 Alright, hello Internet GenCon Internet and everybody in between we are at GenCon My name is Maya. I am the community manager for Secret Hitler and Breaking Games And I'm here with Pat and Kyle from Mantic Games to talk about the Hellboy board game Yes, can you give me like a brief rundown on the game real quick? Hellboy is is a game that was developed from the Hellboy comic book obviously we did a Kickstarter for it So it was kind of a big deal. We ended up doing over $2 million I think on the Kickstarter So yeah, it was it was fantastically successful It's the core game is what's out now that we're selling primarily which is what we have here with us today It's a game that is going to be based around the four main BPRD agents which are going to be Hellboy, Liz, Abe and Yohan Okay, and the BPRD sends you into an unknown creepy crawly dungeon and you have to take care of something and It's going to be based on some case files that show you what you have to do So the case files tell you how to play the game how to set it up and what your enemies are going to be that sort of thing But you don't know what the boss is. Okay, so it's kind of a mystery on what you're going in for You just know that there's some scary thing that you've got to go. Yeah I was going to say because you said take care of and I'm like do you mean like mafia take care of Like take we're taking care of we're going to take them out hilarious. Okay. Cool. Cool. So you're you know You're dungeon crawling you're taking care of bed. It's everything is going on So what are what are some of the distinctions between the different characters that you can play? The characters are unique So each of them is going to be a little bit better at Something that someone else is and that's represented on their actual care character cards So they have four main stats and abilities that are on here and they're color coded So you'll see on Hellboy's card. We actually have a red yellow orange and orange And those colors correspond to the dice that they use when You're actually rolling and testing on those abilities. Okay, so what is Like the order of operations in a turn You can do anything in any order that you want. Oh my actually that right. Yeah So if you need to cooperate and and help one needs to do something and then a needs to do something else You can absolutely do that. Okay. So this is a co-op. Yes Your only limitation is that each character has three activation points that they can use You can spend any of those three activation points in any order you want, right? So I could do something you could do something we can go back to be And then we can play again. That's tight. I don't say I love cooperative games I feel like when you work together to defeat a goal, it's like Winning the game is like, okay So you said that these colors would correspond to the dice over there, right? So what do what do the dice mean? So you have three different color dice. You have yellow, which is not so good Oh, no, there's not so many pips on this one. Oh, yeah, orange, which is kind of a medium Okay, and then red, which is very good You do have a black set of dice, but these are special You can only get when you upgrade Your dice those look special They look terrifying Uh, and then you were telling me some cool stuff about the dice earlier. Oh, yeah So because we realized that these are color according dice Some people might know what color our colorblind might know the dice they're rolling The pips also coincide to the symbols The shapes of the the symbols on their character card. So the yellows are circles The orange are squares and the reds are hexes. Okay, I think honestly I think that's really awesome that you guys have worked towards accessibility for your game I feel like accessibility in board games is really important right now I'm working at secret hitler and we're actually trying to have our next print have braille for the visually That's pretty cool. Awesome. So what's that? What's the what's the fancy? This blue dice. This is the chaos dice. Oh, you roll this whenever you do every test There's five good things and one really bad thing one really bad thing. So or the skull. Oh good god What are some of the other symbols out there? There's like Uh, do you have the thing? Yeah, you get you get bonus to your to your role You might just add one to the actual result You might add two you might get to re-roll any number of the dice that you have What are some examples of the bad things that happen the bad things are pretty varied actually The most important thing that you would see is that the highest roll on your die gets taken away No, if you roll a one two and three that three goes away. Oh, the worst which is pretty bad Also, depending on the weapon that you use there can be some other bad things that happen So for example, hellboy shoots his pistol. You roll the skull along with it. Then all of a sudden he's out of ammo Yeah, so get your stuff together hellboy the game tries to throw Difficult situations at you and then you have to find ways to sort of bounce back from those difficulties Yeah, that was going to be one of my questions, which are what are some typical Obstacles that you might face in this game on your way to the big baddie What are what are some of the like steps to get there as you go through and explore the rooms the cards that you run into Inside the rooms are going to tell you how to populate what's in there Sometimes there's good things. Sometimes there's bad things. That's what these encounter cards are Yeah, the encounter cards will tell you that so As you enter a room, you'll flip these over and it'll actually tell you how to populate the room So you'll see one two three and four listed there I see that the deck will tell you How to shuffle these and place them throughout the room So you don't know what it's going to be and what's great about that is that every time that you play the game because you shuffle This it's going to be a different experience even if you play the same mission again. That's the best Yeah, all right. And so those are you were pointing to some little chips over there. Those are the things that you encounter Yes, so these are the clues that you're looking for These are wound markers and these are fire markers So in the case of this card here, we have one two three four You would do one for the first base closest to you right two and then three and then four So you just sort of bounce back and forth. Okay in some rooms where there are four tiles You would actually populate the whole road. So I cannot read that word at all. What's it? Can you pass me the first one? It's clue. Yeah, first one's clue. Second one is scenery. Oh, they're scenery. They're scenery So there's some cardboard cutouts that we have one of Hellboy's special powers that he can throw scenery he can throw he'll pick up a desk and throw it in them. This is like a book. Yeah So Hellboy is just like you can pick up the book and screw you guys throwing a book at your face Tables, chairs, library. Fantastic. I would absolutely play this game so I could throw chairs at people. That sounds fantastic. All right And so are there always four or is it just like always four? There's four slots There might be depending on what the slot is going to be but there's always like four things that you encounter More things in each each of those numbers. So you might say clue clue in space one for example Okay, so what are what are these little do-dads? Those are your your actual activations Those are the three you were talking about passing them to other people. Yeah, when you spend them You'll say I'm going to do this one action and that's how you keep track It's just an easier way to so if you were going to have someone else do an action on your turn Would you give them one of those little do-dads? No, no if uh You were to we decide that all right Hellboy's going to open the door Okay, cool And then I'm going to shoot the monster in so he can go to the next guy and punch him So I would spend you would spend your action point then I'd say all right, let's let me do my thing I'll spend my action point then we go back to you and then you spend your action point. Okay, so You just limited to the amount of action points that you have There's three every round the basic things that you would do is move that would cause one of the cubes Uh, you could shoot that would be one that'd be fight that would be one And in some instances, you know, how boy could fight fight fight if he's really got to take something out You could fight three times. Yeah, absolutely You also would examine so for the clues for example, you need to find out what the clue is So you have to spend an action cube to actually do an exam test And that's and how you would know if you actually succeed is you would compare that to their stats Like we said before so the orange for hellboy on that eyeball that's his examine test So he would roll the three orange dice and always the blue one Okay, so the the blue one always gives you that wild card. Uh, yeah, that's nice. Yeah, that's really stressful Okay, um, so what are some of the advantages that each character has? You said they all have different advantages like what's what's hellboy's advantage? Hellboy is well, he's he's very good at punching things obviously that's that's his thing Gotta throw looks gotta punch gotta punch. He's not very good at shooting things. Okay, so Those are his primary strengths and weaknesses after that He's he's pretty good at investigating because he has a special rule called seen it all before So obviously hellboy's been around he has been doing this for quite some time and he is not of this world So he has seen a lot of things. He's sort of got an instinct for it. He has seen something Yes So he gets a little bit of an upgrade when he does his examine test as well. That's something that makes him good What about uh, our lovely fish man over here? Yes, so every character has a unique of actions That costs your action points. Okay, and they have special rules like he said with the thing So a basically can do a lot of shooting He's a real good shot so we can do a precision shot so we can shoot past someone because When you shoot with someone the same thing, you have a chance to hit that same person Right Can he do a lot of like slinking you can actually he's very slippery So he can move faster than everybody else too So he can move three spaces opposed to the normal two and then when he moves through spaces that have enemies in them He doesn't take any damage or other people, right? He literally just sneaks on by I literally just pictured him like rolling down a hill and like bowling down Is that like a thing that you can do? Roll down an alley Expansion Okay, uh, and then who were to the other who do you to you to mention them? Liz and yo-han. Liz and yo-han. What's going on with Liz and yo-han. Liz likes to light stuff on fire. Excellent So she's a pyrotechnic, I guess they call it pyrotechnic Yeah, so she's got a really fun mechanic where as she goes through the game and takes damage or even herself She can stoke the flames or she can sort of build up her flame abilities and Raises on her and that can be a really powerful attack So you can go up to five Where you would just add five to your total on your dice roll and that could that could knock something out really quick But not the chaos dice The chaos dice would still in fact. Oh my god the chaos ice Get out of my life cast ex. I'm like already stressed with the cast The danger with her though is that if you have that number really high and she takes damage Yeah, that chaos does too She would blow up though and light the room on fire and cause damage to everybody around her So you kind of kind of balance her. Okay. That's okay. And then what's uh, what's going on with yo-han? Yo-han is incredible at investigations due to smart. So and he's ethereal. Yeah, and he's ethereal That seems unfair. He's got an ability where he doesn't even have to like walk through the rooms He could literally like teleport to another room and Investigate over there and then teleport back. So it's kind of fun. That is great to send him off on his own Is he the only one who's able to teleport like that? Yes But like liz he has a track marker that he has to try and keep his form because if he takes too much damage He just collapses to gas Oh, that's unfortunate. Yeah, that's real bad. Okay, uh, so are these skills based on some of the things that they do In the comic. Oh, like are these like canon skills 100 do you if you play this game? Do you have to be a hellboy fan or do you think you can get through it without it? Or do you think like if you were a hellboy fan, would you have advantage? If you're a hellboy fan, I think that you're just going to appreciate it a little bit But you don't need to be a hellboy fan by any means. In fact, I've had friends that I've introduced the game to when we played with They have now gotten into hellboy because of the game. So yeah, yeah Even if you just see in the movies, you'll have a nice appreciation for it because a lot of people have just only seen the movies Yeah, right. And so it goes hand to hand with the movies also. So How uh, how easy is the game to get into? It's a pretty simple thing to pick up the demo mission really tells you exactly what you'd need to know And it only takes a couple of minutes to get through the demo mission So it's not too bad to sort of get a grasp on it and start playing Everyone that we do, you know game shows and boosts. They really pick up on it fairly easily So it's a lot of fun to just do the dive in crash play and figure it out And then you can play one of the more advanced scenarios Right, right because you were talking about how you have these different case files for every time Yes, can you talk me through like one of the case files? Sure. Would that be like a spoiler? Is that a spoiler? A little bit. We'll do the demo We don't want to spoil the whole internet stuff. So with the case files, they come in a nice little plastic case So you literally do not know what is going to be happening. Awesome It tells you here you read this. Awesome. Then once you find that you read down the next one You kind of read through the story. It tells you what's going on. You get down to the bottom It tells you how long it is. Okay. It tells you to flip the card at the bottom Then you go through It tells you how to set it up. I was going to say is that that's like the dungeon The area set up for it. I set up everything you want to play with what cards to choose Every card has a symbol There's more than one of that type of card. So every time you do it you can just kind of Take the the the group of symbols out randomize the cards You can do that and the setup is changed every case file, right? Yes It'll run the map here once you get the map and again very cool again here It says discard this card after placement of the encounter cards So you set your card to the discard pile? Okay. There's a discard pile over there You only address one card at a time. So until you meet the condition of that card You can't help if you can't move forward. You got to do it first. So it specifically will give you Uh What you have to achieve and if you don't achieve it in time So it tells you exactly what's going to happen whether you do or don't know the stakes. Yes Okay, and there are multiple different directions that can go based on whether you succeed or fail on that particular card So there are multiple outcomes for each mission. Oh my god. I am like already stressed I'm like literally not even playing the game. I'm already stressed. I just get really scared when it's like, what are we gonna do? I don't know. We're gonna do you have so many options. Like I gotta play this game Okay, uh, what's another uh, what's that card? Well, I just wonder right here. This was telling you How to set this board up. Okay. Yeah, what's that board? This is the uh, this is the inside board Okay, this tells you who the threat marker is the lowest one being who the monsters attack first, right? Okay, this is your inside track. These are the clues that you got to cash in to get the insight, right? Okay, and this is the impending doom track. I'm sorry the impending Do you do serious? Yes. That is so terrifying. You get the chaos dice. You got the impending doom track And if you hit The impending doom before you're ready the bug boss monster comes out Oh, no. Were they already or not? He's like, well, exactly what enemies are on the board. What bad things are on the board He's just fighting. Yeah So you want to essentially the entire game mechanic is that you want to get as much information on that boss as possible Before he comes out and then do you do? Yeah, because it's it's significantly harder if you don't Oh, yeah, well, of course there are cards and things that you can do in the game that will raise this Fashionably, yeah, I want to there's like multiple degrees of impending doom. Yes. This is hilarious and I love it There's what's called the deck of doom. I the deck of doom Okay, wait, where's the deck of doom? I just want to see the deck of doom The deck of doom is I want to see it. I want to see it like quakes in fear I want I want myself to quake in fear as I as I witnessed the deck of doom So the deck of doom is going to give us some really bad results Mostly every once in a while. There's a good one in there, but mostly bad. So mostly bad. I'm living for it I'm ready the deck of doom. Yeah, I see you got a lot of minis here So you guys meant to games you guys are really good at making games with minis. Yes. We're primarily a miniature Manufacturer ah the deck of doom This is terrifying. I just want the whole internet to know that this is real scary and I'm stressed But I'm also very excited. He's like drowning. He's drowning in like an octopus. How do you even I'm I'm talking nonsense All right, what are some of these? Okay, so there's stuff on the back of these. Those are the boss monsters The boss monsters. These are nice. Love that finish on the card. Wouldn't finish create a fantastic Okay, boss monsters. I'm like I'm doing the spoilers. I'm witnessing the spoilers I'm not gonna show you guys. I can't show you because like everything's different. I don't want to spoil it on the internet Uh, but these are really cool. The art is really awesome. It looks like it's almost taken like directly Mike McDonald is actually right on board with the game. He is actually drawn But you have the rule of it. He's actually covered uh art specifically for the game I'm gonna put the deck of doom slightly further away From the rest of the card so that it doesn't create impending doom on the rest of our discussion for today Um question. What's that blue thing? Oh, this is just a hole in the floor Something may or something may or may not oh, this is just a casual hole in the floor depending depending what happens with Your case files. You can fall into a hole or something could come out or something to come out of the hole I love this game. I love all the like suspects. There's so much tension And like because all the case files are different you really don't know what's gonna happen They are sealed every case is sealed in his own plastic. That's awesome Wait, so what's going on with some of those means over there? These are the minions Okay, uh, again, we won the cards told you how to populate minions, right? Yes And then as you like if you look at the the encounter card there The little number three says minion a so you're gonna find oh, I do see that Over here and that minion a is going to get populated. So we actually do that So let's populate him He goes there and what's the last minion on there? Yep, we're two of the same He's like ready to smack you. He's got the So smack down as you can see with the first encounter you're right in the right in the face of right in the thick of it Okay, cool. Are there any of them where you're not just immediately in the thick of it? So it depends. Oh, really? Yeah, okay. There might be some clues in our room. Slightly benevolent, dude Okay, yeah, I was gonna ask, what are those things? What are those things? Well frogs is we know in the bible everything frogs are significant Signatures of impending doom frogs or sign of bad things that bad things come up. Oh, what happens if I love frogs? Is my life just a dog swarms? Okay, I was like, what about the cute ones? Okay, not the okay, so in this game is the more frogs you get The faster that tracker just starts going up like crazy. So it's the boohoo's you to kill the frog swarms How do you kill the frog swarms? There's not actually one of your actions Yeah, they're not actually enemies So you have to clear the room of them and what's important is that you can't get rid of them until the enemies that are in The room with you are already dead. So you have to if there was a frog swarm in that room with those two dudes You'd have to kill the dudes and then the frogs Yep I never hated frogs more in my life so the game tries to essentially make you balance Resting and healing and clearing the frog swarms putting out fires like all kinds of bad things that can happen So let's say that the the minions did some damage to you and you wanted to try to heal that back You could do that But then there's what's called a rest phase So in the rest phase you have the option to possibly, you know, heal up some damage and feel a little bit better Put out the fires get rid of the frog swarms But if you do that you automatically tick up this counter the doom counter by one So you have to say is it worth it for us to try to make this boss come out quicker and heal up a little bit Or do we want to take the risk of keeping going? I don't know I honestly I'll have to play the game and find out The wound mechanic is actually pretty cool because they have different spaces here down at the bottom of the card And that's how many they have so help always got a little bit more life than any of those Oh, these are help. Yeah, those are help cubes. So you take one of these and these are sorted randomly you want to keep them face down with the Blood dripping marker essentially and every time they would take a point of damage you place that on their card Once it fills up, they're not actually down and out knocked out dead yet. Okay, okay You would then flip the cards that have been placed. Okay. I was gonna say you said upset you said face down As you flip these you'll see a symbol and a minus next to it. Is that what that is the minus? Yeah, it is. Okay So these symbols match their ability symbols at the top And they start taking negative modifiers to these abilities. What's this? What is that? That one's a chute Chute. Yeah. Oh, it's like a crosshair. Right. Okay. Hellboy has the yellow dice for his chute action, which we said We're pretty bad. It's bad at shooting. Not good. If we actually flip that one on him And there's only three of these normally you would downgrade But since the yellow is as low as you can go you would actually take one of these away So it gets worse and worse and worse. What are you gonna do? Hellboy? If it was his orange, for example, you would Downgrade on his defense one of the oranges down to a yellow. Uh, what are you gonna do? Hellboy? Oh, I feel like it's like stay tuned next week to see if Hellboy shoots himself in the face All right. Um, cool. Uh, so this game seems pretty neat I like that there are a lot of varying degrees of play because you don't know what's going on in the next Smile, what is something that makes this game stand out in the crowd of other games out there right now? Uh, honestly, I think it's the unknown Of the game itself because the case files are sealed Uh, they're stacked in a way that you can't read them. I mean you can read if you want to be like I mean if you want to be one of those if you want to be a party runner, of course you can read them Yeah, okay. If you want to always reach the last chapter of the book first Are there legit people like that? Yes. Okay. All of you said if you're watching this stream and you do that You suck. All right, continue. Uh, and then it just walks you through. So you like you said you have that Oh, what's going on? I'm tense like, you know, there's a hole in the floor. Why is there a hole in the floor? I don't know why there's a hole in the floor. Did he punch the hole? Yes, you know, what's gonna happen when we door open because we don't know what's on those cards Yeah, is this are these like little doors? Is that what you're doing there? Yeah, okay. Cool. Cool. Cool. So and then um, I don't want to say it because I don't want to give it No, don't give too much weight. I don't want to give too much weight The best part about this game is that there's so many things you can discover when you play it Definitely don't give too much weight. You don't know what's going to happen next until you Until you do it? The card over, you know, and even some bold letters. Do not flip this card over to them Yeah, this is the back of it. They just want you to know. Yes. We got to experience this journey together So I think that's a really unique, uh, Oh, like between aspects of the game now? Yeah, it's really a game, yeah We actually ran some demos at C2E2 earlier this year That's pretty good. It's the office of C2E2 We had, you know, full games literally the bigger missions with four full players and we were playing and we ran three games each night and All played the exact same scenario and every single game turned out different So there's a there's a very good replayability even after you open the case files That's really cool. Yeah, because there's so many different tracks the way you go Yeah, and the counter modules and the deck of doom, right? That's cool It changes. So I briefly to ask you guys before because you guys make a lot of minis Yes, what are what are some other games you guys make that have minis? The biggest would probably be Kings of War. Kings of War. That's our mass battle fantasy game. Okay So yeah, yeah tons and tons of stuff. Um, Kings of War There's also the sci-fi version of those games, which is Warpath and Deadzone Yeah, it's it's a skirmish game Deadzone is which is based on cubes, which are kind of similar to this It's an 8x8 map that which is kind of nice There's also walking dead walking dead walking dead comic obviously pretty big with comic fans So we've got two elements where we've got the war gamers who collect, you know Tons and tons of miniatures right over a really long period of time painting them with the tiny brushes We also have the the skirmish and you know smaller scale games as well Yeah, I was going to ask like do you guys focus on more like really long commitment cell games? Or do you also have like some quick casual games too? Are you all over? Yeah, we Span the Gambit that with the board game of Hellboy Here's Negan is a short nice 45-minute board game that we in the walking dead universe all the way up to the Kings of War, which is the giant You know anywhere from two hours to three hours. Yeah, so you guys are like an every kind of gamer happening Yes, you got something for everybody. We even got something for roleplayers. Even got something for roleplayers. Oh, what is it? With our terrain crate, what is it? Terrain crate. It's uh, tell me about that Put this over there. Oh, it's a biggin. We'll swap. This is a biggin. All right, we're talking about terrain crate now So a terrain crate, terrain crate by Manticans. A couple of jankons ago me and y'all were walking through The Deer Hall and we noticed that there was a lot of dungeon stuff But not all the stuff that you could put in the dungeons So was it what's the point of empty dungeons? Yeah, so then we decided well, why don't we make stuff For inside dungeons because we really make stuff for our board games With with tables and chairs and everything and so we started making a a lot of So you can just play D&D. You can just get this. Yes D&D players. They can use this You know, it's a huge help for them because it all the stuff is designed to fit right within their grid maps that they You know bring out built for wanted squares. Yeah, so If you're looking for just some scattered terrain to put in a war game if you're looking at for D&D and role-playing games and things like that. We have a bunch of different themed Boxes and kits. This one is a GM's dungeon starter kit. So it's a dungeon fantasy themed kit. It's got some heroes. It's got some enemies There's a big dragon in there. Is this like a pile of gold? Yeah piles of gold and treasure you can use any bushes There is a kit that has fences and bushes and yes, we have a whole town kit So it comes with a blacksmith. I'm like a shrubbery fan I'm big on the shrubbery. Like I'm the person who would spend like 20 minutes on the sims being like I need to make sure that all my grass is looking like this. So like I would love Yes I would love to have like a shrubbery kit for my D&D group. That's really cool Fences and bushes. We have that. I mean you get a ton of stuff to start your D&D campaign. You're gonna get Figures enemies heroes and a dragon Doors Yeah, I'm a fan of the spooky mirror. Yep. Yeah, we have a wizard study that I can come right now That's cool. So they specifically go to all of our games, you know the door set if you wanted to get the Trencrate doors, they would go great with the hellboy kit because okay, right instead of using these cardboard pieces You could upgrade it to actual doors and it just you know adds a little bit more immersion to it What are back to hellboy? What are some of your future plans for the game? Are you working on any expansions or any like new character release or like? What's going up to the best of your ability that you're able to tell obviously don't like Right ruin everything, but like if you're coming up with some cool stuff What is it at gen con here? We actually just released the first expansion that was separate from the Kickstarter So it was it's hellboy the wild hunt and it's uh, what's that about? It's just an entire take on that story arc within the comics. So You've got access to new hellboy models Touched in the the last the latest movie the wild hunt. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I did see that So the day of the day the damon harbour one. Yeah. Okay. Yes We have uh, we had a special uh for Uh, where did it go? Yeah, it was really quick. Oh, no. Well, that's good. No. Oh, yes Okay, cool. So that's that's pretty much all you've got for here. You're just gonna be really The Kickstarter had two expansions that were built into it So if you didn't pick up on the Kickstarter version the expansions that are part of that are going to be released, you know Coming up soon. So and we do have some Kickstarter kits that some of our prints at gen con So if you wanted to get in you'll get the two expansion there the conqueror Bprd archives come built into the Kickstarter Definitely want to get that out and a lot of these cardboard pieces Have been upgraded to plastic or resin pieces in the Kickstarter kits And for people watching who don't know what uh, is your booth number? That should ask that 835 so you're gonna go on over to 835 play some hellboy stuff. Yep. We're showing we're showing people We had such a demand for hellboy demos yesterday that we actually had to open up another demo table today That is red. I'm probably gonna be one of those people. I want to play. Seems cool. All right Is there anything else you'd like to say to the internet about how cool you guys are? I had a lot of fun talking about hellboy I'm definitely gonna get a box of shrubbery and I'm pretty pretty excited about I mean just combine the booth Play some hellboy if you're interested Again, if you uh, because a lot of people still don't know about to recreate in the dnd world Oh, I'm gonna talk about this a lot. Yeah, come by all my nerd friends. We have all types of terrain We we even just released our releasing a new sets coming when does it come early next year early next year That's going to cover goth modern Yes If you want to do a dragon castle I just want to do like a Dracula closet. Yes, like who you thought here's a vampire Exactly. There's some interesting stuff like uh, there's a mall actually like a post apocalyptic like abandoned mall space Like a paper girl. Yeah. Okay. That's really rad. Okay. Well, I'm excited for all those things Uh, thank you for joining us today. Well, thank you and talking about your red game and your red shrubbery Uh, and I think that we're done