Well Ultimate is in, and John Doe’s mates are not far behind, thanks to all the pledgers on Kickstarter. Thanks guys 🙂
Don’t you just love tentacles?
Anyway, apologies for being absent for a bit. I’ve been writing email interviews like the one on Frontline Gamer, but mostly sitting gibbering in a corner, inventing alien teams and seeing how wacky I can get before Ronnie says no. Turns out that’s pretty wacky, actually.
The Tentacled Terrors (above) are a fun lot, and two types of Guards makes for strange tactics, but I think I’ve got a couple more twists left for you in the last two teams for Ultimate. Then there is the whole of Xtreme, which is all a big twist on the shiny and clean(ish) game you’ve seen so far.
So this weekend we’ve got the Mantic Open day, which looks like loads of fun. I’ve been looking forward to that all week. We’ve also got the last chance to grab these great deals on Kickstarter – and they are pretty impressive deals. If you know any gamers who aren’t pledgers already, you owe it to them to let them know. It’s a whole bundle of freebies they’d be missing out on and at least if you tell them then it’s their fault if they don’t.
So how high will it go? What can we get into the Kickstarter? I can hardly look. It’s just as well that I’ll be at the open day all saturday, because I think otherwise I’d just be hitting refresh all day 🙂
Quirkworthy 
Two types of GUARDS ?? New special abilties/rules ??
Weird, eh?
😉
Oh please say that their Strikers have fins and sharp teeth and this will immediately become my favorite team!
And speaking of new Guard abilities, since you mentioned that the previous incarnation of the game was influenced by hockey, I found it strange that you didn’t have a body check ability for smashing people into the boards. Something that might get rectified in the future?
That’s kind of what Slam is, but you don’t just use the boards. I did have a rule in for what happened when you slammed someone and there was nowhere for them to be pushed back, but it added little and took up a lot of space to explain clearly, so it died. Lots of marginally useful or interesting bits were sacrificed to keep the game moving quickly – and I think it is better for it.
Based on that concept art I’m becoming embarrasingly close to asking you to marry me.
When you said all us odd folk clamouring for the fish man team wouldn’t be disapointed you were spot on.
Crab claws! For the love of pete they have crab claws AND tentacles! It’s like its my birthday or something
Many happy returns 🙂
I really hope this is one of the teams that gets a multi-hex chap. The possibilites are… intriguing.
Jake. You KNOW I love this. Thank you. Thank you so much. Cthulhu Ftaghn!
I have no idea what you’re talking about. It was just my spaghetti, it spoke to me…
Ramen
Indeed.
I’m guessing two different types of Guards means they play in different ways? One stronger but slower, the other faster and better at slams? or something like that anyway.
Something like that, but not quite that 🙂
Is the team selection going to be ‘up to X of Guard A and up to X of Guard B’ or ‘Up to X Guards’ meaning you can pick which type to focus on?
The former as that is the same way everyone else works and the extra cool is not worth the extra rules. And yes, I did just make up a jungle by mistake.
Keeping things simple here 🙂
Awesome! Awesome! Awesome!
But you cant tease us with Open Days on the other side of the world! I think you need to come to Australia and run a Dreadball event so I can use the ticket from my Striker set!
You never know. If DB takes off I may have to do a world tour 🙂
looking forward to tomorrow 🙂
I am assuming one type of guard is for tentacle based grappling as john doe was said to have and the other is your standard i am going to kill you with my giant pincers style guard. I think these guys will be my preferred squad, once they are released of course. Looking forward to seeing what you create for there strikers, I imagine something barracuda like hunting down the ball!
Crimsonsun
Your guess on the guards is right. Not sure what their strikers will do different, if anything. Their weird guard combo may be enough.
I was meaning in model design over rules changes, I agree that with the two types of guard the team would become difficult if you start adding in more special rules just for the sake of it, that is also where balance issues start to become more prominent. Thanks for the confirmation on guards, always nice to get a response from the man in the know! 😀
Crimsonsun
so Jake – now that it is all coming to a close online, I guess you’re going to be busy for a few weeks to come! How was the whole design through to kickstart experience overall on this one? You’ve made a lot of people really happy on this one – thanks a million for all of the work (and for what’s to come!)
shane