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Another zombies game? I will never understand the appeal of this genre. Good on Mantic for landing what seems like a large (but boring) property. May it draw in loads of cash so they can get back to producing fantasy plastics.

Zombies are an incredibly popular genre right now. It's a smart licence to pick up.

A few rules suggestion's, based on the TV show*:

Silent Killer: All Walkers are silent until they attack.

Check your peripheral: There is ALWAYS a walker just outside your peripheral vision, regardless of where you are or if the area has been cleared. Whenever your model changes direction, you will be faced with a walker.

Butt Scoot: See a Walker, fall over, scoot backwards on your butt until a) ANOTHER walker grabs your ankle or b) Michonne/Rick saves you.

There could be a mechanic linking all of these together. I don't know, I'm not a games designer.

*I don't like the tv show

Any ideas on the plan/format for retail?

Type 1
Small initial box set that "works". Contains rules and enough to play (just). Followed by lots of expensive mini box sets of characters/sets. Eg X-wing / Imperial assault

Type 2
Kickstarted with what seems like a million exclusive figures. Everyone buys what they need in the KS and never purchases anything retail for it ever. Eg Zombicide or previous Mantic kickstarters.


I personally have a feeling it will go with the first type. Mainly to sell all the named characters and alternate special editions in mini boxes to people who will likely only be buying them as collectibles while the TV show is "in".

Are Mantic really viewing this as a gaming opportunity or more like GW had their LotR bubble with collectors?

The only odd thing for me is why not wrap up the TV licence as well, just as Daryl has become a very popular character and some folks who haven't bothered with the comics, might be surprised to discover he hasn't been in them.

I believe it's an entirely separate licence at this stage, so they'd be paying twice as much (or more, given the popularity of the TV show compared to the Comics at this stage).

 Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:
The only odd thing for me is why not wrap up the TV licence as well, just as Daryl has become a very popular character and some folks who haven't bothered with the comics, might be surprised to discover he hasn't been in them.

I guess it has to do with both money (a probably more expensive 2nd license) and artistic freedom (likeness of characters, availibility of characters (timeline TV show vs. comic books) and scrutiny of the license holder.)

The hint to AvP/prodoss and their problems was already given - while AMC might handle things differently from Fox, it would still be much more of an adminsitrative hassle than working with a small creative team lead by the actual creators of the franchise.

Right, the Telltale Walking Dead videogame only had a license for the comics, mostly because it was cheaper. It did however also allow them to use the more iconic artwork of the comics, and this could well be a boon for Mantic - remember how their artwork and art design isn't the best? This is all premade for them, both in print materials and concept artwork for the models.

I wouldn't be surprised if they do a bag of WD-themed "accessory" terrain to go with the box set, but then made the remainder of it cardboard. £35 is cheap enough that they can't really fill the box with huge amounts of plastic terrain, but they'll want to give people a "full" out of box wargaming experience a la Mars Attacks.

I can understand why they're excited, but if they're not launching a Kickstarter for this I'm not really sure why things are being announced nearly a near before release. Thought the optimal 'hype window' would be ~3 months.

Many, many thanks Deadleh for the write-up

It sounds like they have gone down exactly the right route in game concept (at least in terms of what I was hoping it would be myself! )

Encouraging also that it seems KS is less of a possibility, I wonder with the strength of the licence if Mantic are going to try direct to some mainstream shops?

 monders wrote:

Silent Killer: All Walkers are silent until they attack.

Haha, yes the 'out of camera shot' silent attack (as first used by Steven Seagal) - they definitely need some way of implementing that in the rules

 Pacific wrote:
Many, many thanks Deadleh for the write-up

It sounds like they have gone down exactly the right route in game concept (at least in terms of what I was hoping it would be myself! )

Encouraging also that it seems KS is less of a possibility, I wonder with the strength of the licence if Mantic are going to try direct to some mainstream shops?

 monders wrote:

Silent Killer: All Walkers are silent until they attack.

Haha, yes the 'out of camera shot' silent attack (as first used by Steven Seagal) - they definitely need some way of implementing that in the rules

Each turn the players alternate setting up the spawning zombies. 1st player sets one, then 2nd player sets one up then back to 1st player until all zombies are on the board at their entry points. The "active player" then gets to move d3 zombies X inches (or one zombie d3 times) if this gets a zombie into base to base com at then the zombie gets a bonus sneak attack. That would make going for objectives that much harder as you would need to ensure you get there and succeed in one turn, otherwise the other player would be swamping you with newly spawned zombies to tie you up.

Somehow I hope the zombies are more primarily AI. Getting to control them and use them like unreliable drones kind of breaks reality for me. Especially if you can turn them around. Maybe some kind of preference in which of two closest targets one goes after or something, but hopefully not much steering.

Maybe have random facing when they come on? Say from a board edge, you have a 180 deg 'scatter' template, roll away and set them off in that direction.

Then any other walkers that come one after will head towards that walker/group of walkers forming a heard. They will then head towards the action/noise.

Alternatively, they head directly towards the nearest (or noisiest) group of survivors.

Maybe they will have dedicated spawn points as marked by maybe a red rectangle. Flipping a card would reveal how many zombies to put on the spawn point every turn. Then maybe they could use, I dunno, noise tokens or something to force the zombies to head towards the noise if they cant visually see a survivor.

Of course, now that I see it, those mechanics would never work...

The demo I played , the zombies were AI based but certain circumstances allowed a player to move some of them. In the game two characters were around a trashed car nearly surrounded by zombies, a random event had the car blow up, killed a ton of zombies but then drew more in. You could also "kite" groups of zombies into the opposing gang. One thing mentioned was that the sides would also reflect different periods in the story for the same gang- so different skills, different weapons etc . Definitely a KS from how it was talked about.

In some other news, warlord has also released a bulletin about their partnership with wargames factory, and will be re-releasing their zombie range... with 'surprises'. So this isn't the only zombie goodness coming. Personally i mix them all into one big horde....

 godswildcard wrote:

Maybe they will have dedicated spawn points as marked by maybe a red rectangle. Flipping a card would reveal how many zombies to put on the spawn point every turn. Then maybe they could use, I dunno, noise tokens or something to force the zombies to head towards the noise if they cant visually see a survivor.

Of course, now that I see it, those mechanics would never work...

I don't like the red rectangle idea, but I think you might be referencing something else. I haven't played Zombicide but I imagine it's from that?

If so - it seems like CMON borrowed the Zombies Follow Noises thing from TWD anyways, so it's all much of a muchness really

 Meade wrote:
In some other news, warlord has also released a bulletin about their partnership with wargames factory, and will be re-releasing their zombie range... with 'surprises'. So this isn't the only zombie goodness coming. Personally i mix them all into one big horde....

My horde has many many different manufacturers...

About half of the painted horde:

Yeah, I'll be honest, they could make this game an exact copy of Zombicide but without the board and I would love it. Zombicide is great.

BUT I think I'll pick this up on its own merits anyway, assuming the $50 core price is correct. I like TWD's comic art style and minis based on that sounds great to me!

 Meade wrote:
In some other news, warlord has also released a bulletin about their partnership with wargames factory, and will be re-releasing their zombie range... with 'surprises'. So this isn't the only zombie goodness coming. Personally i mix them all into one big horde....

A nice surprise would be re-tooling the male zombie sprue, it's really showing its age. If they bring it up to par with the survivor sprues... OMG

Thebiggesthat wrote:

 GrimDork wrote:
Have they said kickstarter yet? I mean I think that's a fairly same assumption, I just didn't see those words used. Yet.

Daedleh, if it plays like you say, definitely have some interest.

It'll be a kickstarter, Ronnie has said.

I hope more FLGS learn to say 'get stuffed Mantic' and stop stocking their products, until they stop this kickstarter cycle

yeah those retailer bundles they offer for retailers to save a ton of money over buying from the distributor AND getting exclusives, they need to go

retailers need to pay more money!

support the middle man

distributors need to make money too!

I'm sure retailers that only care about having stuff on shelves as an ornament, not actually to sell, are very happy to get cheaper wholesale prices.

 Azazelx wrote:
And probably afterwards, if Alessio's Terminator game is any indication. Supposed to be a great game (well, according to Doug, anyway), but rules and 26 figures for AU$140-180 depending on where you buy it? No thanks - easy pass.

Buy the rulebook! Terminator is still easily the best new ruleset released in 2015. Should be required reading for anyone looking to write rules, so they can see an example of perfection of elegance.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Azazelx wrote:
I think one reason the Battlezones haven't sold as well as expected is because they sold so much of in their KS campaigns. I've got way more than I'll ever need, and I doubt I'm anywhere near alone.

Also, way too many SKUs. There should be like one sku per sprue type. They had like 25 different sets and skus and whatnot and it was hard to tell wtf was in each set.

While what I have seem of the models so far has me neither excited nor bored. Hearing the rules I am intrigued and if they do it right I could be tempted.

I very much hope this is a straight to retail game. If it is their is a chance of my local game store picking this up. If its a kickstarter they probably wont as they already have enough mantic stuff sitting on the shelves unsold.

 lord_blackfang wrote:


A nice surprise would be re-tooling the male zombie sprue, it's really showing its age. If they bring it up to par with the survivor sprues... OMG

Their male zombies are horrible... the female vixens are the best thing you can get IMO. The survivor sprues are all you need for any zombie wargame really! Their AWI re-releases came with a bunch of new plastic goodies.... so the question really is what other cool stuff is coming?

I mean depending on what terrain and goodies are included here, im probably interested primarily in the zombies and the rules. Terrain i have covered... got the battlesystems terrain coming.

Have they previewed many actual miniature sculpts for this yet?

 Alpharius wrote:
Have they previewed many actual miniature sculpts for this yet?

Just the ones on the first page of the thread so far.

I can see it now, the confusion of people who purchase this and return it because the game Rick is missing a hand because it's based on the comic vs the TV Rick who isn't missing limbs.

https://www.facebook.com/manticgames/posts/10153770322717319

Mantic Games It will be a Kickstarter smile emoticon
1 · 3 mins

Mantic Games It will hit retail shelves before the end of the year smile emoticon

 agnosto wrote:
I can see it now, the confusion of people who purchase this and return it because the game Rick is missing a hand because it's based on the comic vs the TV Rick who isn't missing limbs.

Maybe a few, but generally speaking TWD merch I have seen is pretty clearly designated as either comic-related or show-related. The comic-related stuff has comic artwork all over it while show related-products feature images of the actors or stills from the show. I doubt too many will be confused. If you don't see Andrew Lincoln on the box art it ain't show related. I think most TWD fans are aware of the distinct divide between the two variants of the story.