Hahaha, yes think that is definitely going to benefit from a Haters gonna hate slogan at the bottom of it.

New Dakka rule: That picture with slogan posted every time Kroothawk posts in a Mantic thread

Like the look of those rebel/hell-father minis though!

These minis are looking great. Not regretting going in deep for this one from what we've see so far.

Why hullo thar Helfather! That looks fan-freaking-tastic. Fear his power-stilts!

And the other one is just damn classy.

Great stuff all around.

 Yonan wrote:

 scarletsquig wrote:
^ Yeah, the decision to replace dwarves with orcs and goblins in the new 2-player set was a very good one.

Shows off Mantic's best model ranges, and makes the overall set much better value for money since I can see myself making both Orc and Undead armies because the minis are:

a) Gorgeous and
b) Soooo cheap. They're running a sale at the moment where the box is £40 instead of £50.. combine that with internet retailer discount (I found it at 35% off), and it ends up costing around 30p/mini, some of which is cavalry and the really nice restic wraiths. No-brainer purchase.

What discounts/sites are these? I'm keen on picking up some mantic fantasy stuff cheap cheap!

Source, Squiggy?
I've been poking around. I can't find anything like that from my usuals, either (Firestorm/Troll Trader). Actually, I can't find it for £40 let alone £40 with 35% off...

Stuff is looking good. I went in pretty light on the actual models on the first survey due to my worries based on the KoW results but I'm thinking I'm going to be adding quite a bit of paintable models for the second wave

 Azazelx wrote:

 Yonan wrote:

 scarletsquig wrote:
^ Yeah, the decision to replace dwarves with orcs and goblins in the new 2-player set was a very good one.

Shows off Mantic's best model ranges, and makes the overall set much better value for money since I can see myself making both Orc and Undead armies because the minis are:

a) Gorgeous and
b) Soooo cheap. They're running a sale at the moment where the box is £40 instead of £50.. combine that with internet retailer discount (I found it at 35% off), and it ends up costing around 30p/mini, some of which is cavalry and the really nice restic wraiths. No-brainer purchase.

What discounts/sites are these? I'm keen on picking up some mantic fantasy stuff cheap cheap!

Source, Squiggy?
I've been poking around. I can't find anything like that from my usuals, either (Firestorm/Troll Trader). Actually, I can't find it for £40 let alone £40 with 35% off...

Total Wargamer, as mentioned by others. The much-maligned UK store that I keep ordering from due to super-cheap Mantic. Not really an option for US/Aus, though.

They still have it for £40 on the Mantic webstore, and it's quite easy to qualify for free shipping: http://www.manticgames.com/Shop-Home/Kings-of-War/Getting-Started/Product/Kings-of-War-Two-Player-Battle-Set.html

Fair enough, since you didn't name them in the earlier post I thought it might have been another vendor.

Looks like the free shipping offer from Wayland atm can get the same stuff for a fair bit cheaper with that hideous shipping factored in. An undead army deal at Wayland was $80 compared to $75 at Total Wargamer. With $0 shipping however, compared to ~$22. Pretty much guaranteed to be picking up Dreadball season 3 from them before the end of the free shipping promotion too.

Just a little nugget of information. Seems like Mantic are working on an app for Dreadball. I wonder what it will entail? Team rosters maybe? (Jake mentioned this in his comments)

http://quirkworthy.com/2013/09/15/deadzone-campaign-rules/#comments

An app for deadzone to help manage your strike force would be great. Dreadball doesn't need one as much but could still be useful so count me in if they make one. More software based assists for tabletop gaming would be great given the prevalence of lappies and tablets.

overtyrant wrote:
Just a little nugget of information. Seems like Mantic are working on an app for Dreadball. I wonder what it will entail? Team rosters maybe? (Jake mentioned this in his comments)

http://quirkworthy.com/2013/09/15/deadzone-campaign-rules/#comments

I wouldn't hold your breath, they've had a KoW app in production for at least 3 years. Completed it and Apple declined it.

Interesting.

Tell me more.

 scarletsquig wrote:

overtyrant wrote:
Just a little nugget of information. Seems like Mantic are working on an app for Dreadball. I wonder what it will entail? Team rosters maybe? (Jake mentioned this in his comments)

http://quirkworthy.com/2013/09/15/deadzone-campaign-rules/#comments

I wouldn't hold your breath, they've had a KoW app in production for at least 3 years. Completed it and Apple declined it.

Well there are a lot more smart devices out ther other then Apple so fingers crossed.

 judgedoug wrote:

 scarletsquig wrote:

I really have not seen any fantasy models from Mantic outside of the skeletons

Give the orcs another look, they are some seriously great models. I collect both orcs and undead, and they're easily Mantic's best fantasy ranges by far.

Agreed. Mantic's Orcs are my favorite Orc miniatures in the universe, by far. I'm not a fan of gorilla/ape arms and evil watermelon heads (so no GW) but I like my Orcs to have bulk (so no LOTR orcs). Mantic's are perfect for me!

Take a look at the orcs in the most recent Red Box Games kickstarter. They should hit all of those points you're interested in.

I love RBG. I have like, piles and piles of them. Currently working on a Helsvakt Horde / Mierce Fomoraic army for KoW.

Marauders, looking....better than expected?

From BoW:

Slightly better than expected, I think. At least I'm not massively regretting the minimum marauders I went for.

I got marauders, and I'll likely get more when the next survey rolls around.

Chicken wing arm poses strike again, but other than that they look okay. Not keen on the faces.

whoa, totally better than they first looked, and they looked decidedly mediocre. They have a great Rogue Trader vibe to them.

Agree - think those look pretty cool, certainly much better than the previews of them previously.

These are certainly looking pretty characterful in any case (in fact, the more I see of this game the better it looks..)

Actually look pretty good imho! The only one im not too keen on is the mawbeast. The ripper suit looks a bit smaller than I thought but looks less cartoony than the green did.

Glad I added on the orx booster in the survey, the hulk was always the figure I thought looked best in the concept art and the model im most looking forward to seeing.

A good save, at least so far, by Mantic on the Marauder stuff.

Makes me a lot less nervous about everything else too!

It also looks like they've finally settled on a paint style which suits their mini's. These look brilliant.

Daedleh wrote:
It also looks like they've finally settled on a paint style which suits their mini's. These look brilliant.

^^THIS. Out with the (**&^*(&&*( fething blue already.

Quite happy with these, might actually go for marauders primarily now (since I'm a bit nervous about enforcer plastics, sadly).

Wow. I like what I see.

Very characterful, like others were saying.

Wish the suit was a big bigger, but it does look like it has a bit of heft to it.

May end up with a bit more Marauders than I'm already getting.

 Alpharius wrote:

Makes me a lot less nervous about everything else too!

Took the words out of my mouth.. think this is definitely going to be the general sentiment.

Cant tell if these have been posted yet.

 Alpharius wrote:
Marauders, looking....better than expected?

From BoW:

Whoa... I really like the model on the far right! (Ripper suit?) And the goblin looks pretty good. The orks are just okay, and the chainsaw-horse thing... ugh.

Not super impressed with the rebs in the post above mine here, either. But the ripper suit gets a thumbs up from me!

Say what you like about some of the KoW kickstarter minis. Mantic are NAILING Deadzone.

Wow! I am really happy about those.

Daedleh wrote:
Say what you like about some of the KoW kickstarter minis. Mantic are NAILING Deadzone.

yeah, agreed 100%. KoW obviously had a lot of teething problems but the value-per-dollar even with half of the new minis looking like poop is still one of the best KSes I've done (I got *how* many minis in the end, and a new ruleset that I love playing? yes please!). Deadzone is looking to have a much higher quality overall than KoW, and I'd be happy if the ruleset is anywhere near as good as KoW is.

Yes I like what I see for the most part. I'm "meh" on the greenskins but as I covered previously, that was always going to be their ceiling in all likelihood just from me disliking greenskins. The mawbeast is ugh, but everything else looks ok.

I like the overall look of the Rebs, but I'm still not sold on the "reloading" hand position on Rocket Girl. I'll reserve final judgement for when I see the model in-hand in a couple months, but it's one of the two models I'm very leery of in the Rebs line (the Zees being the other).

Getting more impressed by deadzone the more they release for it. Glad I didn't stinge out on the Orks, though the second wave would fix that anyway. I was happy with the concepts though.

The Orks, Plague and Rebs all look amazing, although the missile girl looks unfinished in that shot. Have to agree that the colour scheme has been nailed and I'll be pretty keen to try and copy it verbatim. If Mantic paid through the nose for that commission, it'll pay for itself in short order I think.

I haven't seen anything yet that I'd say is something I'm sorry I'll be getting.

Compared to the KoW Kickstarter, this one is out of this world awesome.

 Yonan wrote:
Getting more impressed by deadzone the more they release for it. Glad I didn't stinge out on the Orks, though the second wave would fix that anyway. I was happy with the concepts though.

The Orks, Plague and Rebs all look amazing, although the missile girl looks unfinished in that shot. Have to agree that the colour scheme has been nailed and I'll be pretty keen to try and copy it verbatim. If Mantic paid through the nose for that commission, it'll pay for itself in short order I think.

By the looks of it I suspect fellow Dakkanaut WinterDyne might have had a hand in that.

Whether that means they've paid through the nose is something you'll have to ask him, I suppose

 Alpharius wrote:
I haven't seen anything yet that I'd say is something I'm sorry I'll be getting.

Compared to the KoW Kickstarter, this one is out of this world awesome.

I agree, i dont think theres anything in dz so far that im not happy about receiving, my only worry is the plastics quality, lets hope that they continue to impress.

Except for that marauder dog. Not happy about that one ; p

Winterdyne hey? Here's hoping he chimes in if he did it, was a great job.

 edlowe wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
I haven't seen anything yet that I'd say is something I'm sorry I'll be getting.

Compared to the KoW Kickstarter, this one is out of this world awesome.

I agree, i dont think theres anything in dz so far that im not happy about receiving, my only worry is the plastics quality, lets hope that they continue to impress.

Looking at basically all of mantic's recent plastics, barring one or two exceptions (and even those are entirely salvageable), their plastics quality is fine.
Sometimes, they do silly things (like annoying vents on the gargoyles) and there's the fiasco with pinhead angels but that's it. aside from that everything, both KoW and DB, works fine.
Bit more work cleaning up mold lines than PS sprues would be, that's all.

I believe the comment was referring to the M@As which were done in "hard" plastic instead of restic but were seemingly scaled badly and with soft detail. Since most of the Enforcers are going to be done in hard plastic there's that 800lb gorilla in the room of if they will come out well, or botched like most people feel the M@As were. I'm cautiously optimistic because they were digitally sculpted from the get-go, but that chance of things going wrong can't be dismissed.

Oh right, completely missed that. Yeah I'm more than a bit nervous about them myself tbh.
OTOH, SS made a few good points about those: it seems the faults with the MaA sprues lie more in the design than in the tooling (the CAD weapons are perfect - crisp too! it's the sculpted/scanned stuff where they fail) but without some proof of Mantic finally getting a hard plastic sculpt right again I wouldn't pledge all that much over the base pledge for them either.
...Which is a shame since I was really looking forward to some of the enforcer booster models as well...

Still they acknowledged the issue and since the enforcers are CAD sculpts from the start, from the same guys that did get the MaA weapons and shields right, I'm holding out hope it'll be all right.
(The dwarves I couldn't care less about, TBH )

By the end of Deadzone, I'll have more Enforcers than ill know what to do with. wait-Deadzone Apocalypse!! Mwahahahaha

 timetowaste85 wrote:
By the end of Deadzone, I'll have more Enforcers than ill know what to do with. wait-Deadzone Apocalypse!! Mwahahahaha

Then you just need an opponent who has a horde of infecteds

Yeah should have said hard plastic. I wish theyd stick to restic for describing the other material. The MaA sprue reviews are the thing thats caused me some worry. Luckily ive gone in big for the plague figures which are restic.

There was an inital shot of the plastic bulkheads from the factory samples and they looked pretty sharp which should be a good sign

I agree with everyone that they seemed to have got it bang on with this one (except that stupd dog thingy), but then I thought that about the Dreadball KS as well!

Yes, the dog thing looks like something an 8-year old would create if you asked them to sit down with some crayons and draw the 'best animal ever'

It is such a minor part of the Marauder faction, and it doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would.

It has actually translated from sketch to miniature better than anticipated.

Admittedly, that bar was 'step over easily' low, but still!

Awesome, those plastic terrain sprues look great, as much as I can't wait to play deadzone I'm looking forward to the terrain the most, I got
so many uses planned for it, warhammer 40k, infinity, relic knight and deadzone of course. Really hope Mantic continue making more of this
stuff, they really hit the bull's eye with this idea, maybe if were lucky Mantic might even create a fantasy version for Kings of War.

Oh dear listen to me, now I sound like Mantic fanboy, better get my Mantic Ninja Gestapo costume made up.

BTW does anyone remember what the cut-off date for the Deadzone paypal invoices was?

It was some time in October...I think. I have to send mine in too. I'm doing it as soon as my paycheck hits Friday morning.

Yeah, now that I think about it, it was around early oct, 1st - 5th area, better pay it off this weekend just to be safe. Either way I'd imagine Mantic will send out a reminder email within the last week, so there shouldn't be an issue.

Ya'know in all seriousness I say about the idea of fantasy versions of the Deadzone terrain, I wouldn't be surprised if they just create a fantasy deadzone style game (a mordheim game if you will). Considering Jake Thornton
hinted towards a possible dwarf kings hold KS in the future it could actually happen, it would be a great way of relaunching and expanding the original game, just a thought.

^ With Dwarf King's hold I'm hoping for modular hard plastic 3d dungeons.

There's been a ton of 3d dungeon tiles done in expensive resin and none in super-affordable hard plastic.

They could get a *lot* of money from any KS that offered that, I think.

 Alpharius wrote:
It is such a minor part of the Marauder faction, and it doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would.

It has actually translated from sketch to miniature better than anticipated.

Admittedly, that bar was 'step over easily' low, but still!

Heh yeah, the chainsaw dog/horse is the only true "miss" here. But on the other hand, the only mini I REALLY love is that ripper suit. But the others are all fine, I think, which is much more than could be said of many sculpts in their fantasy kickstarter.

Is there a difference between "Dwarf King's Hold" and "Kings of War"? Regarding the above discussion.

Daedleh wrote:
Say what you like about some of the KoW kickstarter minis. Mantic are NAILING Deadzone.

for some maybe, but Mantic still has not produced a single mini that has made me reach for my money...
they have absolutely nothing that inspires me to paint...
the closest they have come, for me, is the new hero on the lion, and the original Enforcer Captain, but still not worth kicking something out of the painting queue for..

i really want to like their minis, but it's just not happening...

cheers
jah

I can appreciate the cheekiness of showcasing Deadzone minis next to Necromunda bulkheads.

I like these a lot. Not incredible individual showcase pieces, but very good gaming figures. I'm impressed.
Has the reb commanders barrel been sniped off? Also where are all these pics coming from? I want more! No actually, I want the figures in my hand!

The dog looks worse than I ever thought it would and about twice the size, the orcs are meh average, the suit is looking better than expected and the goblin is rather well done.

rebels look better, but I still maintain the heavy's head is bigger than it should be.

I don't remember- can we add to our survey after we send it in, or are we locked in? Now that they actually show a Ripper suit that isn't a horrible prototype, I would love to get a squad of them for Mega Armor Orks.

I urge everyone to give the mantic podcast episode 10 a good thorough listen, some of the wants I just read through were talked about

Ronnie likes big games, expect Warpath to be bigger... maybe apocalypse big? I remember something to the tune of units as a single entity and 20 something "units" on the board where tanks are a unit, squads are a unit etc.

The future of Dwarf King's Hold is to be around adventurers it sounds like. So the talk of hard plastic dungeon tiles could be prophetic (and I would want a million!).

Sharkman and rocket girl are still looking a little fishy (heh), however a little repositioning may do the trick. I rather fancy the shark dude with a rifle or what not anyway, maybe one of my extra humans will be getting that rocket to carry around while Fishy McShark goes a-hunting.

 RiTides wrote:

Is there a difference between "Dwarf King's Hold" and "Kings of War"? Regarding the above discussion.

Dwarf King's Hold is Mantic's answer to Heroquest, with map tiles, a unique model or two and lots of KoW models, dice, etc. They've got 3 expansions out iirc, and apparently it basically sells out every time they do a print run so they're lining up more in the future a well.

In regards to the models, that shark guy looks weird as heck when not basically touching the rocket launcher (Although the lady looks fine by herself). They really should show him and the girl as a single base model so he doesn't look so awkward.

 darkPrince010 wrote:

 RiTides wrote:

Is there a difference between "Dwarf King's Hold" and "Kings of War"? Regarding the above discussion.

Dwarf King's Hold is Mantic's answer to Heroquest, with map tiles, a unique model or two and lots of KoW models, dice, etc. They've got 3 expansions out iirc, and apparently it basically sells out every time they do a print run so they're lining up more in the future a well.

2 expansions and no unique models I've found it extremely replayable personally, though I have only played missons from the first two (which are also both stand-alone/not interdependent) but I haven't tried the make-your-own-warband rules from the second expansion.

 Baragash wrote:

 darkPrince010 wrote:

 RiTides wrote:

Is there a difference between "Dwarf King's Hold" and "Kings of War"? Regarding the above discussion.

Dwarf King's Hold is Mantic's answer to Heroquest, with map tiles, a unique model or two and lots of KoW models, dice, etc. They've got 3 expansions out iirc, and apparently it basically sells out every time they do a print run so they're lining up more in the future a well.

2 expansions and no unique models .

Wasn't the dwarf driller thing made for DKH?

 JoshInJapan wrote:

 Baragash wrote:

 darkPrince010 wrote:

 RiTides wrote:

Is there a difference between "Dwarf King's Hold" and "Kings of War"? Regarding the above discussion.

Dwarf King's Hold is Mantic's answer to Heroquest, with map tiles, a unique model or two and lots of KoW models, dice, etc. They've got 3 expansions out iirc, and apparently it basically sells out every time they do a print run so they're lining up more in the future a well.

2 expansions and no unique models .

Wasn't the dwarf driller thing made for DKH?

I don't know why it was made, but it's also in the KoW Dwarf army list now.

Liking the Plague a lot- Infested Teraton and swarm of gribblies looks great! Liking the Orks though not so much with the horse dog chainsaw beastie- you can see the poor thing saying *kill me!* lol. I'll be interested to see what the not-Eldar-wraithguard are like.

Thanks for the answers, guys!

Really? I could have sworn the Dwarven Driller model didn't have KoW rules until well after it was released for DKH

Dwarven Driller was released as a Mantic Points Reward quite a while before DKH existed.

It didn't have KoW rules until the 2.0 rules were released (after DKH was released).

Anyone got a good judge of the complexity the 6 player map adds to Dreadball?

I'd love to bring dreadball to my lunch hour(s) board games club. However, anything that takes more than 5 minutes to explain before the game, doesn't fit in a normal sized bag, has less than 4 players and takes more than 2 hours just isn't suitable.

Ok, image spurt as pictures from elsewhere have surfaced:

One of the two mawbeasts I've done for Deadzone.


Probably my favourite of the marauder troopers; I just like the pose.


Not overly fond of the sergeant, but was fun enough to paint as part of the batch.


Now these I do like. His dancing compatriot will surface in good time I suppose. Lots of fun to paint.


These are a fair amount more work than you might imagine; many many surfaces that I regretted doing feathered blends on. The result I'm quite pleased with though. Not sure what the underslung weapon on his left arm is supposed to be - some sort of energy ram I supposed.

I went for a vanilla strike team pledge with the Rebs as additional faction, and I am generally happy with what I am seeing. The only faction not to my liking are the Marauders, but as others have pointed out they do have a Rogue Traderish look to them that some will love.

I tend to favour fantasy games but this is really whetting my appetite for late November/early December.

Edit: @Winterdyne, are those "resin" masters or the resin plastic that the models will come in. Thank you for the more detailed shots.

These were all resin masters. The resin plastic shouldn't be much of an issue; have a sharp knife and some strong solvent (MEK or something) and cleanup's not too bad. A fair amount of the stuff I do for KoW is in the resin/plastic material, its not too bad to work with really - far less fragile than PU resin.

Winterdyne, I'm sure you've seen my comments earlier but your paint style is absolutely PERFECT for Mantics' minis. I'm not arty enough to be able to say what it is that you do differently to 'Eavy Metal/Golem painters, but whatever it is looks fantastic. Thank you :-)

Winterdyne: Excellent paint jobs. Truly.

Unfortunately, the Marauder figures suffer from the same issues they showed during the KS: terrible design, poor posing, and middle-of-the-road sculpting. Still disappointed, personally.

And the Mawbeast is just bad all around.

Rebs stuff shown earlier is promising (excepting some big heads...) and Blaine looks pretty good. Fingers and toes crossed that they sort out the HIPS molding/casting issues before the Enforcers.

~Eric

Very nice Winterdyne! You paint very well, and has been pointed out the style suits the minis very well.

Actually don't think the Maw-beast is that bad, and actually looks kind of fun. It looks like a liger with a chainsaw in its mouth, what can possibly be wrong with that?

Those pics look a lot better still than the leaks IMO.
I love the earthy, muted tones WinterDyne consistently uses on Mantic's stuff. It really makes the best of them. Truely lovely

(Any chance of you doing a better paint job on any of the bluer-than-blue basilean characters? Yeah, probably not... )

I gotta say those marauders turned better then I expected, hopefully that goes for the rest of the models too.

The Mawbeast is disapointing... Ok, that means i will have to find ways to convert them into something i like. Maybe i can turn them into 4 Mawbeasts...

The other ork stuff is disapointing, but not so bad. I expected something more in line with the marauders we alredy have, more "real scale", but they are not bad, if you consider them in heroic scale they turn to be very nice stuff (and a lot more compatible with GW orkz).

The ripper suit is amazing. But not in scale with the rest, lets just say that the ork "inside" that armor is problably some very small dude compensating for something...

The rebs are all dream stuff, and i am very inclined to take a booster bundle of them...

The ripper suit is pretty big. That's a 50mm base it's on. Good war boss size model, or mega armour replacement.

Amazing work Winterdyne, love the jobs you did on all of them. The minis are great too - all except for the mawbeast that is.

looks great, and the maw beast wouldnt be that bad, if it were half its size. But im happy im gettin the striker and upgrades to all the 4 base armies, When the second survey comes, is when i'll add the additional races.

You know, the maw beast design and sculpt are so irredeemably, utterly and completely flawed and horrid that it almost has a certain charm to it. I'm almost starting to like it in spite of myself.

 Username Invalid wrote:
You know, the maw beast design and sculpt are so irredeemably, utterly and completely flawed and horrid that it almost has a certain charm to it. I'm almost starting to like it in spite of myself.

Damn you... the one argument that could change my distaste for the model. If I start picturing it next to Ash from Army of Darkness, all is lost!

edit: Damnit! All is lost!

I went all in on my initial pledge, and then added quite a bit in the pledge manager, and to be completely honest I'm glad I did. I'm liking everything I've seen so far, even the mawbeast. Hurry up, November!

I've got no problems with the mawbeast. It's big and dumb, which seems right up an ork's alley. They're certainly more imposing given their larger size now. Look like they'd actually survive a tussle or two.

The mawbeast is my favourite mini out of the marauders but that shouldn't come as a surprise considering my username.

winterdyne wrote:
Probably my favourite of the marauder troopers; I just like the pose.


Now these I do like. His dancing compatriot will surface in good time I suppose. Lots of fun to paint.


These are a fair amount more work than you might imagine; many many surfaces that I regretted doing feathered blends on. The result I'm quite pleased with though. Not sure what the underslung weapon on his left arm is supposed to be - some sort of energy ram I supposed.

winterdyne wrote:
These were all resin masters. The resin plastic shouldn't be much of an issue; have a sharp knife and some strong solvent (MEK or something) and cleanup's not too bad. A fair amount of the stuff I do for KoW is in the resin/plastic material, its not too bad to work with really - far less fragile than PU resin.

Wow, let me just say that I love what you have done with these 3 models! I quite like the sculpts on these, too... particularly that little sniper goblin . Well done!

Goblin sniper is very cool, and that ripper suit...wow! I want duplicates. I think I'll be adding a BOGO Orx squad.

 Username Invalid wrote:
You know, the maw beast design and sculpt are so irredeemably, utterly and completely flawed and horrid that it almost has a certain charm to it. I'm almost starting to like it in spite of myself.

That's my take. Its aggressively ridiculous and refuses to apologize. I showed it to three of my gaming friends, and all had the same feeling (and wanted one). There's plenty of other "serious business" minis out there already.

The Dreadball Team Booster packs with the alt. sculpts and prone markers are up for preorder.

http://www.manticgames.com/Shop-Home/Advance-Orders/Advance-Orders-DreadBall-Team-Boosters.html?utm_source=Mantic+Games+Newsletter&utm_campaign=cae9363cc7-Mantic_Games_Newsletter_226&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_20fe4cf5a8-cae9363cc7-201384889

They don't look very different just a few reposed arms.

Actually the Void Sirens and Judwan at least look like they got new sculpts.

I took a trip to Mantic towers today for a guided tour and was treated to all kinds of deadzone goodness. These are the things that I was allowed to take photos of:







And my mate took this scale shot:


So some notes on the day:
- The Deadzone models look jaw droppingly good. Mantic have absolutely hit their stride with every single one of them. I wasn't even a fan of the "crocodile" Marauder faces but they looked awesome in person. They've got a lot of mean character to their faces that doesn't come across in photos.
- The Marauders are BIG. Swap the heads and they'll make absolutely perfect Blood Axes. If anything I'd say they're bigger than the GW Orks and closer to Nob size, but an army of them would look fantastic and the head swaps will likely be fairly easy to make them fit in with GW Orks if you wanted.
- The plastic tooling on the terrain tiles is absolutely up to scratch. Excellent detail and quality, easily as sharp as GW terrain. I'm confident that the problems with the M@A's are down to sculpting rather than tooling issues. Ronnie explained the exact problems they had but I'm not sure how much I can say publicly. What I can say is that once again Mantic got screwed over by their supplier, rather than Mantic dropping the ball.
- The Teraton is a gorgeous model. Both that and the Hulk model have a lot of bulk to them that doesn't really come across in the photos.
- The Plague Teraton is even better. I only saw the raw greens, but if restic can hold that level of detail (and I'm pretty sure it can) then it will be an absolutely jaw dropping model. Even if some detail is lost then it will still be fantastic.
- I got to see the 3D printed masters of the plague zombies and enforcer plastics. If the plastic tooling is up to scratch (and from the terrain I'm fairly certain it is) then Mantic are going to be printing money.

Feeling a LOT better about all this Deadzone stuff now - thank you very much for sharing these!

Looking good. So excited for November.

Thanks for sharing

ignore me

Deadzone stuff looks good, if a bit 2nd edition-y orky (which may depending on the buyer be a big plus). It seems like they're putting more work/effort into making Deadzone and Dreadball stuff right whereas it feels like (from the pics and posting tone) they're just cutting their losses in KOW.

I agree warboss; it really seems like with KoW they realized they'd eaten up their budget and had to get what they could done. With DreadBall and DeadZone their budgets were apparently better structured to not have to take whatever the artists handed them, though I'd submit there were still some QA issues they could have handled a bit better.

Stuff is looking pretty good. Marauders are really growing on me. Loving that little mini cannon/ tank thing the goblin is driving.

I hope they've learned a bit from some of those missteps they made with Kings of War.

If (when) Kings of War heads back to Kickstarter, which I would assume it will at some future point, I hope Mantic continues with this more cautious approach.

Some really nice figs there, especially like the Hulk at the back left, looks like an interesting colour scheme on the skin.

Looking back at the marauders now theres some painted examples, i've started to really like their look. Odd really considering how bad I thought the inital greens were. There seems to be a nice cohesion between the models, although how'd they match up with the current orx stuff I dont know. I might grab a orx raptor and try painting it in the grey scheme.

Roll on november!

These marauders look nice. Are they plastic or restic? Sorry if it says one type of another 50 different places in the pics.

privateer4hire wrote:
These marauders look nice. Are they plastic or restic? Sorry if it says one type of another 50 different places in the pics.

Restic

All the painted pieces will have been done in resin the production ones will be PVC/restic.

As they've been shown now:

That's actually quite the nice gang!

I'm really positively (?) surprised. When I saw the greens a couple of months back, I never would've thought that they'll turn out to be quite nicely looking.

Ahh they've been shown, but you always have better pictures

Really starting to like the look of those marauders, may have to rethink my brown/leather scheme, they look really nice as they are.

I think if I can just repose the ripper and sgt arms... I'll be very happy with the lot.

And those dogs... are huge... Given how big those commandos are (nearly nobs, definitely a step beyond the grunts)... I guess they are *mawbeasts* and not maw-dogs. More like lions almost!

So, are we going to be seeing Goblin Mawbeast riders in warpath?

The sergeant's arms came fixed like that. I can't remember if his head was separate or not. Some were, some weren't.

The ripper suit arms are interchangable (with the other suit), but the ammo belt dictates the position; there are two provided so you can elect which arm to use. Actually posing it would basically mean sculpting a new arm, so it's fairly limited.

It's an ork in a political officer's uniform. I'm sure Kroothawk can vent for a few hours on the subject of polish companies producing such commodities for those needing variety in their sergeants.
@winterdyne it might not be a bad idea to ballpark prices for a similar (or identical) commission every time you post a pic like that - someone might just bite. These things really bloody well deserve it.
Awesome stuff, again!

Nah, I don't like pushing advertisement, and to be honest, I'm busy enough for the forseeable.

I think it'd suffice to say the troops are fairly standard high end tabletop. The ripper suit was a beast though, several days work on that.

winterdyne wrote:
As they've been shown now:

that is quite impressive, think I am starting to regret not backing as I have not been impressed with Mantic sculpts as of late.

Daedleh wrote:

Ack ack ack! Ack! Ack ack ack ack?

Daedleh wrote:

And my mate took this scale shot:

Love this Marauder, has a real soldier feel to it, glad I ignored the naysayers and went all in for them

Man, those Maraduers went full Rogue Trader/2nd Edition and I'm loving it. They have the character of 80's minis without having the somewhat ham-handed sculpting of the time. They'll be an utter joy to paint.

Don't know if it just the paint job being awesome or what, but I think they look fantastic. Just looking at them brings back a lot of fond memories of one of my favourite gaming eras. Even the saw-dogs (though they look a lot more rough than the rest) are not too bad (I like the non-bucking one a bit more; its pose feels more natural for some reason).

They're steadily growing on me as well. Maybe if the knife sgt was pointing with his right hand it would help justify the position of it to me...

Roll on November!

Jesus christ, Winterdyne has done an amazing job on these. I don't doubt that it's going to help Mantic sell these babies at retail. I'm beginning to think 3 strike teams + BOGOF for every race isn't enough. Curse you wave 2 ability to spend more money, curse you!

If only I could paint 10% as good.

I was under the impression that all models from mantic come prepainted by Winterdyne.

You know... I really did order too many models. Maybe Mantic and I could work something out...

Nah, painting them myself is too much fun, even if I'm not that good at it

I think when survey 2 comes around, hopefully depending on new Warpath lists out by that time, I'll be cherry picking to finish off some units. Might need a plague hound and or mawbeast to make a round number for a squad, etc.

I just hope they keep Warpath's flexible allies system. With just a little effort (maybe some core troops to enable the characters and monsters) you could easily make a pretty large-ish Warpath army by allying the Rebs, Marauders, and Forge fathers.

 warboss wrote:
I was under the impression that all models from mantic come prepainted by Winterdyne.

Yep, pretty sure that was in the kickstarter agreement!

Great painting Winterdyne, thanks for the pics. Looking forward to getting Deadzone now.

The marauders are looking okay, glad people are happy with them. I'd like them a lot more if the hands were a touch smaller, though.

They're pretty much just 40k orks at this point if you give them a headswap in terms of sculpting style. Which, as far as a business decision goes, is probably a good thing since I can't imagine the range as it stands sells all that well currently.. might as well go the whole hog, make them GW shoe-ins and produce alternatives all the unit types. I'm okay with this, having orks in the Warpath universe at all basically screams 40k clone, so you might as well do it properly if you're going to do it and copy the Brian Nelson style.

Very firmly heroic scale, as the comparison to the truescale warpath marauder shows.

This is something you can get away with with orks because huge size and style variance is in the background... if these were human sculpts however, being compared to the original enforcers and corp marines we'd all be saying how terrible they are.

Just some food for thought on that point!

Rebs are looking really nice, though, very happy with those. Everything about those sculpts is looking top-notch, no complaints from me!

 warboss wrote:
It seems like they're putting more work/effort into making Deadzone and Dreadball stuff right whereas it feels like (from the pics and posting tone) they're just cutting their losses in KOW.

That's all well and good unless KoW is the game you're most interested in. :p

They do seem to have taken some advice to heart though - The Marauder Hulk is a lovely model that is everything the KoW Trolls should have been.

Can't see the whole model in those pics, but I can at least tell that it has legs, and the face is well-sculpted.

What are the hard plastic Enforcers and Plague like for scale, Daedleh? The right size?, look okay next to the Rebs?, Guns aren't 5 feet long? Hands aren't larger than their heads?

I'm concerned that they'll mess up like the men-at-arms and make the new enforcers substantially more massive than the existing restic ones, or make the restic Rebs and their weaponry look like midgets.

The same person who sculpted the MAA seems to be doing the deadzone stuff which is why I'm wondering about what they'll look like. Don't forget, even the men-at-arms looked okay as renders, not so much the actual models though.
I hope Mantic gives us a look at the 3d prints fairly soon.

As nice as the marauders are, you have to concede that rampant scale creep is starting to kick in, as someone who has bought heavily into both Rebs and Enforcers I'm hoping scale creep won't make one side look like it has 28mm truescale models, and the other side look like 35mm heroic scale. As it stands the scale consistency between different lines of minis (and even within armies) is all over the place.

I'm liking the Marauders a little better than before. Mawbeast looks better on Daedleh's photos. I really like the Ork with what appears to be a power weapon and commissar's hat and jacket. Really captures the Orkiness. The ripper suits could be used to really great effect as Cybork bodies.

These chaps are going to fit right in to finish off my RT Orks

 edlowe wrote:

privateer4hire wrote:
These marauders look nice. Are they plastic or restic? Sorry if it says one type of another 50 different places in the pics.

Restic

Thanks and...

Crap! We hates restic for anything other than vehicles. We hates it.

Funny, if there's one place I'd loathe having to work with restic it's on vehicles. Infantry, not so much.

scarletsquig wrote:The marauders are looking okay, glad people are happy with them. I'd like them a lot more if the hands were a touch smaller, though.

They're pretty much just 40k orks at this point if you give them a headswap in terms of sculpting style. Which, as far as a business decision goes, is probably a good thing since I can't imagine the range as it stands sells all that well currently.. might as well go the whole hog, make them GW shoe-ins and produce alternatives all the unit types. I'm okay with this, having orks in the Warpath universe at all basically screams 40k clone, so you might as well do it properly if you're going to do it and copy the Brian Nelson style.

Very firmly heroic scale, as the comparison to the truescale warpath marauder shows.

This is something you can get away with with orks because huge size and style variance is in the background... if these were human sculpts however, being compared to the original enforcers and corp marines we'd all be saying how terrible they are.

Just some food for thought on that point!

Rebs are looking really nice, though, very happy with those. Everything about those sculpts is looking top-notch, no complaints from me!

 warboss wrote:
It seems like they're putting more work/effort into making Deadzone and Dreadball stuff right whereas it feels like (from the pics and posting tone) they're just cutting their losses in KOW.

That's all well and good unless KoW is the game you're most interested in. :p

They do seem to have taken some advice to heart though - The Marauder Hulk is a lovely model that is everything the KoW Trolls should have been.

Can't see the whole model in those pics, but I can at least tell that it has legs, and the face is well-sculpted.

What are the hard plastic Enforcers and Plague like for scale, Daedleh? The right size?, look okay next to the Rebs?, Guns aren't 5 feet long? Hands aren't larger than their heads?

I'm concerned that they'll mess up like the men-at-arms and make the new enforcers substantially more massive than the existing restic ones, or make the restic Rebs and their weaponry look like midgets.

The same person who sculpted the MAA seems to be doing the deadzone stuff which is why I'm wondering about what they'll look like. Don't forget, even the men-at-arms looked okay as renders, not so much the actual models though.
I hope Mantic gives us a look at the 3d prints fairly soon.

As nice as the marauders are, you have to concede that rampant scale creep is starting to kick in, as someone who has bought heavily into both Rebs and Enforcers I'm hoping scale creep won't make one side look like it has 28mm truescale models, and the other side look like 35mm heroic scale. As it stands the scale consistency between different lines of minis (and even within armies) is all over the place.

Right, heroic scale is not creeping in. These are an alien species bred for war so them having weird proportions does not make them heroic scale - just alien.

The rebs are most definitely realistic 28mm sculpts and the starter box enforcers are in scale with the current range. The marauders are simply being redesigned, presumably due to poor reception in the gaming community. The current Warpath marauders are likely to become young and not mature marauders who get a hand-me-down gun shoved into their hands and sent off into battle as a bullet shield or as a right of passage. If they survive then they'll be allowed to take full military training while they're still growing, and at the end they'll be the mature and fully grown marauders you see in Deadzone and Dreadball.

Again, the problems with the Men At Arms were not due to Mantic but the supplier. The problems appear to have been sorted with the scenery tiles. I can't go into much detail (Ronnie told us the exact situation and my jaw dropped) but if the factory had made the same mistakes then the scenery tiles would not fit together properly and would not have the sharpness that they do. As you said, the M@As looked alright as sculpts but that didn't translate to the hard plastic. Whether or not you think that Mantic should have handled the M@As better once they received them (admitting up front and allowing people to swap if they wanted), it was NOT Mantics mistake on how the M@As came out. I am fairly confident that the DZ plastics will be sorted.

The zombies and hard plastic enforcers I saw were just the 3D prints of the parts. They were even an old version since the peacekeepers still had the much maligned power maul. Stew confirmed that they have changed it, but didn't show us what to. I didn't have any other figures to compare the 3D prints to at the time, but they didn't seem to be out of scale.

I do not concede that rampant scale creep is kicking in. ONE of the races are being redesigned as much bigger and bulkier aliens, while their originals are fitting in as a different unit in the background. It's a redesign, not a scale creep.

privateer4hire wrote:

 edlowe wrote:

privateer4hire wrote:
These marauders look nice. Are they plastic or restic? Sorry if it says one type of another 50 different places in the pics.

Restic

Thanks and...

Crap! We hates restic for anything other than vehicles. We hates it.

I'm actually coming around to restic myself. The worst castings seem to come out of the kickstarter deliveries when the factory has been rushing to get everything done (same with the metals which are cast in-house) but general production restics have much better casting. It's got nothing on decent hard plastic sprues, but certainly much better than metals IMO.

 Bolognesus wrote:
Funny, if there's one place I'd loathe having to work with restic it's on vehicles. Infantry, not so much.

Same here!

Also, isn't a privateer already 'for hire', making a privateer4hire...redundant?!?

Perhaps he's a really good privateer? I mean, he could be booked right up 'till retirement?

But not if he's for hire all the time, right?

Anyway - I am just really happy to see how good everything's looking, and now my only concern is the Resin Master to Restic (ugh.) conversion process.

The current Warpath marauders are likely to become young and not mature marauders who get a hand-me-down gun shoved into their hands and sent off into battle as a bullet shield or as a right of passage. If they survive then they'll be allowed to take full military training while they're still growing, and at the end they'll be the mature and fully grown marauders you see in Deadzone and Dreadball.

That would be a really good way to explain the current minis in the background, it's good that they've come up with a way to keep the minis in the line and have it make sense.

I'm happy to take your word on the scale creep issue now that you've said that all the other races aren't similarly super-sized and explained that it's a style redesign.

Apologies if the post came across as confrontational, keep in mind I didn't have the same perspective of going there and looking around and asking questions that you did.

All I have are 200 MAA minis that are going to be a pain to sort out (part of a 4000+ point Basilean army which I'm still buying stuff for!), and a very strong desire not to have whatever went wrong with them happen again.

So, more of an apprehensive post on my part. A lot of the KoW minis moved to heroic scale (MAA, Mummies, Trolls), and I feel like they were much worser sculpts due to not fitting in correctly with the rest of the line, and seeing the marauders, it was easy to jump to the conclusion that the scale difference between the new and old minis wasn't paid attention to. I just don't want to see previous failures repeated since a lot of people have a lot riding on Deadzone, it not turning out well is not an option.

Keep in mind that I did note a lot of good stuff, like the Hulk which is looking amazing compared to the KoW Trolls.

I'm also starting to like restic as well, for me it's never been a casting issue with the material, but a pricing issue. If they keep doing stuff like the £20 for 20 restic minis standard that the Baslieans have set, that'll be much better than £15 for 10 and I'll be happier with the material.

No maul on the peacekeeper sprue is good news too, but then I think they knew we wouldn't like it before they showed us it!

I'm very impressed with all the pics that have been coming out lately. After spying on the KoW thread for a while now I was growing uneasy but Mantic seems to have done a fantastic job this time round!

 Commander Cain wrote:
I'm very impressed with all the pics that have been coming out lately. After spying on the KoW thread for a while now I was growing uneasy but Mantic seems to have done a fantastic job this time round!

Yeah, the KoW was obviously "what the hell are we doing?!" where Deadzone is "naw, naw, we got this."

Daedleh wrote:
Whether or not you think that Mantic should have handled the M@As better once they received them (admitting up front and allowing people to swap if they wanted), it was NOT Mantics mistake on how the M@As came out.

We'll just have to take your word on that but it 100% is Mantic's fault that they're *coming out*. That might of been the a lose lose scenario for them but releasing such a bad end product is only going to harm your company image and customers absolutely are right to hold them to that especially since questionable quality releases have plagued KOW in the distant past and have increased with the KOW kickstarter. I'm glad that they're doing better with the scifi lines overall but they also had some serious growing pains with the ork/rebel sculpts as well but were able to salvage them for the most part (except for the chainsaw mouth dog thing IMO). Sedition Wars and KOW were the two main KS that almost made me just into the crowdfunding scene and I'm really glad that I chickened out on both. I hope the enforcers come out well from Deadzone as I'd really like to buy some of them when they hit the local store shelves. Unfortunately, with the KOW sculpts and restic flash issues, I don't trust Mantic enough to pay them sight unseen upfront.

Daedleh wrote:

Again, the problems with the Men At Arms were not due to Mantic but the supplier. The problems appear to have been sorted with the scenery tiles. I can't go into much detail (Ronnie told us the exact situation and my jaw dropped) but if the factory had made the same mistakes then the scenery tiles would not fit together properly and would not have the sharpness that they do. As you said, the M@As looked alright as sculpts but that didn't translate to the hard plastic. Whether or not you think that Mantic should have handled the M@As better once they received them (admitting up front and allowing people to swap if they wanted), it was NOT Mantics mistake on how the M@As came out. I am fairly confident that the DZ plastics will be sorted.

I believe you, internet stranger who tells unverified tales.

However, I just met the Shadow King of Tooling (nice guy, BTW), and he tells me that the problems were definitely on Mantic's end. In fact, when Ronnie saw the original prototypes, he demanded that they be fixed to look more like "the unflushed present I left in your office bathroom, jabroni. Merry Christmas." Then he got the factory owner in a headlock so Tony Reidy could kidney-punch him repeatedly. Unfortunately, due to the investigation, I can't share my proof with you at all, but the MaA models were definitely Mantic's fault. Biased sources have confirmed this.

But on a serious note, either spill the details or admit that Mantic ARE completely responsible for the product they greenlit and chose to send to backers.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

But on a serious note, either spill the details or admit that Mantic ARE completely responsible for the product they greenlit and chose to send to backers.

I'm not sure how it could be spun that Mantic is not in fact ultimately responsible for really bad sculpts being released.

I assume that this "facebook" post is from the same source but a few more pictures here of the Mercs such as Wrath et al https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.697396766954868&type=1

Much better Hulk shot too https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153232538600551&set=oa.697396766954868&type=3&theater

Also a few more Mars Attacks figures in there.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I believe you, internet stranger who tells unverified tales.

However, I just met the Shadow King of Tooling (nice guy, BTW), and he tells me that the problems were definitely on Mantic's end. In fact, when Ronnie saw the original prototypes, he demanded that they be fixed to look more like "the unflushed present I left in your office bathroom, jabroni. Merry Christmas." Then he got the factory owner in a headlock so Tony Reidy could kidney-punch him repeatedly. Unfortunately, due to the investigation, I can't share my proof with you at all, but the MaA models were definitely Mantic's fault. Biased sources have confirmed this.

But on a serious note, either spill the details or admit that Mantic ARE completely responsible for the product they greenlit and chose to send to backers.

Unverified stranger with photos directly from Mantic HQ? Sure thing.

Ronnie asked us not to spill the details and I'm not about to. Why would I break a promise for the sake of e-cred?

If Mantic decided to pull the plug on the men at arms then they'd be without core infantry for their new army. How would that work out?

Daedleh wrote:


Right, heroic scale is not creeping in. These are an alien species bred for war so them having weird proportions does not make them heroic scale - just alien.

The rebs are most definitely realistic 28mm sculpts and the starter box enforcers are in scale with the current range. The marauders are simply being redesigned, presumably due to poor reception in the gaming community. The current Warpath marauders are likely to become young and not mature marauders who get a hand-me-down gun shoved into their hands and sent off into battle as a bullet shield or as a right of passage. If they survive then they'll be allowed to take full military training while they're still growing, and at the end they'll be the mature and fully grown marauders you see in Deadzone and Dreadball.

Again, the problems with the Men At Arms were not due to Mantic but the supplier. The problems appear to have been sorted with the scenery tiles. I can't go into much detail (Ronnie told us the exact situation and my jaw dropped) but if the factory had made the same mistakes then the scenery tiles would not fit together properly and would not have the sharpness that they do. As you said, the M@As looked alright as sculpts but that didn't translate to the hard plastic. Whether or not you think that Mantic should have handled the M@As better once they received them (admitting up front and allowing people to swap if they wanted), it was NOT Mantics mistake on how the M@As came out. I am fairly confident that the DZ plastics will be sorted.

The zombies and hard plastic enforcers I saw were just the 3D prints of the parts. They were even an old version since the peacekeepers still had the much maligned power maul. Stew confirmed that they have changed it, but didn't show us what to. I didn't have any other figures to compare the 3D prints to at the time, but they didn't seem to be out of scale.

I do not concede that rampant scale creep is kicking in. ONE of the races are being redesigned as much bigger and bulkier aliens, while their originals are fitting in as a different unit in the background. It's a redesign, not a scale creep.

Thanks for posting the pictures. That was very cool of you.

Scale creep is happening. All you need do is look at the heads and hands of the non-Marauder figures to see it.

ALL problems with the figures are Mantic's fault. That is one of the nice things about being in charge.

3D prints of the to-be-HIPS Enforcers and Plague being good is nice and all but that has exactly nothing to do with the quality of the final tooling. Same with the terrain. It looking good has no bearing on how the figures will look. It is far easier to mill sharp edges in flat pieces than irregularly surfaced ones.

Marauder Hulk looks pretty good from what I can see. Pleasantly surprised by that. Annoyed the the ranged-loadout Ripper suit still has his arms akimbo, bad 80's sculpt style. Of course the majority of the Marauders seem to be headed back to the 80's, so I'm not surprised.

I'm cautiously optimistic about the rest of the line. Hopefully I won't be disappointed...

~Eric

No kidding!









and



VERY smart idea to get these Marauder shots out ASAP - though puzzling as to why they wouldn't just 'officially' release them first?

Anyway, the Marauder Hulk looks nice - and shows what 'could have been' on the Trolls...

Daedleh wrote:
If Mantic decided to pull the plug on the men at arms then they'd be without core infantry for their new army. How would that work out?

I'm guessing better in the long run than releasing badly molded and scaled ones. It will hurt the bottom line for the short term but it would prevent damage to their rep down the line seeing as how this isn't apparently the first time it's happened. Either way, the discussion probably belongs in the KOW thread rather than here.

 warboss wrote:

Daedleh wrote:
If Mantic decided to pull the plug on the men at arms then they'd be without core infantry for their new army. How would that work out?

I'm guessing better in the long run than releasing badly molded and scaled ones. It will hurt the bottom line for the short term but it would prevent damage to their rep down the line seeing as how this isn't apparently the first time it's happened. Either way, the discussion probably belongs in the KOW thread rather than here.

Looks at thread title...

Yes, it does belong in there, not here!

When Marauders become adults proven in battle, they undergo a ritual where they expose their hands to radiation where they grow to 5 times their normal size.

Great explanation for inconsistent art direction.

I have noticed the 'running' Marauder has 'gone away'? All of those poses seem to be of 2-legged on the ground standing marauders. So maybe the runny orc and the dancing gobbo went to the rubbish bin before 10,000 of them were cast? That is progress at least.

Running marauder is still there you can see him on page 43 in winterdyne's post as is dancing gobbo he's in the facebook pictures.

nkelsch wrote:
When Marauders become adults proven in battle, they undergo a ritual where they expose their hands to radiation where they grow to 5 times their normal size.

Great explanation for inconsistent art direction.

I have noticed the 'running' Marauder has 'gone away'? All of those poses seem to be of 2-legged on the ground standing marauders. So maybe the runny orc and the dancing gobbo went to the rubbish bin before 10,000 of them were cast? That is progress at least.

There's nothing to say that Marauders don't change significantly when growing up. Human measurements change massively too. I'm not seeing any inconsistent art direction in the new marauders nor any heroic scale in the human models for Deadzone.

I want an army of hulks and I want it now! Probably my favorite sculpt from mantic so far. (Plus the paint jobs awesome)

 DaveC wrote:
Running marauder is still there you can see him on page 43 in winterdyne's post as is dancing gobbo he's in the facebook pictures.

Oh there he is... too bad. I guess they haven't learned.

And if you call fists the size of your head and arms which can touch the ground without bending over from a standing position "not heroic scale" or "not a change in core anatomy design" then I know some place you can get some fantastic Men At Arms models cheap!

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153232534420551&set=oa.697396766954868&type=3&theater
Seriously, the orc 2-handed the shotgun can literally touch the ground by simply extending his arms down without leaning over. Where is all the outrage with gorilla-armed nelson sculpts?

Are you serious? Aliens with different anatomy to humans doesn't equal heroic scale and no-one's denying that they're being redesigned - that's the whole point.

Edit: seriously;

Maurader Captian is a great model.... If the entire Maurader line looked even half that good and had those proportions and poses, they would be bankrupting everyone else whomakes Sci-Fi orks.

Any idea what he is holding? Is it a pain stick or cattle prod?

3 months ago this art direction was a great thing to you. Now it's bad?

Your entire post history relating to Mantic is nothing but complaints about them.

Daedleh wrote:
Are you serious? Aliens with different anatomy to humans doesn't equal heroic scale and no-one's denying that they're being redesigned - that's the whole point.

But they are not keeping to their 'OWN' anatomy that they designed with the previous models. That is a lack of art direction. Carrying water saying that the difference in scale is due to a conscious decision to do a deep alien biological fluff is bs. They sold out and went ape-arms because that is what most people wanted and it makes their old models totally out of scale with their own designs. People liked the non-ape arm orcs of mantic and now they have even MORE ape-ier arms than even GW does.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Daedleh wrote:
Are you serious? Aliens with different anatomy to humans doesn't equal heroic scale and no-one's denying that they're being redesigned - that's the whole point.

Edit: seriously;

Maurader Captian is a great model.... If the entire Maurader line looked even half that good and had those proportions and poses, they would be bankrupting everyone else whomakes Sci-Fi orks.

Any idea what he is holding? Is it a pain stick or cattle prod?

3 months ago this art direction was a great thing to you. Now it's bad?

Your entire post history relating to Mantic is nothing but complaints about them.

I like Ape arm orks. Lots of people did not. I see that people who were all anti-GW orks seem deathly silent on the total change of design Mantic has taken. And even between models proportions are all over the place. One has an arm barley as long as his waistline and another reaches the ground.

I find that the change is total design of the race being explained by some 'fluff' like it was an intentional design to have hands grow to 5 times their size is a joke and pathetic. To call these anything but hero scale is also water carrying.

Ah, now I remember nkelsch and his...special relationship with Mantic!

"Kroothawk, is that you?" springs to mind too!

 Alpharius wrote:
Ah, now I remember nkelsch and his...special relationship with Mantic!

"Kroothawk, is that you?" springs to mind too!

So you don't see a gross scale change as well as scale issues which show heroic scale sculpting and also inconsistent sculpting between orcs of the same line?

You don't find a 'fluff' explanation for simply a difference in art direction absurd?

Call a spade a spade, they have gone full-on ape-arms, and some of the models have scale issues inconsistent with other models in the same line. Some of the poses like dancing gobbo and runny ork are bad and the suit doesn't match the concept art and suffers from 'living metal' design which has unreasonable armor bending in an organic way which hurts the model, along with not matching the scale and design of the concept art.

I am glad people enjoy throwing their Kickstarter models away, sounds like a good business model... Why fix things and sculpt better when your backers blindly accept whatever you put out.

 Alpharius wrote:
Ah, now I remember nkelsch and his...special relationship with Mantic!

"Kroothawk, is that you?" springs to mind too!

Just report him for trolling and block him. Much easier

I think that, strangely enough, Mantic is 'fixing' their issues in terms of SF sculpts but oddly, they aren't doing enough on the Fantasy side of things.

Who knows why?

But they need to address the QC stuff across the board.

I think they're smart enough to realize that Deadzone represented a 'final opportunity' of sorts and if the failed here, they were going to be in serious trouble.

Of course, Dreadball must have given them a certain amount of confidence, but again, of the SF side of the equation...

nkelsch wrote:

I see that people who were all anti-GW orks seem deathly silent on the total change of design Mantic has taken.

One does get tired of talking to the wall...

As to heroic scale:


Big head, big hands (although not nearly as off as the head, and mostly forgivable, even for me).

The commander is similar in her issues.

~Eric

Edit:

 Alpharius wrote:
I think that, strangely enough, Mantic is 'fixing' their issues in terms of SF sculpts but oddly, they aren't doing enough on the Fantasy side of things.

Who knows why?

But they need to address the QC stuff across the board.

I think they're smart enough to realize that Deadzone represented a 'final opportunity' of sorts and if the failed here, they were going to be in serious trouble.

Of course, Dreadball must have given them a certain amount of confidence, but again, of the SF side of the equation...

Yes, quality control and art direction are their two biggest issues.

Their SF lines do still have problems but I totally agree that those are not nearly as numerous as for the Fantasy lines.

As long as they don't eff up my KoW Orcs, I'm just fine with them redesigning their space orcs. I personally have zero investment in them.

I coulda sworn everyone was like "fantasy orcs with rayguns are st00pid! mantic is a dumb!" when the original Marauders came out, and now they're being redesigned and now the cries are "they don't match the old ones oh noes! mantic is a dumb!"

 judgedoug wrote:
As long as they don't eff up my KoW Orcs, I'm just fine with them redesigning their space orcs. I personally have zero investment in them.

I coulda sworn everyone was like "fantasy orcs with rayguns are st00pid! mantic is a dumb!" when the original Marauders came out, and now they're being redesigned and now the cries are "they don't match the old ones oh noes! mantic is a dumb!"

"Fantasy orcs with rayguns" are stupid. As are fantasy dwarves with rayguns. Both of those decisions were dumb from a design perspective. I understand the fiscal reasoning, however.

The issue being complained about is the proportions switch, and the move further towards GW-style comedy orks.

~Eric

 judgedoug wrote:
As long as they don't eff up my KoW Orcs, I'm just fine with them redesigning their space orcs. I personally have zero investment in them.

I coulda sworn everyone was like "fantasy orcs with rayguns are st00pid! mantic is a dumb!" when the original Marauders came out, and now they're being redesigned and now the cries are "they don't match the old ones oh noes! mantic is a dumb!"

The negative reaction wasn't as strong as it was for the forgefathers since the marauder sprues are quite nicely done, with 2 separate sprues with lots of different weapon options included.

Whereas the steel warriors were half of a 2-man sprue that didn't turn out so well.

 judgedoug wrote:
I coulda sworn everyone was like "fantasy orcs with rayguns are st00pid! mantic is a dumb!" when the original Marauders came out, and now they're being redesigned and now the cries are "they don't match the old ones oh noes! mantic is a dumb!"

Those are two entirely different problems; the first is equipment, the second is anatomy. If you cannot understand that a medieval knight and a modern marine should be equipped in a drastically different fashion, but should also possess the same body shape, that says more about you than the critics.

 AlexHolker wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
I coulda sworn everyone was like "fantasy orcs with rayguns are st00pid! mantic is a dumb!" when the original Marauders came out, and now they're being redesigned and now the cries are "they don't match the old ones oh noes! mantic is a dumb!"

Those are two entirely different problems; the first is equipment, the second is anatomy. If you cannot understand that a medieval knight and a modern marine should be equipped in a drastically different fashion, but should also possess the same body shape, that says more about you than the critics.

What is says more about is that I don't particularly care about the Marauders either way, which I stated before that quote clip begins. I just remember lots of complaints about them.

So, in fact, the Orx Marauders are well received and universally loved, and this redesign of the line is something which raises the ire of the legions of current style Orx Marauders fans. Gotcha.

With these new pictures, I for one am quite happy. That Enforcer with the heavy flamer looks great! The goblin cannon cart is goofy but neat. The mercs all look pretty damn cool, too. Speaking of, is that Freya in there with them? It's a little hard to tell if that's her or something else. That Marauder Hulk looks WAY better than it's initial sculpt we saw with its twig-like waist and and legs. The lower body looks much better bulked out. I thought they were going to go with the helmetted option for him though?

Have we seen the Hobgoblin Pyro or female Enforcer yet in render or pysical form?

I don't think so. Its as much of an issue for the enforcer infiltrator on bike since she is wave 2. If you meant boomer... I don't think we've seen him yet and I do believe he was wave 1, although he may be wave 2 with all of the faction characters.

Hulk looks much better now than the preview. Between the improvement on that, the heavy suits, and how the artillery turned out I'll probably be grabbing two BOGO's for the Maruaders for other games.

holy hell, im glad i got everything for the 4 starting factions, EVERYTHING looks ace. the Enforcers are looking amazing.

 Taarnak wrote:

One does get tired of talking to the wall...

As to heroic scale:


Big head, big hands (although not nearly as off as the head, and mostly forgivable, even for me).

Regardless of anatomy issues, which I can handle (once painted on the table I won't really notice how big her hands are) this pose still bothers me. That is the stupidest 'holding a rocket launcher' pose I've seen in a long time. Hand and arm position are just silly.

 Alpharius wrote:
But not if he's for hire all the time, right?

Anyway - I am just really happy to see how good everything's looking, and now my only concern is the Resin Master to Restic (ugh.) conversion process.

First, I am an excellent privateer. Goes back to the old Wing Commander Privateer game, back when CD-ROM games were new
Second, I find restic on figures to be a royal pain due to the mold lines.

I'm a decent hobbyist but stuff like the current Enforcers, Void SIrens (female DreadBall team with mold line right down the middle of players' faces) and their rat-men Veer-Myn make me cringe.
On a vehicle, you've at least got a quasi-reason to justify a seam being on a surface or edge. Down a human female model's face (very tiny face because they are more 25mm scale) not so much.

The location of the mould lines is not so much a function of the material, more of poor planning in terms of the sculpt and how it's fitted into the mould

smart digital sculptors (or technicians converting a physical sculpt to digital) who know their stuff will try and have mould lines placed in such a way that they're easy to remove

eg running along a seam, or across bits with little fiddly detail (GW excels at this, but it could be done with PVC too)

typically PVC minis are in fewer parts so it makes it trickier, but not impossible, they just need to think about it more clearly

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:


I believe you, internet stranger who tells unverified tales.

However, I just met the Shadow King of Tooling (nice guy, BTW), and he tells me that the problems were definitely on Mantic's end. In fact, when Ronnie saw the original prototypes, he demanded that they be fixed to look more like "the unflushed present I left in your office bathroom, jabroni. Merry Christmas." Then he got the factory owner in a headlock so Tony Reidy could kidney-punch him repeatedly. Unfortunately, due to the investigation, I can't share my proof with you at all, but the MaA models were definitely Mantic's fault. Biased sources have confirmed this.

But on a serious note, either spill the details or admit that Mantic ARE completely responsible for the product they greenlit and chose to send to backers.

Mark Wallace confirms that we are genuine in the facebook album here.

Again for the record, Ronnie asked us not to divulge the details of what happened with the men at arms and I'm not about to break a promise. To quote someone else who knows:

Wow.. just wow.

There's just so much wrong with that from an artistic perspective I think I'd want to strangle them if I was the original 3d sculptor.

Mantic are definitely right not to go public about it though, it could be taken the wrong way or seen as making excuses by some people.

I agree that Mantic should have handled things better in terms of informing people about the sprues up front rather than when people started getting the sprues, what happened is not Mantics fault nor do they have the capital to correct the problems right now.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
The location of the mould lines is not so much a function of the material, more of poor planning in terms of the sculpt and how it's fitted into the mould

smart digital sculptors (or technicians converting a physical sculpt to digital) who know their stuff will try and have mould lines placed in such a way that they're easy to remove

eg running along a seam, or across bits with little fiddly detail (GW excels at this, but it could be done with PVC too)

typically PVC minis are in fewer parts so it makes it trickier, but not impossible, they just need to think about it more clearly

Good point. However, when their planning fails and a mold line is prominent, restic is a royal bear to clean up without damaging detail.

Love their rules sets. Like their minis for the most part. Dislike restic and any plastic/metal hybrid kits.

Daedleh wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:


I believe you, internet stranger who tells unverified tales.

However, I just met the Shadow King of Tooling (nice guy, BTW), and he tells me that the problems were definitely on Mantic's end. In fact, when Ronnie saw the original prototypes, he demanded that they be fixed to look more like "the unflushed present I left in your office bathroom, jabroni. Merry Christmas." Then he got the factory owner in a headlock so Tony Reidy could kidney-punch him repeatedly. Unfortunately, due to the investigation, I can't share my proof with you at all, but the MaA models were definitely Mantic's fault. Biased sources have confirmed this.

But on a serious note, either spill the details or admit that Mantic ARE completely responsible for the product they greenlit and chose to send to backers.

Mark Wallace confirms that we are genuine in the facebook album here.

Again for the record, Ronnie asked us not to divulge the details of what happened with the men at arms and I'm not about to break a promise. To quote someone else who knows:

Wow.. just wow.

There's just so much wrong with that from an artistic perspective I think I'd want to strangle them if I was the original 3d sculptor.

Mantic are definitely right not to go public about it though, it could be taken the wrong way or seen as making excuses by some people.

I agree that Mantic should have handled things better in terms of informing people about the sprues up front rather than when people started getting the sprues, what happened is not Mantics fault nor do they have the capital to correct the problems right now.

Having said all that, if Mantic can't/won't control this, then they need to stop asking for people to pay for things sight unseen up front, maybe?

Daedleh wrote:


I agree that Mantic should have handled things better in terms of informing people about the sprues up front rather than when people started getting the sprues, what happened is not Mantics fault nor do they have the capital to correct the problems right now.

How is it not Mantic's fault sockpuppet?

An example of 'not mantic's fault' would be if they shipped 2000 orders via UPS which had the packed boxes sit in a 140 degree warehouse and the plastic used was inferior and grossly expanded and warped due to the heat and arrived at customers doorsteps ugly, warped and out of proportion. That would have been 'not Mantics fault'.

If they had used their own money, tooled the model, and then saw it they would have said 'this won't sell, we need to start over opposed to release it to retail and rather than let it be the ultimate pegwarmer.'

But they already have people's money, so while it is unacceptable model which shouldn't have been released, they have already sold them so it is easier to just ship the poor models, keep the money and move on.

If they had to rely on their products own merits to sell them and suffer the financial downfall of unselling inventory, then they wouldn't have let this model get to production, pure and simple. This is a result of them not having enough bandwidth to take their KS seriously and a total lack of art direction and accepting of things being 'good enuff' because they already got people's money.

nkelsch wrote:

Daedleh wrote:


I agree that Mantic should have handled things better in terms of informing people about the sprues up front rather than when people started getting the sprues, what happened is not Mantics fault nor do they have the capital to correct the problems right now.

How is it not Mantic's fault sockpuppet?

it pains me to do it, but I must agree with nkelsch. Mantic released the models, plain and simple.

but, nkelsch, you should really learn what a 'sockpuppet' actually is before you continue to use it incorrectly.

 judgedoug wrote:

nkelsch wrote:

Daedleh wrote:


I agree that Mantic should have handled things better in terms of informing people about the sprues up front rather than when people started getting the sprues, what happened is not Mantics fault nor do they have the capital to correct the problems right now.

How is it not Mantic's fault sockpuppet?

it pains me to do it, but I must agree with nkelsch. Mantic released the models, plain and simple.

but, nkelsch, you should really learn what a 'sockpuppet' actually is before you continue to use it incorrectly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_(Internet)

"A sockpuppet is an online identity used for purposes of deception"

"The term now includes other misleading uses of online identities, such as those created to praise, defend or support a person or organization,"

"A significant difference between the use of a pseudonym[3] and the creation of a sockpuppet is that the sockpuppet poses as an independent third-party unaffiliated with the puppeteer"

Low post count, Someone of a deep inside tour of mantic but is not affiliated with them, "I know real info which makes it not Mantics fault but I can't tell you!", Appearing on the scene right as this very legitimate issue appears?

Fits the bill to me.

judgedoug wrote:

nkelsch wrote:

Daedleh wrote:


I agree that Mantic should have handled things better in terms of informing people about the sprues up front rather than when people started getting the sprues, what happened is not Mantics fault nor do they have the capital to correct the problems right now.

How is it not Mantic's fault sockpuppet?

it pains me to do it, but I must agree with nkelsch. Mantic released the models, plain and simple.

but, nkelsch, you should really learn what a 'sockpuppet' actually is before you continue to use it incorrectly.

Ahaha glad to know I'm getting under the trolls skin.

Alpharius wrote:Having said all that, if Mantic can't/won't control this, then they need to stop asking for people to pay for things sight unseen up front, maybe?

I think that the trolls would be bleating even louder if Mantic went ahead and released nothing which was the alternative. I'm absolutely agreeing with you two that this should have been handled much, much better and that yes, the models are terrible and ultimately reflect poorly on Mantic.

I'm not sure that it's fair to brush all of Mantics kickstarters for the few KoW releases that were poor/sub-par. The Sci-Fi kickstarters have all been great so far and it's just a pity that the KoW one was misjudged from the start.

I think we've been knocked way, way off topic by nklesch here.

Alpharius wrote:Having said all that, if Mantic can't/won't control this, then they need to stop asking for people to pay for things sight unseen up front, maybe?

That would be great advice that is 100% pro-consumer so unlikely to happen considering Mantic is on a biannual kickstarter binge.

nkelsch wrote:How is it not Mantic's fault sockpuppet?

An example of 'not mantic's fault' would be if they shipped 2000 orders via UPS which had the packed boxes sit in a 140 degree warehouse and the plastic used was inferior and grossly expanded and warped due to the heat and arrived at customers doorsteps ugly, warped and out of proportion. That would have been 'not Mantics fault'.

If they had used their own money, tooled the model, and then saw it they would have said 'this won't sell, we need to start over opposed to release it to retail and rather than let it be the ultimate pegwarmer.'

But they already have people's money, so while it is unacceptable model which shouldn't have been released, they have already sold them so it is easier to just ship the poor models, keep the money and move on.

It might be best to leave name calling out of this... or at a minimum use more accurate descriptions like apologist or water carrier. Sockpuppet accounts tend not to be 5 years old and I think we can both agree that Mantic's handling of their first KS shows they're not capable of planning 5 years in advance.

Also, in Mantic's "defense", goofy looking models like the goblins (haven't seen them, just repeating what others said multiple times) and the drakon riders do show that they're willing to release shoddy work straight to the peg as well. I do agree though that it's probably alot more tempting if you've got the money in hand to pay for it to begin with.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Daedleh wrote:
I think that the trolls would be bleating even louder if Mantic went ahead and released nothing which was the alternative. I'm absolutely agreeing with you two that this should have been handled much, much better and that yes, the models are terrible and ultimately reflect poorly on Mantic.

I'm not sure that it's fair to brush all of Mantics kickstarters for the few KoW releases that were poor/sub-par. The Sci-Fi kickstarters have all been great so far and it's just a pity that the KoW one was misjudged from the start.

I think we've been knocked way, way off topic by nklesch here.

Just for the record, sheep bleat.. not trolls. And the pejorative "sheep" is generally used for people who tow the company line in spite of common sense and to their own detriment as customers. I would guess trolls grumble and moan. I agree that this was, in the end, a lose lose scenario for Mantic. They chose to cut their losses and release the product for short term gain (sales to those ignorant of the quality) at the cost of their long term rep. That might have been the only viable financial choice for them but that doesn't soften the blow to someone getting the shoddy models. While I agree that they've done better with their subsequent dreadball KS (to my limited knowledge nothing has shipped for deadzone so you can't count that yet), you'll likely find that the complaints about the first will keep rolling in until it is finished and it stops being an continuing/ongoing disappointment.

nkelsch wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:

nkelsch wrote:

Daedleh wrote:


I agree that Mantic should have handled things better in terms of informing people about the sprues up front rather than when people started getting the sprues, what happened is not Mantics fault nor do they have the capital to correct the problems right now.

How is it not Mantic's fault sockpuppet?

it pains me to do it, but I must agree with nkelsch. Mantic released the models, plain and simple.

but, nkelsch, you should really learn what a 'sockpuppet' actually is before you continue to use it incorrectly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_(Internet)

"A sockpuppet is an online identity used for purposes of deception"

"The term now includes other misleading uses of online identities, such as those created to praise, defend or support a person or organization,"

"A significant difference between the use of a pseudonym[3] and the creation of a sockpuppet is that the sockpuppet poses as an independent third-party unaffiliated with the puppeteer"

Low post count, Someone of a deep inside tour of mantic but is not affiliated with them, "I know real info which makes it not Mantics fault but I can't tell you!", Appearing on the scene right as this very legitimate issue appears?

Fits the bill to me.

"a false identity assumed by a member of an internet community who spoke to, or about, himself while pretending to be another person" doesn't fit the bill.

Maybe a meatpuppet, maybe. More like a white knight or apologist. As any company grows, there's a greater chance of them (how many gazillions does GW have?) But sock puppet? So next you'll tell me he went back in time to 2008 and joined Dakka just to make your above statements look foolish.

Wow, that hulk is fantastic.

We really need to leave all of the name calling and insults out of the conversation, please!

I was gonna say...

For all of the heated debate those pictures have created, I for one am feeling very destitute.

See, I cancelled a pledge for Deadzone thinking that Toughest Girls of the Galaxy was going to be sooooo hot. I really wanted to Rebs minis. And I can't even drown my sorrows in cheesecake in the meantime.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
I was gonna say...

For all of the heated debate those pictures have created, I for one am feeling very destitute.

See, I cancelled a pledge for Deadzone thinking that Toughest Girls of the Galaxy was going to be sooooo hot. I really wanted to Rebs minis. And I can't even drown my sorrows in cheesecake in the meantime.

Fear not. There is plenty of T&A for everyone over at Infinity in the meantime. Heck, even the latest FW press release has a gratuitous marine butt shot!

 Alpharius wrote:
Ah, now I remember nkelsch and his...special relationship with Mantic!
"Kroothawk, is that you?" springs to mind too!

No, I am leaning back, eating popcorn and watch the neverending drama-comedy.
Good thing that most Mantic customers still pay in advance before seeing the product, otherwise Mantic wouldn't exist anymore.
"It's not our fault that we release such crap" <- That's a good one

 Kroothawk wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
Ah, now I remember nkelsch and his...special relationship with Mantic!
"Kroothawk, is that you?" springs to mind too!

No, I am leaning back, eating popcorn and watch the neverending drama-comedy.
Good thing that most Mantic customers still pay in advance before seeing the product, otherwise Mantic wouldn't exist anymore.
"It's not our fault that we release such crap" <- That's a good one

I find that I have to agree with you!

I really, REALLY hope they've learned their lesson by now, but...

...I suppose we'll see with Deadzone!

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
I was gonna say...

For all of the heated debate those pictures have created, I for one am feeling very destitute.

See, I cancelled a pledge for Deadzone thinking that Toughest Girls of the Galaxy was going to be sooooo hot. I really wanted to Rebs minis. And I can't even drown my sorrows in cheesecake in the meantime.

Get a hold of another canadian backer and get them to up their pledge in the next survey.

 Kroothawk wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
Ah, now I remember nkelsch and his...special relationship with Mantic!
"Kroothawk, is that you?" springs to mind too!

No, I am leaning back, eating popcorn and watch the neverending drama-comedy.
Good thing that most Mantic customers still pay in advance before seeing the product, otherwise Mantic wouldn't exist anymore.
"It's not our fault that we release such crap" <- That's a good one

Kroot, that said, can you find any fault with the Deadzone stuff? Most people are crowing about how awesome it is, the only "hate" comes from the hand placement on that one girl's gun. I'd be interested to see if you can actually find things that are actually bad, as opposed to just you not liking Mantic.

And mentioning nkelsch...best just to tune out at this point.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
...the only "hate" comes from the hand placement on that one girl's gun.

Say what?

There have been plenty other problems pointed out. The "fixed" Marauders being the most common.

~Eric

Don't see the need for extremes?

At present Deadzone is looking someway better than what we have seen of the new KoW, although that doesn't necessarily mean it will be perfect. I think most people right now are probably a bit more confident about getting something worthwhile for their investment.

 Taarnak wrote:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
...the only "hate" comes from the hand placement on that one girl's gun.

Say what?

There have been plenty other problems pointed out. The "fixed" Marauders being the most common.

~Eric

Most of the people who disliked the Orx voiced their opinions before, corrections have been made and MOST people have changed their viewpoints for the positive. Not all, but a big enough swing that those "issues" clearly come down to personal taste. So no, Orx certainly don't fall into the screw up category, otherwise even the fixes would have been met with a similar level of criticism.

I still think the dancing sniper is stupid. Dumb. Asinine.

Does that help?

 CptJake wrote:
I still think the dancing sniper is stupid. Dumb. Asinine.

Does that help?

Have we even seen it since the first views that everyone was complaining about?

^I haven't seen a new iteration of it yet. So...perhaps not. I wasn't too fond of the sketch, but I just thought it was goofy. The model itself may be a fantastic sculpt, just a weird pose. Still, there two snipers: you hate one, the other works. I'll likely offer my dancing sniper, as the pose doesn't do anything for me.

 timetowaste85 wrote:

Most of the people who disliked the Orx voiced their opinions before, corrections have been made and MOST people have changed their viewpoints for the positive. Not all, but a big enough swing that those "issues" clearly come down to personal taste. So no, Orx certainly don't fall into the screw up category, otherwise even the fixes would have been met with a similar level of criticism.

Not sure how you can say that most of the people like the new stuff. How do you arrive at that? Seriously. Most people don't follow the development of these figures as closely as we on Dakka do. The majority probably haven't even seen the "fixed" figures. It sure seems hard enough to find good pictures of the figures, and Mantic seem in no hurry to put any out.

Also, a great deal of the "fixes" for the Marauders seem to not even have been implemented. The big one that sticks out to me is the Ripper suit with ranged weapons. I could be wrong, but I seem to recall them saying they were going to reposition his arms to be, you know, aiming his weapons. That definitely didn't happen. Then there is the "running" figure who looks like he is falling on his face, the shotgun Marauder hugging his gun, etc. All these things were complained about (i.e.: problems) and yet somehow still exist. The majority of the Marauders line falls into the Screw Up category for me, and I'm certain I'm not alone.

All of this; every last bitch and nit-pick (from me and anyone else here), ultimately comes down to personal taste. I'm not willing to accept that poorly executed crap quietly. That's all.

~Eric



Automatically Appended Next Post:

pretre wrote:

 CptJake wrote:
I still think the dancing sniper is stupid. Dumb. Asinine.

Does that help?

Have we even seen it since the first views that everyone was complaining about?

timetowaste85 wrote:^I haven't seen a new iteration of it yet. So...perhaps not. I wasn't too fond of the sketch, but I just thought it was goofy. The model itself may be a fantastic sculpt, just a weird pose. Still, there two snipers: you hate one, the other works. I'll likely offer my dancing sniper, as the pose doesn't do anything for me.

Nope, it's still bad.

Personally I'm still not a fan of the Marauders even after the changes they are unlikely to ever see the gaming table, the regular goblin sniper and leader are good the rest are mediocre to bad. Winterdyne has done a great job of making them look better than they are but you can't hide the oversized hands, weird poses and facial expressions and as for the hounds :( - I was prepared to write off the Marauders for the rest of the game contents.

 Taarnak wrote:
Nope, it's still bad.

At least that's down to taste. I think he's cool. Looks like he's saying 'I got one!'

 pretre wrote:

 Taarnak wrote:
Nope, it's still bad.

At least that's down to taste. I think he's cool. Looks like he's saying 'I got one!'

Yes right, I give it a week after release until we see a diorama in the painting section of one of those stood on the chest of a space marine.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
And mentioning nkelsch...best just to tune out at this point.

I'm pro-Mantic in a big way, and unnecessary trolling aside, nkelsch's post on the previous page is spot on.

As to the Marauders, broadly speaking I like the models, but the Marauders, and the dancing sniper is the worst culprit, suffer from trying to be Warhammer-humour in a universe where it just doesn't gel with the rest of the factions. It works for Dreadball because a) the whole background is done it that style and b) it's explained as Corporation marketing hype. It works in 40k because the whole setting is over-the top-ridiculous, I like the KoW fluff, but it has a similar issue, suddenly it'll goes Warhammer-silly (unsurprisingly the Goblins are the worst offenders). As I said in the KS-comments to the original Asterian -not-Wraithguard fluff, they need to sell me their fluff in their game and stop making me feel like they'd rather be playing 40k.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Kroot, that said, can you find any fault with the Deadzone stuff?

It is not yet released, so enough opportunities still to botch it with Mantic's non-existent feedback loops and quality control
That said, I don't follow the previews too closely as they are not my style (I find Orks and power armour guys uninteresting).
But:
1.) Orks (minus dogs and big Tasmanian Devil) look okay for Orks.
2.) Winged Kroot looks okay (waiting for Tau Air caste, bought their Dreadball team).
3.) General Ironman design looks okay, non-Deadzone miniatures have few and odd poses and too thin knees.
4.) Pimp suffers from distorted proportions as many Mantic miniatures do.
5.) Terrain is super bland, even the cheap Russian sprues have more character.

 Taarnak wrote:

 timetowaste85 wrote:

Most of the people who disliked the Orx voiced their opinions before, corrections have been made and MOST people have changed their viewpoints for the positive. Not all, but a big enough swing that those "issues" clearly come down to personal taste. So no, Orx certainly don't fall into the screw up category, otherwise even the fixes would have been met with a similar level of criticism.

Not sure how you can say that most of the people like the new stuff. How do you arrive at that? Seriously. Most people don't follow the development of these figures as closely as we on Dakka do. The majority probably haven't even seen the "fixed" figures. It sure seems hard enough to find good pictures of the figures, and Mantic seem in no hurry to put any out.

Also, a great deal of the "fixes" for the Marauders seem to not even have been implemented. The big one that sticks out to me is the Ripper suit with ranged weapons. I could be wrong, but I seem to recall them saying they were going to reposition his arms to be, you know, aiming his weapons. That definitely didn't happen. Then there is the "running" figure who looks like he is falling on his face, the shotgun Marauder hugging his gun, etc. All these things were complained about (i.e.: problems) and yet somehow still exist. The majority of the Marauders line falls into the Screw Up category for me, and I'm certain I'm not alone.

All of this; every last bitch and nit-pick (from me and anyone else here), ultimately comes down to personal taste. I'm not willing to accept that poorly executed crap quietly. That's all.

~Eric



Automatically Appended Next Post:

pretre wrote:

 CptJake wrote:
I still think the dancing sniper is stupid. Dumb. Asinine.

Does that help?

Have we even seen it since the first views that everyone was complaining about?

timetowaste85 wrote:^I haven't seen a new iteration of it yet. So...perhaps not. I wasn't too fond of the sketch, but I just thought it was goofy. The model itself may be a fantastic sculpt, just a weird pose. Still, there two snipers: you hate one, the other works. I'll likely offer my dancing sniper, as the pose doesn't do anything for me.

Nope, it's still bad.

I'm not a fan of the dancer, but pretre made a good point of his "I got one" dance. It works, especially for a goblin. Sculpt looks good, pose is blah. And fine, if we want to be specific, most of the voices on Dakka (not the whole world) have mentioned improvement on the Orx. There was a LOT of hate on here for them, they were the least preferred team. Now many people are discussing adding more of them to their pledge. An improvement must exist at that point, right? Even if it's just seeing a sculpt instead of a drawing. I forgot that I have to be extremely specific and avoid sarcasm when talking with you, and I'll try to remember that in the future. Apologies.

 pretre wrote:

 Taarnak wrote:
Nope, it's still bad.

At least that's down to taste. I think he's cool. Looks like he's saying 'I got one!'

Which exactly why it is asinine. A sniper that did that is a dead sniper. Sneaky goblins are smart enough o know this, and being sneaking critters should not be announcing their presence after each shot with a frickin victory dance.

Are there sniper rifles with big ammo clips? Looks like an automatic assault rifle to me, but I am no expert. The other Goblin uses it as an assault rifle, not bothering with the gunsight at all.

Taking the high road on the clip/magazine argument. Sniper rifles seem to have 5-20 round detatchable box magazines most often (says a very quick google search), so those are probably within reason. Besides its scifi and the future. And failing that, maybe they're more of a DMR type of weapon than a high caliber affair.

I prefer kneeling super srs goblin over the goofy one, but I like the goofy one too. I think I'm getting 5 of them (2xstrike+bundle) and I'll be able to live with a couple of goofy snipers.

So far for me, KoW = great game, Dwarf Kings Hold = great game, Project Pandora = great game, Warpath = still needs work, Dreadball = my favorite game atm, Deadzone (only played 4 games of Beta rules) = shaping up really well. So for me I'm well happy with Mantic atm!

@ Overtyrant Hey a little off topic but about DKH, would you recommend it? The warstore seems to carry it (or expansion for it, can't tell) in their Mantic overstock section and I was eyeing it. Project pandora too, for that matter.

Back OT...No love for the little downtrodden goblin carrying the big mortar shell thing?

Both games are great and you can normally pick them up cheap! Though the one complaint I have about those two games are the boards and counters are to thin for my tastes.

Dancing goblin sniper could be used as a casualty with very little work.

The Marauders have changed enough for the better that I actually regret not buying any of them. I had written them off after the horrible first showing, but they are definitely a ton better.

Those gobbos look very fitting to me. Cunning, maliciously intent on shooting someone in the back, and mischievous victory dance after cunningly, maliciously shooting someone in the back.

 Kroothawk wrote:
5.) Terrain is super bland, even the cheap Russian sprues have more character.

The plain grey paintjob on the recently shown ones maybe. The light grey with orange striping shown during the KS was much more lively I thought. The main selling point however is the modularity and multiple kits which I think will make it awesome on the tabletop. It won't look as good individually as the large, premade buildings from... Spartan? But the modularity will mean you can have a different battlefield every game, whereas the Spartan stuff will get old very quick. Mantic needs to release some pics of epic epic terrain made with 10+ kits imo, to show off what it can do.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
I was gonna say...

For all of the heated debate those pictures have created, I for one am feeling very destitute.

See, I cancelled a pledge for Deadzone thinking that Toughest Girls of the Galaxy was going to be sooooo hot. I really wanted to Rebs minis. And I can't even drown my sorrows in cheesecake in the meantime.

Ouch. /hug. I did the reverse... dropped down to $150 on Raging Heroes and went in big time on deadzone. Here's hoping both turn out well though!

 AegisGrimm wrote:
The Marauders have changed enough for the better that I actually regret not buying any of them. I had written them off after the horrible first showing, but they are definitely a ton better.

I can probably cut you a sweet deal on a dancing sniper if you regret not getting one of those.

 timetowaste85 wrote:

I'm not a fan of the dancer, but pretre made a good point of his "I got one" dance. It works, especially for a goblin. Sculpt looks good, pose is blah. And fine, if we want to be specific, most of the voices on Dakka (not the whole world) have mentioned improvement on the Orx. There was a LOT of hate on here for them, they were the least preferred team. Now many people are discussing adding more of them to their pledge. An improvement must exist at that point, right? Even if it's just seeing a sculpt instead of a drawing. I forgot that I have to be extremely specific and avoid sarcasm when talking with you, and I'll try to remember that in the future. Apologies.

Again, there's no way you can really say "most of the voices on Dakka". Some, for sure. And that's fine. If you like them, good. I'm glad someone won't be saddled with fixing them or offloading them. Trying to add legitimacy to your argument by ascribing it to the majority just doesn't work. You have an opinion. Great, stick to it. And since we are communicating strictly through the internet, you should aspire to specificity always, not just with me. Also, you and I have never or barely ever "talked" so that last remark was unnecessary. I'm not attacking you, I'm attacking your argument. Please keep that in mind. I have absolutely no ill will whatsoever towards you.

I would totally agree with Pretre and be 100% on board with the sniper goblin IF, and only if, I were buying it from GW. Comedy ork(c)s and Goblins are their thing. It wasn't Mantic's thing. At least not for the Orx. I don't think so for the Goblins, but please feel free to point out a source if I'm wrong. I'd like to know. The departure from the original "feel" and proportions of the Marauders are my biggest complaint about them. Then tack on the mediocre to bad sculpting and the GW-ifying of them and I'm turned off completely.

People are talking about adding them to their pledges, true. No argument there. More than a few posters (here and elsewhere) are doing so to use as Stormboyz. Which is great. But I don't want Stormboiyz. I want serious, deadly, good looking Orx. I'm not alone, but I doubt that we are anywhere near a majority. There is still a lot of dislike felt for the Marauders. A few folks have even spoken up since you and I started trading messages here.

~Eric

Imho, the marauders have improved massively since the inital greens. I initally was a bit miffed that I couldn't swap them out for another second faction. Looking back now im glad I didn't have that chance.

The marauder's new look in dz does seem to fit more with the warpath universes background of them having been used as shock troops by the corporations, being equipped with human equipment and uniforms. The stormboy comparison is pretty much spot on for how they'd look.

I still think theres a couple of problems tho, in particular matching them to the current orx models and vehicles. Also some of the poses could have been better thought out, namely the ripper suits.

 Taarnak wrote:
I want serious, deadly, good looking Orx. I'm not alone, but I doubt that we are anywhere near a majority. There is still a lot of dislike felt for the Marauders. A few folks have even spoken up since you and I started trading messages here.

~Eric

I fall on the "like" end of the Orx debate. The current designs will fit quite nicely with my 40K orks, and since I don't see myself ever playing 40K again, that means I will have a massive Warpath/Deadzone Marauders force with very little inital effort. I'm quite pleased I went all in on this one.

 JoshInJapan wrote:
I fall on the "like" end of the Orx debate. The current designs will fit quite nicely with my 40K orks, and since I don't see myself ever playing 40K again, that means I will have a massive Warpath/Deadzone Marauders force with very little inital effort. I'm quite pleased I went all in on this one.

Pretty much same here in that respect. Or at least, I won't be playing *Orks* in 40k, but will be very happy to have a solid foundation for a warpath army thanks to 3x strike teams + bogof. And Deadzone... I really hope it scales larger well.

Speaking of which - an aspect of deadzone is your activations per turn based on your commander. Will this need to be scaled up for larger games, such as 4x6 boards with 2-3x the units on each side? Or would it still be best to have more rapid turns with smaller numbers of units doing stuff while the majority don't. Or did I miss something in the released rules that already addressed this? If you have 4+ players each with the smaller sized teams it would still work of course, but if you have 1v1 with two very large teams, I was wondering how it would work best.

Well the command value does a few things. First number is how many cards you draw a turn, second is how many you keep (reshuffle the rest). Add them together and that denotes how many units you can move per initiative step (or however they call it). In the standard size 70 point games, most players are going to need two steps to move everyone. So it goes player A player B, A, B. For double the number of models you'll just have more initiative steps per turn. A,B,A,B,A,B,A,B. It seems like it should work just fine, and is a concrete reason to bring a high command character. And to kill them! If you suddenly go down from moving 5-6 guys at a time down to 2-3, you lose a lot of your ability to concentrate your forces and such.

That is, of course, if Mr. Thornton does it that way. The multi-mat/multiplayer stuff may be in the supplement book and not the main rulebook, I don't remember. So far, I don't think he's said a lot about it, what with just the Beta of the main game being out.

I can probably cut you a sweet deal on a dancing sniper if you regret not getting one of those.

While I get the joke, I now totally agree with the genius of having the entirety of the survey available again for the 2nd survey in the spring. As I see more and more models get better previews, and when I see how the hard plastic stuff shapes up, I can add more of those things to what I'll put on the 2nd pledge.

I was kind of planning on using the second survey to cherry-pick models/bundles to fill out units for Warpath. But with all of the talk of Warpath going back towards the 1.0 rules with bigger battles (apocalypse style maybe), I'm somewhat hesitant to go nuts doing so. I'm still hoping they keep a 40k-esque WP2.0 style variant, even if they want to flagship extra big apocalypse style.

Anyway that's a topic for a couple of other threads. For now, the second survey for me is mostly going to be devoted to peace keepers, I think. And, after I've had a chance to play with the battlezone tiles and if they still offer it during the second survey... a chance to get some sweet Antenocitis stuff shipped to me in a box I've already paid to have shipped

Forgefathers for a 2nd edition 40K army, for me! I think that if I buy the faction set and the expansion, with two more Valkyrs, the only figure I won't be using for a 40k list is the demo-bot. So pretty good deal.

I may have to cherrypick some Marauder stuff, though.

 Taarnak wrote:
People are talking about adding them to their pledges, true. No argument there. More than a few posters (here and elsewhere) are doing so to use as Stormboyz. Which is great. But I don't want Stormboiyz. I want serious, deadly, good looking Orx. I'm not alone, but I doubt that we are anywhere near a majority. There is still a lot of dislike felt for the Marauders. A few folks have even spoken up since you and I started trading messages here.

~Eric

This.

I think a lot of the people liking them like them because they're closer to the 40k models.

That's all well and good, but it doesn't help Warpath in the same way that 40k players who never played Warpath complaining about mass-battles rules didn't help Warpath (just admit it's the minis you're not interested in, Warpath 2.0 with 40k-style rules has been out for long while now and the 40k players who shouted from the rooftops saying that was what they wanted still aren't playing it).

I have zero interest in 40k. And zero-interest in Warpath as a 40k-clone. You can get away with that for fantasy since the archetypes are so generic, but with sci-fi, if you make a race of Orx that look exactly like 40k orks, you start to wonder why you're not just playing 40k instead.

What I do want is Warpath which still doesn't feel like it has been released yet, after 2 years on the shelves.

At least with KoW we got Elves, Undead and Dwarves within the first year or so (with abyssal dwarves and orcs following shortly after), and all were viable options to create full and affordable armies out of (with even the frills like artillery done in hard plastic).
It really allowed the game to take off and got people playing,made them interested in tournaments.

Warpath has one faction that is just about half-done - the forgefathers. Most of the infantry, and a mech/artillery piece. No vehicles, but it's playable enough.
Corporation are just about close enough to forming a full army if you count the enforcers as well. Again, no vehicles.

However, even with those two factions, the pricing is basically double what it is on KoW so it's nowhere near as appealing to collect.
The bulk of the forgefathers, and a lot of the enforcers cost either £1.50 or £3 per model which is basically GW prices for hybrid metal minis that don't come close to offering what GW does.

Marauders and Veer-myn might as well not exist as far as being serious playable warpath factions, the Orx have one infantry unit released which is about to be consigned to the "released back when the minis were truescale" dustbin. I have never heard of a warpath game that did not just use 40k orks for the minis. Not one. Not because they were bad minis, but you can't play a game when 85% of the army list is missing and you only have one infantry unit, one hero and a buggy to work with for minis.
Veer-myn are 2 restic kits with metal add-on bitz, and will probably stay that way for a *long* time since they got nothing from Deadzone.

Deadzone will help, but it will also release 3 new factions which will all need their own support before the first four are anywhere close to being filled out properly. And again, with the exception of a few hard plastics (which China may or may not take a sloppy great dump on at tooling time), the releases will mostly be expensive restic and no proper vehicles.

What we will see long before any movement on Warpath is Mars Attacks fleshed out into a complete sci-fi game with its own big monsters and vehicles, and 2-3 complete, compelling, playable factions all with excellent sculpts. /:

Im begining to like the little fella

ROFL. Nice.

 timetowaste85 wrote:

Kroot, that said, can you find any fault with the Deadzone stuff? Most people are crowing about how awesome it is, the only "hate" comes from the hand placement on that one girl's gun. I'd be interested to see if you can actually find things that are actually bad, as opposed to just you not liking Mantic.

And mentioning nkelsch...best just to tune out at this point.

Fault. It's an interesting term.
Scale creep is perhaps an issue, but then again, the Forgefathers shrunk in size when DreadBall came out, compared to the original plastics, so I see it notsomuch as scale creep but scale being all over the shop. (Another bit of fluff to add - when Orks come of age, they're also given shoes. )
A couple of the Rebs look nice. Rocket Girl looks stupid. The Orks have gone from appalling to okay, The goblin driven gun looks decent, as does the teraton and the vespid or whatever it is, but the only figures shown so far that I'd possibly purchase are the Commissar, the big nasty (Stage 3?) and maybe the Enforcer captain. I'll hold judgement on the stuff that's not been shown yet, because as KoW showed us, final product may not match concept art.

So yeah, back to finding fault. I think the main thing the new figures - the stuff that's been shown so far - makes me feel is satisfied with the stuff I already own. I already own better orks (GW), better "Ripper Suits" (GW, Kromlech), better human rebels (GW, Hasslefree, Copplestone, etc). If I owned no orks, then sure, they'd be an alternative with GW's prices the way they are. But I guess that while the DeadZone figures aren't especially gakky (exepting the mawbeast), I don't find them great either. They're just mediocre. Middle of the road. They're alright, but they're not exciting me or making me want to own them. And let's be frank, that's with Winterdyne's paint on top of them, and he almost always makes figures look pretty effing good. He made the KoW trolls look less gak, after all!

40K with non-40K minis aside, I think the Marauders could make good counts-as Blood Axes in my small 40K army. I'm still not sure I like the Ripper suits, but it may just be the ranged one's wonky arms positioning. The price is certainly better than GW mega-armor, but the look of the armor is different because Marauders don't just Mad Max everything in the Warpath universe. It's not ramshackle enough for 40K Orks like the Kromlech stuff.

 Azazelx wrote:

 timetowaste85 wrote:

Kroot, that said, can you find any fault with the Deadzone stuff? Most people are crowing about how awesome it is, the only "hate" comes from the hand placement on that one girl's gun. I'd be interested to see if you can actually find things that are actually bad, as opposed to just you not liking Mantic.

And mentioning nkelsch...best just to tune out at this point.

Fault. It's an interesting term.
Scale creep is perhaps an issue, but then again, the Forgefathers shrunk in size when DreadBall came out, compared to the original plastics, so I see it notsomuch as scale creep but scale being all over the shop. (Another bit of fluff to add - when Orks come of age, they're also given shoes. )
A couple of the Rebs look nice. Rocket Girl looks stupid. The Orks have gone from appalling to okay, The goblin driven gun looks decent, as does the teraton and the vespid or whatever it is, but the only figures shown so far that I'd possibly purchase are the Commissar, the big nasty (Stage 3?) and maybe the Enforcer captain. I'll hold judgement on the stuff that's not been shown yet, because as KoW showed us, final product may not match concept art.

So yeah, back to finding fault. I think the main thing the new figures - the stuff that's been shown so far - makes me feel is satisfied with the stuff I already own. I already own better orks (GW), better "Ripper Suits" (GW, Kromlech), better human rebels (GW, Hasslefree, Copplestone, etc). If I owned no orks, then sure, they'd be an alternative with GW's prices the way they are. But I guess that while the DeadZone figures aren't especially gakky (exepting the mawbeast), I don't find them great either. They're just mediocre. Middle of the road. They're alright, but they're not exciting me or making me want to own them. And let's be frank, that's with Winterdyne's paint on top of them, and he almost always makes figures look pretty effing good. He made the KoW trolls look less gak, after all!

You're right, of course, I just asked Kroot because his feelings towards Mantic are very bad usually. Personally, I love the Orx (except the dancer, but I understand their aim with him). I'm BOGOing a bunch of the Orx, as I have the start of a marauder army now, and these Orx look too notch to me. Always subjective, absolutely. But I love them.

 Azazelx wrote:
the vespid or whatever it is

Kraaw iirc. Cool race, along with the Z'zor from Dreadball which I really hope we see more of.

If they make a Zz'or army, my wallet is screwed. Like prison-rape-scene screwed. Lol

Mantic: "Your wallet looks mighty cute in them thar pants."

You got a pretty wallet, boy...

Usually I'm a big fan of greenskins in general. But DZ orx just don't do it for me.
Those hands and faces are nothing like warpath. That guy running like a bad cartoon is still there. That guy with two assult rifles is still there. Ripper suit arms like he's about to hug someone - still there. Dancing sniper - still there. Stupid mawbeasts - still there, though remove that chainsowrd and they are alright.
The only model that looks like it's actually shooting is the little goblin sniper. And that is the only one I like.
They got a terrific paint job and that is all the improvment I see.

Has anyone got their Dreadball season 3 stuff yet and would care to comment?

 timetowaste85 wrote:
If they make a Zz'or army, my wallet is screwed. Like prison-rape-scene screwed. Lol

What an interesting choice of simile...

 Azazelx wrote:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
If they make a Zz'or army, my wallet is screwed. Like prison-rape-scene screwed. Lol

What an interesting choice of simile...

well, we like to keep it classy here on dakka

Well there's a few races from warpath that need padding out, zzor and veermyn. Sounds like an infestation that needs to be zoned out for purification, deadzone style, maybe by a corporation.

Actually, we do.

So, yeah, let's not continue down that particular path, OK?

You're a party pooper, Alphy.

Also, more painted pics are up (email update) but I'm on my phone and can't copy/paste. That ripper suit is gorgeous though... (To my taste).

Open Doors

More painted models I hear you cry? You want more? We’ll give you more…


There is just time to tell you that tickets to our Open Day have gone up on our website! Fancy meeting the designers? Perhaps you’d like a demonstration of the game? Want to see the upcoming miniatures in the flesh? You can do all of this at the Mantic Open Day, where tickets are just £5 for a limited time only.

You’ll get a goodie bag containing around £10 worth of stuff on entry – and a fantastic day out for the family. Head on over to the website and pick up your ticket here.

Oh ok, here’s another pic!

Spoiler:

Marauder Ripper Suit - he has all of the guns.

Have a great weekend!

So long as the toolings fine, I'm going to be very happy with these I think.

*edit* ninja-ed

Pleasantly surprised at how fricken huge second gens are. And even the third gens look considerably larger than I was thinking. That may go a long way to achieving the mad mutant look and differentiating them from zombies of various types. Rebs look wonderful as always.

I'm still a bit put off by the 3rd gen "supertorso" but... it does go a long way to make them huge and creepy.

That's right, I think it was disgusting that that simile was used outside of the context of GW price increases !

Becoming much more hopeful about this with the latest round of pics, the Rebels certainly seem like one of the more characterful factions (and I think one it will probably be easiest to fit miniatures from other ranges into..)

I came across this pic on the Battlesystems FB page:

Very cool, always got to love a shield and a shotgun. Nice figures. Where are all these pics coming from???

A like to keep a couple riot shield and shotgun armed enforcers around. For close encounters.

barnacle111 wrote:
Very cool, always got to love a shield and a shotgun. Nice figures. Where are all these pics coming from???

I came across this pic on the Battlesystems FB page:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Battle-Systems/242636009156445

That battle systems stuff looks pretty neat. Those corporation marines also put forth a strong case for clear bases... helps a bit with immersion. Thanks for sharing the link.

I'm going to keep an eye on battlesystems.. the fact that it's *not* a pdf solution, and is pre-printed, pre-cut, thick card is very appealing.

I'd like to own more terrain, but it competes for painting time with minis. Pre-painted or pre-printed is definitely something I'm happy to roll with in the case of terrain.

I think worldworks were on to something, but the visible plastic clips really made it look cheap and tacky... this looks like the card itself is designed to slot together (or be glued into sub-assemeblies) which is much better. I can see myself getting in on their KS if they have a deadzone-friendly option that has 3" everything.

They have another pic up on their facebook page, one of the alt pose 2nd gens:



Love the overall lighting and atmosphere of that pic.

His pose reduces the overall terror just a bit, but looks pretty solid.

I love how the guy in the back is just going, "Nope, not even gonna look." Guy in the front is ready to fight valiantly while his buddy is just cowering back there. Talk about teamwork!

That terrain does look pretty neat though.

 highlord tamburlaine wrote:
I love how the guy in the back is just going, "Nope, not even gonna look." Guy in the front is ready to fight valiantly while his buddy is just cowering back there. Talk about teamwork!

It has a window.

While the card terrain's not quite my cup of tea, it does provide a nice effect - it makes it look like your tabletop is a level out of a Doom or Quake game, which is sort of awesome.

 scarletsquig wrote:
I'm going to keep an eye on battlesystems.. the fact that it's *not* a pdf solution, and is pre-printed, pre-cut, thick card is very appealing.

That's what their kickstarter will be funding. I've been following them for a while, but having to print and cut my own has been too daunting to take the plunge. In a semi-related topic, they dropped a hint in a FB post that they would be doing something for/with Mantic, which makes me think that Pandora may be getting an update.

 AlexHolker wrote:

It has a window.

Which he is OBVIOUSLY not looking through! I don't see any helmeted eyes peering through! He's just flailing his gun wildly from behind that shield, praying and spraying.

I'm going to have to keep an eye out on the cardstock stuff. I HATE having to print my own scenery- I just won't do it! We go through so much ink in our home as it is, I don't want to add to the costs!

Hmm, those battle system guys put out something compatible with the DZ tiles... I may have to look into it! I have a feeling I'll have already gotten and painted (in a no-so-matching color) my tiles though, so we'll see.

 Yonan wrote:
A like to keep a couple riot shield and shotgun armed enforcers around. For close encounters.

I like to keep a riot shield and my shotgun around too. Never know when you'll need 'em!



I love the painting they are showing, and really like a lot of the figures. Unfortunately a few of the Marauders still fall into the stoopidly silly for the sake of stooped silliness category for me. I really wanted vicious mean and nasty combat critters to work at carving out a chunk of the Deadzone.

I think you will realise as I did the goblin is wading through shoulder deep water and model your battlefield appropriately.

Except the terrain that the game comes with isn't exactly swamp terrain.

Even if it was, having one figure wading through the swamp (or sewer since we are in an urban environment) and only one is silly.

I know some folks love Happy Dancing Silly Goblins and Orcs. Great for them. My opinion is equally as valid, and I don't like it and don't feel the urge to accept or make excuses as to why it was a good choice of poses for a sniper figure, or why happy silly cartoonish orcs were a good choice for the theme of the game.

Fantastic paintjobs on them though.

Those Plague guys look very impressive in that terrain.

 dragqueeninspace wrote:
I think you will realise as I did the goblin is wading through shoulder deep water and model your battlefield appropriately.

Think this will be conversion we see number 2, after the sniper stood on the dead marine!

 highlord tamburlaine wrote:

 AlexHolker wrote:

It has a window.

Which he is OBVIOUSLY not looking through! I don't see any helmeted eyes peering through! He's just flailing his gun wildly from behind that shield, praying and spraying.

I'm going to have to keep an eye out on the cardstock stuff. I HATE having to print my own scenery- I just won't do it! We go through so much ink in our home as it is, I don't want to add to the costs!

He is using a Corner shot of course, no need to expose himself.

Since this is the Mantic Sci-Fi thread, the Dreadball season 3 shipments have started to arrive. I just got mine today. All the units are there, and I'll unpackage and start building to make sure everything is in order later this week. Very happy so far, and those Nameless are BIG!

Quality of the minis good? Is the ultimate mat as vibrant as it looked? Ordered all of season 3 teams and ultimate from Wayland since I missed the KS, should be shipping out todayish.

I didn't actually get the mat, just the teams. I have the teams rules digitally (if I ever look them up), so I'm good with just that at the moment. Didn't have enough interested party to justify the ultimate pitch. Quality looks good at first glance, few mold lines, but don't look to kill any detail.

Oh good, I think it was your post last time that presaged the arrival of my package. Looking forward to getting it and being done with a KickStarter finally.

Yes, please keep us informed how the figures turn out!

Pictures are nice too.

 Yonan wrote:
Quality of the minis good? Is the ultimate mat as vibrant as it looked? Ordered all of season 3 teams and ultimate from Wayland since I missed the KS, should be shipping out todayish.

Orders with ultimate mat and cards are being packed at the moment as those components arrived a little later than the rest of the bits apparently.

Some interesting news:

- Dreadball season 3 minis are the first to be made with the "new mix" resin plastic.

They've apparently completely changed the makeup of the material to make it better to work with and hold more detail.. if anyone who has theirs can let us know what it's like, that would be great.

Oh, I forgot: if anybody was concerned about Blaine's fate in Dreadball, worry not. He was definitely in the box that I received. I know not much was said after "you guys were so close, we'll give him to you anyway", so I wanted to add that tidbit. More updates to follow when work allows the time.

I think that they have been trying different formulations of resin for a while. My Veer Myn were made from much harder resin than my season one Dreadball minis. The Veer Myn had good detail but were very difficult to remove mold lines. The Dreadball team had below average detail, but the mold lines came off. Let us hope that they find a good formula.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Oh, I forgot: if anybody was concerned about Blaine's fate in Dreadball, worry not. He was definitely in the box that I received. I know not much was said after "you guys were so close, we'll give him to you anyway", so I wanted to add that tidbit. More updates to follow when work allows the time.

Some pics of all the stuff would be greatly appreciated - please!

Will do, Alph, just as soon as I can. I can't possibly be the only guy to receive his stuff, right??

I got my box a couple days ago.

Just the free extras and the prone figures I ordered. Heavy box for what I thought I was getting!

I can try to take some pics later too. The models look good, but I didn't look too closely at them (no idea what half of them are as it is!)

 Baragash wrote:

 Yonan wrote:
Quality of the minis good? Is the ultimate mat as vibrant as it looked? Ordered all of season 3 teams and ultimate from Wayland since I missed the KS, should be shipping out todayish.

Orders with ultimate mat and cards are being packed at the moment as those components arrived a little later than the rest of the bits apparently.

Why do you have to rain on my parades? WHY?! Couldn't let me have my thoughts of getting a box in the mail soon, could you?

Seriously though, if that is the case thanks for the heads up. At least I won't be worried that it got lost if it doesn't show up by this time next week now.

...

I like the dancing goblin sniper :(

RoninXiC wrote:
...

I like the dancing goblin sniper :(

me too, actually, and I don't care about space orcs and space goblins at all.

Oops, wrong thread...

I think you're a bit lost, friend.

Mantic has some pics up:

 Krinsath wrote:

 Baragash wrote:

 Yonan wrote:
Quality of the minis good? Is the ultimate mat as vibrant as it looked? Ordered all of season 3 teams and ultimate from Wayland since I missed the KS, should be shipping out todayish.

Orders with ultimate mat and cards are being packed at the moment as those components arrived a little later than the rest of the bits apparently.

Why do you have to rain on my parades? WHY?! Couldn't let me have my thoughts of getting a box in the mail soon, could you?

Seriously though, if that is the case thanks for the heads up. At least I won't be worried that it got lost if it doesn't show up by this time next week now.

I'll make it even worse

I've not had mine and I'm not even getting the mat/cards so they are probably still pretty early in the shipping

Very nice SS. Very crisp details, mould line running down the monkey is minimal. If that's the new Mantic standard I'm happy!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

A quick update, and an awesome model shot!
Update #113 · Oct 4, 2013
Well, Deadzone production is ramping up at a tremendous rate, and things are getting very exciting indeed! Studio layout guru Curis is currently applying the finishing touches to the rulebook, and I think it's safe to say it's going to be one of the nicest-looking pieces of printed publication we've ever done.

Before I go any further, I'd like to make a quick announcement. We've currently got a bit of a backlog in the Deadzone inbox - people chasing up invoice queries, asking to change their shipping address, and several other things. Please rest assured that we are getting through them as quickly as we can - so if you haven't had an answer, it's not because we're ignoring you, it's just that there's a bit of a queue! We really appreciate your patience, and will get to you as quickly as possible.

Right! That's out of the way; how about something cool?


Most Judwan are pacifists; Wrath is different. The result of a shadowy Corporate-funded programme to create the ultimate assassin, he escaped his masters, and now seeks revenge for what they did to him.

We'll be getting another update out to you shortly - in the meantime, what are you looking forward to most in your upcoming Deadzone package? Let us know in the comments!

Model is pretty cool but I need to see the left hand gun from a different angle.

For some reason this reminds me I need to grab a rebel starter in the next survey.

holy crap! much better restic than before!

Now then, that certainly looks much better! Assuming there haven't been any contrast-related shenanigans via photoshop.

Actually thought the wave 2 stuff was fine detail-wise, it was just the mould lines that were the killer.

People are reporting that the "feel" of the new restic mix is closer to hard plastic.

Bueno!

Awesome, Wrath looks great, glad I'm getting him, not that I can remember all the stuff on my deadzone survey anyway....

Looking at that pic I can't help but think of that Khan vs Klingons squad scene from star trek 2, I'd love to think Wrath is
equally as bad-ass.

So on the Dreadball front...model restic feels more like regular plastic. Definite plus. There are a couple mold lines that are a bit harder to scrape off, but I've only had one that was almost a PITA. Pictures will follow tomorrow, it's just been way too much of a long day. RITides, you're gonna love your Nameless team.

Looking at the dreadball haul, there appears to be 2 types of restic.

One is lighter like the season 1/2 stuff, and the season 3 stuff is darker.

I may be assuming that there is a change. Season 1 teams definitely have the lighter mix for the new sculpts. Season 2 I can't confirm as I don't have much season 2 stuff, but season 3 freebies are for sure in a darker mix.

I will try to get some pics up

Edit: I think my box is slightly mispacked looking at my invoice. I was supposed to get 2 female prone figures, and 1 upgrade pack, but I got 2 upgrade packs and no prone figures. The upgrade packs are 3 + 1 prone, and the prone figure listing has them labeled as a single figure. There is some other odd things in there too.

Also, Blaine is awesome and Dozer is a big girl. Lol

Blaine is sweet!

Does anyone know of a good source that would have a picture of everything from season 3 shipping? I suppose I should try mantic first huh.

edit: I took out the reference to Dozer, I was thinking barricade.

Just put together my nameless spawn too. I REALLY hope these guys make it into Warpath!