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 Slinky wrote:
Surely the loss of one of your team is going to more that offset a minor boost to one of your other characters?

Just seems like a fluffy rule to represent that the other character does place a high value on the child to me...

They should save the "power ups" for video games. Its a stupid idea and not "real to life".

Ive seen friends injured/killed. It did'nt turn anyone into Rambo/the Hulk.

To be fair I am not sure how much a zombie apocalypse is "real to life" either.

True.

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
To be fair I am not sure how much a zombie apocalypse is "real to life" either.

Frankston, Victoria, at pub turning out time. Pretty close I'd think.

ced1106 wrote:

Frankly, I think you're overreacting. We don't (yet) have gameplay involving the children figures. Once we do, THEN you can flame all you want.

But we do have Mantic's words:

Carol is a new support character for your group. She’s rather unstable to begin with and if Sophia is in her group and killed, she gains extra melee dice too.

And Rick's card shows he does about the same thing if Carl gets capped.

I've stated they give an incentive to have the kid get killed, am I wrong?

But the question is do you want that character to get into melee with Zombies? And is it worth all the inherent negatives of losing a character, whatever they may be?

To give a real world example, if my girlfriend was to die, my grocery bills would be less. Woooo!
But that 1 positive wouldn't outweigh the many negatives that came along with it.

Losing the child may increase the damage output of one of the other characters as they are stricken with rage and grief, but it is worth not being able to use that character to achieve objectives and/or retrieve supplies?

Aeneades wrote:
For those saying players will want to kill off their own child gang members, the playtest rules have stat cards for Rick and Carl. The bonus you get for the death of Carl is minimal compared to the benefit of having Carl alive - death of Carl gives Rick a rookie die added to his melee dice pool where as a living Carl has a rookie die for melee and ranged combat. Carl also has a decent sized health pool and defence (matches 3 of the 4 members of opposing gang) so he wont be easy to sacrifice.

Concept wise, I like the idea of the adults getting enraged when a child under their care dies. It's innovative and it's fits the genre.

We are talking about a game where the last stragling survivors of an apocalypse are killing each other over the scraps left over from better times. It's dark subject matter to begin with.

There are people who will object to simulated violence against imaginary children in a fictional scenario and this, perhaps, is not the game for them. They probably wouldn't like the comic the game is based on either, or the Zombie Apocalyspe Genre in general, so I'm not seeing a big conflict of interest here.

Aside from Carl and Sophia, who are both teenagers in the comics now, what other kids would they even bother with ?
It's not like they are going to make 20 children to choose from.
We'll not see Zerg rushes of 15pt children on the tournament scene.

Like i said, stupid rules make for a sh**ty game.

Why do people keep saying this incentivies killing of one of your characters? It doesn't. An extra dice for rick isn't going to outweigh losing character who can fight , shootz move take objectives and be an extra target for things to attack. It might lesen the blow of Carl dying but it doesn't make killing him needlessly a good tactic.

 carlos13th wrote:
Why do people keep saying this incentivies killing of one of your characters? It doesn't. An extra dice for rick isn't going to outweigh losing character who can fight , shootz move take objectives and be an extra target for things to attack. It might lesen the blow of Carl dying but it doesn't make killing him needlessly a good tactic.

In one off games it could come down to one die, and a situation of wiping out the opponent or taking out a specific opponent could matter more than keeping Carl alive. Sacrifice Carl to make sure I kill the Govenor.....Sure, especially if the game objective is kill the opposing leader. I haven't looked at the rules yet, maybe this weekend, so not sure if there are mission objectives.

The mission object for standard games appear to involve collecting resources so 99% of the time having an extra character who can search for loot is better than an extra weak melee die. You may get bonus points for killing enemy leader but I didn't see that in the released rules (only had quick read so may have missed).

There are also story missions which play out scenarios from the comic which may involve killing an enemy leader but I suspect they will be far between.

People mentioning a "tournament scene" are being extremely optimistic. I can't imagine there being much of a tournament scene for this game. There seems to be only one mission that isn't story/campaign driven. And I doubt the game will be popular enough to support tournaments anyway.

And all the arguments about mechanics are pretty irrelevant to me, when my point was that I'm not interested in playing a game where I'm trying to kill children or other pretty much helpless people. That doesn't sound fun to me.

Not seeing myself staying in this one much longer. There's just not much compelling about this one...and will Mantic please stop saying "yup, good enough" to every single render that crosses their desk.

Same old Mantic story; jump on an EB before fully undertstanding the extent of the KS, then after a few days, try to find a reason to stay in.

 Theophony wrote:

 carlos13th wrote:
Why do people keep saying this incentivies killing of one of your characters? It doesn't. An extra dice for rick isn't going to outweigh losing character who can fight , shootz move take objectives and be an extra target for things to attack. It might lesen the blow of Carl dying but it doesn't make killing him needlessly a good tactic.

In one off games it could come down to one die, and a situation of wiping out the opponent or taking out a specific opponent could matter more than keeping Carl alive. Sacrifice Carl to make sure I kill the Govenor.....Sure, especially if the game objective is kill the opposing leader. I haven't looked at the rules yet, maybe this weekend, so not sure if there are mission objectives.

Rick gets an Orange Melee die if Carl dies.

Rick get Carl's Orange Die to Melee, Orange Die to ranged, plus whatever cards he's using if Carl lives.

As long as you keep Carl with Rick, you are better off with Carl alive in melee.
If Carl has a chance to shoot the target, you are better off with Carl alive in ranged.
If you want to carry additional loot, you are better off with Carl alive.

Sounds like they are making efforts to make the pledge level more appealing again today so I expect they will be adding in a few more extras.

At this point though the campaign has lost all momentum and I think they would be better off cancelling and launching again with the campaign starting with the current stretches already unlocked to make it a much more attractive opening pledge.

Assuming they could actually produce what they wanted for $50k, there is no reason to cancel, they are over 5 times their funding goal! That is massive!

Even the Ninja Turtle game is nowhere near 5 times their funding goal.

(please read the above in a sarcastic voice)

I think the main issue with Mantic here is that they assumed this would be a massive hit due to licence alone so they didn't have any sort of contingency plan in place and due to it being a licenced product they have had to run any adjustments through Skybound which has taken days.

With a little more care and value for money this could have been massive. At the current rate it's going to be outperformed by their less well known Mars Attack branded Kickstarter.

It doesn't help that people are rightfully miffed about the dungeon saga woes currently in progress and posting concerns in the comments of this KS. Mantic's constant failure to actually deliver to people exactly what they pay for will continue to eat away at their fan base.

Can't wait for a few sanctimonious Mantic Fans to declare anyone posting info in the comments section about Mantic's failures need to drop their pledge and shut up.

Sarcasm aside, there is clearly a motivation for making the Kickstarter total as high as possible - even if they can produce everything in the initial offering for 50k, that probably isn't enough to be a viable licensed product line. They need money in advance to fill out the line sufficiently, whether that comes from bank loans or Kickstarter, and it comes back to the age-old thing of the latter being interest-free but hopefully also beneficial to the backers. Don't see an issue there.

Re-launching a Kickstarter, especially a reasonably large one, may not always be ideal. People who angrily dismissed the first version are unlikely to show up again, and you risk not retaining all of your existing backers. Plus, your marketing efforts (all of those links in updates of previous Kickstarters, Beasts of War content...) will have been wasted. Not saying its not going to happen, but I imagine the situation would have to be worse than it is.

Sunday/Monday will be the big teller for this game. With TWD returning sunday night there might be a spike in backers, but we will see just how much the IP can really garner on it's own merit. So I expect there to be a slew of new backers asking the same questions "Where's Daryl?" being to top contender. With their announcement of stock shortages for Dungeon Saga and other kickstarter issues (rules still not chosen for Warpath), I don't think a reboot of this one would be wise. At this point ,even if Skybound said they could start over and retry to launch in a month or so, I think that would just add more negative weight to the stone around this ones neck.

I would bet a slew of TV Walking Dead fans pledging because Walking Dead! will end up dropping at some point when they realize their favorite characters won't be in the game.

And honestly, there will be such a tiny portion of the TV viewers Sunday that know what KS is, and not all of them are folks who play games and would buy this. And nothing Sunday is going to point the fans to the Mantic KS. There may be a bump, but I suspect it won't be very big.

I think that they really overestimated the number of wargamers that need more/another zombie game and the number of TWD comic fans interested in getting into wargaming (who already aren't) and the number of board game fans who don't already dislike wargaming. All of the above who actually care about this license. Seems a little too specific a market to expect a runaway success. The number of people who will buy this just because it's TWD and wait months for delivery is quite small I imagine.

I read some of the comment section and one guy asked if there could be a stretch goal if one of the backers got onto "The Talking Dead" and mentioned the kickstarter. I didn't stay around long enough to see the response though, so they might get the word out. We would just have to see if the TV watchers are hardcore enough to buy into something they won't get until later in the year.

 Theophony wrote:
I read some of the comment section and one guy asked if there could be a stretch goal if one of the backers got onto "The Talking Dead" and mentioned the kickstarter. I didn't stay around long enough to see the response though, so they might get the word out. We would just have to see if the TV watchers are hardcore enough to buy into something they won't get until later in the year.

And something that does not have their favorite characters.

I STRONGLY suspect the calls are screened, no one trying to plug the KS is going to get through anyway.

I think another potential issue is this bit that they posted on their facebook yesterday

Mantic Games


ok, lets start a new thread here...
one of the angles of TWD game we haven't really covered is the collectibility part of the range. Obviously the mins, but actually each pack also comes with more equipment cards - each with its own uique stats - some are seriously hard core, and that allows you to tool up your group as it progresses.This is one of the ways we see how the game will continuosly develop and you can put your own mark on your faction. choose a few differetn characters - and a few different weapons - suddenly a whole different group to fight against. I think this is one of the reasons the pledge will end up being such great value - the amount of different cards, minis as well as the exclusives will give you heaps of choice right from the first few games - it'll be over 6 months before some of that stuff hits retail, so that extra loot will make your games more fun from the get go.

while more content is always cool, they way this sounds raised the spectre of having to carry on buying new 'packs' or ending up being behind in the card power race.... and quite possibly packs you don't really want for the mini

sort of like X-wing but while that can clearly sustain such a sales strategy based on huge interest in the franchise, pretty tight rules and most importantly prepainted cool looking ships

I'm not sure that unpained, smaller minis, based on a franchise with a smaller fan base (and certainly a smaller highly driven fan base) will work as well.

Good point. I think it is exacerbated by folks asking if we will get multiples of various weapon cards because maybe they'll want to have more than one shotgun in their group (for example), and Mantic has ducked that question each time.

So an XWing model of collection, card distribution.....yeah, Mantic doesn't compare favorably with FFG on their games and TWD may be popular but Star Wars it ain't.

So "hard core" equipment cards that only come in certain packs, which KS backers get access to before anyone else, which will make games "more fun from the get go".

Basically "back the KS and get OP loot before retail plebs so you can grind their nose into the dirt easier"?

Or am I being too cynical?

 Nostromodamus wrote:
So "hard core" equipment cards that only come in certain packs, which KS backers get access to before anyone else, which will make games "more fun from the get go".

Basically "back the KS and get OP loot before retail plebs so you can grind their nose into the dirt easier"?

Or am I being too cynical?

Too cynical would be that you ordered it through kickstarter for those reasons, but the the order gets lost/ back ordered and retail gets it before you for cheaper than you paid for it with shipping factored in and the game is pronounced dead before you can get to play your first game.

So your fine