What KICKSTARTER(S) are you BACKING and WHY?

duckgoatwombat wrote:

Dogmatix wrote: Looks like Mantic is remaking Heroquest. At least, that's sure what it looks like to me:

www.kickstarter.com/projects/1744629938/...he-dwarf-kings-quest

Mantic's previous kickstarters have all been pretty solid affairs and I expect no less from this. How's the game? It appears the rules are available for download from Mantic's site.

Thanks for the link. I've been waiting for a decent HQ clone. But Holy fuck! Where are the rest of them? I'm left with the distinct impression that they're only interested in using the game to sell miniatures. To think that combat makes a game and everything else is just trappings.. [/q]

Rest of what? If it's the number of minis, be aware that Mantic's kickstarters tend to be heavy on the "unlocks" that eventually end up adding a goodly pile of minis in the end. Not quite sure what you mean by that.

That said, Mantic is basically a company of former Games Workshop employees that is making its name more or less recreating Games Workshop (particularly GW Specialist) products of the early- to mid-1990s--they've recently done Necromunda- and Mordheim-like product; their take on Blood Bowl made a pretty good splash on Kickstarter a while back; and I suspect their Kings of War is probably something in a similar vein to somewhere between the 4th and 6th edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battles (never played WHFB, so dunno what edition the GW-grogs consider "the glory years"). (I'm sort of surprised they haven't done a naval/fleet action game of some sort as that's about the last thing they haven't tapped into.)

As for only selling miniatures here, I think it's a little bit of both yea and no. I think their first Dudes-in-a-corridor games--Dwarf King's Hold and Pandora's somethingorother--were definitely more "sell minis" vehicles than anything. This, on the other hand, feels a bit like they were aware of that bogus Spanish HQ reprint crowdfunding project that generated all the buzz before flaming out so spectacularly and decided to pursue something in the same vein a little at a time. The rules look interesting in general, but, they're clearly nowhere near done. Would be nice to see one more significant update to them before the project closes...

Yes I'm a moron. The quality and quantity of minis look fine. I was (supposed to be) whining about the rules which currently only cover basic combat and nothing more. There's plenty of talk about advanced rules and other systems but nothing concrete. I don't mean to get too far into the Descent 2e thread here but pretty much any of the miniatures kickstarters or dungeon crawlers on the market have perfect components for a great game. They're being held back by shitty rules that don't do anything more exciting than opening chests and fighting monsters with various degrees of complexity. Where the fuck is the rest of the cool shit that can happen when you explore a dungeon.

HeroQuest's rule were basically about movement and basic combat.

Yeah that was misleading of me. I was referring to feel and overhead. After 25 years I don't think it is completely unreasonable to expect better (more from less if you will).
I think the designers have hit a good level of complexity and luck with the combat they showed. A tiny bit of tactics, lots of dice, limited tracking of stats/status for monsters. etc. etc.

duckgoatwombat wrote: Yeah that was misleading of me. I was referring to feel and overhead. After 25 years I don't think it is completely unreasonable to expect better (more from less if you will).
I think the designers have hit a good level of complexity and luck with the combat they showed. A tiny bit of tactics, lots of dice, limited tracking of stats/status for monsters. etc. etc.

Yea, I don't disagree. That would be nice--but, if it will happen at all, I bet it will be "version 3" of the rules or so. First we get a de facto HQ reprint. The next thing, I suspect [and this is pure pulled-from-ass speculation] is an "advanced" rules set that turns it into something akin to Advanced HQ with some extra chrome. From there, if it's reasonably popular, expansions for Kickstarted once, maybe twice, a year. They could mine the original half-dozen HQ expansions and/or some of the pretty polished fan-made HQ quest packages for a couple of years without even having to come up with an original thought [beyond, of course, "how do we re-brand/re-image/tweak/ this stuff to avoid getting sued..."]

As much as I like Jake Thornton's other rules, Dungeon Saga combat feels lame. Roll dice, then sort them???

He included interesting mechanics such as skeleton piles, but also made me thankful Descent doesn't have any zones of control. I mean, the mechanic make sense, and probably good in some games, but here it just creates slugfest. Dude has tendency to get bunch of interesting mechanics and build from there instead of the topdown approach of aiming toward a certain type of game dynamics. Dreadball was great, Deadzone was great, this one is kind of meh.

I backed the "ButterUp" butter knife: kck.st/UXs4VV .

It's a butter knife with a little grater effect built in, to keep clumps of butter from tearing up the bread. I like buttered toast, but clumps of butter are so gross I have eaten it dry rather than run the risk. Yes, yes, peas under the mattress, I know. But this is perfect for me. I ordered three for a couple of gifts.

are you keeping your butter in the fridge where it's always hard? We keep our butter in the pantry and it's always soft and easy to spread, this way we avoid having to kickstart anything.

I would like to see a kickstarter that would make rolling corn cobs in a stick of butter socially acceptable to my step-father who thinks it's uncivilized

Black Barney wrote: are you keeping your butter in the fridge where it's always hard? We keep our butter in the pantry and it's always soft and easy to spread, this way we avoid having to kickstart anything.

I would like to see a kickstarter that would make rolling corn cobs in a stick of butter socially acceptable to my step-father who thinks it's uncivilized

When I was a kid it was kept in a butter dish, and like you say, it was spreadable and required no special hardware. Now that I live on the surface of the fucking sun in Southern California, we keep in the fridge so as to avoid slipping on it every day as it oozes off the table and on to the floor.

Black Barney wrote: are you keeping your butter in the fridge where it's always hard? We keep our butter in the pantry and it's always soft and easy to spread, this way we avoid having to kickstart anything.

I would like to see a kickstarter that would make rolling corn cobs in a stick of butter socially acceptable to my step-father who thinks it's uncivilized

Can't you just do the thing from WarGames and use your perfectly buttered bread to wrap around and slather the cob?