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I did not back the original campaign, but I did back this one for a few sprues of terrain and units, and I bought the game retail... will I get a copy of the new rule book?

In days of yore, I think Mantic would have gone further than just adding an extra set of dice in a different color (or whatever). I know that some here believe that this sort of non-response has been the Mantic formula all along, but to me, it feels more like a belt-tightening change. If anything, I thought Mantic's earlier reactions to this sort of thing erred on the generous side. Not a single extra figure thrown in? Disappointing.

One thing I learned from all this is that photos of Wrath of Kings figures look much, much better than photos of Dungeon Saga figures. I really like some of these WoK designs, so I found a cheap set of Ashmen - my favorites - online and put in an order. If they're good, hopefully Mantic's figures will match that. I think we can forget about Mantic casting weapons etc. in a harder plastic like Cmon did, though. That would require more time and expense, just for the sake of better quality.

Please put any feedback on the beta rules here: https://manticforum.com/forum/deadzone/deadzone-rules-discussion/263636-deadzone-redux-beta-feedback-thread

 Alex C wrote:
I think the "sweetening of the pot" was the KS dice?

Right?

I assumed it meant he would be showing us what they were throwing in with JetBlaine to make amends. Last update they said they would show us our fabulous consolation prizes in the next update.

EDIT: If he thinks the dice are anything I care about, he's wrong. I pledged for minis. Dice suck.

 warboss wrote:
How many years was it in between editions? It feels like it lasted longer than the KOW version a year or two schedule. I'm curious to see what various Dakkites will think of the rules. It kind of sucks for folks that bought it at retail recently and will buy for xmas as they'll not find out they are buying/bought an outdated version until too late.

Released in DEC 2013.

"Dungeon Saga Quality" tells us nothing. The abyssals I got ranged from Mars Attacks Martians to Mars Attacks US Troops in quality, but my Valandor was worse than a Descent 1st Ed mini. In fact, Valandor is a very good reason to be upset at Mantic. He cost $8, which is a bit on the high side for a boardgame plastic mini, especially since a Bones mini of the same size would be $4 or maybe even $5, but his details are so soft and anemic that $4 would be stretching it.

If my $15 JetBlaine ends up at Valandor quality, no amount of dice on Earth would shut me up about it.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
If my $15 JetBlaine ends up at Valandor quality, no amount of dice on Earth would shut me up about it.

But Bob, think about it. Dice, man! Maybe in a different color - or, dare I dream it? - even with a different special symbol than the Mantic splat? And it's exclusive dice, too, and there's absolutely no reason to suspect that Mantic was already planning on adding them anyway. They're sure to go up in value on ebay, too, just like those exclusive Dreadball Xtreme Frenzy tokens did. Ah, sweet plastic tokens with teeth printed on them. Why didn't I jump on you when I had the chance?

Actually, Vermonter, you have a point. If the other sides of the limited dice said "change media", "cancel print run", "ignore email", "stiff sculptor", and "mispack ", I'd be much happier.


PS: does the Mantic Splat make anyone else think of Bill Clinton?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Actually, Vermonter, you have a point. If the other sides of the limited dice said "change media", "cancel print run", "ignore email", "stiff sculptor", and "mispack ", I'd be much happier.


PS: does the Mantic Splat make anyone else think of Bill Clinton?

You forgot -
"offer empty promises, stay in beta for 1+years but still release an unbalanced game, fail to proofred, tiny feet, mail your models in a paper envelope, clip sprues way too close to model and include sprue clippings anyway, blobby fist, retcon faction, add a beard to it, get your fans to work for you for free, bribe disgruntled KS backers, start another KS, offer same stuff in next KS for cheaper, and my favorite.. shrug off any complaints as growing pains.
Looks like they switched to a d20..

I would be very interested in seeing what people think of the v2 campaign rules, since those are the main part where the RC has had input (basically re-writing it from scratch).

Strategic Assets were a pet concept of mine, wanted to include an optional element of area control and players fighting over key assets in a way that didn't require the use of a map.

As for the game itself, the only complaint I agree with is that pinning should play a larger part. Apart from that v1 was terrible and seriously needed a re-write.

The cards were a mess and turned into a mini-ccg on the side.. my Asterians pretty much became auto-win due to infinite re-drawing of Surge and Headshot from the discard pile via reliable triples on command actions, it got to the point where every model in my Strike Team was having a good card played on them every time they activated.

The game had a ton of doubles/triples results which were confusing to remember and often didn't make sense, especially in cases like 1 success vs. 0 successes =Tripling for Blaze away, and often killing a model with the damage (again with my Asterians).

The whole free actions and infinite fight chains were a mess.

The table was covered in counters and the game took a long time to play.

Having played the new rules I'd say it feels a little rough around the edges, but is still a lot more fun and less micro-managey/ metagamey than v1. Give it a try.

 scarletsquig wrote:
I would be very interested in seeing what people think of the v2 campaign rules, since those are the main part where the RC has had input (basically re-writing it from scratch).

You certainly won't get that from here. Everyone's enjoying showing off how impressive their tinfoil hats are.

 warboss wrote:
How many years was it in between editions? It feels like it lasted longer than the KOW version a year or two schedule. I'm curious to see what various Dakkites will think of the rules. It kind of sucks for folks that bought it at retail recently and will buy for xmas as they'll not find out they are buying/bought an outdated version until too late.

The minis, terrain, mats and dice are still useable. As for the rulebook, Ronnie has offered a free replacement to anyone who wants one, retail customers included. 50% off was a really good deal!

They had plastic bins full of battlezones sprues for £1 each at the open day too, I picked up a table full of ruins... now is quite a good time to pick up the old stock on clearance.

Thank you, Scarletsquig, interesting information

 scarletsquig wrote:
As for the rulebook, Ronnie has offered a free replacement to anyone who wants one, retail customers included. 50% off was a really good deal!

Thanks for the update. The devil is in the details though. Is that free replacement condition free? Or do you have to mail in the old book? Mail in the old book cover? Take a photo of your receipt and or box? Is the replacement a physical book or pdf? Other than mailing in the whole book, those would be reasonable requests depending on whether you're getting the PDF or physical copy.

Replacement is .pdf.

 judgedoug wrote:
You certainly won't get that from here. Everyone's enjoying showing off how impressive their tinfoil hats are.

Rather than resort to ad hominem attacks, debate this:

1. There is now no reason to trust Mantic when they say they're going to produce KS exclusive figures in a given material that, to some backers, holds particular value.
2. If the material they switch to holds less detail / value, they will not make any serious attempt to make up the difference to people who bought the items expecting higher quality.

I generally like Mantic, have thrown a lot of money at them, and want them to succeed, but when they do things like this, I don't see why any of that precludes me from drawing these conclusions.

If you can show me how the statements above are untrue or unfair, I'd be interested to hear it. I'm not particularly interested in debating how insane I am to criticize Mantic at all, or whether or not the changes they've made bother you personally, or whether they're really all that big a deal in general. To be honest with you, in terms of how it impacts the product I'm getting, these changes, while not entirely welcome, aren't really that big a deal to me, either. In principle, though, I think this was badly done and not fair to backers. As a guy who likes Mantic, I think that's beneath them.

If you're just sick of hearing people like me go on and on about this, say so; it's more honest than insinuating that there was no reasonable basis for complaint in the first place. Meet me at that halfway point of civility and you won't hear another word from me on the subject. Right now, I just want my Forge Father sprues. (And I haven't complained once about the Forge Father heavy weapons thing. Unless you count the previous sentence. In which case, I just blew it.)

I will now invalidate any counter-argument you might care to make with an ad hominem attack, just to show you how it's done.

I'm calling you out, judgedoug. You're not a wargamer. You've never assembled or painted a miniature in your life. You know how I know? I've seen your photo.

You don't wear glasses, you have no beard, and you're not fat. That might fly in health conscious Euro-geekdom, but in sedentary America, it's a big red flag. You, Sir, are a football-watching, gym-attending, lunch-money-snatching jock, and a traitor to the geek cause.

Take him away.

I like what I've seen so far. Overwatch and suppression missing stinks go a degree. Suppression moreso. Overwatch ehh I can just play infinity and overwatch all the time.

Need some clarification or to reread the gear rules. If an enforcer takes a snipe are rifle is it a fixed cost in addition or do I subtract the cost of his old rifle? No restrictions like gear?

Anyone wondering about Grogans they are just regular Rebs Troopers and you pay extra for the weapon. The idea being to keep the number of troops with similar stats to a minimum and just differentiate by weapons/gear options.

Quirkworthy says:
December 4, 2015 at 9:34 am

Apparently the Grogans are supposed to be included in the basic Rebel stat line. I am guessing here, but I think that’s a reflection of the way they work in Warpath.

IIRC Survey Drones can hold objectives, and therefore gain VPs while they free up other models for the fighting.

but

Quirkworthy says:
December 4, 2015 at 3:50 pm

As I mentioned in an earlier comment, I preferred the Grogans as a separate line. I will be arguing for them as a separate thing again when we come to look through all the feedback.

I argued for Grogans to be a separate line and was overruled. I’d been hoping that enough people would take up that banner so we could argue for them back. We’ll see

 Vermonter wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
You certainly won't get that from here. Everyone's enjoying showing off how impressive their tinfoil hats are.

Rather than resort to ad hominem attacks, debate this:

whoawhoawhoa this is the internet. that's not possible

 Vermonter wrote:

1. There is now no reason to trust Mantic when they say they're going to produce KS exclusive figures in a given material that, to some backers, holds particular value.
2. If the material they switch to holds less detail / value, they will not make any serious attempt to make up the difference to people who bought the items expecting higher quality.

I suppose that's the difference between peeps like me and everyone else. I've been doing KS for years and years and fully expect that projects are very much a development especially when it comes to things that have literally not been produced yet. gak happens. I know it's a commonly held belief that all Kickstarters are preorders systems and everything is all ready to go and as soon as the funding is taken the big "produce product" lever is pulled. This is why I've never understood complaints about people pledging for concept art. LOL! why the feth are you complaining? for me, the only company I actually do that with is Mierce. every other company, if it's a "freebie", then it's cool if it looks good when I get it; if it doesn't, whatever.

 Vermonter wrote:
I generally like Mantic, have thrown a lot of money at them, and want them to succeed, but when they do things like this, I don't see why any of that precludes me from drawing these conclusions.

I generally like 'em too - well, I love their games, and some of their minis. (this is why I get accused of being a fanboy) I don't complain a lot because simply because of how I feel when I support a KS - is the original contents pledge worth it to me? If so, I'll pledge. All those "freebies" can be bags of gravel when they arrive. I also only add stuff that is complete - or near to completion (say, in tooling, etc) in pledge managers. If I take a gamble with something, I very much know that it is a gamble.
So, more often than not, my Mantic pledges tend to be the whatever level plus like maybe fifty bucks in the pledge manager. (in the case of Dreadball Xtreme, it was $1 plus some add-ons)

 Vermonter wrote:
If you can show me how the statements above are untrue or unfair, I'd be interested to hear it. I'm not particularly interested in debating how insane I am to criticize Mantic at all, or whether or not the changes they've made bother you personally, or whether they're really all that big a deal in general. To be honest with you, in terms of how it impacts the product I'm getting, these changes, while not entirely welcome, aren't really that big a deal to me, either. In principle, though, I think this was badly done and not fair to backers. As a guy who likes Mantic, I think that's beneath them.

That last part we can agree on. It always seems like "some jerk" makes an update and "hero Ronnie" has to ride in to clarify. How about just hire someone who is semi competent to do this? If the update had been worded as "look, we got too many orders, and can't find a resin supplier who can fulfill them. We are making them in plastic. We'll give you two, or you can get a refund. Hope that's cool!" then there'd be a lot less complaints. Certainly the normal people who criticize everything Mantic does, but that's background noise. I mean, *I* want my resin Blaine in resin, so it sucks, and they handled it like crap. But going back to my point above, gosh, I know that it's entirely possible that during the creation of new product that things can change.

 Vermonter wrote:
If you're just sick of hearing people like me go on and on about this, say so; it's more honest than insinuating that there was no reasonable basis for complaint in the first place. Meet me at that halfway point of civility and you won't hear another word from me on the subject. Right now, I just want my Forge Father sprues. (And I haven't complained once about the Forge Father heavy weapons thing. Unless you count the previous sentence. In which case, I just blew it.)

 Vermonter wrote:
I will now invalidate any counter-argument you might care to make with an ad hominem attack, just to show you how it's done. I'm calling you out, judgedoug. You're not a wargamer. You've never assembled or painted a miniature in your life. You know how I know? I've seen your photo. You don't wear glasses, you have no beard, and you're not fat. That might fly in health conscious Euro-geekdom, but in sedentary America, it's a big red flag. You, Sir, are a football-watching, gym-attending, lunch-money-snatching jock, and a traitor to the geek cause.

*sniff sniff* Vermonter... I, I... think you're pretty rad, too. Gosh. *kicks rock*

WINNER: Dakka Post of the Day Dec 4 2015

I've not read the rules yet myself but, the most important things to me in Deadzone were:

The 3dness of the board and the terrain interaction. - I loved how height was a big part of the games I played. And the terrain interaction with the whole 'cover for an area, but line of sight matters too' was great. I've been playing Batman recently and, while the game is fun, the terrain rules feel rather heavy in that.

Here's an example of the sorts of boards I played.




The other thing that I really loved was the massive importance of controlling movement in it. This includes surpression and pinning, getting guys into good firing lines, working out how to outflank thos epositions. A good analogy I liked using for Deadzone was.

"Have you ever played X-Com?" It's that feel that I loved in the game.

The elements don't need to be identical ruleswise for me, but I want to have that X-Com 'feel' to it.

 Alex C wrote:
Replacement is .pdf.

Think you can get a physical copy as well if you bring your old book to a convention where Mantic has a stand.

Overwatch isn't as necessary in the new rules due to the alternating activation of one model at a time, you have more opportunities to react unlike v1 where a small elite Strike Team (again, my Asterians) could do all their stuff before the opponent got a chance to do anything.

A similar thing applies to Blaze Away.

To use a CCG analogy, v1 was like playing a "control" deck, you could effectively shut down the opponent with suppression, but it leads to very long and drawn -out games.

v2 is more like playing an "aggro" deck, things die fast, objectives get grabbed, captured, re-captured very quickly.

I managed to play 3 games of Deadzone v2 in the time it would have taken to play one game of v1.

This in turn will lead to a few more minis on the table being possible, which unlocks a greater spread of tactical options.. you can fit some suppression weapons alongside melee and all-rounders and specialists. List building for a 70-point Strike Team in v1 was very difficult.

It's hard to describe without playing it, but the game is now fast-paced and very action-packed, there are fewer restrictions on movement, things move faster and die more. Missions discourage camping.

The core of the game is the same, but it plays in a much faster and more enjoyable way. Unfortunately, on the whole, v1 was not a successful game at retail, and people did find the rules to be too long-winded and over-burdened with rules bloat.

If you have 8 models and I have 3, Squig, then wouldn't my elite force still be able to activate before you got to your final models?

 Alex C wrote:
Replacement is .pdf.

That's not as good as it could be but better than nothing I suppose.

TLDR: Mantic. Almost.

 warboss wrote:

 Alex C wrote:
Replacement is .pdf.

That's not as good as it could be but better than nothing I suppose.

TLDR: Mantic. Almost.

Did I miss how retail purchasers of 1.0 are supposed to get the PDF?

I'm guessing you have to email them directly yourself. It's not realistic for them to hunt you down.

 warboss wrote:
I'm guessing you have to email them directly yourself. It's not realistic for them to hunt you down.

j

Yeah, I figured it would be an active process on the part of the customer. Just didn't know if I would have to hunt down a receipt.
It's only been 2 years since the game came out but I know I don't have a receipt any more.

 warboss wrote:

 Alex C wrote:
Replacement is .pdf.

That's not as good as it could be but better than nothing I suppose.

TLDR: Mantic. Almost.

so like...

Battlefront: Perfect
Mantic: Almost
every other publisher/designer/manufacturer of anything that gets replaced by a revised version: fething horrible pieces of gak because you have to buy a new $20-$75 rulebook

so Mantic is number two in the world by your metric

I agree fully that Battlefront putting out barebones tiny rulebooks for free for existing customers (even if only for a limited time) was a very classy move. Is Battlefront known for ridiculously short edition lifespans of 1-2 years like Mantic that prematurely devalue your purchases? I don't play/collect FOW so I don't really know but I assume they don't as people don't generally comment negatively about them in that regard. If that is indeed the case then your comparison is not very good since (previously) most publishers/designers/manufacturers don't devalue their own products in 1-2 years. I will admit that by your very poor shelf life metric that Mantic is better than GW since they will give out free pdfs... but that is a very low bar to hurdle over. Mantic would indeed be like a 6ft Superman leaping tall 28mm buildings in a single bound.

 warboss wrote:
How many years was it in between editions? It feels like it lasted longer than the KOW version a year or two schedule. I'm curious to see what various Dakkites will think of the rules. It kind of sucks for folks that bought it at retail recently and will buy for xmas as they'll not find out they are buying/bought an outdated version until too late.

Not long for DZ. Hard to give exact dates since there's the KS date, the fulfilment date and then the retail dates. Do we go from retail of DZ1 to KS of DZ2? Jan 2014-March 2015 for both campaign launches, according to google. So 14 months. That's even faster than 40k!

KoW by comparison was May 2012-Nov 2014, so 30 months. Twice as long as DeadZone.

I wonder if we'll see a second (fixed up) edition of Dungeon Saga launched in, say, October 2016 or Feb 2017?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 judgedoug wrote:

 scarletsquig wrote:
I would be very interested in seeing what people think of the v2 campaign rules, since those are the main part where the RC has had input (basically re-writing it from scratch).

You certainly won't get that from here. Everyone's enjoying showing off how impressive their tinfoil hats are.

You mean complaining about Mantic's poor choices in material switching, poor communication and poor "attempt" to rectify it when there was a backlash for (amongst other things) expensive premium resin becoming PVC? Those are tinfoil hats now? Mantic is on a run of extremely poor form right now between the issues here and the DS ones, and people are well within their rights to be unhappy and discuss those issues. Geeze, Doug, You were much more able to be a critical thinker when it came to MEdge.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 scarletsquig wrote:

The minis, terrain, mats and dice are still useable. As for the rulebook, Ronnie has offered a free replacement to anyone who wants one, retail customers included. 50% off was a really good deal!
They had plastic bins full of battlezones sprues for £1 each at the open day too, I picked up a table full of ruins... now is quite a good time to pick up the old stock on clearance.

Where is the free replacement rulebook offer located?

 Azazelx wrote:

KoW by comparison was May 2012-Nov 2014, so 30 months. Twice as long as DeadZone.

What came out in 2012? The hardback that replaced the previous version and was significantly revised from it was in 2013. The KOW2 kickstarter that was to replace it was in 2014 and the final product was delivered in 2015 so that hardback version lasted as little as a year and change before they started coming out with rules to replace it (albeit PDF). That seems to correspond to Deadzone pretty well. Mantic seems to just like that 1-2 year lifecycle of usefulness in their rules before they're devalued. It's up to customers to decide whether a can of soup should last longer than an entire game edition.