I always got the feeling that the game development was being pushed to the wire – just a week or two before launch and we were told “we’re just fine-tuning a few things”. The lack of play-through videos always felt a bit suspicious (the idea of holding back on how the game actually plays as a “launch surprise” always felt like a bit of an excuse) but then when the gameplay was revealed, it did seem like a pretty solid game.

I get the feeling that they were just disappointed that the funds stopped coming in – setting a target that can be smashed within two hours of launch impresses nobody except the creator! It seemed to me that they pushed hard on “get your proxies for that other fantasy football game” but the minis were actually pretty uninspiring.

I’d have been quite happy to have seen just the game released, with minis for teams added at a later date (the whole “game-only-with-standees” offering appears to have been pulled). It’s as if Blacklist didn’t have faith in the game, and just wanted to push the minis. Then made a complete hash of the campaign – offering all kinds of things, changing the offering, pulling pledge levels, adding other levels…. it really does feel like they were trying anything to just pull in ever more money, instead of focussing on getting a game to market.

I thought that the game *did* look original – the minis were pretty poor, but I like the look of the game. But I won’t be backing it a second time around. Which is a real shame. I’d happily buy into just the game (and if it was handled by not-Blacklist, I still might). The “fake-launch” teaser idea could only ever backfire – I’m not sure it was intentional, but maybe they had a particular “real target” in mind and just didn’t want to display it?

It’s quite possible that I’ll keep my money and just pick up the rules online and get some proxies for *this* particular fantasy football game from other sources, and just use their rules and a homebrew board (the irony – given this is how they positioned their offering against Blood Bowl – is not lost on me).