get started, and bring in more new players alongside the wave 2 releases.

Thank you for being patient with us whilst we delivered this massive undertaking. The final pieces are now being made and shipped into us. We will keep posting all the last bits as they arrive and with the move completed we are on track for getting wave 2 out in a far more organized and well packed way – but even more so the sculpts, books and scenery are looking just as fantastic as they were in the first shipment!

Best wishes and thank you for your support, Deadzone would be nowhere near as filled with plastic, scenery and books without your support.

Ronnie

Pics and videos in the link.

Also... Top men.