Mantic’s DreadBall Kickstarter Has Gone Live

I posted some early pictures from Gen Con on Mantic’s upcoming DreadBall game. Since midday today (UK time), Mantic’s DreadBall Kickstarter is live. Perhaps unsurprisingly – as Mantic Games already teased this game at Gen Con, via newsletters and across the web – the Kickstarter hit its (comparatively modest US$ 20.000) funding goal within hours.

Mantic’s Dread Ball Kickstarter

If you are a fan of sport games (such as the Blood Bowl of old), you should definitely give DreadBall a look, even though the “pledges” available at the Kickstarter look essentially like retail-price pre-orders (no Bones-style bargains to be made here).

A Blood Bowl-Clone or Something Else?

Both before the Kickstarter and after its launch, much scorn was directed at Mantic for doing yet another Games Workshop clone. If you look at the teams – Humans and Orcs Orx – the association with Blood Bowl is easily made. But besides placing their game in a sci-fi setting, rather than the fantasy equivalent as GW’s Blood Bowl has done, Mantic also appears to have invested heavily in a unique play-style.

Instead of Blood Bowl’s American Football-inspired gameplay, where you try to make touch-downs and set up teams anew after each score, DreadBowl seems to look more towards Handball, Hockey or Speedball.

Here are some rumours that suggest how the game will likely play:

• Game mechanics use a d6 for everything. There is also a deck of 54 cards of various types that are played in-game for various effects.
• The stats are Move, Strength, Speed, Skill and Armour. There’s a ton of different special skills in addition.
• Gameplay is back and forth: Each player gets 5 Action Tokens to spend each turn, which can be used to move/perform actions with the models, or to spend on cards. Interrupts are featured as a special ability that lets you act in the middle of your opponents turn.
• Your turn ends once you’ve spent your 5 AP or you lose possession of the ball, either by losing it to the opponent, or by making a successful strike.
• Teams start with 8 players initially, but can be expanded up to 14 via hiring new team members and/or Most Valuable Players (special characters) during a league. There’s also an underdog system to balance games out in the case of highly uneven teams.
• The designs on the field are the strike zones from where players can score goals.
• There are 3 strike zones on each side of the pitch, once a model has moved into the strike zone (lit up hexes), you can attempt to throw the ball into the goal hex.
• As soon as a point is scored, the teams are not reset, but a ball is immediately re-launched from the center of the pitch and play continues instantaneously.
• First team to gain a lead of 7 points wins, or if the game reaches 14 rushes for each side, then the leading side wins. If it’s a tie, then play continues into “sudden death” mode where the first team to score a point wins.

All game-rumours by Scarletsquig from Dakkadakka.

To be honest, I am more enamoured at the prospect of those fluid rules than the – in my opinion – rather meager offering in the box they offer for US$ 80,- on Kickstarter at the moment. Hopefully they will bulk it out a bit during the course of the Kickstarter.

Are you interested in DreadBall? Do you think it is too much “like” Blood Bowl? Does it matter? I would love to read your comments below?

Z.