DreadBall Azure Forest – Unboxing

More DreadBall! DreadBall Xtreme is close, though Mantic put out a tiny tournament-themed expansion to keep people playing through the Kickstarter: Azure Forest, which is also billed as the first of a (annual?) Galactic Tour Series.

My Azure Forest box arrived, including new cards to simulate the dangers of tropical forests to a kinetic match of DreadBall, the fantastic (metal-cast) A’Tea Adysi MvP miniatures and a print of Mantic’s latest tournament rules.

Let’s have a look!

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#1 – DreadBall Azure Forest Miniatures

The Azure Forest expansion comes in one of the white plastic boxes Mantic Games also uses for regular DreadBall teams. Inside is a bit of foam, the cards, the Azure Forest booklet and … of course … MvP A’Tea Adysi, as well as a tribal-looking (and surprisingly huge) trophy.

The trophy is kinda fun, but the real star is A’Tea Adysi, which I think is a lovely miniature. A lionesque face, furry tail and lots of tribal detail such as feathers, a native-american-style bone-breastpiece, etc.. all over. A great miniature!

Rules’s wise, A’Tea Adysi is an absolute killer too. A Striker with Move 6 and Speed 3+ and (!) Duck & Weave (+1 dice to any Dodge), he’ll be incredibly difficult to take down! If you don’t assist on a slam, A’Tea Adysi will be dodging with 5 dice on 3+!!

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#2 – DreadBall Azure Forest Cards

There is a deck of 15 cards (one of which is a weather-reference card) that can be used to change the card deck for DreadBall to create new events, including ongoing (and ever-changing) weather-effects that haunt players playing in the Azure Forest.

I have yet to play a game with them, so I don’t know how big the change is. Can’t wait to try.

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#3 – DreadBall Azure Forest Booklet

Finally, there is the little booklet – 30 pages in a small format. It’s split as follows

• Introduction (1 page)
• Azure IX (Background – 4 pages)
• Azure League Rules (Cards, Weather, A’tea Adesi, etc.. – 6 pages)
• DreadBall Tournaments (10 pages)
• Kickstarter MVPs (6 pages)
• Tournament Handouts

There is a good amount of stuff in there, partly because Mantic Games used a smaller font than they do in the normal, larger rule books. To be honest, it feels very much like a document made for larger A4 format of the regular DreadBall rule books, printed to the smaller format without changes to the layout.

The background on the nostalgia-retro leagues on the Moon of Azure IX is fun enough. The most puzzling thing is the disconnect between the emphasis on tournaments (a solid 1/3 of the book is about tournaments) and the inability to actually use the miniature Mantic Games, which sells with the Azure Forest expansion, in said tournaments (see below)!

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#4 – The DreadBall Tournament Conundrum

One thing I find rather odd is that Azure Forest – as the first installment of the Galactic Tour Series – promotes MVP A’Tea Adysi as a player only available in official tournaments in 2014.

The pack contains the metal A’Teo miniature plus full rules for using him in games. As an interesting point, he will only be legal in official tournaments in 2014, but of course there’s nothing stopping you continuing to use him in your own leagues and exhibition matches.

Yet the official tournament rules, as published in the very Azure Forest booklet, don’t allow the use of MvPs at all, not A’Tea Adysi, not any of the others. What the hell?

I live an hour away from Mantic’s HQ in Nottingham and had a look around their website and forums. There isn’t – as far as I could see – a single official Mantic Games DreadBall tournament there that I could use A’Tea Adysi in, even in 2014.

I have no problem with A’Tea Adysi being phased out in 2015, but I’d love to be pointed to an official tournament by Mantic Games in 2014, where I can bring my A’Tea Adysi miniature and “legally” play him, if he’s to be the 2014-season tournament MvP?

Is there even a single official tournament in 2014, where I can use the “official-tournaments-in-2014-only-miniature”?

Am I missing something obvious?

Anyone able to help me out?

Z.