Mantic ending availability of Walking Dead: All Out War on March 31st 2022

Not altogether unexpected, but still sad. From a breakout Kickstarter success in 2016 to several waves of retail releases afterwards, a case could be made for TWD:AOW as the best fully contained co-op/solo introduction to miniatures gaming. The game was Mantic's highest selling product at one point, and although over time sales would decline it never lost its fun-factor or playability. When Mantic switched from the fun, play-right-out-of-the-package miniatures to assembly-required in-house resin production (much more cost-effective to produce resin in-house than pay Chinese factories for a massive plastics production run) the casuals left & the writing was on the wall. When Robert Kirkman ended the comic I think it took Mantic by surprise as much as the fans. The last few waves registered minimal interest even among the dedicated, and it looks like we won't get the entire run of comics represented in miniature form.

Since it is a licensed property, then all TWD product will be de-listed from Mantic's site on 3/31/2022. And thus POOF... it disappears.

I kinda wish Mantic would port the rules over to one of its other properties (Deadzone Enforcers battling waves of Plague zombies?) as it would be a real shame to see the bones of the game itself just evaporate.

It's a good game system, I'm sure it will live on in one way or another. And isn't there a metric ton of content already?

hotseatgames wrote: And isn't there a metric ton of content already?

Depends on if we're going by GW's "choke them to death on a neverending slurry of product" approach, or a more typical minis release schedule. TWD had 5 waves of plastics (each had a mini-expansion with around 6 figs, and around half-a-dozen 3-fig boosters) and 3 smaller waves of resins. So maybe more than some games, but less than it seems due to figs being broken up into so many individual SKUs.

Such a good game. I ported my solo miniature gaming interest entirely to Core Space, but I miss this game sometimes.

charlest wrote: Such a good game. I ported my solo miniature gaming interest entirely to Core Space, but I miss this game sometimes.

The simplicity was everything. Movement was simple, attacks were simple, walker movement was simple. It really pulled in casuals like no other game I had seen. And because FFG had already primed people to buy into $15 ready-to-play expansions with X-Wing, that meant casuals could continue the adventure without needing to be a hobbyist. I understand Mantic's decision to switch from plastics to resins, but when I saw people yelling at Mantic's social media accounts when they unknowingly bought these new resin boosters that required assembly (and getting pretty upset about it) I figured knocking out that prop would eventually collapse the table.

The ready-to-play plastics separated it from most other easy-to-play skirmish minis games.

Long Live TWD: AOW

I attended Gencon 2021 as a Mantic rep. I ran 14 sold out sessions of TWD: Walker Challenge. Six gamers sit down, I hand them a pre-generated character, and they enter a city hellscape. They have 60 minutes to destroy as many Wallkers as possible. After an hour of mayhem, I gave someone a toy and reset the board. Rinse and repeat. 84 gamers had a hell of a time.

IMO, TWD jumped the TV/Comic shark after season 2/leaving Herschel's farm. Kirkman himself made remarks about stopping after Rick found Alexandria. Damn, I wish he had. The entire franchise just dipped so much with only few sparks on its former glory. So it goes.

Mantic's handling of the game was pretty solid. Awesome rules, and the best production values from the company (until Hellboy was released). Once resin was introduced, it was a trade off. More details, less durability. IDK. I enjoyed the earlier waves more.

Mantic's two off shoots; Here's Negan (board game) and Call to Arms (war game) left me kind of cold. I just preferred the smaller skirmish level fighting of of All Out War. Different strokes for different folks. The minis worked across all three games.

I sold 90% of my Zombicide stuff and kept TWD. I guess that's telling. I'm going to dip my toes into Osprey's Last Days and see if it's an easy system for my apocalyptic zombie mini collection to adapt.

fightcitymayor wrote: When Mantic switched from the fun, play-right-out-of-the-package miniatures to assembly-required in-house resin production (much more cost-effective to produce resin in-house than pay Chinese factories for a massive plastics production run) the casuals left & the writing was on the wall. When Robert Kirkman ended the comic I think it took Mantic by surprise as much as the fans. The last few waves registered minimal interest even among the dedicated, and it looks like we won't get the entire run of comics represented in miniature form.

Just this AM on ToS the subject of minis came up - one poster opined that he'd prefer better quality, assembly required minis and I countered with ALIENS ANOTHER DAY IN THE CORPS which stumbled right out of the box, literally with minis that required several hours of assembly. In this day and age that is a death sentence for a game unless you're talking about a dedicated customer base a la W40K or its ilk.

Drewcula,

Is it possible to get more details of this scenario, or maybe some pictures?

Like how many zombies on what size table etc. ?

drewcula wrote: Mantic's two off shoots; Here's Negan (board game) and Call to Arms (war game) left me kind of cold. I just preferred the smaller skirmish level fighting of of All Out War. Different strokes for different folks. The minis worked across all three games.

I gave Mantic credit for Call To Arms, as they basically gave you a more squad-based PvP game (attempting to rope in the 40k players) to play with all of the existing minis you already had, all you needed was an affordable book & a pack of new cards. I contrast that with GW, who will never make it easy to do anything in their metaverse while being brazenly FOMO-inducing & anti-consumer, and people just eat it up. Meanwhile Mantic listened to their fans and created a whole new way to play that didn't involve $1,000 in new purchases, and it never really took off. I'm slightly bitter about that.

Mantic did a similar fan-friendly outreach when they included rules in the Anthology book so you could use Here's Negan (a good intro boardgame in its own right) as a Rick-based adventure with the "good guys" instead of Negan's crew.

Mantic really did try to make TWD:AOW all things to all people, which is an admirable goal.

I really like Here's Negan! Very unique twist to the typical dungeon crawler. I almost rebought it a couple of times.

Based on Google search data, the internet reached peak zombie in early 2014.

Shellhead wrote: Based on Google search data, the internet reached peak zombie in early 2014.

The zombie/undead theme has become a part of that 2nd tier of minis gaming, along with topics like Pulp and Weird War. Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and historicals remain 1st tier (with maybe Old West being Tier 1.5) but the 2nd tier stuff never really goes away, it just bubbles beneath the surface, surviving on the interest of diehards and whatever casuals get tired of the umpteenth iteration of space marines or pointy-eared elves.

Once a person has the base game,(for item/event decks, and markers and enough zombies to get going) and the anthology rules set (which has campaign rules, and build your own character rules).........

You don't really need anymore of their products to enjoy years of Zombie miniatures gaming. I's a great system for co-op or vs Zombie adventures without accessing the storyline materials, not that I would throw shade at those who enjoy it that way.

We have played many games in my play group of Walking Dead, but since we use the build your own character rules and rarely use the named characters nobody I play with will care at all about the game ending.

We use the points build rules to create our actual families and try to equip them with items we actually have around our houses and play a "Hatfield vs McCoys" esque campaign. (I use a rebased kingpin clix for myself, one of the actual walking dead models for my wife, and pre-mutation BeBop ninja turtle clix for my son)

Smeagol - I owe this site a decent forum post. I'll write up an action report while I'm suffering through professional development sessions.

Fightcitymayor & Charlest - fair points. 'Call to Arms' was an easy lift for the company and a modest one for the customer base. I bought into it, but never played. And honestly, I didn't know anybody who played it. Personally, it just never appealed to me as much as a smaller force.
'Here's Negan' did have its moments, and I found it a pretty challenging solo game. I got pissy with the crafting side of things. I had to make all of my components back and white to match by minis. First world problems...

The Anthology is just great, and I really like having all of it bound into one volume. Still, I'm temped to bind it into a spiral. Then I ask myself, "why don't you just bind all of the expansions into a spiral too, then you'll have TWO copies?"

[Well, there is that neat alternative ruleset "Here's Rick."]