Mantic Deadzone Kickstarter - Completed! - $1,216,482 final total.

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**Necros**

Really like the matt idea.. wondering though, it kinda looks like it's just a mouse matt kind of thing, only bigger.. think the edges would start to get frayed a lot, or sharp pointy swords might catch and rip little holes over time?

**Ronin_eX**

DaveC wrote:
From the comment feed apparently Ronnie has been sharing some info on what's coming up.

Next 2 factions are Forge fathers...

*ahem*

But seriously, I can't wait.

**BobtheInquisitor**

So... what is the Brian Blassed thing about? Will he be some kind of winged Forgefather? Will he command his Hawk Men to DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE?

(If there is an homage model based on his character, I'll buy it sculpt-unseen.)

Also, I'm curious if the Asterian drone rumors have anything to do with the demand for plastic wraithguard... I sure hope 'Craftship Eyarndon' stays out of trouble.

**warboss**

@Ronin: Aren't you tapped out from the warzone KS?

I hope you have an army of talented minimum wage painters to help you paint your hauls in a few months.

**Ronin_eX**

warboss wrote:
@Ronin: Aren't you tapped out from the warzone KS? I hope you have an army of talented minimum wage painters to help you paint your hauls in a few months.

Heh, close to it. But I am already so far in the painting hole I may as well dig a bit deeper. With the extra 80-ish hours I work this month (why I agreed to it I will never know) I may be able to keep a small army of painters fed for the amount of time I'll need 'em.

At least Deadzone seems to be slated for December, I may get through up to a quarter of my Warzone stuff before it arrives.

**Earth Dragon**

That's why Mantic were geniuses with their timing. Right before summer, started at the end of month, but ends right after paycheck a are given out at the beginning of another month.....

I'm positive this will break a mil, and may see a "Bones" ending because of some of the add-ons. The pledge per backer amount will probably break $300.

**Ronin_eX**

At their current rate I think 1mil is a pretty good guess right now. It got a much better start than DB and that ended pretty well. DB also managed to stay pretty constant throughout the middle, if Deadzone manages those kinds of numbers through the middle and has as impressive and end as it did a start then I think we are in for a pretty good campaign. At nearly 2000 backers and $300k before even releasing terrain-based stuff, this thing is looking solid. And if those mats caused enough of a surge to turn a potentially slow Wednesday in to a fairly successful day then the rush once the terrain add-ons come in may be an impressive one.

I can't wait to see how the rest of the week shapes up (at least once the terrain stuff goes up). If the terrain has even half the effect that I think it will then the Forge Fathers and Asterians may get funded pretty damn quick.

**AegisGrimm**

At least a successful campaign will make sure it's a healthy product once released for retail. I can say that even if I can't currently afford the kickstarter, I would definitely still be interested in getting into this game once it releases, if even just bought as smaller chunks.

**warboss**

Out of curiosity, do kickstarted projects sell well in your local areas? I've seen maybe a half dozen products total at my local store that were initially kickstarted and it doesn't seem like they're selling much in either case. I also don't tend to see people playing them either much. I don't know if that's a local phenomenon or a more global thing.

**judgedoug**

I believe at Mantic's press conference they said that they had interest from distributors for 3000 to 5000 copies before the Kickstarter, but after that they sold out of the first two productions runs of Dreadball totalling 10000 copies and created the Dreadball Kickoff boardgame variant because of the popularity.

**Hulksmash**

I've seen Sedition Wars, Zombicide, and Dreamforges stuff in local stores. Not much else yet. Though I'd expect to eventually see Dreadball. The problem for mantic is that some stores don't want to cannibalize their GW sales for fantasy and 40k by carrying Mantic regularly. Might be less a thing with Dreadball.

**Ronin_eX**

warboss wrote:
Out of curiosity, do kickstarted projects sell well in your local areas? I've seen maybe a half dozen products total at my local store that were initially kickstarted and it doesn't seem like they're selling much in either case. I also don't tend to see people playing them either much. I don't know if that's a local phenomenon or a more global thing.

My LGS rarely even gets things outside of the GW and PP range of things. I was surprised when Malifaux seemed to have taken off (Infinity didn't unfortunately; he only ever got the starters for it and is still sitting on six). But amazingly I saw a copy of Zombicide up for sale, I was going to grab it last week when my wife and I went (she loves zombies and board games) but it had been sold already. That was the one and only KS product I have ever seen on the shelves.

I can almost guarantee he wont stock Warzone when it comes in for retail (he still has Heartbreaker/Target minis lying around, not to mention box after box of the FFG one). So I don't think I'll see another Kickstarter product in their until Zombicide Season 2 stuff gets released. But when it does, it will probably sell pretty well.

Edit - Wait, just remembered. I totally saw Sedition Wars in there as well.

**warboss**

judgedoug wrote:I believe at Mantic's press conference they said that they had interest from distributors for 3000 to 5000 copies before the Kickstarter, but after that they sold out of the first two productions runs of Dreadball totalling 10000 copies and created the Dreadball Kickoff boardgame variant because of the popularity.

Good to hear. If anyone could be considered experienced with running successful tabletop minis kickstarters, it would be Mantic. I've seen some of their stuff at the local store but nothing from the more recent KS releases but rather earlier traditionally released stuff.

Hulksmash wrote:I've seen Sedition Wars, Zombicide, and Dreamforges stuff in local stores. Not much else yet. Though I'd expect to eventually see Dreadball. The problem for mantic is that some stores don't want to cannibalize their GW sales for fantasy and 40k by carrying Mantic regularly. Might be less a thing with Dreadball.

I saw a selection of the Dreamforge stuff just a month or two back and one copy of zombicide but that's been it for me. I hadn't thought about it but I do see how a store could see Mantic's lower price points cannibalizing higher priced offerings.

**Commander Cain**

Ah good I see that the Enforcer Captain has been added, really do love that model!

**PsychoticStorm**

And if enough buy it it will become restic.

**squall018**

PsychoticStorm wrote:
And if enough buy it it will become restic.

They did say that but later on in the comments said that would only happen if "thousands were sold". I think they said it as a joke and quickly backtracked when they realized how seriously people took them. I would go try to find where they said it in the comments but the comments page has thousands of Brian Blessed comments and no one has the time to dig through all that. But they definitley said it would take thousands of orders to make that happen, without ever actually putting out a real number.

**JoshInJapan**

PsychoticStorm wrote:
And if enough buy it it will become restic.

The one I got with my 46-minis set is metal, but it goes together more easily than the restic Enforcer troopers.

**Pox Apostle**

I'm loving the look of this so far. I was already in for the $144 early bird Strike Team, but I just upped it another $75 to make a 4x4' gaming surface, and the two captain figures. I've always loved that Maurader but never picked him up, definitely a good time to do so. Once the scenery tiles come up as an add-on I can totally see my pledge for this game coming in at over $300.

**Krinsath**

warboss wrote:
Out of curiosity, do kickstarted projects sell well in your local areas? I've seen maybe a half dozen products total at my local store that were initially kickstarted and it doesn't seem like they're selling much in either case. I also don't tend to see people playing them either much. I don't know if that's a local phenomenon or a more global thing.

The store I frequent doesn't carry too many products that I've seen previously on KS. They have a pretty ample selection of ranges of all sorts, but they seem to be from the usual suspects like GW, WarmaHordes, FFG, Infinity, Malifaux, Spartan Games, CMoN, etc.

I got into a discussion one time about KickStarter with the owner and he expressed that ordering things based on KS performance is something of a crap shoot for him. In the case of Reaper, a line that has a decent chunk of shelf space in the store, they were giving so much away by the end of their KS you were almost crazy to not go in on that if you liked the product. With so many people doing that, and his clientele being relatively Internet-savvy, it becomes a guessing game on if your customers would be interested in something because it was wildly popular online, or if they already got it off of KickStarter for less than he can afford to sell them for in which case you end up with a lot of stock that's already saturated. Factor in re-sales of unwanted models online and that specific picture gets even grimmer. I'm sure there are some things that could work, but I see his point in that for something like DreadBall I'm getting all the teams and rulebooks and MVPs from the KS, so what would he have to sell me?

Now that I think about it though, Mantic doesn't have a presence at all in the store that I recall; I'll have to inquire about that sometime.

**Alpharius**

Do we know if the Deadzone rules will easily accommodate lager board sizes, like 4' x 4' or 4' x 6'?

Or will we have to 'house rule' it?

**Cyporiean**

From what was said at the Adepticon panel, the Deadzone rules will.

**Alpharius**

That is good news, and if properly communicated will certainly help sell truckloads more of the deluxe gaming mats!

**Black Nexus**

i can then see them doing light vehicles maybe like walkers perhaps if the board size gets increase.

Also, new update:

Afternoon update for you today as there are a ton of things going off at the moment:
Jake’s Deadzone Development Diary

Jake talks Grids, boards in a wargame and line of sight in a 3D environment in this enthralling blog post on quirkworthy – here’s an excerpt:

The Challenge

Those of you who have played my other games will know that I like fast and simple games which include a lot of tactical decision making and choice. The challenge for me here was to bring that design ethos into a skirmish game environment and avoid as many as possible of the traditional pitfalls and difficulties.

These problems tend to congregate around movement and who can see what. Getting tape measures into and between scenery can be awkward and whether things are just in or just out of range is a frequent debate that is only made worse by the measuring being difficult to do accurately.

Read the full article here!
Alpha Rules coming tomorrow

Jake has completed the Alpha Rules manuscript and our resident graphic design artist, when not staring at 6’x4’ gaming table made of our shiny new Deluxe Gaming Mat (currently being funded!) is now pulling his hair out getting it into some sort of shape to release to the masses tomorrow as a free download.

Here’s Jake with more:
Live Chat with Ronnie

Ronnie Renton, the big bossman at Mantic Games and general ideas man (whether good or bad) is ready to spill the beans on Deadzone. We’ve kept him quiet but he’s now close to bursting, so we’re letting him loose on our Facebook page and in the comments this evening to answer your questions.

He’ll be online from 8:30 BST – get your questions ready!
Open Day

There is a little over one week to go until the Mantic Open Day!

Held on the 11th May 2013, we will have a Deadzone demo game being run, will be showing off all of the models and sculpts that we have in the office AND Jake Thornton will be on hand to answer your questions.

We have loads of other events being run including a painting seminar with Golem Painting Studio where they will run through hard edge highlighting, painting cloth and more!

Grab your tickets here – don’t miss out! There is only one week to go!

Woo, alpha rules.

**adamsouza**

Alpharius wrote:
That is good news, and if properly communicated will certainly help sell truckloads more of the deluxe gaming mats!

There is nothing on the Kickstarter page that gives anyone any reason to believe it would not work on anything larger than 2'x2'.

That perception was born from rumor mongering before the kickstarter started.

**Alpharius**

If it is unclear to me, I'd bet it is unclear to others.

And an additional note that 'gridless' gameplay will be doable as well, maybe, eventually, is certainly a good thing as well.

**warboss**

The mats look nice the group deals are somewhat odd. In an industry that has either square or rectangular playspaces, the deals that offer odd numbers of mats leave you with a completely useless one. You can make a smallish 4x4 area with the 5 matt deal for $90 but you end up with a pointless dead area mat on the side. I'm not sure if the odd numbers are there to convince people to buy another one matt or what. I don't plan on playing the smaller skirmish games but would be much more likely to use them in larger scale wargames so the choice of odd numbers of mats is (pun intended) odd. For those more familiar with mantic kickstarters, is it likely that a later stretch goal will increase the number of mats in the deals or decrease the price? Or does mantic generally only do completely new addons/stretch goals instead of revising older ones?

I'm guessing that the base game has a bloodbowl/space hulk grid pattern based on the grid pattern on the mat as well. In a minis game that doesn't use a grid, those lines can give you a heck of a bonus in determining if you'll be in range with a particular set of moves/actions.

**Cyporiean**

warboss wrote:
The mats look nice the group deals are somewhat odd. In an industry that has either square or rectangular playspaces, the deals that offer odd numbers of mats leave you with a completely useless one. You can make a smallish 4x4 area with the 5 matt deal for $90 but you end up with a pointless dead area mat on the side. I'm not sure if the odd numbers are there to convince people to buy another one matt or what. I don't plan on playing the smaller skirmish games but would be much more likely to use them in larger scale wargames so the choice of odd numbers of mats is (pun intended) odd.

Its because the 'Sweet Spot' pledge includes 1 mat.

**recruittons**

It might be assumed that people are using the mats with the included one. Strike teams gets a free deluxe and Recon gets a paper one, so they could be used together

**warboss**

Ah, that makes sense. It doesn't do me any good since I don't plan on getting the free pledge level but it does make sense.

**CptJake**

Cyporiean wrote:
warboss wrote:
The mats look nice the group deals are somewhat odd. In an industry that has either square or rectangular playspaces, the deals that offer odd numbers of mats leave you with a completely useless one. You can make a smallish 4x4 area with the 5 matt deal for $90 but you end up with a pointless dead area mat on the side. I'm not sure if the odd numbers are there to convince people to buy another one matt or what. I don't plan on playing the smaller skirmish games but would be much more likely to use them in larger scale wargames so the choice of odd numbers of mats is (pun intended) odd.

Its because the 'Sweet Spot' pledge includes 1 mat.

And you can also purchase a single mat, and when added to an order with an odd number of mats, PRESTO!, you end up with an even number.