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 Azazelx wrote:

 agnosto wrote:

 Baragash wrote:

MaxT wrote:

YouKnowsIt wrote:
Remember the Elf Chariot had to fit in with the rest of the Elf line (their oldest models), so it's a stylistic limitation, not indicative of modern lines from Mantic.

I disagree. If you have a poor line of models (which fair to say the elves are) then you don't double down with gakky new models as well. You gotta improve them at some point, so may as well start now.

No.

If you're going to do that you relaunch the plastics and work from the base up. You don't piss off people that have already bought armies by changing the aesthetic at some random point.

So, you're saying it's better throw good money after bad? If they thought a rework was in order, they'd be better served to change the aesthetic now or just not release new kits until it's been done. No, I prefer to think that Mantic thinks the elves are fine as is or they wouldn't just throw money away; someone at Mantic likes the current look or we wouldn't see new, ugly kits...beauty and eye of the beholder, etc.

The issue is not about the aesthetic of those Elf chariots. It's with the execution. Keep the existing Mantic Elf aesthetic, but improve on the execution. This means produce a quality sculpt, not a gakky one. Simples.

Here's an example of keeping the early aesthetic but improving on the newer sculpts. From Mantic.

Spoiler:

Now even if you like the first model, the execution on the second one is far superior - and they both retain the same general aesthetic.

here's a GW example:

Spoiler:

Same deal. Sub-par models don't need to be followed up with more sub-par models. Keep the same general aesthetic, but improve on the sculpt. The Mantic plastic elves aren't that bad as sculpts anyway - I don't much like their skinny nature, but they're reasonable sculpts - but that chariot sculpt is far poorer than the plastic elves standing in them.

Anyway, we digress a little with this, but to bring it back to the main topic - while renders as shown above are a bit "safer", until they actually deliver on the Warpath KS models we won't know how well they turn out in hand. Mantic models based on concept art is far too much of a gamble, though - and the relevance of those chariots comes in at that point since they show that Mantic still finds terribly sub-par models to be acceptable quality to release in 2016 (yes, present-day argument). This unfortunately shows that they're more concerned with releasing anything that they consider "good enough" over having a minimum level of quality that represents quality. So anything without renders or a green is pledged for at our own risk.

Well said and some great examples.

I don't think those examples mesh stylisticly at all myself.

YouKnowsIt wrote:
I don't think those examples mesh stylisticly at all myself.

I agree that the second, the horsemen, not so much but I'd argue that the 1st example, of Mantic's work, maintains the same aesthetic but made for a cleaner, more well defined model. The design elements are all similar. The problem that I would see is that improving minis ad-hoc works well for heroes, which you would expect to look different form rank and file, but they would eventually need to rework the grunts as well.

The chariots are a niche choice for the Mantic range that is pretty universally seen as the weakest. While they are pretty poor models, I don't see them as indicative of their potential going forward.

In other words, of their current releases, if there was anything I'd want them to just poop out a product, it'd be the elf chariots.

This is essentially my Mantic dream game, the sci-fi rpg-lite I always wanted them to make. It just hits late in my Mantic-collecting (and miniature collecting) curve. I would've been in it come hell or high water a couple of years ago. Now I'm interested, but need convincing.

I'll be watching the campaign for committed statements about what the materials used will be (Deadzone 2-style PVC vs. Dungeon Saga PVC, etc.), whether or not the expansions will be coming with additional minis (otherwise they will not sell anywhere near $40 each at retail), and what the diversity and quality of the mini designs are. I expect this is going to be a completely CG sculpted game, like the Walking Dead and Dreadball 2.0; Mantic seem to have ceded the top-tier professional traditional sculptors to companies like CMON, where they continue to work alongside digital sculptors and frequently best them by turning in the most outstanding work. Mantic just isn't willing to pay for Jason Hendricks / French school of Rackham quality hand sculptors anymore. Still, some of Mantic's (freelance) digital sculptors are pretty talented (others not so much).

Personally, I think the Mantic of incredible $ deals is over. That may well reflect market realities / profit margins, but coupled with Mantic's tendency to go light on must-have exclusives, there's less and less reason to "buy in now!" on their KS campaigns. More and more, you need to do so for altruistic reasons, i.e., you just want to see the game get made. I could be persuaded on that basis - this is exactly the kind of game I've always wanted Mantic to make, as I said - but it's by nature a harder sell and requires more up-front evidence that the game will, in fact, be amazing when it ships. I'm not motivated to back any old sci-fi RPG lite boardgame, just a very good one that my family will enjoy. I'm willing to take the risk when the promise and evidence of design / execution is high, as I did with Black Plague, which has paid off in family play at my house in spades.

I will say that I hope there will be far more than 4 highly varied characters to field in the game by campaign's end. 4 is a puny amount when compared to the amount you get with CMON boardgames.

I had no problems with DZ2 Arrived quickly and correct. The metals are hit and miss if anything I would have wanted them to switch all the metals over. The fish guy, ogre and kalyishi are all average based on previous Mantic metals and the handful of other metals I've got. The orcs arms will need work. All the new PVC is really good. The new plastics are good too. not as crisp as something like malifuax. The steel warriors are a nice kit with room for customization. The mat and terrain are as good as well. The rule book had a fair amount of to be FAQ'd. Most are inconsequential spelling mistakes, but some were a fairly large oversights. The cardboard for tokens in DZ2 wasn't the best. The Infestation supplement was mostly error free.

The material switch was the only feth up on DZ2, If you consider a higher quality material a problem. I couldn't imagine the rat queen in metal lol.

The elf chariot is bad but seems old, like an older unreleased sculpt maybe? Aren't those horses used in another kit somewhere?

I won't be backing star saga as I want to move out of sci-fi for a bit. I wanted to buy TWD at retail but my shop is closed for a couple months. Maybe when they open back up.

Beasts of War Weekender had a bit about Star Saga

Here's some not yet seen artwork from the Weekender



Top left - Space "Vampire" she's a healer type that sucks life force and uses it to heal.
Teraton - Probably a Technician type
Top Right was described as a Robot nothing more on him/it
Bottom left - Forgefather with servo arm harness - he can deploy sentry guns
Bottom right - Chovar he's one of the 3 bosses in the game. They can store data so you'll probably have to retrieve it from one.

The first 4 are all stretch goals they are not in the base game.

Not much else revealed really just that teams are built using a point limit you are free to build and equip a team however you like within the point s limit.

That robot in the top right reminds me of the Advanced Scout from Infestation before they redid her art. Looks like her design might have been somewhat salvaged?

I'll be giving this a look come Monday at the very least. I can't help but be a sucker for most Mantic campaigns.

Wow mechachovar. Huh.

So we've got a

Wolverine enforcer
A Mastercheif enforcer
And now we have

A captain America enforcer

 Myrthe wrote:
"Dungeon Saga was praised ..." By whom ?!!
"Star Saga will feature ... more detailed, adcanced mechanics ...". Like they promised Dungeon Saga would during the Kickstarter to raise pledge levels only to fall WAY short in fulfillment ?!!

Mantic has run twelve Kickstarters to date. 12 !! They say they improve and learn with every one but read what customers have to say about them.

If you're interested, do yourself a favor and take a look at their KS history and read the comments. Do your due diligence before you choose to invest.

They lost me and my dollars with the way they botched Dungeon Saga with all the broken promises, pathetic delivery and offensive treatment of customers.

Yup. I've been a backer for most of the KSs and have been impressed in the wrong direction. They do each one the same. Half baked rules, minis thrown into tiny plastic baggies with no labeling or instructions (some of which tear open, leaking swords/legs/guns all over the box and who knows where), everything about all (literally all. no exceptions that I've seen) their KS projects is so amateur.

I've backed:
KoW
KoW2
Deadzone
Dungeon Saga (hugely disappointed with this one)
Warpath (just the rules)
Dreadball 2nd ed (just the rules)

They might get a buck from me to follow along, but otherwise I'm waiting for retail

It's live

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1744629938/star-saga-the-sci-fi-dungeon-crawler/description

Postage has to be paid as part of the pledge haven't seen that for awhile.

Is that design and art on the box, cards and tiles the finished article? It all looks a bit amateur.

Shipping October 2017.

It says All artwork not final, it looks like they are going for a case design for the box but yeah the tiles need a lot of work.

This is also the 2nd KS they have relied on renders only not a single miniature printed or painted which is not a good trend IMO.

I like the look of the 3D objectives as the first stretch goal hopefully they will make them available as optional purchases as well. It's clear that some of the stretch goals will be for alternate sculpts for the minions the video even briefly flashes through them.

Agreed, not a good trend at all, I just find it hard to back anything when you have no finished product to see. Mantic are a lot better at matching things up to renders and concept art now but there is always the worry that things will be changed in what an individual backer regards as a negative way. At least Mantic are giving themselves sensible lead time to do things properly, hopefully this turns I to a great deal for the backers.

Well, they have confirmed everything most people said about them. Checking out the page, looks horrible. As expected.

No actual painted minis, and the tiles....wow. Pretty sure I could give a kid crayons and let them draw on white paper and it would look better then those tiles.

Here's some of the unshown miniatures from the video, alt. Lab Technicians, Rangers, Strain


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Alpha rules

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dpdnbwngi71ybp7/Star%20Saga%20KS%20Alpha%20Rules%5B1%5D.pdf?dl=0

Gameplay video

I'm in for now. I liked Dungeon Saga so we'll see where this one goes. It does seem a little less "fancy" than DS did when it first launched if I remember right, but the sculpts look great so far.

I just hope they change the tiles. I've pledged for now but we'll see.

I backed for the early bird but for myriad reasons I foresee dropping out. Sometimes these are fun to watch though and who knows, they may hook me before it's over.

 MrDwhitey wrote:
I just hope they change the tiles. I've pledged for now but we'll see.

Same here. That was what really put me off DS. The tile artwork for Project Pandora was pretty good (as a point of reference for how these might look in the end) but I just can't stand those tiny corridor sections that are 1x1 or 2x1 because you are working with something that is not much bigger than a counter. Yes, adding a black border to the sides of the those tiles (ala Warhammer Quest, Space Hulk..) means they take up more space on the sheet but it makes for a much nicer board game 'piece'.

I'm also in with an Early Bird, but they're very much going to have to work to keep me with this one. I'm very disappointed with the DS Adventurer's Companion, so I'm going to need to see some details on the character and mission creators to stay in at the end.

I want a highly customizable dungeon crawler with plenty of support for using my imagination and Mantic minis collections to keep playing, and that's what I thought I was getting with DS (specifically the Adventurer's Companion.) What we got there was some half-baked add-ons to Jake Thornton's Heroquest clone on rails. I'm not going to back something like that again.

 DaveC wrote:
It says All artwork not final, it looks like they are going for a case design for the box but yeah the tiles need a lot of work.

This is also the 2nd KS they have relied on renders only not a single miniature printed or painted which is not a good trend IMO.

I like the look of the 3D objectives as the first stretch goal hopefully they will make them available as optional purchases as well. It's clear that some of the stretch goals will be for alternate sculpts for the minions the video even briefly flashes through them.

Yeah, lots of warning signs here - I think this one has become a definite 'wait until retail' for me.

$100k funding goal met on to Stretch goal #1 - 3D objectives. The samples in the video look very nice and will add in well to Deadzone terrain. The video also shows 3 types of benches I guess the final make up of the set depends on mold limits.

Our first goal, at $130,000, will fund the additional tooling required to upgrade the scenery in your pledge from printed cardboard to 3D plastic, including laboratory desks, crates, and computer terminals. This will also give us back some space on the tile sheets for a few more corridors to make larger and more interesting map layouts!

Minis are same plastics as Walking Dead, which are fantabulous, so for once in a Mantic KS I actually have no concern over the quality of the final miniatures.

If the Walking Dead stuff is at least comparable to what I got with Deadzone Infestation, at the very least I've got no worries about material quality.

I hope they learned a lesson about packaging adds on and expansions. Hopefully no more weird boxes!

I did notice that the base game will ship alone, with all add ons coming later. That's a good sign that maybe packaging will be better taken care of. Hopefully.

I'm more worried about the cardstock used for the tiles, counters and cards. Only good cardstock I've had from Mantic was DB1. The tiles are only 2.5 and Mantic are not known for their quality items. Though I am impressed that the box content will have vac formed plastic to put your goods in.

I'm in for $1 for now. We'll see h things go with this. There's a few things I see that I like though. I like that we're apparently getting new versions of the DZ1 mercs. Wrath's new design looks good and I'm totally down for another Survivor.

They mentioned that they might do a Mercenaries supplement for Deadzone at a later date and that could include rules for the Star Saga mercenaries.

3D objectives unlocked

We are still finalising the exact tooling capacity, but the total number of scenery pieces in the game will be around 30 - a mix of tables, crates, cabinets, containment tanks, and computer terminals.

So what's up next? Can you say new character?

An exciting feature of Star Saga is the ability to use any character to play through the story. This goal will give you more choice to do just that – we will upgrade the core game with Alyse, a member of the secretive race known as the Kayowa. She has the ability to drain the life-force of her enemies, and can even redirect this energy back into her comrades, healing their wounds, making her an invaluable member of any infiltration team.

When we hit $150,000, Alyse will be added into the Star Saga core game as a playable character, along with her character card. We will post more on Alyse's story in a future update. Let's go get her!

Mantic Games

Oops, sorry. I can't count... I must have included some doors - it's more like 20-25 scenery pieces not counting the doors. Ideal plan is 6 terminals, 6 tables, 6 crates, 6 cabinets, and 2 containment tanks, of varying designs, but I will probably have to cut one or two when I get the final tooling plan back. I've tweaked the update.

more of the 3D objectives