Mantic open day 2014 with roaming reporter El Pollo Diablo

How do!

The Ant-meister asked me to do a quick write up of the Mantic open day this weekend (17th May) and I said I'd be happy to oblige.  I do apologise in advance if the prose isn't up to the usual high standard though!

The main reason I went along was that I wanted to defend my Dreadball Open Day title that I won last year.  Ironically I didn't get any pictures of that as I was too busy playing!  I was joined in this endeavour by two of my Phat Cats compadres; Mr Nicholas Ayres (Lord High Table Builder of our esteemed gaming group) and Mr Adam Cooper (Chief Phat Cats Rabbi Impersonator).  

The venue is the same as it was last year; Mantic HQ is a former health centre in Nottingham.  That said they've improved the building no end.  Last year the tournament felt like we were playing in the Chechyn Dreadball Open with lighting taped to the ceiling and sub zero temperatures.  It is much better now with the added benefit of working toilets and proper lighting!

There was a lot going on with demos of Dreadball and Deadzone, a massive Kings of War game going on (about 15,000 points a side I think), studio seminars, sculpting demos and ask the artists sessions.  There were some guys for Warlord games too showing off Bolt Action.  The chap running the demo was right beside the Dreadball tables and he was using a shell casing as a dice roller.  I don't think it could have been any louder if he'd actually fired the gun the shell came from every time he rolled the dice!

The Dreadball tournament itself was a great experience.  One of the most heartening things for me is that the Dreadball player community is a genuinely nice bunch of people with an almost complete absence of dicks.  And I don't mean people called Richard.  I always hated playing in WHFB and 40K tournaments as they seemed to generate epic twattery.  I've never played Warmahordes but I get the feeling the same is true there also.  Never seen it in Dreadball though which is its own tribute to the game and the players.

We played using the Azure Forest rules which added a whole new dimension to the game with the weather playing havoc with your strategy.  I enjoyed the tactical challenge it provided though.  The first three games went right on schedule for me getting three landslide victories on the bounce.  The last game however against a chap called Mike and his Nameless team proved to be a match too far.  I managed to get into a 5-0 lead but my dice abandoned me in the later rushes as I missed four attempts to score two points and close the match out.  Ultimately his passing game and the gradual loss of my players to his hitty guards meant I couldn't score enough to get back in the game.  Second place overall is not too bad though and there's always next year!  Unfortunately Nick and Adam had varied fortunes and my dream of a Phat Cats 1-2-3 was not to be with both of them finishing in mid-table oblivion ...

I picked up a couple of bargains; Project Pandora and Dwarf King's Hold were on sale for a £10 each (reduced from £34.99!).  They are Mantic's sci-fi and fantasy dungeon skirmish games (think Space Hulk and Heroquest).  I think Mantic are going to release new version of the Dwarf King's Hold though which is more of a Heroquest type game (see photos below for some of the models!)

I'll leave now, kind readers with some of the photos from the cabinets at Mantic HQ.  As a keen Dreadballer I'm quite excited about Dreadball Extreme and the Season Four rules which will bring the Extreme teams onto the standard Dreadball pitch.  Anyway; thanks for reading!

Dan "El Pollo Diablo" P.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Note from Ant - Huge thanks to Dan for taking his time to put some words togeather for the blog and snapping the outstanding pic of the shiney new stuff that will be coming out from Mantic in the next few months.