 everyone at home and welcome to our firefight Q&A. So if you've been in the comments so far on YouTube, you'll know that 100% something always goes wrong whenever I host one of these things. So hopefully you can hear me, Rob from Mantic and I'm joined by, let's start with top left, that's you, Andy, well on my screen, that's you. So who are you, Andy? And tell us a little bit about what you've done on firefight. Hi, I'm Andy Sharp. I have done some stuff with Mantic for a while as part of the Dead Zone rules committee, but for the last couple of years, I've also been working on firefight second position. So I was the sort of lead developer along with many other play testers and Matt and Rob obviously to get this game out there. So hopefully people will enjoy it. Well, of course I'll enjoy it, Andy. You've got to be more confident than that. And then Matt, what do you do at Mantic? So I run the design studio at Mantic. So any of the models, games, anything like that that comes out of the studio or goes across my desk really. So as I worked with Andy over the last one, I think a couple of years I guess, to work through the development of the game and then obviously integrate it with the commercial side and what models are gonna be in the sets and everything else, so it all ends up as one, hopefully coherent project. Of course, again, you've got to stand more confident as Matt. Of course it does. Of course it's all coherent and absolutely pro-planned to a T. So I guess it's worth saying first of all, we can talk a little bit about how firefight started I guess with you, Andy. And this goes back kind of a long time ago to an open day where you did Dead Zone XL. Yeah, I can't even quite remember when it was. I think it was November 19 maybe or something like that. I think it might have even been 18. I think it might have been 18. Yeah, I think it could have been, yeah. So yeah, I mean I said I've been involved in Dead Zone for a long time and I love that game and had back the Kickstarter for Firefight and Warpath which is four and a half years ago or something like that. And that game just never really sort of firefight in that version didn't really do what I wanted it to do from a play point of view. So I'd independently started to sort of work up some Dead Zone ideas, initially just removing cubes and just playing Dead Zone without cubes and seeing how that worked and then scaling it up a bit. And as you mentioned, this Dead Zone XL that we trialed at an open day once and got lots of people interested. It was a similar scale to sort of how firefight is now but you're able to put your planes on the table and small squads and it played quite well. We just played all day with a rolling sort of thing and it was very rough and ready, much more Dead Zone based than it's ended up being but it was a good start. And I think it showed enough people were interested in posting about the pictures and turning up at the open day itself and popping in the room. It was basically, the room was full the whole day long which was great to see. And I think it probably gave yourselves at Mantic a bit more confidence that this might be something that could be revisited at some point as well. Yeah, I think Ronnie mentioned that he'd kept because he pops his head around in all these different rooms to see what's going on during the open day and he came in and said, wow, this room's been busy all day. Oh, I should have just been more, wow, this room's been busy all day, we should do this. So yeah, that's sort of from there, the conversation started and initially it was like you say, almost Dead Zone XL. But then I think when we decided to do Dead Zone third edition, I think it might be a bit confusing if we had lots of different Dead Zone names. So in the end, we thought actually, I guess people have got, like you were saying, people have got all these models from maybe backing the Warpath Kickstarter or from Dead Zone. So let's actually give people a chance to get them all on the table, particularly all the really nice hard plastic vehicles we've got. Yeah, that's certainly where from a design point of view once it became an official project where the whole premise for me was that you have a quite strong core of people playing Dead Zone regularly and it doesn't take too long actually for you to buy a bit every now and again and then you've got more models than you need in Dead Zone actually. Most of us have been playing Dead Zone for a while, have more models you can ever put on a table for Dead Zone. So looking for an avenue to migrate those people into a larger game was where we started with the idea. And it did start off very much like just an upscale Dead Zone. But of course, as you add in more complexity the way that the game has to work on a without the grid system, you have to give up some things for speed of play and clarity of play. So things like opposed roles ended up dropping out. We had to change some of the stat lines around adding some other things. But that's very much where it started and then grew sort of continually over that two years of development. It was very long period of development because we had a pandemic in the middle which really did kind of curtail the opportunities to play what was a new game. But actually ended up fitting probably quite well because it allowed Dead Zone to do what it needed to do because that was a bit unclear as well when we first started this firefight process as to what was going to happen with Dead Zone. And then we had the third edition of that which then created the space to then move on to the firefight second edition coming out afterwards. Yeah, I think it was interesting. So a lot of testing was done on, Universal Battle I think. Which is good actually because I suppose that allows you to test with people who maybe normally you couldn't even test with people all over the world I guess to be able to do that. So maybe that actually helped in some ways to kind of give us a better idea of how the game played and what the sort of balance was and what units needed boosting and that sort of thing. I think that really did help actually because certainly in those early days we had a lot of people playing from particularly parts of Europe that I would never be able to get to on a regular basis even without a pandemic. And so particularly from Spain and from Poland and also of course obviously the UK and further afield we had a lot of people doing stuff there and not all of those people necessarily stayed through the whole process of it but they were very, very important at that early stage and a lot of those players had played Kings of War so they're very comfortable with Universal Battle which is a 2D top down relatively basic computer system but for those early stages of just how many dice do you wanna roll for these things? How do you want units to move? It was really useful because the whole thing started from dead zone and elements of firefight but actually it's ended up not being dead zone not being firefight first edition it's ended up being its own thing entirely and some mechanics are completely new others are brought across from each of those other previous games. Yes, so as a map from Mantik's point of view obviously what's our aim with firefight? I mean generally how does firefight fit into our releases alongside dead zone and things like Kings of War I guess in some ways as well. Well, I think firefight's I think something that when the original firefight was something that was born out of the Warpath Kickstarter as there was a desire expressed during that to create this kind of game the game in between dead zone Warpath which was the kind of big epic battles with tons of models this squad based kind of combat system. The first edition was kind of distilled from the rules of Warpath. So from our point of view it was there wasn't enough different differentiation between the games, between firefight and Warpath and this having gone back and looked at dead zone and released that it created a nice one two kind of left right delivery of sci-fi systems where we could go back to the dead zone which was kind of almost there and I think we've really nailed now with third edition but then look at that piece in the middle firefight and say okay this needs to be its own thing fully supported, separated from Warpath and the real mass battle stuff and live in its own space and I think we've really successfully done that and it's very distinct now it's obvious what it is which I think was probably one of its perhaps downfalls before that separation wasn't there and of course from a commercial point of view there are a huge number of players that have never seen it, never got into Warpath therefore didn't get into firefight because it was so similar so you know it's enabled us to launch the game or to a bigger audience that's almost new there's an entire range there of all this hard plastic and all these armies which is already there and it's all new to a lot of people which I think is really exciting Yeah I think for me because I'd never played sort of this sort of it's not quite skirmish level it's squad-based kind of a game I'd never played that sort of squad-based sci-fi game so for me it was a real revelation of when I started painting like my enforcers you know to paint 40 enforcers and coming from more of a Kings of War background you know where I'm painting 40 goblins which is 125 points I know it off by heart almost for a hoard and that's like a tiny portion of my army so for a firefight it was really exciting to be like oh brilliant you know I've painted 40 enforcers now that's it I can get onto the fun stuff like the Interceptor or the Striders so I think for a lot of people it's who really actually a really good introductory game and you know for me I finished my enforcers then I went on to VMN now I'm looking at my rodas I think it fits into that space nicely like we were saying like the next level up from Deadzone when you've got a few models and want to kind of take it a little bit step further and paint some more stuff Well I think the great thing as well is you know there'll be a section of people that will have played or be playing Deadzone and like Andy said want to step up they've got a big collection and they can maybe add a few more things to it and then start playing Firefight but I think there'll be a lot of people coming in to Firefight who will then look at Deadzone because we've done that quite close one too you know they're very tied together in there the way they look the way they're presented the way that the art is and things like that and obviously the storylines and things are obviously tied together so I think it's an easy easy move from one to the other Yeah cool so we obviously we asked people for questions so we've obviously got people in the comments who are asking questions but I did promise that if there were some people that left comments during the day that we would answer those first and I guess we may as well get we'll get one question out of the way which everyone's been asking since we did so we may as well establish this now is Danny Graves says I want a tank for my GCPS when are we getting tanks for GCPS so we can get this out of the way and then move on We will do mentioned not this year we're not so I think we looked at everything and as I just said I think there's so much plastic there already that a lot of people haven't seen yet that we felt that you know we wanted to tackle the marauders which we did we felt they needed a plastic frame and then we wanted to see how the game went so it turns out it was really successful we want to see how firefight goes you know if that if it picks up and the more people buy the more money I've got to develop stuff then I've definitely got plans you know I've got plans for two three years out for hard plastic and that kind of tank is definitely in my plans I guess this follows into Brad Wiley says how we support the game to ensure it grows and becomes the strongest kings of war in terms of community and popularity I guess you know like Matt was saying there you know he has got plans going two just three years out of what we want to do but also we will be looking at things like organised play obviously you've seen all the videos we've been doing with Andy Burdis and there'll be more of those you know battle reports and stuff you know this is you know ideally we want this to be just as big as as kings of war you know the kings of war has got a huge scene tournament scene and I think that'd be great for firefight I think getting them at a similar sort of level will be will be spot on and I guess Andy you might have other ideas for different factions you'd like to see possibly yeah I mean there's definitely always scope for new things I mean a lot of stuff depends on product of course so what you do but then you can take different angles with things as well and there are obviously some factions from Dead Zone that aren't represented yet in firefight now bringing some of those over may be a challenge but there's no like you said before a lot of it will depend on popularity and how the sales go I mean if if it's making money romantic then I'm sure there'll be opportunities to bring extra stuff in I mean we do like money that's that's quite nice but yeah I think it's really exciting because there is yes there's the vehicle element which does pose a little bit of a barrier when you're going into a larger game let's say Dead Zone but actually I think it's been shown quite well over the last few years that small releases in Dead Zone build forwards very very well actually and can change up a faction very easily things like the mats are down how they changed how the Assyrians work so you can make differences to gameplay or even whole sub factions that will play very differently and one of the things that we haven't really touched on yet in firefight that we could do is things like a bit like in Kings of War where you have formations or you have new leaders that make an army play in a different way so it may not I mean my view is it doesn't have to be an entire new range to make the a faction play very differently and you know that I guess is something that we'll we'll see as the game evolves over the next year or two isn't it yeah I guess particularly with the way that command orders work like you're saying there you know that a one new command order can make such a huge difference so how you play or even a faction order to support you know a new model could really change up a faction and what they do so yeah that'll be that'll be interesting actually so another question from Brad again is how much terrain do you recommend to be on the table for a full-sized game and I guess it's worth saying what is a full-sized game as well yeah so there is a lot of the play testing for the game was done on four by four size and that's sort of the I think that's sort of probably these days I think people are finding it harder and harder to find the time and the space for for larger games those six by four standard games they're still very much a common size but I think for sci-fi games people are probably migrating a bit more to a slightly smaller table size so about 1200 points 1250 points fits nicely on a four by four table depends a little bit on what faction you're playing some bring more models to the table than others and then up to sort of 1500 or just slightly more on a six by four table gives you plenty of space and there are suggested layouts in the book for the amount of terrain but the idea is that you want to dense enough to allow your people not to be shot completely off the table but not so dense that you're cowering behind buildings all of the time so that's something I think that the community will develop its own matter and maybe like you said before maybe things like tournaments tournament packs that will make it clearer what people would be sort of expected you know to bring on a table but and there's different ways you can use the terrain so you can occupy things like buildings and so on but then some of the scenarios purposely don't let you occupy the building so they act differently then in how you're playing on the game so I think there's quite a lot of different things you can do to make the game play in different ways and different sizes and that would depend very much on your own circumstances and your own style of play and also actually talking about style of play as well is yeah about a thousand points maybe for a kind of a typical game and how long kind of after people have played a couple of games does it take for a game would you say well it's obviously so it's going to take a little bit longer when you first start and you'll get quicker as you move on particularly as you get familiar with your own army I think one of the things that is very different for this game and does have some hangovers from from dead zone of course it's the alternate activation rather than moving your entire army then your opponent doing their entire army so that does by its nature have a lot more interaction during the game there's no you're not sitting passively for 15 minutes while your opponent has their turn so that does in some ways slow down a game but the way we've tried to compensate for that and speed things up is by simplifying shooting line of sight movement so that we make those elements very quick and so the game size I mean I think an hour and a half is a sort of a you know a good size four by four sort of size game probably stretching up a little bit longer for a bigger game and but as you get quicker and quicker you get familiar with particularly using your orders there's something that you will have to think about how you use your command points they're the real interaction points across the table actually because your opponent does something and I was planning to do this but oh hang on a minute now he's just done that so I need to do something else now and that that thinking process is something that does take a bit of time but when you've played your faction with a similar layout similar build three or four times then you'll be like yeah I know what I'm doing now he's made that mistake again right I know I hit him with this one and he's fallen into my trap hopefully you often find as well with alternating activation war games like that is that the early turns are longer because you've got more stuff on the table but as stuff starts to die your turns it comes around really really fast and suddenly you're on turn five or six and you're like whoa I'm there you know it really speeds up yeah and I think there won't be much like I said because of that constant interaction you should really be focused on the table throughout the entirety of the of the game and there's there's some games where you're not really having to do it you can go and have a quick wee and you can go and have a cup of tea and come back and you okay what did you do yeah so I won't be able to move models around but I normally do when people are you know having a break this is a shame so I guess actually Matt this is a question for me and you we've had this a few times is you know are we planning on putting like build instructions or videos to help people build their models because I guess you've got the big vehicles and things in this one so some people might be a little bit find them a little bit tricky yeah so in the two player set obviously with with new players even you know not just new players to to the mantic or to to firefight but new players just in general you know it's the first time you picked up this type of game we've put build instructions for all the models that are in there you have to put them off the frame have to put them together what the different weapons are etc and they're all they're all color-coded and then there's a suggested armies for the for the two player set it tells you how to build them all I think for everything else like the existing vehicles and things we've probably looked at doing video build instructions and then perhaps you know quick quick throughs on all the product pages and things like that and to show you how to build them piece by piece and sub-assemblies and all that sort of thing now I'm not just reading out this comment because it portrays me in a good light but Scott Webb says it was great to see you both that's me and Andy at the weekend dead zone tournament even though Rob thrashed me so just let's take a moment to respect that and he asked if we will be championing in championing in champion if we will be promoting events where possible for firefight after the release and I guess we touched on this earlier is yeah absolutely I think I think we'll probably wait a couple of months before once the game's out before we start having events at Mantek HQ but I think Matt who does Kings of Hearts down south has already got an event coming up do you know where that is Andy? I'd be guessing it's the end of May I think but I can't remember exactly when it is yeah but yeah if you look on the Facebook group so Kings of Hearts yeah his voice yeah I mean I mean obviously if you've got a group like that they'll probably all get together and they'll be they'll be painting and stuff already but I think for us to run events we need to give people time to have got the game time to have collected their armies painted them learnt the game before they jump into jump into a tournament although sometimes that's the best by learning a game take it to the point if you know a blade 28th of May 28th of May he's got his event okay but yeah I think what Matt says is right if you've if you've come from Dead Zone which I presume a large number of people but not everybody you're still going to have to build or put together a chunk of troops to upscale even to a smallish game because you know the starter armies at 800 points or thereabouts in the two player set but that's still about 30 models for each of the factions so if you're playing Dead Zone you've probably got maybe 15 so you're going to have to put some together to get a reasonable game going so again Matt this is probably a question for me and you a few people about this one or variations on this one is will we be releasing sets to match the numbers of miniatures required for firefight for instance sets of more beasts it's something we've definitely talked about whether I mean it's something we could do we can either look at for retail if you think there's a you know it's a it's a viable set that way or it's something that we could do as I guess as web bundles mantic direct that kind of thing so that we've got we've got options for both and I think someone was asking about the the marauder the ripper suits obviously you get some of those in the two player set but other than that they're only available as part of Dead Zone obviously in firefight you you might want multiple units of those so we're going to bring those out as a firefight release in as a as a set of four that will be coming out couple of months after after release this is June I think it comes out along the alongside the marauders for Dead Zone I think yeah and actually yeah so we're doing things like the firefights the more beasts they're actually getting moved into Resid so we've got a new some new sculpts for those which are a combination of like the old ones and the new Kings of War ones which are a bit chunkier and a bit a bit more detailed so that'd be cool someone else saying will firefight version two lead to a D8 system for Warpath will all Mantic Warpath universe games become D8s it's possible I mean it does the DH do allow obviously a bigger spread of results than a than a D6 and allows you to allows you to as a wider spread in your stats and obviously in your bell curves and all that sort of stuff so yes is is possible I mean obviously then would be a defining feature of Mantic games but I think I think you need to look at each game on its case by case basis and say is it right for that game don't just don't just put D8s in because that's now the Mantic thing you know it needs to work well for that game yeah if it was a game where you you needed to roll 120 dice you probably wouldn't want to do that with the race that's definitely how we approach this game was that D8s weren't chosen just because they were a D8 they were chosen because we felt that the core people that would move into Firefight would come from Dead Zone and therefore that familiarity was going to be useful and it might seem a bit weird to say that's a familiarity when there's so many other bits that aren't but the previous version of Firefight didn't really have much interaction directly with Dead Zone it was a it was a very different game so there wasn't an encouragement really to to migrate through whereas taking some bits up but keeping some of those other bits should hopefully make people make that transition much more easily and and as Matt says you know he brings in a wider range of options and sets a little bit apart from some other similar types of games as well which is no bad thing as well I don't think I guess there's a question for anyone who can feel this one is will we be adding like the Mercs or named characters from Dead Zone it's worth noting that the Mercs for Dead Zone are ready to go on easy army so we were going to launch those alongside the the campaign that's coming in May but I guess Andy do you see those coming to to Firefight as well or are you kind of happy to keep it with Commanders? Thank you Andy, me by Mercs so I think in the in the new terminology that we've used in Dead Zone 3 that the living legends yes I absolutely see they're being scoped for a bit like we talked earlier on these sort of heroic figures within a faction who have a link with it in some way maybe they bring just a different stat profile maybe they build come with certain units that have to come with them you buy them as a group or they come with a a new order or so I can certainly see stuff like that fitting in very nicely Mercs as in the way that we had them in Dead Zone 2 with like a bunch of different Mercs they might feel a little out of place in these bigger armies now but I guess it depends you know what the demand is and you know if people are playing it and calling for it then I guess you know maybe that could be something but I think I mean I guess it's something that you could build into maybe narrative games rather than kind of the battle scenarios but I think yeah definitely added to factions as a named character that brings a different order and then changes the play style of that of that army dependent because you've chosen them as a command option certainly very possible So we had a couple of questions about the Marauder Raptor I think it's worth saying that that currently doesn't have stats in Firefight and I think that's so one of the things we did with Dead Zone a bit was look at what we call legacy ones legacy models that we aren't able to produce or a kind of limited availability unfortunately the Raptor was one of those so instead the the Marauder's got the mule and the hornet but I mean Matt could it could it ever return the Raptor would we ever do a nice hard plastic one? Possibly I mean as well as being one of the older models and one of the older older kits so in terms of quality you know it didn't really fit with where we wanted to to take obviously our model ranges as we expand them and improve them but also it didn't really particularly fit with the idea of the Marauders where we're taking them it felt a bit ramshackle and a bit pandering to perhaps another another universe which our armor orders our orcs aren't that you know they're much more military disciplined elite you know kind of quite savvy species so it didn't really fit but I mean it never said never I mean if I think if it came back it would be it wouldn't perhaps look quite like that but it would you know be perhaps more of a much more the military you know professional looking thing but you know who knows just one the goblin snipers someone's asked if the goblin snipers are in and they are as far as I can remember you can take them as bodyguards can you for a unit I can't remember now yeah so they're a they're a upgrade option for the Marauder Commando Captain yeah that's right so you can't take them as a whole unit of goblin snipers again this comes down to production and the way the way they're made there's two poses and so they would look a bit it wouldn't look the best as a as a whole unit but they will look great supporting what is effectively the lead from the rear sort of leader of the Marauders really so you know he needs some snipe but you don't want to get up close with him anyway actually Matt you might know this one Lorewise the last event in the Warpath Source book timeline was 989 AE have we reached the year 1000 AE? I can't remember where we go we certainly advanced the timeline in Dead Zone yeah um and we might have taken we did actually mention what the dates were but it was so long ago I wrote that I can't remember let's see we have but yeah wherever it went from further wherever it ended in the Warpath Source book we definitely moved it on and I think we moved it on like five maybe 10 years so and we've had in the firefight rule but we've added more new stuff again that covers a lot of the existing stuff um because obviously new players need to need to catch up but there are areas where we've pushed up pushed on again so between the two at one two of of Dead Zone and and now firefight we have we have moved on from the Warpath Source book also people say will we see translations of firefight in the future? uh yes we certainly will so you know we're we're going into um Germany and France this year with with Kings of War and then we'll be looking to do things like you know like Dead Zone things like that so yeah certainly what there's as those markets grow and develop where the the follow on games we'll certainly get into the areas of translation for those so I'll answer this one because we had a uh Mini Munder says will you guys make the Crone Mother Boss 15 points available because that's a mantic points model I think currently the Vault Chasers and the Crone Mother are out of stock so I guess it's it's watch this space that's a bit of a boring answer that one but yes possibly in the future but not in the immediate future let's kind of a look uh Andy and you it was coming any chance we will see a return of the Martians or similar themed faction for firefight I'll answer this one Andy no obviously we don't have the license anymore for for Mars attacks so I think we've uh we want to obviously build our own IP I think this is a great way to do it with firefight you know we've got lots of exciting factions there so I think we'll be looking at what we do with those and kind of how we expand those um a lot of people asking about kind of the tournament scene and organized play I think definitely we want to kind of do more organized play and a look at a way of doing it and obviously the Masters is really popular for Kings of War you know do we start having that from the you know day one for firefight could be something we look at um let's have a look um so Nathan said the game already feels so good but if things pop up what's the plan to address balance changes something we've noticed locally is chain activating from the first activation is strong so I guess we've kind of future proved ourselves in some ways by doing things like the Forcelest book but I guess Andy obviously it's early days I mean I guess we'll be keeping an eye on things and see how they go yeah absolutely so um despite having you know many hundreds of games actually over the last couple years from from probably about 60 different people there will be things that come up when it's out there in the in the real world that we thought were a hundred percent clear what they were and someone else interprets differently or um a play style is different um to what you know we've experienced so far so there definitely will be things go so we're going to be watching it very very closely um at the moment and for the next few weeks it's likely to be theorizing as people see bits and pieces come out from the videos and the blog posts and stuff like that and then when people get the actual book there'll be more theorizing and then it's only really when people start playing games that a lot of that actually just falls away by starting to play because you can easily overthink things but um but yeah no absolutely we're always looking for things you know whenever there's we've already spotted a one or two tie pose and things like that we should always slip through the net unfortunately no matter how many eyes are on it and so we'll just collate that stuff and as you say there's um an opportunity at some point when there's enough of that to produce a FAQ or IRATA or as new models come online whether they then be a new force list which in a similar way to the clash of kings books have they change up the meta every well in kings of war terms every year but wouldn't necessarily be that frequently for firefighters so so that we're constantly collating this stuff and storing it to to try and make sure that the game always keeps um keeps evolving as good as it can be for players yeah I guess obviously we've got the benefit of of easy army at launch or let's say the launch window just in case it's not ready for day one but um yeah the good thing is we can potentially update that so if there are a little if you have noticed a little tie pose or something we can we can amend that quite quickly like we did with with dead zone actually a few stats got through the net but we managed to pick those up and put them correct on easy army and I guess the other thing I did um what when was it Andy probably about three months ago was suggested we put an RC together so a rules committee so for each of our our major game systems we have a rules committee which is typically the early ones the first time we formed them it's from the people who were very responsive in play testing and gave the best feedback and and and things like that um and then it evolves into um you know as the community grows it's it's the good tournament players and things like that but we put in around Andy um rules committee to help to help him finalize those those things that we hadn't thought about and we're coming out in final play testing and it's good to balance ideas around them because someone will come up someone will suddenly say well hang on I was thinking about this last night and what about this situation it's like oh how did that never come up in play testing and you get to fix those things just before they get all goes over the line and goes out to print so um so in terms of balance and stuff there that that rules committee structures already in place so a quick question I can answer this one from Gareth Mason says on the website it says you have to back hold and now for firefight how long would I be waiting to get a copy well so the actual the release date or the shipping from date is April 18th or April 19th 19th 19th that's right um so it depends depends where you live but uh yeah we will be shipping from that date and in fact we you may have already seen we've had some unboxing videos as well so we have started to get some early copies in and then the warehouse will go mad building all the copies we need to build for the release Ian Inman and this is the token Rebs and Nameless question any plans to expending the Nameless range whether in firefight or in mind or not so Matt you can answer that one because I know you'd like this one yes yes do you like sir or yes will expand yes I have I have plans for uh I've got Rebs in my plans I've got uh Nameless in my plans but I'm not telling you when those are but they are in plans so that's good they are in plans so then everyone everyone because yeah I guess the the problem obviously with Rebs and Nameless is we don't have the hard plastics for all the core troops so it's kind of okay well what would we do you don't want a squad of all the same looking models so we have to no that's it I think because because the other the factions that we've launched with have got so much hard plastic support it would be unfair to release another a faction and do a disservice to that faction if we didn't have the same level of support or tend to plan that same level of support around all the models that they had so you know those that's why we're not doing stuff immediately you know we'll see once the go once we can see the games got got traction and they can say okay let's go with those plans that we've got and then we can put those those things in make them tool them and get them out and release those factions yeah I mean there was one other faction that was play tested as well which isn't in the main book so we could potentially do that one in the future or the they're just finishing their PhDs before we can possibly release those Jerry McCabe asks with the split of scenarios between narrative and tournament in the rules is this an indication of how you are planning to proceed with future releases I guess Matt that's one for you I guess it's all well I guess it's I guess because obviously we did we did we do the narrative split in the tournament split in Vanguard the new Vanguard book first like 1.5 to be split in there is that something I've imagined I think it's I think it's a good way of doing things because it because often you often create we've had in the past where we've created maybe 12 scenarios and then when people are creating when people are coming up with you know doing events maybe they got four of them on the day then they got to pick and choose the ones that are is this one balanced or not or is this suitable for tournament play and then you put it in and then some people like it some people don't I think having having that split between ones that are symmetrical and balanced to both players and then and then those other ones that aren't are a bit more around story a bit more asymmetric maybe a last stand or all that sort of thing as well as helping tournament support the ones that are geared to that it it it provides to the different player bases that you've got where people who are focused on the really balanced stuff or people who just like to you know turn up with an army it doesn't matter if it's balance just want to throw some dice and and and have a good game they're not training for a tournament or or worry too much about the game balance and then you catering to to both certainly how I am how I plan those out was in some ways more to help me design them to be as you say more balanced in the competitive rather than tournament that's you know competitive what we sort of use and the narrative ones were to sort of add that fluff but I suspect that actually some of the narrative ones would probably make it into tournament packs actually because whilst they are more narrative they're not crazy it's not like random things are happening necessarily in all of them that would unbalance a game and so I don't think it's necessarily as clear a margin as the names might imply I think you're gonna have a lot of fun with all of them yeah I mean I guess we could go you could go one more level and really go story driven the kind of you could almost have a level where it's and you're building them around a campaign so you're deliberately playing them over a number of a number of games and a number of scenarios that they're definitely unbalanced but you're telling a story all the way through so that's a third level that's easy to explore as well yeah because certainly all the ones in the book are designed to have evenly matched armies even though the the narrative of how the mission might work would be different so you know that that isn't like what Matt might have there he's 750 points versus 500 points clearly it's not going to be an even five but the story leads to the next bit which is what you did with the vanguard ice and iron expansion so I guess it's a question for me out though you Matt are there any plans to make the commanders in the faction boxes available separately yeah because I guess obviously you can take multiple commanders in your squad that might be that you may want two of the pack leaders or something like that I mean I guess that could be a mantic direct release possibly Matt yeah I mean some of them will probably come out as anyway as as dead zone items that's that's a possibility but yeah I think definitely mantic direct so they'll be available individually there and again it'll be based on demand if the demand's really there and you know the retailers are asking for them and the sales team are asking for them then like easy to make them a you know commercial retail release Steve Weaver asks and I guess this one's good on for you Andy could you give us a flavour of how flying vehicles work in the game cough chroma force platforms it sounds like you may have COVID there if he's coughing but hopefully he's okay so yes how do they work Andy how do so yeah flyers are are interesting flyers probably work quite a lot differently than people might expect actually so I'll start off by saying there are some vehicles that are flyers and there are some vehicles that are not flyers that are actually what we would call anti-grabs so they're sort of hovering vehicles of which the the chroma and the Kira the esteeming ones actually are hovering vehicles because fancy hovercrafts yeah effectively yeah because if you look at them on their on their base they're only actually about an inch above the table so they're certainly not flying high so they behave quite differently the flyers though so that's the enforcer interceptor and a hornet for the gcps and play they my view on them was that flyers really don't like hanging above battlefields for a very long time it's very vulnerable for them to be so so I wanted to give them a feeling of movement yet still have the models on the table because you don't want your to no point having your lovely flyer if it's never really there and you might as well just have it in the cupboard still so the way we've tried to do that is that every flyer has to move every turn it can't stay in one place it has to at least make an advance or a short move and it cannot obviously make a sprint or a long move so that gives you the feeling that they're constantly whirring around the battlefield area and one of the downsides of that is that they also don't like being shot at so if someone shoots them with particular types of weapons that I mean most things don't like being shot at at them well most things don't like being shot at but flyers particularly because I think they're further from the ground so they find it perhaps a little bit more nerve racking up there so if you are hit by certain types of anti-aircraft weapon for instance then it can mean that actually all you can do for the next round is move you can't do anything else you're too busy trying to maintain control of the of the flyer so there's an element of flyers are designed to be good and strong but they're also designed not to be completely overpowering and there are ways of negating them as well so I hope that that we've got the the balance right that they add a lot in deploying troops bringing heavy weaponry to the table but they're certainly not going to be one-shot wonders like they you might necessarily think for some sort of super-powered spaceship or something like that cool so Kiran and I guess this one we all Matt announced this one he says it's not necessarily firefight second edition related but is it but it is model related will we ever see mega forces make a return so obviously we have gone through and repackaged obviously of obviously what we've got for the kind of warp at the universe range into the new strike forces and I think that was intentional so you're not put off by the amount of in some ways yes it's cool to get a big box full of miniatures but actually it can be quite up putting because you have this huge box and it ends up going on your shelf of shame and then you never get round to doing it so what we've tried to do with those boxes is is creating an almost ready to go strike force of around about a thousand points unless I'm corrected yeah it's from seven depending on which which faction it's from 750 up to yeah about nine 50 I guess I think the the model that we had before there's actually three boxes for every factions here yes yeah yeah starter force the reserve force and the mega force and I think that that what we were talking about before that heart back to that the odd the non-difference almost between Warpath and Firefight and where did where did you sit in terms of model count and which game do I play that almost expressed itself in those in those three models and it's like take away that confusion and so this is this is where you start with firefight this is where you buy your the bulk of your army and then you have the other bits that bits around it so it's almost I guess as far as the Aldi approach so rather than have the loads of stuff to choose from you go in and you got one bottle to catch up well I'll just I won't catch up I'll buy that bottle so I want to start play force there's one box to buy I go there talking of Warpath but a few people ask what's in store for Warpath I guess you can't say too much about that map but maybe blink like communication if you can do something like that if you can indicate what's happening with at the moment Warpath we're not we're not looking at changing so is it Warpath is what it is at the moment obviously all the all the the models obviously all still work now they'll slowly you'll probably start to see those slowly become firefight packaging which is will be the focus at the moment but as with everything else I do have plans for Warpath and you're winking there I can't see because I'm looking at a different screen that's delayed so I'll just assume you're winking and indicating what's going to happen to go gaming I mean this is probably a bit of a to we could talk about this one all night but he says could you outline any real major change between first edition and second edition firefight I mean I would say it's almost an entirely new game really would you say that Andy I might I guess I think so I mean I guess if you wanted to take design concepts I didn't want the game to be a complete step from firefight that was never the intention that was never the remit you know so I think the things that have been kept that people are familiar with is similar to Dead Zone that the activations and the actions and that you get too short or one long so there are a lot of things like a lot of the keywords have been kept they will change a little bit what they do but the idea was definitely to keep them and then the probably the one single most important key thing that has been kept is the orders so the fact that there are faction orders and there weren't really commander orders in firefight first edition but there certainly were faction orders and that struck me as the single most important thing that made firefight and warpath unique actually because that that game works really is that the grunts are just normal people or or orks or or whatever and there's very few they might do heroic things there's very few superhuman heroes in it so it's the orders that make your army do the special things that make it cool and so that that part I thought was an absolutely critical key thing to to keep now the way those orders are are used and the way that they're paid for is slightly different the command points have changed a bit because we used the what was the walking dead and vanguard dice system which is very familiar to lots of people who play other those mantic games as opposed to the old command point system but effectively it's the same and I think those are probably the most important sort of elements to have kept and then the other design thing I also wanted to keep was bringing other aspects of other mantic games if you're used to mantic games you will any any number of them you will recognize some things from kings of war you'll recognize some things from dead zone and you recognize some things from fire fire of course so you know I think there's plenty that you should see as being familiar from version one but it's definitely a new game I think that's probably the key thing okay very succinct okay well I think we've got to the end of our questions so thank you everyone at home for joining us for this live Q&A I guess if there's more questions that we've missed maybe I'll force Andy and Matt to do another one of these in the future but hopefully that's everything answered so yeah so remember the game starts shipping from April 19th is up for pre-order on the mantic websites I'm sure it's available from your friendly local game store too so thank you very much Andy thank you very much Matt and unless there's anything else you too want to add then we shall say cheer here bye bye as well bye