Dreadball Xtreme

Well, the Dreadball Xtreme Kickstarter has been live for a couple days now and has already garnered a smack-ton of cash.  Your truly and Mr B have jointly signed up to it, at a fairly hefty, but not ridiculous, level.

 

At the moment I'm reasonable happy with what's on offer, but, given the previous projects Mantic have launched this way, I'm expecting to see a lot more value added over the next three weeks.    Given how much we've collectivly dropped on the original Dreadball, it still's still a good deal so far.

Very little information is available about the actual gameplay, but the core seems to be the same as the original Dreadball game.  Dreadball was easily the best (miniatures) game I properly invested in last year and is one of those games that I would play without resevation.

One of the notable decisions Mantic have made is to move away from their heavy plastic (rastic?) figures to preassembled plastic miniatures.  If there's one thing that frustrated me about Deadzone, Dreadball and some of their other figure ranges, it's cleaning those hideous mouldlines and glueing the pieces together.  I've had Deadzone for a week now and have suffered through assembling a whole seven figures!  Hopefully this new material will be easier to work with.

The big draw for me so far is the customisable board; appropriate given that DB:X isn't played in a traditional arena, but in back streets, warehouses and prisons.  I'm also anticipating what new teams or races Mantic add into the mix.

Three weeks to go with eleven updates so far, looking forward to seeing what the final package will be.  Check out the Kickstarter here.

What's in this box then?

After an interminable three hour meeting at work, I was really looking forward to this when I got home last night.

So what's in it then?  Well, it's my huge, extravagant and completely unnecessary Christmas splurge gift to myself; a big pile of Deadzone goodness.

Ok, justification time.  We can use the scenery for at least two games other than Deadzone itself.  I've only heard good things about the gameplay; plus it plays on a two foot square area, meeting the whole "game in a box thing" I've got going on at the moment.  Lastly, I wanted to drop some cash on myself, rather than solicitor bills and property management companies.  Job done.

By my count, that's 51 figures (with two still to come) added to the lead pile, twenty two sprues of scenery, plenty resin and plastic tokens and a whole new game to explore. Everything I'll every need to pick up... well, until the next wave of releases in March!

I read the core rules this morning and everything looks pretty straightforward to far. Deadzone ticks most of the boxes I look for; simple enough core rules, plenty of options and special rules, a nice dice rolling mechanic and plenty of player options, both in choosing your strike force and on the table.  Consider me happy!