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What happened at Mantic that caused the shift from the awesome, large sprues of their early days, then to the smaller sprues, and now to Restic/crappy sprues?

Is it a case of, the company had a big loan at the start and used that capital to pay out for some really nice sprues to start with, and then the capital began to dry up, and they had to use the money from sales alone to fund new projects, and eventually that became untenable, hence the shift to kickstarter?

In any case, I think they will do long term harm if they can't get control of their QA. We're a picky bunch with high standards.

 Da Boss wrote:
What happened at Mantic that caused the shift from the awesome, large sprues of their early days, then to the smaller sprues, and now to Restic/crappy sprues?

Is it a case of, the company had a big loan at the start and used that capital to pay out for some really nice sprues to start with, and then the capital began to dry up, and they had to use the money from sales alone to fund new projects, and eventually that became untenable, hence the shift to kickstarter?

In any case, I think they will do long term harm if they can't get control of their QA. We're a picky bunch with high standards.

That's exactly the case. They had a large startup fund (no idea where from!) and used it to produce large plastic sprues for the Elves then Undead. Dwarfs came next and started having smaller sprues and then the Orcs had even smaller sprues after that. At that point the startup capital was burnt through and yes they were relying on funding from sales.

I spoke to Ronnie at one point after they were starting to bring out restic figures and he said that if he could go back and do it all again then he'd have done units such as the elf scouts, balefire etc in restic. Unfortunately at the time they overestimated how much return they'd make and hadn't even considered restic as a material (let alone the learning steps that came with it).

And yes it will do long term harm if they don't get control, and already has. It does seem that they have learnt from their mistakes with Dreadball (better stretches, sculpting etc), Deadzone (absolutely top quality models and terrain) and Mars Attacks (extra time added on for their expected delivery to allow for unforeseen problems). The Kings of War kickstarter was an absolute rush job, and knowing Ronnie would have been a Friday afternoon "Hey this kickstarter thing looks pretty cool - throw something up on there by the end of the day will you?" idea. They certainly didn't make a big announcement of it and hadn't planned much before the kickstarter. They didn't leave themselves enough breathing room for delivery and the stretch goals were too small for things like shipping, resculpting etc. The Men At Arms suffered the worst for it since Mantic couldn't afford to and didn't have the time to tool a replacement sprue. Not a great situation at all and wasn't handled very well, but the future is looking brighter with the DZ and Mars Attacks kickstarters.

I didn't think they looked too horrible to begin with, but those mods on the previous page actually made them look pretty damn nice.

Quesiton though, has anyone tried using Fireforge, Perry, or GW helmetted knight heads? I'd bet that using a helmet that actually covers the entire face and is maybe a smidge larger would really help their overall look.

Thanks for the spear conversion, I think I might do the same! Looks much better. Also going to try adding a few elohi heads.

 Daedleh wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
What happened at Mantic that caused the shift from the awesome, large sprues of their early days, then to the smaller sprues, and now to Restic/crappy sprues?

Is it a case of, the company had a big loan at the start and used that capital to pay out for some really nice sprues to start with, and then the capital began to dry up, and they had to use the money from sales alone to fund new projects, and eventually that became untenable, hence the shift to kickstarter?

In any case, I think they will do long term harm if they can't get control of their QA. We're a picky bunch with high standards.

That's exactly the case. They had a large startup fund (no idea where from!) and used it to produce large plastic sprues for the Elves then Undead. Dwarfs came next and started having smaller sprues and then the Orcs had even smaller sprues after that. At that point the startup capital was burnt through and yes they were relying on funding from sales.

I spoke to Ronnie at one point after they were starting to bring out restic figures and he said that if he could go back and do it all again then he'd have done units such as the elf scouts, balefire etc in restic. Unfortunately at the time they overestimated how much return they'd make and hadn't even considered restic as a material (let alone the learning steps that came with it).

And yes it will do long term harm if they don't get control, and already has. It does seem that they have learnt from their mistakes with Dreadball (better stretches, sculpting etc), Deadzone (absolutely top quality models and terrain) and Mars Attacks (extra time added on for their expected delivery to allow for unforeseen problems). The Kings of War kickstarter was an absolute rush job, and knowing Ronnie would have been a Friday afternoon "Hey this kickstarter thing looks pretty cool - throw something up on there by the end of the day will you?" idea. They certainly didn't make a big announcement of it and hadn't planned much before the kickstarter. They didn't leave themselves enough breathing room for delivery and the stretch goals were too small for things like shipping, resculpting etc. The Men At Arms suffered the worst for it since Mantic couldn't afford to and didn't have the time to tool a replacement sprue. Not a great situation at all and wasn't handled very well, but the future is looking brighter with the DZ and Mars Attacks kickstarters.

This is something I have been telling people in forums and youtube comments. Mantic is not focusing in their core games (Warpath and KOW).

The KoW kickstarter has only just finished and they're still releasing models to retail from it. Warpath is getting love via Deadzone. Not only is Deadzone being used as an intro game for Warpath, it's being used to fill out the niche models so that a full launch of Warpath can concentrate on the core models.

I'm using Deadzone to fill my two Warpath armies: Orx and Enforcers. I also have regular corporation, but with 100-some of the little bastards, I think my horde is okay as is.

Deadzone looks pretty promising. I will keep an eye on the releases. Love the Enforcer design. A good hard plastic sprue would get a bit of money from me!

I will have pictures up tomorrow morning, hopefully, of the front rank of my new and improved MaAs using a combo of what I was already doing with some suggestions from bobtheinquisitor. Hopefully it encourages people to not write their own MaAs off as a total loss.

 Barzam wrote:
I didn't think they looked too horrible to begin with, but those mods on the previous page actually made them look pretty damn nice.

Quesiton though, has anyone tried using Fireforge, Perry, or GW helmetted knight heads? I'd bet that using a helmet that actually covers the entire face and is maybe a smidge larger would really help their overall look.

I've mostly been concerned about using "just what's in the box", but I will save 5 or so MaA to use GW parts on. When I get to them, I'll put up some pics, but it might be a while.

So does anyone have a comparison of the quality of the Men at arms vs the Paladins?

Because I have a box of the paladins, and while I think they're dandy (Bit of a gap with gluing the arms, but nothing severe), I'm curious how similar or dissimilar they are from the M@A.

 darkPrince010 wrote:
So does anyone have a comparison of the quality of the Men at arms vs the Paladins?

Because I have a box of the paladins, and while I think they're dandy (Bit of a gap with gluing the arms, but nothing severe), I'm curious how similar or dissimilar they are from the M@A.

They don't really look very similar at all. The Paladins look much more like the Elohi, except that their heads are in helmets, and they are a bit more stout. The Men at Arms look more like the guys you take pictures with at Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament. Their heads, arms, weapons and torsos are completely different proportions compared to the Paladins, and the armor does not have the same look to it.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
I will have pictures up tomorrow morning, hopefully, of the front rank of my new and improved MaAs using a combo of what I was already doing with some suggestions from bobtheinquisitor. Hopefully it encourages people to not write their own MaAs off as a total loss.

I am still looking forward to seeing them. It's nice to see someone actually paint the MaA.

Here are some pictures I took of the Basilean Sisters with WGF Amazon arms.

In this view you can see a lot of what worked and what didn't. The model on the left had a better torso/shoulder, so I gave it the better WGF arms, and it looks quite good. The mini on the right's torso had severely-sloped shoulders which would have made any arms look terrible, but make the WGF obligatory 'awkward arms' look even worse. It doesn't help that all of the sisters have extremely long and nightmarish necks. Believe it or not, the one on the right was the best fit out of the four remaining sampler heads. If I ever do decide I like the sisters models, I may have to use WGF heads, too. At that point, I might just use WGF models altogether, which are $20 for 30, or roughly a million times better of a deal than anything Mantic sells. (Man, this KS has really hurt Mantic's standing with me.)


Here is a nice side-rear view for you to absorb the assemblage of bleh parts into a holistic mehness that defies enthusiasm.


"Fetish-fuel cosplay in the hizzouse! Whoop! Whoop!"



And then this happened.



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I think that's Magneto at Renn Faire.

Eccentric's arms don't look too bad.. would they make a decent replacement for the regular MAA arms?

At least the posing on them looks a lot more normal and the chainmail has detail.

And yeah I don't know what the hell went wrong with the sisters, but they're going to involve a lot of snipping that I'll do at some point when I can be bothered to.

 scarletsquig wrote:
Eccentric's arms don't look too bad.. would they make a decent replacement for the regular MAA arms?

At least the posing on them looks a lot more normal and the chainmail has detail.

And yeah I don't know what the hell went wrong with the sisters, but they're going to involve a lot of snipping that I'll do at some point when I can be bothered to.

They would not work for MaA arms--they are much too small. The hand would hang only to the hip. Everyone would call your soldier "T-Rex", but not because he's a big, vicious carnivore.

Here you can see them next to some other Mantic minis:


I like the Eccentric minis, although I think they are a bit too small to use with most other minis. They also tend to look bland in large numbers, in my opinion.


As for the sisters... Some day I hope Mantic puts up a Kickstarter to fund a documentary/docudrama about the KoW Kickstarter and what went wrong, ideally with the same light-hearted tone as The Pentagon Wars or The Late Shift. I would pledge well for that.


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The more I look at that first sister's hat (and whip), the more I am reminded of this guy.

Thanks for that pic... the nice thing about them being a bit on the small side is that it looks like the heads will at least be a good fit.

At the moment I'm just putting together paladins, paladin knights, angels and characters first; then once they're painted I'll start to bother looking at the rest of the army.

By that point the Perry foot knights will be out so I can see if I want to grab some of those for the MAA instead.

What happened to the guy in the far right?

I think that's an elf body with a serious case of "roman bobble head".

I like to ...experiment.

*shifts glasses to reflect glare*

It's a WGF Hoplite head (and shield) on a Mantic Elf. Different versions of "true 28mm" scale, I guess.

I love the Roman?(Or maybe greek?) with the machine gun. Cant help but think he has an unfair advantage for his time period. At least until he runs outta ammo.

Bob, you are seriously cracking me up man. Those pictures with your commentary are hilarious.

 carlos13th wrote:
I love the Roman?(Or maybe greek?) with the machine gun. Cant help but think he has an unfair advantage for his time period. At least until he runs outta ammo.

Yeah... before DFG's plastics, most of my sci-fi indulgences involved using historical minis and adding guns. I tend to get about 10 to 15 of them done before I burn out and shove the rest of the nearly-full box into the closet. I blame R. M. Meluch's hilarious Merrimac series for this. (The gun arms are from the Defiance Games UAMC. For some reason, I get a little naughty tingle when I kitbash them with WGF bits.)

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Thanks Gallahad!

Got any painted. They would work well as Caesar's legion from Fallout: NV.

 carlos13th wrote:
Got any painted. They would work well as Caesar's legion from Fallout: NV.

Me? Models? Painted?

I no understanding.

I am back to show some other things I've done with the MaA. I used some GW bits, including the requested Knight head (with more to come on that in the next wave), as well as a WGF Hoplite's head.


Left to right: GW Empire State Troops sword arms and Chaos Marauder head, EST crossbow, EST halberd, EST swords with MaA head. I plan to add shields to the swordsmen, but wanted to get pics of their arms for comparison.


I think the GW arms look pretty good as unarmored arms, but the GW heads are too large to accompany them on an MaA torso.


Any pair of arms that hold the same weapon will result in hideous gaps that will be harder to fill than the hole in a Browncoat's heart after Serenity. In advice eerily similar to Dr Ruth's, I suggest using copious feathers.


Left: (Mantic dwarf head and hammer) Garreck always wondered why his father hated the dwarf mailman so much. His mother liked him just fine.
Middle: (GW Emp. Knight head and Pistolier hammer) Sir Timmus never entered or left battle without sufficient head protection.
Right: (WGF Hoplite head, Chaos Marauder arms) Leonardus was the king of the clubbing scene at The Hot Gates.


Abbey Path to Victory.


Only one of these guys has the guns for 40k.


For the sake of completion, my spearmen that I made with my patent-pending feather-brooch method.




I think I'm going to write Mantic about this one. I think my sampler Brock was in thoroughly used condition. At first, I was delighted that Mantic had designed an armored diaper for the brock, but now I'm starting to think this one was just unlucky.

If you read the KoW rulebook there's actually some background text about what dwarfs like to get up to with their badgers.

Is there seriously a separate buttplug piece though? That's hilarious, kinda wish I'd spend more time looking at mine before trading them away now.

Let us know what Mantic's response is.

There was no plug piece in my kit, which is what clued me in that this was less awesome and more... brockse.

EDIT: Also, his back left foot is a melty stump. So, I'm just going to chalk it up to a rather unfortunate miscast.

EDIT: Those are shoulder plates that have the wrong tabs for my Brock and will not fit.

The EST arms certainly make the MAA look a lot better, I have to admit. I still wouldn't buy any but hopefully it can help people like SS who are stuck with piles of the things...

Hahaha! Bob, I really enjoy your chimera projects. That dwarf at the left is really hilarious!

Getting back to topic. So it is better to buy Perrys men at arms to avoid having to spend more money to repair the Mantic ones? unless you already have spare GW bitz

Yeah. Either Perry minis, Fireforge minis or Gripping Beast minis. I think I prefer Gripping Beasts minis because they look slightly more heroic in scale and should fit in with my Reaper Bones models better.

Of course, their weedy swords will need to be replaced with my spare MaA swords. For science.