Lots of Walking Dead: All Out War news is coming in from Mantic now. Their blog is dedicating the week to hype up the upcoming fifth Wave of the game and even though I was a little down based on the news I heard from Gen Con, the content for Wave 5 is still sounding strong.
from mantic games
As was hinted at with the expansions only having two figures to show off, they are, indeed, dropping the extra unique walker sculpts from the expansion packs. To supplement the loss (since they aren’t reducing the price), there will be more cards in the form of character cards, event cards, equipment cards, and the new “veteran” cards. This is a little disappointing as it forces the game more into a card chase instead of dropping all of those cards in the large wave 5 expansion. It’s also lazy that they are giving up on the unique walker sculpts. T&G Productions has an interview from Ronnie Renton explaining their mindset. Listening to that video makes me think they are surrounding themselves with “‘yes’ men” who just obediently agree with whatever new scheme the head comes up with next. Dropping the co-op and solo play from the game sounds like a mistake and one built around a conception that everyone out there is playing the game in a skirmish setting already. I think they have overestimated that aspect of the game’s popularity and are running with it. Ah well, it was fun while it lasted.
It’s not all gloom and doom though as there are some cool things coming out in Wave 5 like a campaign narrative (heavily pvp based but I’m sure can be adapted into a co-op or solo experience). Also the “veteran” card additions sound like a good way to keep your survivors leveling up.
from mantic games
Also, a first for the series, resin models that aren’t part of some limited time set have been introduced. Horse-riding versions of Glenn and Maggie will show up. The only other horse-rider is an early option of Rick. That version worked a little clunky so I wonder if they will have revised how to deal with horses or double-down on it. Either way I can see picking up multiple copies of this set and cutting the torsos off the riders and magnetizing my duplicate figure’s torsos to allow for more models to swap on and off horses.
The last thing they’ve mentioned is they’re coming out with a “General’s Compendium” to re-configure their skirmish experience into something more balanced (the official push of what I was mentioning earlier). This book will rebalance and possibly redo the points and maybe stats of the existing characters and is supposed to help players build their groups by factions and still use all the existing material. It is supposed to include list building elements with guidance on how to build the survivor group. I assume this will mean something similar to Batman Miniature Game with leaders, sidekicks, and henchmen or Frostgrave’s Wizard/Apprentice/soldiers scheme, flavored to the Walking Dead theme.
It sounds like the first glimpse of this will release in December. It may be a fine game and one that really focuses the game into a competitive skirmish game but I have quite a lot of those now and I’m not sure I need another one. Knowing me, I’ll likely cave and pick it up but hopefully adapting and customizing the experience for co-op and solo won’t be difficult.
from mantic games
Mantic isn’t completely leaving the co-op and solo players out to dry as they have the release of Here’s Negan coming up soon as well. I had a lot of fun with this one at Gen Con and think it has a lot of potential. I’m looking forward to its release later in November.