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So, I wanted to grow my Undead army in this new year. I thought I would share some research I did.

I have 100 dollars USD to work with

Mantic games, 110 model undead army (40 skellies, 20 heavy skellies ala grave guard, 20 ghouls, 30 zombies) plus another skellie regiment box at 25 puts me at $105
, $109 shipped. Over my limit, but not unreasonably so.

Games Workshop = to get the same amount of models (130) I would have to pay $315.50 USD. Even with thewarstore's 20% off, it would be $252.40 which is over 2 times the price of the mantic stuff.

Wargames factory also has an undead kit, their skeleton kit. While not having any modles for ghouls or zombies, to get the same amount of models as the other options (130) I would have to buy 4 sets of WGF skellies coming in roughly at $60 USD. Considering the cons of the kit, and the fact that there are no options to give the skellies heavier armor, this seems a fair price for a lower end of the spectrum kit.

Just thought I'd share my findings. Keep in mind that all the companies do bigger deals from time to time.

Fantasy has always cost more, since there are so many models to. GW does have it's prices higher than I would like, but... I bought everything I would need two years ago. Now I just drop maybe $15 USD here and there on old OOP models.

You think $41 for 10 grave guard is an acceptable price?

lord marcus wrote:You think $41 for 10 grave guard is an acceptable price?

Well no one should be paying retail in the first place. So really 10 GG are $29-33 depending where you buy(I get 30% off all the time). Now $2.9 per model is a lot sure. There are other things that factor in to the decision of buying:

1. Where you will play. If a GW store is the ONLY place locally to play, then the decision to buy only their models is pretty much made for you.
2. Looks. Some people prefer the GW look over other companies offerings, and vice versa.
3. Cohesion. Some people already own GW models of the same type, so they will buy GW to keep their force looking the same.
4. Business practices. Some people outright boycott GW regardless of the models they release.

For me, it comes down to 1 and 2. I like the look of the GW models for the armies I play. And until I find players locally that have tables at their homes, a GW store is the only option for me to get a game in at.

Aerethan wrote:

lord marcus wrote:You think $41 for 10 grave guard is an acceptable price?

Well no one should be paying retail in the first place. So really 10 GG are $29-33 depending where you buy(I get 30% off all the time). Now $2.9 per model is a lot sure. There are other things that factor in to the decision of buying:

1. Where you will play. If a GW store is the ONLY place locally to play, then the decision to buy only their models is pretty much made for you.
2. Looks. Some people prefer the GW look over other companies offerings, and vice versa.
3. Cohesion. Some people already own GW models of the same type, so they will buy GW to keep their force looking the same.
4. Business practices. Some people outright boycott GW regardless of the models they release.

For me, it comes down to 1 and 2. I like the look of the GW models for the armies I play. And until I find players locally that have tables at their homes, a GW store is the only option for me to get a game in at.

Not exactly true.

If you know your local gaming populace, and organize, you can have a club set up in no time flat. And, with the money you would save not buying GW, you could make a storage-possible table for war-gaming in your own home.

Think outside the box of "I'm stuck with this."

Not everyone has room for a table, and some people are just that stubborn that they only want to play at a store.

Now I'm not saying that number 1 should be the ONLY deciding factor, but for some people it IS still something that has to be considered.

For me, number one only hurts as I can't use Avatars of War models for characters, which isn't the biggest financial problem, but an aesthetic problem as I love the ones I have.

For VC troops, I prefer the GW realistic skulls over all the cartoonish ones out there. If there's one thing GW knows, it's skulls!

Aerethan wrote:Not everyone has room for a table, and some people are just that stubborn that they only want to play at a store.

Now I'm not saying that number 1 should be the ONLY deciding factor, but for some people it IS still something that has to be considered.

For me, number one only hurts as I can't use Avatars of War models for characters, which isn't the biggest financial problem, but an aesthetic problem as I love the ones I have.

For VC troops, I prefer the GW realistic skulls over all the cartoonish ones out there. If there's one thing GW knows, it's skulls!

Very True. I prefer to think Mantic's skulls are more army of darkness in look.

Not to mention Feebay has offered up more than one decent find for me.
Even if you go the "cheap" route, you can snag up great bits cheap to add
to the cheaper ones.
Just my$.02.

Mantic advantages:

1) you dont have price hikes each year, indeed, when their models get low sales, or they are in good mood, they just set discounts.

2) prices can grow, but they do so when nessecery, and normally they explain why.

3) i like he look of Mantic undead, and find GW ones to be much "humoristic", the strange proportions of GW in undeads have not good effects for my taste.

The big (not so) ugly problem: you play on GW shop? Well, they suck, so they need sucking rules to control the market. If this is a problem for you, go GW, if not, i would go Mantic all the way...

Mantic disadvantages:

1) Mantic's miniatures.

I own Mantic undead, they look amazing so does all that have seen them and compared them in person with GW ones.

LunaHound wrote:I own Mantic undead, they look amazing so does all that have seen them and compared them in person with GW ones.

I also own them and can say that while they have a great price, they severely lack the extra bits needed to add a bit of diversity to your ranks.

BrookM wrote:

LunaHound wrote:I own Mantic undead, they look amazing so does all that have seen them and compared them in person with GW ones.

I also own them and can say that while they have a great price, they severely lack the extra bits needed to add a bit of diversity to your ranks.

How about the sculpt and quality? what do you think of them?

LunaHound wrote:

BrookM wrote:

LunaHound wrote:I own Mantic undead, they look amazing so does all that have seen them and compared them in person with GW ones.

I also own them and can say that while they have a great price, they severely lack the extra bits needed to add a bit of diversity to your ranks.

How about the sculpt and quality? what do you think of them?

When compared to the decade old competition, yes they look sharp, but the lack of extra bits to customize them is still a bad thing and should not be overlooked in favour of sharp casts.

LunaHound wrote:I own Mantic undead, they look amazing so does all that have seen them and compared them in person with GW ones.

So they compare favourably to what is probably GW's weakest range. That's not exactly a ringing endorsement.

I would love to get behind Mantic, but so far their Undead are the only range they have that I could get enthusiastic enough about to paint, and even then it would only be select parts of the range.

insaniak wrote:

LunaHound wrote:I own Mantic undead, they look amazing so does all that have seen them and compared them in person with GW ones.

So they compare favourably to what is probably GW's weakest range. That's not exactly a ringing endorsement.

I would love to get behind Mantic, but so far their Undead are the only range they have that I could get enthusiastic enough about to paint, and even then it would only be select parts of the range.

I dont know who they is, but as far as im concerned OP of this thread is asking about skeletons.
And thats what Im going to approve, Mantic skeletons.

VC just came out, I wouldn't call them the weakest range

BrookM wrote:How about the sculpt and quality? what do you think of them?

When compared to the decade old competition, yes they look sharp, but the lack of extra bits to customize them is still a bad thing and should not be overlooked in favour of sharp casts.

lord marcus wrote:You think $41 for 10 grave guard is an acceptable price?

Yes.

Try paying the equivalent of $72.00 US for a box of them!

LunaHound wrote:VC just came out, I wouldn't call them the weakest range

There's some nice new shiny in there, but the number of models still in the range that are from the '90s and weren't really great even then is a little disappointing. Fell Bats, Spirit Host, Bat Swarm, Zombies (which admittedly weren't bad for their time, but are looking a little dated), Crypt Ghouls (more recent release, but incredibly fugly), The Black Coach (suffering from still using those terribly cartoony skeletal horses)...

Personally, I prefer the Mantic Dwarves to the GW version. Every single GW dwarf I've seen slouches and has a beer belly - not exactly a good look for what is supposed to be a proud and hardy folk. The Mantic dwarves are upright, broad-shouldered, and trim in the waist... relatively, anyway. They are noticeable thicker in build than a human or elf, but... well, dwarves aren't supposed to be scrawny!

I'll grant you the lack of optional parts means less customization out of the box. But if I can get over a hundred Mantic dwarves for $80, I can afford to spring for a GW box for bitz... or better yet, cherry-pick the ones I want from one of the e-bay bitz distributors for far less.

insaniak wrote:

LunaHound wrote:VC just came out, I wouldn't call them the weakest range

There's some nice new shiny in there, but the number of models still in the range that are from the '90s and weren't really great even then is a little disappointing. Fell Bats, Spirit Host, Bat Swarm, Zombies (which admittedly weren't bad for their time, but are looking a little dated), Crypt Ghouls (more recent release, but incredibly fugly), The Black Coach (suffering from still using those terribly cartoony skeletal horses)...

I know there are out dated stuff in GW VC, but my point is, an update wass a chance to make the out dated stuff up to par.
The fact that GW didnt update them and hence their range being weak is their own problem and fault, not the customer's.

LunaHound wrote:I know there are out dated stuff in GW VC, but my point is, an update wass a chance to make the out dated stuff up to par.
The fact that GW didnt update them and hence their range being weak is their own problem and fault, not the customer's.

Who was talking about it being anyone's fault?

The point you were arguing against was that the claim that Mantic's miniatures are good on the basis of a comparison between Mantic's best range and GW's weakest doesn't hold a lot of water.

When they were updated, and whose fault it is that the range is weak is completely irrelevant to that point.

insaniak wrote:

LunaHound wrote:I know there are out dated stuff in GW VC, but my point is, an update wass a chance to make the out dated stuff up to par.
The fact that GW didnt update them and hence their range being weak is their own problem and fault, not the customer's.

Who was talking about it being anyone's fault?

The point you were arguing against was that the claim that Mantic's miniatures are good on the basis of a comparison between Mantic's best range and GW's weakest doesn't hold a lot of water.

When they were updated, and whose fault it is that the range is weak is completely irrelevant to that point.

customer will still gravitate towards the better specific product , e.g OP

especially zombies for sculpt and value , and ghouls and skeletons for decent sculpt and great value

insaniak wrote:Mantic disadvantages:

1) Mantic's miniatures.

The only line of Mantic's figures that I would really consider playing is their undead. So if you need undead figures, Mantic might be a good buy, but I'm not sold on any of their other lines yet. Hoping for good things for their Corporation line.

Mantic arn't that bad.

HI folks.
Asthetics are subjective.
(Some one thought the 'pumbagor'/chaos ogres were good at some point .)

You may not like the sculp style of Mantic minatures .You may prefer more variation in the 'ranks'.

These are you personal subjective views.

If I want to put 100s of minatures on the table to play a game,and MANTIC are HALF the cost of GW offerings.

I would want GWs product to be at least twice as good, or I would not concider it.

I buy minatures to play the game, not for display, so my views may differ from yours.

(If I was buying for display AoW , PP, and other companies do awsome sculpts too,)

Might as well use plastic army men as Imperial Guard while we're at it, since looks don't matter.

Other companies do single character models quite well, and AoW is starting to get into the rank and file market which looks good so far.

My point stands that GW's skeletons for VC are the most realistic looking skeletons in the market. As much as I hate to give GW my money, they are the winners of the skeleton world for me. I would love it if another company had something proper to compete with, but everyone else's skeletons look cartoony.

If aesthetics truly did not matter at all, it is very easy to play WHFB using only movement trays.

add in a few dice to keep track of Rank and file members, maybe a base for each member of the command group and Characters and few rods glued down to act as height markers for LOS.

Combine this with the fact that you now have an "army" that can be fielded as whatever you want and it is significantly less expensive than any army of models.



My brother and I decided to both get into fantasy and while i was home for that holidays we used a couple of sets of movement trays to have a series of proxy battles to decide which armies we wanted to invest in. There were no problems with playing the game this way. There were no rules issues that came up and we were ably to play with 3-4 armies each with a minimal investment.

Aerethan wrote:Might as well use plastic army men as Imperial Guard while we're at it, since looks don't matter.

This is an argumentative fallacy. "Aesthetics are subjective" does not equate to "aesthetics don't matter". Maybe some players prefer GW, some Mantic. That doesn't make one the "correct" choice.

insaniak wrote:

LunaHound wrote:I own Mantic undead, they look amazing so does all that have seen them and compared them in person with GW ones.

So they compare favourably to what is probably GW's weakest range. That's not exactly a ringing endorsement.

I would love to get behind Mantic, but so far their Undead are the only range they have that I could get enthusiastic enough about to paint, and even then it would only be select parts of the range.

This is my problem with Mantic :-/

Hoping they improve a bit...

Mantic's skeletons look like something from the movie Nightmare before Christmas.