I've never had a go with Kickstarter but this one does attract me. Couple of dumb questions - I realise the product wont appear until December but when does the money get taken out for my pledge ? When the Kickstarter finishes can I still add to it / change it or is it fixed then ?
Thanks
Nephilim
When the Kickstarter ends the money gets charged from your account (as per the previous post)
Mantic also sends out a survey for what you want and they have in the past given the option to get more stuff added on which is charged a day or two after the survey is due back. However this is not guaranteed and they may give no chance to add on to your pledge after the Kickstarter ends.
*sigh* I just upped my pledge to 730. Suppression Team, the $185 Terrain Bundle; 3 extra gaming mats and a EU Bundle. Sad to think Im pretty much tapped out and its still 2 and a half weeks left of the campaign...
Wow, if I could now have a round of applause for successfully predicting that the new factions would come at 500,000
(OK.. I guess it didn't really take a genius to work that one out! )
This has 'forced' me to put another $35 in for a new faction in any case - that, along with the Strike Team pledge will hopefully allow me to drop the faction I like least at the end of the KS.
Also - thought I had spent too much, and then read about people already pledging 700+ with 2 weeks left haha..
At least that makes the decision of free faction pretty wasy (and yet SO HARD!): more Enforcers or more Rebels?
That's a pretty easy question for me. Between 10+years worth of GW Orks, a copy of Sedition Wars that I'll probably never play, and a 45-man Enforcer army bundle I picked up last year, there's only one faction I can't represent adequately with my existing collection...
As I feared...I really like the Asterian Commander but am not keen on the Ciphers. They don't look bad themselves...just compared to the guy in charge....
Postage clarification so it's $5 extra for wave 2 shipping on top of the original $5 so $10 in total not $5 wave 1 and another $10 for wave 2.
Creator Mantic Games 4 minutes ago
Right...
RE Plague in update - This is just a picture of a shiny model in the update with a caption but seems to have caused a little confusion from a few corners.
To clarify the caption - which isn't part of the "what you get" section of the update - IF you pick a second Plague Faction Starter, you'd get the second 1st Gen. You will not get a second 1st Gen if you pick a different faction starter - you'd be getting two's of everything in that Faction Starter On shipping:
- If you choose an Expanded Faction Starter as your free faction please add $10 shipping regardless of where you are in the world.
*Shipping to UK and US*
- If you choose to add an EU Bundle, you do not need to add shipping if you're in the UK or US.
- If you are in the UK and US, add the EU Bundle and choose one of the new Faction Starters as your free one, you do not need to pay the $5 shipping for the second shipment as it's included in the bundle.
*Shipping to Europe/Rest of World (e.g. Canada, Australia)*
- If you choose the Expanded Universe Bundle, an existing faction and you're in Europe or Rest of World, please add $5. If you're in South America or Africa, please add $15 as these would need to be couriered.
- If you choose the Expanded Universe Bundle, either the asterian or forge fathers as your free faction and you're in Europe or Rest of World, please add a total of $5 shipping. If you're in South America or Africa, please add $15 as these would need to be couriered.
*Courier Shipping*
- Regardless of where you are in the world, you can upgrade your second shipment to courier by adding a single postage payment of $15 instead of adding standard shipping - note this means that if you are in the EU or ROW you only need to add $15, not the $5+$15.
Hope that clarifies things! Will be back in a bit in answer any questions and we'll add this to our update today.
Well, I'll be in for Asterians at least. The bundle looks a good deal, it'd be amazing if I could get 2 Asterian starters instead of beign stuck with FF but I'm sure there'll be some swapsies going on when it all arrives.
Still slightly confused about the various shipping permutations, is the free UK shipping only on the ExpUn bundle or on the indivdual starters as well?
If you're a Strike Team pledger (or one of the ST Early Birds) then, if the project hits $500K you'll be able to add a free, 5th starter box to what you're getting.
This can be a duplicate of one of the 4 original starters (Enforcers, Plague, Rebs, Marauders), or one of the 2 new starters (Asterians, Forge Fathers).
If you pick one of the two new factions, it will come in a 2nd shipment in 2014 and you'll need to pay postage to cover that.
@HMBC: Pick a faction, get the faction + all its free crap doubled.
Mr. Jellyfish is 40mm-based, big model!
@Riquende: I *think* there's nothing to pay for UK/US if you get either a $35 FF/Astie bundle or the $50 bundle that has both and then pick either FF/Ast as your freebie. I just got confused all over again trying to confirm that for you, though.
Ah. Ok. So if all I want is the Plague starter and a few random other Reb and Enforcer minis (plus Mr. Jellyfish), then I needn't concern myself with that.
And yeah, this forum is going nuts with the double post weirdness lately... it doesn't *actually* double-post, it just looks like it does until you refresh the page.
Two showed up. I edited the bottom one. Hit save. The top one was edited. I Ctrl-F5'd the page a few times, and it finally reloaded with only one post. So I edited that and pasted my original reply back in. Dakka be crazy y'all!
H.B.M.C. wrote: Ah. Ok. So if all I want is the Plague starter and a few random other Reb and Enforcer minis (plus Mr. Jellyfish), then I needn't concern myself with that.
If you want the plague you can have the free starter from mine (I don't really want the 5th... I know... odd). Just add on what you need to my one.
DaveC wrote: Postage clarification so it's $5 extra for wave 2 shipping on top of the original $5 so $10 in total not $5 wave 1 and another $10 for wave 2.
Creator Mantic Games 4 minutes ago
Right...
RE Plague in update - This is just a picture of a shiny model in the update with a caption but seems to have caused a little confusion from a few corners.
To clarify the caption - which isn't part of the "what you get" section of the update - IF you pick a second Plague Faction Starter, you'd get the second 1st Gen. You will not get a second 1st Gen if you pick a different faction starter - you'd be getting two's of everything in that Faction Starter On shipping:
- If you choose an Expanded Faction Starter as your free faction please add $10 shipping regardless of where you are in the world.
*Shipping to UK and US*
- If you choose to add an EU Bundle, you do not need to add shipping if you're in the UK or US.
- If you are in the UK and US, add the EU Bundle and choose one of the new Faction Starters as your free one, you do not need to pay the $5 shipping for the second shipment as it's included in the bundle.
*Shipping to Europe/Rest of World (e.g. Canada, Australia)*
- If you choose the Expanded Universe Bundle, an existing faction and you're in Europe or Rest of World, please add $5. If you're in South America or Africa, please add $15 as these would need to be couriered.
- If you choose the Expanded Universe Bundle, either the asterian or forge fathers as your free faction and you're in Europe or Rest of World, please add a total of $5 shipping. If you're in South America or Africa, please add $15 as these would need to be couriered.
*Courier Shipping*
- Regardless of where you are in the world, you can upgrade your second shipment to courier by adding a single postage payment of $15 instead of adding standard shipping - note this means that if you are in the EU or ROW you only need to add $15, not the $5+$15.
Hope that clarifies things! Will be back in a bit in answer any questions and we'll add this to our update today.
I am confused to be honest, does that mean Expanded Universe needs its own shipping added?
DaveC wrote: Postage clarification so it's $5 extra for wave 2 shipping on top of the original $5 so $10 in total not $5 wave 1 and another $10 for wave 2.
Creator Mantic Games 4 minutes ago
Right...
RE Plague in update - This is just a picture of a shiny model in the update with a caption but seems to have caused a little confusion from a few corners.
To clarify the caption - which isn't part of the "what you get" section of the update - IF you pick a second Plague Faction Starter, you'd get the second 1st Gen. You will not get a second 1st Gen if you pick a different faction starter - you'd be getting two's of everything in that Faction Starter On shipping:
- If you choose an Expanded Faction Starter as your free faction please add $10 shipping regardless of where you are in the world.
*Shipping to UK and US*
- If you choose to add an EU Bundle, you do not need to add shipping if you're in the UK or US.
- If you are in the UK and US, add the EU Bundle and choose one of the new Faction Starters as your free one, you do not need to pay the $5 shipping for the second shipment as it's included in the bundle.
*Shipping to Europe/Rest of World (e.g. Canada, Australia)*
- If you choose the Expanded Universe Bundle, an existing faction and you're in Europe or Rest of World, please add $5. If you're in South America or Africa, please add $15 as these would need to be couriered.
- If you choose the Expanded Universe Bundle, either the asterian or forge fathers as your free faction and you're in Europe or Rest of World, please add a total of $5 shipping. If you're in South America or Africa, please add $15 as these would need to be couriered.
*Courier Shipping*
- Regardless of where you are in the world, you can upgrade your second shipment to courier by adding a single postage payment of $15 instead of adding standard shipping - note this means that if you are in the EU or ROW you only need to add $15, not the $5+$15.
Hope that clarifies things! Will be back in a bit in answer any questions and we'll add this to our update today.
I am confused to be honest, does that mean Expanded Universe needs its own shipping added?
Not as I read it. It's saying if you buy the EU bundle, you don't need to pay Wave 2 shipping because it's included in the price of the bundle. If you later decide you want your freebie faction starter to be something in Wave 2, you don't pay shipping because you've already paid it in the bundle.
Essentially, you pay shipping once. Since the EU bundle includes shipping, paying for that covers the shipping for any future Wave 2 purchases.
Kalamadea wrote: Hrm, not really liking the Asterians. I REALLY want space elves, but I want space ELVES and not Space Elf+ a dozen Cylons. I totally understand the fluff reasoning, I do. It makes MUCH more sense than say, a dying race using it's civilian militia as front line troops wearing paper mache armor. But it hardly makes me want to use the models or play the faction.
To each his own I guess. I'm digging that Asterians are not willing to risk more of their lives than necessary when they have the technology to do otherwise.
The only fiction that could make it better is that the drones are piloted by Asterians who are sitting at home piloting them by playing a video game.
The Asterians will field more troops in regular games of Warpath, but for Deadzone, they're the only ones who know exactly what the plague is, and aren't willing to take the risk.
It's possible that they consider being infected a fate worse than death.
Given that Asterians are willing to suit up and form Dreadball teams*, I think we'll see bigger gangs of them in Warpath (even if they still use sizable Cypher contingents).
I asked Stew at the Open Day if Asterian teams would feature the Cyphers, and he said they didn't.
Well the site can be safely ignored for probably two days while we move toward this goal. I think I'll check back on it on Friday.
I'm excited about the Forge Guard models as I recently came into a bunch of FF regular models for free and a bunch more at 60% off so for a counts-as SM army they'll add quite a bit.
Not sure on the Asterians but since it's basically $5 to add them so I can get two FF starters I guess I'll wind up with them.
Assuming that both new starters get rounded out to 13 models we're looking at 92 models for $200 for an average of $2.17 each. It does look better when you remove the scenery for a total of $1.63 per model. If there are more freebies added outside of that then you're looking at a pretty solid value right now.
If you don't count the scenery and don't grab one of the new starters the Strike pledge by itself is currenly $1.51 per model.
Granted this is assuming you want all the figures. The real way to determine the value for most people would probably be to remove all but the Ripper suits from the Orx starter and then do the math again
Still a pity that any multiple of Strike (i.e. Assault) doesn't allow swapping...
On a seperate note what do you guys think Mantic is planning on pricing the scenery at? Because there isn't a lot of wiggle room to avoid jumping up to GW pricing.
Cyporiean wrote: Still alittle confused on the Asterians/Forgefathers/Freebies + Shipping front.
If I choose Asterians as my freebie, and want to add a Forgefathers starter.. with shipping to the US is it $35 or $45?
I believe it would be $45; the shipping is only included in the EU bundle. Even though you're technically making the bundle, it would be the extra $10 still. That then makes it seem like you should ponder if you really want the Asterians as a freebie or if you want to double-up on something else since it will only be $5 more to get the bundle and you can use your freebie on any faction you desire of the six (a clever upsell tactic, really).
Cyporiean wrote: Still alittle confused on the Asterians/Forgefathers/Freebies + Shipping front.
If I choose Asterians as my freebie, and want to add a Forgefathers starter.. with shipping to the US is it $35 or $45?
I believe it would be $45; the shipping is only included in the EU bundle. Even though you're technically making the bundle, it would be the extra $10 still. That then makes it seem like you should ponder if you really want the Asterians as a freebie or if you want to double-up on something else since it will only be $5 more to get the bundle and you can use your freebie on any faction you desire of the six (a clever upsell tactic, really).
That's how I read it at any rate.
Thats what I figured.. but I have no interest in getting double starter sets for any of the factions :/
Get the rebels and sell it. You're bound to get more than $5 for it. That or the Enforcers. Those'll easily be the most popular based on the models. I mean, it's $5...Heck, PM me and I'll shoot you $5 thru paypal and pay for shipping the extra starter to me
Maybe the forge fathers get less to start with since they've got heavier armor? I haven't really followed the Forge Fathers- do they already have any Forge Guard figures? Would I be correct in assuming they're a bit more thicker than the average Forge Father?
Maybe they'll have comparable/ better stats than the Enforcers since they're fewer in number.
At the moment I'm probably just going to get the Asterians, but if Iron Ancestors enter the fray that's going to be a tough decision. Really like the looks of those.
When extras start getting added to the new starters I'm sure I'll cave in for the EU bundle.
For those of you who've built an Iron Ancestor, what material are they made out of? Restic? Metal? Both?
This goal is going to be great for our 4 way split of Strike Team.
-The guy who ended up with enforcers really wanted rebs, so he's adding the 5th faction share (bringing down the price of each shares about 8 bucks!) of rebs.
-The guy who got Mauraders also wants Asterians
-I wanted to add the Forgefathers to my order (rebs) so my Squats can have some proper exo-armor.
So one free faction and a 50 buck upgrade and we're all very happy with the results! Now I'm really interested in seeing what add-ons the Forgefathers end up with.
Wait, I'm wrong... you only add the $10 if you pick FF or Asterians as your freebie starter, you don't have to add $10 if you buy the EU bundle or a FF/Asterian starter and then pick one of the first 4 as your freebie.
So much for clarifying it - I've put in $10 even though I've picked Rebs as the free faction and added the EU bundle I can't be bothered with it any more if it's needed it's there if not I have $10 to spend later.
To celebrate achieving this goal we will add One Free Faction Starter Of Your Choice (Miniatures PLUS Faction Card Deck) to game pledges of Strike Team ($150 + Early Birds) and up*, and add the digital rules for the Asterians and Forge Fathers into every pledge!
Has there been any mention of whether the PDF rules will contain copies of:
-Battle cards
-Cards for each Faction
As for event cards, I'm curious about the ability of someone who get's scout (faction plus pdf) to play the full game, a requirement of which is event cards. For the Faction cards, I'm looking at the possiblity of getting clubmates who didn't get in on our strike-zone pledge to play the game with proxies from their own sci-fi figure collection. For both situations, I'd rather just be able to print them out than have to copy or scan them.
Hey guys - we are certainly not hiding! Sounds like you want some further clarification... so here we go!
The last update is in response to the questions we had to deal with this morning, rather than deal with each request piecemeal.We've tried to make it as simple as possible whilst covering all of the bases:-
$10 covers you if you want either of the two new factions as your free faction in your pledge level.
- If you want one of the four initial factions, you pay no extra postage
- If you add-on the EU bundle and pick one of the existing factions, you pay no extra postage, no matter where you are in the world.
- If you add-on the EU Bundle and pick one of the new factions, you need to add on $10, no matter where you are in the world.
- The new factions will get stuff added in, and Strike Team will get more second shipment stuff added in
- you will more than make that $10 back in the extra free stuff we can give you.
We can give you more stuff into Strike Team by having a single postage charge for second shipment than if the EU bundle covers the shipping, because the EU bundle is already heavily discounted, it puts a lower ceiling as to what we can include free in that faction starter - something we perhaps underestimated last night and reviewed this morning in light of some of the confusion.
Don't forget that you don't need to choose until the end of the campaign. If you'd rather see what extra Second Shipment stuff we're giving you before you dive in, then don't add the $10 for the second shipment. We appreciate what was said yesterday but as we say in the update, we feel this reviewed option is the smoothest best way to get you the maximum amount of stuff for the minimum amount of fuss. Want one of the newbies free? Add $10 shipping. Don't want to pay the shipping and want the newbies? Add $50.A free faction and 2 new factions is quite a big deal - and expense!
Such a confusing system. While it's better for us this way, wouldn't it have made more sense to say "If you're getting a second shipment, add $10 to your pledge, regardless of how much it is."
Commander Cain wrote: Well I finally got an extremely good tax return so it looks like some of it will be going to this kickstarter. Time to splurge!
My Dreadball season 2 stuff arrived today and I was very impressed with it so I think Mantic deserve more of my money.
I got mine and it reminded me why I shouldn't be trying to get 150 miniatures. Now I just have to make myself believe that, because, I mean, it's such a great bargain!
I just noticed that it says "We looked at the Veer-myn and the Z’zor as possible candidates but they seemed to be the perfect protagonists for their own story".
Wiping out Humans makes you a PROtagonist......Hilarious!!
Sorry if someone said something similar here. Didn't read through all the new stuff
Commander Cain wrote: Well I finally got an extremely good tax return so it looks like some of it will be going to this kickstarter. Time to splurge!
My Dreadball season 2 stuff arrived today and I was very impressed with it so I think Mantic deserve more of my money.
I got mine and it reminded me why I shouldn't be trying to get 150 miniatures. Now I just have to make myself believe that, because, I mean, it's such a great bargain!
God I'm stupid about buying minis. x.x
This is gonna be my last KS for quite sometime. I'll have more then enough to keep me busy with all the WWX stuff coming in and then this stuff a couple months later.
I just noticed that it says "We looked at the Veer-myn and the Z’zor as possible candidates but they seemed to be the perfect protagonists for their own story".
Wiping out Humans makes you a PROtagonist......Hilarious!!
Yeah I just noticed that as well! Makes you wonder who the actual protagonists are. The Rebels perhaps? All depends on your point of view I guess...
I just noticed that it says "We looked at the Veer-myn and the Z’zor as possible candidates but they seemed to be the perfect protagonists for their own story".
Wiping out Humans makes you a PROtagonist......Hilarious!!
Yeah I just noticed that as well! Makes you wonder who the actual protagonists are. The Rebels perhaps? All depends on your point of view I guess...
I just noticed that it says "We looked at the Veer-myn and the Z’zor as possible candidates but they seemed to be the perfect protagonists for their own story".
Wiping out Humans makes you a PROtagonist......Hilarious!!
Yeah I just noticed that as well! Makes you wonder who the actual protagonists are. The Rebels perhaps? All depends on your point of view I guess...
The Z'zor have invaded your wife's home planet, and slain everyone. This is great news because you'll never have to visit your in-laws again! (Although I tend to enjoy the company of my in-laws more than my own family so, well, go figure.)
I just noticed that it says "We looked at the Veer-myn and the Z’zor as possible candidates but they seemed to be the perfect protagonists for their own story".
Wiping out Humans makes you a PROtagonist......Hilarious!!
Sorry if someone said something similar here. Didn't read through all the new stuff
Maybe the next game will be Z'zorkaM'morka or Veer-mynheim? That is pretty much all that is left to make
^ I'd heard good things about "Mawbeasts in the pantry" as their next release. :p
Oddly enough, I'm totally fine with them doing new games in the same genres as the now-discontinued GW specialist games which have now been discontinued and will probably have their moulds destroyed soon.
I can't quite put my finger on why I'm fine with that, though.
I just noticed that it says "We looked at the Veer-myn and the Z’zor as possible candidates but they seemed to be the perfect protagonists for their own story".
Wiping out Humans makes you a PROtagonist......Hilarious!!
Interestingly the original use of Protagonist (roots in greek theater) doesn't have anything do do with good or evil. It's just the character around whom the story is built also implies the Pro (first) or primary character.
It is interesting though that mantic thinks that Veermyn and Z'zor are interesting enough to be the center of their own stories. I wouldn't have pegged them as such.
I just noticed that it says "We looked at the Veer-myn and the Z’zor as possible candidates but they seemed to be the perfect protagonists for their own story".
Wiping out Humans makes you a PROtagonist......Hilarious!!
Interestingly the original use of Protagonist (roots in greek theater) doesn't have anything do do with good or evil. It's just the character around whom the story is built also implies the Pro (first) or primary character.
It is interesting though that mantic thinks that Veermyn and Z'zor are interesting enough to be the center of their own stories. I wouldn't have pegged them as such.
Same focus in the story as the Plague are here. And instead of Enforcers and Asterians trying to put them down, it might a Corporation Platoon, or local militia. I'm sure the standard looters and raiders would still be present as viable factions. And of course, if you wanted to say to hell with the setting, you could mix them all up (I'd personally prefer to play with faction restrictions 80-90% of my campaigns. Lizards in Mordhiem proper always wrecked the immersion to me)
Ellif wrote:
It is interesting though that mantic thinks that Veermyn and Z'zor are interesting enough to be the center of their own stories. I wouldn't have pegged them as such.
The Warpath fiction depicts them in another setting than Deadzone Planets.
Veermyn infest giant space haulers (Space Hulk) and Z'zor stick to their worlds and neighboring planets. While it's possible that Veermyn could end up in a Deadzone, or a Deadzone borders Z'zor space, those two races offer the possibility of expanding deadzone into other settings. Veermyn for indoor, battles inside vast space ships and Z'zor on alien worlds, possibly with organic structures and mobile man eating plants, etc...
Ellif wrote:
It is interesting though that mantic thinks that Veermyn and Z'zor are interesting enough to be the center of their own stories. I wouldn't have pegged them as such.
The Warpath fiction depicts them in another setting than Deadzone Planets.
Veermyn infest giant space haulers (Space Hulk) and Z'zor stick to their worlds and neighboring planets. While it's possible that Veermyn could end up in a Deadzone, or a Deadzone borders Z'zor space, those two races offer the possibility of expanding deadzone into other settings. Veermyn for indoor, battles inside vast space ships and Z'zor on alien worlds, possibly with organic structures and mobile man eating plants, etc...
I read something as well that Veer-Myn "swallow whole planet", and just like how Norwegian Rats are all over Earth because of ship traffic, I'd imagine once Veer-myn were discoverd somewhere, you shut that place down to avoid spreading those buggers (creating the Deadzone)
Ships and Underground settings sound awesome for them though!! We'd need a lot more funding for them to go there.
I've made some signatures for anyone who would like to use them, the copy + paste BBcode you need to add to your signature to use them can be found underneath each one.. don't use the copy to clipboard button, though, it doesn't work if the post contains more than one code tag:
I am pulling out of this kickstarter because I don't have the cash for it, and I am not too happy with the Marauder sculpts. I went in big for Kings of War, and with the sculpts that are coming out that, I don't think the Marauders will be redone to look like the other Mantic Orcs.
So, a $145 early bird open for whomever wants it in a minute or two. Good luck with this guys!
Note: This was for Warpath 1.0, so I need to tweak it so it can be used for WP 2.0. Alternatively, you can use it just fine with Hellebore's Warpath 1.1 Mass Battle ruleset that is basically a refined and streamlined version of the WP 1.0 rules.
Fenriswulf wrote: I am pulling out of this kickstarter because I don't have the cash for it, and I am not too happy with the Marauder sculpts. I went in big for Kings of War, and with the sculpts that are coming out that, I don't think the Marauders will be redone to look like the other Mantic Orcs.
So, a $145 early bird open for whomever wants it in a minute or two. Good luck with this guys!
Make sure you check back cause they "might" change.
You can always grab one the lesser bundles. It's not Strike Team or bust. It's your choice of course, but I find the all or nothing mentality odd.
Eh, after how KoW has turned out, it's left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. If anything, I think waiting for a Warpath kickstarter is a much better idea. I want hard sprue plastic Enforcers, not restic. I can wait.
Is it actually the Marauders you want? I'm not overly sold on those models either (at this early stage), but I don't care as I'll be looking to either swap with a mate for another starter I do want (Enforcers, Rebs, Asterians) or just sell them off if nobody's interested.
I would really like some good looking Marauders. Better still, I would like a kickstarter from Mantic that didn't have some kind of redundancy in it in the form of miniatures you wouldn't want to use.
I pledged $250 for the Kings of War kickstarter, to get a $225 pledge plus shipping. Now it looks like a majority of the sculpts are ones I don't like and wouldn't want to use on the tabletop. Mantic weren't very forthcoming with pictures, and I had given them the benefit of the doubt as I love a lot of their lines quite a bit. Then suddenly when pics do come out, they're terrible (Troll legs, the entire Brock miniature, Cat Horses, Sisters, Paladin hands and arms). No consultation in the process apart from a few "What do you thinks?" in the Kickstarter. The Sisters went from an awesome concept to a muddled mess.
The thing that cheeses me off the most is the change of the cats from Monstrous Cavalry to regular horse sized ones. I had decided to pull out of pledging back then, but the whole Celestian idea got me very excited about it. Expecially the cat cavalry. Paladins on Monstrous Cavalry, awesome. So I pledged big. Then, without knowing, a single comment on the idea of cat cavalry had them switched from Paladins riding them to Sisters. Who knows when it was changed from Monstrous Cavalry to regular.
So now I have $195 worth of choices to make (I pledged for the hardback rules and the rest were BOGOF choices), and the whole way I am knocking more and more off my choice list. I had gone in for a bunch of Celestian choices, but now I don't really want any of it from what I have seen. I am hoping the Men-At-Arms figures turn out well, otherwise I am completely stuck. At least those can be proxied for Empire troops. I am hoping the shrinkage of the Paladins works in their favour, but I am likely to need to correct the hands/arms. The sisters I don't think are salvageable, outside of a massive resculpt. I wouldn't be caught dead with the Cat horses (where even the halberd looks badly done).
So I have a $225 pledge that's now hinging on one specific set of miniatures to see if I can't pull out a win out of all of this. All the freebies are nice, but if the sculpts are poor, why in the world would I want them? Where am I going to use them? The Goblin Mincer looks great, and from what I see of the chariot, it's not so bad - Only problem is I don't play Orcs and Goblins.
I've spent thousands of dollars on Mantic stuff so I can encourage others into the hobby, promote games, and get people interested. I thought it would be a cool thing to help fund them with KoW as well through the kickstarter, so they could get some awesome sculpts and get a larger and larger chunk of GW's market share, but they really dropped the ball when it comes to sculpting quality, as well as consultation with those who invested, and keeping us up to date with how the sculpts were progressing, and showing off painted versions of them. I honestly think them going hard for Dreadball afterwards made them lose focus on KoW, and it shows. Not reigning in artists sculpts and sticking to an overall design aesthetic has left them with a whole bunch of miniatures I wouldn't want to pay money for. Just turns out that being a sucker who backed for a bucketload leaves me in that exact position.
I want Mantic to do well. I am a fan. But I am not a fan of them forgetting about a project, and having it come in half-arsed.
To be honest, that seems like exactly the sort of thing worth emailing mantic about directly. - Minus the GW references of course. There is nothing wrong, inappropriate (well, maybe reign in the last sentence or so a bit) or unfair with what you just said there so you should email Mantic directly, so they know that you do have problems with it and that you're willing to put a face on what you've experienced, rather than an (effectively) anonymous forum post.
+EDIT+ yes some good points there Fenriswulf, and obviously something you feel very strongly about. Write to Mantic and let them know.
In general terms I don't think anyone ever tries to release a sub-par model (and the style of something is very much open to subjective opinion in most cases). That being said, you can get a general consensus on whether something is good or not. The cat cavalry certainly haven't gone down very well - it might be that in the rush to bring such a high number of new miniatures to the market that some of them get released when they possible shouldn't have.
In any case, I don't think there is any harm in telling Mantic about it. Who knows, if enough people make similar comments then they might go back to the drawing board with it?
I just noticed that it says "We looked at the Veer-myn and the Z’zor as possible candidates but they seemed to be the perfect protagonists for their own story".
Wiping out Humans makes you a PROtagonist......Hilarious!!
Interestingly the original use of Protagonist (roots in greek theater) doesn't have anything do do with good or evil. It's just the character around whom the story is built also implies the Pro (first) or primary character.
It is interesting though that mantic thinks that Veermyn and Z'zor are interesting enough to be the center of their own stories. I wouldn't have pegged them as such.
Yes, although Earth Dragon is correct regarding the common usage of the term (you would expect 'antagonist').
However, in the context of the background it possibly makes sense. The Corporation are very much a 'Weyland Yutani' of the Warpath universe, exploiting and enslaving alien (and human for that matter) populations, exterminating when it suits them. Think of their use of the Marauders as cannon fodder for their armies also. In that sense, the animal species (who were probably quite happy eating cheese, rolling dung or whatever before the Corp turned up) might be regarded as the good guys by comparison.
Although, we are possibly giving this point too much attention
Ellif wrote:
It is interesting though that mantic thinks that Veermyn and Z'zor are interesting enough to be the center of their own stories. I wouldn't have pegged them as such.
The Warpath fiction depicts them in another setting than Deadzone Planets.
Veermyn infest giant space haulers (Space Hulk) and Z'zor stick to their worlds and neighboring planets. While it's possible that Veermyn could end up in a Deadzone, or a Deadzone borders Z'zor space, those two races offer the possibility of expanding deadzone into other settings. Veermyn for indoor, battles inside vast space ships and Z'zor on alien worlds, possibly with organic structures and mobile man eating plants, etc...
That makes perfect sense. I hadn't thought of that, but Veermyn and Z'zor are races with built-in plot points for moving the Deadzone game into new locations.
Lots of potential there.
Don't call them short; they hate that.
Update #39 · May 16, 2013 · comment
Another missile impacted against the habtainer wall, but miraculously it held. Fillon didn’t know how many more it could take, but her options were limited. They were surrounded on three sides leaving only an open kill-zone to fall back into. Of the Rebs under her command, only four were still capable of anything like a fighting retreat, and Joruk’s Desolator had to run dry sooner or later.
Belwin darted around the refrigeration unit he’d been using for cover and let loose a burst from his rifle. His only reward was the bark of return fire from the enemy position, shots chewing more fist-sized holes through the wall. Fillon barked at him to get down and stop wasting ammo. Not that she blamed him. If they didn't do something soon, none of it would matter anyway.
She replayed the past ten minutes in her head – her compad’s clock showed it was only ten minutes, but how was that possible? – and tried to work out how OTR-9 had been backed into the scant cover of a blown-out diner unit. It had been a routine sweep-and-keep, picking the area clean of resources for the good of the cause. Drone visuals had shown no enemy forces, so they hadn’t suspected a thing until the Forge Fathers opened fire. She knew it was nothing political or personal; the Rebellion had fought alongside them on a number of occasions. She guessed they just wanted what was on Nexus Psi enough to put aside common courtesy in favour of a “shoot first, talk later” policy.
The east wall exploded inwards and she was snapped back to the present. Three Brokkr were already charging through the gap as she began to raise her rifle. Radner looked up from treating Nolan’s chest wound in time to take a heat hammer to the side of the head. Ryla sprang from cover, drawing his long-bladed skinning knife. The Sorak, an expert close-quarters fighter, had been waiting for the chance to set aside his rifle ever since the Forge Fathers had revealed themselves. He wasted no time dipping his blade past the lead Brokkr’s defences and into its exposed throat, but the dwarf still managed to unleash three point-blank headshots in return.
Fillon’s gun beeped empty as she pulled the trigger. She slung it and drew her sidearm, yelling at Joruk and Belwin to fall back. The Grogan wasn’t listening, too intent on keeping any more dwarves from making their way through the blast-hole with bursts from his cannon. Belwin stood to run and was pitched over by a heavy-calibre round that vaporized his shoulder and half of his ribcage.
The enemy were all around. Time seemed to move at a fraction of its normal speed as a missile streaked through the smashed front window and took Joruk apart from the waist up. In the tinny aftermath of the explosion Fillon could hear the enemy fire slowing as they realized their targets were running out.
She dropped her weapon and raised her arms, hoping that the little she knew of their language would be enough to convince them to take her alive. The battle was lost, but as long as one member of OTR-9 was standing, the war wasn’t over.
With the Forge Fathers turning up in Deadzone, game designer Jake Thornton has rummaged through the Corporation data-files and pulled out some more information about them...
The Forge Fathers are in the Deadzone for a very simple reason: resources. They are, at heart, miners and artisans, and the fact that the Corporation controls any resource-rich planets is like fingernails down a blackboard to the Forge Fathers. They want it all.
The moment that a Deadzone is declared, Forge Father ships are ready to move in and scour the area for the rich pickings they imagine must have attracted the Corporation in the first place. Often they are right, and their strike teams will be able to pinpoint likely sources of ores and other minerals that can be exploited by follow-up units. However, even the most avaricious of Forge Fathers knows that they must be wary of the original cause of the Containment Protocol, and so their forces arrive encased in the best armour money can buy, armed to the teeth and prepared for anything.
So what do you think of the Forge Fathers so far? Drop us some comments below and tell us your thoughts! If you like the look of them, you can add a Faction Set to your pledge on their own, or with the Asterians as part of the Expanded Universe Faction Bundle add-on.
If you're interested in finding out more about Forge Fathers, and about Deadzone in general, Mantic CEO Ronnie Renton will be doing another live Q&A session on the Mantic Facebook Page at 9pm BST tonight! Get your questions ready - the last one was great fun, and all sorts of secrets spilled out. I wonder what he'll say tonight...
Forgefather and Asterian Cocnept art are bad ass...
They need to have REMY sculpt them and match the pose in the art.
But I doubt we will get that. Probably the Forgefathers will have totally different scale and armor look and be in the worst part of an awkward swing or mid leap or some horrible pose.
Simply cannot back anything Mantic does on concept art alone after the utter fails we have been seeing. Mantic is their own worst enemy in regards to selling their own models.
To be fair Mantic themselves reinforced this with the concepts for the Rippers and Marauders being pretty sweet and then showing us greens that.....didn't live up to the concept art.
I hear that. I will say that so far Mantic does seem to be batting around 75% for their models on this one. All the shown Rebels (which is all but the commander, drones, and vespid lookin dude) have been seen and look great. The Enforcers look like Enforcers and except for the captain are solid. The plague look good and we've seen all of them except for the hounds and grenade dude.
Basically it's the darned Marauders that are hurting this. And I'm so nervous about ordering something almost a year out that might get that treatment.
God I wish they had a build you're own option. I'd happily pay a $20 premium to get it. At that point I'd go in for an equivelent 2xStrike level in a heart beat. Oh well. Less I'll likely have to put in on this as it goes forward.
To celebrate achieving this goal we will add One Free Faction Starter Of Your Choice (Miniatures PLUS Faction Card Deck) to game pledges of Strike Team ($150 + Early Birds) and up*, and add the digital rules for the Asterians and Forge Fathers into every pledge!
Has there been any mention of whether the PDF rules will contain copies of:
-Battle cards
-Cards for each Faction
As for event cards, I'm curious about the ability of someone who get's scout (faction plus pdf) to play the full game, a requirement of which is event cards. For the Faction cards, I'm looking at the possiblity of getting clubmates who didn't get in on our strike-zone pledge to play the game with proxies from their own sci-fi figure collection. For both situations, I'd rather just be able to print them out than have to copy or scan them.
I put this in the comments and Mantic replied with a YES to both the battle cards and all faction cards being included in the rules PDF.
One option might be to go for the Strike level - you get 4 factions (with the 5th one free.. is that right?).. out of the 6 that are coming I'm sure 5 will probably be palatable (or you can sell or give to a mate to play with etc.), allowing you to leave the one you think is a dud on the sideline.
Except the noted dud is one that you can't trade out. So now we have to worry if one of the two we haven't seen anything for is a dud which would leave us with 2 duds out of 5 sets....
Remy did the Dreadball Forgefathers so I'm hopeful that he will do the Deadzone ones as for the Asterians I can see the Cyphers and drones at least being digital sculpts like the Robot team, time will tell (hope that's how they do them)
If it ends up being a digital sculpt (and you're right, can definitely see the asterians and drones being all-digital), it'll turn out well, the people that Mantic hire for that really know what they're doing (and are running their own indiegogo for 6mm plastic at the moment).
Robot team turned out very nicely, and the digital enforcers for this are pretty sweet, too. And of course, they designed the terrain tiles on top of that.
I can't see them messing up the forgefathers unless they give it to someone who flat-out ignores the concept art and goes with giant balloon hands/ feet and terrible poses. You'd have to really make an effort to produce a bad sculpt when working to concepts like that, they look completely and utterly badass in the sketches.
In fact, a lot of the problems with the marauders could have been avoided if the sculptor treated the concept art as "I need to match this *exactly*" rather than "I'll go off and do my own thing in my own style and see how it goes".
When it comes down to it, Mantic's #1 problem at the moment is that they go to a lot of effort to get excellent concepts made, but every single time a random sculptor decides that they're not going to stick to that, it results in a bad sculpt.
Look at the difference between the KoW Ogres and the KoW Trolls for a perfect example. The former were Remy-sculpted and are 100% carbon copies of the concepts. The Trolls... kinda make you wonder if the sculptor even looked at the concept art, never mind paying any attention to the brief to make the models look like that. Some like the sculpts and that's good, but a lot of the discontent can be traced back to that disconnect between the concept art and final model.
Do any of these models already fit within the Warpath system? I'm trying to figure out how much value I'm getting from the strike team pledge; it's certainly worth a single pledge, but it may or may not be worth going assault or suppression team (as an example, 4x a starter is really only worth more than 3x a starter if I'm able to translate it to Warpath most likely.)
scarletsquig wrote: If it ends up being a digital sculpt (and you're right, can definitely see the asterians and drones being all-digital), it'll turn out well, the people that Mantic hire for that really know what they're doing (and are running their own indiegogo for 6mm plastic at the moment).
Robot team turned out very nicely, and the digital enforcers for this are pretty sweet, too. And of course, they designed the terrain tiles on top of that.
Mantic has been batting 100% with the digital renders. I haven't seen one bad render from them and from past experience, digital renders translate pretty much perfectly to models so if a company shows me a render concept, I can feel pretty safe that is what the model looks like.
If the asterians get a digital concept, I will minimum be in for a add-on because they are simply cool looking models.
Okay, here's some Warpath army lists, for 3x Strike Team (where you really want to be to get a small playable warpath army for up to 5 different factions up and running (3x the starting four + 3x either free forgefathers or free asterians).
Really, though, it'll just be a way of getting a small army of elite restic units set up to get some small 750-point games in before the Warpath Kickstarter comes along with hard plastic core troops and vehicles comes along to expand that in 2014.
Forgefathers and Enforcers are definitely the most Warpath-usable ones.
Keep in mind forgefathers are getting more freebies as this goes on and the other factions probably will as well, so these lists are lowball estimates. Also, I haven't included all of the minis you get, most notably the ones that don't have rules... I've subbed in the enforcer engineer as a unit leader model for now. The Marauders don't have rules for commandos, or detailed rules for the ripper suits with weapon options, so I've had to heavily proxy those and count the commandos as regular horde troops.. those will definitely rise in points once the official lists for the DZ stuff is out.
Warpath has an allies system too, so you can easily do something like team up the Rebs with Marauders and have a game against the Enforcers.
Forgefathers (660 points)
Enforcers (800 points)
Marauders (335 points)
Made the lists using my battlescribe files, link to that is in my signature.
I think once Mantic go for hard plastic Enforcers, their sales will skyrocket. They are really nice figures, the latest designs are great, and at a good price point they could likely wipe out the very aged looking Space Marines as the choice for those wanting power armoured super beings.
I hope Mantic can start to turn around and put pressure on sculptors so they can make this happen. They don't need duds in their line weighing them down in both sales and reputation. Better to pay the extra and get them done as the concept artwork is made. Hoping for good things.
Just saw the Forge Father update. Decent looking concept sketches. But....
Mantic Update wrote: Concept art is designed to show our sculptors what the look and feel of the model is, which why it’s a static design. Often the sculptor will go away and re-pose the concept into something more dynamic, or our artists will suggest some poses for the sculptor to copy.
Following the pattern of the Marauders means we can expect the actual sculpts to look like similar to these:
Bearded or beardless?
Update #40 · May 16, 2013 · 25 comments
Before we press on with some Forge Father concepts, Ronnie and Jake are currently in the office playing the Alpha Rules before recording the next Podcast - don't they look happy?!
Following on from our rather sad story earlier (Poor poor Fillon…) we’ve got some shiny Forge Father concepts we wanted to show you…
Now that we’re currently in the process of funding the Asterians and Forge Fathers, we’re looking at what other unit types and specialists we can add to them to really flesh out the diversity and uniqueness of the faction.
When it comes to the Forge Fathers, you’ll notice we’ve started with a squad of five Forge Guard suits – 1 Huscarl, 3 standard Troopers and 1 Heavy weapon. Not only is this a lethal combination in Deadzone, it also means that one of the gaps in the Forge Father Warpath Army is filled!
The Forge Guard Huscarl could also be used as the Thane Squad Leader in the set.
The Forge Guard have been sent by the Forge Father overlords to protect the mining ships of the Star Realm and it’s crew: the Brokkrs.
Brokkrs are the equivalent of scrap metal merchants in Forge Father society, fervent in their work of stripping planets of anything they can reuse.
When it came to concepting them, they required a different look from the more elitist Forge Father warriors: open-faced, lightly armoured and showing a bit more character:
Controversially, we've got a suggested alternate head design with no beard. Now this doesn't mean we'll do it, but what do you think - bearded or beardless?
They are renowned for getting angry during a fight, and often making them Enraged or Berserk in the game makes them much better at swinging their Heat Hammer.
In addition, there will also be special equipment that the Forge Fathers employ. The Brokkrs bring tracked mining lasers with them operated by a single crew member. This is quite large when compared to the equipment options the likes of the Enforcers and the Rebs get with their sentry guns and drones.
Concept art is designed to show our sculptors what the look and feel of the model is, which why it’s a static design. Often the sculptor will go away and re-pose the concept into something more dynamic, or our artists will suggest some poses for the sculptor to copy.
These are both additions we’d like to put into the Forge Father Faction Starter in future stretches - what do you think? What other units types could we do?
Don’t forget that you can now add-on the Forge Father Faction Starter to your pledge as part of our fantastic value Expanded Universe Bundle Deal - the perfect addition to Strike Team ($50)!:
The aim is that the new faction starters will be expanded to include the same amount of diverse models as the first four factions by the end of the campaign - saving you $20 off purchasing them individually!
We’d love to have your feedback on the Brokkr and we’re a little stuck in picking which variant of the mining laser we’d like to use – please let us know what you think in the comments!
And finally...
Oo - don’t forget Ronnie will be doing another exclusive Live Chat on our Facebook Page tonight at 9pm British Summer Time to answer your questions!
The lighter armored Forge Fathers have Marauder-level screw up potential...
And I like the tracked laser version in the lower right corner best...
Actual miniatures of Enforcers without super-skinny legs, including the heavy weapons versions?
I'll admit to not being familiar with the Warpath line, so I didn't even know that the heavy weapons troopers already existed until today - and I don't like the look of their legs, so... that's why I'm asking!
Alpharius wrote: Actual miniatures of Enforcers without super-skinny legs, including the heavy weapons versions?
I'll admit to not being familiar with the Warpath line, so I didn't even know that the heavy weapons troopers already existed until today - and I don't like the look of their legs, so... that's why I'm asking!
The original enforcers had skinny knees and bad unnatural poses.
The 3D renders have seemed to address at least the pose issues which may have made knee-size a non-issue. The renders don't look 'wrong' to the eye the way the warpath ones do, so they might finally have fixed it all.
Alpharius wrote: Right - the 3D Renders look nice - but unless I'm wrong (and I could be!), there are no actual Enforcer miniatures for us to see yet, right?
The first two pictures on the main page show 3 Enforcers. I believe the pictures from Salute showed some more. It's not every Enforcer (that I'm aware of) but what they've shown don't look wrong, at least from the photos I've seen.
Question: Given that there's lots and lots of interest in new units and scenery and so on, how much pressure are you feeling to make Deadzone scale up to larger battlegrounds and army sizes and are we likely to see such an expansion in this kickstarter?
Reply: I think taking it to a 2x4 game is easy - so you can have 4 player - 2 per side and they ally vs the 2 opponents. however we have also talked (at length - today even) about the 4x4 and if we get the funding this would be brilliant (it will be season 3/compendium 2 in effect). at this point you can add 2 man weapon teams and weapon ranes become really significant - as does more commander figures of different ranks, and I definately think the game will scale really well into that space (well we have designed it thus) _ i hope we can make it there. I don't think it will scale much bigger than 4 feet between forces because of the time it will take to close into hand-to-hand combat. Anyway we will have Warpath for that
Question: So I'm wondering what the next few stretch goals are gonna be, are we gonna see more stuff for the Expanded Universe factions, or something else? If something else then what can we expect?
Reply: we are definitely going to focus some time and love on the Forge Fathers and Asterians and bring them up to the same level as the other factions - and they will all be free to anyone that picks up the faction itself. We also intend to do another scenery sprue to keep that rolling on. We will also be doing some character/storyline models - such as PAthfinder N-32 and Professor Symonds. these characters will feature in the short stories collection (also a soon to be chased stretch) and then can be objectives in scenario/narrative campaigns and then feature in the armies as heroes in future battles.
Question:
I'm curious about the rules as well. I know Jakes been working on an alternative for Turn activation to get away from you go I go, how is that coming?? he's been quiet on this topic on Quirkworthy.
Reply: there is a little detail below - and I will get it wrong if I try to explain it - but his solution is pure genius, and scales up. basically you have a command level (which is a sum) and you can move up to that many in your phase, then the opponent goes and so on, until every model has acted, so it cuts the turn up nicely, but you can still do a co-ordinated move with a few figures. there are a few other touches too but best he details those in a full explanation. The new updated alpha/beta rules will be going up in the middle of next week so keep your eyes peeled.
Question:
So, you have Enforcers, Rebs, Marauders, Forgefarthers, Asterian Plague........ Will we see more corporation troopers? Perhaps some robots?
Reply:
I think we will be going deeper into the 6 factions we have first - so they are really rounded out forces (rather than 4 complete and say 4 more that are only 1/2 as good), also want to put on with this style of scenery. I think ZZ'or vs Corporation could carry their own expansion/upgrade - especially when you add in the Veer-Myn) after all the council don't just have to deal with Plague outbreaks (Contagions!) they also have Swarms (!) to deal with! and Infestation (not a great name, but you get the idea) - also power wise Corp vs RAts and ZZ'or feels more balanced - as does Plague vs Enforcers
Question:
Concern was expressed about the Dreadball judwan models and poses during the kickstarter with no notable change when the models were released. Now, with the overall very negative reaction, including several dropped pledges after the orx greens in deadzone were previewed can we get assurances that changes to the orx figures now are actually feasible and possible.
Reply:
we will be working on the Orx tomorrow, and we will be showing them off BEFORE the end of the KS so people have time to have a good look and pass comment. I think the photos did not do them justice, however, we all feel that these models are not right yet - and that is why we are sitting down tomorrow to get them sorted.
ith this KS we have mowe time to get everything right, and a better idea of what producing this will take - both KoW and Dreadball caught us by surprise (as has this a little in terms of speed, if not the opverall number yet!!) - with this we had more finished - except the Orx landed with us for a first loook on Friday, we took them to the Open day ebfore we have really looked at them and then everything went off. now the second shipment is opening up
scarletsquig wrote: Hard plastic plague zombies and enforcer heavies confirmed if this kickstarter gets high enough (around the 1 million mark)
Interesting. Also, interesting choice of words: Enforcer "Heavies". Does that mean heavy weapon specialists only? Seems like a bit of a waste, but I'll take it either way.
Well.. I think a lot of people are looking at this particular instance now to see how Mantic react.
If they do release proper photos of the painted minis, and they still get a similar level of dislike and yet go ahead and release them, then it will certainly not reflect well on them.
I have to say I do like the fact that they at least give the appearance of listening to the fans.. often opinions are split about the quality of a release. However, in cases such as this when opinion is almost universally falling one side, then it looks good if the company is able to react and make changes.
Also, I hear a lot of talk about a Warpath ks and the plastics that will come with it. Is this fact or just speculation?
I will likely have many of them as well. It just seems that they would be better served, especially for this game, by making the "basic" Enforcers in plastic.
They have said that there will be a Warpath KS, probably next year, and that plastic figures and vehicles will be a big part of it. I don't have a direct quote or link for you, but it has been stated multiple times and places.
Compel wrote: Well, I doubt any meetings with the company head were held about the judwan.
There is a few other mentions too... And worst case we see the final models before we put our money in
As soon as they (again) used the 'Pictures didn't do them justice' line I assumed they are happy with silly dancing happy orx and are not going to make the types of changes I would personally like to see. Obviously that is their call to make, but if they keep the funny orx I sure am not going to be too happy with them. I want snarling killing machines.
I just had a thought - about the "silly/comedy GW orc/ks" that keeps coming up, and I realised - GW has always has some silliness going on with their O&G and Space Orks lines. Kev Adams has always been a playful sculptor, after all. But you know what? GW's model lines have always had something that Mantic's do not (yet) - depth.
Not too long later, and there's a few more humorous looking sculpts, but look how many there are - there's 36 models on that page, so if a couple are a bit goofy, it's really not a big deal. Mantic have.. what? The repurposed fantasy plastics, and that one Warlord figure? Now is probably not yet the time to be adding in a whole lot of goofy Orcs, even if that's the impression they or others have of GW stuff. But... these guys don't look especially clownshoes, do they?
As soon as they (again) used the 'Pictures didn't do them justice' line I assumed they are happy with silly dancing happy orx and are not going to make the types of changes I would personally like to see.
Yeah, that particular line is getting a bit predictable.
I think Alph meant that he expected the "buy Forgefathers and Asterians - one free!1!" (based on concept art) hasn't set the world on fire with increased and additional pledges as they would no doubt have hoped. Showing good concept art for the Orx followed by gakky models has hurt the campaign - and I'd also put good money down that the disappointing KoW sculpts that have been seen aren't helping.
Yeah, Mantic REALLY needs to work on quality control. If they could just do that they would solve pretty much every problem they have. At the moment, it's really holding them back.
Alpharius wrote: I thought the terrain deals and the 2 new factions would have really set this one on fire, but now I'm hoping Mantic's got a contingency plan...
Oddly slow day, sure, but I don't see why it is call for any kind of contingency plan. I figure the speculative boosts from those anticipating the next stretch have started to peter out and those that didn't go in on it yet are either waiting for Friday or are waiting for them to reach $500k because they don't want to pledge before things actually occur.
Sometimes it is best to just let stuff fall as it may and not expend effort in some hope of altering an anomalous day. I think this is just a symptom of it being the largest stretch goal to date. It is $40k all in one shot so the usual cycle of announcing a new stretch goal, riding the wave of initial excitement 75% of the way and finishing up in a couple of days just to do it again is kind of broken since they were passing $25k stretches every other day.
And before people say they should announce what is next, that may or may not help. Excitement for some at stuff on the horizon is someone else's "that is how far away?".
I think now that the initial wave of excited pledge increases from speculators has gone through we are waiting on the people pledging in when a goal is close enough to taste. Since the sweet spot for this goal was likely to be 2-4 days instead of 1-2 like the smaller goals, those who tend to jump on board in the last few thousand and shoot past the goal are still too far away to pledge but all of us who added on early on are basically done.
I figure that by the end of the night we will be sitting within about $14k of the goal and the Friday bump should be enough to push it past and in to $500k for the weekend. But this dip has more to do with the time-to-complete being longer than the previous $10-25k stretch goals. It creates this odd mid-zone in the progression where one group has done their pledging and one is still waiting to do it. But considering the numbers, completing a $40k stretch in 3-4 days is expected. I think the tipping point for this one that sees pledges ramp up over time will probably start once $500k is in the bag and the extra starter is a sure thing.
I admit I find it odd that the terrain not catching fire was weirder to me, but that may also be people waiting on more terrain stretches down the line as well.
Either way, the doldrum created by an extra-long stretch is having fairly predictable effects of making things feel like they are crawling even though we are making expected time. But the excitement cycle of a KS is like that. People wont be excited about $500k until we are at $490k, and those who like waiting until a stretch is "close" will hold off until they feel it is "safe". The only thing Mantic can really do at this point is offer a teaser tomorrow (when things are close enough that announcing the next stretch after wont feel like it is $65k away) and to ride it out until they hit $500k. They are already promising and extra starter to the majority of pledgers (if not more to some), so panicking and offering more in an attempt to push pledge numbers along will only hurt them.
Besides, why push a stretch toward two new factions when you are still busy trying to fix one of 'em. If the Orx go in for a full resculpt after they do whatever design tweaks they have in mind (and apparently they fixed a lot of the common complaints about the Ripper suits as well; so who knows?) then they will have their plate full. Breaking a new stretch in the middle of an unforeseen re-do of another sculpt will cause more undue stress.
Let's just call it a lazy Thursday (Friday morning for some) and move on. They happen, especially with marathon stretch goals. I figure after this plod, a few $7.5k "sprint" goals will be refreshing after this (and with five starters at strike I dare say we may see a few people jumping in at that point). The only major notes about today is that it still made more than Dreadball's slowest day ($4,210 on day 19) and that this is the first day where it hasn't beat Dreadball's total for the day. Every KS has its slow days and I don't think Mantic need to do much to rectify a one day anomaly.
PS - Man, when I write something over the course of an hour while alt-tabbing between things at work I really get my ramble on...
tl;dr one slow day does not a crisis make, long stretches tend to have a doldrum because of pledging habits, it is still doing better than Dreadball was around this time. The stretch is still on track for a 3-4 day completion which compares well to the 1-2 day completion for stretches half its size.
Part of it may be that a lot of people pledged more or less what they expected their max to be, and then figured they'd adjust accordingly at the end (and up their pledge with the pledge manager if needed.) I'm sure everyone is expecting to be able to increase post-KS in the pledge manager like they've been able to in the other Mantic KS's.
Plus, yeah, it's a $40k stretch goal. Even when we hit $500k, $50 for those two starters isn't that great of a deal yet. It's, what, 12 models? $50 for 12 is living in GW pricing territory, not KS discount Mantic territory. Will it get better? Almost certainly; I'm sure the Forge Fathers and Asterians will get to similar values as the four core starters by the end of the KS. But right now it's a big stretch goal for an item that isn't a huge value.
All that said, I think Strike Team + some Core World terrain add-ons will be a good deal. Everything else is gravy. Do I want more? Hell yes. I want Mantic to cover me in warm gravy like I'm some kind of weird human poutine (blame my wife for that, she's starting to plan our trip to Montreal this summer.)
It's the usual mid-campaign doldrums, nothing to be concerned about. I still predict $1.5mil, or at the very least $1.2mil, but that would be the lowball estimate.
It's still a great product, tons of hard plastic terrain, plenty of value. Strike Team will have 65 minis once $500k is hit, I still put good odds on over 100 minis in Strike Team by the end (or possibly 90 + 10 terrain sprues)
I was still predicting $100k+ for Loka in the middle of that campaign when everyone was agonising in the comments that it definitely wouldn't hit $80k (to fund all 4 factions) and started pulling pledges citing uncertainty over that.
People get emotionally invested and disregard previous available data. It could use some promotion at this point, though and the best thing to do is to get it on as many different forums as you can, or mention it to your friends. And of course for people currently chatting a lot on KS and backing multiple projects, the absolute best thing you can do is grab a backer avatar ( *NOT* a brian blessed avatar :p ) for passive cross-promotion.
Yeah, Mantic REALLY needs to work on quality control. If they could just do that they would solve pretty much every problem they have. At the moment, it's really holding them back.
- Marauders are getting reworked and shown off next week, if we still don't like them, they're getting a resculpt. Confirmed by Ronnie.
- Mantic have the same opinion as us about the minis, they only got hold of the sculpts themselves the day before the Open Day and didn't really have much of a chance to get a look at them themselves before showing them off.
Mantic don't get everything right, but they do definitely listen. I'm fairly sure I'll be happy enough with the marauders by the time this is over, all they have to do is make them look like the concept art and like the existing warpath minis, which aren't all that bad apart from the obvious "based on fantasy models" thing.
Maybe bring in Remy to sort them out once and for all, with a potential 5k+ people getting the minis and not getting any choice on the matter, it is vitally important that they are good.
Odd. The Kicktraq day rolled over recently, and whilst the prime "American" hours hadn't been very productive the last few days, it was those late hours that saved the day from being a total stinker. Funny how things pan out sometimes.
Automatically Appended Next Post: SS wrote:
- Marauders are getting reworked and shown off next week, if we still don't like them, they're getting a resculpt. Confirmed by Ronnie.
- Mantic have the same opinion as us about the minis, they only got hold of the sculpts themselves the day before the Open Day and didn't really have much of a chance to get a look at them themselves before showing them off.
First note I saw, Makes sense. Second note......Not sure if "totally" buy that. Maybe, since the first is the case, they said "maybe they'll like them" and it blew up in their face. Probably wont make that mistake again. But in the end, if they improve on them, it will be better for all they were showed really.
For those wanting non-apes, I hope it's been well noted that Warpath orcs are Ape-like, and that is gonna stay. So this shouldn't be an expected change. If the poses are improved, and the overall look and feel blend the concept art with Dreadball sculpt, I think they'll look fine.
And unfortunately we'll have to expect a minor drop from the "I demand goofy Orx" folks if they are more seriois, but the folks swinging back in should counter.
I personally don't care if they're hunched Rogue Trader Orks, "apelike" modern 40k Orks, hunched, longfaced Mantic Orx or Apelike DreadBall Orx as long as they're well sculpted, properly-proportioned to the template they go with, and don't look like the amateur/semi-pro not-warhammer figures that used to come out in the mid-late 1990's
The economist in me thinks you may have a number of potential backers waiting until an Early Bird opens up... While $10 is a pittance, it does get you Season 2 postage or Chovar...
Azazelx wrote: I personally don't care if they're hunched Rogue Trader Orks, "apelike" modern 40k Orks, hunched, longfaced Mantic Orx or Apelike DreadBall Orx as long as they're well sculpted, properly-proportioned to the template they go with, and don't look like the amateur/semi-pro not-warhammer figures that used to come out in the mid-late 1990's
I'm still unclear on what you can pick. There are things I wouldn't mind pledging for. But I really don't want the bundles of starter sets. The terrain and a few of the add on units are all I want.
All that said, I think Strike Team + some Core World terrain add-ons will be a good deal. Everything else is gravy. Do I want more? Hell yes. I want Mantic to cover me in warm gravy like I'm some kind of weird human poutine (blame my wife for that, she's starting to plan our trip to Montreal this summer.)
I'd like to see your holiday photos when you get back.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Then again, maybe not.
Automatically Appended Next Post: ...on the other hand...
HisDivineShadow wrote: I'm still unclear on what you can pick. There are things I wouldn't mind pledging for. But I really don't want the bundles of starter sets. The terrain and a few of the add on units are all I want.
Do one of the EB terrain bundles (which shaves postage in essence), and then add-on from there. That would be my suggestion. It was hinted that the terrain bundles would get a 'little' better, so they may not last for ever. If you aren't sure how much terrain you want, I'd personally grab the lower bundle, as the upper bundle looks like it should have EBs available longer and at $95, adding on the $185 add-on is the same thing as getting the $280 pledge.
I feel Alpharius thoughts are entirely valid and I do hope mantic have a contingency plan ready in case, fluff updates and live chat didn't speed it up.
I do believe it will kick up again once it reaches 500k, but how long it will take will be crucial to its final peak.
PsychoticStorm wrote: I feel Alpharius thoughts are entirely valid and I do hope mantic have a contingency plan ready in case, fluff updates and live chat didn't speed it up.
I do believe it will kick up again once it reaches 500k, but how long it will take will be crucial to its final peak.
I don't know if there was much they could do in some respects. Eventually there was going to be a falling out from a chunk of the first few days folks when you look at some of the posts. You had people clamoring about stuff that just wasn't gonna happen (no FF stretch goals, concentrate only on four faction for the duration, put vehicles in all the starters, have a single-player rules set). So in retrospect, you knew there was going to be a chunk of time where all those people who thought this KS was gonna do something it wasn't were gonna bail, and nothing encourages that more then a rough day. Hopefully the bulk bailed ship yesterday and we can push past this.
I've gotten at least two others to join up every week so far (at least in the states, the whole "knock out your Christmas shopping earlier" has worked with female relatives!!) so personally I'm just gonna keep spreading the word and ensure there are players in Honolulu, Boise, and my family members wherever they may be. I'm not a "wait for someone else to do it" sort of guy (and not saying you are storm....just quoting you as a talking point) and between Jake Thorton's ability to do rules, and the success Dreadball has had in my greater gaming circle, I'm sold this can succeed, and will help it do so.
Compared to most other Kickstarters their tier structure and add-on system is fairly obtuse. I'm not saying that it is a Organic Chemistry II final, just that in comparison it is not very straightforward on what you get and how to get it. I can see how KS window shoppers may just skip over it and go on to the next to peruse the offerings.
I emailed Stuart with a polite bit of feedback re: the KoW trolls and the DZ Orx and their need for a more firm Art Director for the long-term good of the company.
this is part of his reply:
Stuart Gibbs wrote:
The Deadzone Orcs are not final, and the photography does not show them in a good light. They are actually very nice figures in terms of detail, and I am having the poses rebuilt over this weekend. Once you see the finished models I’m sure you’ll change your mind.
So having read that, I'll openly reserve my judgement for another week in the hope that they make good on what Stuart has indicated above. I did reiterate that when people pledge based on concept art, the models as depicted in the art is really what they're paying for.
I'm withholding judgement on the Orx until I see decent photos.
I'm in at strike, plus an urban skirmish terrain pack and the urban detailing mega deal, I'll probably not be going much higher at this point unless I see something really spectacular.
Well since he said the detail is good, which may be and that they will rebuild the poses, their better photos may be entirely different models, time will tell.
I am more interested in Renton's determination that if people will not like them even after modifications they will re do them.
If Mantic follow through with majority consensus that the models need a complete resculpt they'll probably get my pledge back for classy moves. However I'll be waiting until the very last minute to ensure there's no more bad photography or lousy paintjobs.
I'm starting to think someone needs to oversee Mantic's aesthetic direction. In Warpath, we've went from reskinned fantasy, added in strangely 1950s pulp style space ratmen, added in comedic background with Dreadball and yet also crushing megacorps dominating the galaxy in the same vein as cyberpunk. Now all the models are becoming heroic scale, and we're going from Orx as a sinister, brutal repressed slave race to comedic bumbling. The sci fi universe is going to be aesthetically and thematically confused.
Azazelx wrote:I think Alph meant that he expected the "buy Forgefathers and Asterians - one free!1!" (based on concept art) hasn't set the world on fire with increased and additional pledges as they would no doubt have hoped. Showing good concept art for the Orx followed by gakky models has hurt the campaign - and I'd also put good money down that the disappointing KoW sculpts that have been seen aren't helping.
That is exactly the point I was making!
I really expected this one to take off after the terrain was announced, but maybe the price wasn't low enough for some? Or many?
This isn't just a 'one day slowdown' when you look at what's happened since the terrain bundles were released - I'm shocked at how slow it has gone since then.
And that's a good point Azazelx - the KoW "Troll Issue" combined with the Deadzone "Marauder Issue" may REALLY be putting people off here?
PsychoticStorm wrote:I feel Alpharius thoughts are entirely valid and I do hope mantic have a contingency plan ready in case, fluff updates and live chat didn't speed it up.
I do believe it will kick up again once it reaches 500k, but how long it will take will be crucial to its final peak.
Right!
I still think Mantic needs to do something now, in order to help this along, even if it is 'only' revealing the next set of stretch goals and concept art groups for the upcoming Forgefather and Asterian miniatures we know are waiting in the wings.
If the Marauders have come to put people off, and I think now it is starting to dominate discussion, Mantic need to distract our attention with shiny things until the Marauders are in a good state to reveal again.
So, how about some more pics of those cool looking rebel guys, and a feature on them? Or even a Forge Father (I heard those heavily armoured guys were made yonks ago, by someone who had seen them - may not be remembering that correctly however!) What about some fully painted and assembled terrain, perhaps even with a battle report featuring the Alpha/Beta version of the rules?
It's amazing how momentum can shift with a KS - it's up to Mantic now to try and push things forward, and create a more positive atmosphere with this KS I think.
Pacific wrote: If the Marauders have come to put people off, and I think now it is starting to dominate discussion, Mantic need to distract our attention with shiny things until the Marauders are in a good state to reveal again.
I don't know. I like that they are addressing the issue front and center instead of doing magical hand waving and going "look over here guys!".
I suspect while there is a strong desire for terrain here on Dakka it's not the gamer norm
most folk will play at a store/club/somebody elses house and they'll have terrain already
so while the hardcore loe terrain the casual gamer (and that's who make big KS projects big) isn't so interested. Sure they'll buy the Deadzone, but they're not going to add on lots of extra terrain
Azazelx wrote: I personally don't care if they're hunched Rogue Trader Orks, "apelike" modern 40k Orks, hunched, longfaced Mantic Orx or Apelike DreadBall Orx as long as they're well sculpted, properly-proportioned to the template they go with, and don't look like the amateur/semi-pro not-warhammer figures that used to come out in the mid-late 1990's
I want the Ripper suit back to the concept art where it is a power-lifter machine with a cockpit driver and not just fancy armor. One-handing those guns, it needs some gumption in the design. I also think there is room for 'Orx holding rifle like he is shooting' poses. After collecting hundreds of ork models, something has to be said for the simplicity of a non-dynamic infantry man. It is ok if he is just standing there with a gun instead of running, throwing a grenade, leaping over a box or checking his iPhone. Just stand there and be a nice simple model.
Enough about the Orx... when is something being done about that butt-ugly captain for the Enforcers? How can they make such an awesome one for Warpath, and try to push that lame figure for Deadzone?
I'd split RPG terrain off from TTG terrain personally
This is based of my circle of friends & folk I've known over the years, a lot more of the people I played pen and paper RPGs were likely to take a 'turn' at running a game (and thus perhaps having a desire to pick up bits a pieces for doing so), even if it was just play mats, giant sheets of graph paper etc.
I'm not certain if this is because RPGs could be squeezed into smaller, less optimal spaces (so more of them felt comfortable offering to have a go) or because one person in the TTG group was so much better (and keener than the rest of us) on building tables
(I know this is just anecdotal, but it is what I've known over the years)
The terrain is also very similar price to GW terrain (which tends to be one of the better value things they sell). If you look at this from a terrain value focus, the kickstarter doesn't provide a great value (and doesn't look like it will benefit from any stretches).
I feel that for may people its not a good deal yet, it lacks variety and the deal could be more a single battlezone atm is a single 2x3 one story building, not impressive to be honest, if mantic wants to see the terrain pledges go in big, they must work their terrain value.
I'd split RPG terrain off from TTG terrain personally
This is based of my circle of friends & folk I've known over the years, a lot more of the people I played pen and paper RPGs were likely to take a 'turn' at running a game (and thus perhaps having a desire to pick up bits a pieces for doing so), even if it was just play mats, giant sheets of graph paper etc.
I'm not certain if this is because RPGs could be squeezed into smaller, less optimal spaces (so more of them felt comfortable offering to have a go) or because one person in the TTG group was so much better (and keener than the rest of us) on building tables
(I know this is just anecdotal, but it is what I've known over the years)
The thing is RPG players and Wargamers are different groups with different needs.
Deadzone terrain is middle of the pack quality for a market super saturated with alternative products for customers who have a large percentage of people who need zero terrain.
Dwarven forge was a top of the market product for a market starving for cheaper alternatives for customers who usually sell large terrain batches to DMs or clubs.
The Deadzone terrain (outside the counts as skyshield) has almost no appeal to me. It seems too focused for a specific gaming system, and doesn't appeal as generic wargaming terrain. I may use parts for conversions of custom terrain, but it will not be the same as a deadzone terrain. I don't need enough to fill a 4x6 table because I want varied terrain, not a table full of static-looking 3"x3" blocks. Gorkamorka bulkheads were great for making custom terrain, not 3"x3" bricks. I feel like I can make my own terrain better or buy better alternatives ont he market which are not deadzone specific. So it limits your appeal to the wargaming market.
I think we'll see more interest in the terrain once the ruins battlezone is unlocked.
The thing with making enclosed intact buildings is that it takes up a lot of tiles, even if you're using the city of death stuff.
Whereas with ruins you only need half or less than half the amount of plastic to cover the same kind of area in gaming terms, and it's easer to move minis in and out of, too. So from the gamer POV, you want open stuff, lots of gangplanks, ruins, lots of dense cover but still easy to move around in.
So, while one regular battlezone is indeed a 9" x6" intact building (+ 2 spare 3x3 tiles, and a bunch of half tiles/ walkways etc.), a ruined one could easily double that coverage.
Also, you can't get a 9x6" single storey intact building out of a GWCoD kit, just not close to being possible, so I'm certain there's a good bit of value there.
$5 per sprue isn't bad however you look at it. It's possible that going with the connectors is a factor making it more expensive though, since that's one connector sprue that has to be provided for every 3 other sprues instead of just requiring glue and having a 4th building sprue in place of the connector sprue.
Would be interesting to get the option to buy the terrain without connector sprues, they do glue together without them.
CptJake wrote: How is it you feel limited to making 3"x3" blocks out of these panels?
Because there are dozens of better alternatives for terrain. And these, while might make a few nice ruins, if I fileld a 4x6 table with them, it simply doesn't appeal to me.
Regardless how you slice it, these will make some varient of a 3"x3" brick of a building. Did I miss something which allowed these to be all sorts of random dimensions like 2"X7" or 5"x5"?
CptJake wrote: How is it you feel limited to making 3"x3" blocks out of these panels?
Because there are dozens of better alternatives for terrain. And these, while might make a few nice ruins, if I fileld a 4x6 table with them, it simply doesn't appeal to me.
Regardless how you slice it, these will make some varient of a 3"x3" brick of a building. Did I miss something which allowed these to be all sorts of random dimensions like 2"X7" or 5"x5"?
Availability of 'better' alternatives (for your definition of better) don't make your statement about 3"x3" accurate. You may be limited to multiples of 3 (or 1.5, see below) for any given run of a wall, but you could easily construct L or T shaped buildings for example, have a large warehouse type building, and so on. To declare 3"x3" bricks as the only possibility is disingenuous.
If this is what the sprue ends up looking like, the two half panels give quite a bit of flexibility I would think.
Regardless how you slice it, these will make some varient of a 3"x3" brick of a building. Did I miss something which allowed these to be all sorts of random dimensions like 2"X7" or 5"x5"?
Aside from LEGO terrain, no commercial made terrain is going to deliver the same flexibility as scratch built terrain.
If you don't like them that's cool.
This thread really isn't a pulpit to discuss the pros and cons of prefab terrain. This kickstarter will include them no matter what anyone's opinion on the matter is.
They actualy lost out on the terrain stuff mostly from me, simply due to bad timing.
Shortly before the kickstarter was announced, I had just bought the completely Galeforce 9 Halls of Heroes kits, plus extra pre-painted ruined walls. That and my GW stuff pretty much means that I'm just going to get a couple of extra 'ruined' style battlezones to add variation to my strike team pledge.
Regardless how you slice it, these will make some varient of a 3"x3" brick of a building. Did I miss something which allowed these to be all sorts of random dimensions like 2"X7" or 5"x5"?
Aside from LEGO terrain, no commercial made terrain is going to deliver the same flexibility as scratch built terrain.
If you don't like them that's cool.
This thread really isn't a pulpit to discuss the pros and cons of prefab terrain. This kickstarter will include them no matter what anyone's opinion on the matter is.
I didn't say I didn't like them... As a Wargaming terrain collector, I only need a few pieces, not an entire table full, hence why I feel that this type of terrain didn't explode the way people assumed it would.
A single terrain base of pre-fab terrain on its own looks fine. Cover an entire table with it, and you get boring an repetitive. I feel like wargamers who focus on terrain have loads of different sizes and styles from lots of manufacturers, and each piece being different is part of the appeal. As for RPG terrain, people literally want a 4x6 table of dungeon corridors. So different groups want different needs. If I was big into Custom Space Hulk, that is another design which wants endless 'exactly the same' terrain.
I think some games want pre-fab and repititon, warmgaming likes variety. Deadzone looks to be reliant on a 3x3 grid, but people may not know if dreadzone will pan out in the end, so the fallback is using these models and terrain for other wargaming games... which means I only need a few bases of terrain from this type. The more variety and other options they give, the more they will draw out of people like myself looking for wargaming terrain first, Deadzone terrain second (or not at all for people not interested ind eadzone as a game and want just terrain)
You say repetitive, I say consistent. I worry that mixing terrain from three manufacturers plus adding in some scratch built stuff is going to lead to a table that looks messy.
I'd split RPG terrain off from TTG terrain personally
This is based of my circle of friends & folk I've known over the years, a lot more of the people I played pen and paper RPGs were likely to take a 'turn' at running a game (and thus perhaps having a desire to pick up bits a pieces for doing so), even if it was just play mats, giant sheets of graph paper etc.
I'm not certain if this is because RPGs could be squeezed into smaller, less optimal spaces (so more of them felt comfortable offering to have a go) or because one person in the TTG group was so much better (and keener than the rest of us) on building tables
(I know this is just anecdotal, but it is what I've known over the years)
Orlando is still right, but Zweischneid loves him a 'clever' zinger whenever and wherever possible...
Anyway, I'd love to hear opinions as to why this one hasn't gone quite as well as many expected after the terrain and FF and Asterians were introduced...
I've made a quick sketch for everyone to show a building that can be made with the contents of a single battlezone, it's a bit more interesting than the plain 9"x6" single storey that Mantic uses in their sample pic:
scarletsquig wrote: I've made a quick sketch for everyone to show a building that can be made with the contents of a single battlezone, it's a bit more interesting than the plain 9"x6" single storey that Mantic uses in their sample pic:
You could make a 'ruin' by taking the right wall and putting it on top of the bases then put the little one on top. Leave the little bases along the bottom (make a base for it out of cardboard) to form a fenced area.
So:
1x1
2x1
4x4
The moral of the story though is that it's modular, there's a million things you could do.
that's 21 tiles when the battle zone has an unspecified tile sections number that is 6 per sprew for 3 sprews so 18.
I would hazard a guess that the terrain has at last some issues on been vague and hazy, we know just the number of tiles, not what tiles there really are, the "X" tile for example is useless on your building but if you get 3 of them, one in each sprew it detracts 3 more tiles from the equation.
I think mantic needs to kill the sprew idea as a generic term and go with battlezones 2 generic sprews with core tiles and 2 or more specific tiles to get a building type done.
PsychoticStorm wrote: that's 21 tiles when the battle zone has an unspecified tile sections number that is 6 per sprew for 3 sprews so 18.
As you can see from the sprue pic posted above (they're having a separate sprue for connectors in the final version but I imagine that's all that will change), you get 2x half tiles on each sprue, which can be combined into a full tile if you want. So, 21 in total.
Wow, that's quite a change in the kicktraq and thread mood since the last time I popped in. The not-eldar look interesting but dwarves look a bit too must like old D&D fantasy adamantium dwarven armor. Hopefully it won't say in the single 1,000 digits today. Even if it does, lots of very successful KS like other mantic offerings and even Myth hit those low numbers for a few days in the mid-KS lull and still ended very strong.
I know we are all foaming at the mouth over terrain possibilities, but remember the game was tested for, and works best with lots of cover, and not just a few building with lots of open terrain.
Jumping on Squig's idea, I'd like to just see a post from Mantic saying "Here's what you can make with one Battlezone!"
Toss up a bunch of mock ups. Remind people it's just one battlezone. Show big tall structures. Maybe a few little bungalows. T and L shaped buildings. Multi stories.
I think we'd see more terrain pledges if people could see all the various possibilities of even just one battlezone.
The orx are the big problem, the FF + Asterians big streach gap right after their reveal does not help, so things are a bit slow, not that slow really, but since there is no perceived movement things look slow and people have time to think, recollect and ask.
Its what I had said really early about keeping the steam, the gap here is a problem, I am positive it will start moving faster once those final 8k accumulate, but the time took its toll, now they need to rekindle the fire and pick up steam.
its not doom and gloom really and it may be in retrospect a good thing because it allows good questions to be raised that may help the overall project much.
There's another significant factor too: Pledges are open for KoW backers right now too. It will probably pick up to some extent after that, but a number of Mantic fans are being pulled in two directions right now.
Once it gets close to $500,000, there will be some momentum of people trying to reach the stretch.
scarletsquig wrote: I've made a quick sketch for everyone to show a building that can be made with the contents of a single battlezone, it's a bit more interesting than the plain 9"x6" single storey that Mantic uses in their sample pic:
Yep. I will make one building like that, and possibly one multi-level ruin, and then add a ton of details to make it a nice piece of terrain. And then those 2 bases of 'terrain' go into my collection. I don't need dozens of buildings like this, I also am not going to be taking them apart and putting them back together. The idea that someone will want literally a dozen of these custom buildings, I don't see it. A unifying paint job and basing combines dozens of custom terrain pieces.
I pretty much don't want or need more than 50$ total of this style of terrain and even for 50$, that seems a bit much, I probably would do a 25$ kit and add my own walls out of other materials and use the bulkheads for detailed features and mix it with my own conversions and styles. The detail add-ons actually are more appealing as pieces which can be used to make cool terrain. But for 35$, that is super expensive compared to alternatives IMHO. Make that 20$ for those sets, and now you have a 'deal' which encourages purchasing.
There is simply no appeal for these pieces in bulk for a single person the same way a dungeon tile set has. Unless you are in ultra need of 3"x3" gridded terrain for a specific ruleset. And the prices are expensive for the value. I buy terrain which interest me, and I would get more if the computer terminals were cheaper, but they all cost too much for too little.
I also know as someone contributing for terrain, my money and stretch goaling power will not bring ME more stuff. Every stretch goal should have parallel tracks for models and terrain if they were serious about making this a terrain kickstarter. I don't particularly care if you are going to get an extra dancing goblin if I am pledging as a terrain only person. I need to know if I splurge on an extra 50$ of expensive terrain, eventually the 50$ will snowball into something with a great value. Right now that doesn't seem to be possible. Just matter of fact add-ons with take it or leave it prices.
Anyway, I'd love to hear opinions as to why this one hasn't gone quite as well as many expected after the terrain and FF and Asterians were introduced...
I can only speak for myself. I am pledged at Striker level. I may add more terrain once I see what the ruins look like. The Orx are useless to me in their current form. Kicking in $50 for two factions that may or may not get enough figs added to them so that they are comparable to existing factions isn't attractive until they do get fill out WITH concepts and sculpts I like. After the Orx, I am very reluctant to add the bucks based just on promises or concept art which they feel no obligation to stick to. Some of the other extras are mildly attractive, but since I currently feel 25% of the figures I am getting are a waste I'm reluctant to add more based on concept art. Floating Squid Critter is not to my taste. Many of the terrain items seem best suited for indoor stuff (holo tables and lockers and med beds and stuff) and I don't imaging playing a lot of indoor scenarios, and have a lot of those types of items anyway.
OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote: It seems a bit of a shame that Warpath elves are featuring cybernetically reanimated soldiers
it all seems a bit too close to Eldar and soulstones
^This, terrible, terrible fluff. Just make them advanced AI or some sort of mind-link with the actual live Asterian. Guess that free expansion choice will be FF for me.
OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote: It seems a bit of a shame that Warpath elves are featuring cybernetically reanimated soldiers
it all seems a bit too close to Eldar and soulstones
^This, terrible, terrible fluff. Just make them advanced AI or some sort of mind-link with the actual live Asterian. Guess that free expansion choice will be FF for me.
Did they actually say that is what the Drones are? If so, where? I'd like to read it.
~Eric
Edit:
Just noticed the newest update so disregard the above.
Anyway, I'd love to hear opinions as to why this one hasn't gone quite as well as many expected after the terrain and FF and Asterians were introduced...
I just backed out. I don't like the terrain. Can't tell you why. Maybe if it were mixed in with plasticard or something, but as of now a big selling point is modularity... which makes it just too toy-like.
Also, the Orx now-a-preview-because-its-gak-back-to-rework thing scared me off.
The problem with kickstarters, in general, is that I have to pay upfront, sight unseen, in this case based on concept art. The Orx look nothing like the concept art - proportions speaking - and I really feel like if the pictures hadn't been shown upfront and elicited such an outcry, we'd have been stuck with them.
No discount is enough for me to be stuck with minis that I dislike. I'll wait for streetdate and buy what I want.
OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote: It seems a bit of a shame that Warpath elves are featuring cybernetically reanimated soldiers
it all seems a bit too close to Eldar and soulstones
^This, terrible, terrible fluff. Just make them advanced AI or some sort of mind-link with the actual live Asterian. Guess that free expansion choice will be FF for me.
Did they actually say that is what the Drones are? If so, where? I'd like to read it.
~Eric
Edit:
Just noticed the newest update so disregard the above.
Yeah, Mantic is really falling down on dealing with this stuff. This is the 'Zeee' and '8th race' all over again. It isn't hard to make unique stuff, but they keep having to ret-con their own fluff and just copy other universes for no apparent reason.
OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote: It seems a bit of a shame that Warpath elves are featuring cybernetically reanimated soldiers
it all seems a bit too close to Eldar and soulstones
^This, terrible, terrible fluff. Just make them advanced AI or some sort of mind-link with the actual live Asterian. Guess that free expansion choice will be FF for me.
Just feel like it should be mentioned that what is being said isn't entirely accurate... they're flesh and blood with a steel skin, the background is closer to Cylons from the new BSG than eldar.
Azazelx wrote: I personally don't care if they're hunched Rogue Trader Orks, "apelike" modern 40k Orks, hunched, longfaced Mantic Orx or Apelike DreadBall Orx as long as they're well sculpted, properly-proportioned to the template they go with, and don't look like the amateur/semi-pro not-warhammer figures that used to come out in the mid-late 1990's
I want the Ripper suit back to the concept art where it is a power-lifter machine with a cockpit driver and not just fancy armor. One-handing those guns, it needs some gumption in the design. I also think there is room for 'Orx holding rifle like he is shooting' poses.
I did mention these points to Stewart. I don't expect we'll get much love with the Ripper suits though. We can hope, though...
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scarletsquig wrote: I've made a quick sketch for everyone to show a building that can be made with the contents of a single battlezone, it's a bit more interesting than the plain 9"x6" single storey that Mantic uses in their sample pic:
15 years ago when Necromunda came out, we could choose from a few chunks of resin, building our own, or GW's card+bulkhead offerings. As others have stated, though. We're really spoiled for choice these days.
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adamsouza wrote: I know we are all foaming at the mouth over terrain possibilities, but remember the game was tested for, and works best with lots of cover, and not just a few building with lots of open terrain.
I guess the problem, for me at least, and possibly others as well is that we like to play our mini games on a table that at least looks like it could exist somewhere. That playtest table pic reminds me of the "Shipment" MP map from Call of Duty 4. Which was fun enough, but is far from the only type of game I'd want to be playing.
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nkelsch wrote: But for 35$, that is super expensive compared to alternatives IMHO. Make that 20$ for those sets, and now you have a 'deal' which encourages purchasing.
There is simply no appeal for these pieces in bulk for a single person the same way a dungeon tile set has. Unless you are in ultra need of 3"x3" gridded terrain for a specific ruleset. And the prices are expensive for the value. I buy terrain which interest me, and I would get more if the computer terminals were cheaper, but they all cost too much for too little.
I also know as someone contributing for terrain, my money and stretch goaling power will not bring ME more stuff. Every stretch goal should have parallel tracks for models and terrain if they were serious about making this a terrain kickstarter. I don't particularly care if you are going to get an extra dancing goblin if I am pledging as a terrain only person. I need to know if I splurge on an extra 50$ of expensive terrain, eventually the 50$ will snowball into something with a great value. Right now that doesn't seem to be possible. Just matter of fact add-ons with take it or leave it prices.
Again, feed this back to Mantic in an email. You don't even need to change your tone - just c&p
Just to speak from experience, the above mentioned Dust Tactics/Warfare buildings are WONDERFUL.
Not the prettiest, most artful terrain ever, but I own five or six sets of it, and it is highly functional, and CHEAP (relatively speaking). I think you can buy a two-story building's worth for about $20 at internet prices, which is on par with Mantic's "battle-ground" prices.
Meanwhile, the "segments" are roughly three inches long... go figure. ;-)
CptJake wrote: Many of the terrain items seem best suited for indoor stuff (holo tables and lockers and med beds and stuff) and I don't imaging playing a lot of indoor scenarios, and have a lot of those types of items anyway.
You know... with such a small playing area, and the type of terrain set up in their playtest example - indoor scenarios actually fit the game quite well. With an assumed ceiling over the top of it all, a series of rooms set up as the interior of an office/med facility/university building/etc would probably be ideal. There's tons to google as well. Just add some vents or holes blasted in walls to add more flanking options and lessen choke points.
Just google "office floor plans" and see a million ideas.
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NewTruthNeomaxim wrote: Just to speak from experience, the above mentioned Dust Tactics/Warfare buildings are WONDERFUL.
Not the prettiest, most artful terrain ever, but I own five or six sets of it, and it is highly functional, and CHEAP (relatively speaking). I think you can buy a two-story building's worth for about $20 at internet prices, which is on par with Mantic's "battle-ground" prices.
Meanwhile, the "segments" are roughly three inches long... go figure. ;-)
Yeah, I have 2 sets (so far) myself. Unassembled as yet, as I'm working my way through a ton of scenery, but yes - that's exactly my point.
OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote: It seems a bit of a shame that Warpath elves are featuring cybernetically reanimated soldiers
it all seems a bit too close to Eldar and soulstones
^This, terrible, terrible fluff. Just make them advanced AI or some sort of mind-link with the actual live Asterian. Guess that free expansion choice will be FF for me.
Bad game fluff is bad, but expected. Most new games have bad fluff. I don't even know why people get worked up about it anymore. Just play DeadZone (or Warpath) as in the 40k universe setting.
OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote: It seems a bit of a shame that Warpath elves are featuring cybernetically reanimated soldiers
it all seems a bit too close to Eldar and soulstones
^This, terrible, terrible fluff. Just make them advanced AI or some sort of mind-link with the actual live Asterian. Guess that free expansion choice will be FF for me.
Just feel like it should be mentioned that what is being said isn't entirely accurate... they're flesh and blood with a steel skin, the background is closer to Cylons from the new BSG than eldar.
Let's be fair though:
1) I've bolded what he actually said, the issue here is that once it steps away from robots (be it AI or controlled) to some form of "spiritual" construct, the "our Elves are different" Venn diagrams share too much common area
2) It goes beyond that, the commentary about the relationship between the Corporation and the Asterians also does a good impression of walking and quacking like an Eldar, even if they are not entirely identical
Let's not forget, I'm a fairly big Mantic fan (I own all there games and went all in on Dreadball and Loka and heavily in on KoW, they've had nearly £2k off me over the last 2-3 years) - but I raised this issue on their own forums before. We get that there's "nothing new under the sun", but they need to pick and choose when to go and stand in the shade, this is a definite moment of not applying enough factor 50 to whoever is writing the background.
@Azazelx: TBH I don't expect Booker Prize winning fiction from any game, but I like to feel that the author is at least making an effort to construct something in an interesting manner. Take the KoW mythology for example, very little original in it, but the way old tropes have been put together is sufficiently interesting as background for a war game.
Bad game fluff is bad, but expected. Most new games have bad fluff. I don't even know why people get worked up about it anymore. Just play DeadZone (or Warpath) as in the 40k universe setting.
Part of what interest me in a force or a game is fluff, more so then the rules; bad fluff means less interest and less likely to play/buy.
Azazelx wrote: You know... with such a small playing area, and the type of terrain set up in their playtest example - indoor scenarios actually fit the game quite well. With an assumed ceiling over the top of it all, a series of rooms set up as the interior of an office/med facility/university building/etc would probably be ideal. There's tons to google as well. Just add some vents or holes blasted in walls to add more flanking options and lessen choke points.
Yep that's what I was thinking. A big reason I'm so keen on this terrain is due to how modular it is which will let you change it up in awesome ways like that.
Only $5000 until the marathon stretch is over. Looks like it will probably drop a few hours after the Kicktraq day ticks over. So still within the 3-4 day span, but man was that a slog.
Can't wait to see if they do another flurry of $7.5k stretches to start filling out the new factions. Giving us a few new-faction add-ons will start getting me in to things a bit more. I have been waiting for FF add-ons since day one and I want to give them my money.
the 7.5k stretches are great. so the next set of stretchs will be?
i am assuming something like terrain, asterian/FF ranged model, melee model, fast attack, terrain, ++ to minis in both. then after that, season 2 which would hopefully ad dreadnaught type characters and potential vehicles for the bigger games.
Ronin_eX wrote: Only $5000 until the marathon stretch is over. Looks like it will probably drop a few hours after the Kicktraq day ticks over. So still within the 3-4 day span, but man was that a slog.
Can't wait to see if they do another flurry of $7.5k stretches to start filling out the new factions. Giving us a few new-faction add-ons will start getting me in to things a bit more. I have been waiting for FF add-ons since day one and I want to give them my money.
I'm thinking given the less than stellar reaction and pledging they've seen since a few of the recent releases that yeah, this is exactly what we'll see!
Bad game fluff is bad, but expected. Most new games have bad fluff. I don't even know why people get worked up about it anymore. Just play DeadZone (or Warpath) as in the 40k universe setting.
Part of what interest me in a force or a game is fluff, more so then the rules; bad fluff means less interest and less likely to play/buy.
Fair enough. For me at least, there are just so many sci-fi figure ranges out there now, and every one of them wants to have their own background and world and ruleset, mostly of which seem to be average-or-badly written. It's about as bad as video games now. I'm happy with good models these days, and I'll just shoehorn them into something that works for me. For example, the version of 40k I have in my mind is expansive enough to fit everything, and I just ignore the truly awful elements (fungoid orks, no more squats, etc).
They need to show better pics of the available mini. It's ridiculous that you have to search multiple forum to be able to see the mini that are sculpted
At Pele - currently you get 3 buildings sprues in a battlezone. We're going to show you what 4 building sprues in a BattleZone can be build. Possible hint to a future stretch goal?
You'll of course note that Recon already gets 4 building sprues...
Looks like battlezones might be goinf from 3 building sprues to 4 soon plus they will have an assembly video for 4 sprues worth this week.
Trying to decide if I would rather increase my KoW stuff or go for the DZ Strike Team....
strike team imho..
mantic are hinting at adding more scenery sprues into the battle zones...
Would be good if they can get another sprue in there.
At the moment a single battlezone is around the same surface area coverage as a single GWCoD kit. 25% cheaper than GW (£15 instead of £20), but then it's not really the GW stuff it's competing with, it's the MDF stuff from a million different companies.
A 33% increase in the amount of "stuff in a box" would really boost the value side of things quite a lot.
One thing I'm kinda surprised about is that there isn't really any bulk value on the high-end terrain bundles... it's pretty much $25 / £15 per battlezone no matter what level you're pledging at. In fact the $185 terrain pledge is actually better value per sprue than the $280 level is.
Considering it's practically a no-brainer that the retail release will get a 4-pack battlezone set for around £50 (yes I know, that hasn't been decided yet and is rampant rabid fanboi speculation, but you can see it happening, can't you?)... the lack of bulk discount on the terrain pledges is probably keeping them from being quite as popular as they should be, considering the quality of the product and the fact that it's GW or those Russian kits as the only alternatives on the market for hard plastic terrain.
Ideally, kickstarters should sell add-ons to consumers at trade prices... Mantic used to do this with the BOGOFs in KoW and Dreadball... those aren't present here, which makes the add-ons a tough decision rather than "50% off? Hell yeah! Gimme!".
So, that mainly leaves "upgrade to 2x Strike Team" (which already has that good level of discount and will get better) as the main add-on option left for me to consider since there isn't a lot else that appeals.
Buy two battlezones for $50? Hmm.. Strike team has 2 in there, might as well go 2x strike. Buy the EU bundle for $50? Again.. 2x Strike team + pick ff/asterians as the freebies looks better.
I guess the nice thing is, the Strike Team level is really well put together and scales up nicely... it gives you a little bit of everything, with the chance to double up on everything and get both of the new factions free.
I've gotta say... i'm usually a very measured guy, and non-capricious... but somehow my enthusiasm for this Kickstarter is waxing and waning constantly. I probably hyped myself up a bit to excess based on the Mantic legendary value (TM), but so far, it all feels good, and fair... not exciting.
I also hate the fact that as time ticks down, several more "big" stretch-goals will likely unlock more terrain, which has proven far less compelling than I expected.
Late last year, I backed this.... to support a local club-mate... http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adventureterrain/wargame-roleplaying-and-model-railroad-terrain , and my $170 US got me such an embarrassment of riches, that I still cannot believe it. I can COVER a 8x4 table with a variety of natural and man-made terrain, and the volume/quality I got for my buck blew me away, as this individual essentially priced his Kickstarter rates at "cost".
I, perhaps wrongly, expected the same of Mantic, who was said to be famous for doing just that to grow their fan-bases.
As it stands, the terrain is... alright. If anything, the only things keeping me engaged right now are....
1. The promise of character-growth / campaign rules, because that is a stand-out feature I can't find in other games I own right now.
2. I'm treating this like a Warpath primer... because that is the Kickstarter I am wishing this was. :-p
" just chatting to Jake about the Beta at the moment and scheduling the gameplay video in.
On scenery sprues, I have the final sprue layout. You guys should be very happy with it, much better than what we previously thought was possible. Look for the next update coming soon."
This is sounding like it could be a turnabourt point, no?
That is, unless they're overegging it. But noone would do that, would they?
" just chatting to Jake about the Beta at the moment and scheduling the gameplay video in.
On scenery sprues, I have the final sprue layout. You guys should be very happy with it, much better than what we previously thought was possible. Look for the next update coming soon."
This is sounding like it could be a turnabourt point, no?
That is, unless they're overegging it. But noone would do that, would they?
It may provide a boost but I doubt it will be a 'turn around point'. I think folks hoping this would be the Best Terrain Deal EVAH! have already looked and passed it by for a variety of reasons.
Didn't Mantic used to run 30 day kickstarters? Deadzone is listed as a 38 day one (a wierd number). Can you just pick the day you want to end now with KS and that's why you can get these previously nonstandard lengths? While I agree that some of the choices of sculpts and updates haven't turned out as hoped, perhaps the added length of the campaign is increasing the mid-KS lull adding to the effect.
We’ve done it – that’s half a million dollars achieved… simply a mindblowing amount in the time frame!
So to recap, that’s now:
- A fifth free faction of your choice added to a pledge of Strike Team and up!
- The Asterian Faction Starter locked in!
- The Forge Father Faction Starter locked in!
- Digital rules for the two new factions added to your pledge!
Thank you so much!
The Expanded Universe Bundle is the best way to get the two new factions, saving $20 off adding them individually.
$510,000 – BattleZone Upgrade: +1 Buildings Sprue
If we hit this goal we will add 1 additional Building Sprue to each BattleZone FOR FREE.
Currently the BattleZones are at 3 Building Sprues and 1 Connector Sprue. Hitting this stretch goal will change that to 4 Buildings Sprues and 1 Connector Sprue, adding the equivalent of 6 tiles into each set. We will make sure that the Connector Sprue is resized to give you enough connectors for the extra tiles.
All future BattleZones will get this starting number of sprues as standard.
So, what does that mean for our scenery pledge levels and add-ons?
Only-click Urban Battlefield ($100 + early bird):
PLUS 4 additional Building Sprues - approximately 24 Tiles
Only-click Urban Wargames Table ($285 + early bird):
PLUS 12 additional Building Sprues - approximately 72 Tiles
Urban Fight ($25) Scenery Add-on:
PLUS 1 additional Building Sprue - approximately 6 tiles
Urban Skirmish ($50) Scenery Add-on:
PLUS 2 additional Building Sprues - approximately 12 tiles
Urban Battle ($95) Scenery Add-on:
PLUS 4 additional Building Sprues - approximately 24 Tiles
Urban War ($185) Scenery Add-on:
PLUS 8 additional Building Sprues - approximately 48 Tiles
$520,000 – FREE Doctor Gayle Simmonds
One of the stars in the lead up to our Kickstarter launching, Doctor Simmonds unfortunately met an untimely end as the Plague outbreak just got too much for her…
Doctor Simmonds was one of the genius minds on Nexus Psi, stationed as both an archaeologist and biotechnician.
By the time the Containment Protocol was ordered and the Enforcers landed, Simmonds had already lost her team to the mutant beasts roaming the streets. Having received basic training by the security teams on board her ship during spaceflight, Gayle managed to preserve her life a little better than the others – but it was only a matter of time before the Plague caught up with her.
Defiant in the clutches of a rabid second generation, her body succumbed to the mutant virus, warping far faster than any other victim previous. She eventually awoke from the turmoil, her need for knowledge greatly exaggerated, a base desire to cause pain greatly inflamed.
With vengeance on her mind, Simmonds vowed to destroy those that had left her to this fate.
If we hit this goal we will be able to sculpt and tool Doctor Gayle Simmonds, a brand new special character for the Plague – and include her free with pledges of Recon ($100 + Early Bird) and up*
Not only that but such is her importance to the Nexus Psi story that Jake will centre one of the scenarios around Simmonds, as the Enforcers will need to quickly end her life if they are to escape her thirst for blood!
* Not including the scenery only pledges.
$525,000 – FREE Deadzone Short-Story Compilation
Enriching the Warpath universe was one of the key motivations behind Deadzone and, if we hit this goal, you’ll allow us to delve further into the background as we will write a short story compilation written by the likes of esteemed authors Guy Haley, Alessio Cavatore, Jake Thornton PLUS special guests.
This epic new compilation will feature all-new explosive stories between the warring factions and special characters both new and old.
If we hit this goal, we will add a FREE digital copy of the Deadzone Short Story Compilation with every pledge on the Deadzone Kickstarter.
There you go guys, let us know what you think in the comments. Let’s get these goals hit!
Confirmation that the $510k stretch goal does not apply to Strike team as it doesn't contain Battlezones just building sprues (or other game pledge levels) but there will be more for them later.
Mantic-logo.small
Creator Mantic Games 1 minute ago
Strike Team doesn't have BattleZones but will be getting more sprues by the end of the campaign
AlexHolker wrote: A grand total of two women in your game, and one is a zombie.
Bravo, Mantic. Bravo.
One faction consists mostly of robots, one is so heavily armoured it would be anyone's guess visually, one is so far gone into mutation you wouldn't see the difference, one consists of dwarfs and for all we know they could all be female - beards and all -, marauders well I wouldn't be surprised if they'd have quite different sexual characteristics from humans anyway and the rebs are mostly alien as well.
"hey mantic, a game with dozens of models and not one of them is a pony?!? nice going!" would make just about as much sense.
"hey mantic, a game with dozens of models and not one of them is a pony?!? nice going!" would make just about as much sense.
Maybe Mantic is planning on adding a white Equarian mercenary who is known for their scarlet uniform and goes by the callsign of "Skwig" and then won't you feel silly for that comparison. At the least it'd be a much better homage character than BB...
It's nice to see the new goals after that marathon one, but I'm still torn between trying to go big on this one (and running the risk of not liking the Orx at all) or waiting for a year to see what the proper WarPath KS will bring. I'm probably only going to go big on one of them, and it's a real toss-up at the moment for me.
scarletsquig wrote: ^ Don't worry, if I ever end up with a spare $5k to put into a Mantic KS for a custom sculpt, I'll do my best to horrify you all.
Why spend $5k? You could just make a cult of personality in the KS comments getting a few people to make my little pony avatars and my little pony names, and to demand a pony character. If there's enough support, Mantic will make a pony character as an add-on for the rebels.
...Not to mention you'd vastly improve the quality and atmosphere of this KS's comments section
oh and given the amount of customers SS has probably brought in to mantic KSes by now it'd be no more than fair, too. Not to mention Krinsath's suggestion actually sounds like fun to paint. ...and I *hate* the whole MLP thing.
At this point I'm more excited for the fiction than the models.
Mantic's comments about the KOW problem really, really sapped my confidence in them. Unless they start showing amazing sculpts left and right, I'll probably drop down to a token pledge.
I can always go crazy in the pledge manager later. :V
I don't really like the concept for the plague woman. Look too much like something you'd get from zombicide. Tough the extra sprues goal seems great, since the value you previously got for the terrain was average at best.
And for the BEEEP complaining about the lack of woman, i'd like to point out that also theyr is no disabled, no black and no Autochthon. Guess you'be be happier in another hobby than miniature gaming, since it's not pc enough for you
DaveC wrote: Confirmation that the $510k stretch goal does not apply to Strike team as it doesn't contain Battlezones just building sprues (or other game pledge levels) but there will be more for them later.
Mantic-logo.small
Creator Mantic Games 1 minute ago
Strike Team doesn't have BattleZones but will be getting more sprues by the end of the campaign
May just be me, but I think it is pretty crappy to have a 33% increase to the terrain not also increase the terrain in the Strike pledge (and in all game pledges to be honest).
DaveC wrote: Confirmation that the $510k stretch goal does not apply to Strike team as it doesn't contain Battlezones just building sprues (or other game pledge levels) but there will be more for them later.
Mantic-logo.small
Creator Mantic Games 1 minute ago
Strike Team doesn't have BattleZones but will be getting more sprues by the end of the campaign
May just be me, but I think it is pretty crappy to have a 33% increase to the terrain not also increase the terrain in the Strike pledge (and in all game pledges to be honest).
For a 10k stretch after Strike Team just got a free faction? Good luck with that. Strike team will get more terrain, and it sounds like they were able to add more to each sprue with the final layouts.
DaveC wrote: Confirmation that the $510k stretch goal does not apply to Strike team as it doesn't contain Battlezones just building sprues (or other game pledge levels) but there will be more for them later.
Mantic-logo.small
Creator Mantic Games 1 minute ago
Strike Team doesn't have BattleZones but will be getting more sprues by the end of the campaign
May just be me, but I think it is pretty crappy to have a 33% increase to the terrain not also increase the terrain in the Strike pledge (and in all game pledges to be honest).
Why do people act like every single stretch is gonna provide free stuff for Strike Team? It blows me away how the next stretch adds a free model, the last stretch added a free starter, and because there is 10k worth of funds that don't provide free stuff, people gripe. Come on folks.
streetsamurai wrote: I don't really like the concept for the plague woman. Look too much like something you'd get from zombicide.
Don't worry. The final model will look nothing like that.
Oh stop it you!
I kind of agree that it's kind of a good idea to drop your pledge to $5 or something if you really aren't sure. On the other hand, if everyone does that, then we won't get anything like the same level of value for the finished product that we might otherwise have had! Some belief in what Mantic are going to be able to do (and some balls? ) are perhaps necessary in this case however.
Personally I think Mantic have done enough good stuff for me to be able to pledge a moderate amount for this - yes there might be a few misfires, but looking at the Dreadball season 2 stuff, and even a lot of the KoW range for that matter, I'm confident enough that I'll be able to re-arrange what I'm buying if necessary, and still not be in the position where I'm regretting spending money on stuff I don't really want.
Maybe a lower total will give Mantic time to focus on making the fewer models better models. Also, maybe positive reinforcement for negative behavior isn't the best method for creating improved outcomes.
Pacific wrote: I kind of agree that it's kind of a good idea to drop your pledge to $5 or something if you really aren't sure. On the other hand, if everyone does that, then we won't get anything like the same level of value for the finished product that we might otherwise have had! Some belief in what Mantic are going to be able to do (and some balls? ) are perhaps necessary in this case however.
Why would you drop your pledge? Treat your pledge as if you were going to go through with it, then near the end judge if it's worth it (or just sit on the pledge and check at the end if it's worth it and make necessary addition). This is true particularly if you're on an early bird. You lose nothing by sitting on a pledge, and it means there's more likely to be additional stretches unlocked at the end.
Pledges are coming in nice and fast now, increasing the amount of stuff in the terrain pledges and add-ons by a third really seems to have really helped get things moving after that slow stretch.
DaveC wrote: Confirmation that the $510k stretch goal does not apply to Strike team as it doesn't contain Battlezones just building sprues (or other game pledge levels) but there will be more for them later.
Mantic-logo.small Creator Mantic Games 1 minute ago
Strike Team doesn't have BattleZones but will be getting more sprues by the end of the campaign
May just be me, but I think it is pretty crappy to have a 33% increase to the terrain not also increase the terrain in the Strike pledge (and in all game pledges to be honest).
Why do people act like every single stretch is gonna provide free stuff for Strike Team? It blows me away how the next stretch adds a free model, the last stretch added a free starter, and because there is 10k worth of funds that don't provide free stuff, people gripe. Come on folks.
Perhaps because out of 2700 or so backers, over 2000 are Strike pledges? And almost another 100 are higher levels giving multiples of the Strike team? So perhaps even Mantic ought to consider those folks the main backers? Perhaps the less than exuberant number of terrain only pledges is an indicator that terrain only backers won't be the main source of funding for this project?
Beyond that, strike team backers will reach a terminal point, while terrain only backers are still untapped, I see nothing wrong in making terrain only (and terrain upgrade) pledges more attractive, I can see many positive things on that.
PsychoticStorm wrote: Beyond that, strike team backers will reach a terminal point, while terrain only backers are still untapped, I see nothing wrong in making terrain only (and terrain upgrade) pledges more attractive, I can see many positive things on that.
That and since the the stretches also enhance add-ons, the buy-in for benefiting from the extra sprues is quite low. Good way to entice people to grab an extra terrain kit.
Besides, Mantic said they are hoping for 10 terrain sprues in Strike Team before the end of things, so it isn't like those not grabbing the awesome terrain kits will miss out on much. Which reminds me... Off to grab one of those urban detailing kits. I've been meaning to grab some stuff from AW for a while and this is a great excuse.
Regarding the lack of women and racial diversity in the current line-up:
I would rather have a game that problematically lacks any women and / or racial diversity, than have a game that is problematically full of sexualized women and / or stereotyped tokens. Case in point: Sedition Wars. If that's your idea of a positive presentation of women, with their pointless sexualized poses, or of healthy racial diversity, with the big black muscleman and anime Japanese kitten, then you and I will never see eye-to-eye on this. Don't even mention Kingdom Death: Monster.
Would I prefer a sensible, intelligently diverse presentation of race and gender in Deadzone? Yes. Especially because it more accurately reflects the modern world we already live in. Women can join combat units in the US army now, so why not get with the times? But I worry I would be "rewarded" for pushing that issue by getting a bunch of god-awful sexy ladies and / or cringe-worthy racist stereotype figures. This is my last post on the subject, and if someone wants to carry the torch for getting more racial and gender diversity into the game, I won't stand in your way. More power to you. But I'm concerned enough that it would backfire badly that you won't catch me leading that charge.
Does that make me cynical and defeatist? Yes. Possibly even a hypocrite, because I've seen the green for the Rebs female and i think she projects authority and capability, not sexuality, just as one would expect and want. But honestly - what has the gaming world done to prove me wrong? However much people dislike the Marauders, it doesn't hold a candle to the fury I'd have if Mantic put a bunch of thinly veiled racist human stereotypes, or pointless sexy-butt women, into my KS haul. Mantic has some smart, top-notch sculptors, but they obviously also have some that haven't learned basic anatomy or how to make a figure look like it's actually carrying a gun. What assurance do I get that Mantic will entrust the racially / gender sensitive figs to the sculptors with the smarts, maturity, and talent to do them well?
None, that's what. Do I want to roll those dice? No, thank you.
Vermonter wrote: What assurance do I get that Mantic will entrust the racially / gender sensitive figs to the sculptors with the smarts, maturity, and talent to do them well?
And, quite possibly the least stereotypical female sculpt I've seen from any wargames company in a very long time:
Vermonter wrote: Regarding the lack of women and racial diversity in the current line-up:
I would rather have a game that problematically lacks any women and / or racial diversity, than have a game that is problematically full of sexualized women and / or stereotyped tokens. Case in point: Sedition Wars. If that's your idea of a positive presentation of women, with their pointless sexualized poses, or of healthy racial diversity, with the big black muscleman and anime Japanese kitten, then you and I will never see eye-to-eye on this. Don't even mention Kingdom Death: Monster.
On racial stuff:
I didn't realise that these guys had a defined racial background
Is one of these worse than the other? The big dude is easily painted with any skin tone you choose.
Neither of these are particularly sexualised, either.
Now stop making me defend McVey/Sedition Wars. I feel dirty.
Would I prefer a sensible, intelligently diverse presentation of race and gender in Deadzone? Yes. Especially because it more accurately reflects the modern world we already live in. Women can join combat units in the US army now, so why not get with the times? But I worry I would be "rewarded" for pushing that issue by getting a bunch of god-awful sexy ladies and / or cringe-worthy racist stereotype figures. This is my last post on the subject, and if someone wants to carry the torch for getting more racial and gender diversity into the game, I won't stand in your way. More power to you. But I'm concerned enough that it would backfire badly that you won't catch me leading that charge.
Does that make me cynical and defeatist? Yes. Possibly even a hypocrite, because I've seen the green for the Rebs female and i think she projects authority and capability, not sexuality, just as one would expect and want. But honestly - what has the gaming world done to prove me wrong? However much people dislike the Marauders, it doesn't hold a candle to the fury I'd have if Mantic put a bunch of thinly veiled racist human stereotypes, or pointless sexy-butt women, into my KS haul. Mantic has some smart, top-notch sculptors, but they obviously also have some that haven't learned basic anatomy or how to make a figure look like it's actually carrying a gun. What assurance do I get that Mantic will entrust the racially / gender sensitive figs to the sculptors with the smarts, maturity, and talent to do them well?
None, that's what. Do I want to roll those dice? No, thank you.
Mate, this is your second post ever. You're already flying the "this is my last post on this subject" flag? Are you here to discuss games, or here to make grand, meaningful sweeping statements/rants and put yourself on the cross? You clearly have a bunch of personal issues around gender and race, and you're getting a bit too excited about it. The "gaming world" doesn't really care about you. They care about what sells. Hopefully, someone will release female troops who dress just like the guys - there's quite a few of us here who keep asking for those. Great martyrdom statements like yours don't really help, though. As far as racial issues go, they're your own. I choose the colour of the paint that goes onto my models, and have always done so.
Erm, they are Toy Soldiers..... playing the Racial card seems a mite i dunno.... pointless?
Its not like the ethnic divergences are the bad guys or anything or portrayed in a negative light.
Its weird really, When i paint space marines they are always white. Not racist just happens to be. My catchan army however had a variety of skin types. (doing tattoos on dark skin was a particular challenge)
There's nothing to stop you painting the models any colour you want, never has been. I dont think its a reflection on you if they all happen to be caucasian.
Im probably in this kickstarter just for the terrain though tbh as the models dont really do it for me. Im sure you're not suggesting THATS not ethically and sexually diverse enough?
I've always deliberately painted my models with a variety of skin tones. Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Ogres, Necromunda Gangers... whatever. I also vary the skin tones of my orcs. Some have lighter green skin, some darker. Same thing, different colour spectrum.
The only races I don't really vary in that way are Dwarves and Elves (Squats and Eldar). I suppose I see them as more specifically northern European, with a mix-in of Celtic for dwarves and fey for elves - though I can also do swarthy/Middle Eastern for Chaos Dwarves and their derivatives.
Azazelx, you're right that "last post on this subject" was a pretty obnoxious thing for me to say on a chat board. Downright stupid, really. It's a shame we got off on the wrong foot, as I've enjoyed reading your posts. But yes, that's entirely my fault; I should actually thank you for catching me out on that. You're also spot on in saying I was making a "sweeping" statements, especially in regard to Sedition Wars. I really wasn't fair to Studio McVey.
Even if I'm being accurate about my own opinion, (which I don't believe carries any more weight than anyone else's), I'd call Sedition Wars more of a mixed bag. I don't have any problem with most of the figures you posted, and if I'd been clearer and more precise with my criticism in the first place, you wouldn't have needed to go to the trouble. My fault - I own the game, have the figures, and have varied opinions on them. Should have known better.
We do disagree on the guy in the exo-suit, though. I take your point that you can paint your figures to be whatever race you like, or imagine them to be whatever race you like under their helmets. But it's another thing when you sculpt a figure to represent a race, in this case as an African-American, and then you make the one figure you sculpt that way over-muscled and huge. You can paint him white and name him Bernhard Schadenfreude if you like, but his features are still going to be African-American, and he's still going be the African-American character in the IP, the story, and any official publications. We might not agree, but yes, I think that's a problem. I can still enjoy the game, but yeah, I'd rather the one figure they'd sculpted to be African American hadn't been defined by being the biggest, burliest figure of the bunch. I like Sedition Wars a lot, both for the imaginative Strain villains and for many, if not all, of the human figures, male and female. But that guy was a disappointment to me.
DiabolicAl - I think you're concerned I'm somehow saying that gamers are racist. I'm not, and I don't believe that, regardless of how you or anyone else imagines or paints their forces. Imagine your forces any way you like, because if you don't have that privacy and freedom, what's the point? That's the beauty of the hobby. But given that my last post was over the top, I can't blame you for getting that impression. Generally I think the gaming industry has the same problems most pop culture industries have with race and gender, no more, no less.
Scarletsquig - Good visual points - thank you for that. I shouldn't have given Mantic such short shrift on the race / gender thing, especially since the Marauder issue is really an apples and oranges comparison. Again, I really should have known better and thought before I put my foot in my mouth. I always thought that female MVP was a pretty fantastic move for Mantic to make, too.
My apologies to everyone for going too far, exhibiting some painfully sloppy thinking, and writing something unfair and even insulting. You all have my respect, and my thanks for letting me know I was being an ass. I will learn from this.
adamsouza wrote: I would have bought sprues of Necromunda bulk heads $5 a piece, and they really are not as flexible as these Mantic ones will be.
The biggest hurdle for them is the mind set of gamers, like myself, who are used to making their own terrain, as opposed to buying it.
I'm for strike force, and I appreciate the terrain tiles that will be part of it, but I won't be buying more of those tiles beyond that.
I just realized, if you can figure out how thick the tiles are, you can make roofs and maybe walls out of plasticard for your buildings, and try and save on your tiles. Maybe scribe a few panel lines in, since most roofs are unadorned.
Bolognesus wrote: "hey mantic, a game with dozens of models and not one of them is a pony?!? nice going!" would make just about as much sense.
We do disagree on the guy in the exo-suit, though. I take your point that you can paint your figures to be whatever race you like, or imagine them to be whatever race you like under their helmets. But it's another thing when you sculpt a figure to represent a race, in this case as an African-American, and then you make the one figure you sculpt that way over-muscled and huge. You can paint him white and name him Bernhard Schadenfreude if you like, but his features are still going to be African-American, and he's still going be the African-American character in the IP, the story, and any official publications. We might not agree, but yes, I think that's a problem. I can still enjoy the game, but yeah, I'd rather the one figure they'd sculpted to be African American hadn't been defined by being the biggest, burliest figure of the bunch. I like Sedition Wars a lot, both for the imaginative Strain villains and for many, if not all, of the human figures, male and female. But that guy was a disappointment to me.
Well, I haven't been on the McVey bandwagon from the limited-edition resin days, and I'm not exactly excited about the fluff for the game anyway (because it seems generic at best) but I'm not sure how many specific characters they've actually created to date? I only got on board from the advent of their KS, and so I could be wrong, but disregarding the dozen or so KS "homage" characters (which cross race and gender boundaries anyway) - the "named" characters from this game that I've noticed appear to be one white woman and one black man. It's not like there's a dozen well-established named-and-modelled skinny white guys being dwarfed by Bobby Lashley, after all. Anyway, again - does The Mighty Zug have black, white, hispanic features? I painted mine with dark skin, though I also painted a bunch of my other human BB figures with dark skin as well. racist or realistic?
DiabolicAl - I think you're concerned I'm somehow saying all games, or all gamers are racist. I'm not, and I don't believe that. Imagine your forces any way you like, because if you don't have that private freedom, what's the point? But given that my last post was over the top, I don't blame you for getting that impression. Generally I think games culture has the same problems most of pop culture has with race and gender, no more, no less.
Scarletsquig - Good visual points - thank you for that. I shouldn't have given Mantic such short shrift on the race / gender thing, especially since the Marauder issue is really an apples and oranges comparison.
This is it. Compare the depiction of the Mantic DB corporation females, to say, real-life female athletes. I could have some real fun with google images here , but pick out some female hockey players, netball players, female WWE "divas", Roller-derby girls.. which ones are "sexist" and which are neutral and which are celebrations of femininity? Roller derby girls might look like they're all just tits and tattoos, but I'm sure they's also good at putting your teeth out. ...they're like the Escher gangers of real-world sports.
Female soldiers. sure, should generally dress the same way as their counterparts. People with a defined uniform obviously should be in that uniform. After that, it's much more amorphous. It doesn't mean that I want all female figures to look like these
- but you know, I'll probably buy those anyway. If they produce good models of properly-dressed, non-cheesecake females, I'll buy those, too. The main difficulty we've had is that no-one has dared to really produce non-cheesecake military females - though Statuesque Miniatures has put out some nice models recently. There's a bit more luck in the fantasy genre though, if you look through Reaper's catalogue. They also have tons of cheesecake - but c'est la vie.
My apologies to everyone for going too far, exhibiting some painfully sloppy thinking, and writing something unfair and even insulting. You all have my respect, and my thanks for letting me know I was being an ass.
No problem - just remember that while Dakka is often an argumentative place, it's not nearly the same kind of atmosphere as a screaming match in Kickstarter comments. Stay for the discussion.
Azazelx - I'll keep this short, as I got to hit the hay, so apologies for only addressing part of your post.
I guess for me there are two (Jekyll / Hyde?) ways I could approach depictions of females in games. I could get on a soapbox and make a pseudo-academic argument about how women are portrayed, but honestly, while I am a (pseudo?) academic and despite what my last post suggested (or maybe, come to think of it, exactly what it demonstrated), gender issues aren't my thing. So let's skip that one, (surprise! That one was Hyde!), I'm sure we'll all be better off.
Instead, I'll speak simply as a gamer. As a gamer, I want my models to make sense. I want Orx Marauders, if they are supposed to be hard-core Mercs, to look fierce, independent, and capable - not like buffoons. Likewise, I want my female soldiers to look like soldiers, wearing practical protective gear that has some sense of military utility about it, even if it's futuristic. Female soldier figures whose poses, or whose outfits seem designed primarily to show off their busts or butts really annoy me, because they make no sense. Yes, I know that man-sized rat creatures with drill weapons also make no sense, but that's the point: Good miniature sculpts make them LOOK like they do. Bad miniature sculpts can make the most "realistic", up-to-date miniature of a contemporary soldier look absurd.
Generally speaking it seems that while some sculptors learned a long time ago that miniature poses should "tell a story" and / or look purposeful, some haven't yet. There's clean purpose in the way the Rebel soldiers line up their guns to aim, and there's a nice sense of "aha, THERE you are" - "oh gak! It's seen us!" suggested by the 1st gen sculpt's attitude and facial expression. The Marauders are an old issue, I know, but they're a classic example of the opposite. The Marauder with two guns at his side, pointed in the air, defies explanation. What is the sculptor trying to say with that pose? What is the message? The only one I can detect is, "since there's a gun on either side, he won't tip over." When that's the primary thing your model's pose communicates, it calls attention to itself because of its own bad design. People don't even want to put them on the table, because their mediocrity actually distracts players from the game world.
For me, over sexy female soldier types likewise yank me out of the "suspension of disbelief" zone and interrupt the atmosphere of the game. That doesn't mean I don't want female soldier figures, it means I want female soldier figures that are consistent with whatever standard of battlefield realism is being set by the rest of the game. In a wargame, when a female soldier's bust is exposed to be sexy, it's also presumably exposed to bullets, knives, etc., in a totally foolish way for someone on a battlefield. While it's not exactly the same, just as the Marauder's pose says to me, "I make no sense but I won't tip over!", the pointlessly sexy female figure's pose says to me, "I make no sense but I'm eye candy!" It's an unwanted distraction from the world of the game.
^ No need to apologize, I agree with everything you said. Just wasn't sure if you'd seen the female dreadball minis or not.
And that's a far more reasonable post on the female soldiers topic than normally gets posted.
So far Mantic have been fairly good about making realistic women, I think they know they'd get murdered if they took a walk down cheesecake alley at this point now that they have a good reputation for doing it right.
Only exception is Mars Attacks, where they'll need to go down the gore/porn route to stay true to the IP.
I understand what you're saying, but frankly the "chainmail bikini syndrome" is a well-worn trope of gaming, fantasy and sci-fi. It runs deep in out little niche, through film, television, videogames and everything else. I alternately laugh at it, make fun of it, stare at it (mmm... booo-bies...), embrace it, undermine it and ultimately disregard getting too passionate about it. In one of my other hobbies - 1:6 scale modelling, the syndrome is known as "tactical hookers". Both these figures came from the same manufacturer. Both sold well, but the second one took them by surprise and got a re-issue with grey fatigues.
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4132/5039644770_2cd937f846_b.jpg http://i731.photobucket.com/albums/ww316/BIO55/p90-2.jpg
Ultimately, all you or I can do is tell producers of miniatures like Mantic, or Vic, or whoever what we'd like to see, and then if they produce something fitting that description, buy them. It does little good to be railing against Sedition Wars because Kev White sculpted the female troopers posing their booties when in many ways they're as good as female (sci-fi) troops have gotten. If they don't get bought, we end up with more of these rather than tilting the market further towards properly-uniformed figures because "the last ones we tried didn't sell well":
Sisters of Battle sadly didn't sell all that well. I've heard a friend's wife complain about them because they're wearing corset-armour. Female miniatures are often hard, because it seems people are more interested in tearing down the various attempts that aren't hyper-sexualised because they don't match their own personal standards or vision. In short, angry tirades don't really do much. Calm discussion with those few who are willing to listen, and then following up on it by buying them (or squads, regiments, armies - depending on what you play) and then showing those off once painted for the "wow, cool!" factor will do more than being angry on the internet.
Me? I'll buy both types as long as I like the figures. Still, Chainmail bikini figures are going to be much more one-offs, individuals, while uniformed and geared females that fit into something like Imperial Guard will be bought in larger numbers. Let's see how the Raging Heroes attempt pans out...
Azazelx wrote: Sisters of Battle sadly didn't sell all that well.
For the most part, that's less to do with their design and more to do with the fact that they're expensive and have spent so much time over the years with no available, official codex.
adamsouza wrote: I would have bought sprues of Necromunda bulk heads $5 a piece, and they really are not as flexible as these Mantic ones will be.
The biggest hurdle for them is the mind set of gamers, like myself, who are used to making their own terrain, as opposed to buying it.
I'm for strike force, and I appreciate the terrain tiles that will be part of it, but I won't be buying more of those tiles beyond that.
I just realized, if you can figure out how thick the tiles are, you can make roofs and maybe walls out of plasticard for your buildings, and try and save on your tiles. Maybe scribe a few panel lines in, since most roofs are unadorned.
Not a bad suggestion at all.
Going one further than that, I've already made these.
Azazelx wrote: Sisters of Battle sadly didn't sell all that well.
For the most part, that's less to do with their design and more to do with the fact that they're expensive and have spent so much time over the years with no available, official codex.
I'm talking about from release onwards (after the initial splash)
Yes, all metal armies haven't usually sold well, and I can probably count on one hand the number of times I have played SoB (from hundreds & hundreds of games of 40k). I used to have an all metal Steel Legion army that I bought way back in the day when I was a staffer - this was in the days of 'metal by weight' that staff members could enjoy. Think I paid about £70-80 for something that would have cost well over £500 had I bought it new! I understand in modern pricing context this is not as unreasonable (considering Forge World DKoK armies and the like), but it explans why you hardly saw any of them on the tabletop and by extension the likes of SoB.
Not saying that they would have been as common as Marines or IG, but a nice box of plastic sisters for £15 I think would have made them a lot more prevalent. The same argument could be made for Specialist Games and the like - if you want something to sell, you have to make it easier to buy (in terms of both its presence on the website, in White Dwarf etc, and its price).
@Vermonter - don't worry about apologising! Nice to have someone making such well written posts, regardless of whether I agree with your points. I think it's the nature of internet forums for communication and communicators intent to be difficult to understand at times - excessive use of smilies is a good way around it! I can write something like "Azazelx please don't go so heavy on the new guy, you might scare him away!" followed by many to show that it is just some good-natured finger-wagging
Regarding that topic, I think 'cheesecake' goes back a long way in the fantasy/sci-fi setting; From King Kong holding a semi-naked, screaming blonde woman while he is climbing up the building, right through the B-movies of the 50's and 60's, to the iconic Frank Franzetta fantasy artwork that is synonymous with Dungeons and Dragons. As Azazelx and ScarletSquig have said though, I think it has to have it's place - the chainmail bikini (and don't forget the thong!) goes alongside the bulging musculature and loin cloth of the Barbarian, of Arnold Schwartzneggar, as a way of illustrating the primal, bestial (and sexualised/un-civilised) nature of that setting. Again I think a different version of over-sexualisation works for Infinity, as part of that game's anime/manga heritage (although there have been many hard discussions about that very topic!).
It would look completely out of place in 40k however, despite lots of hopeful(?) artwork of female commissars wearing bikinis! Same too with Deadzone, I would be very surprised if we saw a Kingdom of Death style 'pin-up' strutting her way in high-heels while shooting plague troopers with a machine gun in each hand. Going on Mantic's track record however, I see no real cause for concern at this point.
@adamsouza - those look great, where did you get that terrain from? And is that a set-up for Dreadball Xtreme?
It's very easy to cross the line with female models, both with the look and the volume. And no matter what Mantic does, someone will claim its not enough. I personally don't understand why some feel it would be needed to add boobs to an Orc, Robot, or Reptile. Bit it will continue to be asked for daily in the KS comments by someone.
I am thinking of doing a kickstarter where I fashion a line of resin dongs in various states of arousal, or perhaps codpieces - the King Arthur, the Black Russian etc - to tap a previously untapped market. I am sure if the market is there for boobies, it must also be there for wangs too, right? I mean we want people to be able to identify the miniatures as male surely? Why not do so with something that makes that unambiguously so?
OK! So... now they have hit the 510,000 figure (and unlocked the addiitonal scenery sprue), are they likely to add new ones beyond or will we now have to wait until 525 or 530 until the next stretch goals are revealed?
Well, I don't know if the digital short story compilation is going to set the world on fire... frankly the sexism in games discussion is probably more interesting...
Well the next streachgoal (after the fiction of course) is probably this
Not bad, damaged buildings.
Personally I have a huge issue with Simmonds concept art.
She looks anything but her background and more zombielike than any 3rd gen sculpted or illustrated, actually its the only plague member that looks like a zombie.
PsychoticStorm wrote: Its a great concept art for a zombie, but can you imagine her especially with such posture be in a lab researching stronger mutagens for the plague?
That's fair, but at the same time, would she be on a battlefield holding beakers and flasks and a nice white lab coat? I guess I think this works for what she's doing while the game is taking place.
I'm not sure that Gayle looks 'more zombielike' or 'further gone' than the other 3rd gens that have been presented. She still has very distinct human-like features, mixed in with the beginnings of plague infection. Most of the 3rd gens shown have gone completely plague-tastic. I think it may be the mix of human and plague features which makes her seem more like a traditional zombie, but it makes sense how they got there to me.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
PsychoticStorm wrote: What I meant is, she looks and is posed as a zombie, a mindless thing, not a genius, her overall appearance is not bad, her pose is.
She doesn't look particularly mindless to me. She looks pissed.
Depends where you live in the world - when I used to live in Korea I used to have to dodge at least half a dozen people like that on the walk home from work.
Looking forward to seeing what the new damaged terrain is going to turn out like..
They do if they have a broken leg. I'm not suggesting Gayle is a fit specimen of taut athleticism; her body has clearly seen better days. I can very easily see someone who is pissed off and seeking vengeance on those who did this to her in this concept art though. And, of course, the actual mini? Well, we'll see what happens with that.
I like the Doc. Looks like she's being wracked by mutation while dragging herself towards cause of her condition (too-slow corp forces) filled with hate.
I mean yeah, she looks more like a zombie than the other 3rd gens, but I dont think she's going to look bad lined up next to them.
they'll like them" and it blew up in their face. Probably wont make that mistake again. But in the end, if they improve on them, it will be better for all they were showed really.
