Mantic Mars Attacks Kickstarter - Completed! - $558,076 final total.

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**Barzam**

Ruined buildings, eh? They look like they could be decent. I wonder if they'll be cast in the red plastic like in that preview? I may wind up going in on this with my brother and just taking the humans from the set. He can have everything else.

**Alpharius**

I think I'll probably be in for the terrain options, including that new mat!

**DaveC**

Yep no interest in the game or Mars Attacks in general but I'll take more Deadzone compatible terrain please

**GrimDork**

Not sure about MA but more terrain ftw

**highlord tamburlaine**

Barzam wrote:
Ruined buildings, eh? They look like they could be decent. I wonder if they'll be cast in the red plastic like in that preview? I may wind up going in on this with my brother and just taking the humans from the set. He can have everything else.

So I get the Martians AND the terrain?

Don't you want to build a mall of your own and have Dawn of the Dead type scenarios playing with Flying Lead or Fear and Faith?

Shooting up shoggoths that are rising up from the sewers?

What about insurgents stopping a pack of werewolves?

I know you're going to want in on some of that sweet, sweet terrain.

Since this is a modern setting, maybe we can have the crazed redneck/ conspiracy nut/ paramilitary survivalist that lives on the fringes of town ready to shoot things up?

**Cyporiean**

Zweischneid wrote:
scarletsquig wrote:
Breotan wrote:
timetowaste85 wrote:
Kick started I working for them. Why would they do something else?
Because they have to give around 20% (iirc) of the money to CMoN/Amazon?

Lol, they don't have anythnig to do with CMoN.

That's not true. They had Wrath of Kings promotions send out through both DreadBall and Deadzone, so I would think there is an agreement for some cross-promotion in effect now.

Eh, its a small industry and we're all mostly friends with one-another.

**scarletsquig**

I meant not to the extent of paying them a 20% cut of kickstarter funds.

**emperorpenguin**

chris_valera wrote:

That's a shame. The retro-bit was part of its charm, and the miniature world needs 28mm scale 50s troops and civilians.

I might get in on it anyway

--Chris
www.chrisvalera.com

I agree, I'd have loved some 1950s civilians (and maybe some soldiers) for my Fallout game. Still might be interested in some scenery but again would have wanted 1950s style as the only way to get that is through Ebay and expensive postage

**Alpharius**

Fallout game?

Using what rules?

**highlord tamburlaine**

Mutants and Ray Guns maybe?

Pretty Fallout in its execution and concept. Scrounging for gear, limited resources....

**Squat Kid**

I just want Aliens and Terrain... Hope they make this one a good value! (or make the miniatures compatible with Deadzone or Warpath)

**highlord tamburlaine**

After looking at that blog post, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one hoping for a Dinosaurs Attack! crossover.

Set those dinos up with an AI deck where they just rampage across the board, randomly stopping to chow down on both sides.... what's not to love?

Then you can bring in the Deadzone zombie AI cards... Zombies vs. Dinos vs everyone else trying to stay alive!

Looking at the junk they've got laying around on the table, I'm wondering if we might see cars or plants end up on some sort of a sprue. That'd be neat.

Not super impressed with the humans we've seen so far. Rate things are going I probably will end up letting Marasai err... Barzam take all of 'em.

**Barzam**

Yeah, you better get that name right. Barzams are superior to Marasais anyway. And yes, I'll let you have all of the aliens and scenery. I'll let you set up the board. You are the default GM, afterall.

**Aeneades**

Some gameplay info from the mantic blog -

Firstly, the basics. Mars Attacks is a tabletop skirmish game played on a gridded mat, with modular plastic scenery, Martians, US soldiers and civilian characters. It’s really quite simple: the mat means that unlike a lot of tabletop wargames there’s no need to use a tape measure for range or movement. Instead, in your turn your models can move up to 2 squares in any direction, or move one square and shoot. Simple!

Provided one of your models can “see” a target (determined by bending down for a model’s-eye-view of the battlefield!) they can shoot it. If any part of the target model – that’s the whole model including its base – is obscured by something, then the model counts as being in cover. If this isn’t the case and you can see the whole model, you get some bonus dice for your shooting roll. Players take it in turns to activate two of their models until the whole force has moved.

And in a nutshell, that’s it! Or is it? Not on your nelly.

Terror in the town square!

The core of the game is balanced and works great, but one of the most enduring parts of it was the wacky stuff that’s been overlaid on top of these basics. Martians have armour against shooting but if you get a Marine into close combat and break its glass dome, that Martian is going down. There are also counters on the table that both sides will be hunting down – the Martians will want to be seeking out the Squirrel, Otter and Badger so they can take them back to the mothership for experimentation…

Jake also brought in a card deck he’s been experimenting with. This is one of the components dependent on the Kickstarter; what we’d like it to do is introduce some cards that you can play to add additional dice when rolling for survival, fighting and melee, but also cards that can bring Martians back from the dead, distract Grunts with a cute furry animal that they simply have to obliterate, activate the mothership’s heat ray (which is brutal), or perhaps – most hilariously – launch a military bombardment at the area! Martians might even be able to take over the army artillery and launch it against the humans…

There’s a whole bunch of other crazy stuff we could do as well (burning cattle came up bizarrely, as did a scene out of Die Hard 4 with a car being flung at a helicopter…) but I’d love to hear your suggestions for what crazy things you’d like to be able to do – and maybe even see models for…

Ultimately the game was a delight to play, after Ronnie played Stewart I got a game in too and he wiped the floor with me (I blame the eight-sided dice) but I came away with the desire to paint up my own Martian force and see if I could get Earth to succumb to my own dastardly attack plan. And we’ve not even got to the point where we get to use the heroes yet – I can’t wait to see what chaos Buddy and Brandi will cause!

**Alpharius**

A little too much hype in there, but to be expected, I guess.

And I'm amused/annoyed at all the shout-outs to "simple" and "No tape measuring!" and such, but, I suppose it is more a boardgame than anything else...

**Squat Kid**

Sounds pretty solid to me

**Aeneades**

Another new blog post about mars attacks over on the mantic blog. Mostly the bio of a new character named Ashley but also some hints at the box contents and stretch goals (including possibility of vehicles) -

Ashley will joining Buddy, Brandi and Joe in our upcoming Mars Attacks miniatures game. The game box will contain those three, plus a squad of U.S. Troopers, up against General Tor and his Martian Grunts. Of course, that’s just where it starts. If the Kickstarter campaign is successful, we’d like to add plenty more variety! That means more heroes, more Martians, and maybe even some vehicles!

**highlord tamburlaine**

There has to be a robot in that box. Maybe not at first, but there has GOT to be a Martian robot stomping around.

Maybe we'll get a tank or two?

**GrimDork**

I could go for some 28mm jeeps or hummers etc. Not as interested in martian vehicles but I may be surprised.

**Squat Kid**

Jeeps and Hummers would be really cool, I'd also go for wrecked civilian vehicles

**edlowe**

Ive got the feeling that the mars attack game is going to be aimed at the board game market initialy. With the stretch goals taking it into the wargames market.

There was a huge amount of board game fans attracted to the dz kickstarter especially the pre assembled boxset. I can see mantic quite happily catering to this market and would not be surprised to see a dwarf kings hold ks in the near future.

**Barzam**

Keep in mind Deadzone was marketed as a boardgame initially too. It just devolved into Warpath Skirmish once we started really hitting the stretch goals. I can see the same thing happening here, but it does seem like they're trying to keep this one more of a boardgame.

There was mention of artillery, so I'm betting a howitzer might be in the works for this game.

**emperorpenguin**

Alpharius wrote:
Fallout game?

Using what rules?

highlord tamburlaine wrote:
Mutants and Ray Guns maybe?

Pretty Fallout in its execution and concept. Scrounging for gear, limited resources....

Nope, my own home-made rules

**highlord tamburlaine**

Don't forget Martians had artillery too.

I would imagine board gamers are the primary target too, what with single piece prebuilt minis.

That's not necessarily a bad thing though. It might be a bit cheaper/ easier doing a single piece and churning out multiples instead of worry about a multipiece martian grunt (which is probably what most of you guys would want).

I would be absolutely alright with a Dwarf King's Hold game coming down the pipeline, especially if it gave us figures of things that don't currently exist in Manticland, like all the typical fantasy critters you fight on a dungeon crawl.

**edlowe**

Picture from the quirkworthy blod.

Some test scenery and resin test figures

**Necros**

the painted pics look good.. so do those building bits come with the game? I like em but I kinda don't like the look of the holes on the corners, I guess where they clip together?

**edlowe**

The holes are for the clips so you can change the buildings for each game. They do look a bit odd tho on this style of building.

The buildings and gaming map will come in the boxed game tho how much depends on the ks success. I guess they will upgrade the map to the mouse mat like material used in the dz box if the funding gets high enough.

**Aeneades**

They are also looking into the possibility of terrain sprues for street furniture (phone boxes, trash cans, benches, etc) which should be good.

**GrimDork**

A good accessory sprue (or more than one!) would really up my pledge for this. I can't see going in for more than the basic set of each faction... however some more scatter terrain and another variety of foam mat would really go nicely with my incoming deadzone haul

Oh and civilian cars/trucks and military jeeps/hummers/etc, i would probably throw too much money at those too

**highlord tamburlaine**

How will faction packs work?

So far every human player is a named character. I'd guess maybe we see some army trooper boosters, both for the humans and the martians. Individual sculpts a la the mercs from Deadzone possibly?

I'm in absolute agreement with you though GrimDork- if we get a few good accessory sprues I would love to splurge on those.

If they do phone boxes... why not take it one step further and toss in a police box? They've gotta have a classic British one.

Because Doctor vs Martians is a scenario I would gleefully play out.