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I''m in for the full whack, as as previously mentioned, SDE stuff in the UK is almost £1-$1 parity, if you can find it at all.:(

Will probably top up on the few items I stupidly didn't add to the FK pledge first time round (a few solo characters and the tile sets).

Hoping they tweak game play a little to speed things up, but ultimately I think I just need to force my long suffering GF to play more.

If we unlock all the gender switch characters (which we will, lets face it) no doubt she will run a part of three Barbarians... as her strategy usually boils down to apply axe to face.

OK - I need a little help here!

My daughter would love this style of game.

Arcadia Quest is out and launching a KS...soon?

I can't afford both - in terms of money OR hobby time.

So...which one?

We've had more "fun" with Arcadia, due to the rules being very straightforward and easy to grasp. Only real hangup was the PVP aspect which tends to get played down with the kids (every guild for themselves with the adults however).

My kids preferred the SDE figures, and there is the fact that the game has co-op built into it. Supposedly with a rules revision, it might end up a little smoother this time around.

With SDE if you do the consul and guide the kids through it, it will probably be a more enjoyable game for them too. My kids love trouncing all over dad's typical crummy dice rolls, and I'm sure yours will too.

Arcadia Quest is all about stitching up the other player (s) and to my mind does not work particularly well as a 2 player game. It does play a fair bit faster than SDE

So if she's got a decent sized group and they can play without always picking on the same person, and don't mind working against each other this is a decent choice

SDE is all verses one (the consul), you've also got arcade mode which replaces the consul with an AI... not quite the same as fighting against a real person but it works ok. It plays slower than Arcadia Quest

so ideal if there's only you and your daughter, if she would respond badly to having to fight her friends or if her group of friends can't be trusted to 'play nice' enough of the time

(I like arcadia quest, but personally would pick SDE for younger players especially as a supervising adult as the consul can always play stupid to keep the game fun for the whole group, Arcadia Quest really does depend on interplayer rivalry which is fair enough 1 on 1 but as soon as you have a group younger players do tend to pick on one person rather than switching alliances all the time)

I probably would say if you wanted AQ, go to retail and get the current one. It is a fun, self-contained game with no need to KS it up.

This is a good KS to ground floor with SDE, design for it. AQ if someone wanted to ground floor, I would totally recommend what is at retail now.

i really hate the AQ designs though.....one of my main reason for sticking with sde is the design work is so much better.

Though with the amount of SDE minis i have and the fact that AQ rules are free online..I could do both pretty easily.

AQ is purely competitive. SDE can be played both ways: competition (Classic) or coorperation (Arcade). Even in competition, SDE still plays "Heroes vs Monsters" - so one player is clearly "the Bad Guy".

SDE is usually more suited to young players - as an adult, playing Consul is a good way to give your children fun. But you can also play with them against "the Console" in Arcade Mode. The game isn't especially difficult and usually, the young ones just like playing with Chibi miniatures and "killing" a lot of monsters for fun.

Moreover, Legends is all about narrative and could be a good way to initiate some RPG (even in a light way).

I would say SDE is a good thing to try, if you're willing to wait for KS. AQ coming soon...well, it's more about an extension - you can already play with the core game in retail, after all. And it's somewhat less cute, IMHO.

Anyone want to give me a realistic idea of what the wife and I are in for? We love co-op dungeon-crawls, love campaign systems, etc... and love the aesthetic. Owning zero SDE content, the $200 pledge seems perfect, and its certainly looking like a nice deal.

That said I hear a lot of folks talking about how terribad the rules are, and that it is a slow, unwieldy mess in practice. Can someone speak to that in any kind of detail for us noobies?

There's a run through of SDE Arcade mode here:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQrLfMRnQwBxYhzT31qenoS_k3M9H_pmo

Watch it Played did Arcadia Quest for comparison (but Haven't done the new version of SDE that I can find)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ8fMyOPZ1I

 Alpharius wrote:
OK - I need a little help here!
My daughter would love this style of game.
Arcadia Quest is out and launching a KS...soon?
I can't afford both - in terms of money OR hobby time.
So...which one?

Of the two, I'd say SDE. Based mostly on models & personnel reasons.

We actually didn't love Arcadia Quest. Our board-game nights are usually just the two of us, and as a 2-player adversarial game, it ends up very light, and kind of predictable.

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
Anyone want to give me a realistic idea of what the wife and I are in for? We love co-op dungeon-crawls, love campaign systems, etc... and love the aesthetic. Owning zero SDE content, the $200 pledge seems perfect, and its certainly looking like a nice deal.

That said I hear a lot of folks talking about how terribad the rules are, and that it is a slow, unwieldy mess in practice. Can someone speak to that in any kind of detail for us noobies?

Here is the main 'hook' that you are in for with SDE. It is a game which relies on 'expansions' for variety.

You can play a game like monopoly or AQ 50 times with the same rules and the game is different and fresh due to what people do and adapting to new scenarios.

For the most part, if you play SDE with the same spawns and same heroes, after a while it becomes the same playthrough, especially with arcade. So yes, you only need 2-5 heroes and 2-5 spawns and a boss or two, but if you play it a lot, you will quickly want and possibly NEED more spawns, different spawns otherwise you will be stomping on kobolds over and over.

You can buy zombicide and AQ retail, play it a dozen times and never really need more content for varied gameplay, especially if you have fresh players. SDE is buying into a miniature line which will expect you to constantly be expanding to the tune of 20$ a spawn point usually and 10$ a hero. Also, AQ and Zombicide have expansions which are more like re-skins where SDE has 40+ unique heroes and close to 15+ unique spawn points which really is large amount of content.

If you buy in at 200$, one of two things will happen:
*You will not like it, it gets shelved or sold off.
*You like it and quickly find you need to buy TFK, mismourn coast, emerald valley, the kobold expansion, von drakk and roxor and probably 10 or so heroes to the tune of 4-500$

Well, we love dungeon crawls, and love variety... I also have no problem spending on a game which keeps delivering. It took us years and years, but we eventually tracked down everything Warhammer Quest related just because randomness + variety in a dungeon-crawl can give it incredible longevity.

The campaign aspect of the new game calls to us, but the requirement of playing pre-built campaigns if you want to go co-op is a touch disappointing. I'd love just adding EVERYTHING to a giant pool of randomness and seeing what comes up, all with persistence, etc...

But the few things I have heard about the game keep calling back to unwieldy, unclear rules, which is more concerning.

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:

But the few things I have heard about the game keep calling back to unwieldy, unclear rules, which is more concerning.

The directed play sounds 'interesting' but with zero evidence of rules or vetting, right now this campaign is mostly 'the models are cool' and that's it.

No major changes from TFK, and no legends preview so far. If you are really worried about liking the rules, I would do my best to read the core rulebook online or try to demo a game in the next 20 days.

I bought pretty much everything for TFK (I only didn't get the Twilight Knight), but I'm not sure what to do with this one.

I'm not a huge fan of the new monster sculpts for the starter, but I do like the heroes, and as has been mentioned SDE is really expensive to get in the UK. I'm torn between the $150 and $200 pledges, I guess it depends how many paid stretch goals there ends up being.

I like the figures enough that the rules aren't that big an issue, but I do think the games could do with being shorted (45-60 mins feels about right).

caylentor wrote:
I bought pretty much everything for TFK (I only didn't get the Twilight Knight), but I'm not sure what to do with this one.

I'm not a huge fan of the new monster sculpts for the starter, but I do like the heroes, and as has been mentioned SDE is really expensive to get in the UK. I'm torn between the $150 and $200 pledges, I guess it depends how many paid stretch goals there ends up being.

I like the figures enough that the rules aren't that big an issue, but I do think the games could do with being shorted (45-60 mins feels about right).

Rumor is, only a single paid add-on will potentially exist. Everything else will be big box pledge.

If I had to guess, that single paid add-on would be a 50$ caverns of Roxor 2.0 as that would complete their entire back catalog for retail and get the CMoN packaging off the market. (since von drakk has already hit retail in 2.0 mode)

That's pretty tempting then...

Is the 2.0 Von Drakk just a repack with the same minis?

caylentor wrote:
That's pretty tempting then...

Is the 2.0 Von Drakk just a repack with the same minis?

Yup, same minis.

caylentor wrote:
That's pretty tempting then...

Is the 2.0 Von Drakk just a repack with the same minis?

And updated cards.

http://sodapopminiatures.com/new-releases/von-drakk-manor

Basically new box, same minis. Von Drakk has been out of stock for a long time as all the old stuff was done under the CMoN agreement. So they have been letting things be out of stock.

Since we haven't seen one of these for Roxor yet, and you can't get roxor outside of old inventory right now, that is why people think it will possibly show up later.

The re-boxed Von Drakk doesn't come with Rattle Bones that's the only difference you have to buy them separately now (but they do come with Von Drakk tiles).

http://sodapopminiatures.com/new-releases/von-drakk-manor

I'd like to see a new Roxor really don't like his sculpt

Thanks guys! I got all the cards with TFK (at least I think I did) so I guess a $200 pledge might be the way to go.

If only the £:$ ratio was as good as last time

The 'beef' right now is that the pledge basically is:

100$ Core 2.0 + Legends
25$+25$ humans vs orcs
50$ Midnight tower

They basically forced bundled paid add-ons.

Some people want Core 2.0 and all the freebies without the bundled add-ons. They want all the free stuff at deep discounts for 100$ without paying the close to MSRP for the add-ons? It is almost as if they can do simple math.

In the previous campaign for TFK, the core pledge was about a 33% discount. Paid add-ons were a 9%. There was minimal reason to buy the add-ons at the KS outside of convenience or shipping.

The forced bundle into BIG BOX I think was a gamble, which has paid off for them in the form of momentum. Normally people pay for the expensive profit-making add-ons due to being exclusive, now they upsold by the nature of being eligible for stretches.

Overall, I like this model better than the piles of expensive add-ons or the mess that NAS was. No trickery, no fake stretches, just 'here it is'.

There are numbers of people who don't want legends or don't want one of or both of the bundled packs, just 60$ core and hundreds of dollars of free minis. if Sodapop had done that, we would probably have been barley at 100k funding trying to unlock the ragebeast from the snow orcs for a paid add-on.

 Cyporiean wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
OK - I need a little help here!
My daughter would love this style of game.
Arcadia Quest is out and launching a KS...soon?
I can't afford both - in terms of money OR hobby time.
So...which one?

Of the two, I'd say SDE. Based mostly on models & personnel reasons.

Same here, the models are truer to their intent and the gameplay is not a pure PVP with creeps.

 Alpharius wrote:
My daughter would love this style of game.

Arcadia Quest is out and launching a KS...soon?

So...which one?

The SDE minis are very cute, although the cheesecake is getting to be a bit more than what I'd prefer. There are a LOT of differently-themed minis out there, Heroes and Monsters, so lots of variety is available. Gameplay has gotten a bit bloated; however, if you are playing the monsters, then that might work well with just a little tweaking to remove unnecessary stuff. Still good, but not perfect.

I'm not familiar with AQ, as I'd already locked into SDE when CMoN launched AQ. I understand it's doing just fine, though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
Well, we love dungeon crawls, and love variety... I also have no problem spending on a game which keeps delivering.

The campaign aspect of the new game calls to us, but the requirement of playing pre-built campaigns if you want to go co-op is a touch disappointing. I'd love just adding EVERYTHING to a giant pool of randomness and seeing what comes up, all with persistence, etc...

Perhaps you'd rather try Kingdom Death : Monster? Because, talk about random in campaigns...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nkelsch wrote:
Rumor is, only a single paid add-on will potentially exist. Everything else will be big box pledge.

I'm guessing King Starfire, the giant dragon. There is huge pent up demand for such a model, and this is the perfect time to release it, given that they are revisiting Dragonback Peaks and doing powered-up Legends.

Don't worry John, we've got Kingdom Death in house already, and a mountain of expansions incoming.

At the moment its just about finding motivation to assemble a lot of gorgeous, but very fiddly minis.

SDE has appeal in pre-assembled. I mean, my hobby time is finite as is, and I do play three major table-top war-games, so... :-p

Haha, yeah, I do like that SDE plays right out of the box!

After seeing the Female Hearthsworn fighter art, I'm a bit disappointed the male version isn't just as jolly.

I'm more disappointed that the Hearthsworn Tincan isn't actually, well... a tin can. I figured it would have been some sort of clockwork knight or something.

Looks like just another dwarf in armor, which we'll soon have two of anyways.

I spent some time last night reading through the old Arcade-mode rules, and I really liked what I saw. It sounds like any potential "clunky"-factor is mostly tied to set-up and break-down, specifically in building the decks of cards and then pulling out enemy specific treasures/exploration, etc...

But if you play a couple games in a row with the same spawns/mini-bosses/boss, it sounds like the game should play quickly?

Am I missing where the supposedly fiddliness and slow-playing aspects are?

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
I spent some time last night reading through the old Arcade-mode rules, and I really liked what I saw. It sounds like any potential "clunky"-factor is mostly tied to set-up and break-down, specifically in building the decks of cards and then pulling out enemy specific treasures/exploration, etc...

But if you play a couple games in a row with the same spawns/mini-bosses/boss, it sounds like the game should play quickly?

Am I missing where the supposedly fiddliness and slow-playing aspects are?

No you're right. I like to play in Arcade and indeed it tends to be quite fast once you get used to the rules.

Games are also faster when you play with three heroes/tiles. People saying it takes a lot of time usually try to play Classic with the maximum numbers of heroes and same number of players - well, yes, in that case, it takes longer 'cause there are more miniatures to move, more turns to play, an so on.

We still have to see the rules for Legends, but...if it's a RPG-like, you already know rules aren't that important for that kind of game.