In a nice lead up to Gen Con, Mantic Games is blogging all about their Walking Dead games this week. It’s still early in the week but we’ve already seen talk about what direction they are heading next, the new Here’s Negan game, and the resin Governor set.

from Mantic Games

You’ll want to check their blog out all week to see what is coming up but I wanted to focus a little on some of the news Mantic shared on where they are going with the game.

It’s no longer about those small supply runs into the Atlanta suburbs. It’s more about large skirmishes with other groups of survivors that are tooled up with all the weapons and supplies they have found. All Out War is finally becoming all out war! -Mantic Games

So the minis game will move onto it’s actual namesake.  If we dig a little deeper, we find what this may mean.

…next year we are going to release a full large-scale skirmish rules set, to really allow you to min/max those army list combos and go super hardcore on your enemy. – Mantic Games

And so next year they sound like they will transition the game to work more in the competitive tournament 1 vs 1  scene.  From the blog, it sounds like they are going to revamp the rules to tighten things up as well.  For the skirmish side of the game, I think this is great.  I’ve always had my reservations about how well this game can truly skirmish as ranged weapons are so powerful and your squad is so fragile and small.  It makes sense that normal people shouldn’t just be able to weather fire from automatic weapons but it makes balancing the game a lot harder.  It’ll be interesting to see how they go about changing things.

On the other side, however, it also sounds like they might be leaving the solo and co-op side of the game behind.  It’s hard to determine exactly what they mean when talking about what wave 5 will bring to the table when they say:

Fear the Hunters is totally different again. It introduces map-based, inter-linked campaigns and even a map to track your progress. This means each week you can head to your local gaming club and track the progress of your gang.

I’m really hoping that this “inter-linked campaign” can be accomplished solo or co-op but wave 4’s Made to Suffer expansion offered no knew solo scenarios and focused solely on competitive play.  Hopefully we’ll see more and hear more later this week and if not, I’ll have some questions to ask at Gen Con.