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 Psychopomp wrote:

But...that still doesn't excuse what feels like a first draft ruleset. As I posted in the News and Rumor thread, I feel like Jake's final submissions constitute a great first draft for games design, but need more work to be a polished, finished game. The core game rules are solid, but Jake lacks clarity when explaining rules in writing. Also, the adventures are good, but emphasize a balanced, competitive game over creativity. Too many Overlord victories are, "Cripple one of the heroes or keep them from winning until you run out of cards." The Blaine, Keldin, and Hordrin quests in the Dungeon Journal serve as good contrast.

But the Adventurer's Companion (the final, corrected PDF version, even) shows Jake's lack of interest in writing anything more than a Heroquest clone. You can actually watch his level of investment drop as you progress through the book. The uncharted dungeons, invisible overlord, and dungeon design sections (especially the latter) feel more like he turned in his notes and outlines rather than a final copy. I really wish this game had gone through a rules committee after leaving Jake's hands.

I think you're putting too much blame on Jake. Certainly he wasn't responsible for the other shortcomings in the project, as well as Mantic's previous efforts. I wouldn't be surprised if Mantic (Ronnie) put pressure on the entire project to be shipped in December for Christmas sales.

I wonder at the decision to print everything only once, on the cards. This keeps the rules down to a minimum and allows complexity to be added through the various card decks, but it leaves the casual reader (rather than player) dissatisfied, feeling like there is not much content.

So am I correct in assuming that we didn't get stat cards for the not-drizz't, dwarf+dog, extra halfling, and whoever else I'm forgetting (possibly no one)?

As long as the stats are written down somewhere?

Ah, Dungeon Journal in each of their relevant sets of adventures. Cool. I guess none of those heroes (Blaine, Keldan, etc) get to become epic variants?

What's the deal with the Dwarf Kings Hold stuff in the back, then? It looks like that stuff is practically a separate game with somewhat different rules? Only getting a bit of a chance to skim here (apparently children are force multipliers for eachother!) so assuming what I must. That would mean that the Ancient Grudge at the end is practically yet another game, dungeon skirmish after a fact. Looking forward to getting to dig into these better.

Little bored with the items in the first batch of cards (in the main game), that's a *lot* of power crystals etc... but still everything looks neat.

Wait... That was just the first 4 card decks, I was a little let down that everything was kind of limited or plain but upon reading that there should be Tavern and Market cards, I had a look through my stuff. Whoops, misplaced 5 entire decks... now to look those over.

Oh yeah, the adventurer's companion decks shave me sorted out for wants (more or less). Gotta figure out how the uncharted dungeon and invisible overlord stuff works, but everything looks pretty cool.

That post read like you having a conversation with yourself

I would have liked all the rules to also have been in the book. I might scan them as a PDF just in case - cards like that are not the most survivable things, especially if I intend bringing this to school to play with the nerdy students at lunch time.

Grimdork, you will find there is a fair amount of conteb]nt in and around the game, but it is not clearly shown up in the rules.AC etc. You almost stumble over thing by accidemnt so to speak. I think it is going to a waiting game to see how much more fan based material will start to see the light odf day as people start to discover these parts, so they can make the whole.

Although the stats are tweaked to match Ds, you could conceivably use the journal to play the separate games contained in it, if you have the figures. Hopefully mantic will post a nice PDF of the counter shetts , to let everyone who wants do this.

What would be really swell would be to offer us a nice, thick, die cut, cardstock counter sheet in the pledge manager when they reopen it. Or offer a bundle of them from the original games if they still have any in stock.

It would also be nice if they can ship some of the extra stuff I may order inside the extra book box I will most likely be ordering to hold the pile of gak this game comes with.

I had to get a refund on my pledge and recently purchased another's pledge (with acrylic hearts and bone piles)... I have to say I am surprised that none of the extra hero's come with their stat cards! I hope they release the expansions soon so I can actually use them with their cards.

:(

ced1106 wrote:

 Psychopomp wrote:

But...that still doesn't excuse what feels like a first draft ruleset. As I posted in the News and Rumor thread, I feel like Jake's final submissions constitute a great first draft for games design, but need more work to be a polished, finished game. The core game rules are solid, but Jake lacks clarity when explaining rules in writing. Also, the adventures are good, but emphasize a balanced, competitive game over creativity. Too many Overlord victories are, "Cripple one of the heroes or keep them from winning until you run out of cards." The Blaine, Keldin, and Hordrin quests in the Dungeon Journal serve as good contrast.

But the Adventurer's Companion (the final, corrected PDF version, even) shows Jake's lack of interest in writing anything more than a Heroquest clone. You can actually watch his level of investment drop as you progress through the book. The uncharted dungeons, invisible overlord, and dungeon design sections (especially the latter) feel more like he turned in his notes and outlines rather than a final copy. I really wish this game had gone through a rules committee after leaving Jake's hands.

I think you're putting too much blame on Jake. Certainly he wasn't responsible for the other shortcomings in the project, as well as Mantic's previous efforts. I wouldn't be surprised if Mantic (Ronnie) put pressure on the entire project to be shipped in December for Christmas sales.

I don't hold Jake accountable for any materials or misprint issues, no. But I've been following his development posts and even engaging him in conversation over on his blog since during the KS campaign. He never seemed very interested in campaign or AI rules, and I believe that is the reason for the weaknesses in the Invisible Overlord and especially the dungeon design rules. From the outset, it seemed Jake was interested in reinventing Heroquest and only inventing Heroquest. The push for Advanced Heroquest / Warhammer Quest style rules came from Mantic and the fans, and those are the weakest parts of the rules system. I don't think that's coincidence.

Now, lest it seem I'm just ragging on the man, those basic rules for a reinvented Heroquest are simple, elegant, and brilliant. But, like with Deadzone and a lesser extent Dreadball, they're presented a little haphazardly. Jake's strength is in writing good, solid core rules, but he's weak in clear, intuitive presentation writing. He's also a bit weak in more complicated add-ons, as we see with the Adventurer's Companion and the Deadzone 1 campaign rules. This is just critique, not condemnation. I'd like to see Jake's work run through a strong editor with the remit to confer with Jake and rewrite for clarity. I also think it'd be nice to have those more complicated add-ons come from Jake as a first draft, then run through a rules committee overseeing a public playtest before being given over to the editor. Jake's a good rules writer, but Mantic needs to exercise a bit more quality control and not burden the man with every aspect of a rules system for an entire game. (I think that's something Mantic needs to do in general, and not just Jake, actually. Ronnie needs to learn to control his enthusiasm enough to say, "That's fantastic...but it needs to be better. Please go back and tweak this, this, and this." Or hire someone who *will* do that.)

Thanks!

Are you on BoardGameGeek? I'd like to see your comments in the Personal Comments section for Dungeon Saga so others can see it!

EDIT: BGG review: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1490551/dungeon-saga-review

Cutting through a lot of chaff in this thread.

Miniatures are hands down the best figures ever released for a boardgame - maybe on par with Blood Rage, easily superior to FFG. Superior in quality to many metal and quite a few lower quality resin sculpts. Anyone who doesn't agree is blind and wrong.

Have played like 7 missions so far with a full crew of people. Most of us like exploration games more than tactical combat games; for that reason alone Dungeon Saga to me is an order of magnitude more fun than Imperial Assault (our group never finished the campaign, got close tho, but was so boring and dry) and definitely Descent which I can barely stomach.

What the feth is up with the $20 Tome Book box? That's gotta be a mistake right?

I haven't played yet but I agree about the minis, they're a lot nicer than I expected and hardly any flash or mold lines to clean up, or their cleverly disguised in areas that don't matter. Only done 3 so far but they're fun to paint too

 Compel wrote:
To be honest, the resin heroes, though they can be a bit fiddly to glue together are some of the nicest looking fantasy hero models I've seen.

I'm sure I'll get shouted down for this, but honestly, they're Forge World level.

LOL comparing them to Forge World would be doing them a disservice. The resin figs are Mierce levels of casting.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Necros wrote:
I haven't played yet but I agree about the minis, they're a lot nicer than I expected and hardly any flash or mold lines to clean up, or their cleverly disguised in areas that don't matter. Only done 3 so far but they're fun to paint too

Mispacks and $20 tome boxes and misprinted books and all the other gak aside, Dungeon Saga has two immensely powerful things going for it:

1. the game is fun as gak to play. the core rules are super fething fun and i haven't had this much fun playing a dungeon crawler since about 8-10 years ago when my group played warhammer quest for an entire summer with the full campaign rules.
2. the miniatures and dungeon decor are fantastic, better than any other boardgame on the market, by far.

I wouldn't be opposed to $10, I was kinda expecting it around that, bit of sticker shock here right now at $20 per book box.

Man, Mantic is gonna have to have a REALLY nice licence for me to back their next project. Between the post-funding changes, spotty customer service, shipping problems, quality issues and creeping price points I'm very leery any more.

Which is a shame, because the games are very fun.

If that backpack is anything like the dice bag, stay the heck away from it.

Well, there's always retail. I've already seen Dungeon Saga products on pre-order at $54, and I can wait for a sale. We'll have to wait for the DS 2.0 KS for the Adventurer's Companion.

How well did the KS after DS fulfill? I see KoW 2.0 is currently fulfilling.

KoW 2 wave 1 is done, wave 2 just started shipping.

Deadzone 2 supposed to go out next month.

No idea on Warpath, I bailed that one.

The backpack looks cool, but not for me. I think the extra boxes are expensive though because they are probably doing a new printing and ordering a lot less than they needed for the KS originally.. and the less you print the more expensive each one costs. I think I'm gonna grab 1 to store the minis. I have one box that's got all the books and cards, then my 2nd box has all of the board tiles & tokens. 1 more should be good for holding all the extra minis

I haven't played yet and only just kinda skimmed the rules. WHen it comes to all of the cards and stuff... would it be best to consolodate all of the different expansions into 1 big deck? like 1 big ability deck, 1 big spell deck, etc? or do you need to keep them separate for each expansion?

I was gonna order 1 for the minis, but they're having a laugh at that price.

I would've bought another box for 10, but at 20 I'm having some serious second thoughts. An extra Adventurer's Companion would be handy to have, so I'll probably go ahead and get one.

A shame they didn't offer up more resin stuff, I'd be grabbing more of them for sure.

At $20 they are a fething joke. That means that Kickstarter backers will have paid $45 ($25 + $20 for the box), while the retail item is $40. Someone at Mantic is an idiot. They should be sold at cost, period. Five bucks at most.

@Necros - we have only played the base game plus one or two scenarios from another campaign maybe? So no idea how he's separated cards, etc. Not entirely sure as it's my brother's copy and I've just been enjoying playing it.

From my understanding, it's best to keep the expansions separate because each deals with a different sort of Overlord which will have different powers and so on.

Book box at 20 dollars is pricey, but I might get one anyway for the minis.

The quality of the minis is pretty good really - I'm painting up the Abyss expansion at the moment and they're all lovely and paint up really nice.

deleted my link as soon as I saw the $20 price tag. Haven't played yet, just primed the undead figs and npc figs along with my zombicide black plague set. I don't think the figs are as good as the blood rage figures, but they are really nice. Too bad mantic fired that sculptor .

I like the Book boxes. I'd like to get 2 but I'll make do with just one, simply because of my own finances right now.

I don't think $20 is too bad for a custom purpose box with unique design and cover. I've never seen similar from any other company, and I highly doubt it would be any cheaper from others.
I don't think shipping that much air helps. Large shipping box with very little weight can be pricey. You have to pick a shipping method that reduces the risk of crushing, or use a really sturdy shipping carton.

What's this about firing the sculptor? I hadn't heard anything about that. I thought Mantic was still contracting sculptors.

I think they had *one* in-house guy but he was let go, and came around here to let us know about it. If it wasn't this thread then it was the kow/news and rumors thread (I believe, could have been one of the scifi threads).

Definitely no boxen for me, two will be enough. Can't imagine not storing my minis in foam after going to all of the hard work to paint them, so two book boxes should be enough for all of the non-model materials surely.

Need to remember to have them send me one of the fixed ACs though.

Nah, they didnt have an inhouse sculptor, Remy (I think?) was freelance as well. Theyd just *considered* hiring him fulltime.

Nah, there was. I'm pretty sure I even met him once!

I think his name was Sylvain or somesuch, French dude.

If you're in the US, Michael's craft store has various decorated storage boxes, including book-shaped ones. They're usually at a discount, but you can get a coupon on the Michael's website.

 Compel wrote:
Nah, there was. I'm pretty sure I even met him once!

I think his name was Sylvain or somesuch, French dude.

Correct, he did a lot of the DS models before he was let go.

ced1106 wrote:
If you're in the US, Michael's craft store has various decorated storage boxes, including book-shaped ones. They're usually at a discount, but you can get a coupon on the Michael's website.

Yes, for $4.49

This paper mache box is perfect to give as a gift or to keep for your own home décor. Decorate it with paint, decoupage, stickers or other fabulous embellishments. Finish it off with varnish paint to protect and enhance your creation or use a glossy finish for that extra pizazz. Create multiple book boxes for an entire library.

Details:
6 1/4" x 8 3/4" x 2 1/4"
Paper mache

Useless size for Dungeon Saga

So I'm trying to organize my non-figure portion of Dungeon saga and all of the expansions for packing into the book boxen. Am I going to want to keep my dungeon tiles separate on a per-expansion basis? I know Imperial Assault really benefits from having your tiles organized ahead of time and I wasn't sure if the DS tiles were any simpler to use (say, you need the warehouse tile for a scenario in IA but in DS any 4x4 tile would work unless you need lava etc) or not.

What about the cards? Can I safely mix together all of the spells, items, and so on? Locations seem like a given, and obviously the invisible overlord cards would have to be separated out for specific use, but can I just toss all of the items/spells/songs/etc together and use them in every campaign or will there be some degree of imbalance/just not rightedness?

Forget finding people to play, I'm gonna have to set up the first adventure just to try this thing out myself if I have to.