Mantic DreadBall Kickstarter - Completed! - 3 seasons fully funded!

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**OrlandotheTechnicoloured**

The mould lines on some of the figures have been the one dissapointment for me on some of the dreadball figures

It's a problem with their caster as not all figures have the same issues (eg one of my Orx Guards had horrible thick mould lines, the others were much better)

While cleanup on most of the minis will eliminate the problem (with time and effort) some are positioned to make this tricky and possible require some resculpting

Lucky Logan is one I'm having trouble with, and the Veermyn have mould lines over fur (always tricky) and narrow strapping round the ankles (again tricky)

I just have the feeling the mould maker had taken a little more care (or rejected the odd figure) I'd have been more impressed

(I'd still give the package a solid 8/10, but they could have got 9)

**Commander Cain**

Ah thanks for the size comparison pic Dave. I was planning on chopping them up and incorporating them into my sedition wars game so it is nice to see that they scale up much better than I first thought.

And my set really needs to hurry up and get here soon!

**OrlandotheTechnicoloured**

Just to note I dropped a quick email into Mantic about my generally positive first impression of the game

1. I mentioned an assembly guide would be good for the non-minigames out there.

They said they'll look into it for future printings

2. I thought the card counters were a bit thin. Aparently they were originally meant to be thicker but the overseas printer let Mantic down and these are the best they could get locally in the time frame allowed.

Future print runs will have counters comparable to those in FFG boardgames

3. They'll pass on my mould line comments to their caster (so hopefully future buyers won't have those few figures with horrible mould lines)

(and Stuart responded to my email in about 5 minutes so well done to him too)

**Alpharius**

Nice pic - thanks Dave!

**DaveC**

OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:

1. I mentioned an assembly guide would be good for the non-minigames out there.

Having just assembled the Marauder and Forge Father Teams I could have done with one of these while the pegs are all different sizes and shapes and should only fit in a specific slot it can still take awhile to figure them all out especially with the Forge Father fists and Goblin Jacks also proved to be very fiddly to put together and I'm an experienced model maker who knows how a casual gamer will manage. That said everything fits together very well there will be no need for any filling here joins are hidden at armour plate joins and clothing.

I have a Marauder team, Forge Father Team (they look great assembled up and were the one team I wanted more than any other), Slippery Jack, Gorim Ironstone, No.88, Lucky Logan and Refbot assembled and on the painting shelf I hope to get them all painted over the Christmas holidays. The join on the Refbots left arm is tiny with no slot (to small to pin) I foresee many missing Refbot arms and as for the balls Mantic are going to have to sell packs of these to replace all the lost ones. Gorim is noticeably thinner than the other Forge Fathers but it's probably just as well so he's easier to spot on the pitch but he's a bit underwhelming for an MVP sculpt. No. 88 is actually quite small but as it's of an unknown race it's fine. I was lucky with the mold lines on mine for the most part nothing misaligned just a little extra "flash" in places that scraped away easy enough.

Overall very impressed with the miniatures and the Acrylic pitch (glad I opted for it at the survey now) sure there are a few average sculpts but there's no bad sculpts that I can see even Wildcard looks better in person and I may not even do any conversion work on her afterall.

I used Army Painter Cyanoacrylate super glue to assemble them without any problems or "fogging" issues. Finally the miniatures will have to be glued to the Hex bases or magnetised at any rate they are not snap fit some like the Refbot are a lot smaller than the insert space on the Hex base.

**OrlandotheTechnicoloured**

I'd agree with you that the Forge Fathers as a team are probably the stand out group of mins

I also really like the Orx Guards and the Veermyn Guards

**judgedoug**

re: Gorim, I was under the impression his fluff indicates that unlike normal Forge Fathers, he's smaller, runs faster, and avoids combat, to score points.

**wilycoyote**

Yep, mine arrived checked and then was taken away until Christmas...doh.

I did get a couple of practice games with a mate's copy though at my club and his solution for the hex base issue was to use double sided clear tape. just enough tackiness to keep figures in place and less fiddly than magnetising them. Although I suspect when the orders that were made for additional bases arrives the figures will be glued on.

Question, normally I would use PVA with clear plastic, but having little experience with the Restic used by Mantic will this do? I an wary of superglues because of the fogging issues on clear pieces.

**Cyporiean**

Just got mine, the box got pretty beat up by shipping though :/

**DaveC**

wilycoyote wrote:
Yep, mine arrived checked and then was taken away until Christmas...doh.

I did get a couple of practice games with a mate's copy though at my club and his solution for the hex base issue was to use double sided clear tape. just enough tackiness to keep figures in place and less fiddly than magnetising them. Although I suspect when the orders that were made for additional bases arrives the figures will be glued on.

Question, normally I would use PVA with clear plastic, but having little experience with the Restic used by Mantic will this do? I an wary of superglues because of the fogging issues on clear pieces.

The fogging is usually due to getting some moisture - normally from your hands - in the superglue while it sets or using to much superglue a small drop in the center of the underside of the base will be sufficient to glue it to the clear base without any fogging issues (or if there are they won't be visible as they are on the underside). PVA won't form a strong enough bond for long term use it will hold in the short term though.

As a side note my Enforcers base was fairly badly warped (the Enforcers base seems to be thinner than the others) so I put it in boiling water for a few seconds and it became very pliable and I was able to straighten the base out good as new.

**Riquende**

DaveC wrote:
The join on the Refbots left arm is tiny with no slot (to small to pin) I foresee many missing Refbot arms

Have you got a metal refbot? Because I've got two restic ones and neither needed its arm attaching to it.

**DaveC**

Riquende wrote:
DaveC wrote:
The join on the Refbots left arm is tiny with no slot (to small to pin) I foresee many missing Refbot arms

Have you got a metal refbot? Because I've got two restic ones and neither needed its arm attaching to it.

Looks like mine broke in the box then thought it was a bit weird that it was a separate piece her ankle was broken as well but just needed gluing back together can't even be seen now.

**timetowaste85**

My refbot was a single piece too. Yours definitely must have been broken.

**Commander Cain**

Ah, after all my complaining by DB box arrived today. Now to wait until Christmas to inspect the goodies!

**RiTides**

Agreed, thanks for the pic DaveC!

Can't wait to get my John Doe from Cyporiean... then the long wait for his Nameless friends!

**Krinsath**

Mine was just dropped off while I got some chicken soup to fight this pesky cold.

Very nice stuff on initial glance and my acrylic pitch is gorgeous. I'm saving playing with the models until I'm feeling better, but everything looks good so far.

**kenshin620**

Sorry if this has been discussed at length already, but is it fair that people who back the KS might not get their box before retailers do?

Though I suppose the issue this TMPer has is not the game itself but the "hostility" of the mantic forums

http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=290010

**overtyrant**

Yeah thing is he was quite hostile to begin with and essentially everyone disagreed with him, just pop over to the Mantic Forums and give it a read he blew things right out of perportion IMO!

Not to botherd about receiving my copy of DB at the same time as retailers. Was told I would get it in December and I got it in December, its not a race lol!

**Baragash**

kenshin620 wrote:
Sorry if this has been discussed at length already, but is it fair that people who back the KS might not get their box before retailers do?

Though I suppose the issue this TMPer has is not the game itself but the "hostility" of the mantic forums

http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=290010

that page is not representative of the situation at all, and half his rant on the Mantic Forum is about how his local gaming group are douchebags and taking the piss out of him because he hasn't got his yet, and possibly not letting him play without his own copy (his writing is terrible so I'm not clear on that point).

He was the one being the most hostile on the Mantic forums.

Mantic promised the product in December, it shipped in December, almost everyone is going to get it in December
Though they didn't publicise it, they were screwed by the same printer that screwed McVey on Sedition Wars and everything was meant to arrive already packed from China
So Mantic had to pack way over 2000 games themselves (1610 + 297 Striker pledges alone, plus other pledges including games + retailer copies) for which they closed their warehouse and didn't ship any other product out
The MVPs and some of the teams they were still waiting on so they began shipping (on the 30th Nov I'm led to believe) the product that didn't require the extras as it was ready
They didn't give any KS backer's copy to anyone that wasn't a backer

So essentially a few people have gone all #firstworldproblems because over a two and a half week period Mantic worked a shedload of overtime, shipped a load of product in a practical order instead of holding their hands up and going "things are delayed and it's not our fault" and even pulled a couple of hundred backers product forward a month (January Striker pledges went out too).

I wish they'd communicated it much better than they did.

On a more positive note, here's a review I did for some people who knew very little about DB in the first place - because I enjoy the game, you might consider it fairly biased

but I've tried to concentrate on telling people how the game works:

Baragash wrote:
Firstly, if anyone wants to read more about it:
http://dreadball.com/ - official site
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1744629938/dreadball-the-futuristic-sports-game - kickstarter, probably the best place to see the scope of what's planned
http://quirkworthy.com/category/dreadball-the-futuristic-sports-game/ - designer Jake Thornton's own blog

So what's the game like? Well it's not like Bloodbowl, that's for sure. Yeah, you pick up the ball, throw the ball, punch (slam) people, have "tackle zones" (threat hexes), give assists, steal the ball, can foul (and get sent off), score points (strikes) and you get "special play cards", yet despite all that, it's a really different game. Think more ice hockey or basketball where the action flows from end-to-end continuously.

So the basic premise is that you get 14 rushes, 7 per player, each of which allow you 5 actions. As you start with 6 players on the pitch, and a player can take up to actions you're immediately presented with a choice for managing limited resources.

Now you don't track absolute score, rather you track the difference. So if I score 2 points, then you score 4 points, the score track would read 2-0 to you. If you get to 7 points ahead at any time, you win there and then. There are 3 strike zones you can score in, the 2 ones nearest the centre line are worth 1 point (+1 if you score from a particular hex) and the one at the end is worth 3 points (again the +1 is available). In order to score you have to get a player into the strike zone and make a successful throw (I personally imagine this bit like the game they play in Battlestar Galactica).

So what about the teams?

Firstly there are 3 types of players. Not all teams get all 3.

Striker - the stars of the team, they are better at throwing (and therefore scoring), picking up the ball, evading and dashing, but they can't hit opponents

Guards - the violence in the team, better armoured, better at slamming and therefore killing, but they can't catch or hold the ball (unless they get the Keeper upgrade though this doesn't allow them to score)

Jacks - they are generally not as good as a Striker or Guard at their respective specialities, but on the other hand they can both handle the ball and slam so give you flexibility

The 4 Season 1 teams are:

Human - all-rounders as you would expect, start with a roster of 2 Guards, 3 Jacks, 3 Strikers

Orx & Goblins - no strikers in the team, start with 3 (!) Orc Guards (these guys are hard, harder than Human Guards) and 5 Goblin Jacks

Veer-myn (rats) - no Jacks, start with 2 Guards and 6 Strikers

Forge Fathers (Dwarfs) - similar to humans but they trade move and speed (move is what you think it is, speed is a measure of a particular range of abilities like you would imagine strength or skill to be) for strength, start with 3 Guards, 3 Jacks and 2 Strikers

What about the mechanics?

To conduct an action you make a test against Speed, Strength or Skill. Where DB gets interesting is that you don't roll 1 dice against a score, you roll 3 dice and only need 1 to equal or beat the score to succeed. Also, rather than use modifiers, bonuses and penalties increase or decrease the number of dice you get to roll. There are some actions like Dashing or Evading which get progressively difficult the more times you do it in an action and require cumulative successes to pass. The net effect is that the odds are normally in your favour to pass a test, but the benefits of succeeding in any individual action aren't huge. The big benefits come in when you "double" an action, that is roll lots of successes - or in the case of an "opposed" roll (where you and your opponent both roll and the highest wins) scoring twice as many successes as they do. Doubling either gives you a much better benefit in the action or gives you a free action beyond the 5 you get in your Rush (and doesn't count against the players' individual 2 action limit).

Any dice that comes up a 6 allows you to throw another dice at the action (this can be crucial in armour rolls and slams quite often) to try for an additional success.

In addition to actions being fairly easy to pass at a basic level, which helps the fast, end-to-end nature of the game, you only end a rush prematurely if you lose possession of the ball during it (if you don't have possession then you've nothing to worry about).

Another interesting feature is that the game is entirely continuous, after a team makes a successful strike the ball is pinged back across the centre of the pitch and the other player begins his next Rush. This means you have to balance committing players forward against needing players back to stop enemy scores and retrieve the ball from relaunches or missed passes/strikes. If you lose players during the game then substitutes simply run or sprint onto the pitch from your entry hex.

The other features of the game are coaching dice and cards. Coaching dice are a limited pool of dice that you can discard during any action and simply add them to the number of dice you are rolling for that test. The cards off a range of effects. Many of them are held in your hand and allow you to give a player a free action (and a player can have 1 card action per turn on top of their 2 normal action limit). Most of the others are events which bring a permanent effect or modifier into play, though only the most recent event ever applies. The cards are also used to move the ref, randomise players and conduct "fan checks", fan checks allow you to gain more coaching dice during the game. As you can "buy" 1 card per turn as an action, use of cards is a central feature of trying to gain the upper hand.

Each race has a defined number of starting cards and dice.

There are also "star players" known as MVPs in the game, they look cool as models and on paper, but I've yet to try any myself.

And leagues?

Each team has a defined starting roster, which is the set of players you use in both one-off games and to start a league system with. This works quite well as it means teams start the league on a level playing field. I haven't experienced a league yet myself, but you can add additional players, increase the number of cards and coaching dice you have, add skills - all the things you expect to see.

The future?

Season 2 playtesting is well under way now. This will add the effects of coaches and cheerleaders to the game, as well as expand the league rules. It will also add more MVPs, and 4 more teams, slightly more exotic and with slightly steeper learning curves than the existing 4.

As I'm lucky enough to be in the playtest group for Season 2 I can't say much, but here's a summary of what you can find on the linked sites:

Zz'orr - insectoid aliens, playstyle info currently classified, but much like Earth's beloved cockroach they are hard to kill

Female humans - playstyle info currently classified

Judwan - alien pacifists, so no hitting the opposition

Robots - can transform from one player type to another

These teams do add an exciting new twist beyond the 4 "basic" teams in Season 1. Season 3 was also funded through the Kickstarter, so that's a further 4 teams coming, plus there are models (and eventually rules) coming for large multi-hex occupying models (Season 4?) and Xtreme which is an underground no-holds-barred variant on the game.

Anyway, I love the game, it's fast and exciting and combines tactical depth with easy-to-pick-up mechanics, so if you get the chance to try it, have a go!

**Groundh0g**

Came home to mine today... didn't expect it to reach Australia so quickly. Very impressed by the models AND the acrylic pitch!

**Azazelx**

Meh. Whiny guy on internet forum has entitlement complex. Par for the course really, isn't it?

**Riquende**

I missed it on the Mantic forum yesterday, but reading it today it comes across as:

Warwick: "Moan moan moan, don't have my stuff, local players being mean, Mantic's fault, never backing them again"
Mantic Community: "Well, actually Mantic have done really well considering their problems, plus they never said you'd get it first, only in December. It's a bit silly to be whinging."
Warwick: "OMG THE INTERNET BULLIEZ!"

**Zweischneid**

Well.

If Mantic had all those problems, why did they only affect the KS backers but not the retailers? Seems a bit odd.

Reading this, it doesn't seem like the problem is the delay. Everyone accepts that possibility with a KS. The problem appears to be a relative delay of KS-pledges over retailers. And problems in the supply chain cannot really explain that, as these problems would seem to hit the entire line equally, no matter where it ships to, no?

**Baragash**

Zweischneid wrote:
The problem appears to be a relative delay of KS-pledges over retailers. And problems in the supply chain cannot really explain that, as these problems would seem to hit the entire line equally, no matter where it ships to, no?

Items not in the basic box - the MVPs and the FF/VM teams - had not arrived when the first boxes had been made ready for release, so Mantic started shipping the boxes that didn't contain these items ie the basic box set.

**Zweischneid**

Baragash wrote:
Zweischneid wrote:
The problem appears to be a relative delay of KS-pledges over retailers. And problems in the supply chain cannot really explain that, as these problems would seem to hit the entire line equally, no matter where it ships to, no?

Items not in the basic box - the MVPs and the FF/VM teams - had not arrived when the first boxes had been made ready for release, so Mantic started shipping the boxes that didn't contain these items ie the basic box set.

How were MVPs and the FF/VM Teams delayed, but not the boxes, when it allegedly was the printers and the packaging that let them down?

Baragash wrote:

Though they didn't publicise it, they were screwed by the same printer that screwed McVey on Sedition Wars and everything was meant to arrive already packed from China

**Skinnereal**

My club's Cheerleader set arrived yesterday, with the extra MDF pitch and counters.
But, one of the boxes had 2 of 1 team and none of another. Luckilly, we're missing the one no-one else wanted, and another of the more popular one

Mantic are fab!
i've not checked the models yet, but it all looked OK.

**Baragash**

I didn't say the FF/VM/MVPs were delayed, I said they hadn't arrived.

**Zweischneid**

Baragash wrote:
I didn't say the FF/VM/MVPs were delayed, I said they hadn't arrived.

So if they weren't delayed, but as scheduled, than Mantic always planned for the Striker, etc.. stuff to go out after the boxes went to the retailers - printing hickups or no printing hickups.

Indeed, if it weren't for the printer problems, shops might have gotten it even earlier, but backers still on-time with the non-delayed MVPs,etc..?

**Riquende**

Oh, keep up. It is well known that Mantic expected the Kickstarter copies of DB to arrive in the UK with all the extra pieces already packed, so they'd be able to send everything out at the same time. This didn't happen, and Mantic had to spend several weeks packing the Kickstarter copies with the extras before they could ship them out. This was compounded by further delays as the separate components (the additional teams and MVPs) did not only not turn up ready packed, but did not turn up until a week or so after the basic game.

So in summary, retailers weren't hit with this delay because there weren't any extras to pack in the box.

**Zweischneid**

Baragash wrote:
I didn't say the FF/VM/MVPs were delayed, I said they hadn't arrived.

Riquende wrote:
Oh, keep up. It is well known [...] This was compounded by further delays as the separate components (the additional teams and MVPs)

It is well known? Baragash just said the MVPs weren't delayed. You said they were.

Baragash said they closed the warehouse to pack both retail and KS copies. You say the retail copies didn't need packing.

What is it?

Baragash wrote:
So Mantic had to pack way over 2000 games themselves (1610 + 297 Striker pledges alone, plus other pledges including games + retailer copies) for which they closed their warehouse and didn't ship any other product out

Riquende wrote:

So in summary, retailers weren't hit with this delay because there weren't any extras to pack in the box.