What KICKSTARTER(S) are you BACKING and WHY?

I'm in for Xia for exactly the opposite reason. Something about Merchants and Marauders doesn't click for us and we never really got into Merchant of Venus either. Really like the concept of both games, but something about the execution just didn't grab our attention.

I think I'm probably going to go in for Xia but I haven't yet. I love the genre and it looks goofy and dumb in its detail.

One thing about it I do like is that it actually seems like what kickstarter is for? Getting money for a personal project you couldn't otherwise create. Xia seems like a pretty scrappy production.

Mantic's new PR indicates that DreadBall will have a 2nd edition Kickstarter launch next month (July 2016). Pretty much an "auto-buy" for me.

Gary Sax wrote: I think I'm probably going to go in for Xia but I haven't yet. I love the genre and it looks goofy and dumb in its detail.

One thing about it I do like is that it actually seems like what kickstarter is for? Getting money for a personal project you couldn't otherwise create. Xia seems like a pretty scrappy production.

It's true, and that's why I'd like to back it, but I just can't do $115 worth of essentially charity. I can't even see doing the $80 base set. It's just not going to get $80 worth of play, and it's not $80 worth of game for me.

But who knows, maybe I'll fall down the stairs or run the lawnmower in the garage too long and get woozy enough to back it.

drewcula wrote: Mantic's new PR indicates that DreadBall will have a 2nd edition Kickstarter launch next month (July 2016). Pretty much an "auto-buy" for me.

Yep...I'm sure I'm in for some flavor of this...

I just backed Madness At Midnight. Yes, it's another Lovecraftian game, but first of all this one has you playing the cultists, and secondly I designed the damn thing. (I pledged to be able to comment).

It's being published by Mr. B Games and Richard Launius has co-designed it with me. He has added some really cool stuff to the original design and I'm pretty psyched about it. Especially since we are three quarters funded in like four hours. I won't spam the forums about it, but if you want to know more I'll be happy to answer questions. And honestly I imagine both theme and game play is a perfect match for F:ATties.

Linky-linky:
www.kickstarter.com/projects/532062403/madness-at-midnight

Eh, I stopped being ensorcelled by Massive Darkness. I don't feel like spending $120 plus shipping on a game I won't see for almost a year. I'd rather buy something else with that money and have it, like, Thursday. Plus, there's no way it is better than WHQ Silver Tower.

Oddly, it did make me interested in checking out Black Plague.

You should sell your Early Bird to a BGGer for $115.

Why would anyone buy it? They'd have to just pay for it again wouldn't they?

Michael Barnes wrote: Why would anyone buy it? They'd have to just pay for it again wouldn't they?

You just talked yourself out of a sale.

I'm giving serious thought to this gaming table. I do wish it was wider, but the price is pretty damn attractive.
www.kickstarter.com/projects/1296268806/...etablescom?ref=users

The table looks okay, but the lack of mitered joints for the rail makes me think "cheap" in the way that something looks good from afar on in pictures, but is very disappointing up close.

I think Dreadball is great outside of the poor team balance, and I would be tempted by a second edition. But I'm getting a bad feeling about Mantic kickstarters lately. They seem to make so many mistakes (material changes, sprue changes, delivery screw ups) I wonder how they can afford them without using new kickstarter money to clean up previous obligations. Also, every time I hear from their support (and I have two outstanding "lost" kickstarter orders), it's a new name...Dave, Zak, Matt, whoever. Makes me nervous.

^^Yeah, I would really like a new gaming table. The inset playing surface would be grand.

Michael Barnes wrote: Eh, I stopped being ensorcelled by Massive Darkness. I don't feel like spending $120 plus shipping on a game I won't see for almost a year. I'd rather buy something else with that money and have it, like, Thursday. Plus, there's no way it is better than WHQ Silver Tower.

Massive Darkness feels underdone to me, in the way that Zombicide needed some tweaks that eventually came with Black Plague. It seems like this one needed a little more time to season and differentiate itself a bit more from the Zombicide formula of gradually flooding the board with minis & smashing your way through them. The video hints at this design model sort of teetering over: they ran out of space because there were too many figures (in a 4 player game, no less), and they kept doing weird things like spawning and auto-removing a certain number of them. Janky.

The skill charts seem like tepid increments to dice & stats with a few characteristic abilities that get more effective over time but will probably just scale to the additional hordes of monsters. The confused way in which the skill progression keeps being explained is rooted in the confusing nature of the design idea to begin with: unlocking skill tiers only to "reset" at the beginning of each game (basically "pre-unlocking"), and losing all of your items between scenarios is goofy in the same way that we had to shoot at our own teammates in the first Zombicide, showing that some of the systems need to be sanded down, criticized, and honed a little more.

Hell, even Black Plague seems a little fragile at this point. With all of the Wave 2 stuff that just came out, I just assumed I could go a la carte and add in some content without worrying that it would break some scenarios or turn them into ultra hard mode. That seems like a fundamental design puzzle for CMON with these games: how to scale and modularize. They can't seem to scale up since the game is already all about maxed out PVC excess and simple gameplay, and they can't really modularize all that much without going whole hog into a new "version" of the same system. In this case they probably should have worked on Black Plague cleanup rather than bolt the dungeoncrawl zeitgeist onto their system.

They're kind of like the Coca Cola of boardgames. They know their market, their product, and their consumers, and they have their production & Kickstarter hype down to a science. But it seems like they're trying out a New Coke with this one and something seems off about it.

Gversace wrote: I think Dreadball is great outside of the poor team balance, and I would be tempted by a second edition. But I'm getting a bad feeling about Mantic kickstarters lately. They seem to make so many mistakes (material changes, sprue changes, delivery screw ups) I wonder how they can afford them without using new kickstarter money to clean up previous obligations. Also, every time I hear from their support (and I have two outstanding "lost" kickstarter orders), it's a new name...Dave, Zak, Matt, whoever. Makes me nervous.

I like the Dreadball as well and am 10 teams, 4 pitches into it. I'm hoping I can get by with just a pledge for the rulebook on this second edition and not have to deal with all the other stuff, but it sounds like I'll at least need new cards...