Advanced Hero War Dwarf King's Quest

by Kevain25460 via Wikimedia Commons

HeroQuest was ace, but is out of print. Advanced HeroQuest was ace, but is out of print. Warhammer Quest was ace, but is out of print.

For a while now Mantic has been playing Games Workshop at its own, er, game by releasing the sort of products that GW did before Warhammer took over everything. As well as two wargames, Mantic has also done its own broad analogues of Blood Bowl, Necromunda, and Space Hulk, so it is perhaps no surprise that the company has just announced Dwarf King's Quest:

We always intended to do the typical adventurers’ party version, and Jake has always been very keen on putting his mark on this type of game. However, at the time we just didn’t have the resources, or in some cases the knowhow (such as one-piece miniatures with great detail) to deliver the vision that we had for this type of game. However, with the passing of time all that has changed… :)

Secondly, there are certainly a few great dungeon games out there, but they are all quite different from what we want to make. There are a couple from the light-hearted end of the spectrum – such as Super Dungeon Explore - and others that are intense and deep, such as Descent. But none of those are really in exactly the space we want to occupy.

We want to do a grave and dangerous dungeon miniatures game, set in our fantasy setting, with all the opportunity that gives us to develop the back story and flesh out the world. It will have very strong narrative, based around the main protagonists. This will really bring to life a whole new story arc in the world and highlight some of the big characters for further development. It will also give us a few great sculpts and some heroes for Kings of War armies too.

Mantic has a lot to prove by taking on not only the classics of the genre but also the well-regarded newcomers. I've been impressed by Mantic's output in the past so I'm intrigued, bordering on excited, by this news. Fire of wrath!

Ice Cream! Ice Cream!

When Mantic announced their future sport board game DreadBall a lot of people claimed they were ripping off Games Workshop's Blood Bowl although the similarities were little more than superficial. A smaller number of people -- myself included -- noted that the game was rather reminiscent -- in looks at least -- of something else.

It turned out that designer Jake Thornton had never heard of Speedball 2 and any similarities were but a coincidence but that didn't stop a number of fans painting their teams up to mimic the teams in the computer game. It also didn't stop Mantic announcing this today:

That's the chap from the cover of Speedball 2 as a miniature for use in DreadBall, available as part of the company's latest Kickstarter. I'm not backing this one because Blood Bowl is one of my favourite games and I never get to play that so I'm not about to buy something else that will go unplayed; even so I have to applaud Mantic for responding to its fans and -- most of all -- for having a sense of humour.