Watched the last gameplay demo video and thoroughly unimpressed by it. It's TAG Infinity with fewer steps and a beastie. TAGs die off like flies and... immediately respawn? You "mine" tesseum and t-bezoar by... shooting other TAGs and the beastie, respectively? Bwuh? What is this, long range FPS game pickup logic? I shoot your TAG, it "drops" some minerals and they get sucked into my TAG, from across the board? Ridiculous. There doesn't seem to be much depth, it's a quick-and-dirty free-for-all with inexplicably instantly and constantly respawning TAGs. They even added a "deathmatch mode" as a stretch goal - what else can that be than more of the same, just without the beastie? It already feels like an FFA Deathmatch mode in an FPS game. It's literally a who-shoots-each-other-and-the-beastie-most-times "game". There's no real need for tactics, little to no weight to any choices beyond not exposing yourself to obvious ARO, as you run at the enemy and shoot like a maniac to "mine" most minerals off them, 'cause worst case scenario you'll respawn anyway and mine more. Utterly underwhelming, I'd say. I don't think I will be backing if the core game is so shallow. I hope I'm missing something and somebody will tell me there's a lot more to the game than the vid has shown.
Man that Ana sculpt may be old but it still is gorgeous. It does need a re-do though, he's proper dumpy short ass.
I think they were just going for a quick and light code one esque deathmatch game. Probably not going to be more depth than what we've seen.
Which is a shame, I don't feel like it's going to see much gameplay with my friends. There's not much to it, just a literal TAG bash :(
Well that's exactly how it was advertised. If it's not your thing, it's not your thing but don't act surprised.
New Actu [8] from KS: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/corvusbelli/infinity-deathmatch-tag-raid/posts/3352582 The Street Hacker unlocked.
I was actually quite surprised to how literal "Death Match" in the name was. Not sure what I was expecting but it does seem like they are really trying to make some sort of an FPS. I do think it flies a bit in the face of the narrative conceit of the game - the mining theme doesn't make sense and is kind-of a poor in-universe explanation for why four TAGs from different factions are bashing one another. I think I would have liked something more along the lines of Aristeia! where it's an in-universe game. Perhaps the mine workers' lives are so hard and dangerous that they've created their own combat sport to blow off some steam using company property - that way the designers wouldn't have to contort themselves so much to get these abstract mechanism for "points" and respawning and such. Normally these abstract aspects could be hand-waved away in a completely new setting, but they don't make much sense in the established reality of Infinity - so we end up with narrative structure in the game that raises more questions than it answers and doesn't feel like Infinity, let alone like a cogent game world. As an explicitly Death Match style game, I see TAG Raid's main competition in the board game world being something like GKR: Heavy Hitters or Adrenaline. The former is "big mechs fighting free-for-all" that has a lot of big miniatures and flash but is a bit light on gameplay, and the latter is a very clean and easy to play board game that is essentially competitive Unreal in a box - it's actually quite good if that's what you're looking for. No doubt, TAG Raid's gameplay will be more robust than GKR, though if we're ranking purely on aesthetic sexiness, I do think TAG Raid has hamstrung itself a bit by focusing on the mining TAGs (rather than big weapons of war) because they're inherently kind-of puny looking for a game where the draw is supposed to be big stompy mechs. The Mechwarrior: Dark Age miniatures game from Wiz Kids awhile back made this same mistake by loading its game with too many industrial mechs - if you're playing Battletech, you want to be able to field an Atlas or Timber Wolf... not a Logging Mech. If the conceit of TAG Raid had been playing with 150 point (in N4) ultra heavy TAGs or something like that, my ears definitely would have perked up at that - but as a huge fan of the Battletech universe and a liker of TAGs, it's a bit ironic that CB's game about TAGs doesn't really excite me. The game is in a tough spot because it's trying to serve two masters. Clearly there is some deference being paid to N4 players, since so many of the add-ons are trying to hype the compatibility with Infinity... yet the style and presentation of the game and the Code One lite ruleset also makes it look like it's a tool for evangelizing to board gamers. But if we assume that TAG Raid at least partially exists for the purpose of bringing people into the Infinity ecosystem through a board game, the marketing is not doing anything to break through into that realm. I'm very plugged into the board game world and nobody there is talking about it - and CB doesn't seem to be reaching out to board game reviewers and such, instead focusing specifically on publications that are already ensconced in miniatures gaming. Even though it doesn't look like the game for me, I'd love to see TAG Raid be successful beyond just a fully funded Kickstarter, but I remain skeptical about whether or not it's the right product for CB at this time, and whether this model of one-off Kickstarter projects will ultimately become a detriment to the company and to the Infinity universe.
[ I myself have not been able to put my strange/mixed feelings about the game into words, but I think, this exactly sums it up.
Now explain how it is you expect someone to try to sell Tag Raid to board gamers, when they're supposed to be allergic to the idea of putting together miniatures, let alone metal figures. What TAG Raid and Defiance have been so far is what they've been so far: Side game produced by a miniatures company, to give the people who like the miniatures something else to do with their time. Hence, the people they've been reaching out to.
I don't know for a fact that it's meant to appeal to board gamers. It just feels like a weirdly compromised design choice otherwise - A simpler game with fewer miniatures (with the TAGs being plastic actually) and less expandability than N4 sold as (potentially) KS only is a bit of gamble as to how it will appeal to the ever-skeptical N4 crowd, but since Tag Raid is both more approachable than N4 (including the aforementioned plastics) and smaller in scale, it's likely to draw in people in the board game sphere who are mini-curious... so CB would be kind-of crazy from a business sense to not be thinking of this at least in part as a potential gateway game. This is particularly prescient with GW pushing hard to appeal to the board game crowd with their latest release of Age of Sigmar, which they sent to numerous board game influencers along with paints and tutorials with the hopes that it would be promoted as "miniatures games aren't as scary as you think" and bring in a new wave of players. I have to hope that CB would want to do something similar if they want to remain competitive in this market... because if this is just meant to be for ensconced N4 players, it feels to me like it falls short of the mark, judging by the mixed reactions.
Are we trying to sell this to board gamers? I don't think we are. There are only 1200 backers, I'm willing to bet the vast majority of those 1200 are from the Infinity crowd. Defiance had 5300 and I wouldn't be surprised if that was mostly Infinity players buying it too. Same as Defiance, this is a one off production run, they're not trying to kickstart a long lived board game franchise like Zombiecide or A! This is a one off vanity project that's mostly going to sell to the Infinity crowd. Making TAGs that a coherently themed with our existing armies would've made more sense sales wise. I wound up with 3 copies of Defiance because the minis were great, at this stage I will back no copies of TAG Raid because the minis just aren't appealing for the cost price.
CB would have to release something on par - game- and quality-wise - to the Blackstone Fortress, to compete with GW on that market. Boardgamers love thematic games with minis and negative player interaction, just look at how not-ALIENS "Nemesis" has stormed the Kickstarter and then the market. Defiance could've been a similar dungeon crawler to Blackstone Fortress or the fantasy variants of Warhammer Quest, like Cursed City, but it fell way short. This TAG Raid game doesn't even seem to be trying the game seems to be an afterthought to a "we need money again, a year ahead of delivery" of the Kickstarter format. CB seems drunk on Defiance's financial success and doesn't seem to notice it was the dozens upon dozens of rare and high quality metal minis that were missing from the N4 game or were useful in it, that sold the Platinum pledges, not a few PCV TAGs, a Worm, a Birb and about 10 metal minis that will be actually useful to N4 players.
Oh, man. I would have been so down for an official Infinity: Tag Bash game. Just a beer and pretzels free for all and an excuse to paint up other factions' TAGs and put them to use? That would be awesome for more casual game nights. Kinda of hoping the N4 Deathmatch mode fills that niche by minimizing the teseum points accumulation focus of the main game mode.
I'm a sucker for dungeon crawls but I missed Defiance - would consider picking it up at retail if it ends up there (as CB have teased) - and it helps that I'm interested in starting a CA army so even if the game isn't great I'd have those Shas minis... is the game itself decent or when you say "fell way short" does that mean it's essentially broken (as so many KS only games tend to be)?
