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This did not need to be a KS in the first place. They could've gone straight to retail with an upgrade kit and or with either two of the current teams in their one piece BG plastic or two new teams in a new boxed game.

 Polonius wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
Zombicide everything has been very successful at retail. I'm not sure how "successful" it has been, but I've seen Secret Weapon's tablescape tiles at a few different stores.

Good call on both of those. I never followed Zombiecide, but I know that the Tablescapes KS was the ultimate "true believer" kickstarter. Several years of lead time, and only the early birds got a discount off of retail.

Because of timings, Tablescapes ended up saving me a chunk of money because it was part of that early wave of KS that included free shipping worldwide, and also because of currency exchange vs local ripoff retail.

 Azazelx wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
Zombicide everything has been very successful at retail. I'm not sure how "successful" it has been, but I've seen Secret Weapon's tablescape tiles at a few different stores.

Good call on both of those. I never followed Zombiecide, but I know that the Tablescapes KS was the ultimate "true believer" kickstarter. Several years of lead time, and only the early birds got a discount off of retail.

Because of timings, Tablescapes ended up saving me a chunk of money because it was part of that early wave of KS that included free shipping worldwide, and also because of currency exchange vs local ripoff retail.

Nice! I forgot about the whole shipping thing outside of the US.

When I want Tablescapes (I'll need gaming table, and I'm still not sold on them over a good mat), I can grab one off the shelf at my FLGS or Adepticon, usually with 10% off. I actually tried looking online, and I didn't see any online retailers with them.

OTOH, getting Victoria Minis has to be easier down under, right?

 Compel wrote:
Hypothetically, an upgrade pledge, would encourage more backers to that, thereby increasing the total, thereby unlocking more stretch goals to improve the main striker pledge... Which may tempt people to increase their upgrade pledge to the main pledge.

They're probably (rightfully) concerned that an upgrade pledge would cannibalise their Striker pledges. Not to mention the number of people who would sit on one of each, only to pull out.

Winner don't pull out

 Polonius wrote:
Guild Ball taking off is also not a great sign for Dreadball as a franchise.

Not to mention that we all know the new edition of Blood Bowl is on it's way. Straight to retail (so the main game will probably in-hand before this is - and certainly in-hand before this completes with delayed items, wave shipping, and Mantic's slow KS missing parts service) and with what are supposed to be quite lovely models. In HIPS. And several expansions.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Polonius wrote:

OTOH, getting Victoria Minis has to be easier down under, right?

I don't really bother with local retail for the most part (a little, but not much) as there's no real benefits, and I don't think many carry Vic's stuff anyway. Ordering from her is kinda pointless, since she's set up primarily for US sales - her prices are all in $USD as is her free shipping threshold. Her stuff is pricey at the best of times, but with the AU$ dropping in the last year - just not worth it for the numbers you need for IG. And now with Brexit, Forge World is a much better deal for Aussies for the most part than Vic.

 Azazelx wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
Guild Ball taking off is also not a great sign for Dreadball as a franchise.

Not to mention that we all know the new edition of Blood Bowl is on it's way. Straight to retail (so the main game will probably in-hand before this is - and certainly in-hand before this completes with delayed items, wave shipping, and Mantic's slow KS missing parts service) and with what are supposed to be quite lovely models. In HIPS. And several expansions.

In that case, a kickstarter makes sense! Get the money now, while people are still a little interested, let the game stall while the players await the new edition, then leave for other games, so that nobody cares by the time fulfillment rolls around. I kid, of course. But only a little.

thinking about it, I wonder if this isn't an attempt to cash in on the interest while they can? Bloodbowl restarting could be huge if the game is even playable. I just don't see room in the market for three Sports Minis games (I'm not sure I even see room for one, but people just freaking love Bloodbow.

Guild Ball is a different play experience to Dread, DB is a complex board game, GB is essentially a skirmish wargame.

The imminent arrival of BB, and those sweet mini previews, is likely giving a lot more people pause, me included.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Guild Ball is a different play experience to Dread, DB is a complex board game, GB is essentially a skirmish wargame.

The imminent arrival of BB, and those sweet mini previews, is likely giving a lot more people pause, me included.

I kind of forgot about the Blood Bowl Factor here!

That might help explain this:

At least it sounds like there will be an official upgrade pledge. Which there should have been in the first place. With more goodies thrown at the new boxed set pledge in order to entice us to upgrade.

Blood Bowl's minis look great; but as a 20 year veteran player of Blood Bowl (well, 17 years, as I haven't played it since I got Dreadball), I cannot stand the rules any longer. The single greatest disappointment was hearing that it would not have a redesigned ruleset. I lost complete interest at that point.

 Nostromodamus wrote:
Not to mention their handling of DBX probably left a lot of people with a bad taste in their mouth.

I'm genuinely curious about this; what the heck happened that made everyone unhappy? Any chance someone would care to enlighten me or point me to an article telling me about it?

 ZergSmasher wrote:

 Nostromodamus wrote:
Not to mention their handling of DBX probably left a lot of people with a bad taste in their mouth.

I'm genuinely curious about this; what the heck happened that made everyone unhappy? Any chance someone would care to enlighten me or point me to an article telling me about it?

Gave us teams but no rules to use them in Extreme until final shipping wave. Forgot about one of the coaches and hastily made rules for them to be an MVP at the last minute, trying to claim that was the plan all along despite hard evidence to the contrary. The usual poor CS issues. Did we ever get the zombie pitch invasion rules? Probably more that I'm forgetting.

I actually really like the game, but Mantic basically treated it like the red-headed stepchild that they probably wish they never made.

There was supposed to be a zombie pitch invasion? That sounds great. I must have completely forgotten about that.

There were also a lot of people that got the wrong teams in Extreme. I somehow ended up with at least 4 teams I did not ask or pay for but was told to keep anyways.

 judgedoug wrote:
Blood Bowl's minis look great; but as a 20 year veteran player of Blood Bowl (well, 17 years, as I haven't played it since I got Dreadball), I cannot stand the rules any longer. The single greatest disappointment was hearing that it would not have a redesigned ruleset. I lost complete interest at that point.

You mentioned that earlier, but my point isn't whether or not Doug or even I like it either way - it's about a much, much bigger dog on the horizon that everyone knows is about to return to the playground.

 Compel wrote:
Yeah azure forest was a store release. This is the thing though. With the new cars, isn't Azure Forest now redundant?
I'm really annoyed that my Acrylic Ultimate pitch is now redundant too.

Your pitch will still be usable, they've thought of that and the mantic blog post about the new rules mentions it towards the end:

https://manticblog.com/2016/07/26/dreadball-2-rules-update/

We will, of course, include rules for using the existing pitches with the new cards and rules – after all, Gruba-Tek is going to want ROI on all those new Ultimate stadiums they built…

Nothing from v1 is being made redundant.

As for the Kickstarter, the add-on pricing for teams is extremely poorly calculated. The teams are $25 each which is £19.05 at current exchange rates. The RRP on them is £18, with many places offering a good discount on that. They do come with an MVP, but that's really nothing special.

Upgrade pledge goes live at 8PM BST $45

$45 Jack - DreadBall Veteran Pledge Level goes live at 8:00pm BST
Having spoken and listened to the community, we know there are a whole bunch of players who are eager to participate in the Kickstarter with a pledge that boils DreadBall 2nd Edition down to the essentials, and so at 8pm BST tonight we’ll release a new pledge level that does exactly that.
The DreadBall Veteran Pledge Level will include the Core Rulebook (MSRP $25) and the DreadBall Team Guide (MSRP $25), both physical and digital, as well as the revised DreadBall 2nd Edition Card Deck ($5 KS add-on), which has new action and event cards. There’s also a set of card counters that will be immediately upgraded to the new 3D plastic DreadBall counters ($10 KS add-on) the moment they are funded – because they are fun and add extra value to the pledge level.

 DaveC wrote:
Upgrade pledge goes live at 8PM BST $45

$45 Jack - DreadBall Veteran Pledge Level goes live at 8:00pm BST
Having spoken and listened to the community, we know there are a whole bunch of players who are eager to participate in the Kickstarter with a pledge that boils DreadBall 2nd Edition down to the essentials, and so at 8pm BST tonight we’ll release a new pledge level that does exactly that.
The DreadBall Veteran Pledge Level will include the Core Rulebook (MSRP $25) and the DreadBall Team Guide (MSRP $25), both physical and digital, as well as the revised DreadBall 2nd Edition Card Deck ($5 KS add-on), which has new action and event cards. There’s also a set of card counters that will be immediately upgraded to the new 3D plastic DreadBall counters ($10 KS add-on) the moment they are funded – because they are fun and add extra value to the pledge level.

But it doesn't come with the new pitch?

Interesting.

Probably to keep the cost down both contents and shipping wise. If your upgrading you probably have a pitch already granted it has smaller hexs but it is still perfectly playable.

I'm thinking upgrade set now and pick up a Yndij team later at retail no interest in the other teams revealed so far or in updating Ultimate. I have a Gruba Tek pitch so covered there

I think Dreadball is a good game. And the choice of a scifi setting instead of another fantasy football game was great, too. They succeeded in adding many interesting teams and races which is also benefital to their Warpath universe.

The miniatures are limited quality-wise but which company's arent? Even GW's new Blood Bowl miniatures shown so far arent multipart and it seems there will be dublicates.

What I always liked about Mantic, and which is easily forgotten with all the hundreds of kickstarters during the last four years, they were taking a lot more risk than GW and other companies by releasing product the latter had abandoned and left starving.

In case of the Forgefather range I think they have done a really good job, not all but most of the original WP FF miniatures were good, the Dreadball players and teams too, and the new Deadzone range is surprisingly excellent.

Except for a very few Space Dwarf/Squat miniatures released over the decades - often only available for a limited time, like Fantastic miniatures (Bob Olley sculpts) in the US, Bob Olley's 'Great coat' Space Dwarfs and a few more - this was an abandoned faction. If you were interested in expanding your collection there was only the second hand market for GW miniatures. In some cases it was ignorance but in most economics why product like this was left behind by companies.

Mantic is still taking risks with their product - the Army of Nature for example. It makes sense they use crowdfunding to balance it out as much as possible. I dont think sports tabletop games was that big of a market back when they did DB. Except for the Blood Bowl fans who took control of that franchise for a while and continued supporting it. When Dreadball and Project Pandora were introduced there werent many tabletop/games manufacturers (if any) offering similiar products.

I still rate Mantic high for this and buy their product when I feel I want and need it. They have revisited and revitalized quite some dead game types, miniature ranges and brought new concepts for scifi and fantasy races to life. During the last years not them alone of course but their's were easily available and offered at brick&mortar stores.

GW has now returned to most of its classic designs and products. Genestealer Cults, Harlequins, board games, Adeptus Titanicus. Who would have thought five years ago?

What Kickstarter in my opinion damaged a lot are translated versions of games. They dont make sense financially anymore - which means those games do not stand a chance in countries like Germany.

The 'hardcore' tabletop gamer here buys english editions during a kickstarter. German translations if available are starter sets only, released much later and dont sell enough to allow for expansions to be translated. Who buys german core rules if you need the english ones for expansions? Not that many. Mantic has quite some problems selling in Germany in general from what I read and heard from shop owners. Players are rare. Even for Kings of War. You loose out on many customers if you do not offer translations early on - especially if you do kickstarters - as the initial sales are a big part.

GW is benefitting from these 'left behind' customers offering their games translated day one. BB will take over easily here. Ruleswise DB is much better than BB, so this is a sad situation. But you cannot fix it by doing kickstarters the way Mantic does. This is not building up and strengthing local scenes. And the german market (like the french and spanish) is not a small one.

So I fear Blood Bowl will take large bits of foreign DB scenes, maybe not the Guild Ball one as it is a much different game and its players arent 'casuals' anyway, but probably the DB one. Day One translations are what DB2 needs the most and would have meant a chance to expand its market. It would be good if Mantic is taking this into consideration. Outsourced, later translations dont work well anymore.

moderately interested in the upgrade pledge although it's just over what I was hoping for

Warhams-77 wrote:
Day One translations are what DB2 needs the most and would have meant a chance to expand its market. It would be good if Mantic is taking this into consideration. Outsourced, later translations dont work well anymore.

Not much chance of that with Mantic. Their first editions seem to have some serious issues on a consistent basis with a few exceptions, and they rely heavily on volunteer labour (the Rules Committee) in order to come up with balanced and playtested rulesets. The chances of getting a properly-translated set of rules created in that kind of situation - especially Day One - are slim to none.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
moderately interested in the upgrade pledge although it's just over what I was hoping for

US$45 plus postage? I may as well wait until it hits retail and get it at a discount with free postage. A refbot figure doesn't mean much in this context.

With Postage and current exchange rate that's £44

I'll give it a miss and wait for my FLGS to stock it

Upgrade pledge is now live. - I'm one of 10 backers so far. Kinda sad about the lack of "Ultimate board" but if the old ult board is allowed in a variant I can live with it

Ultimate has been redesigned but there will be rules to use the old pitch

DreadBall Ultimate

Finally, DreadBall Ultimate will be given a fresh breath of life, with a new pitch designed to eliminate ‘dead’ areas of the board and keep the focus on the action.

Ultimate was a popular way to play the game, and made for an excellent capstone for a league or great way to spend time with your mates over beverages and pretzels. The most frequent complaints we heard from Ultimate players, though, were twofold:

At smaller player-counts large sections of the board never saw any play, and a ball could get lost in the weeds if launched in the ‘wrong’ direction.
Long wait times between your turns sometimes meant you spent more time shooting the breeze than shooting for Strikes.

The new DreadBall Ultimate pitch is designed to solve the first problem: Each team has a Strike Zone that they must defend in the usual way, and a Strike scored in a team’s Zone will ‘steal’ points from them as it does in standard DBU play.

However, there is a central, shared strike zone in the center of the pitch. A Strike scored in the center zone will earn you one point that is not taken from another team. The center hex also doubles as the Refbot hex.



What this allows us to do is to shut down the sections of the board that are not in use. Instead, the ball will bounce off of a low-power force field erected at the border of the unused section, and any players that stray over this line (or are pushed out) will be committing an Out of Bounds foul, and potentially sent off. This means that the balls cannot wander off into the wilderness, keeping the action focused.

As for the second problem, the new DBU card deck will contain new ways for you to act in an opponent’s rush. This will mean you have to keep an eye out for opportunities and openings, and watch out for your opponent’s tricks and schemes while planning your own Rush.

We will, of course, include rules for using the existing pitches with the new cards and rules – after all, Gruba-Tek is going to want ROI on all those new Ultimate stadiums they built…

More on the 2nd edition rules on the blog: https://manticblog.com/2016/07/26/dreadball-2-rules-update/

 scarletsquig wrote:

 Compel wrote:
Yeah azure forest was a store release. This is the thing though. With the new cars, isn't Azure Forest now redundant?
I'm really annoyed that my Acrylic Ultimate pitch is now redundant too.

Your pitch will still be usable, they've thought of that and the mantic blog post about the new rules mentions it towards the end:

https://manticblog.com/2016/07/26/dreadball-2-rules-update/

We will, of course, include rules for using the existing pitches with the new cards and rules – after all, Gruba-Tek is going to want ROI on all those new Ultimate stadiums they built…

Nothing from v1 is being made redundant.

As for the Kickstarter, the add-on pricing for teams is extremely poorly calculated. The teams are $25 each which is £19.05 at current exchange rates. The RRP on them is £18, with many places offering a good discount on that. They do come with an MVP, but that's really nothing special.

They aren't supposed to be anything special. Mantic has gotten absolutely panned in the past by game stores for consistently offering their catalog at firesale prices during later KS projects. I honestly think this is a far more responsible move to not undermine their exposure yet again. The problem with many TT games is that you have to have a community around to actually have them work. If you never allow for that community to assemble, the game dies. This is honestly a step in the right direction in my opinion.

If you are buying the old catalog items for the project, buy them to support the project. If you are buying older stuff on the cheap, go to the local stores to get them on the cheap.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Warhams-77 wrote:
I think Dreadball is a good game. And the choice of a scifi setting instead of another fantasy football game was great, too. They succeeded in adding many interesting teams and races which is also benefital to their Warpath universe.

The miniatures are limited quality-wise but which company's arent? Even GW's new Blood Bowl miniatures shown so far arent multipart and it seems there will be dublicates.

What I always liked about Mantic, and which is easily forgotten with all the hundreds of kickstarters during the last four years, they were taking a lot more risk than GW and other companies by releasing product the latter had abandoned and left starving.

In case of the Forgefather range I think they have done a really good job, not all but most of the original WP FF miniatures were good, the Dreadball players and teams too, and the new Deadzone range is surprisingly excellent.

Except for a very few Space Dwarf/Squat miniatures released over the decades - often only available for a limited time, like Fantastic miniatures (Bob Olley sculpts) in the US, Bob Olley's 'Great coat' Space Dwarfs and a few more - this was an abandoned faction. If you were interested in expanding your collection there was only the second hand market for GW miniatures. In some cases it was ignorance but in most economics why product like this was left behind by companies.

Mantic is still taking risks with their product - the Army of Nature for example. It makes sense they use crowdfunding to balance it out as much as possible. I dont think sports tabletop games was that big of a market back when they did DB. Except for the Blood Bowl fans who took control of that franchise for a while and continued supporting it. When Dreadball and Project Pandora were introduced there werent many tabletop/games manufacturers (if any) offering similiar products.

I still rate Mantic high for this and buy their product when I feel I want and need it. They have revisited and revitalized quite some dead game types, miniature ranges and brought new concepts for scifi and fantasy races to life. During the last years not them alone of course but their's were easily available and offered at brick&mortar stores.

GW has now returned to most of its classic designs and products. Genestealer Cults, Harlequins, board games, Adeptus Titanicus. Who would have thought five years ago?

What Kickstarter in my opinion damaged a lot are translated versions of games. They dont make sense financially anymore - which means those games do not stand a chance in countries like Germany.

The 'hardcore' tabletop gamer here buys english editions during a kickstarter. German translations if available are starter sets only, released much later and dont sell enough to allow for expansions to be translated. Who buys german core rules if you need the english ones for expansions? Not that many. Mantic has quite some problems selling in Germany in general from what I read and heard from shop owners. Players are rare. Even for Kings of War. You loose out on many customers if you do not offer translations early on - especially if you do kickstarters - as the initial sales are a big part.

GW is benefitting from these 'left behind' customers offering their games translated day one. BB will take over easily here. Ruleswise DB is much better than BB, so this is a sad situation. But you cannot fix it by doing kickstarters the way Mantic does. This is not building up and strengthing local scenes. And the german market (like the french and spanish) is not a small one.

So I fear Blood Bowl will take large bits of foreign DB scenes, maybe not the Guild Ball one as it is a much different game and its players arent 'casuals' anyway, but probably the DB one. Day One translations are what DB2 needs the most and would have meant a chance to expand its market. It would be good if Mantic is taking this into consideration. Outsourced, later translations dont work well anymore.

Anyone who didn't think the KS upstart craze was going to be a short-lived gaming fad (in the grand scheme of things) was sorely mistaken. Eventually you realize you need other players to have a good time, and so naturally everyone gravitates towards the most popular games and companies for no other reason at times but to actually be able to play the game.

It seems at least 90% of miniature/board game KS projects fail at retail because anyone who wanted the game got it, and the handful looking into the game can get it from e-bay offloaders.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

overtyrant wrote:
This did not need to be a KS in the first place. They could've gone straight to retail with an upgrade kit and or with either two of the current teams in their one piece BG plastic or two new teams in a new boxed game.

I absolutely agree with this. Mantic has yet to figure out that if they NEED to do a KS project for an existing line/game, there is something inherently wrong. There is no reason you should have had to do a project to update a rulebook if your game is popular. They need to reassess their strategies. You can hate capitalism all you want (which is apparent given their lore background) but you have at least understand it.

Now that is not to say I won't give them one last chance on a single wave KS with rules put together by someone other then Jake (nothing wrong with the guy, but there has always been too much on his plate) and an OBVIOUS showing that they've had their ear to the community on what needed to change. Now all we need is for a few of their business practices to change. At times, you can't listen to a bunch of fans that are only in it for themselves to get your stuff at firesale prices if possible. This causes so many extra models to be floating around anyways and for a year after you ship, people are buying your stuff off ebay anyway and not from you or a vendor.

Mantic has too many model lines to continue to have to use KS if they were actually as popular of gaming company as I'm sometimes made to believe. Existing revenue streams should be taking care of this stuff.

A suppose another 37 or so backers on the Jack pledge level is enough to make it sort of worthwhile, right?

 Azazelx wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
Blood Bowl's minis look great; but as a 20 year veteran player of Blood Bowl (well, 17 years, as I haven't played it since I got Dreadball), I cannot stand the rules any longer. The single greatest disappointment was hearing that it would not have a redesigned ruleset. I lost complete interest at that point.

You mentioned that earlier, but my point isn't whether or not Doug or even I like it either way - it's about a much, much bigger dog on the horizon that everyone knows is about to return to the playground.

It's particularly frustrating because Deathwatch Overkill and Warhammer Quest Silver Tower are so good and a nice return to form for the GW that I fell in love with. I want to love Blood Bowl again but not when there's been several other games released in the last many years that are just... better.

 Compel wrote:
A suppose another 37 or so backers on the Jack pledge level is enough to make it sort of worthwhile, right?

Sure, but that's how must new pledge levels go. Backers beg for certain pledge levels like they are going to cause this massive influx, and its always marginal. It helps, but the community exaggerated how much it was going to help like always.

Just another one of those "Well I want it, therefore you'd be a fool not to offer it" sort of things.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 judgedoug wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
Blood Bowl's minis look great; but as a 20 year veteran player of Blood Bowl (well, 17 years, as I haven't played it since I got Dreadball), I cannot stand the rules any longer. The single greatest disappointment was hearing that it would not have a redesigned ruleset. I lost complete interest at that point.

You mentioned that earlier, but my point isn't whether or not Doug or even I like it either way - it's about a much, much bigger dog on the horizon that everyone knows is about to return to the playground.

It's particularly frustrating because Deathwatch Overkill and Warhammer Quest Silver Tower are so good and a nice return to form for the GW that I fell in love with. I want to love Blood Bowl again but not when there's been several other games released in the last many years that are just... better.

I do believe in this case there is plenty of room for both. They have very different styles in play, setting, fell, and look. Dreadball is also cheap enough that players wouldn't have to invest too much. This would be doubly so if Mantic offered a playkit minus teams so you could pick your own.

 ZergSmasher wrote:

 Nostromodamus wrote:
Not to mention their handling of DBX probably left a lot of people with a bad taste in their mouth.

I'm genuinely curious about this; what the heck happened that made everyone unhappy? Any chance someone would care to enlighten me or point me to an article telling me about it?

In short, DBX was just a nice box cover for what was really DBO seasons 4-6 to sucker in people who didn't already own DBO. Once Mantic had the money, they pretty much forgot DBX as a game existed and put all their effort into integrating "DBX" minis into DBO, to the point that they shipped the miniatures with only DBO rules and forgot to release DBX rules for them until something like half a year later. I even emailed the designer of the game if he could at least post them online while Mantic is durdling with the book so we'd actually have something to do with the minis that didn't include going out and buying DBO and he said he didn't even remember where his DBX files were. That's how much they didn't care about it.