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 lord_blackfang wrote:
Yeah, maybe some of us were a bit unfair. It's been a long time since any strictly wargaming KS raised this sort of money besides Mantic.

I mean, think about it this way. If million dollar kickstarters produce huge delays, a 25% to 75% good to bad sculpt ratio, and poor quality materials, I'd much rather have a series of smaller kickstarters producing no-to-light delays, a 50% to 50% good to bad sculpt ratio, and reasonable quality materials.

With the small/controlled Kickstarters (and I use the term "small" loosely, $250,000 is still two hundred and fifty thousand dollars) like KOW2, DZ2 and Warpath, there's a majority of sculpts in a material I like; versus a big fat KS remiscent of DZ1 and Dreadball, that we'll be waiting forever on, that will be totally mispacked when we do get it, with hands that don't actually fit to a model's arms, etc.

If Mantic starts throwing in a bunch of free crap and Warpath soars to a million bucks, I'd be sorely tempted to Azazelx my pledge because I know that Mantic simply cannot handle that much all at once.

Well, the terrain-heavy add-on wednesday arrived...

... and the pledge total is going down.

Not sure whether to laugh or cry.

All I really want out of this KS are some cheap HIPS troops and cheap HIPS vehicles of decent quality. 20 for $20 troops and $20 tanks or dropships will get me to spend. Great designs will get me to spend slightly more.

Anything else will be met as a challenge.

I'm trying to find a good balance between having enough for a Firefight game and supplementing all the goodies I've already gotten from both Deadzone campaigns.

Problem I have like many is I got plenty from both Deadzone sets, so I don't have a real need for an entire other battleforce.

A mix of vehicles and new troop sprues is all I'm really after.

I guess I could go for more specialists to toss in the DZ.

Got the add on Wednesday info...so be ready for an honest critique. No discount from buying multiple terrains. Each terrain is $35. No slight discount for buying 2, 4, 8 or anything. First time I've seen that from them. Not going to lie, it's kind of a stinker. And that's me as a fanboi.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Got the add on Wednesday info...so be ready for an honest critique. No discount from buying multiple terrains. Each terrain is $35. No slight discount for buying 2, 4, 8 or anything. First time I've seen that from them. Not going to lie, it's kind of a stinker. And that's me as a fanboi.

Unless I'm mistaken, the chart shows that higher terrain pledge levels have bonus accessory sprues.

The main thing any Battlezone set needs is more connector sprues, are they available to add on?

 Alpharius wrote:
I was just about to ask "If I want to play a SF mass battle game with plastic infantry and vehicles, and I don't want to play 40K, what are my options?"

There aren't many, are there?

Maybe Spartan's stuff, but is any of it plastic?

And have they stopped changing the rules too frequently?

Is there something else?

Dust... although that isn't "just" scifi but also a mix with historical. Over a decade ago, Warzone tried and failed due to reasons unrelated to their actual game (the parent company IIRC went belly up). There weren't many choices before kickstarter because the barrier was so high. Even GW took decades to get to *MOSTLY* plastic and they're not done with that switchover even now.

 Alex C wrote:
Well, the terrain-heavy add-on wednesday arrived...

... and the pledge total is going down.

Not sure whether to laugh or cry.

Hmm? It's gone up, at least $500, since the update.

 judgedoug wrote:

 Alex C wrote:
Well, the terrain-heavy add-on wednesday arrived...

... and the pledge total is going down.

Not sure whether to laugh or cry.

Hmm? It's gone up, at least $500, since the update.

At the time I posted it had gone down a couple of hundred.

Yeah, I'm not gonna lie, that's a little odd. - Even a cumulative $5 discount or something would make sense.

Or some extra accessory sprues, it's just a doubling up. Seems meh, yeah.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Got the add on Wednesday info...so be ready for an honest critique. No discount from buying multiple terrains. Each terrain is $35. No slight discount for buying 2, 4, 8 or anything. First time I've seen that from them. Not going to lie, it's kind of a stinker. And that's me as a fanboi.

Unless I'm mistaken, the chart shows that higher terrain pledge levels have bonus accessory sprues.

Spoiler:

Ah. Yes and no. You get a free sprue per each battlezone after the first. So a discount from 1->2, then just one accessory/expansion sprue per grouping. So buying 2 is better than 1. But 8 is no better than 2 or 4.

And unless I'm mistaken, both Mantic's own bundle deals and independent retailers' individual battlezones would end up cheaper than this, and ship immediately to boot? I get they didn't like the hit on shipping they must have taken in the DZ1 KS but this is a fairly poor deal.

I mean, who would not rather take the $199.99 urban quadrant over the $280 deal here? That's $80 to spare to get some of the DZ:I scenery and in the end you'll simply have more scenery for the same price, and most of it probably at least half a year earlier as well.

One thing to keep in mind. - The term "battlezone" isn't consistent across everything. The number of actual sprues and what kind change depending on what box or deal you pick up at any given time...

For mass battles, you can use the Warmachine rules, it does scale up now a bit. If you alter your thinking outside of the original setting and think of it like a hacker/decker/rigger controlling drones you can easily move it over to a more futuristic setting.
How does that apply to Mantic? Well, focusing on their models, you could pretty easily come up with some proxies. Vehicles would mostly be out though.

That said, I buy a lot of Warpath and other sci-fi models to do custom scenarios. Other people use it for upscaled Tomorrow's War or Gruntz even. I have also heard people using them for games like Hammers Slammers or Stargrunt 2.
So.. if you don't like Mantic's rules and don't want to play proxy hammer or simply use the old 3rd ed 40k books (that's what we've been doing a bit of lately) then you can use the Warpath stuff in some of the smaller rules that are trying to get a foothold. The systems are quirky but a lot of them are flexible enought to allow you to use whatever models. For me, I like a lot of the stuff Mantic released for Deadzone and have/will be using them like this. I will likely pick up a few things from this KS because I know that if I don't like the rules I do still have ways to use the models.

 Compel wrote:
One thing to keep in mind. - The term "battlezone" isn't consistent across everything. The number of actual sprues and what kind change depending on what box or deal you pick up at any given time...

Fair enough. However the eight or so battlezones I got from the original KS didn't seem like that much more stuff than the urban quadrant an FLGS around here got (and had us build, mostly for Infinity use). I'm fairly sure it's the same ballpark. I'll try to do the math on it this weekend or so but I'm fairly sure discounted retail is cheaper than KS, and via KS you'd have to wait, what? half a year? more? There's just no 'deal' to be had on the scenery as currently marketed via the KS from what I can see.

 MLaw wrote:
For mass battles, you can use the Warmachine rules, it does scale up now a bit. If you alter your thinking outside of the original setting and think of it like a hacker/decker/rigger controlling drones you can easily move it over to a more futuristic setting.

Rules aren't really the issue but rather the availability of plastic minis. I have a copy of HG Well's mass battle rules published around 1900.

Well, it's picking up a bit now. We still gained less than $3k since I got up 12 hours ago, though.

 Polonius wrote:
Given that people here are on rules committees

Was this necessary?

 Baragash wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
Given that people here are on rules committees

Was this necessary?

No good deed goes unpunished, I guess.

I was pointing out, to a moderator no less, who was expressing some angst over the tone of Doug's posts, that a certain emotional response is to be excepted among people that are emotionally invested in something.

I was, in fact, defending, or at least explaining, the actions of some of the people propping up Mantic in this thread.

So, no, it wasn't necessary. Indeed, I'm regretting trying to help any of you out!

New FF tank/APC renders the face is more subtle now







Next goal adds the dozer blade and dragon breath flamer

The back of the APC looks strangely devoid of detail (not to mention the yuuuuuge 'teeth' on what looks like the hatch). I guess it's not an issue as long as you can feasibly build it with the back of the tank and just pretend that that small hatch works for the APC but still it looks sort of unfinished.

 judgedoug wrote:
Which is interesting, because another game, Medge, was actually billed as the next 40k, and one can see how well that did.

No it wasn't. At least, not by the guys making it.

 Mymearan wrote:
But when it comes down to it... Do people actually want a 28mm mass battle sci-if game?

Absolutely.
Or more specifically, I want a game that allows for games around a similar size to a 1500-2000-point 40K game, that also scales up to larger games without getting too bogged down and taking a week to play.

MEdge isn't that game, and was never intended to be (it's aimed at the spot in between 40K and the ever-increasing collection of small skirmish games) so I'm really not sure how it got dragged into this discussion.

Warpath was looking like it could be that game, but the hub and/or multibasing rules kill it for me. Although it's also possible that what I'm really looking for is 40K, but written properly and run past an editor before printing, so it's entirely possible that I'm going to find something that I hate about any other ruleset that is supposed to replace it... So in the interests of kicking out of that groove, I guess I'm probably going to have to wait until Warpath has finished rules and then, I don't know, try it or something...

 warboss wrote:

 MLaw wrote:
For mass battles, you can use the Warmachine rules, it does scale up now a bit. If you alter your thinking outside of the original setting and think of it like a hacker/decker/rigger controlling drones you can easily move it over to a more futuristic setting.

Rules aren't really the issue but rather the availability of plastic minis. I have a copy of HG Well's mass battle rules published around 1900.

Ah.. well, I'm not partial specifically to plastic so I suppose I have more options in that regard :/

The tanks for the FF look a bit better. It'd be nice to see inside so we can tell whether or not detailing an interior (like with a Rhino) is a possibility.

I like that a lot, considering it still has a face and two hands with pinkies extended. For $20, I'd get two.


I'm really trying hard not to make some terrible jokes about the tank's rude gesture.

 DaveC wrote:
New FF tank/APC renders the face is more subtle now

Yeah, that's a big improvement... Back end is still a bit boxy, and the turret doesn't really fit. But it's definitely coming along.

I'm curious how big those tanks are going to be.

I know we saw a render early on with an FF next to one.

Ought to put a Steel Warrior in each photo just to give a sense of scale.

DaveC wrote:New FF tank/APC renders the face is more subtle now

I take your meaning; but overall there's not much about that tank that says 'subtle' to me...

I like this new version of the FF Tank a lot better!

The APC version does look nicer - as noted the turret doesn't quite seem to 'fit', but this is certainly an improvement!

FF tank is awesome, very cool that it has 3 options included as standard, all of which look quite distinct and different from each other.

I kinda want 12... although 6 and a bunch of magnets will probably have to do.