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I've never played Dreadball (sports minis games just aren't my cup of tea), but I'd be surprised if they just leave it to linger. GW sold Bloodbowl for years without a lot of new material.

I think what hurt Dreadball is that they released so, so much so fast. I get that the Kickstarters blew up, but there are what, two dozen full teams?

It's really hard to sustain growth when you release everything in the first year or so.

Including the Mars Attacks team, there's 25 teams now, with 3 game variants.

 Compel wrote:
Including the Mars Attacks team, there's 25 teams now, with 3 game variants.

Wow, that's actually more official material than Bloodbowl ever had.

I think the weird thing is that it's a fully supported Mantic game, with rules for all models and models for all rules.

This is what happens when you release all the models and rules for a game all in one edition. It explains why GW does what they do .

Polonius wrote:

 Compel wrote:
Including the Mars Attacks team, there's 25 teams now, with 3 game variants.

Wow, that's actually more official material than Bloodbowl ever had.

I think the weird thing is that it's a fully supported Mantic game, with rules for all models and models for all rules.

Theophony wrote:This is what happens when you release all the models and rules for a game all in one edition. It explains why GW does what they do .

I don't think that is the issue but rather an issue of scope. The real question IMO should rather be if a limited boardgame about a sport IN SPAAAACE! actually ever needed two dozen different teams in the first place.

I dunno, maybe.

I mean, it's kinda worth saying a couple of the teams are bugfixes of the first teams (Brokkrs > Forge Fathers specifically) but... I dunno. My gaming club plays a *lot* of Blood Bowl. A *lot* of it. And they use many, many teams, official and unofficial (Slaan comes to mind...)

I think a case of "too much too soon" is a very valid argument. Like I said, I really enjoy dreadball, but even so, I've only played 3 games of Dreadball Xtreme - a game variant I kinda enjoy more than original Dreadball. I've yet to use any of the new teams in classic Dreadball. Or even assemble most of the others.

Nor have I even looked at the multiplayer Dreadball Xtreme sets.

Ok, sure, I'm a kickstarter backer and therefore got a HUGE amount of things delivered to me at once. Even so, I'm WAY behind in dreadball stuff. There's also the mental commitment as well, - I need to figure out how these 13 new teams play before I field them. - And, of course, they play slightly differently in Dreadball Xtreme and Original Dreadball.

It suddenly becomes a lot of work for a 'schoolnight' game.

And the fact that people believe it's American football in SPAAAACCE is also part of the problem. The game is more like jamming hockey and basketball together. It has goals and no endzones.

Pshaawww with you and your sportsball references.

:-P

Yeah, honestly, Dreadball has nothing in common with American football. Soccer, hockey or basketball would all be more accurate comparisons.

Or handball..... seriously, it's a real sport. They take it super seriously in Europe.

I've corrected the sports reference in the previous post. Either way, the real question was whether a boardgame about a sport in space really needed as many or more teams as some real sports leagues stands. Some teams will invariably suck either in the rules or the visual design and won't be popular/bought. Others won't really be supported as much for internal reasons. I guess I'd ask whether it would have been better to have a dozen teams with some subsequent smaller releases/additions rather than the two dozen previously mentioned (I don't collect/play it so can't confirm that number personally). Two dozen teams for a niche game seems like alot to expect players and stores to utilize and for Mantic themselves to support.

With hindsight and, this might have influenced some of mantic choices with TWD, perhaps a better situation would have been to go fornsomething like the X-wing method.

Perhaps only release one new team to retail every one to two months, but include the teams rules in that box set. Then you can 'reprint' teams depending on their popularity and you're not overloading the stores with, I think there's about 50 different SKUs for Dreadball all at once.

Ronnie
FEBRUARY 16, 2016 AT 3:55 PM

It (Deadzone) goes to print today, and we are getting on with casting the minis. Some plastic are here already and more arriving in early March. We are aiming for Late March to begin shipping.

Dreadball would really benefit from a high quality second edition a few years from now, to replace the restic teams with board game plastic, 8 unique sculpts per team rather than 4.

Could easily have 4 teams in the base box, and then from there, just have expansions containing 4 new teams, MVPS and rulebook at a decent price.

Just like Dungeon Saga that way, £50 base game, £30 expansions, absolutely loaded with stuff.

The board game retail model of base + expansions works really well, since selling in bulk allows the RRP to be lower and it works so much better for retail stores if they can stock 10 SKU's for the complete range rather than 70.

Also, the Deadzone book looks amazing, you're all going to be very happy with it. Lots and lots of work from the RC on this, the weekend was spent with all of us doing a fine-tooth-comb proofread of the entire final print file (although the final proof-read to remove page XXX is out of our hands. :p). The shipping on this has been delayed by a couple of months, but the time spent really was completely necessary to make sure that the release and rules are actually good and properly balanced.

The Infestation expansion book is 100% RC-written, other than the background text, we managed to go beyond the scope of what Mantic asked us for and were able to include some extra content, such as weather effects and an alternative d88 table if you want to play a campaign in the freezing Veer-myn infested tunnels of Exham IV.

The 5-mission linked campaign in the Infestation book is fantastic, I think everyone who gets a copy of the KS will want to play through it at least once, it escalates from small skirmish to a full-scale battle on a space station, with wins/losses granting bonuses to future missions. It is possible to play through it in a single day since the new rules play so quickly. The fixed campaign avoids the complexity of specific terrain setup/ extra special rules that was a problem with Nexus Psi and keeps things reasonably simple and themed.

Everything from V1 gets updated stats, if it isn't in the book, it is in an expansion (such as Infestation).

Really excited for the release of V2, I know some people didn't want the game changed, but it really really needs it, V1 was just overcomplex, slow and horribly unbalanced once you started powergaming it.

And don't worry about stat cards, GCPS/ Mars Attacks lists.

Sounds great Scarletsquig.

Any word on how the character progression turned out?

Is the name Exham an intended pun?

Just wanted to share this pic from the blog. The name of the picture might imply this is a new starter set. although I don't see wounds and activation counters? It would mean that the starter is all plastic now though if it is Enforcers versus forge fathers. Might make more sense to have ruins in a new boxset then the newer terrain would. I'm assuming they have lots of left over ruins AND did a smaller number of industrail battlezones, all speculation for sure. I wonder if Infestation and veermyn will get a contagion style expansion box.

I see 5 enforcers, 5 pathfinders and 10 steel warriors. Those sprues would give a pretty good range of options over the current box DZ box.

Retail is supposed to be late April.

Not sure what retail will involve at this point, that picture might simply be a publicity shot.

Counters aren't finalized at the moment, those are v1 counters in the pic, they are producing a full set of counters on a punch sheet.

A V2 box with Enforcers, Forgefathers and ruins would make a lot of sense. They could probably offer it at a lower price point too.

@highlord - If by character progression you mean the campaign rules, they are as can be seen in the latest beta, characters can gain stat increases, skills and injuries throughout a campaign. Much ore balanced and revised system compared to v1. Points costs do not change when a model increases in rank or is injured, the general idea is that things balance out over the course of a campaign.

Oh yes everything I said was speculation based on the pic.

Can't wait to see the final book, and the campaign pack. the d88 list is one of the better additions to the campaign for me. Makes it feel less like just after game book keeping.

We home brewed weather and environment hazard charts for V1. Thats pretty exciting that the infestation pack will have some in it too.

that bit about stat cards post before last sure is mysterious.

@MasterSlowPoke ?

Looks like white walls collapse into yellow rubble

Are those clumps of rubble from an existing terrain sprue?
I think I have the damaged battlezone somewhere but that package came in before I moved so I never got around to opening it.

 MLaw wrote:
Are those clumps of rubble from an existing terrain sprue?
I think I have the damaged battlezone somewhere but that package came in before I moved so I never got around to opening it.

Those are from the ruined sprues.

I could see Dreadball benefiting from a boardgame plastic re-launch years from now. Currently the problem would be finding people willing to kickstart teams they've already invested in; I suspect that there would be very few current Mantic fans willing to do so. The marketing approach you describe, though, sounds exactly like what Dreadball needs to realize its full market potential. I'm happy to have my "early Mantic" Dreadball models, though. I'm not as allergic to restic as some people are, though I understand their complaint. (Which is accurate. It does take forever to clean.)

As for your description of the RC's contribution to the new Deadzone rulebook / Infestation, it sounds excellent. Especially the proofreading with a fine-toothed comb.

To be perfectly frank, since Mantic is a for-profit company and not a charity, I have mixed feelings about them benefiting so much from the work of unpaid volunteers. I know that they have finally hired Matt after his years of service, and I really hope that for those of you on the RC with ambitions of working in the gaming industry, that they will reward your efforts as well. A free rulebook or master resin figure for the hours you've put in - which I understand at this point are a lot of hours - really isn't sufficient. If Mantic are serious about the Rules Committee being a "try out" / unpaid internship kind of thing, I hope those of you who demonstrate talent, and have the interest, will find your way into their employ, or failing that, that Mantic can perhaps put in a good word that will get you hired by another company.

There's potentially a lot riding on this new rulebook. If you guys really turn Deadzone around in a big (successful) way, Mantic may need to rethink their approach to hiring game designers.

At any rate, I intend to give your rules a fair hearing with some test games before making any judgments. That in itself means I'm more interested in playing Deadzone than I have been in a long time.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Regarding the new Deadzone starter box, I'm guessing the mat included will be paper? It looks like a paper one in the picture. That would also allow them to significantly lower the price of the starter. It's less quality in the box, but if it helps them price the box set appealingly, I'd call that a good decision. If the set remains expensive, it's more baffling Mantic price-raising, which I think will hurt the sales of the set.

For someone new to the line, that all-hard plastic starter looks pretty solid to me, and at least in terms of including ruins terrain, it has something to offer that most other starter sets don't include. But would Mantic have been better off doing Enforcers vs. Plague again? I'm not sure how big the market is for Space Dwarfs or Space Rats, honestly. If I ran the zoo, I would have gone the safe "armored guys vs. mutants" route using the all plastic 3rd Gen plague mutants. As it is, you have tall armored guys facing off against short armored guys, both sides being grey in terms of order vs. chaos, good vs. evil, etc. Grey vs. grey may be more mature and appealing to some, but I wonder how it sells. (I don't claim to know, either. But making your sci-fi starter Space Marine vs. Space Dwarf, rather than vs. mutants or vs. more alien looking aliens does fall outside the norm, hence the question.)

Just noticed something - I wouldn't put an image of the Peacekeeper captain and a Peacekeeper trooper vs. Forge Guard on the starter set rulebook if none of those figures are included in the starter set. Nice art, odd choice.

Looks like the kind of photo you get in a kickstarter. Not finished product.

I certainly hope so anyway as that book looks paper back and the KS was for a hardback I thought.

@Vermonter
Yeah it seems like a weird move but plague are a ways out I'd imagine and the plastics weren't part of the DZI KS maybe thats why? Aprils too close for 3a plastics I assume. Also there are two more potential starters.

I would Imagine that if it isn't a mouse mat than that would cut down on cost. That being said the mouse mat is really good.
25 bucks or whatever is worth it if it is. probably a year and a half and it hasn't frayed or come apart. I'm not exactly gentle and I don't store it all that well.

The box could potentially be alot smaller too. The Deadzone box is pretty big to me at least. it's not exactly take to the FLGS size.

@Gimgamgoo the KS is. We're assuming this is a new retail starter put together using the kits funded in the KS. The update was talking about the retail release.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
New Warpath update

Pledge Manager Extension

We’ve been working hard behind the scenes on Warpath Firefight. As this is a game that many of you made requests for, we’ve known from day one that it was important that we got it right. Firefight has been through a fair few permutations over the last few months as we’ve fought to make it into the game that you want to play. It has had lots of different people involved to make sure it covers everything it needs to.

We’re making good progress at this point, but we aren’t willing to release the game until it’s ready. With the current progress being made on the game, we’ll be aiming to do this within the next month.

We know that a lot of you have been waiting on the Firefight rules in order to make your decisions on the final selections in your pledge. Since we haven’t released the rules at this point, we have made the decision to extend the pledge manager and give you more time to decide.

The Warpath Pledge Manager will now close at midnight GMT on the 31st March 2016.

If you do not fill out the pledge manager you will not get your pledge level during the shipment and we cannot guarantee that we will have enough stock to supply your full pledge.

Please fill out the pledge manager before 31st March. You will receive a confirmation email when you successfully check out from the pledge manager, and can check your order by clicking ‘My Orders’ on the pledge manager. If you do not receive a confirmation email and/or there are no orders on your account then you have not successfully completed the pledge manager.

So, if you are waiting on the new rules to inform your selections, you now have plenty of time.

We’ve also received a few comments from backers who want to fill out the pledge manager and pledge for The Walking Dead Kickstarter - with the extension, now you can do both!

One possible issue with Dreadball sales is that with only three figure types per player, it becomes really easy to proxy things without it getting confusing.

But surely that applies to Bloodbowl just as much? Some teams only have 2 positions! It might be people not actually liking/being willing to pay for the models, but I thought they were pretty good for the price, and conceptually distinct from other stuff on the market.

Thought that DBO, at least, was a decent seller for them though!

From the FB page:

Nice to see bad guys Vs bad guys for a change.

the VM aren't bad. Just misunderstood.