NTRabbit wrote:


e: Mantic could hire Dan Abnett to write it, I hear GW are having real trouble getting him to write anything for them anymore

Yes. Because, ya know, Marvel Comics.

If GW can't (wont) outbid Marvel for Abnett's time, I don't think Mantic would. It would be a nice coup, but probably expensive.

http://www.cosmicbooknews.com/content/first-look-dan-abnetts-hercules-1

http://marvel.com/comics/creators/1107/dan_abnett

[edit]

The new "The Beast Arises"-series on the BL-website is probably a smart way to do it. ( http://www.blacklibrary.com/ )

Buy Abnett for the first book to lure people into the series. Than (hopefully) sell them several more books by less expensive authors.

How are we doing for $235 total warfare pledges remaining? I want to upgrade my buck but the KS website is being a git on my smart phone

Wonderwolf wrote:

 NTRabbit wrote:


e: Mantic could hire Dan Abnett to write it, I hear GW are having real trouble getting him to write anything for them anymore

Yes. Because, ya know, Marvel Comics.

Having your name in the credits for one of the top cinematic releases of 2014 probably does put writing stories for Games Workshop into perspective.

I updated my quick reference sheet for the Warpath alpha rules:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27484619/Mantic/Warpath%20Quick%20Reference%20Sheet%20v0.2.pdf

Currently has all the main rules summarized on a single page of A4 (including terrain, vehicles and orders), will add another page soon with special rules on one side and unit stats on the other.

 scarletsquig wrote:
I updated my quick reference sheet for the Warpath alpha rules:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27484619/Mantic/Warpath%20Quick%20Reference%20Sheet%20v0.2.pdf

Currently has all the main rules summarized on a single page of A4 (including terrain, vehicles and orders), will add another page soon with special rules on one side and unit stats on the other.

Awesome! Thanks SS!


As for FF Trikes..... (Facepalm). Mantic was doing SO WELL.... I hope they don't ruin it with trikes. :(

I think the total is moving along nicely. I wouldn't be surprised if it ended in the 500 range, last days are always busy.

 Mort wrote:

 scarletsquig wrote:
I updated my quick reference sheet for the Warpath alpha rules:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27484619/Mantic/Warpath%20Quick%20Reference%20Sheet%20v0.2.pdf

Currently has all the main rules summarized on a single page of A4 (including terrain, vehicles and orders), will add another page soon with special rules on one side and unit stats on the other.

Awesome! Thanks SS!


As for FF Trikes..... (Facepalm). Mantic was doing SO WELL.... I hope they don't ruin it with trikes. :(

You can always not use/buy them if you don't like them. Personally I am in favour since I want a squat army. I expect the autocannon reference in the last update refers to the corp troopers heavy weapon upgrade.

What's wrong with trikes?

 Taaloc wrote:
What's wrong with trikes?

Nothing. They are great minis to put in your A-Team lunch box, and look amazing on your Trapper Keeper. Paint the rider in dirty plaid flannel and he'll be radical.

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
How are we doing for $235 total warfare pledges remaining? I want to upgrade my buck but the KS website is being a git on my smart phone

80 or so to go

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Taaloc wrote:
What's wrong with trikes?

Nothing. They are great minis to put in your A-Team lunch box, and look amazing on your Trapper Keeper. Paint the rider in dirty plaid flannel and he'll be radical.

I know you're mocking him but at the same time this sounds totally bodacious..

Jumping around a little: For the Tunneler, has their been any discussion about the bitz that look like fingers with curved fingernails on the concept? Will their be organic elements on the final design or am I just mis-reading the concept drawing?

Looking at Tunnelers as drop pod stand-ins.

Just popping my head back in here briefly. As I'm more interested in Warpath firefight and Deadzone I'm finding the £1 pledge a more attractive option right now. (I dropped my EB) I'll end up playing Firefight with whatever Deadzone units I have and may add some "20/20" deals to make up the numbers. Shame because I'd have liked a "taster deal" of each faction much like the 2player starter but that seems to be off the table.

I've upped to Tyrant just in case Mantic actually act on the suggestions they requested from pledgers in the comments thread.

I'll have to pull out of it later tonight, though, if they don't do anything. I'll most likely be out during the grand finale tomorrow, so any last minute revisions will be too late for me.

A few nice additions to some of the battlegroups, like 20 more marionette drones for the Asterian group, a Plague mule for the Plague battlegroup, etc., and Tyrant could become worth my while. Otherwise,it's back to Total Warfare for me, or even to a la carte. I can still beat Total Warfare's price pretty well if I cut out the redundant old stuff in the battlegroups that I don't need extras of.

 DaveC wrote:
The new Forgefather light vehicle is probably the trike that's been mentioned by Ronnie in the Facebook chat apparently it's Mule sized.

Individual 'whisker' bikes, or in a full 'beard' formation, lots of ridiculous places for this to go!

Plague Bursters (2nd Gens) at $430k

This art is illustrative of the concept we are aiming for, but is not final art - the final miniature will be more grotesque, with boils (that explode when shot!), tentacles and more.

These unstable Plague creatures are truly horrifying, and when we break this stretch goal you can add-on a set of 2 metal ogre-sized beasts for $12, or a pack of 6 for $30!

$450k - The GCPS/Plague Hornet




COMING SOON:

TEST SUBJECT ESCAPES (Plague Character)

 dragqueeninspace wrote:

You can always not use/buy them if you don't like them. Personally I am in favour since I want a squat army. I expect the autocannon reference in the last update refers to the corp troopers heavy weapon upgrade.

Well... yeah... I know I don't "have' to buy them. That's pretty much common sense.

I guess I had just hoped for a little more out of Mantic than to take yet another stereotypical GW theme and add it to their manifest. We already have Doomwheels, Valkyrie gunships... why not copy some more with Squat trikes?

/yawn

But, less for me to buy, is more money I can certainly spend elsewhere.

 scarletsquig wrote:
Mantic's hard plastic sci-fi models are excellent, details, extra parts and overall quality are just as good as GW.

Wow. No. Just.... no.


They're getting better, but... no.

So now the plague borrowed looting from 40k Orks judging by that drop ship?

That Dropship is lovely!

ArtIsGreat wrote:

 DaveC wrote:
The new Forgefather light vehicle is probably the trike that's been mentioned by Ronnie in the Facebook chat apparently it's Mule sized.

Individual 'whisker' bikes, or in a full 'beard' formation, lots of ridiculous places for this to go!

"We lost three Moustaches of troopers on that last run!"
"By Space Odin's Beard! Release the Soul Patch scouts, we must plan our next move before we are reduced to mere sideburns!"

The Plague version of things seems like it could be a lot more imaginative.

 MLaw wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Taaloc wrote:
What's wrong with trikes?

Nothing. They are great minis to put in your A-Team lunch box, and look amazing on your Trapper Keeper. Paint the rider in dirty plaid flannel and he'll be radical.

I know you're mocking him but at the same time this sounds totally bodacious..

I am not mocking him. I am mocking Mantic's complete lack of originality or initiative. It's hard to lead the dance when you are trying so hard to keep in someone else's footsteps.

The Tunnel Runners might make decent not-Doomflayers.

 scarletsquig wrote:

Also, if we get 3000 backers, everyone gets a free book.

Hm.. was it a previous Mantic KS that reneged on a printed book? Wasn't there a CYOA for DKH? Or am I misremembering?

ArtIsGreat wrote:

 DaveC wrote:
The new Forgefather light vehicle is probably the trike that's been mentioned by Ronnie in the Facebook chat apparently it's Mule sized.

Individual 'whisker' bikes, or in a full 'beard' formation, lots of ridiculous places for this to go!

I can't wait for the goatee squads lead by the hero Van Dyke.

 pretre wrote:

 Vermis wrote:

 Taaloc wrote:
The other two concepts were far better and not doomwheely

The sketches on the previous page here, or something else? If the former, I know the monowheel vehicle is a popular thing in sci-fi and even some potential real world imaginings... but even the other designs, applied to space rodents, that are clearly based on GW's fantasy rodents who have their own highly distinctive and notorious hamster-wheel vehicle...?

but apparently the doomwheel is the one the community wanted when asked to vote via the comments on the ks. The cynic in me reckons they would have picked the doomwheel one anyway, but who knows.

I'll guess this why Ronnie or whoever allegedly feels confident in throwing anything out. (Honestly, a choice between these concepts is basically a choice between hamster wheels and hamster balls)
This is why we can't have nice things.

Or... This is why the vocal folks in this Dakka thread do not represent the actual target audience of the Warpath KS?

Sweeping generalities FTW! Especially considering that there are at least 3 members of the RC in here.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 GrimDork wrote:
Total is molasses today. They're gonna have to do something or be content with a lower total. Hopefully last day shenanigans and the Hornet have enough of an impact to get the hornet locked. I think all that artificial scarcity/pledge pressure pulled money in that usually shows up on the last days.

There's not much they can do about that, because you're obviously right. There's a finite amount of money, and they pulled a lot of the last-minute fence-sitters in already with the passive-aggressive artificial scarcity. I wonder how many they put off with it, on balance?

 plastictrees wrote:


The Plague version of things seems like it could be a lot more imaginative.

Yes. The plague side borrows from Zombiecide, Firefly and GW orks. One more source and their method graduates into 'research'.

(I'm only half-mocking. I'm glad they are taking ideas from more than one source now.)




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Azazelx wrote:
The Tunnel Runners might make decent not-Doomflayers.

 scarletsquig wrote:

Also, if we get 3000 backers, everyone gets a free book.

Hm.. was it a previous Mantic KS that reneged on a printed book? Wasn't there a CYOA for DKH? Or am I misremembering?

It depends on what you mean by 'renege', but yes. That happened more than once.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 DaveC wrote:
The new Forgefather light vehicle is probably the trike that's been mentioned by Ronnie in the Facebook chat apparently it's Mule sized.

....of course it's a trike....

I understand that this is a concept sculpt. It does fit in with the beard-tank aesthetic that they've established, though, as well as that Named character from the first days...




Jokes aside, I'd love to see something like the old-school Squat Bikers.

 Azazelx wrote:

 pretre wrote:

 Vermis wrote:

 Taaloc wrote:
The other two concepts were far better and not doomwheely

The sketches on the previous page here, or something else? If the former, I know the monowheel vehicle is a popular thing in sci-fi and even some potential real world imaginings... but even the other designs, applied to space rodents, that are clearly based on GW's fantasy rodents who have their own highly distinctive and notorious hamster-wheel vehicle...?

but apparently the doomwheel is the one the community wanted when asked to vote via the comments on the ks. The cynic in me reckons they would have picked the doomwheel one anyway, but who knows.

I'll guess this why Ronnie or whoever allegedly feels confident in throwing anything out. (Honestly, a choice between these concepts is basically a choice between hamster wheels and hamster balls)
This is why we can't have nice things.

Or... This is why the vocal folks in this Dakka thread do not represent the actual target audience of the Warpath KS?

Sweeping generalities FTW! Especially considering that there are at least 3 members of the RC in here.

I doubt that the ones I'm talking about are on the RC.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
The Tunnel Runners might make decent not-Doomflayers.

 scarletsquig wrote:

Also, if we get 3000 backers, everyone gets a free book.

Hm.. was it a previous Mantic KS that reneged on a printed book? Wasn't there a CYOA for DKH? Or am I misremembering?

It depends on what you mean by 'renege', but yes. That happened more than once.

Um, promise that a physical book will be a thing, and then turn around and say "sorry, no can do". How many times have they done it? And if more than once, why go back to that particular well?

At least this time I don't have to pay for the physical book that then gets dropped after the cash is handed over, unlike last time.

 Azazelx wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
The Tunnel Runners might make decent not-Doomflayers.

 scarletsquig wrote:

Also, if we get 3000 backers, everyone gets a free book.

Hm.. was it a previous Mantic KS that reneged on a printed book? Wasn't there a CYOA for DKH? Or am I misremembering?

It depends on what you mean by 'renege', but yes. That happened more than once.

Um, promise that a physical book will be a thing, and then turn around and say "sorry, no can do". How many times have they done it?

Matt Gilbert's 2 (TWO) adventure books. (Still mad.)
Bloodstone of Cerillion.
Deadzone short story anthology.
Probably some of the expansions that ended up mashed into one compendium book might count, too.



Remember that time when Mantic promised to free the hostages? Sad, sad day for Kickstarter.

And if more than once, why go back to that particular well?

Because Timmy is trapped! That's what Mantic's been trying to tell us.

So total did better than I was grousing about earlier. Yay.

Bursters sound awesome and quite icky. May be inclined to convert, I'd get them sooner and that kind of stuff is fun to do on your own.

I like the drop ship. Wonder if we'll unlock some kind of gunship option. Transport 3 is great too.

Should shape up to a good end run.

 pretre wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:

 pretre wrote:

Or... This is why the vocal folks in this Dakka thread do not represent the actual target audience of the Warpath KS?

Sweeping generalities FTW! Especially considering that there are at least 3 members of the RC in here.

I doubt that the ones I'm talking about are on the RC.

In that case, it defeats your initial proposition. "The vocal folks" is a bit broad, and while I for example am not shy of criticising Mantic, I've spent thousands of dollars on their products. More importantly, any of us who has a wallet and are willing to open them are their target audience. Let's face it - people who post "vocally" on wargames forums, facebook, run games at game clubs, blog, vlog, etc are a boon to have on your side because they spread the message about your product. OTOH Someone like Kroothawk, who appeared to simply hate Mantic rather vocally might not be their audience, but I really think that almost everyone in this thread are hoping that Mantic do well - and produce better models and rules going forward. Naturally people do want the best deals for their money a year in advance, and while there are some here that will gratefully take anything offered and water carry or white knight any criticism of their favourite thing, those people are probably more counter-productive to Mantic's future than the critical ones, especially when you consider that pretty much any one product released by GW will take in more revenue than all of Mantic's in a year.

The size of that vast untapped market is immense, and Mantic need to continue to improve and be willing to take on board criticism/feedback of their models instead of ignoring them at the behest of those most emotionally invested in them. There's been plenty of valid critiques brought up in this thread over the last however-many pages that makes me wonder how certain things got through to the KS. Then again, I work in a large enough organisation to know that often the people who make certain decisions aren't always the best people to make those particular decisions. I've spent the last 7 months at work cleaning up someone else's mess and making improvements to the way certain things are run. No reason to think it's any different at Mantic or anywhere else.

 Alex C wrote:
At least this time I don't have to pay for the physical book that then gets dropped after the cash is handed over, unlike last time.

You'd think that, but I've heard of novels being finished, edited, even printed and then gakcanned. Mantic will show us just enough during the pledge manager, then once they have the dowry marry us to the other daughter.

Hmm. I'm liking that GCPS dropship. But, I also like the Asterian one and I actually do like the Enforcer one. So, which do I wind up with? Which do I get in a battleforce and which do I pay for?

If I get the GCPS Battleforce, does it come with a Mule, or would that have to be the "free" vehicle choice?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

It depends on what you mean by 'renege', but yes. That happened more than once.

Um, promise that a physical book will be a thing, and then turn around and say "sorry, no can do". How many times have they done it?

Matt Gilbert's 2 (TWO) adventure books. (Still mad.)
Bloodstone of Cerillion.
Deadzone short story anthology.
Probably some of the expansions that ended up mashed into one compendium book might count, too.

For feth's sake. Post that in the comments and ask them to stop promising physical books that they will never publish.

How many of those above were "freebies" and how many were paid-for add-ons?

The Deadzone anthology was definitely a freebie. I can't speak for the other books, but the Deadzone one was at least released as an e-book.

 Barzam wrote:
Hmm. I'm liking that GCPS dropship. But, I also like the Asterian one and I actually do like the Enforcer one. So, which do I wind up with? Which do I get in a battleforce and which do I pay for?

If I get the GCPS Battleforce, does it come with a Mule, or would that have to be the "free" vehicle choice?

Get all like I am, then you won't have any regrets

You get the Mule in the Battlegroup, no need to use up your free vehicle choice on it. In fact, it doesn't qualify as a choice of free vehicle anyway.

I would get them all, but funds are limited and I already own most of the armies via Deadzone anyway. If the Mule is a part of the Battlegroup, I think that means I'll wind up getting them.

 Azazelx wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

It depends on what you mean by 'renege', but yes. That happened more than once.

Um, promise that a physical book will be a thing, and then turn around and say "sorry, no can do". How many times have they done it?

Matt Gilbert's 2 (TWO) adventure books. (Still mad.)
Bloodstone of Cerillion.
Deadzone short story anthology.
Probably some of the expansions that ended up mashed into one compendium book might count, too.

For feth's sake. Post that in the comments and ask them to stop promising physical books that they will never publish.

How many of those above were "freebies" and how many were paid-for add-ons?

I believe only the adventure books were going to be paid add ons...because I paid for them in the campaign phase. Bloodstone was a freebie in pdf format with the idea that we would pay for the printed version...which didn't materialize untl the author put it on some POD site. (I actually bought a copy from amazon.) The deadzone one I am kind of fuzzy on, but I remember being excited for it.

Sedition Wars also promised a novel that didn't happen. Medge will sell theirs through the kickstarter, and MERCS Recon already sold me a copy through theirs, so they had best deliver. It seems like a lot of companies view a novel as a cheap, easy stretch goal under little pressure to deliver.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
By the way, the only problems I have with the new dropship are the unarmored ducted fans, especially the third one. Other than those, that dropship looks solid and imposing.

Well, I'd be less annoyed about freebies not materialising, but regardless, surely their track record with printed books should be at the point where they stop offering them?

The Deadzone one did make it to print, it's in the hardback compendium.

The choose your own adventure books are a big missed opportunity, they are one of those things that need to be in print... sure there's digital versions, but it just isn't the same as rolling some dice and penciling stuff in on an action sheet. with your fingers lodged in the previous 5 pages for backsies.

I would have loved to see Mantic release a whole series and revive the gaming genre.

Ninja'd by Scarlet Squig.

So not a standalone book? Was that what they promised initially?

 scarletsquig wrote:
The Deadzone one did make it to print, it's in the hardback compendium..

Technically correct. The best kind of correct!

Should we count all the fluff vignettes in all the other hardback rulebooks as short-short story and narrative prose collections in print, then? If their fiction were any more accessible, people might accidentally read it!



Yes, I'm the rare kind of gamer who won't just buy the huge hardback in order to read some fraction of fluff.

Not a fan of the burster or the plagifed drop ship. The basic drop ship is really nice though. The drop ship should look salvaged and jury rigged not mutated and orcified.

As someone with about 30k points of Orks, I'm not sure I see what everyone's getting at with the Orkification comments.
The bottom outline and one other spot have pieces of scrap protruding, yes. It looks more like they've fused plates on to change the outline though. Orks don't do this. They either slap orky gubbins on, deconstruct and reuse components, or slap orky repairs on busted up vehicles sure. There are no checks or dags, no lightning bolts, no mismatched big shootas.

There are however, bullet holes, bits of patched metal, and some claw looking thing added to the profile of the wing. People want it to look derelict.. well.. that's patched metal. How else, outside of the paintjob would you convey that?

I think it looks fine. Do I think they could easily be made Orky? Yes. Do I think it's where they are now? Nah, not so much.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It looks more to me like


Than this

The bolted on wing claw you describe has no other purpose than to look Orky. Also, how does a vehicle catch the plague?

I know, the answer has to do with the Plague taking cues from Firefly's Reavers, but a paint job and maybe some light damage should be the only noticeable difference. If the plague 3rd gens keep enough knowledge to repair the flyers, they should retain enough to do it right.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Heck, aren't the plague supposed to be able to infiltrate society so they can...spread the plague? Would you let some blood-painted Mad Max mother land at your starport?

No, only Stages 1 and 2 can spread the plague, and no one makes a Groucho mask convincing enough for one of them to blend in.

overtyrant wrote:
Sounds like sour grapes to me. They could definitely use more QC but to saying they don't care about their customers or the quality of ther minis is BS, they are a small company that deal with ALOT of customers so some fall through the cracks (funny I've never had a problem with them in getting any issues resolved...) and their minis are getting better and better every time!

sour grapes certainly, and I have good reasons for this, but my points still stand.
I'm not saying they don't care about their customers, as they need you to come back, but the line is subtle.
And when I say they don't care about models, I mean they can't see the difference and aim to make cheap average models when just a little more effort could get you good models for the same price and would attract more players.
When I asked if Ronnie really think what he says in the company's description about doing the best miniatures I was just told that Ronnie was "talking sh*t".
Though to be fair they occasinaly want to put extra effort and I had the opportunity to sculpt some good figures. I even hopped the company was on a good way, but I was latter proven wrong. You just can't expect consistancy.

regarding Mantic minis getting better and better, that's rather subjective. What miniatures are you talking about? Enforcers? they are modified 3D scan from Remy's work, so a good base to work from. The vermyn? better material, but I personnaly don't think the sculpting as good as the old models. What other recent models have you seen? Dungeon Saga? the sculptors for most of those figures don't work for Mantic anymore.
I'm sure many of the new models will turn right, but I'm pretty sure many won't. I have seen a few things before leaving, and even if they were supposed to improve them, they had a lot of work for that....
I expect the "hit and miss" to stay the rule from Mantic.
You should also consider the staff/freelancers turnover at mantic, you can't be sure the new guys can do the same...

Some of you may remember the 1st deadzone KS, when pictures of marauders greens had been shown online and people asked them resculpted. That was also one of my first suggestion my first day at mantic. After the amount of comments online they promised to get them modified, and if people still didn't like them, to get them resculpted. I did some change on the pose (I wasn't the original sculptor btw), but tbh they should still have been redone to match the concept art. But to make sure they wouldn't need to get them resculpted (they really didn't want too) they spent a lot of time heavily photoshoping the picture (to the point it was almost repaiting a new picture) of the new conversions to make sure a majority of backers would think they are good enough. While some like the models, I think many regret that decision. I have later heard the manager who approved the models calling them "sh*t", but I guess at the time he genuily thought they were good enough for backers...
And beside the cost they also preffered to impact quality than deadline so they could tell backers they deliver in time.

The first exemple of the low quality KS add ons I mentionned in my original post was some deadzone add ons I was required to do as a rush job. To save some time on a sorak swordmaster I asked a resin copy of the original sorak to re-use the armor, but my manager had no copy and couldn't remember who did the mold so he suggested I'd use a restic production model to make the conversion... I'm sure people familiar with restic will understand what a master model converted from restic will look like once cast in metal. I was horrified by the suggestion and decided to take the time to resculpt the model from scratch, but next time something like this happens who know what you'll get.


That's just some exemples. If this is the kind of quality control you want and are happy with what you get, as I said before you can keep buying everything unseen. If not I suggest having a look at the finished product first.


As for people asking what I had done for Mantic, they include many deadzone figures (goblin snipers, characters, plague stuff including teraton but also 3rd gen, yes I know you don't like them, and take the critics but that's what they were supposed to be and you get what you pay for), dreadball/DBX, some king of wars and about 80% of dungeon saga (undeads, greenskins, half the heroes and half the abyssals, which I hope prove I can do proper proportions too)

just for the record, the quality of my work was not the problem, and they would have liked me to keep doing some occasional sculpting for them (but that's not going to happen)
It's just that after getting me to move from France to UK they changed their plans and decided they wouldn't need a full time sculptor anymore and I should leave, so yes, I'm a little pissed off at them, but if you think that affect my judgment, keep in mind I have been saying similar things with more chosen words to the management for 2 years and have been trying hard to improve things here (which only agravated my dispointement with the latest turnsof events)







Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Azazelx wrote:


In that case, it defeats your initial proposition. "The vocal folks" is a bit broad, and while I for example am not shy of criticising Mantic, I've spent thousands of dollars on their products. More importantly, any of us who has a wallet and are willing to open them are their target audience. Let's face it - people who post "vocally" on wargames forums, facebook, run games at game clubs, blog, vlog, etc are a boon to have on your side because they spread the message about your product. OTOH Someone like Kroothawk, who appeared to simply hate Mantic rather vocally might not be their audience, but I really think that almost everyone in this thread are hoping that Mantic do well - and produce better models and rules going forward. Naturally people do want the best deals for their money a year in advance, and while there are some here that will gratefully take anything offered and water carry or white knight any criticism of their favourite thing, those people are probably more counter-productive to Mantic's future than the critical ones, especially when you consider that pretty much any one product released by GW will take in more revenue than all of Mantic's in a year.

The size of that vast untapped market is immense, and Mantic need to continue to improve and be willing to take on board criticism/feedback of their models instead of ignoring them at the behest of those most emotionally invested in them. There's been plenty of valid critiques brought up in this thread over the last however-many pages that makes me wonder how certain things got through to the KS. Then again, I work in a large enough organisation to know that often the people who make certain decisions aren't always the best people to make those particular decisions. I've spent the last 7 months at work cleaning up someone else's mess and making improvements to the way certain things are run. No reason to think it's any different at Mantic or anywhere else.

nope, no one at Mantic was doing this job (same person in charge for 3 years), at least regarding miniature improvement. As I said before all efforts have been in other departements.

as for listening to "The vocal folks", if you have something to say you should say it in the KS comments, they won't read comments here, at my time in Mantic when I (or someone else) would read the forum or bring some comments to the management's attention I was just told I shouldn't read it or pay attention because people here (or another forum) are "mean". At least it was 1 year ago, comments sounds more positive now, maybe they should start reading again!

sculptin'zombie wrote:

overtyrant wrote:
Sounds like sour grapes to me. They could definitely use more QC but to saying they don't care about their customers or the quality of ther minis is BS, they are a small company that deal with ALOT of customers so some fall through the cracks (funny I've never had a problem with them in getting any issues resolved...) and their minis are getting better and better every time!

sour grapes certainly, and I have good reasons for this, but my points still stand.
I'm not saying they don't care about their customers, as they need you to come back, but the line is subtle.
And when I say they don't care about models, I mean they can't see the difference and aim to make cheap average models when just a little more effort could get you good models for the same price and would attract more players.
When I asked if Ronnie really think what he says in the company's description about doing the best miniatures I was just told that Ronnie was "talking sh*t".
Though to be fair they occasinaly want to put extra effort and I had the opportunity to sculpt some good figures. I even hopped the company was on a good way, but I was latter proven wrong. You just can't expect consistancy.

regarding Mantic minis getting better and better, that's rather subjective. What miniatures are you talking about? Enforcers? they are modified 3D scan from Remy's work, so a good base to work from. The vermyn? better material, but I personnaly don't think the sculpting as good as the old models. What other recent models have you seen? Dungeon Saga? the sculptors for most of those figures don't work for Mantic anymore.
I'm sure many of the new models will turn right, but I'm pretty sure many won't. I have seen a few things before leaving, and even if they were supposed to improve them, they had a lot of work for that....
I expect the "hit and miss" to stay the rule from Mantic.
You should also consider the staff/freelancers turnover at mantic, you can't be sure the new guys can do the same...

Some of you may remember the 1st deadzone KS, when pictures of marauders greens had been shown online and people asked them resculpted. That was also one of my first suggestion my first day at mantic. After the amount of comments online they promised to get them modified, and if people still didn't like them, to get them resculpted. I did some change on the pose (I wasn't the original sculptor btw), but tbh they should still have been redone to match the concept art. But to make sure they wouldn't need to get them resculpted (they really didn't want too) they spent a lot of time heavily photoshoping the picture (to the point it was almost repaiting a new picture) of the new conversions to make sure a majority of backers would think they are good enough. While some like the models, I think many regret that decision. I have later heard the manager who approved the models calling them "sh*t", but I guess at the time he genuily thought they were good enough for backers...
And beside the cost they also preffered to impact quality than deadline so they could tell backers they deliver in time.

The first exemple of the low quality KS add ons I mentionned in my original post was some deadzone add ons I was required to do as a rush job. To save some time on a sorak swordmaster I asked a resin copy of the original sorak to re-use the armor, but my manager had no copy and couldn't remember who did the mold so he suggested I'd use a restic production model to make the conversion... I'm sure people familiar with restic will understand what a master model converted from restic will look like once cast in metal. I was horrified by the suggestion and decided to take the time to resculpt the model from scratch, but next time something like this happens who know what you'll get.


That's just some exemples. If this is the kind of quality control you want and are happy with what you get, as I said before you can keep buying everything unseen. If not I suggest having a look at the finished product first.

Be particulary carefull with metal casting from digital sculpt as they kept using lower res print to reduce cost, and the result isn't very pretty.



As for people asking what I had done for Mantic, they include many deadzone figures (goblin snipers, characters, plague stuff including teraton but also 3rd gen, yes I know you don't like them, and take the critics but that's what they were supposed to be and you get what you pay for), dreadball/DBX, some king of wars and about 80% of dungeon saga (undeads, greenskins, half the heroes and half the abyssals, which I hope prove I can do proper proportions too)

just for the record, the quality of my work was not the problem, and they would have liked me to keep doing some occasional sculpting for them (but that's not going to happen)
It's just that after getting me to move from France to UK they changed their plans and decided they wouldn't need a full time sculptor anymore and I should leave, so yes, I'm a little pissed off at them, but if you think that affect my judgment, keep in mind I have been saying similar things with more chosen words to the management for 2 years and have been trying hard to improve things here (which only agravated my dispointement with the latest turnsof events)







Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Azazelx wrote:


In that case, it defeats your initial proposition. "The vocal folks" is a bit broad, and while I for example am not shy of criticising Mantic, I've spent thousands of dollars on their products. More importantly, any of us who has a wallet and are willing to open them are their target audience. Let's face it - people who post "vocally" on wargames forums, facebook, run games at game clubs, blog, vlog, etc are a boon to have on your side because they spread the message about your product. OTOH Someone like Kroothawk, who appeared to simply hate Mantic rather vocally might not be their audience, but I really think that almost everyone in this thread are hoping that Mantic do well - and produce better models and rules going forward. Naturally people do want the best deals for their money a year in advance, and while there are some here that will gratefully take anything offered and water carry or white knight any criticism of their favourite thing, those people are probably more counter-productive to Mantic's future than the critical ones, especially when you consider that pretty much any one product released by GW will take in more revenue than all of Mantic's in a year.

The size of that vast untapped market is immense, and Mantic need to continue to improve and be willing to take on board criticism/feedback of their models instead of ignoring them at the behest of those most emotionally invested in them. There's been plenty of valid critiques brought up in this thread over the last however-many pages that makes me wonder how certain things got through to the KS. Then again, I work in a large enough organisation to know that often the people who make certain decisions aren't always the best people to make those particular decisions. I've spent the last 7 months at work cleaning up someone else's mess and making improvements to the way certain things are run. No reason to think it's any different at Mantic or anywhere else.

nope, no one at Mantic was doing this job (same person in charge for 3 years), at least regarding miniature improvement. As I said before all efforts have been in other departements.

as for listening to "The vocal folks", if you have something to say you should say it in the KS comments, they won't read comments here, at my time in Mantic when I (or someone else) would read the forum or bring some comments to the management's attention I was just told I shouldn't read it or pay attention because people here (or another forum) are "mean". At least it was 1 year ago, comments sounds more positive now, maybe they should start reading again!

sculptin'zombie wrote:

as for listening to "The vocal folks", if you have something to say you should say it in the KS comments, they won't read comments here, at my time in Mantic when I (or someone else) would read the forum or bring some comments to the management's attention I was just told I shouldn't read it or pay attention because people here (or another forum) are "mean". At least it was 1 year ago, comments sounds more positive now, maybe they should start reading again!

So you're pissed off at your ex-employer. You feel you have good reason to be. That's great!

But... what is the point of your rants here so far? To warn us that some of Mantic's future minis will be hit or miss? We knew that already - hell, some of GW's figs are 'hit or miss'.

So what's your agenda, other than to bash your ex-employer? What 'news and rumors' can you offer?

sculptin'zombie wrote:

regarding Mantic minis getting better and better, that's rather subjective. What miniatures are you talking about? Enforcers? they are modified 3D scan from Remy's work, so a good base to work from. The vermyn? better material, but I personnaly don't think the sculpting as good as the old models. What other recent models have you seen? Dungeon Saga? the sculptors for most of those figures don't work for Mantic anymore.
I'm sure many of the new models will turn right, but I'm pretty sure many won't. I have seen a few things before leaving, and even if they were supposed to improve them, they had a lot of work for that....
I expect the "hit and miss" to stay the rule from Mantic.
You should also consider the staff/freelancers turnover at mantic, you can't be sure the new guys can do the same...

Any company will have turnover. Aragorn Marks was indie, then worked for GW, then went indie again in seemingly the blink of an eye. Juan Diaz, that guy who did the GW beastmen and is now doing more beastmen for Mierce - a company built entirely on freelancers. It's hard to say much about Mantic since they, like GW, seem to avoid giving a lot of info on who sculpted what. As for which recent models are "better" - the Ogre Berserkers are much better than those models that preceded them, both the Restic ones and the Metal Ogre Sham that's been sitting around for a couple years and has just been released. The Metal Chaos Dwarf sorcerer guy with two heads, also.



The first exemple of the low quality KS add ons I mentionned in my original post was some deadzone add ons I was required to do as a rush job. To save some time on a sorak swordmaster I asked a resin copy of the original sorak to re-use the armor, but my manager had no copy and couldn't remember who did the mold so he suggested I'd use a restic production model to make the conversion... I'm sure people familiar with restic will understand what a master model converted from restic will look like once cast in metal. I was horrified by the suggestion and decided to take the time to resculpt the model from scratch, but next time something like this happens who know what you'll get.

As for people asking what I had done for Mantic, they include many deadzone figures (goblin snipers, characters, plague stuff including teraton but also 3rd gen, yes I know you don't like them, and take the critics but that's what they were supposed to be and you get what you pay for), dreadball/DBX, some king of wars and about 80% of dungeon saga (undeads, greenskins, half the heroes and half the abyssals, which I hope prove I can do proper proportions too)

just for the record, the quality of my work was not the problem, and they would have liked me to keep doing some occasional sculpting for them (but that's not going to happen)
It's just that after getting me to move from France to UK they changed their plans and decided they wouldn't need a full time sculptor anymore and I should leave, so yes, I'm a little pissed off at them, but if you think that affect my judgment, keep in mind I have been saying similar things with more chosen words to the management for 2 years and have been trying hard to improve things here (which only agravated my dispointement with the latest turnsof events)

At this point you'e outed yourself to anyone in the know, so you may as well post your name here and let us know what else you've sculpted for other companies. I'm interested in taking a peek for the sake of comparison. Which KoW stuff?

I think the new dropship might actually be worse than the last one. I've seen Lego spaceplanes that are less blocky than this rubbish.

I'm new to the whole Mantic KS things, so please pardon these questions if they've been answered before in this thread or another, previous campaign:

1. How long do they usually keep the pledge manager open post-campaign?

2. If I'm pledging for a single mini and maybe an extra plastic sprue of five models, how favourable will shipping be?

3. Is there any word on whether or not we'll see renders or greens of the GCPS troopers soon?

sculptin'zombie wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:

The size of that vast untapped market is immense, and Mantic need to continue to improve and be willing to take on board criticism/feedback of their models instead of ignoring them at the behest of those most emotionally invested in them. There's been plenty of valid critiques brought up in this thread over the last however-many pages that makes me wonder how certain things got through to the KS. Then again, I work in a large enough organisation to know that often the people who make certain decisions aren't always the best people to make those particular decisions. I've spent the last 7 months at work cleaning up someone else's mess and making improvements to the way certain things are run. No reason to think it's any different at Mantic or anywhere else.

nope, no one at Mantic was doing this job (same person in charge for 3 years), at least regarding miniature improvement. As I said before all efforts have been in other departements.

as for listening to "The vocal folks", if you have something to say you should say it in the KS comments, they won't read comments here, at my time in Mantic when I (or someone else) would read the forum or bring some comments to the management's attention I was just told I shouldn't read it or pay attention because people here (or another forum) are "mean". At least it was 1 year ago, comments sounds more positive now, maybe they should start reading again!

The KS comments are too vast, and anything of value gets lost unless picked up by the general hive-mind. They're also a toilet. We did have one of the Mantic staffers mention that they were following this thread earlier on, so I'm satisfied with that. I don't expect them to spend hours replying.

 AlexHolker wrote:
I think the new dropship might actually be worse than the last one. I've seen Lego spaceplanes that are less blocky than this rubbish.

I confess I'm not particularly fond of any of the aircraft. Not much character to them at all IMO. That or I've been severely spoiled by GW's excellent kits. Probably the latter...

 BrookM wrote:
I'm new to the whole Mantic KS things, so please pardon these questions if they've been answered before in this thread or another, previous campaign:

1. How long do they usually keep the pledge manager open post-campaign?

2. If I'm pledging for a single mini and maybe an extra plastic sprue of five models, how favourable will shipping be?

3. Is there any word on whether or not we'll see renders or greens of the GCPS troopers soon?

1. I've heard two months, but they've never been consistent/ KoW2 did not have the third wave they promised, whereas DZ 2 they left the manager open longer than they'd given.

2. Probably not too bad.

3. We will see the greens or renders just as soon as you close your pledge manager order and they charge your card. They've been consistent about that.

Pledging a dollar to see the pledge manager (and the shipping rates) is probably your safest bet.

Hey sculptin' zombie,

Mostly what I would like to say is thank you for your high standards and the good work you did. You sculpted some great stuff during your time at Mantic - many of the figures you listed are among my favorites. You may not be working with Mantic anymore, but let us know how to keep track of your work and progress. Miniature companies often seem to like to keep their sculptors anonymous, but we do notice good quality when we see it, and like to follow good talent. I take it your first name begins with an S, last name with a Q? (I don't know if you want your real name printed here, hence the capital letters.) We do pay attention, and I've really enjoyed your work.

I wonder, honestly, if part of what happened to you was due to changes in the industry. Personally I think there are some things hand sculpting just does better than digital, and that there are qualities to hand sculpted work that digital will never recapture. I don't know if you work in digital also, but I could see miniature companies increasingly turning to digital sculpts for faster, cheaper results. I enjoy both hand and digitally sculpted work, but I hope there will always be a place in the industry for talented traditional sculptors.

Mantic do have bizarre artistic hiccups. Deadzone was a mixed bag of great sculpts and terrible ones. Overall, in no small part due to your work it seems, Deadzone was worth it for me. And while the 3rd Gen designs weren't to my taste, one in particular - the guy with the hanging arm and crooked fingers - that sculpt really was exceptional work. Well done. But as to Mantic, they do get enough great sculpts that it boggles my mind when they cut corners and produce bad ones, taking the resulting hit in sales. The Marauder ripper suits could have been a huge hit if they'd been better sculpts, their material notwithstanding.

On the other hand, Games Workshop has infinitely more money and resources than Mantic does, but they also produce terrible sculpts sometimes. There are smaller companies with higher aesthetic standards than GW, of course, but to be fair, Mantic aren't the only ones who stumble.

Particularly if you end up doing sci-fi miniatures again, Monsieur Q, I'd love to know about it.

 angelofvengeance wrote:
I confess I'm not particularly fond of any of the aircraft. Not much character to them at all IMO. That or I've been severely spoiled by GW's excellent kits. Probably the latter...

Do you mean FW? I think all of the FW flyers are great, but most of the GW-proper flyers look like rancid ass.

@Sculptin' Zombie - Found your blog. Excellent stuff! I'll be following your work, best of luck to you.

 NTRabbit wrote:

 angelofvengeance wrote:
I confess I'm not particularly fond of any of the aircraft. Not much character to them at all IMO. That or I've been severely spoiled by GW's excellent kits. Probably the latter...

Do you mean FW? I think all of the FW flyers are great, but most of the GW-proper flyers look like rancid ass.

I meant GW as a whole. With notable exceptions to the plastic vanilla marines and Space Wolves aircraft.

 angelofvengeance wrote:

 NTRabbit wrote:

 angelofvengeance wrote:
I confess I'm not particularly fond of any of the aircraft. Not much character to them at all IMO. That or I've been severely spoiled by GW's excellent kits. Probably the latter...

Do you mean FW? I think all of the FW flyers are great, but most of the GW-proper flyers look like rancid ass.

I meant GW as a whole. With notable exceptions to the plastic vanilla marines and Space Wolves aircraft.

The Doghead Barge, the Flying Cathedral, the Space Guppy, the VTOL Space Guppy, the death croissant, the Tau thing I don't even know how to make fun of are all terrible, and the Eldar and Deldar GW flyers are average at best, while the Ork flyers look cool, but can be beaten by any Ork player worth his or her salt with a 1/48 WW2 plane kit and liberal use of the bitz box and Morkspiration. Or Gorkspiration. Only the Nephilim and Valkyrie are good, and the Valkyrie is hardly the torch bearer for unique character.

e: I guess the Heldrake is technically fine? Just the mechanical dragon aesthetic never really grabbed me, but then again I don't like Chaos stuff much on the whole anyway.

Looking forward to seeing a lot of this stuff at retail. Glad the Kickstarter has done so well.

 NTRabbit wrote:


The Doghead Barge, the Flying Cathedral, the Space Guppy, the VTOL Space Guppy, the death croissant, the Tau thing I don't even know how to make fun of are all terrible, and the Eldar and Deldar GW flyers are average at best, while the Ork flyers look cool, but can be beaten by any Ork player worth his or her salt with a 1/48 WW2 plane kit and liberal use of the bitz box and Morkspiration. Or Gorkspiration. Only the Nephilim and Valkyrie are good, and the Valkyrie is hardly the torch bearer for unique character.

I think the Eldar/Deldar flyers are pretty awesome, while I really dislike all the human vehicles with severe intensity. Tau/Nid stuff is ok, Necron/Ork stuff is pretty goofy... for the most part, though, I'd agree their flyers just look silly.

One man's art is another man's garbage. and all that.

For the Imperial GW flyers it's more than just aesthetics, apart from the Nephilim/Cathedral and Valkyrie they're all technically bad as well, with flawed designs that do things like block pilot vision, have weapons blocked by parts of the fuselage, rocket exhausts pointing into engine intakes, wildly disobey aerodynamics well beyond suspension of disbelief, etc

It's only concept art, but the Hornet seems to be in front of them from the start, hopefully it stays that way from paper to CAD to production.

I definitely like the Corp flyer better than any of GW's SM flyers.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I definitely like the Corp flyer better than any of GW's SM flyers.

Ditto. And I won't even be collecting Corp or Enforcer.... though I might get a couple of those flyers to paint up as terrain for Infinity.

I see they just posted a drawing of some sort of... half-tracked... trike... thing? If THAT is the kind of 'trike' that people were talking about... I could probably get behind it- if it pans out to renders/real life as nicely as the drawing.

e;fb

Yeah ok, that's a bit different.

Oh dear. That looks like one of the sillier toy creations from the '80s He-Man cartoon.

It does look a bit Saturday morning cartoon.

I'll take 12.

 Azazelx wrote:

sculptin'zombie wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:

The size of that vast untapped market is immense, and Mantic need to continue to improve and be willing to take on board criticism/feedback of their models instead of ignoring them at the behest of those most emotionally invested in them. There's been plenty of valid critiques brought up in this thread over the last however-many pages that makes me wonder how certain things got through to the KS. Then again, I work in a large enough organisation to know that often the people who make certain decisions aren't always the best people to make those particular decisions. I've spent the last 7 months at work cleaning up someone else's mess and making improvements to the way certain things are run. No reason to think it's any different at Mantic or anywhere else.

nope, no one at Mantic was doing this job (same person in charge for 3 years), at least regarding miniature improvement. As I said before all efforts have been in other departements.

as for listening to "The vocal folks", if you have something to say you should say it in the KS comments, they won't read comments here, at my time in Mantic when I (or someone else) would read the forum or bring some comments to the management's attention I was just told I shouldn't read it or pay attention because people here (or another forum) are "mean". At least it was 1 year ago, comments sounds more positive now, maybe they should start reading again!

The KS comments are too vast, and anything of value gets lost unless picked up by the general hive-mind. They're also a toilet. We did have one of the Mantic staffers mention that they were following this thread earlier on, so I'm satisfied with that. I don't expect them to spend hours replying.

I feed anything I think is useful from forums back in a non-mean manner either through e-mail to Stew or in the RC forums

Ah so it was a half track trike hopefully the front face armour is toned down in look in the final sculpt like the tank/APC was but I'd probably take the 3 for $40.

The Plague always struck as more Firefly Reavers - the good thing about the Hornet being a dual kit is that if you don't like the added plague gubbins you can just build the GCPS version with one or 2 gubbins on it.

 insaniak wrote:
Oh dear. That looks like one of the sillier toy creations from the '80s He-Man cartoon.

It does, but the artwork for the tank did as well, and looked quite different by the time it was done and much better for it.

100 more Utimate Tyrant pledges just opened up.

I've been trying to place how I'm getting a sense of familiarity about it... it feels kind of like a cross between a Kettenkrad and a 6 Rad, like someone made a Kettenkrad the size of a 6 Rad, and then put the 6 Rad armour and turret over the top.

Shipping Estimates are updated

We will ship your pledges from the UK.

Warfare

As a rough estimate, the Advanced Warfare pledge level will cost about $10 to ship in the UK, $15 in the EU, $20 in the USA and Canada, and around $25 to Australia and the rest of the world. This may increase or decrease based on the quantity of stretch goals we might unlock and your carrier choices.

Advanced Warfare

As a rough estimate, the Advanced Warfare pledge level will cost about $15 to ship in the UK, $20 in the EU, $25 in the USA and Canada, and around $50 to Australia and the rest of the world. This may increase or decrease based on the quantity of stretch goals we might unlock and your carrier choices.

Total Warfare

As a rough estimate, the Total Warfare pledge level will cost about $15 to ship in the UK, $25 in the EU, $60 in the USA and Canada, and around $70 to Australia and the rest of the world. The USA Value may decrease if we can secure a shipper in the US to dispatch US kickstarter pledges. This may increase or decrease based on the quantity of stretch goals we might unlock and your carrier choices.

Ultimate Tyrant

As a rough estimate, the Total Warfare pledge level will cost about $15 to ship in the UK, $25 in the EU, $90 in the USA and Canada, and around $125 to Australia and the rest of the world. The USA Value may decrease if we can secure a shipper in the US to dispatch US kickstarter pledges. This may increase or decrease based on the quantity of stretch goals we might unlock and your carrier choices.

Dat shipping

Hmmmmmm.... Those vermen weapons platforms might make excellent, cheaper mek guns for my orks...

 NTRabbit wrote:
I've been trying to place how I'm getting a sense of familiarity about it... it feels kind of like a cross between a Kettenkrad and a 6 Rad, like someone made a Kettenkrad the size of a 6 Rad, and then put the 6 Rad armour and turret over the top.

It reminded me a bit like a half track crossed with a SdKfz 222 armoured car.

Sure, maybe tone it down a little, but yeah, seems good. In saying that, I'm happy with my main choices of Plague, Corporation and Interceptors, with probably the hornets as the free ships?

Ouch with the shipping. I had been idly considering upping to an Ultimate Tyrant pledge, but tacking on an extra $65 for shipping is probably going to keep me down at Advanced Warfare level and buying what I know I like rather than padding it with maybes like I would be with UT. It's not Mantic's fault that international shipping sucks, but given Mantic's historic packing accuracy rate I'm not interested in rolling the dice that much a year in advance.

I realize there's no much sympathy in the international community for that, but it is a strong incentive to wait for retail on the things that have not yet been seen.

Harsh shipping costs. But they do show how much of the bill Mantic has been footing so far with $10 flat rate shipping across the board on most previous KS.

Well, the Ultimate Tyrant box will be massive..

Over 1000 backers at the $1 mark. That's unusually high.

 Mort wrote:

So you're pissed off at your ex-employer. You feel you have good reason to be. That's great!

But... what is the point of your rants here so far? To warn us that some of Mantic's future minis will be hit or miss? We knew that already - hell, some of GW's figs are 'hit or miss'.

So what's your agenda, other than to bash your ex-employer? What 'news and rumors' can you offer?

The news that with Mantic burning through sculptors at a quick rate, future Mantic minis might be more miss than hit? There have been plenty of misses in this KS already, whether you agree or not, and the message that the concepts and quality will not be stabilising and improving in the foreseeable future is a pertinent one, I feel.

There's also the news, or rumour if you prefer, that Mantic cares about quality and customers almost to the same degree as GW. I've said earlier that I suspected that much, given the dreck that Mantic hasn't been shy about putting out. Nice to have it confirmed.

And then there's the hint about what Mantic are like to work with. Now, it'd take a long while, a lot of sculptor turnover, and an awful lot of desperation for Mantic to come knocking at the doors of the likes of me! Also, I've been wondering about the 'professionalism' of, as you say, bashing an ex-employer like this, the dirty laundry in public, the reputation you might accrue, etc. To be honest I've come to the conclusion that it's good to know what Mantic are like to work for, and better to know in this way than not at all. There's too much vague, subjective, contradictory, and plain nonexistant info in this tiny industry as it is, even when you have the brains of a handful of pro sculptors to pick, every so often, and I like having one more concrete nugget to squirrel away.
What's more, like Vermonter I now know who Sculptin'zombie is, the degree of his established reputation and - from what little I've seen - his cool-headedness in this business. I can't easily imagine that these little exposés are just kneejerk tantrums, let alone from a notorious and unreliable individual; and to be honest, the bit about emigrating on the promise of a full time job, to have the rug pulled out from under you, by itself goes a fair bit towards explaining them in my eyes.

Holy gak 90 dollars? What the what? When I could order this crap free from the mantic website or miniature market at retail? I'm gonna have to do some thinking....

 scarletsquig wrote:
Over 1000 backers at the $1 mark. That's unusually high.

Just around a 50% increase from DZ:I. Shipping for the top level pledge is a 500% increase. THAT's unusually high.

 GrimDork wrote:
Holy gak 90 dollars? What the what? When I could order this crap free from the mantic website or miniature market at retail? I'm gonna have to do some thinking....

I'm trying to talk my friend out of ultimate tyrant. We were going to split shipping, but I only wanted one battle group... So that's a lot to pay.

I'd rather wait for retail.

 Vermis wrote:

The news that with Mantic burning through sculptors at a quick rate, future Mantic minis might be more miss than hit? There have been plenty of misses in this KS already, whether you agree or not.

I don't agree so no, your subjective assessment does not stand on its own merits

Looks like Marauders are going to be added at the last minute!

I mean they say you don't lock in till Feb that that's like any kind of payments, you still gotta add them all up and be able to agree with the total. That means if I buy 500 worth of stuff I'm looking at an extra 20 bucks per hundred. 20% increase in spend?

Man I really didn't wanna drop to a dollar for time to think but I'm not sure I've even paid anyone a hundred bucks to ship me anything =\ Hell I could go back to a cat battle systems pledge for as much as I've talked myself into here, and still pay less to ship all that dense card...

 scarletsquig wrote:
Over 1000 backers at the $1 mark. That's unusually high.

It's the only pledge level for people who want the new Deadzone units without buying a whole army for some other game.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 scarletsquig wrote:
Over 1000 backers at the $1 mark. That's unusually high.

It's the only pledge level for people who want the new Deadzone units without buying a whole army for some other game.

Yep. And with all some of us have for DZ from those KS projects, chances are it also allows us to have Firefight forces if we decide we like those rules.

Can we add extra $$$$ in the pledge manager? Forgot about the way Mantic does things.

To be fair I think the shipping is a good estimate, shipping abroad is a costly venture. I actually applaud Mantic for releasing those prices at this time in the campaign. It will either make customers think twice or outright remove their pledge.

As for the sculptor guy (I am assuming he did the Ogres) I think his feedback is very useful for backers.

Shipping costs these days are horrific, and I blame Tories, Republicans and "third way" conservatives of all stripes for destroying the various national postage services by privatising them. Crony capitalism is the bane of society.

RoninXiC wrote:
Can we add extra $$$$ in the pledge manager? Forgot about the way Mantic does things.

Yeah you can, they run it using their Mantic Digital store.

For US customers, it's the end of an era.

The fact is, for the amounts we're spending, in the United States U.S. customers can easily get free shipping. However that relates to what international customers pay, that's what Mantic is competing with in the United States.

So the deals would have to be an order of magnitude better than they used to be for the value to be similar to previous campaigns. They are not. They're about the same, more or less, and in some cases perhaps worse, if you care about older product being bundled in. So the value is a lot less.

I'm thankful that I got in when the getting was good with Mantic's earlier campaigns, very much including Deadzone Infestation, whose shipping was capped at a reasonable level. But from now on, I'm only paying for what I really want, with no filler. I'll need to see more up front before committing. I plan to buy no vehicles whatsoever, as with shipping costs included, I'm very sure discounted retail will compete well with Mantic's KS price, and allow me to buy them risk-free by seeing them produced and reviewed first.

I'm dropping to a dollar, and pledging about $135 up front. I do think Heracles and the $20 for 20 deals will likely prove worthwhile even with shipping costs. Even the $115 level bundles in the rules and the book, which will weigh more, and which I don't want to pay for or pay shipping on, so a la carte makes more sense. How much I add on the Pledge manager will depend on the total value, with final shipping costs very much a consideration.

I don't believe US customers are better than anyone else in the world, or deserve better. But again, as a US customer, fair or not, the reality is I look for the best deal. And with free shipping on large bulk orders so easy to do here (or even on small orders through Amazon), I'm not assuming special privileges by stating these facts or taking this reduced approach to the campaign, I'm just being a smart customer.

I'm not resentful. Again, I'm thankful I got such incredible deals from Mantic up until now - I can't imagine paying for my Deadzone scenery with the new shipping prices. But from this point forward, I'll be a merciless a la carte customer for their campaigns, buying only what I want, and only at very low speculative risk. I will continue to follow their products through campaigns and retail, though. Just more selectively and carefully.

@Vermonter, seems like sensible and logical reasoning to me. Very nicely put.

Personally I may just go the Heracles route as we are 95% sure if the quality of the contents.

I just hope that for those adding funds via the pledge manager that there are updates/renders/sculpts for inspection up to January/February.

I was really excited here but maybe it's the lack of sleep, scream crying kids, or pressure due to limited time...but after a couple of days of little sleep and screaming kids... That retail, yeah that retail she starts looking pretty good. And now I'm poorly quoting piirates of the carribean...


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Also very well spoken verm. Don't always agree with your outlook but I think we're pretty close here.

With the shipping costs, the lack of knowledge about scuplt quality, and at least a year to deliver (not to mention my KOW2 pledge still being AWOL with no response from Mantic), I don't see any upside to pledging big now.

I'll keep my dollar, and maybe buy some goodies when the PM closes.

I'm dropping my EB $115 back to $1, haven't had enough of a look at firefight and nothing in the bundles or pledges really sufficiently entices me. I'll go back up a bit in the PM of course but for now it's not really as exciting as I'd hoped.

Anyway, whoever gets to that EB first saves $10

Pretty much what Vermonter said. I don't blame Mantic for not wanting to take a bath on shipping, which I'm sure they have to this point. At the same time, I'm not looking to spend a ton of money on shipping either. If the shipping is going to up the price to where it's basically at "what you pay from discount retail" then I'm not really a buyer for large quantities that long in advance. If Mantic cares, they'll find a way to make distribution less costly. If they don't or can't, well, at least retailers will now have incentive to stock Mantic I guess.

I do appreciate Mantic's honesty that it's stated up-front, and I do look forward to the people who don't read complaining in February about how they didn't notice.

EDIT: Also thanks Bolognesus for reminding me to drop to a cheaper EB. $5 isn't much, but still...

 GrimDork wrote:
Holy gak 90 dollars? What the what? When I could order this crap free from the mantic website or miniature market at retail? I'm gonna have to do some thinking....

Vehicles aren't such a good deal now. Even the troop deals lose some of their shine when you factor the shipping.

Welcome to my world, fethers

Seriously considering the dolla billz approach now. If I had known UT was that high from the state of probably have never nabbed one honest. But like I said if I don't have UT a dollar is what would happen.. Hate not to pledge up front but I really gotta have the PM in front of me so I can weight the cost of shipping added on a per model/group basis.

I dropped to $1 from the $115 eb. I just don't see a single bundle I'm interested in. I'll likely grab 20-40 of each plastic infantry type in the pm but that's the only place the deal is with shipping being what it is.

Yep, looking over the final-ish offerings I see enough in Heracles that I'd make use of to bulk out existing armies in a worst case (the Enforcers are overkill really, but meh, there are worse things). Everything else is far too much on the "maybe" end of the scale to throw money at a year in advance. I might like the Asterians and GCPS, but that's just way too much of a gamble at the moment.

Yeah, those shipping costs.

Understandable, I guess, but still...

I'll definitely be staying at a dollar now.

Well, there's still Blaine and the novel. That deal should be quite safe. If the novel actually survives the funding process, that is.


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 Alpharius wrote:
Yeah, those shipping costs.

Understandable, I guess, but still...

I'll definitely be staying at a dollar now.

I really don't think it is understandable. At $30 per vehicle, the shipping costs should have already been out of sight between Waldo and Keyser Soze.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Well, there's still Blaine and the novel. That deal should be quite safe. If the novel actually survives the funding process, that is.

You're assuming that the Royal Mail doesn't decide to start charging exorbitant fees for the mailing of dead trees overseas to retain more of England's Strategic Pulp Reserve. Plus you will also have to pay the fee for the handling of those fees similar to what they charge on paying customs, and of course the "because we can" tax that the US government will put on it once they find out that inferior British pulp is coming into the States.

$90 will be the shipping on the novel before long...

I guess Amazon will come to the rescue. Amazon, protecting the little guy.

It may be worth Mantic investigating sea freighting pre-packed orders in to the US in future,

although whether US backers will be happy having to wait an extra month or two for ships to arrive, containers to get processed, customs, and then stuff to be reshipped ?

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
It may be worth Mantic investigating sea freighting pre-packed orders in to the US in future,

although whether US backers will be happy having to wait an extra month or two for ships to arrive, containers to get processed, customs, and then stuff to be reshipped ?

Not sure but here's what I do know. I started the day with an Advanced Warfare pledge, was planing on updating to a total warfare pledge + add ons, rad the shipping amount and will now be dropping to $1 and might get some infantry sprues. Once shipping is added value just isn't there on the things I'm interested in especially when the prefunding aspect is added in.

 GrimDork wrote:
Holy gak 90 dollars? What the what? When I could order this crap free from the mantic website or miniature market at retail? I'm gonna have to do some thinking....

I did my thinking and I saved my money for elsewhere. They seem to be trying to not take my money while still holding my KOW2 models hostage.

Ugh... those shipping prices.

I swear it's an echo chamber in here!

Thought about upping to one of the larger pledge levels myself when the PM dropped, grabbing at least one vehicle bundle to go with everything. Saw how much it would be to ship it, figure I'll wait for the inevitable online sales instead.

Heck, wouldn't I qualify for free shipping from Mantic themselves after spending beyond a certain threshold anyways?

I still like the basic Advanced Warfare package. It's nice getting books, dice, all that stuff along with an army and vehicle. At least I have a few hours left to make a decision.

Yeah, poor Americans... that's what we Europeans had to deal with for quite some time.

Like 75 bucks lol.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I guess Amazon will come to the rescue. Amazon, protecting the little guy.

It does help when you use a series of well paid for loopholes and small banking islands to ensure you never pay company tax, anywhere

 NTRabbit wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I guess Amazon will come to the rescue. Amazon, protecting the little guy.

It does help when you use a series of well paid for loopholes and small banking islands to ensure you never pay company tax, anywhere

. And here I thought they saved all that money cutting their labor law compliance to the bone and then denying it medical leave. Amazon, passing the savings on to their workforce payroll.

RoninXiC wrote:
Yeah, poor Americans... that's what we Europeans had to deal with for quite some time.

Leave emotion out of it. It pure logic. I can

A Pay more now for what I hope the models will look like based on renders or
B Pay less in the future if the models come out looking like there rnders.

Why should I choose A ?

RoninXiC wrote:
Yeah, poor Americans... that's what we Europeans had to deal with for quite some time.

Yep, and I have no doubt it has cost some US-based projects a lot money over the years. However, most of those projects didn't have those international backers down as a major funding source over multiple projects. Mantic did, and while they have clearly decided that the costs just can't be stomached anymore, it's going to have a much more profound impact on their bottom line than other projects who had already written off having any sort of large international funding.

For one of their flagship games, it would have made more sense for Mantic to have a solution to that problem figured out before the KS. It just feeds into the premise that they didn't really plan on doing WP at this time. This also doesn't boost confidence given the other stories detailed here and Mantic's history in general. Like I said though, that's a boost for US retailers I suppose? If Mantic can entice any of them anyway...

Also, reveling that others now have it as bad as you do is probably not the ideal way of resolving inequality.

I can hear the dull thuds of the 6x4 mats being dropped from Stateside pledges as people try and guess what the shipping on that would be.

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
I can hear the dull thuds of the 6x4 mats being dropped from Stateside pledges as people try and guess what the shipping on that would be.

I'm still interested in that, but you are correct that the money for that is not in my KS pledge pending how much it actually costs.

The only sensible option would be to cut it up into smaller sections and then post it over Sticky tape included free.

 scarletsquig wrote:
Over 1000 backers at the $1 mark. That's unusually high.

If most of them are like me, they wanted a cheap set of rulebook PDFs.

 Krinsath wrote:
it would have made more sense for Mantic to have a solution to that problem figured out before the KS

I too am looking forward to Mantic's solution to endemic political corruption, crony capitalism, the undermining of labor laws, legalised avoidance of taxes, and the corporate fueled destruction of public services and infrastructure.

Should be a doozy!

So Mantic put together a Marauder package of all the previously released Deadzone stuff... was there that much demand for old Marauder sculpts?

Yeah, people have been asking for them.

I'd like to get the Asterian Flyer Upgrade.. that would be nice.

 highlord tamburlaine wrote:
So Mantic put together a Marauder package of all the previously released Deadzone stuff... was there that much demand for old Marauder sculpts?

Maybe, maybe not. Doesn't hurt to add it though.

 NTRabbit wrote:

 Krinsath wrote:
it would have made more sense for Mantic to have a solution to that problem figured out before the KS

I too am looking forward to Mantic's solution to endemic political corruption, crony capitalism, the undermining of labor laws, legalised avoidance of taxes, and the corporate fueled destruction of public services and infrastructure.

Should be a doozy!

You make it sound like Mantic will have failed if they don't solve all the world's problems. There's a vast gulf between "what would fix everything" and "what Mantic could be doing"; perfect is the enemy of good and all that.

Finding a distribution partner isn't the most difficult thing in the world; if a small company in NY can manage to do it for the EU, Mantic should be able to wing it for the US. That's not to say it'd make shipping dramatically cheaper due to the order complexities Mantic allows, but that'd be on Mantic, wouldn't it? It's also going to be something they're going to need sooner or later if they realistically expect to maintain growth; either their own presence or a partnership.

Again, this is a flagship game for them, and they certainly want to sell it to a region that accounts for about a quarter of their market segment leader's income. To allow barriers like that to come up shows a lack of foresight, or, more likely, trying to hurry to do something before they're really ready to do it. Again, that's been one of Mantic's stumbling blocks for quite a while.

The description of Marauders in the last update doesn't seem to relate very closely to the goofy models.
Are Marauders being revamped down the road?

Dropped my pledge. Just not willing to fork over $150+ on shipping and run the risk of import duties on top of that for something I won't see for a year.

If I still want it at retail, I'll buy it at 20-30% off and get it shipped immediately for free.

And before anyone says "minis are duty exempt in the US", yes, they are, but many of us still got bills for importing our KoW stuff.

That is big Alex, you have been a very vocal supporter of the project and seemed excited by a lot of the options. You have also been great in the KS comments. I completely forgot about the issues with import duty that some people had on the last KS fulfillment from Mantic and they do not seem to have addressed that elephant in the room.

 Vermis wrote:


The news that with Mantic burning through sculptors at a quick rate, future Mantic minis might be more miss than hit? There have been plenty of misses in this KS already, whether you agree or not, and the message that the concepts and quality will not be stabilising and improving in the foreseeable future is a pertinent one, I feel.

LOL. "Whether you agree or not, my opinion is more right than yours". LOL. The message to YOU might be concepts/quality is not stabilizing. That's your -opinion-... whether you agree or not.

Ultimately - there's two sides to every story, and we're hearing only one. I guess I just don't see how it pertains to the KS, and it's just the rantings of a guy with an axe to grind. Very unprofessional, in my book.

-Mort

 Mort wrote:

 Vermis wrote:


The news that with Mantic burning through sculptors at a quick rate, future Mantic minis might be more miss than hit? There have been plenty of misses in this KS already, whether you agree or not, and the message that the concepts and quality will not be stabilising and improving in the foreseeable future is a pertinent one, I feel.

LOL. "Whether you agree or not, my opinion is more right than yours". LOL. The message to YOU might be concepts/quality is not stabilizing. That's your -opinion-... whether you agree or not.

Ultimately - there's two sides to every story, and we're hearing only one. I guess I just don't see how it pertains to the KS, and it's just the rantings of a guy with an axe to grind. Very unprofessional, in my book.

-Mort

It pertains because it's providing some context to one of the repeated criticisms of Mantic where there is a general unevenness to the models where some are great, and others are noticeably less so. Execution even after the sculpting is similarly hit-or-miss such as making a transparent team in DBX, then making the MVP opaque. When pledging sight-unseen a year in advance, that's good information to have as to why those themes seem to occur.

On the flip side, you are correct that it needs to be run through the filter of someone who feels slighted by Mantic and freely admits that to be the case. That can be a significant skewing factor, and may make the information exaggerated. Thus, it's more a prompt for further investigation than an "OH GOD RUN AWAY" scenario. Really, that sort of investigation should be part of the due diligence any backer would be well advised to undertake for any project, never mind who's running it.

Someone asked if people had been asking for Marauder sculpts from DZ.

Well.. I don't actually think that's what they were asking for. I "think" they were asking for hard plastic Marauders that would hopefully be sculpted better (like pretty much everything that has gone to HIPS) plus vehicle kits and general support for the range. That is not the same thing as asking for existing Marauders.. Almost Mantic.. almost..

 Krinsath wrote:
You make it sound like Mantic will have failed if they don't solve all the world's problems..

No, i'm pointing out you're blaming Mantic for not solving a problem so ridiculously out of their control. Welcome to what the rest of the world deals with, America, enjoy your stay. The least we can do after your poisonous Reagan-era politics leaked out and caused much of this in the first place.

International postage is expensive, has increased dramatically in recent years, and cannot be circumvented by any of the tiny companies in this industry, because only places of such breathtaking size and kickback ability can meet the scale and legislative influence needed to drive prices down, ie Amazon.

Is it just me or did Mantic just guarantee that most American backers will have a chance to try out Gates of Antares and MEdge, and fall in love, before they even have a chance at buying Warpath KS figures through retail? God help them if WGF's planned sci fi range drops between now and then.


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 NTRabbit wrote:

 Krinsath wrote:
You make it sound like Mantic will have failed if they don't solve all the world's problems..

No, i'm pointing out you're blaming Mantic for not solving a problem so ridiculously out of their control. Welcome to what the rest of the world deals with, America, enjoy your stay. The least we can do after your poisonous Reagan-era politics leaked out and caused much of this in the first place.

You are missing the nuances of the situation. Culturally, free shipping is to America what free health care is to the rest of the developed world.

 NTRabbit wrote:

 Krinsath wrote:
You make it sound like Mantic will have failed if they don't solve all the world's problems..

No, i'm pointing out you're blaming Mantic for not solving a problem so ridiculously out of their control. Welcome to what the rest of the world deals with, America, enjoy your stay. The least we can do after your poisonous Reagan-era politics leaked out and caused much of this in the first place.

International postage is expensive, has increased dramatically in recent years, and cannot be circumvented by any of the tiny companies in this industry, because only places of such breathtaking size and kickback ability can meet the scale and legislative influence needed to drive prices down, ie Amazon.

Again, in your mildly irrelevant trashing of conservatism you miss that there are numerous companies who have the infrastructure to lower shipping costs to consumers, including GW. Sure, some of them are orders of magnitude larger than Mantic, but it's not some unknowable process so much as one that Mantic doesn't have a handle on. You don't need the money to afford an elected representative to set up a logistics chain, as companies do it regularly. While that is by no means "easy" nor "simple" it is something Mantic will need to do, either internally or through partnership, if they want to sit at the big kid's table in the market.

I don't dispute that international shipping is a horrendous cost nor am I saying that Mantic must do these things now; they may be entirely happy with how the campaign has gone and bully for them if they are. I'm saying that these things are not impossible to have sorted out and Mantic's own language implies that they are looking into doing just that. For a core product, why is that uncertainty there? Why was that not sorted out so there's not the "plan on $90, but maybe it'll be less"? This speaks to what was suspected that Mantic is trying to step up their timetable and didn't have all their ducks in a row. However, Mantic tends to not do particularly well when they rush their logistics, which is another repeated criticism of the company.

 NTRabbit wrote:

No, i'm pointing out you're blaming Mantic for not solving a problem so ridiculously out of their control. Welcome to what the rest of the world deals with, America, enjoy your stay. The least we can do after your poisonous Reagan-era politics leaked out and caused much of this in the first place.

I've seen some pretty ridiculous (and mostly joking) blame Obama memes but your blame Reagan! blurb beats them all... combined. Yes, let's blame a dead president from the Cold War for why Mantic is charging so much for shipping today for this kickstarter instead of absorbing the cost since they're cutting out most of the middle men like the previous half dozen kickstarters. Can you please take the politically charged speech based more in pudding than fact over to the off topic forum instead of this thread?

If they manage that American hub, I'm guessing those import fees won't be a worry either.

 warboss wrote:

Mantic is charging so much for shipping today for this kickstarter instead of absorbing the cost since they're cutting out most of the middle men like the previous half dozen kickstarters.

The politics of Reagan, the worst President you ever had, along with those of Thatcher, have badly poisoned the anglosphere, and they directly inspired the "third way" conservatism of John Howard, Tony Blair, David Cameron, Stephen Harper, and numerous other infamous conservatives largely responsible for many ills, including devastating the postal services in order to hand them over to courier firms.

Mantic, nor any other minis company, are not responsible for the shipping prices, have never been responsible for the shipping prices, and to any American who thinks they deserve special entitlements and most of the shipping absorbed because ~reasons~ while the rest of us have been eating it all so you can get free domestic shipping on US projects since Kickstarter began, the answer is no.

For what it's worth, Exalting all of NTRabbit's posts. And I'd definitely add Thatcher to the wall of shame.

But it is what it is. At least Mantic were honest and provided the estimates up front, not all KS do that.

Yeah I appreciate the thing about shipping. I was over extending on this and heavier shipping fees will help me limit what I purchase when the pledge manager does roll around. UT up for grabs if they were getting scarce.

They're still probably gonna get a couple hundred bucks before its over and I'll probably still get some of the stuff at retail but... its getting to be time of year to watch spending anyway and over 500 is a bit different from 425, too much now.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
For what it's worth, Exalting all of NTRabbit's posts. And I'd definitely add Thatcher to the wall of shame.

But it is what it is. At least Mantic were honest and provided the estimates up front, not all KS do that.

I wonder what sort of lesson Mantic is learning...

...oops, never mind this post...

 Azazelx wrote:

 scarletsquig wrote:
Mantic's hard plastic sci-fi models are excellent, details, extra parts and overall quality are just as good as GW.

Wow. No. Just.... no.


They're getting better, but... no.

Yeah... GW set a new standard with the Stormcast Eternal kits. Even if you don't like their aesthetic, they are superbly tooled.

I don't think it's wise for anyone who would be adversely affected by a $100 shipping fee to spend over $500 on minis at once anyway, but people are free to make their own decisions!


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 judgedoug wrote:
Yeah... GW set a new standard with the Stormcast Eternal kits. Even if you don't like their aesthetic, they are superbly tooled.

Horribly designed though. Square butt chaos guys, Stomfront eternals who ate all the pies, and then more of the pies, guys with bows who can't see where they're shooting, clear signs that they're down to a very shallow talent pool of sculptors who rely heavily on CAD lifting them up to the minimum standards, eg overuse of repetitive details, bad posing, poor knowledge of anatomy. High quality work on the steel moulds by engineers and machines doesn't make up for that.

 Alex C wrote:
Dropped my pledge. Just not willing to fork over $150+ on shipping and run the risk of import duties on top of that for something I won't see for a year.

If I still want it at retail, I'll buy it at 20-30% off and get it shipped immediately for free.

And before anyone says "minis are duty exempt in the US", yes, they are, but many of us still got bills for importing our KoW stuff.

Hope you stay In at $1, free rules. I dropped out then remembered the PDFs

 lord_blackfang wrote:
For what it's worth, Exalting all of NTRabbit's posts. And I'd definitely add Thatcher to the wall of shame.

But it is what it is. At least Mantic were honest and provided the estimates up front, not all KS do that.

The estimates are a nice bit of realism/honesty from a Kickstarter, a strangely rare thing. One wonders what the total would currently have been had they not released the shipping estimates.

Who is Thatcher?

OK, folks, while the political debate is fascinating, how about we agree that international shipping is expensive and leave the discussion of why that is for elsewhere?

Honestly only reason didn't up my pledge is because I can't get what I really want in the PM post kickstarter. So $1 it is which I may use to grab some stuff if really tempted, probably just the rules at this stage.

Trike is less goofy than I was hoping, at least give the option for dorfs sticking out of it somewheres, dual side cars!

Guy who sculpted dancing gobbo and 3rd gens judging other people, hmmmmmmmm

In for $125 rat army pledge, not too much metal, some fun stuff I think. For the pm probably 3 squeel wheels, mebbe same for the dorf trikes if their awesome, and $20 of steel warriors to supplement dorf stuff from previous ks should be good.

Blinkin' Nora, NTrabbit. Even I think you need to chill.

And, looking at the last few pages alone, still think there are no misses here?

Krinsath wrote:It pertains because it's providing some context to one of the repeated criticisms of Mantic where there is a general unevenness to the models where some are great, and others are noticeably less so. Execution even after the sculpting is similarly hit-or-miss such as making a transparent team in DBX, then making the MVP opaque. When pledging sight-unseen a year in advance, that's good information to have as to why those themes seem to occur.

On the flip side, you are correct that it needs to be run through the filter of someone who feels slighted by Mantic and freely admits that to be the case. That can be a significant skewing factor, and may make the information exaggerated. Thus, it's more a prompt for further investigation than an "OH GOD RUN AWAY" scenario. Really, that sort of investigation should be part of the due diligence any backer would be well advised to undertake for any project, never mind who's running it.

This. Personally I stake a lot on the reputation of Sculptin'zombie - I don't think he'd risk that for just a minor, petty tiff or misunderstanding - and I note that part of his frustration was the lack of or willingness for QC at Mantic. Maybe he's overstated it, and maybe Mantic will hit on some good sculptors, or actively seek them in the future. But until that actually comes through in consistent quality of successive products, I think it's a telling insight and a good reason to exercise some amount of caution.

Hey, look. Apocalypto is on tv right now.

So I have 100 minutes left to fund this?

Is there anything in this that is outstanding deal wise?

is there anything in heere thats ks exclusive thats great?

Triszin wrote:
So I have 100 minutes left to fund this?

Is there anything in this that is outstanding deal wise?

is there anything in heere thats ks exclusive thats great?

The Plague mini is exclusive - maybe an Asterian too?

But given the recent Shipping Revelation and the ability to pick most of this up later on possibly cheaper and with free shipping from a domestic seller?

I don't think there's anything too fantastic here that would beat waiting until it releases at retail and you can see the final sculpts too.

$15 postage for UT sounds a bargain to me.

That is UK cost, $90 for US (may be lower,).

 Alpharius wrote:

Triszin wrote:
is there anything in heere thats ks exclusive thats great?

The Plague mini is exclusive - maybe an Asterian too?.

Lt. Roca, Ingulf Krestursson, Hacker Half-Tail, Ten'ur Go, Major Chard, and Subject 901 are all special characters with a KS exclusive pose/sculpt. Whether they're great or not is up to you.

 Vermis wrote:

Guy, leave the butthurt fanboy defence stuff for GW. Look here and then decide if he's in a position to judge the quality of minis and sculpting.

Pal, I see a link with a lot of fine sculpts...and like every single culprit of tiny legs, huge body minis mantic has ever released! If this guy is happy working somewhere else and Mantic is no longer releasing tiny legged minis I guess things worked out pretty well for all of us.

The murderbirds are a $485k stretch whilst the trike/half track for the Forge Fathers is at 500k. Around an hour to go, this should be fun.

I dropped my pledge down unfortunately. I felt like Corporation needed more umph than it got. It seemed more like it was added as an after-though. Then there was the shipping. Technically when you think about how much was shipping, it isn't too much... but when you add in retail usually is free shipping over X amount, the savings just wasn't there. I could afford to be more choosy in retail, not getting pieces I already have from previous Mantic KS, getting what I want, and free shipping. So in the end I lowered my pledge.

I suspect that is why they waited till the very end to mention more details about the shipping. If they let it slip too early, folks wouldn't pledge. This way they can be open and honest and still hope that folks won't notice just how much it'll be until it's too late.

Then I think I'll pass this time.

I bought a LOT of stuff with Deadzone 1 kickstarter, and seeing as there wasnt an army upgrade option for all the new stuff. meh

I'll wait till retail and spend a little more to get the stuff. I backed Deadzone 2 just to get n117 enforcer. None of these exclusives do it for me.

The next deadzone/warpath, should focus solely on new stuff and make options for those to select a bundle that only comes with the new figures.

Murderbirds are literally murderous birds. This made me laugh/cry a little. Glad I ordered the birds from Black Plague.

The ratman vehicles, the trike thing, the flyers, the tunnelers, the tank.. guys. I am pretty sure those vehicle designs were primarily picked from a variety of 80s cartoons.



EDIT: I did find examples similar to the others I mentioned but I really don't want to sit here all day worrying about that.
When I sent a message to Mantic declining an offer they were making, they said AW prices haven't changed. I asked if that means I can add whatever I want to an AW pledge and still only be looking at the same shipping cost. I have not heard back yet on that.

Anyone else think the forgefather half track looks a bit he-man vehicle ? Like a land shark/battle ram had a baby ?!!!

So a total of $484,917, I thought that they would breeze past 500k but still a very successful campaign with 5 armies nearly fully fleshed out. I hope to see lots of quality HIPS vehicles and infantry ready for release in Oct/Nov 2016.

 highlord tamburlaine wrote:
So Mantic put together a Marauder package of all the previously released Deadzone stuff... was there that much demand for old Marauder sculpts?

I guess they figured the numbers wouldn't allow them to found new marauders but they wanted to sell a few anyway.
A lot of the minis in this KS were actually ready for DZ2, I guess the KS wasn't big enough for them.

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:

As for the sculptor guy (I am assuming he did the Ogres) I think his feedback is very useful for backers.

the old ones are from Remy Tremblay, I just did the ogre mage

to the person asking what else I sculpted for KoW, I did the molochs, the goblin shaman on lizard you may have seen from the open day and some rework on other sculpts, can't think of anything else now.

 Azazelx wrote:


Any company will have turnover. Aragorn Marks was indie, then worked for GW, then went indie again in seemingly the blink of an eye. Juan Diaz, that guy who did the GW beastmen and is now doing more beastmen for Mierce - a company built entirely on freelancers. It's hard to say much about Mantic since they, like GW, seem to avoid giving a lot of info on who sculpted what. As for which recent models are "better" - the Ogre Berserkers are much better than those models that preceded them, both the Restic ones and the Metal Ogre Sham that's been sitting around for a couple years and has just been released. The Metal Chaos Dwarf sorcerer guy with two heads, also.


At this point you'e outed yourself to anyone in the know, so you may as well post your name here and let us know what else you've sculpted for other companies. I'm interested in taking a peek for the sake of comparison. Which KoW stuff?

anyone in the know could tell who I am from my first post, there has only ever been 1 in-house sculptor at Mantic
I posted a link to my blog in my presentation section: http://area51minis.blogspot.fr/


regarding turnover, you are partly correct, but the difference is that GW will select new sculptors carefully and train them until they match their style and a certain standard in quality.
Mantic won't be so picky and has been trying new sculptor with little experience with mixed results. In particular digital sculptors don't always have a clear view of what their mini will look like once printed in 30mm, or know how to make them suitable for production. Of course Mantic can offer them some input about production, but they can't direct them properly or even get them to work in a consistant style (the enforcers, vermyn and marauders just don't belong to the same range). That's when they can deliver a proper mini at all, during my time here I had many change to do on freelancers sculpts, including new ones. Once I even had to resculpt half a model (from a digital print) because the sculptor didn't know how to resize parts of the model. I wonder what we'll see next...
I have read on several occasion that mantic use second rate sculptors, but If you look in detail who sculpt what at Mantic you'll find that many of their sculptors have done better stuff for other companies. The problem is that Mantic can't get the best of them for many reasons (I'd be happy to develop but my post are long enough)

regarding the ogres, I don't agree, the old ones are excellent sculpts, with a questionable design choice (large torso and narrow hips), which iirc come from the concept art. I'll leave asside the mage as I did it to match the old ones and didn't had the freedom to change the design or the time to match Remy's sculpts. From what I have seen the Berserkers correct the design flaws (new concept artist who is also the sculptor), they are correct sculpts as far as I can tell (can't judge from a render) but the original ones would be a lot better than the berserk if they had the same proportions. At the end with design it's always a matter of taste.

 Vermonter wrote:
Hey sculptin' zombie,

Mostly what I would like to say is thank you for your high standards and the good work you did. You sculpted some great stuff during your time at Mantic - many of the figures you listed are among my favorites. You may not be working with Mantic anymore, but let us know how to keep track of your work and progress. Miniature companies often seem to like to keep their sculptors anonymous, but we do notice good quality when we see it, and like to follow good talent. I take it your first name begins with an S, last name with a Q? (I don't know if you want your real name printed here, hence the capital letters.) We do pay attention, and I've really enjoyed your work.

I wonder, honestly, if part of what happened to you was due to changes in the industry. Personally I think there are some things hand sculpting just does better than digital, and that there are qualities to hand sculpted work that digital will never recapture. I don't know if you work in digital also, but I could see miniature companies increasingly turning to digital sculpts for faster, cheaper results. I enjoy both hand and digitally sculpted work, but I hope there will always be a place in the industry for talented traditional sculptors.

Mantic do have bizarre artistic hiccups. Deadzone was a mixed bag of great sculpts and terrible ones. Overall, in no small part due to your work it seems, Deadzone was worth it for me. And while the 3rd Gen designs weren't to my taste, one in particular - the guy with the hanging arm and crooked fingers - that sculpt really was exceptional work. Well done. But as to Mantic, they do get enough great sculpts that it boggles my mind when they cut corners and produce bad ones, taking the resulting hit in sales. The Marauder ripper suits could have been a huge hit if they'd been better sculpts, their material notwithstanding.

On the other hand, Games Workshop has infinitely more money and resources than Mantic does, but they also produce terrible sculpts sometimes. There are smaller companies with higher aesthetic standards than GW, of course, but to be fair, Mantic aren't the only ones who stumble.

Particularly if you end up doing sci-fi miniatures again, Monsieur Q, I'd love to know about it.

thanks for the kind words. Indeed that's me, no big secret here.
the 3rd gen you mention is also my favourite, it was the 1st one, I should have stayed closer to it but had to rush to match Mantic deadlines and budget.

"change in the industry" was indeed the reason they gave me to make me redundant, althought it's a bit more complicated... I was supposed to do most of KoW sculpts after the DS ones, but they switched KOW and DZ2 KS, needing KS figures sooner and commissioning most from freelancers, I belive that's what precipited their decision, and they made sure to fire me in time so they wouldn't need to give me any redundancy pay, but wanting me to do the KoW models as a freelancer. In a different context they would probably have kept me longer.

I don't do digital sculpting but had a look at it, I agree with you about digital sculpting. but I think one of the problem is they use the easy way and just making an unposed model and bending it in software. It give awkward pose with anatomical issues, lack of personality, and regulary everyone looks like clones with the same face (it was supposed to be good for martians, not so much for human troopers). But anyway Mantic won't give their sculptors the ressource to do much better.

I won't compare Mantic with GW, their is indeed no comparisons in ressource. But their are also smaller companies that make more effort than mantic, and new ones come to KS every month. It's sad because Mantic has some potential and could do great games with great minis, but will rather deliver a "good enough" product. I think there is a good reason if Mantic KS are somehow decreasing.

you'll probbaly see my new work on my blog, and yes, that will include some science fiction.

 Vermis wrote:

 Mort wrote:

So you're pissed off at your ex-employer. You feel you have good reason to be. That's great!

But... what is the point of your rants here so far? To warn us that some of Mantic's future minis will be hit or miss? We knew that already - hell, some of GW's figs are 'hit or miss'.

So what's your agenda, other than to bash your ex-employer? What 'news and rumors' can you offer?

The news that with Mantic burning through sculptors at a quick rate, future Mantic minis might be more miss than hit? There have been plenty of misses in this KS already, whether you agree or not, and the message that the concepts and quality will not be stabilising and improving in the foreseeable future is a pertinent one, I feel.

There's also the news, or rumour if you prefer, that Mantic cares about quality and customers almost to the same degree as GW. I've said earlier that I suspected that much, given the dreck that Mantic hasn't been shy about putting out. Nice to have it confirmed.

And then there's the hint about what Mantic are like to work with. Now, it'd take a long while, a lot of sculptor turnover, and an awful lot of desperation for Mantic to come knocking at the doors of the likes of me! Also, I've been wondering about the 'professionalism' of, as you say, bashing an ex-employer like this, the dirty laundry in public, the reputation you might accrue, etc. To be honest I've come to the conclusion that it's good to know what Mantic are like to work for, and better to know in this way than not at all. There's too much vague, subjective, contradictory, and plain nonexistant info in this tiny industry as it is, even when you have the brains of a handful of pro sculptors to pick, every so often, and I like having one more concrete nugget to squirrel away.
What's more, like Vermonter I now know who Sculptin'zombie is, the degree of his established reputation and - from what little I've seen - his cool-headedness in this business. I can't easily imagine that these little exposés are just kneejerk tantrums, let alone from a notorious and unreliable individual; and to be honest, the bit about emigrating on the promise of a full time job, to have the rug pulled out from under you, by itself goes a fair bit towards explaining them in my eyes.

Mort, if you consider what I say is just 1 side of the story and many doubt it that make it a rumor, so it's the right place, no?
I keep seeing people claiming Mantic minis get better everytime, I think my explainations make sense here, but feel free to ignore them.
I'm just saying could expect as much hit and miss in the future as there was 2 years ago, despite some claims I read here.

Vermis, actually the staff turnover I had in mind was not just sculptors. There is a sculptor turnover, don't know if you can call it quick, but there are not much reason for talented people to stay at Mantic. There are still some good sculptors working Mantic (though they are probably busy working for other companies as well, there is a high demand for talented sculptors and Mantic is not the one giving the best conditions).
If they contacted you it may just be a consequence of me turning down any freelance work for them after after all of this, I guess they didn't had anyone else for the job.
Now if I wouldn't recommend working for Mantic as an employe, beeing a freelancer isn't as bad assuming you are ok with the price, they aren't too picky... (but may claim that your work is gak after realese if the customers don't like them)
they have tendency to screw people working for them though, I have a few other exemple in mind even though mine is probably the worse by far.

now I know this is probably beeing unprofessional, but given the circumstances I kept it to the minimum,
I'm certainly immodest, but think I have been one of the reason people think Mantic quality is improving, and I think people desserve to know they may not get the same in the future (maybe they will, just giving a warning)
it's not like I was giving a list of all their upcoming KS including secret IP they were working on (which I could... there wasn't even a confidensiality clause in my contract...)
I kept professional in my last days at Mantic and finished my work in time the best I can, but frankly now I regret it.

ArtIsGreat wrote:


Guy who sculpted dancing gobbo and 3rd gens judging other people, hmmmmmmmm
.

the "dancing gobo" looks exactly like the concept art and iirc it was one of the studio manager's favourite minis among those I have sculpted (could be wrong), the 3rd gen were supposed to be like this, though I admit I'd redo them differently now.

Anyway I did those miniatures before beeing employed in-house as test pieces and they got me a full time, so if you think they are poor you are just proving my point really.

Now I think my other work prove I can do properly proportionned miniatures as well, and most Mantic sculptors have done small legs huge torso minis at one point, so maybe you should be looking elswhere (like the art direction, quality control or lack of it)

Dropped out in the last hour.

Was originally a $115 pledge.

But after totting it all up. Looking at what I'd get vs waiting and getting at retail at discount.

Opted to wait instead as for me the value wasn't there.

What's this about the next project being post apocalyptic? Oh my.

 GrimDork wrote:
What's this about the next project being post apocalyptic? Oh my.

If that's the new licensed property... it could be significant. I'm hoping more in the lines of Fallout and less The Walking Dead.

I'll be honest, I wavered on the TW after seeing the shipping charge. But I ended up sticking with it. It's still a great deal, just possibly not as good as MM prices.

Gotta admit though, I blanched a bit at SZ's remarks. I was hoping the attitude he shared from mantic was a pissed off customer or somebody who just hates mantic like Holker does. But being not super familiar with specific sculptors, it sounds like a lot of you recognize him. And it's pretty damning. I was pretty sure these guys were the ones to replace the gw of old in personality and game quality. I'm frightened that I may have been wrong. But they're still doing right by me. And I still enjoy most of their sculpts. So time will tell.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 GrimDork wrote:
What's this about the next project being post apocalyptic? Oh my.

If that's the new licensed property... it could be significant. I'm hoping more in the lines of Fallout and less The Walking Dead.

If it's a licensed Fallout game (maybe the delay was due to NDA agreements if Fallout 4 content is involved) my wife has proclaimed that she "doesn't give a feth how much the shipping costs, we're getting it".

Who am I to argue?

Fallout could be spectacar. Even walking dead would be sweet. Or mad max. Any of that, if its more 28 mm minis for me. I guess they could brsch out and be like FFG and start doing different scales and card games etc... But I'd love me either of those first two in 28mm.

Even more reason to get that battle systems post apoc.

Could alternatively, be Mad Max?

 Compel wrote:
Could alternatively, be Mad Max?

I'd be up for Med Mex too.

 Alex C wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 GrimDork wrote:
What's this about the next project being post apocalyptic? Oh my.

If that's the new licensed property... it could be significant. I'm hoping more in the lines of Fallout and less The Walking Dead.

If it's a licensed Fallout game (maybe the delay was due to NDA agreements if Fallout 4 content is involved) my wife has proclaimed that she "doesn't give a feth how much the shipping costs, we're getting it".

Who am I to argue?

Oh god please no. Not Fallout. Not from Mantic.

~Eric

Why? They tend to do pretty well when it comes to rulesets (the current WP scare is really the one exception...) and with a clear set of concept art etc already available to work with that might well be just about the best thing that could possibly happen to the franchise, TT wise.
The artistic direction is there, included in the license. All they have to do is get it to market - and they've done a pretty good job of that over the last few years.

I got snarky. Sorry about that. Redacted.

 NTRabbit wrote:
I don't think it's wise for anyone who would be adversely affected by a $100 shipping fee to spend over $500 on minis at once anyway, but people are free to make their own decisions!

....Unless, of course, the $500 you were about to spend was fairly 'borderline' as it was. Adding in almost $100 for shipping pushes it over the edge to a deal-breaker for some folks. I know I lowered my pledge. I really only 'need' the one faction and its vehicles, the others would have 'been nice' to have, a luxury, but not for almost $100 shipping.

Don't get me wrong - I am not angry at Mantic for that. They're in Europe, and shipping to the States (or heaven forbid, Oz) is expensive. I am not one of those Americans who thinks we should get 'free shipping' always and everywhere we go. But I also know when to cut back to a level of service that is more reasonable and tolerable to my budget, and my needs.

Slightly tongue-in-cheek political comment redacted, as per Insaniak's request, which I missed.

sculptin'zombie wrote:

Mort, if you consider what I say is just 1 side of the story and many doubt it that make it a rumor, so it's the right place, no?

If that's all you were posting about, that'd be one thing. But you didn't. Your walls of text went well beyond that. This is (or was) a thread dedicated to a KS - not to your job prospects, or the dirty laundry you felt the sudden urge to air DURING the KS. It really comes across as sour grapes, coming from someone with an axe to grind. I know, because I've been in your shoes once (not in the gaming industry though, thank goodness). It sucks. I empathize. But I also see your actions as being highly unprofessional.

But like you - and several others here - I am just voicing my opinion. And before one of the big-talkers here tosses out the 'Mantic Fanboy' tag on me - I've never done a Mantic KS. This is my first. I've played a couple games of KoW and have not bought any of their products until this KS.

And to those that disagree - /shrug. We disagree. Ain't no harm in that.

sculptin'zombie wrote:

I keep seeing people claiming Mantic minis get better everytime, I think my explainations make sense here, but feel free to ignore them.
I'm just saying could expect as much hit and miss in the future as there was 2 years ago, despite some claims I read here.

Great. So there could be some 'hit and miss' in the years to come. Did we already know that? Was anyone expecting Mantic to be perfect from here on out? There are plenty of complaints about some of their figs production values, not even taking into account the aesthetic side of things.

sculptin'zombie wrote:

now I know this is probably beeing unprofessional, but given the circumstances I kept it to the minimum,

Well, at least now you admit it.

And that's all I was saying.

There's two sides to every story, and I doubt we'll ever hear Mantic's side of what happened and why. But the KS is over, and I hope you have garnered some satisfaction from whatever impact you felt you had on it.

I'm furthest from mad at Mantic about the shipping as possible. I'm very grateful they offered up that information, it helped me make a decision to scale back my pledge and when the manager comes around I'll likely get less. I think this is for the best, saves me money and doesn't bloat my backlog quite as much. They're still gonna get a pretty chunk of change before the manager ends unless I'm just flat broke then, but right now I'm glad they helped me make the informed decision to wait.

sculptin'zombie wrote:

the 3rd gen you mention is also my favourite, it was the 1st one, I should have stayed closer to it but had to rush to match Mantic deadlines and budget.

I always thought deadlines / budget pressures probably had something to do with it, given how good that first one was. Interesting to see that confirmed. The quality on that first guy was great - it's an interesting sculptural composition from every angle, "in the round," as we art historians like to say. The 3rd Gens got a lot of bashing, and even I wish they'd used a different design. But that one, that was great work.

the "dancing gobo" looks exactly like the concept art and iirc it was one of the studio manager's favourite minis among those I have sculpted (could be wrong), the 3rd gen were supposed to be like this, though I admit I'd redo them differently now.

I always loved this one, actually.

I'm sorry you were ill-used during your time at Mantic. You seem like a disappointed idealist, insofar as many of the realities you cite (lots of turnover at Mantic as people move on to better paid positions in the industry, cut corners, etc.) are what you would expect to find at many business places. I'm not saying it's right, and I like your idealism. But much of what you've told us probably doesn't come as much of a surprise to people here, even though it is disappointing to hear.

Anyhow, I hope that your next venture, as an employee or a freelancer, treats you better. I believe talent should be rewarded, and you have plenty of that. And you're right - it is a shame that Mantic didn't take your push for quality more seriously. Whatever they think their business model is, they lose money with every poor sculpt they make, and even their good sculpts need to compete effectively with other ones on the market. If I were Mantic, even from a cold business standpoint, I'd hire an artistic director. With you already in-house, I would have asked you to do the job. They've missed a big opportunity. It's a shame.

Anyone who entertains doubts about your skills just needs to have a look at your blog. I'd post a link, but again, don't want to presume. You might consider doing so yourself.

 GrimDork wrote:
I'm furthest from mad at Mantic about the shipping as possible. I'm very grateful they offered up that information, it helped me make a decision to scale back my pledge and when the manager comes around I'll likely get less. I think this is for the best, saves me money and doesn't bloat my backlog quite as much. They're still gonna get a pretty chunk of change before the manager ends unless I'm just flat broke then, but right now I'm glad they helped me make the informed decision to wait.

Ditto. I do appreciate them at least coming out with it in time for most folks to change pledges if they wished.

It would have been a rude-awakening for some of us to find out about the shipping -after- the fact. As others have pointed out, lots of KS don't do that, and I definitely appreciate it.

 GrimDork wrote:
I'm furthest from mad at Mantic about the shipping as possible. I'm very grateful they offered up that information, it helped me make a decision to scale back my pledge and when the manager comes around I'll likely get less. I think this is for the best, saves me money and doesn't bloat my backlog quite as much. They're still gonna get a pretty chunk of change before the manager ends unless I'm just flat broke then, but right now I'm glad they helped me make the informed decision to wait.

Hey Grim,

As you mentioned earlier, we may not agree on a number of things, but truthfully, you've always had my respect. Too bad you're not in New England like I thought; I would have been happy to get in some good games of Deadzone with you.

I think Mantic posting the shipping information was the right thing to do, but in a way, it really was the only logical choice. You can imagine how upset people would have been if they were told they'd be paying $90+ for shipping after they were already on the hook and couldn't scale back accordingly. Public relations disaster.

I see Mort beat me to the punch, but I'll leave this up anyway.

Yup, very good that Mantic put out those figures before the end. I can't imagine the feedback if those sorts of numbers were revealed AFTER our pledges were locked in.

They're still going to hear that from some (unknown number) who missed it during the campaign...

And I thought I'd never see the day people on the internet started complaining.

 Alpharius wrote:
They're still going to hear that from some (unknown number) who missed it during the campaign...

Very true!

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Is it just me or did Mantic just guarantee that most American backers will have a chance to try out Gates of Antares and MEdge, and fall in love, before they even have a chance at buying Warpath KS figures through retail? God help them if WGF's planned sci fi range drops between now and then.

Mantic's new KS shipping price for US customers certainly won't hurt Maelstrom's Edge. If Mantic's crazy old bargain deals are gone, MEdge and Antares just became a lot more competitive. When discounted retail sets the baseline standard for the best deals, all of these companies' sets could end up costing about the same, whereas before Mantic KS campaigns had a huge advantage in undercutting everyone else.

I'm interested in a more diversified market with lots more companies producing hard plastic sci-fi minis, so that's a good thing in my book.

I dropped back to $100 at the last moment. (I'm still too fond of Mantic to go all the way back to $1.) Call it an experiment. If I can beat retail prices here with the better 20/$20 deals and shipping for that amount, Mantic and I will have a KS future. Just a smaller one. I've heard people doubting this, and I haven't done the math, but even with international shipping charges, can discounted retail really beat 20/$20? Considering how much five plastic minis can get marked up at retail, that seems like a stretch. I hope? Otherwise, it's $100 spent on becoming a little wiser. For what it is or isn't worth, I probably would have put between $300 to $500 into this campaign between now and the end of February if shipping had been lower.

Incidentally, this is a particularly awkward moment for Mantic to be switching back to metal, no? I'm very happy that I got my large Veer-myn metals from Infestation.

sculptin'zombie wrote:


the "dancing gobo" looks exactly like the concept art and iirc it was one of the studio manager's favourite minis among those I have sculpted (could be wrong), the 3rd gen were supposed to be like this, though I admit I'd redo them differently now.

Anyway I did those miniatures before beeing employed in-house as test pieces and they got me a full time, so if you think they are poor you are just proving my point really.

Now I think my other work prove I can do properly proportionned miniatures as well, and most Mantic sculptors have done small legs huge torso minis at one point, so maybe you should be looking elswhere (like the art direction, quality control or lack of it)

Sure, yeah I can see that. But we don't give all the credit for an excellently sculpted mini to to the artist behind the concept art, why would we put all the blame on the art when it sucks? Especially when you knew it was gak and made it anyway! If I were more of a dick I'd suspect some of the butthurt came from seeing Mantic have to redo your sculpts, a ridiculous conspiracy theory, but it seems the day for one sided accusations!

Because I currently live in Japan shipping was the 1st thing I checked before pledging and I cannot guess why other supporters seem to not be aware of it until the last possible moment. I've been many times before in the situation that when ordering something from the EU, or especially the US, s&h costed more than the price of the goods I was buying, perhaps that's why I'm not that surprised by the price of shipping nor it seems that bad to me.

I was going to pledge only for the warfare level but then after arranging things with a friend in Spain I traded it for an advanced warfare plus some add ons and even then I changed 2 times as people freed lower priced levels.

At least I can attest that Japanese Customs are very reasonable and in my knowledge they never hold packages hostage charging random taxes and fees.

M.

(Edit: If you think you had it bad in the US, I still remember the newsletter GW Japan sent around apparently their goods need to travel 1st class and like in Down Under they slapped a 50 pound fee on our orders just because.)

Well it's done. I thought about dropping my pledge down when I saw the shipping charges, but then I thought, eh, it's not worse than what CMON charge for the giant piles of stuff they've sent me.

Went shopping and let it ride on an EB Advanced Warfare. No idea which faction I'll get. Maybe they'll be cool and end up putting a vehicle sampler up in the pledge manager.

The key will be to how much I can add in the PM versus how much more the shipping costs will become. It'll almost be a game unto itself.

 Miguelsan wrote:
Because I currently live in Japan shipping was the 1st thing I checked before pledging and I cannot guess why other supporters seem to not be aware of it until the last possible moment.

Because Mantic didn't make us aware of it until the last possible moment.

Yes, Americans have it much better than anywhere else in the world regarding shipping in most cases, but I think most people can at least understand why we may be shocked at $100+ shipping fees when we're conditioned to seeing $0-$20 normally, right?

 Alex C wrote:

 Miguelsan wrote:
Because I currently live in Japan shipping was the 1st thing I checked before pledging and I cannot guess why other supporters seem to not be aware of it until the last possible moment.

Because Mantic didn't make us aware of it until the last possible moment.

Yes, Americans have it much better than anywhere else in the world regarding shipping in most cases, but I think most people can at least understand why we may be shocked at $100+ shipping fees when we're conditioned to seeing $0-$20 normally, right?

Define last possible moment. I pledged on Saturday and I was aware of the 90$ shipping cost to Aus and the rest of the world. I understand that somebody that pledged in the early days might be upset of having to come with more money or drop pledge levels but still there was a margin to do that and not be hit by the price increase after commiting.

M.

Edit: And yeah I feel your pain, had to send some documents to the US from Spain last month and I was surprised that they charged me 10€ while the cost of sending the same stuff from Japan is less than half.

Postage is weird, and variable. I have a friend who works in logistics and says depending on the time of year it can be cheaper to ship an entire shipping container's worth of stuff from China to Melbourne docks than it would be to get that container 5km from the docks to the distribution centre. Local tarifs, government subsidies and all that.

 highlord tamburlaine wrote:
The key will be to how much I can add in the PM versus how much more the shipping costs will become. It'll almost be a game unto itself.

Darn tootin' it will. And I thought all my calculations and re-calculations of the value of various pledges during the Kickstarter were a lot to handle. But also, oddly, part of the fun of it. Game on, shipping charges.

 Vermonter wrote:

 GrimDork wrote:
I'm furthest from mad at Mantic about the shipping as possible. I'm very grateful they offered up that information, it helped me make a decision to scale back my pledge and when the manager comes around I'll likely get less. I think this is for the best, saves me money and doesn't bloat my backlog quite as much. They're still gonna get a pretty chunk of change before the manager ends unless I'm just flat broke then, but right now I'm glad they helped me make the informed decision to wait.

Hey Grim,

As you mentioned earlier, we may not agree on a number of things, but truthfully, you've always had my respect. Too bad you're not in New England like I thought; I would have been happy to get in some good games of Deadzone with you.

I think Mantic posting the shipping information was the right thing to do, but in a way, it really was the only logical choice. You can imagine how upset people would have been if they were told they'd be paying $90+ for shipping after they were already on the hook and couldn't scale back accordingly. Public relations disaster.

I see Mort beat me to the punch, but I'll leave this up anyway.

I'm glad you did. And I totally agree with you.

I could imagine the firestorm if Shipping fees would be revealed AFTER it closed. Hearing folks with stories about how certain other KS kept it quiet just makes me cringe. Being up-front about it (even at the last hour) is better than trying to pretend it's not going to be an issue, because for a lot of folks it is.

Out of curiosity - those of you who backed their previous KS - how was the shipping on those? Similar? Lower? Higher? It seems like a good number of you were backers on previous KS (I wasn't, this is my first Mantic one), so I am curious.

And who knows? Maybe they'll find some way/work out some deal. I won't hold my breath, but it's a good long while until we'll see our stuff, so something could happen to help us out on this front...

 Vermonter wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Is it just me or did Mantic just guarantee that most American backers will have a chance to try out Gates of Antares and MEdge, and fall in love, before they even have a chance at buying Warpath KS figures through retail? God help them if WGF's planned sci fi range drops between now and then.

Mantic's new KS shipping price for US customers certainly won't hurt Maelstrom's Edge. If Mantic's crazy old bargain deals are gone, MEdge and Antares just became a lot more competitive. When discounted retail sets the baseline standard for the best deals, all of these companies' sets could end up costing about the same, whereas before Mantic KS campaigns had a huge advantage in undercutting everyone else.

I'm interested in a more diversified market with lots more companies producing hard plastic sci-fi minis, so that's a good thing in my book.

I dropped back to $100 at the last moment. (I'm still too fond of Mantic to go all the way back to $1.) Call it an experiment. If I can beat retail prices here with the better 20/$20 deals and shipping for that amount, Mantic and I will have a KS future. Just a smaller one. I've heard people doubting this, and I haven't done the math, but even with international shipping charges, can discounted retail really beat 20/$20? Considering how much five plastic minis can get marked up at retail, that seems like a stretch. I hope? Otherwise, it's $100 spent on becoming a little wiser. For what it is or isn't worth, I probably would have put between $300 to $500 into this campaign between now and the end of February if shipping had been lower.

Incidentally, this is a particularly awkward moment for Mantic to be switching back to metal, no? I'm very happy that I got my large Veer-myn metals from Infestation.

Looking at around $24 for 20 guys would be discounted retail from $30ish. That would work. If they go too much higher than that, Mantic will edge into Eisenker price per-mini, and even the Enforcers look worse for that kit comparison.

Now, I know that Mantic has priced their last few plastic sci fi kits much higher than that, but as a certain colored squid pointed out to me, that's to encourage customers to buy the huge boxes, where the real savings are. The huge boxes probably match or beat the KSS prices at discounted retail, but with Mantic's roulette wheel of quality, they really need to have affordable, reasonable impulse buy priced kits so potential customers can see how the minis look in person. A box of 5 plastic Mantic minis for $25 is not really a good value, and in some countries is a deadly insult.

Unfortunately, GW has raised prices so dramatically that their "expensive" price per mini kits from 6 years ago had the same price per mini that today's "it's not too bad" plastics manufacturers are trying to pass as reasonable. If you wouldn't have bought 20 guardsmen for that price in 2009, why on Earth would you buy less than 20 Mantic GPS dudes for that retail price now?

 Alpharius wrote:
They're still going to hear that from some (unknown number) who missed it during the campaign...

They could have replaced the entire project page with the shipping charges chart in 72 point font and people would still complain that they missed it and feel cheated

 NTRabbit wrote:

 Krinsath wrote:
it would have made more sense for Mantic to have a solution to that problem figured out before the KS

I too am looking forward to Mantic's solution to endemic political corruption, crony capitalism, the undermining of labor laws, legalised avoidance of taxes, and the corporate fueled destruction of public services and infrastructure.

Should be a doozy!

I think comes during the DZ3 kickstarter. May 2016, right?

 NTRabbit wrote:
Dat shipping

What the feth? Nice last-minute timing on that shipping bump. I might have to request a refund when the pm comes out.


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 lord_blackfang wrote:
Harsh shipping costs. But they do show how much of the bill Mantic has been footing so far with $10 flat rate shipping across the board on most previous KS.

They might have to learn2hub like everyone else.


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 pretre wrote:

 highlord tamburlaine wrote:
So Mantic put together a Marauder package of all the previously released Deadzone stuff... was there that much demand for old Marauder sculpts?

Maybe, maybe not. Doesn't hurt to add it though.

It pretty much just pisses all over their retail customers, though.

I may not be pre-ordering one now, but I am intrigued by the Tangle miniature they're aiming to produce. Bizarre and ratty, and not really a "safe bet" kind of thing at all. Hopefully they'll do the sculpt justice, and if so, I'll pick one up. Same goes for the hamsterballs, which I'd been waiting an age for.

When they hit things right, they really can do good work. Ks shipping increases won't stop me from buying Mantic products; they just may change when I do, and where I buy them from.

Well, for the first time in a KS I dropped my pledge to $1 with 2 minutes to spare, due to a combination of factors:

1 - the suppy issues I'm currently having with Mantic's existing projects. If it was just late then I wouldn't mind, but responses of "who are you, we have no record of your email address despite already sending you the pdf and some of your rewards" don't fill me with much confidence. Mantic should be better than this on their 10th project.

2 - I'm not really that interested in Warpath at the moment, so don't mind if I miss out on rules when picking add-ons.

3 - An unfortunately not-insignificant tax bill came through my door yesterday morning.

 Mort wrote:

 GrimDork wrote:
I'm furthest from mad at Mantic about the shipping as possible. I'm very grateful they offered up that information, it helped me make a decision to scale back my pledge and when the manager comes around I'll likely get less. I think this is for the best, saves me money and doesn't bloat my backlog quite as much. They're still gonna get a pretty chunk of change before the manager ends unless I'm just flat broke then, but right now I'm glad they helped me make the informed decision to wait.

Ditto. I do appreciate them at least coming out with it in time for most folks to change pledges if they wished.

It would have been a rude-awakening for some of us to find out about the shipping -after- the fact. As others have pointed out, lots of KS don't do that, and I definitely appreciate it.

 Alpharius wrote:
They're still going to hear that from some (unknown number) who missed it during the campaign...

Well, going by Dave C's post timing about the shipping updates, the "warning" came around 10:30pm on Sunday night, when I was already in bed because work. The campaign then finished when I was at work, so it's not like I was realistically able to follow the final hours of the KS. I got suckered in by the TW tax and bumped up to Total Warfare, certainly not expecting an extra $70 to be tacked on top. Now I've got to decide whether to stay in and get an "all extras" pledge of $20/20 figures and possibly a few vehicles - because feth paying for useless heavy books that will need revision within two years - or ask for a refund, ASAP.


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sculptin'zombie wrote:

anyone in the know could tell who I am from my first post, there has only ever been 1 in-house sculptor at Mantic
I posted a link to my blog in my presentation section: http://area51minis.blogspot.fr/

Yep, I saw your blog. It made me quite sad since you're behind many of the far better sculpts that Mantic have shown in the last year or so.

regarding turnover, you are partly correct, but the difference is that GW will select new sculptors carefully and train them until they match their style and a certain standard in quality.
Mantic won't be so picky and has been trying new sculptor with little experience with mixed results. In particular digital sculptors don't always have a clear view of what their mini will look like once printed in 30mm, or know how to make them suitable for production. Of course Mantic can offer them some input about production, but they can't direct them properly or even get them to work in a consistant style (the enforcers, vermyn and marauders just don't belong to the same range). That's when they can deliver a proper mini at all, during my time here I had many change to do on freelancers sculpts, including new ones. Once I even had to resculpt half a model (from a digital print) because the sculptor didn't know how to resize parts of the model. I wonder what we'll see next...
I have read on several occasion that mantic use second rate sculptors, but If you look in detail who sculpt what at Mantic you'll find that many of their sculptors have done better stuff for other companies. The problem is that Mantic can't get the best of them for many reasons (I'd be happy to develop but my post are long enough)

I'd welcome reading more about it. Another thread for it might be the best place, though?

regarding the ogres, I don't agree, the old ones are excellent sculpts, with a questionable design choice (large torso and narrow hips), which iirc come from the concept art. I'll leave asside the mage as I did it to match the old ones and didn't had the freedom to change the design or the time to match Remy's sculpts. From what I have seen the Berserkers correct the design flaws (new concept artist who is also the sculptor), they are correct sculpts as far as I can tell (can't judge from a render) but the original ones would be a lot better than the berserk if they had the same proportions. At the end with design it's always a matter of taste.

Remy's sculpts are good but seriously flawed. The proportions have issues and the posing is not good. I am taken to understand that knock knees and pigeon toes are part of a common French "style" for comics and art, but it's not suitable for Ogres. Those ogres are also over-detailed for the PVC medium that they were produced in, resulting in terrible mould lines, and the heads are overall sub-par. Remy is a seriously talented sculptor, and those Ogres are still some of Mantic's best models in many ways, but as I said - they are also seriously flawed.

Still glad I dropped to $1 once the shipping came out. It just takes all the savings out of a product I'd be paying for 1-year in advance. I'll happily take the free rule pdf's though.

Shipping wasn't so bad in the DZ2 pledge manager for the 20 for $20 miniatures. I think I paid 7 bucks on 60 models. So figuring around the same amount I'll probably still grab a few of those but anything else I'll see about MM or ebay.

Dropped down to $1 myself, I'll be adding more again around the end of the month when I get paid.

 Mort wrote:
Out of curiosity - those of you who backed their previous KS - how was the shipping on those? Similar? Lower? Higher? It seems like a good number of you were backers on previous KS (I wasn't, this is my first Mantic one), so I am curious.

And who knows? Maybe they'll find some way/work out some deal. I won't hold my breath, but it's a good long while until we'll see our stuff, so something could happen to help us out on this front...

Hi Mort,

Sorry I didn't get back to you on this sooner. Before Deadzone Infestation, deals were generally about as good as Warpath's, but shipping was free to the USA. Yep, those were the days. We were spoiled, admittedly.

Deadzone Infestation had new "actual shipping", but it really depended on how you pledged. The "get it all" pledge of Lockdown ($215) had its shipping to the (US and Canada, at least) locked down as well, to match that of a lower "sweet spot" pledge level, Quarantine, which was $115 worth of stuff. As I dimly remember, that came out to something like $30-$35. I didn't grumble, I thought that was fair and reasonable. Compare that to the projected actual shipping cost of $235 for Total Warfare, $60 to the USA and Canada, for pretty much the same level of deals and same amount of stuff. And that's before you add anything on to it, mind you. If you planned to add on a bunch of other things, as many of us did, that shipping price could easily climb on up from there.

And at that point, it starts biting into your savings on the deals to such an extent that the difference between buying into the kickstarter and buying later from discounted retail, particularly in similar bulk to save on shipping, starts to get slim or vanish.

If the financial benefit of paying now is minimal, then you are investing now to: 1) Charitably support a private, for-profit company or 2) You can't wait the extra time for retail, and want to have your stuff sooner. In either case, what you potentially sacrifice (depending on what you buy) is: 1) The chance to see what the final miniatures actually look like, which can vary dramatically from the concept art, and 2) To see what the quality of production for the final work is. How well will that Asterian ship go together? How well will it be supported by whatever stand Mantic makes for it? Do you want to find out once you've already spent $30 on it, or do you want to let other people take that plunge for you, and then if you like what you see, get it at discounted retail for maybe $5 more? Or maybe even for pretty much the same price, after you figure in the cost of shipping it from the UK?

US customers can still get good deals on Mantic's products, just not as good as they used to be. And the best deal is currently looking like being patient, seeing how the products turn out, and then buying what you actually want. Before, Mantic's deals for the US were so good that you really could afford to speculatively gamble on the final products, and if most of them were good, you were still fine if some didn't pan out. I'm not sure that's still true.

It also remains to be seen what this means for Mantic's KS development model. There's been some chatter of them moving away from it, which now seems like a good idea. If they keep it, I can't believe they'll be nearly as effective as before, because the USA has been their leading market for KS campaigns, and those campaigns won't be as attractive to US customers as they used to be. Maybe they'll do the smart thing and figure out some way to do distribution in their largest market that cuts down on the shipping expense. Maybe it won't matter, maybe they'll even do better this way. Or maybe they won't, and it'll be time for them to start producing products on their own dime. I don't claim to know.

One thing's for sure - this KS campaign won't be the bellweather to find out: the next one will. Because the shipping reveal did come late in the game this time, and a lot of people will be caught off guard by it, particularly since it's such a radical departure from the precedent that Mantic themselves set over the course of their many preceding kickstarter campaigns. If people want to argue that those people have only themselves to blame for not reading the fine print on the last 2 or so days and say Mantic's covered its bases, that's not the issue I'm addressing here. My point is that next time, high shipping costs will be a known factor right from the beginning. Then we'll find out what impact it has.


And there will be a reckoning. IN BLOOD.*


*This final line was self-parody. Please disregard it and take only the preceding lines seriously. Come on, how often do we get to type things like that? You know you want to.

Thank you.

I can see them doing much smaller KS in the future to fund say a Marauder HIPS sprue with perhaps a vehicle, then another one to fund a Zz'or sprue. Deliberately keeping it small means the P&P will be much much less and it won't spire out of control so that should keep things more manageable.

That is an excellent summation of the issue Vermonter.

It's not that "shipping is expensive", because it is indeed expensive, but more that the expense eats into the savings on the offering. You then have to factor in the timeframe of the project of next year versus the uncertainty of sculpt execution which Mantic has a checkered past on. If you pile in as a factor the accuracy of Mantic's packing where checkered doesn't begin to describe the situation, then the prospects are slightly grimmer still versus a regular retail transaction.

The new paradigm is certainly understandable, but when the deal to the consumer is not as appealing then a smaller amount of money will be earned since that's pretty basic economics. Mantic will have to figure out where the threshold is between souring the deals of the big spenders (who you really want on a KS campaign) and hemorrhaging money on shipping internationally and I'm not convinced it's presently been calibrated right.

Of course, improving their logistics and customer service systems would also be a sound investment for this arena; shipping gets even more expensive when you have to do it multiple times because your packers aren't paying attention.

Decided not to pledge at all, even for the PDF rulebooks. Between the dodgy sculpts, rule ambiguities, pledge shenanigans, and the disturbing revelations of what goes on behind the scenes, I'm staying far away from this circus.

overtyrant wrote:
I can see them doing much smaller KS in the future to fund say a Marauder HIPS sprue with perhaps a vehicle, then another one to fund a Zz'or sprue. Deliberately keeping it small means the P&P will be much much less and it won't spire out of control so that should keep things more manageable.

I like this idea a lot. Particularly the bit about the Zz'or sprue.

As you were.

Interestingly, there is a "Late Pledging(coming soon)" button on the KS page. Is that a new thing with Kickstarter now?

 angelofvengeance wrote:
Interestingly, there is a "Late Pledging(coming soon)" button on the KS page. Is that a new thing with Kickstarter now?

Newish.

So, is there a pledge manager for the kickstarter yet?

 Guildsman wrote:
Decided not to pledge at all, even for the PDF rulebooks. Between the dodgy sculpts, rule ambiguities, pledge shenanigans, and the disturbing revelations of what goes on behind the scenes, I'm staying far away from this circus.

Hmm. I really want in on some Tunnel Runners (potentially a lot of them), and was thinking about jumping on the late pledger when it turns on. But the more I'm hearing about Mantic's KS campaigns, I'm wondering if I should just wait the year or so before we see these monowheel sculpts and just acquire from LGS or other sources. 3 for $30 seems cool at first glance (1/3 off), but $20 shipping or whatever has serious suck potential.

- Salvage

 cuda1179 wrote:
So, is there a pledge manager for the kickstarter yet?

Not yet.

At this point they could do the ridiculous thing and open it now - before Christmas. On the other hand, they're launching another KS in Jan or Feb, aren't they? So the PM will be out just before, during or after they run the next project. My money is on during, because they have a habit of doing these things concurrently.

Yeah, opening the PM for the last project during a KS for a new project while fixing the mostakes of a Third KS all at the same time speaks of the kind of business sense that results in a limited edition Pumpkin latte released in May. Sure, the timing probably saved you a significant amount on production and logistics, but you might want to wait before handing out bonuses.

 Azazelx wrote:
On the other hand, they're launching another KS in Jan or Feb, aren't they?.

What's their next KS? I do like their retail KoW starters, so still have hope!

Are you Morgoth the Faceless ? Because you made a very impressive act of thread necromancy there, the message you answered too was from more than one year ago.

ced1106 wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
On the other hand, they're launching another KS in Jan or Feb, aren't they?.

What's their next KS? I do like their retail KoW starters, so still have hope!

I have been told there is no KS in Jan or Feb, just the Star Saga Pledge Manager.

The initial post about a new KS was from november *2015*, so it referenced a KS already passed, but thanks anyway for the precision Baragash.

Anyone else recieved wave one packages yet? Who else likes the quality they are seeing. I got a gcps battlegroup

The Intercepters are AWESOME!! And the GCPS sprue quality looks pretty nice too!!

Two regulars, one arbiter (front), and one bomber (back).

 lord marcus wrote:
Anyone else recieved wave one packages yet? Who else likes the quality they are seeing. I got a gcps battlegroup

Got mine today. GCPS battlegroup, Enforcer battlegroup + Interceptors, Asterian battlegroup. Waiting for my Mules/Hornets/Chibas in wave 2 before I really get to putting stuff together and painting (that and a painting backlog from here to forever). I really like the GCPS models, which is why I'm kinda bummed I don't have the vehicles yet.

I'm painting my battlegroup up. I have 1/35 German armored cars I'm going to be using as mules until my mules arrive

Damn I have a lot of painting ahead of me!! Lol. I recon this is around a 4K Enforcer army!! Behold mortals and despair!!

Also, I would like one more airship if someone ended up with an extra unbuilt. Lol

The baggie is two more bikes, and I have about 45 pathfinders still on sprue. And a bunch of characters and obsolete enforcers still unaccounted for.

That looks really cool!

Now get painting

Yeah...as soon as there is a nice day to prime!! Lol

Also, seriously, somebody offer me a drop ship that I can turn into a bomber. Please.

Wow. And I thought I had a lot of Enforcers.

 JoshInJapan wrote:
Wow. And I thought I had a lot of Enforcers.

There is a distinct possibility that I have the largest possible Enforcer army that exists outside of somebody working at Mantic. Haha

I really wish this wasn't a case but....

"Hold my beer..."

Oh, it's on.

Like Donkey Kong. Lol. This weekend I'll build up a full list utilizing ALL my enforcers points appropriate. See why has the bigger army, Compel!

I still need another drop ship, gents! And I have enough Striders to make 3 of each of the 4 types. And I found an extra peacekeeper sprue, bits box with like 6 more bodies, and two more full enforcer sprues. And 45 pathfinders slowly being built!


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Can't sleep. Did a count now. Without unit champ upgrades, characters, medics or engineers, I have 8,825pts of Enforcers. (I just haven't counted them yet; I have multiples of each though)

Yeah....

And I haven't fully finished counting, cuz I'm pretty sure I have a 7th unit of regular enforcers available (currently 6 regular units built).

Pretty sure I scared Compel off!

It's kinda more I haven't actually assembled it yet. And it's so far down The List that the thread will probably be closed by the time I get round to it... For the moment though, this is the stuff I've got before the recent kickstarters.





Pretty sure I've got another 10-15 Peacekeepers, plus maybe 15 pathfinders and another 30-ish of the new plastic Enforcers.

I've got... more Striders than I want to admit, but they're split between 3 factions and I haven't even began to work out how I'll divvy them up. The main thing I don't have is jetbikes, only got the two of them.

Yeah, I have 12 striders, and there's no reason they can't pull double duty for GCPS and Enforcers. Except the Ajax build.
I have something like 130 enforcers, 20 peacekeepers, 12 striders, 45 pathfinders, 4 drop ships, and 12 jetbikes. I may be..."good", at this point.

And then 4 medics, 4 engineers, 3 peacekeeper captains and 4 Enforcer captains.

Well, part of the long term plan I've had, is paint my Enforcers as N7 Operatives, while my Corporation troopers as Cerberus soldiers. This would then lead the Striders to be painted white for Corporation (as Atlas') and another colour for N7's.

Ouch. That'll definitely lead to strider overload. My Enforcers are iron man themed, and the GCPS will be SHIELD. So I'll be able to make a scheme that works for both pretty easily.

I also have 90 new GCPS and three starter resin boxes of the original crew. So...like 200 GCPS models?

.

Did we break your brain, .mikes.?

When can we expect those dropships to come out for general release?

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Did we break your brain, .mikes.?

Nah, I made a comment, then assessed its amusement value and found it lacking. I should always do that before hitting Submit.

That is a lot of military power you two have collected.

Well the good news is, I definitely have way less GCPS than you. I did the whole silly amount of 40k Imperial guard collected over 16 years thing once and that was enough for me.

Again, I'm not entirely sure how many good I have but it's probably only in the 70ish mark.

Haha. Yeah, thinking I have way too much!
How come none of you wanna drop a single dropship in my lap?! Lol

Just found the this topic here and my question is, does someone play WP or FireFight or are all just collecting models for 40k

I play Firefight, the ruleset is tight and lends itself to easy, fast, and tactical gameplay without getting too complicated.
I like the rules a lot.

How do you feel about close comat?
(it is one thing that is a bit strange to me)

I've created an Enforcer P&M blog in the blog section. I'll be adding stuff to it often. Check it out if interested. I give color details and everything else. I'm hoping with support and feedback from you guys, the army will go from unpainted to painted in short order. It's all Iron Man themed. So Quinjets and varying Armor Marks (classic, stealth, hulkbuster, shotgun, silver centurian, etc). Hope you guys get enjoyment out of it, and I'll get enjoyment out of working through it!

 kodos wrote:
How do you feel about close comat?
(it is one thing that is a bit strange to me)

It's pretty good, but a bit discouraged.
I like that the close combat is discouraged, but when it does happen it's fast and brutal.

since Mantic said there won't be an Uncharted Empire like update to WP, is anyone here interested into writing fan based FireFight lists for 40k?

Has anybody started playing Firefight yet? I'm basically working on painting up my full Enforcer army hardcore right now.

Soon,
Got my books 2 days ago (a KS backer sold them) and while friends from another club tried already tried Warpath (and were not so happy because of balance issues) I am gonna try to talk the guys from my club into FireFight.

I will write a count as list for them in the weekend so that it is a little bit easier to use existing 40k models to test the game

If any rules committee guys are looking, where are rules for the fusion gun? I'd kinda like to use the ones I have. Enforcer specific question, but GCPS also has the model.