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Heath has uploaded some High-Res concept art:
http://artofhf.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/deadzone/



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Cross Post from the Tablescapes Kickstarter:

Secret Weapon 22 minutes ago

OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT OF A PENDING OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT AN OFFICIAL... ah, you get the idea....

I'm off to bed, and I'm waiting for logos to come through to make everything official, but I can tell you now, that I will be telling you later, that Secret Weapon *WILL* be offering an official Deadzone compatible board!

DEADZONE BOARD - ANNOUNCEMENT INCOMING!

And so I'll leave you with that... because I spent today so excited that I'm exhausted!

Hmm, that is certainly an interesting possibility. Can't wait to hear more.

It seems like a lot of people tend to have a bit of a knee-jerk reaction of "ugh" whenever they hear "anime/manga style." I suspect a lot of people are having flashbacks of the McFarlane Toys Manga Spawn line or generally just unfairly think of Gundam Wing whenever they hear the term used in relation to robots. The Japanese know how to design robots and I'd say there's a few designers out there whose aesthetics would actually work quite well with Eldar/Asterians. Case in point, the Siren R from Mamoru Nagano's Five Star Stories. This is just one of many, many cool mecha designs from that comic.


(Picture comes from Gears online, btw)

Or there's the mechs from Magic Knight Rayearth (which is actually a magical girl show, if you can believe it)


Point is, anime style could be a very good thing here. Hell, the Eldar Titans were already pretty much aping Nagano's designs anyway.

And I'll just echo the comment about GW's Eldar fluff not making any sense. If your species is near extinction, why wouldn't you use some damn robots?

Another good example is Kingdom Death's Beetle Knight:


Which is a homage to Dunbine:

Dead zone compatible board? Oh yeah!!

I've really got to stop exclaiming holy friggin crap, but holy fringing crap!

Quickworthy has a rundown of the turn sequence

http://quirkworthy.com/2013/05/02/deadzone-designers-notes-turn-sequence/

I think he slightly misrepresents Infinity game system in his brief description of it, but gives some basic outlines on his take of a modern IGYG system.

Interesting, but I am not fond of random cards for actions/ reactions, that been said this is an outline, the alpha rules will give a better insight on it.

 DaveC wrote:
so then what we know after tonights chat with Ronnie

Rules - Alpha rules tomorrow

Terrain - there's more to come they still have to finalise the layouts but they should be in a position to add the terrain pledges on Wednesday or so, this will include the terrain only pledge and discounted terrain bundles for other backers. There's a chance of ruined buildings and alien stuff if it gets far enough.

Game Mat - 1 design for now but if it gets far enough in they might do a second theme.

First 4 factions - still a few bits to round out before they can call them done. Rebs and Marauders are sculpted already. They will start showing off the Rebs over the weekend. There are upwards of 20 alien species associated with the Rebs so lots of room to expand.

Next 2 factions - Forgefathers and Asterians. Asterians will have only one "elf" as the commander the rest of the faction will be drones - manga style drones.

VeerMyn and Z'Zor they have special plans for these but they aren't yet intended to be part of the KS but if it gets far enough they might make it in. They would be the main "bad guys" in future expansions like the plague are now.

There will be a plague zombie expansion as part of the KS, new sculpts in hard plastic - not a kit bash like before.

Nameless - they are trying to find a way to fit them in - so probably not as full faction then.

Thanks very much for that summary, very useful!

Almost at the 300,000 mark now, will be interesting to see what the new stretch goal will be.

1,999 backers ^^

2000backers + $300k stretch goal hit.

New $315k SG is the Helfather.

Many of the mercenary warriors who ply their trade on the fringes of Corporation space have blood-curdling nicknames and impressive ranks. Few are as well-deserved as that of Shadrek Mal-Raz.

The assumption is that he is a Forge Father by race as his armour and weaponry are all made by that most secretive and closed culture. However, it is clearly a customised or at least extremely rare form of equipment as no other examples have been reported on other battlefields.

In combat, the roar of his double-barrelled heat cannon is as distinctive as the clank of his massively armoured exo-suit. He is to be found at the forefront of the attack, destroying everything within reach. Vehicles are reduced to semi-molten smouldering heaps of slag, habtainers are shattered and their contents set ablaze, even the concrete foundations are cracked and blackened by the searing heat.

The survivors of this assault emerge into an inferno of destruction and it is these tragic few who have dubbed him Helfather.

If we hit this goal, we will be able to sculpt and tool The Helfather mercenary, a secretive renegade agent from one of the galaxy’s more technologically advance races… hint hint!

Earth Dragon wrote:
Why would a dying race risks even a small number in an environment like this.

Oh...it's a dying race of space elves. That's much more original

I'm disappointed because I liked the look of the Asterians in DB. I was hoping there would be a bunch of equally cool space elves in DZ. One guy and a bunch of drones...not so interesting for me. I grant you it makes much more sense to send robots or RP androids in to clean up a plague zone rather than running around without even a face mask on like the Rebs or Marauders. I mean that would just be stupid.

^ We don't know if it's a dying race or not, we don't know anything about the Asterian background other than them lurking around black holes and abducting people.

Marauders are immune to the plague.

 Bolognesus wrote:
Not really, yet. You can get a 3-pack of mats for $55, a fourth mat for $20 and US shipping add-ons only for $5, totaling you $80 for a 4x4 area of gaming mat. No buildings.
I expect the hinted-at terrain pledge (will be around some time next week, I believe?) to offer quite a bit more value over that @ ~$100 level or so, but I could be mistaken

Terrain only prices are coming soon; the Mantic folks say they're still working with the factory on that at the moment.

Excellent news I'm not interested in buying yet-more-figures* but I'm pretty tempted by the mats.

*Because I've already got about 500-600 28mm figs in the backlog.

so the helfather wont come in striker then?

Triszin wrote:
so the helfather wont come in striker then?

No, you have to pay 8$ for him. He's an add-on.

Triszin wrote:
so the helfather wont come in striker then?

nope, add-on only.

I like the concept art. I'm already in for enough to cover quite a few add-ons. Don't expect to spend over $300 so I just went in for that. But this model is definitely going to be part of my order.

Mmm, dat Heath Foley art

I really dont mind 15k or smaller stretches for add-ons. maybe instead they should do 3 special character add-ons per 25k. just to give more variety and more reason for people to add 8-24$.

 Cyporiean wrote:
Heath has uploaded some High-Res concept art:
http://artofhf.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/deadzone/

Damn fine! Really digging these two Rebs;



Wow, that second pic is way bigger then I anticipated...

Mantic had a meeting with Antenocitis Workshop today - no more details than that.

i wondered if Antenocitis made the gamemat but I got in touch with them and they didn't. They've put up a note on their facebook page now...

At least it's moving along nicely. Should break this stretch later today.

We're 100% that we have to add-on the dwarf even at Striker?

Yes, if you want him add $8.

^ Yeah, there's no freebies for this particular stretch goal.

At $8 for an add-on, it's worth noting that that's what the dreadball MVPs cost.. and is likely to be what the mercenaries cost too, unless they're metal (which they won't be), or huge models (this is a dwarf).

So, I wouldn't recommend buying him as an add-on, better to wait until seeing the final sculpt rather than buying blind 8 months in advance.

There's probably going to be better places to put add-on money as this progresses anyway, the terrain will be a major one to sink money into.

I'll buy in for mercs if they release a bundle pack for all of them with a discount, just have to wait and see on that. If there's around 8 or so mercenaries in the rulebook (same amount as dreadball season 1), then we could be in for around 8 fairly boring $15k stretches sprinkled in amongst the more interesting $25k - $50k ones.

That's okay though, it's clear they don't want to focus the freebies around mercenaries this time, if no free mercs means they're later able to do a free starter set for a couple of new factions, then I'm fine with that.

They're already at $270 worth of stuff at the $150 level... they max out on capacity for freebies at $500 (around 70% discount, the level both KoW and Dreadball hit), so they're probably looking at the current success of the campaign and factoring in that upper limit at an early stage, thinking hard about what freebies in particular people would like the most (probably terrain, new faction sets, expansions for current factions) and focusing on those for the freebie goals.

Personally, I'd like any stretch goals without freebies to be EXCITING, to make up for the lack of freebies.

e.g. $50k stretch for a hard plastic Enforcer sprue, with no freebies? Hell yes! Don't care about no freebies, because I'd be too happy about the new sprue.

After my barrage of updates on my Gaming Club's Facebook page a lot of member's have given in and pledged.

@Scarletsquig

Seeing as this game isn't going to be a niche as Dreadball I'd bank on the model costing more than $8 retail.

Most of Warpath's characters cost between $10-$15 retail. Granted that's before the Warstore discount so it's really $8-$12. So it's likely a discount on retail.

^ Warpath's characters are all metal, though. I can't seriously see Mantic charging $15 for a single restic mini.. that's how much finecast costs.

$10, maybe. But not $15.

For a unique one off I absolutely can. You're buying the model to play the game with. The material really shouldn't matter at that point. It'll likely be similar in price to other single models in the range.

Maybe not but it's likely honestly. You think the HQ's would get a price drop if they were redone as restic instead of metal?

^ Yes, mantic regularly re-releases popular metal models in restic and halves the price. I can list well over a dozen kits where this has happened. They're genuinely committed to good value for money, and don't pull any kind of "charge the same for both metal and plastic just because" crap like GW does.

They are well-known for value, and aren't going to be charging $15 for a single (small) restic mini any time soon. Just isn't going to happen. Metal, yes, but metal is more expensive to cast.

Anyway, Alpha rules will be here soon, should be fun.