Stuck at Home; Keeping myself sane

The Brutal Sci-Fi Sports Game

Recently I picked up a copy of Dreadball Extreme board game from Mantic Games for a bargain price of £9.99 (approximately $12.50), this also included a free copy of the players handbook as well. So I’ve decided to carry out an unboxing.

So what is Dreadball Extreme

DreadBall Xtreme is the underground sports game of the future and the follow-up to DreadBall: The Futuristic Sports Game. In this game, two teams battle it out on the pitch to outscore each other, with all-new twists: … Best of all, Sponsors allow you to build entirely unique teams out of any player combination you like! Basically if you’re still unsure,think Blood Bowl with a Sci-Fi twist and it comes close.

DreadBall Xtreme plays very similarly to the original game. In fact many of the actions and their resolution are the exact same.

Contents:

Rubber Gaming Mat

4 Strike posts

Obstacle Posts

2 Dreadballs

65 Page Rulebook

Special Move Card Deck

Sabotage Card Deck

Counters

14 Coloured Dice

Over 30 Miniatures

10 Convict Players

10 Asterian Players

9 Free Agents

12 Yellow Bases

12 Blue Bases

The game is supplied in a tightly pack box, the artwork on the front depicts a scene from a game between the two teams supplied with the starter box. The rear of the box provides some introductory information designed to sell the game to the potential purchaser, it also includes a list of the games contents.

Once opened you’re presented with a tightly packed inside full of goodies, on top is a flyer from Mantic, which we’ll ignore. Next is the 65 page full colour glossy rulebook, this is A4 in size and is nicely designed. The rules and information are presented in a clear and precise manner, making it quite easy to read.

The next item in the box are the counters, these are all on one page. This is a boon for me, as I can’t stand games which have been flooded with counters and small cardboard parts everywhere. These are made from a good quality stiff glossy card. They pop out from the card quite easily, as there’s nothing worse than counters that need to be forced out potentially damaging them.

The next element of this game is the rubber mat, now this did surprise me as normally with these types of game the playing area is generally made from cardboard. So receiving a rubberized mat in the box make this even more of a bargain.

Once the mat is taken out, what’s below are the miniatures, dice and cards. All neatly packed into the plastic box insert.

You receive in a small bag of different coloured 6 sided dice, consisting 4 red dice, 5 blue dice and 5 Yellow dice. There is also a sealed deck of cards which contains the Special Move cards and the Sabotage cards.

Next are two bags of easy to fit together obstacles and strike posts. These push together really easily and its not necessary to glue them but I intend to glue them myself. Both of these bags are stuffed with parts giving you quite good amount of terrain pieces to place on the gaming area.

Now we’re down to the most important aspects of this starter box, the miniatures. First we’ll look at the convict team, this consists of 10 one piece plastic miniatures. These are nicely sculpted, though is some cleaning to do on these, mostly mould lines.

The Convict team is sponsored by the Warden and is made up of hardened criminals.  These players have all position available in their teams; Strikers, who handle the DreadBall with bonuses, Guards, the players that can damage all opponents with bonuses to their rolls, and finally Jacks, who are able play a little of both positions, but they don’t have any bonuses.

The second team are the Asterians, these are quite slender looking aliens, very much like Elves in fantasy settings. There is some cleaning to be done on these models, and again its generally mould lines.

These are the  more feral version of the Asterians from the Warpath universe and are sponsored by Blaine, a character that appears in all of Mantic Games’ universes. The Kalyshi have only two positions, Strikers and Jacks. This team is a  much faster and more agile team than the Convicts, but they’re also less armored.

Finally the last bunch of the miniatures are the Free agents and the two sponsors. The two sponsors are single piece miniatures, which will as with the other minis in the box need some minor cleaning. The Free Agents are a mix of different races from the Warpath Universe, all are again single piece miniatures.

I wasn’t planning on picking this game up, though I had played Dreadball in the past and enjoyed the game, but when I saw the price I decided to grab a copy. So far I’m very impressed with my first impressions of the game, and I’m expecting this to be as good as the original Dreadball game.