The Walking Dead: All Out War Kickstarter Begins
February 1, 2016 by brennon
Mantic Games have now launched their The Walking Dead: All Out War Kickstarter allowing you to fight out a battle for survival between rival groups and hordes of zombies. Find out more about the campaign and the miniatures below...
There seems to be a lot inside this box already and they've got plans for expansions right out of the gate which add new survivors to the experience.
What's The Game About?
You will be playing as teams of survivors made out of popular characters from the comic books in a scrap for resources. For example here we have Rick Grimes who is one of the main characters.
Each of the characters gets their own plastic miniature and a statistics card.
You will also have access to a whole bunch of gear which will help you take on the zombie hordes who are all controlled by an A.I system which makes them go after the flesh bags near by. They can be effected by other factors too though.
You also have the necessary locations and terrain on which to fight out your scuffles. You will have paper mats to lay out on the tabletop and then small cardboard terrain pieces which act as barricades and more.
This all looks like it's going to be a pretty stand up zombie game with what appears to be some very nice quality components. The plastic miniatures are looking great for both the characters and the zombies and they have plenty of plans for additional content.
Stretch Goals
The first two targets, which people are already close to unlocking are for some additional Loot Markers and another character with Shane.
I can imagine the Mantic audience and those obsessed with The Walking Dead are going to be getting stuck into this campaign.
What do you think of the campaign as it begins?
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"Each of the characters gets their own plastic miniature and a statistics card."
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This does look a fun game to play, just backed it and took advantage of the earlybird pledge. I hope it goes smoothly and arrives on time.
Boom – they just topped £100K. Took a look for about 4 mins and they jumped another £6,000 in that time.
Only thing faster than hitting the funding total in a Mantic KS is backers in the comments complaining. I reckon there’s an anthropology or psychology PhD in the making there.
You don’t need to complete a study. Mantic continually stuff up their kickstarters and they don’t fix the problems before starting a new one.
How many people would complain about issues from previous kickstarters if they had all been resolved?
Dungeon saga is still a mess, some KoW 2 people still haven’t received a rulebook, the latest dead zone one was full of unhappy people which it still haven’t completed and believe it or not people still haven’t received all the stuff they were meant to from the Dread ball Extreme kickstarter.
It’s very easy to see why the comments are full of people complaining, what’s not easy to see and what I believe deserves a study is why Mantic continually stuff backers around and yet the campaigns continue to get funded.
Well, I sercured me an Early Bird slot, but it depends on how the campaign runs. I got a bit burnt by the DS KS (nearly all minis have to be worked on, some were even broken, not only bended and the quality of the adventure add-on handbook is just horrible). If the value for money doesn’t improve I’ll most likely cancel my pledge in the closing hours. About the minis: I think the undead are looking good, but severl character models are strange. The extremities are way too big, especially the legs. Michonne looks like she has a serious weight issue;) Look at those legs…
The trouble is @redben, you can never please everyone mate. I don’t normally like Mantics figures but I do play Kings of War and Dungeon Saga but substitute the figures for other companies miniatures.
But, looking these sculps and also being interested in the Walking Dead it was a no brainier to me.
125$ that’s kinda expensive!
Not planning on backing it myself (not my kinda thing) but given what you get for the $125, I would say it isn’t that expensive at all
Obviously “expensive” is a subjective thing. I reckon it’s decent value for what you currently get and come the end of the campaign it’ll likely be excellent value, but $125 is still a lot of money to buy in. License fees are usually around 10% and that tends to get passed on to the customer which doesn’t help. Personally, if I have the money to back it come the end of the month then I will, if not then I’ll wait till retail.
Last week I said three hours to fund, looks like I was 2 hours out on that one. Wow I think the numbers on this will be huge, I just hope they return the value to the backers at that level.
$125 (£87) is a massive buy in for a game like this. Yes, the value will be pretty good by the end, but its still a steep entry to the game.
Also, crappy PVC minis? Why? Give us hard plastic please Mantic.
Will give this one a miss and will instead keep an eye on Warlord’s upcoming zombie game.
I’m guessing this will need to get to $300k before the game becomes worth it (ie get the full game), getting bugger all for $125 at the moment.
I’ve had a good read of the Kickstarter and for your average backer the buy in is $125 plus shipping for the base game, the Atlanta expansion the deluxe box and associated dice etc and some to be unlocked stuff (mostly TBC)
The retail pledge is $275.00 for 10 copies plus 10 x the kickstarter exclusive minis.
So in order for the average punter to see some value, Mantic are going to have to start offering up quite a lot of unlockables to come close to making the $125 seem reasonable.
I hate to say this but as it stands it looks as though Mantic are already billing the backers for the unlockables at a buy in of $125. It’s a tactic that Conan Rise of Monsters tried, and they ended up in all sorts of mess eventually cancelling the kickstarter.
Yeah, it really does seem like they are charging for the full finished pledge level up front if the retailers are getting copies for $27.50 each.
Pretty disgusted by this kickstarter to be honest. Mantic has taken a number of massive steps downward in my estimations with this and Dungeon Saga.
Almost £90 for a game of this (low) quality is far too much. Not even a nice card or plastic battlemat. Its paper. Scenery is mostly 2d card and the minis are PVC. Could they make this on any smaller a budget? There’s big budget games with nice minis and thick card tiles selling for less money.
I wouldn’t back another Mantic Kickstarter tbh following the problems with their Dungeon Saga Kickstarter, but good luck to them :o)
I’m not saying this won’t fund as clearly it will, but they really need to pull something special out of the bag to make it worthwhile.
Also @lunchbox is right PVC minis is erring on the cheap side!
i think i will go to warlord games zombie skirmish game :
– already have a range of minis
– is not tied to buying specific minis
– has a good track records for good rulesets (terminator, goa…)
– release in april 2015 !
– lower buy-in
i am tired of putting money for one year, especially with a triple digit, and wait for a final product.
@vandelli I couldn’t agree more, for all the reasons you gave plus ‘keep it cheap PVC but sell it high’ Mantic seem to be becoming the kick starter kings… Sorry Mantic but no! not another kick starter….
This.
I liked jumping in to Gates of Antares. I paid for the starter box and got it in a month, no year or two waiting period. It was nice for a change. 🙂
The GoA stater set is great value, especially with the hardback rule book.
Though I’m happy the IP is being used I wish Mantic would focus on the product they already have. They are constantly spitting out Kickstarters. Surely they are in a financial position where they can fund these games themselves and stop offering the pre order Kickstarters. I feel it is a short term game with little or no long term gains. I’m not a fan of GW but they tried to run and support several games and it was unsustainable and eventually had to reduce. I,ve seen nothing for a while substantial on warpath, Mars Attacks, Dead zone or Dreadball, c’mon guys you have great products support what you have it will live longer.
They don’t have the money to fund this themselves, at least nothing like to the same degree.
Also, GW can games if they don’t sell enough, not because they can’t support them.
By unsustainable I mean financially viable the amount of choices in GW land made it hard for players to spend substantially in a specific area. The lack of support to SG (due to there being so many to support) killed new players starting the game and drove current players to setting up fan dedicated sites to get some form community and support. For people to spend you should show some loyalty and support to the games you create, not just throw out a new game when backers of the last one have yet to receive products they funded. Mantic need to create a sustainable business model so they can fund these games themselves instead of reaping a few million from Kickstarters every few months. The bubble will pop and people will get tired of Kickstarters. Where will they go then?
That’s not what happened with the SG. GW spent nearly a decade trying to find a third line that would sell like the two main ones, then they did, so the rest got shunted canned. Some hung around as direct only until they stopped making metal minis.
Then is it a wise decision to take on another project. If they can’t cope with the development costs of putting out a game, I feel they are stretching their resources or allowing the rest of their catalogue to suffer.
The KS campaign means they aren’t stretching their resources. It would also be odd to say a company should stop once it has a few products and not make anything new. GW would still be doing RPGs and 40K would never have happened if that was applied to them.
You say that, but just look at the state Dungeon Saga was in when it came out. It clearly suffered from release pressure. Whether that was incoming kickstarters it was blocking or simply the need to get it to market in order to recoup some losses I couldn’t tell you, but it would have definitely benefited from another six months in design/testing.
I understand the point you make, the market is flooded with games like never before, quality should be the mark not quantity, they’ll lose out long term. What would be nice is a none Kickstarter re-release and resculpt of the kings of war elves or dwarves. Mantic seem to be happy with the endless churn of Kickstarter if it works for them, then kudos, it’s unlikely though. Cheers.
At the minute for the amount of miniatures you get it isn’t worth it. 27 miniatures including all 9 of the Atlanta Expansion mini’s some of which are being used as stretch goals is pretty damn poor. For example the Zombicide: Black Plague core box comes with 81 PVC miniatures. Mantic are dining out on The Walking Dead IP and fleecing everyone.
Yup gotta agree with Redhood. After backing Blood Rage and Zombicide Black Plague, I find myself comparing the number of minis I got there with the number of minis in TWD and it severely comes up lacking. I know there’s an IP to pay for and I know CMON really pushed the boat out with all the extra minis in their Kickstarters and spoiled us, but to be honest I expected a little bit more from more from Mantic. For that price I’d be expecting better quality – better minis, more off them and better artwork (I know they’re trying to be indicative of the original comic art work). Think I’ll sit on this one for a while to see if the stretch goals can change my mind.
The artwork I’ve seen in the game is taken straight from the comic. Are there bits around that Mantic have commissioned themselves?
They did the same thing with their Deadzone and Dungeon Saga kickstarters. The base pledge was a little anemic for what you were paying yet people backed on faith that it would grow bigger. They are pricing it with the expectation of hitting a bunch of stretch goals and having to include a bunch of extra crap in the box.
Essentially they are holding back contents from the base game so they can include it as a bunch of free stretch goals, which is kinda despicable really.
They’ve categorically denied that is the case in the comments. They’ve said the base game is exactly ‘as is’ at the start of the campaign and has been solicited to retailers already in that format.
Of course they are going to deny it. They also claimed there were no problems with the Adventurers Companion to begin with. What Mantic say and reality are often two very different things. The kickstarter has been priced in such a way as to pay for all the early stretch goals, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was targeted to cover all expected stretch goals.
You can’t tell me with a straight face that 18 PVC miniatures, a paper mat and some cards is worth $125.
Sorry, 24 PVC miniatures.
It’s a terrible deal really, paper mats, 27 PVC mini’s. It’s as if they wanted to send a box with a note inside that had ‘Thanks for the money’ scrawled on it in crayon, cheap crayon at that.
it is a classic from mantic ks : base pledge is usually average low.
then as ppledges come in and under pressure of existing backers, the pledges start to get more and more interesting to end up being a cool pledge at the end.
Eff it I’m gonna pledge could be a lotta fun.
Gotta say I’m disappointed..$125.00 is too steep. I’ll be checking towards the end of the KS to see if I get tempted anyways. But as things stand I will be happy with the £35 retail version. The money saved will go to Warlord’s multipose *hard* plastics.. I can happily convert all the TWD characters I want from the sets I already have. With bikers being released soon even a Darryl 😎
From the comments here, and the ones I have read on the Kickstarter comments page, I get the feeling a lot of people are going to sit on their hands until they see some value being unlocked.
If Mantic are not careful they are going to find themselves in a position where there are enough actual pledges there to fund, but nowhere near enough to release the full content and a lot of people are going to be mighty pissed.
If I were Mantic I would get the unlockables up on the KS page sharpish! Let people know exactly what is in the pipeline.
Not really taken by this. It looks a bit like a poor copy of Zombicide. Mantic seem to have 2 main problems with their products – 1) The quality of their miniatures is poor 2) Their games seem rough round the edges. I recently played a copy of Dungeon Saga and the tiles don’t fit very well, there are issues with the manual and when you compare it to products such as Hero Quest Advanced Hero Quest Warhammmer Quest which came out years ago it seems cheap in comparison, it always looks like they ran out of money near the end and a few items in their games always look worse off for it. On a positive note KOW is good fun but sadly the quality needs to improve to draw in more people. The resale price of their stuff is low which says it all….
We went through this with the Dreadball Extreme KS from Mantic.
1. They post a Frenzy Package, it seems a very poor deal at $375 at first. Many back out and go for a lower pledge. Then with all the stretch goals the Frenzy package starts to become a lot more appealing and people upped their pledge again. End result a lot of see sawing on the total pledge level.
2 Deadzone Infestation. Mantic only placed a “get everything” level about halfway through the KS when the pledge made a lot more fiscal sense. End result, a lot of people jumped from the EB pledges to the complete pledge, and a lot of shuffles on the pledging (although no seesaws).
Mantic try and tweak the KS as they gain experience. This years tweak seems to be a simplified system with one pledge level and Ronnie has stated when he has enough, he may decide to close the KS early (stops the KS going out of the original plan, as backers demand MOAR stretch goals as the pledging mounts up). Hopefully the fixed pledge will also mean the orders are shipped out with a lot less errors as its a standard packing lost (rather than lots of unique orders).
My experience with Mantic KS is mixed, however I would quite happily say that you WILL get your monies worth with a Mantic KS (and they will actually deliver, unlike certain KS schemes…which is always a risk).
I pledged this largely on the basis of the the property itself because I know that its an aesthetic and license I can get some of my semi-gamer WTG fan friends into for some light wargaming. They already play through the various board game iterations, so this seems like a nice step up.
I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to a significant amount of trepidation about it though. I’ve never much been impressed with Mantic for a variety of reasons, but here’s hoping I bet on a decent horse.
I am holding an early bird pledge, but might let it go if they don’t start adding value, like upgraded mats, maybe better mini material. The comic series is quite good, I want to like this.
Zombie games not my thing so will give this a miss. I’ve supported a couple of other Mantic KS and been happy enough with the final package. It’s had a fast start, not sure what the demand is though. Good luck to all who will give it a go
I agree, seems a bit sparse, and I expect it to get better value. The PVC minis from previous games are good, and ideal for a mini boardgame, which this is. I think more terrain stretch goals will drag people in (doors!).
The single pledge level is a smart move to simplify the shipping, so I’m very surprised to see the description of add-ons coming in wave 2. That seems so contradictory.
I have to admit, I didn’t think I’d be choosing to avoid the KS comments section so early in the campaign… I think I’ll just focus on the pretty pictures and the updates section.
If you plan on purchasing it, get it at kickstarter. Mantic have confirmed that the price will be $50, for the boxed game and $40 for the expansion. You will not get any stretch goals which means no tokens, or extra zombies, and the expansion also doesn’t include any zombie sculpts.
Also the packaging at retail will not include the plastic trays in the kickstarter version which is only there to stop warping from happening.
On the plus side you will get some form of packaging from the expansion which the kickstarter backers will miss out on as their expansions will just come in a box like the dungeon saga expansions.
I wasn’t sure about this, but the solo play option, made me pledge. I love zombies, my gaming group not so much.
I agree, solo play sounds awesome.
But still not quite enough to make me pledge. Yet..
Nearly £90 for PVC minis and a paper mat, you’re avin a larf Mr Renton
Good to see that, despite the general negativity in the comments, it seems to be the biggest first 24hr total of any of the Mantic Kickstarters – bigger than Dungeon Saga and Deadzone anyway, which I believe were the highest before.
A bit surprised that we still spend the first few days of each kickstarter with lots of complaining in the comments about it not being as good value as previous ones, or other companies Kickstarters. No, the starting level on this one isn’t as good as the finishing level on that other one… Is that a surprise? No… Will it get better over the course of a month? Definitely.
Any word as to whether Mantic will proof read this one? 😉
Will be interesting to see The break even point for this. This is a huge licence and anything less than their highest kickstarter in terms of backers and dollars would be a failure wouldn’t it?
What happens when A new big licence comes and they look at Mantic and what happened with it? Do they just say that mini games just aren’t popular enough?
This needs to do well over $2mil
Licenses usually cost 10%. So a mini that would ordinarily retail at £10 would have to retail at £11 to make the same profit. The exception is the Star Wars license which Disney bumped up to 20%. Mantic just need to make enough to cover their production costs of the product and to fulfill the pledges. Given that Ronnie was talking about wanting to have a cap on the number of pledges then I doubt it needs to be anywhere near $2 million.
As long as their is a cap and it does really really well at retail.
My question wasn’t really in relation to making money from the walking dead, but more to make enough money for other licence to maybe take notice or if not take notice at least not be put off by the idea.
If it breaks even or makes a small profit, do other IP’s just then not bother with miniature games? The walking dead is a huge IP.
From Skybound’s point of view any profit it can make them is gravy. It’s a minimal amount of work on their part to okay things and by all accounts they’re gamers and fans of Mantic to begin with. In terms of attracting other licenses, a look at other companies with name licenses suggests that it doesn’t need to sell a whole lot to make it worthwhile. I doubt Mithril, Dark Sword, or River Horse are making big bank from LotR, AGoT, or Terminator, but there’s no sense that the IP owners are unhappy. AvP ‘only’ raised £380k at KS, and that’s another very big license. It’s obviously had post campaign issues but that’s separate to the amount of money it made. I also suspect that avoiding these kinds of the issues were part of the reason Mantic took the comic license instead of pursuing the TV one.
I would love to see a kick starter from mantic where you could pay in the hopes that they might one day have an original idea. No respect for this company.