Yes it has.
Apologies all round. As ever it’s simply the workload that’s getting in the way of posting. Fingers crossed I can get the DS articles finished soon. Not promising anything though as that never ends well.
Unfortunately I can’t tell you most of what I’ve been up to of late as it’s all still very hush hush. Suffice to say that there are a number of very exciting new projects in the works, which I will tell you more about as soon as I can.
So, stay tuned, subscribe if you haven’t already, and, as Arnie says, I’ll be back.
Quirkworthy 
Holiday time 😉
I’m ready to talk about Deadzone Infestion when you’re ready ! (Deazone rules and so on)
Cool. I’ll send you an email.
All good Jake. I figure where you aren’t posting here it means you are in design crunch time, so from our perspective that just means something really good is coming up!
That’s usually the case. Though yesterday was lost to having to clear up the damage left by some drunken scumbags who destroyed our front garden wall 😦
Wow, not good at all.
No, not good. Can’t say I was in a very good mood yesterday.
I’m really sorry to hear about that.
Thanks Dave. Nothing much to be done except tidy up the mess. I am with Draco on punishment though, and more so every time this sort of thing happens to me. There is no excuse.
Will you start to answering Mars Attacks Questions?
I’m hoping to get back to all the unanswered comments, though that will take time. The MA queries are fairly high on that list. DZ less so as the new version I’ve been working on will make most of that redundant anyway.
About DS, any ideas how to play the first scenarios with one game at the same time?
Sorry, I don’t understand the question. Could you rephrase?
If there are 4 players, the wizard/elf players must wait and later the babarian/dwarf players must wait. Ok, not really long, but a solution would be to play both scenarios at the same time. Like in the later scenarios.
Making out of the first 2 scenarios one scenario.
OK, I see what you mean.
The first two scenarios are designed to introduce the rules gradually and in layers, with the second building on the first. They won’t fit that purpose if you play them at the same time. So if you’re learning the game you should play them sequentially.
If you already know the game and are going back to play them again, then there’s no reason why you couldn’t play both alongside each other. They don’t physically link up though, as that would make no background sense. The two pairs of adventurers are fighting to meet up, which they only do after both scenarios are completed (in time for the next).
I think the question is if you have enough Overlord cards to play 2 set-ups.
I think you could keep both games seperate and the overlord would have to manage 2 hand of cards?
I’ve not tried it, so I can’t say for sure. In general we found that they are so quick to play (especially with people who’d played before) that it wasn’t an issue. When I get a set I’ll have a play though 🙂
Do you know if there will be an Open Beta for DZ, like we had for Kings of War?
I thought there was, but I’m not sure now.
About DS again, in the BoW video was one open question, is it possible to outnumber a door?
No.
Those videos might be a good place to watch for common mistakes to get a quick note guide or something ready. I saw them setting up dungeons behind doors, and moving then using a feat, etc.
Good to see you back online. I am here eagerly awaiting my dungeon saga stuff, and a little concerned about how long it will take to get it as I ordered the formal expansions (ie not the tile set ones) and that seems to mean I will be getting stuff later than others.
You’ll have to talk to Mantic about delivery times. I don’t deal with any of that side of things. Worth giving them a ring, or dropping them an email if you’re concerned. They don’t (usually) bite 😉
Chris is already sick of hearing from me. I contacted them a couple of weeks ago to inquire about the noticeable shrinkage between the painted resin masters which they have advertising with and the actual plastic pieces.
I haven’t got any of the production models to make my own comparison. However, I do have one of the resin masters of a Hero, so I’m keeping that to hand to compare when I get the final thing.
Here is my post on the matter.
http://twilight40k.blogspot.com/2015/08/resin-master-to-plastic-shrinkage.html
Thanks Erio. I’ll reply here, if you don’t mind. For everyone else, you’ll need to check his post for my comments to make complete sense.
You touch on a number of issues. Firstly, there is indeed some shrinkage when you go from master to final version. This happens between greens and metal masters, then again on the production versions. It happens to a different degree in different materials, but it’s always there, whatever you use. Original sculpts, masters and the final production version are never identical. On the whole this shrinkage is in the order of a few %, though it varies depending on a number of factors such as materials of both original and final version, skill of operator, technique used in pressing, etc. The % change can also vary across the model and in different planes. It’s more art than science.
That said, it has been industry practice to show painted versions of masters for several decades. As long as I recall, anyway. I suspect that the reason people don’t tend to mention it is that is is so normal that nobody even thinks about it any more – it’s just how it’s done. I doubt that it’s any sort of deliberate attempt to mislead.
The same sort of process is involved in most product shots you see, including those on the backs of game boxes. Often these were made before the finished articles were available, and so mock-ups and (these days) Photoshop are used to make appropriate stand-ins. It’s far more unusual to have the picture of the box contents actually be final production versions of exactly those contents. Again, it’s all entirely normal part of the process, which is why people don’t bother commenting. If you want to talk about misleading photographs on packaging, try the food industry 😉
In the specific examples you have in the pictures, it’s hard to tell. Firstly, as you say, they are out of focus and on the wrong plane. They’re also different distances away and we don’t know what type of lens was used and what distortion that may have introduced. Camera lenses typically cause different degrees of distortion in different parts of the image. Finally, painted miniatures look different to unpainted ones. Even two unpainted models look different if they’re different colours, even when we know they are identical in other ways. I suspect that it’s a trick our brain’s image processing does.
As I mentioned earlier, I have a resin master (unpainted) of one of the DS Heroes, and was going to do a side-by-side shot when I got hold of the production version of the same piece. I hope that will be of interest.
Just to back up Jake here: You might remember when GW released the first plastic knight titan box. The released lots of promo pictures. And if you poaid really close attetntion, youd notice some things were… off. Ridges on curved parts, parts that didnt seem to fit quite right… in short, it looked as if theyd taken the CAD files and quickly done some 3d printing to get the models painted. Its the same with other models, but it was particularly obvious in those knight pictures. 🙂
Thanks for the reply. That is pretty much what Chris said. I would just like to see them paint up some actual game models sometime and post those. Ofcourse a good painter can add in details that someone like me can’t. It is unlikely I will paint them every anyway seeing as my son like to pile up all my plastic reaper bones into a dragon style treasure hoard.
I do mention in the post that the worse case of this I ever remember was the GW moonscapes where the awesome resin models turned into what you expect from a polybag of toy soldiers from the grocery store checkout line.
I am really looking forward to the game and like that Chaos Dwarf racial feat. Are their only the three dungeon dwellers? Guess we get to create our own “generic” monsters from the racial examples and hero abilities.
Hi, what happend to the hero AI cards, are these rules discarded?
Sadly, yes. As we added more and more choice and variation to the Heroes, it became increasingly impractical to have an AI to replace them. A simple AI rule didn’t really reflect what the Heroes could do nor how they would play, and a rule set that did reflect these things was so baroque and complex that it was painful to use. So Mantic made the sensible decision to focus instead on the bits we could do well.
Hey Jake, I’m trying to get some pre-purchasing and painting done before the Kickstarter arrives. With the Bestiary previews, I can go ahead and get started on some Dungeon Dwellers and the like. The preview page shows the levels of the critters, and the random dungeon preview showed a card that dictated 10 levels worth of monsters be placed.
What I’m wondering is, what total levels will your average custom-designed dungeon encounter be? Is it based off the party’s level and so fluctuates as the campaign goes on? How many “total levels worth” of a given monster or related pack of monsters should I have in my Dungeon Saga collection if I want to be able to provide themed and challenging encounters throughout a campaign?