Hello everyone, Ronnie here.  I meant to post this on Friday, but it’s been so hectic here since the move.  But what a move!  We’ve got internet that’s faster than a snail’s pace, plenty of space for everyone, and so much news coming over the next days and weeks, you won’t believe it.  We’ve also got a special surprise up our sleeves for you. Apologies that this didn’t appear on schedule though.

DreadBall is currently Mantic’s bestselling game to date; although it is rapidly getting caught up by Deadzone and Mars Attacks (MA looks on course to be the biggest outright, simply by its launch!).

What is the Azure Forest Limited Edition of DreadBall?

This summer, DreadBall will be getting its 5^th printing, which is an amazing achievement for any table-top game, and it’s all thanks to you guys!
Interestingly, only half of the first print run went to Kickstarter backers – all the rest have been sold by our independent stores, with a few going from Mantic directly at shows or online. Every single one of those 5 print runs have been packed here in the UK, and then shipped around the world. The components have come from many different suppliers, all around the world, including the UK, China, and Lithuania. It has been a fun challenge bringing in all the bits needed for the game from so many places and keeping it in stock for the past 18 months (that’s right DreadBall is only 1 ½ years old!!!!) but now, it is time for a change.

At the end of summer the 6^th Edition will be printed and packed by the same company that handles DeadZone and Mars Attacks. They can now source all of the components directly at the quality we need.
This has the added advantage of allowing the team here in the UK to concentrate this summer on packing (carefully!) and shipping nearly 7500 Kickstarter orders, plus all the usual trade and mail orders! We are expecting to be busy! We will get delivery of the 6^th print run of the main DreadBall game in early autumn (or fall depending where you live). Oh, and we will no longer need to call it DreadBall Deluxe – it will be back to the original-is-best plain DreadBall. DreadBall Kick-Off will continue to run down over the summer, and will be discontinued at the end of this print run, so if you want a copy, now is the time to grab that.

So to celebrate the fifth printing we have decided to do a very cool one-off only Azure Forest Edition – celebrating this year’s expansion – and perhaps a nod in the direction of another major sporting event in a rainforest this summer

This Azure Forest boxed set is strictly limited to just 750 copies, and we have produced it for 3 main reasons…

1.  It will celebrate the fifth and final packing of Dreadball in the UK and be a fitting way to end the production here.
2. –        It will mean that people can buy DreadBall in 2 ways over the summer:
   1. The Kick-Off version (if they want to give it a try for the lowest cost possible – and then come back to upgrade it later, of course!!)
      OR
   2. The Azure Forest Edition which has all of the basic game components – AND includes the Azure Forest book, cards and pitch – plus A’teo “The Savage”, the MVP from the expansion.

 The Azure Forest version will also come with the very cool Azure Forest arena pitch – and will look very much like this…. and its own unique limited edition box.

1.  It will allow us to print the Azure Forest pitch, which a number of people have been asking us for since we did the expansion earlier this year. We will be able to make that available separately for anyone who doesn’t want a full new version of the game too, although again that will be in very limited numbers.
   This is made up from the last of the print run of the Azure Forest books, and once it’s all gone, it’s all gone.  We’re not reprinting any of this once it goes out of stock, so please do grab a copy as soon as you can.
2. Oh, and it is cool – I know that makes it 4 reasons, but you know, what the heck!

I am sure this will mean DreadBall continues its march to top of the leader board and remains entrenched as a fan favourite for Mantic Games. It is a great celebration for our first game to sail pass the 10,000 copies mark, and keeps the attention focused on this most special of games – ahead of season 4 and Xtreme later in the year!

Best wishes and thanks for reading.

PS.  Look out for other big news over the coming week – we’ve got some really great stuff coming up for you, and we couldn’t do it without you all, so thank you for supporting us and allowing us to bring you great games for everyone to enjoy.