Dreadball

Well, I've finally gotten my copy of dreadball and played with it several times...

This is probably the first Kickstarter project I've actually received so far, which leaves me still waiting for Reaper, Relic Knights among several others.

First of all, Dreadball comes in a much larger box than previous mantic offerings; such as Dwarfs King Hold or Project Pandora. To top it off, it even comes with a plastic inset which helps hold your cards and figures, which Dwarfs King Hold didn't.

The rule book is also a lot larger than the previous games by Mantic and a lot better quality too. So that's a plus. The rules themselves are fairly simple but it took me a while to really get familiarised with them, mostly due to the layout of the rulebook. There were several times where I went searching for a particular rule that I was unclear of and it wasn't where I expected it to be but buried somewhere else instead. This really could have been clearer if they had put some sort of reference at the back like a lot of other modern boardgame manuals nowadays. 

Seriously, they needed to put something like this (link) at the end of the rulebook. Once I had that, it really made things a lot clearer for me. 

The models are fairly decent and easy to assemble. Or at least most of them are (coughVermyncough) although they will STILL need glue to stick together as some parts are too fiddly otherwise and are likely to fall off during the course of game play. It uses shaped slots so that you'll know what part goes where. Basically if it fits, it's probably supposed to be there. 

Also, you will definitely need the hexagon bases to be able to play dreadball properly. Mostly because some of the models will fall over without the bases and also partially because facing is very important. 

Disclaimer: Non-KS boxes will only come with the basic 2 teams, the orcs and the humans. I've gotten the dwarves and the vermyn as well cause I took part in the KS. 

So how does it play? Well, I've only played 3 games so far. Once as humans and 2 times as the dwarves. The basics of the game remain the same but there is a fair bit of difference due to the various difference in the stats of the models, which affects the playing style. For example, humans are much faster and better at evading than the dwarves so while you don't want to risk evading with a dwarf, you can do so with a human. 

Although this is a boardgame, positioning is VERY important in the game. Almost as important as it is in miniature wargames like warmachine or infinity. Because the positions do not reset after every goal, it is very important you place your players correctly, to make sure you don't leave too large a gap for opponents to exploit or end up being too aggressive and leaving yourself completely undefended. Because the players don't have 360 degree vision, it's also important that you place them where they won't be caught unaware by enemy players or the ball. Very important note, only players who can see the ball CAN CATCH the ball. 

Would I say Dreadball is worth playing? Yes, probably. I mean, I've only got it for a few days but I've already played 3 games of it. And this is considering the time it took to assemble and glue everything together -_-.