The Asterians have a great alien and/or robotic look to them. They make me...happy.

 insaniak wrote:

 MLaw wrote:
Also.. why do the robots have ears?

Because they're elf robots. Duh.



And yes, I realise that it's possibly somewhat hypocritical of me to criticise bearded tanks, but be perfectly happy with pointy-eared robots... But really, it comes down far more to the final look than to what it symbolises. I'd be ok with slightly anthopomorphic tanks if they at least looked cool... and those dwarf tanks just don't. They're just a box with a dwarf face on the front.

It's not hypocritical. Humanoid robots are by definition going to have humanoid features, it's just a question of how closely they will mimic a human. A stylised pair of ears like Batman's cowl doesn't look out of place on the Asterian drones.

 Azazelx wrote:

 BrookM wrote:
That Corporation concept that was previewed earlier, is that also happening?

It seems that they wanted to do Asterians first and did a "what do you think?" to test the waters and make sure there wasn't a huge backlash against. With 2 weeks, there's a good chance they'll get to the Corporation yet. Stretch goals seem to be for adding new things, rather than sweetening the pot - which is taking the form of troops discounted more heavily than they were in their own DZ1&2 KS campaigns.

Thanks, that's maybe something for me to look forward to in this gakshow then.

 MLaw wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
As a consumer who loves generic sci fi stuff, there's nothing on the market that can compare with the Mantic Dropship. The Valkyrie is very specifically a 40k aesthetic. Other alternatives are WAY too small (GZG,Old Crow) and non-existent (Antenociti's Workshop). The price is right around 1/48 model kits and don't have the side effect of looking like kitbashed Apaches or Hinds.

Puppetswar and Titan-Forge are two examples of companies making nice dropships. I had a large hand in the initial design of the Titan-Forge dropship and I believe the retail on that will be around $60 and it is pretty close to the Valkyrie in size. The Puppetswar ships are nice too and range from about $30 to about $40 and are resin. I know there are one or two others out there but Mantics' dropship is definitely not the only game in town. A major difference is that the Mantic design is extremely basic, but if it appeals to you, hey more power to you. Nobody (as far as I can see) is telling you otherwise. The problem is that a fair enough number of us find it uninspiring that it's not compelling me to throw money at it. With it's poor design (my opinion of it) I am content with PW and TF and will probably buy up the AW and DF ones when they come out.

I'd pick the Mantic dropship over the titan forge one if both were the same price, I like the Hunter-killer look of the enforcer one and the TF one just reminds me to much of the chibihawk. The puppets war one is nice but has more of a transporter feel than a combat dropship.

I'd really like to see how the beard tank comes out as it looks like it will be fun to paint and SQUATS 4 LIFE. But if it looks derpy I will pass, ironically the titan forge tanks look amazing so I might even swap some of them into a FF force.

I'm working on a quick reference sheet for the Warpath alpha rules, if anyone hasn't had time to read through the rules yet, a quick skim through this should make it easier to figure out the bulk of the rules:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27484619/Mantic/Warpath%20Quick%20Reference%20Sheet%20v0.1.pdf

Great job Squig!

I appreciate the condensed rules. Makes this whole newfangled "mass battle" thing you kids keep talking about much more approachable.

 dragqueeninspace wrote:

 MLaw wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
As a consumer who loves generic sci fi stuff, there's nothing on the market that can compare with the Mantic Dropship. The Valkyrie is very specifically a 40k aesthetic. Other alternatives are WAY too small (GZG,Old Crow) and non-existent (Antenociti's Workshop). The price is right around 1/48 model kits and don't have the side effect of looking like kitbashed Apaches or Hinds.

Puppetswar and Titan-Forge are two examples of companies making nice dropships. I had a large hand in the initial design of the Titan-Forge dropship and I believe the retail on that will be around $60 and it is pretty close to the Valkyrie in size. The Puppetswar ships are nice too and range from about $30 to about $40 and are resin. I know there are one or two others out there but Mantics' dropship is definitely not the only game in town. A major difference is that the Mantic design is extremely basic, but if it appeals to you, hey more power to you. Nobody (as far as I can see) is telling you otherwise. The problem is that a fair enough number of us find it uninspiring that it's not compelling me to throw money at it. With it's poor design (my opinion of it) I am content with PW and TF and will probably buy up the AW and DF ones when they come out.

I'd pick the Mantic dropship over the titan forge one if both were the same price, I like the Hunter-killer look of the enforcer one and the TF one just reminds me to much of the chibihawk.

Since you mentioned it I went back and checked - and I agree with you.

As much as I really don't like the Enforcer version, the TF version is even worse.

Plastic over resin for a vehicle this size is preferable too.

Maybe the Enforcer Dropship will grow on me...

 Alpharius wrote:

 dragqueeninspace wrote:
[I'd pick the Mantic dropship over the titan forge one if both were the same price, I like the Hunter-killer look of the enforcer one and the TF one just reminds me to much of the chibihawk.

Since you mentioned it I went back and checked - and I agree with you.

Yeah, it's sobering and strange to check out the field of available drop ships, isn't it? So many wargamers seem to want them, but no one has quite hit the nail on the head yet, at least for my tastes.

Initially I wasn't so fond of the Enforcer interceptor. Then I looked at what's available, and I liked that even less. If Antenociti ever made theirs, that's the one I would go for, but that product seems to have vanished into some sort of development / infinity rights hell right now. I do like the GW Valkyrie and would buy one to modify, but it actually looks too large for my purposes. Smaller vehicles are better in my case, since I'd be using them primarily as occasional Deadzone scenery / objectives.

I'm still not thrilled by the prominent seam running down the middle of the Enforcer interceptor, and I wouldn't be happy to pay for Warpath vehicles that turn out to have seams just as prominent as those on the Mars Attacks robot. I've just asked Mantic about this, politely but point-blank, on the KS comments. But design-wise, I must admit that the Enforcer interceptor actually is my favorite. Partially by default, but even so.

I'm hoping they can eliminate the seam, and that it grows on me, too.

Supposedly that seam is just an angle top piece of the interceptor thats actually gonna sit flat in the mold. They just edge highlighted it. Apparently.

 MLaw wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
As a consumer who loves generic sci fi stuff, there's nothing on the market that can compare with the Mantic Dropship. The Valkyrie is very specifically a 40k aesthetic. Other alternatives are WAY too small (GZG,Old Crow) and non-existent (Antenociti's Workshop). The price is right around 1/48 model kits and don't have the side effect of looking like kitbashed Apaches or Hinds.

Puppetswar and Titan-Forge are two examples of companies making nice dropships. I had a large hand in the initial design of the Titan-Forge dropship and I believe the retail on that will be around $60 and it is pretty close to the Valkyrie in size. The Puppetswar ships are nice too and range from about $30 to about $40 and are resin. I know there are one or two others out there but Mantics' dropship is definitely not the only game in town.

I'm unfamiliar with the Titan Forge dropship and I don't see it available on their website. Can you provide a link? I'm always interested in well-designed near future/sci-fi vehicles!

The Puppets War aircraft are all pretty much the 40k/Robogear toy aesthetic, however, unless I am missing a model.

 MLaw wrote:
A major difference is that the Mantic design is extremely basic, but if it appeals to you, hey more power to you. Nobody (as far as I can see) is telling you otherwise. The problem is that a fair enough number of us find it uninspiring that it's not compelling me to throw money at it. With it's poor design (my opinion of it) I am content with PW and TF and will probably buy up the AW and DF ones when they come out.

Actually the generic-ness of the Mantic design is what does appeal to me. It's definitely better than the Puppets War ships I linked above, but I am anxious to see the Titan Forge one. Of course, this would all be moot if Antenociti's Workshop ever released theirs

I think the enforcer plane and the men themselves would have looked a lot better in a dirty weathered and more military color scheme, rather than trying to copy the clean cerberus look from Mass Effect. Armor always looks awesomer when it's dirty.

Hopefully the finished, plastic model has an actual cockpit; that would make it more attractive, as would interior detail.

I'm not a modeller by any stretch of the imagination but painting interiors and magnetizing doors is something that I can do and makes me feel like one of the big boy modellers.

 Vermonter wrote:
Yeah, it's sobering and strange to check out the field of available drop ships, isn't it? So many wargamers seem to want them, but no one has quite hit the nail on the head yet, at least for my tastes.

These are two concepts that Antenociti's Workshop previewed two years ago - and still haven't made (the one in their Kickstarter looks like a pregnant Firefly ship)

 judgedoug wrote:

Puppetswar and Titan-Forge are two examples of companies making nice dropships. I had a large hand in the initial design of the Titan-Forge dropship and I believe the retail on that will be around $60 and it is pretty close to the Valkyrie in size. The Puppetswar ships are nice too and range from about $30 to about $40 and are resin. I know there are one or two others out there but Mantics' dropship is definitely not the only game in town.

I'm unfamiliar with the Titan Forge dropship and I don't see it available on their website. Can you provide a link? I'm always interested in well-designed near future/sci-fi vehicles!

The Puppets War aircraft are all pretty much the 40k/Robogear toy aesthetic, however, unless I am missing a model.

 MLaw wrote:
A major difference is that the Mantic design is extremely basic, but if it appeals to you, hey more power to you. Nobody (as far as I can see) is telling you otherwise. The problem is that a fair enough number of us find it uninspiring that it's not compelling me to throw money at it. With it's poor design (my opinion of it) I am content with PW and TF and will probably buy up the AW and DF ones when they come out.

Actually the generic-ness of the Mantic design is what does appeal to me. It's definitely better than the Puppets War ships I linked above, but I am anxious to see the Titan Forge one. Of course, this would all be moot if Antenociti's Workshop ever released theirs

The titan forge drop ships are not available yet as they were part of one of their recent KS

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:

The titan forge drop ships are not available yet as they were part of one of their recent KS

Spoiler:

they also have a collection of shared hull vehicles from the same KS https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1084608523/x-terra-space-force-vs-daemonic-kingdom-tabletop-a/posts/1343818 eg

That is unfortunate. They are of the 40k/Robogear style aesthetic - large, bulbous cockpits and 6up weapons.

I've been tempted by the ISSCV dropship that Acme 360 makes, I might have to bite the bullet and get one along with the Mantic ones.
http://www.acme360models.com/mycustompage0001.htm

 GrimDork wrote:
Supposedly that seam is just an angle top piece of the interceptor thats actually gonna sit flat in the mold. They just edge highlighted it. Apparently.

Yeah, I found their response on the KS helpful so I'm copying it here. And bully to them for being up front with their answers.

"1) Regarding the (Forge Father) tank, we've actually given it to a new sculptor because the sculptor wasn't comfortable that he could do the concept justice. We want to match the concept art where we can - I think the Interceptor is a pretty spot on replication of the concept art.

2) (Regarding how much value will be added to the pledge levels) We are expanding the value in the Battlegroups, which by extension expand the value in the pledge level. That's not to say we don't have one or two things that can go in the pledge level, but just like Kings of War 2 it's the armies where we're putting in the value.

3) (On the dropship "seam".) That isn't a seam or a join, that top panel for example is one piece that'll sit flat in the mould, you won't get a mould line there. Basically, it's a slightly angled piece, and Dave has picked that with a highlight right the way down the middle.

4) (On the quality of vehicles to be produced.) To ease those worries, we've been doing big, flat, hard-line sci-fi panels for years now - the Battlezones scenery in part was a test run for designing and manufacturing vehicles. Much of the learning going into the vehicles comes from the Battlezones scenery range - we very consciously did it that way around."

I then pushed a little harder to say I'm hoping for better quality than the Mars Attacks vehicles, and got this:

"4) Us too, and we'll be pushing the toolmakers accordingly "

Regarding the "seam" that isn't one, before anyone says "now it's a feature lol!", yeah, it actually is a huge difference. If the ridge is a deliberate design choice, it will have none of the sloppiness or irregularity of a manufacturing seam. I was honestly hoping they'd say something like this, because it does improve the product a lot in my eyes.

 Vermonter wrote:
3) (On the dropship "seam".) That isn't a seam or a join, that top panel for example is one piece that'll sit flat in the mould, you won't get a mould line there. Basically, it's a slightly angled piece, and Dave has picked that with a highlight right the way down the middle.

Regarding the "seam" that isn't one, before anyone says "now it's a feature lol!", yeah, it actually is a huge difference. If the ridge is a deliberate design choice, it will have none of the sloppiness or irregularity of a manufacturing seam. I was honestly hoping they'd say something like this, because it does improve the product a lot in my eyes.

Well, yeah, it has to be a separate piece due to the top detail, panel lines, etc. That would have been impossible to produce in plastic unless the top/front of the dropship were separate pieces.

@judgedoug,

That Grendal is awesome.

Oh, that Titan Forge stuff is neat.

RE : Dropship - I think it's pretty safe to say that people want dropships. A lot of people are more than happy with the Enforcer one. I don't think it's horrible in design, it has a bit of a Destiny type of design (a lot of Enforcer stuff feels like it's rooted in Destiny to be honest).
When the TF KS had stalled, that's when I suggested to them to do a dropship and the numbers really picked up. Hopefully, Mantic will follow their cues and add options for alternate wings, cockpit, etc etc so people can customize if they want but either way, I probably will get 1 of the Mantic ships, if nothing else but for a spaceport table I want to do.

AW needs to stop dragging their feet on getting those designs out. I have to go back and look but I could almost swear he was showing prototypes of one but it might've been in 15mm.

EDIT: If you want an actual HK dropship, the Pegasus one is pretty cheap, reported to be closer to 28mm scale than 54mm, and is..I dunno.. an actual HK???

At least all of the designs on this page are different, right? Because it'd be pretty boring if they all looked the same, and not particularly helpful to the people who don't like that particular type.

Do you fine fellows think the hard plastic Warpath vehicles will all have the same price at retail? Or is the current pricing parity likely to expire when the KS does?

Almost everything they've put out at retail has been higher. A few things have been similarly priced after a 25% discount. I'm assuming the vehicles will be closer to $40 if they're 30 now. I know people seem to want to double the price to guess at Mantic's retail pricing but I dunno if they'll be selling any at that price range. But I doubt they'll be the price they are now.

I'm sure they'll raise the prices, too. I was asking more if people thought that a Forge Fathers Tank would still cost the same as a Veer-myn Tunneler, for example, or if they thought Mantic would differentiate hard plastic vehicle prices based on their manufacturing, or differing value to the game, or size of the cross-game market interest, or number the average player would want to or be able to field, etc. Will everything cost $50, or will dropships always be cheaper than Asterian troop transports?

My instinct on the vehicle pricing - which I admit is fairly uninformed - is that the $30 KS price will be hard to beat at discounted retail except in cases where the game tanks and a store is clearing its shelves. Which would be a bad sign for Warpath and an extreme case, of course. The wild card is how much shipping from the UK will add to that $30.

Re the dropships it's worth remembering that the GCPS/Plague have a dropship option as well that's different to the Enforcers that may be more in line with peoples expectations for what a scifi Dropship looks like the Interceptor seems to have been designed very much with Enforcer aesthetics in mind rather than a more generic look.

Ahhh. Hmm. That's an interesting point. Right now I think you'd pay more for the interceptor with options and tank with transport section AND turret options, versus a basic tunneler with no extras. However... they'll probably make options for the tunneler.

Mantic only has so many price points online the last time I checked, so I think things will be pretty similarly costed but if one or the other winds up costing them more to tool, they'll probably charge appropriately.

The KS pricing will definitely be lower. That only means a bargain if you perceive it that way though. Mantic stuff on clearance is not that absurd or uncommon either though, nor is their stuff resurfacing on KS at deeper discounts.

On the GCPS Dropship - Here's to hoping?

 DaveC wrote:
Re the dropships it's worth remembering that the GCPS/Plague have a dropship option as well that's different to the Enforcers that may be more in line with peoples expectations for what a scifi Dropship looks like the Interceptor seems to have been designed very much with Enforcer aesthetics in mind rather than a more generic look.

Are you saying we should expect to see Mantic make another dropship design for the GCPS / Plague at some point? For this campaign, at least, it seems that mostly it's been murmurs about GCPS HIPs tanks, which might indicate that Plague and GCPS are stuck with modified Enforcer dropships despite the design's specificity to Enforcers. Unless you think Mantic might want to tackle more than one GCPS hard plastic vehicle? There might be a case for that, as opposed to making two for a faction like Asterians or Veer-myn, given the presumably generic applicability of GCPS designs across multiple company lines.

Or did I miss something and the likeliest GCPS HIPs vehicle actually is a dropship, not a tank?

At a glance, they seem to all require about the same amount of sprue space, so they should cost the same. Maybe the ones that are shared by several faction might cost a bit less because they'll sell more?

I think that all the vehicles in roughly the same class will be certainly be the same final price if not all of them being the same price

(so Tunneller/FF tank/Asterian tank and enforcer dropship/plague dropship),

but if they decide to include some non plastic stuff in the boxes as to add options to the build for some/all (and I can see they might) that goes out the window

 lord_blackfang wrote:
At a glance, they seem to all require about the same amount of sprue space, so they should cost the same. Maybe the ones that are shared by several faction might cost a bit less because they'll sell more?

That's reasonable. In part I was asking because GW's prices are all over the place rather than logically determined by manufacturing cost per sprue, so I wondered if other factors might impact the final unit prices of Mantic's vehicles differently. It's not immediately obvious how they would, if so. You might price the Asterian Troop Transport higher because fewer people will buy them than will buy an Enforcer Dropship, for example, or you might price them the same or lower to encourage more people to pick up Asterian factions in the first place.

GW's pricing is only all over the place since they stopped (thank goodness) their annual price increased that used to make sure all comparable kits went up to the price of the new stuff

but you might well find the retailers discount stuff that doesn't move as well (eg the tunneller) more heavily than the stuff that does (dropship)

Vermonter they've said GCPS and Plague share vehicles it's also possible that the Rebs use these vehicles the Plague list has a Dropship that is not the same as the Enforcer one so it is possible to do a Dropship and a Tank kit in HIPS for GCPS/Plague/Rebs as it covers more than 1 army so technically it's still 1 vehicle per army it's just that they can be shared I guess it's all about how far they can push the funding

I went and took a look at KoW models, they seem to be costed by manufacturing cost, not by in-game effectiveness. 20 HIPS figures are 15 quid, be they Elf or Dwarf or Goblin.

 DaveC wrote:
Vermonter they've said GCPS and Plague share vehicles it's also possible that the Rebs use these vehicles the Plague list has a Dropship that is not the same as the Enforcer one so it is possible to do a Dropship and a Tank kit in HIPS for GCPS/Plague/Rebs as it covers more than 1 army so technically it's still 1 vehicle per army it's just that they can be shared I guess it's all about how far they can push the funding

Sounds good, then. If I were Mantic I'd seriously consider doing the GCPS tank and their military-styled dropship, just because there's likely to be a very large market for both. As MLaw said, here's to hoping!

Or to hoping that the final vehicle sculpts are terrible, so I won't be tempted to add them to my pledge and make my final tally even worse than Deadzone 1 was.

I like what I just heard. Plague get hp tank or drop ship, GCPS get hard plastic dropship or tank. Either initially or after another short stretch goal, each becomes compatible with the other force.. SYNERGY!

 lord_blackfang wrote:
At a glance, they seem to all require about the same amount of sprue space, so they should cost the same. Maybe the ones that are shared by several faction might cost a bit less because they'll sell more?

This is assuming they don't price them at retail based on power in game or popularity of kit.

EDIT: Making it Plague is essentially like making a GW kit Chaos or Dark Angel, it's just an upgrade sprue away really.

Any possibility that they might do a vehicle "sampler" bundle? Like, instead of 3 of a specific faction vehicle, they give you a choice of three vehicles? I wouldn't mind getting the dropship, FF tank, and Asterian tank, but as they are now, there's no real discount if you want a variety.

I'm hoping they do some kind of 'get em all' pledge, or bundle...or something. I don't need three of anything either. I mean... I could probably use three of several things, but I'm mostly interested in painting, and I'd prefer to paint one of each.

 Barzam wrote:
Any possibility that they might do a vehicle "sampler" bundle? Like, instead of 3 of a specific faction vehicle, they give you a choice of three vehicles? I wouldn't mind getting the dropship, FF tank, and Asterian tank, but as they are now, there's no real discount if you want a variety.

They keep getting asked this, as it is the obvious question to ask. So far they've always answered "no."

I won't be upgrading to any mega pledges that involve getting more army forces or "3 of the same kind" vehicles, myself. I'm not even sure I'll keep the early bird pledge I currently have, because as a Deadzone veteran and skirmish shopper, I can't really justify getting any of the army forces or vehicle deals. Too much repetition, not enough application unless you're going in for Warpath itself. A resin Blaine doing whatever won't sway me, either.

Not quite the same thing as saying "I'll pull my pledge" in my case, as I'll stay in regardless to get the add-on deals on new HIPs troops. With no deals in sight, vehicles are a question mark in terms of how many I'll buy individually. I'd only want one of each, tops.

 GrimDork wrote:
I'm hoping they do some kind of 'get em all' pledge, or bundle...or something. I don't need three of anything either. I mean... I could probably use three of several things, but I'm mostly interested in painting, and I'd prefer to paint one of each.

yeah, I want my Lockdown.

I'm kinda at the point of wanting Avengers/Iron Man vs Ultron (see my Deadzone paint schemes)...and I'm considering now an Asterian battle group (Ultron), an Enforcer drop ship group, and an Asterian vehicle group when it hits. So...at $300 in wants now.

The thing that puts me of the Asterians is the round circular 'eye' - I would have been up for something more Cylon-ey myself.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I went and took a look at KoW models, they seem to be costed by manufacturing cost, not by in-game effectiveness. 20 HIPS figures are 15 quid, be they Elf or Dwarf or Goblin.

Manufacturing cost of the mould, rather than the sprue, hard plastic sprues come in at a few cents difference no matter the size or density, because the plastic itself is cheap, the production is entirely automated, and the machines can spit out tens of thousands of sprues a day. The cost comes from working out how many you anticipate selling versus how much the mould cost to create - the larger and more complicated the mould, the more costly machine and specialist time is required to carve it out of the block of steel.

I really like those Asterian drones compared to the butt-ugly Cyphers. So far Mantics HIPS kits, space rats aside, have been really great design wise. Way better than the restic stuff.

I haven't really been paying close attention to this one because it is all rather underwhelming for me.

I'd love a Space Dwarf army, but something about what's offered so far...

Still, it is still hard to believe that this one is performing at the pace it is:




Many of us really did envision this as a serious contender for 40K and GW.

9 days in (12 to go), I thought we'd be WAY past $250K.

I'm not even sure a Brian Blessed miniature could get this thing moving faster now!

Yeah it's been pretty stagnant.

Tomorrow's add-on wednesday is supposed to be terrain heavy, maybe that will help.

I think a big part of the problem is Mantic's timing. People have been asking for this for years, and when they finally get around to it, they took so long that interest has waned significantly. on top of that, they just kind of threw this campaign out without any real promotional support. Then there's the fact that most of what they're offering, people already purchased in DZ2. had they done this campaign before DZ2, I think there would have been significantly more interest and it would be doing wat better.

I think a lot of us also expected that Mantic would at least know what the rules for Warpath were going to look like before they jumped into its Kickstarter. WP: Firefight is supposed to be the best 40k equivalent, and at best it is a giant question mark right now. Warpath proper is also still in a quantum state of "TLOS/No-TLOS" and "Multibasing/Hubs" to figure out.

This Kickstarter is still outperforming the WHFB-killing KoW2, but that was part opportunity and part rule iteration and balance. Warpath doesn't have the latter, and if they get the former again then I'm letting Ronnie buy all my lottery tickets from here on out. Combine people being burned by Mantic in various ways in the past on various things (some of which have been fixed, but that doesn't change the trust dynamic), a lack of solid rules to say "This is the 40k-killer!", and the place that Kickstarter has seemingly established for board gaming audiences and not wargaming audiences and I'm not sure anything is going to make this a million dollar kickstarter. I also don't think it seems like Mantic expected it to be, and with the rumors that this could be the last core Mantic line on kickstarter maybe they just wanted to fund what they could now and get Warpath out in some real form to let it gain traction there as opposed to trying to create the biggest Kickstarter of all time.

 Alpharius wrote:


Many of us really did envision this as a serious contender for 40K and GW.

Are you kidding?

GW in its currently diminished state is 120 Million GBP in Revenue per year, or about 180 Million USD. That is half a million dollar every single day of the year, sundays, christmas, everything.

All Mantic Kickstarters in the history of the company since 2012, maybe about 5 Million USD, don't add up to a even 2 weeks of GW, and thus probably to less than a week of a big seller like a Knight or a big Tau suit. When GW releases the Tau starting next week for 3-4 weeks, they'll make more money of that than Mantic in its entire history.

A "serious contender" to 40K at a Kickstarter-launch would be high triple-figure millions minimum.

 Barzam wrote:
Then there's the fact that most of what they're offering, people already purchased in DZ2. had they done this campaign before DZ2, I think there would have been significantly more interest and it would be doing wat better.

I think this aspect is really hurting them. I know they'd like to run this like KOW 2 with army deals alone and are resistant to adding value to the base pledges a la Deadzone, but I think slowing interest is going to back them into a corner. Hard sells like limiting ship bundles to 3 of the same kind, or refusing to do any pledges based on new stuff alone, may make the KS pledges easier to pack and ship, but there is zero benefit to the customer, and right now customers are voting with their money. If it's supposed to encourage skirmish players uninterested in Warpath to spend more and pick it up anyway to get better deals, how is that strategy working out?

Wonderwolf wrote:

GW in its currently diminished state is 120 Million GBP in Revenue per year, or about 180 Million USD. That is half a million dollar every single day of the year, sundays, christmas, everything.

And once upon a time, it wasn't.

Everyone starts somewhere.

 insaniak wrote:

Wonderwolf wrote:

GW in its currently diminished state is 120 Million GBP in Revenue per year, or about 180 Million USD. That is half a million dollar every single day of the year, sundays, christmas, everything.

And once upon a time, it wasn't.

Everyone starts somewhere.

Sure.

5-10 years down the road, it may be. But to believe this Warpath-Kickstarter would make it that contender is foolish.

 insaniak wrote:

Wonderwolf wrote:

GW in its currently diminished state is 120 Million GBP in Revenue per year, or about 180 Million USD. That is half a million dollar every single day of the year, sundays, christmas, everything.

And once upon a time, it wasn't.

Everyone starts somewhere.

And not only that, but I was speaking more of in the 'game to replace 40K for many' sense, not the "it was going to make $180 Million in this Kickstarter" sense...

 Alpharius wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

Wonderwolf wrote:

GW in its currently diminished state is 120 Million GBP in Revenue per year, or about 180 Million USD. That is half a million dollar every single day of the year, sundays, christmas, everything.

And once upon a time, it wasn't.

Everyone starts somewhere.

And not only that, but I was speaking more of in the 'game to replace 40K for many' sense, not the "it was going to make $180 Million in this Kickstarter" sense...

But your earlier post suggested that the current performance somehow dashed that hope? What would you have expected this Kickstarter to achieve, to be that replacement in the sense you were speaking of?

You posted Kicktraq stats, so clearly we were talking money, no?

200.000 USD or 20.000.000 USD don't really make any difference against that particular benchmark.

Really?

Because the more people that back this would mean it would be easier to find a game of WARPATH somewhere near me.

Also, why so aggressive?

I know it is the Internet and all, but maybe dial back the aggression a bit?

 Alpharius wrote:
Really?

Because the more people that back this would mean it would be easier to find a game of WARPATH somewhere near me.

Also, why so aggressive?

I know it is the Internet and all, but maybe dial back the aggression a bit?

Well, I am just asking. 250.000 is pretty successful.

Why (if) is it a "failure" in your eyes?

If it is a failure because it somehow didn't achieve the "serious contender"-status, what would've been necessary to achieve that?

I don't think he's saying it's a failure. Simply that he expected it to be bigger.

I guess one question is, why do people need to back it to play Warpath? If it's the 40K alternative, and you already have a 40K army, then you don't need to buy a Warpath army. If Mantic is going to post the rules online for free eventually, then you don't need to buy the rules, either. So why would the average disillusioned 40K player need to back the project?

 insaniak wrote:
I don't think he's saying it's a failure. Simply that he expected it to be bigger.

Yeah, that's pretty much it.

I suppose I'll have to choose my words super-ultra-carefully next time?

 Vermonter wrote:

 Barzam wrote:
Then there's the fact that most of what they're offering, people already purchased in DZ2. had they done this campaign before DZ2, I think there would have been significantly more interest and it would be doing wat better.

I think this aspect is really hurting them. I know they'd like to run this like KOW 2 with army deals alone and are resistant to adding value to the base pledges a la Deadzone, but I think slowing interest is going to back them into a corner. Hard sells like limiting ship bundles to 3 of the same kind, or refusing to do any pledges based on new stuff alone, may make the KS pledges easier to pack and ship, but there is zero benefit to the customer, and right now customers are voting with their money. If it's supposed to encourage skirmish players uninterested in Warpath to spend more and pick it up anyway to get better deals, how is that strategy working out?

I don't disagree with your assessment but I think it's also important to note that the Warpath rules are a long way from being anywhere near finalized and the Firefight rules are even farther away from being a finished product. I think some of the minis are nice and the deals are good but I don't want to buy armies for a game that doesn't exist yet and that I don't know if I'll even want to play. I think the desire to buy an army to proxy in a different game would be minimal and without much of a finished game with which to entice people. I think that is leaving a lot of people on the sidelines taking a wait and see approach rather than jumping in and committing to building and painting one or more armies for a game that they may end up not being interested in once the rules are done.

 Alpharius wrote:
Yeah, that's pretty much it.

I suppose I'll have to choose my words super-ultra-carefully next time?

Hey! Plastic army-mens is serious business, bud so be careful not to defame the most holy of holies ( insert whatever company someone's invested too much emotion into).

I agree that the lag has to do with a combination of factors; biggest for me is lack of rules direction; they don't appear to know where their rules are going to wind up. Spin the roulette wheel and see if the ball lands on hubs, multi-basing or some bastard child in between, then spin the wheel the next day for a different result.

I don't think anybody expects a polished product but it would have been nice if they had gone into this thing with at least an concrete idea/concept.

What's killing it for me is that I have all the models I need from DZ since they just threw tons of free crap at me so all I would be interested in would be vehicles but what they're showing so far does not inspire me. I suppose everyone else who's sitting on the sidelines has their own reason but these are mine.

Why it isn't a contender in my eyes.
It doesn't feel like the factions are being developed as existing in a universe so much as little plastic dudesment for sale.
40k (as derivative as it is, has tons and tons of fluff and character).

Additionally, these rules and Mantics existing philosophy has felt very fly by the seat of your pants.. even when they swear up and down that they're developing something thoroughly.

We're getting beard tanks, face jets, earbots, rules about cheese (was that for real??), you can hub if you want to, and a rules system for mass combat that the creator seems to wish had been in 10mm instead of 28mm. (if you missed that bit, there was discussion from the creators about 10mm WP).

Add to that a KS full of models that.. again.. a lot of us already have.. there's no way this was primed for big numbers.

The Kickstarter has zero wow-factor. The rules ... they don't even exist but are contentious in their current incarnation.

I want this game to be awesome. As someone who played Magic The Gathering in the 90s, I saw a lot of "coulda been" CCGs come along and people were wearing those shirts for games whose names I can't even remember. Over the years you really only have a very very slim market of other games that survived and the two that I can think of have cartoons and child-predator tactics to keep them afloat. Unless Mantic has a candy-van somewhere they better figure something out fast or they're going to end up like Hyborian Gates (I remembered the name of one!!)

I think the expectation was that, if the stars had aligned properly and it was done at the right time in the right way, this could have been a $1.5 million kickstarter. However, it's probably going to end up at around 500k or so I think. Which is still good, of course and worth doing, but I think there was always the potential for more if some things in the past were different.

In saying that, I don't think Mantic are daft, they're probably more aware of the general environment than we are and most certainly didn't go into this kickstarter expecting to laugh the way to the bank.

Given Mantic mentioned earlier in the year that this KS was delayed for a more suited time I honestly think they were expecting better , or they just had to jump the gun to grab some cash.

Most of the negative points others have said are bang on with what I thought myself.

The value, for a title I'm being asked to prepay at least a year from release, based on renders and some sketchy rules, is not there. $30 vehicles ? Based on what we are being shown $30 should be the retail value, not the KS value.

This still feels like a version of Warpath that will be shelved in a year and half time ready for another KS attempt. Sure, if some people like it then great, I just don't personally see enough incentive to back this given other hobby gaming money choice available to me.

 Alex C wrote:
Yeah it's been pretty stagnant.

Tomorrow's add-on wednesday is supposed to be terrain heavy, maybe that will help.

Terrain would help, but just as folks already got plastic Enforcers and dwarves and rats, a lot of folks already bought a gak ton of terrain. Unless there is something new, it likely won't be a huge draw.

Like I already said, Mantic obviously rushed this and knowingly sacrificed a higher pledge total in order to get some money fast, which suggests that they're desperate for cash.

 CptJake wrote:
Terrain would help, but just as folks already got plastic Enforcers and dwarves and rats, a lot of folks already bought a gak ton of terrain. Unless there is something new, it likely won't be a huge draw.

It would take something really new for me, as I'm really not a fan of Mantic's 'My God, It's full of cubes!' approach to terrain.

Reckon I'll be backing out of this pretty soon. Not really sure why I backed it in the first place as I'm not a sci-fi fan in general, but I guess I just like following KS as it fills my boring days at work. Nothing truly exciting to paint has emerged, so I don't see much reason to stay.

7 sins might get ridiculous and force me back in, then there is the Super Dungeon KS apparently soon which I might be all over if it's done right, so I can't justify wasting money on fairly generic sci-fi, even if it is very reasonably priced.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Like I already said, Mantic obviously rushed this and knowingly sacrificed a higher pledge total in order to get some money fast, which suggests that they're desperate for cash.

I find their own explanation far more likely, that they needed to do it now so they have some sort of product hitting retail 2nd half of next year.

Everything they have in the works up to and including Deadzone will be at retail by the first half of 2016, and their secret licensed product got held up, so they needed Warpath to fill the gap.

What has surprised me most is how few $1 backers there are

18% of the total at the moment compared to 25% for deadzone infestation,

so there's not even such a strong interest in getting into the PM at a point where what's on offer in terms o rules/minis/etc might be clearer

Badly enough to forgo any decent marketing and go to KS with what, two painted 3D prints, 5 new renders and 2 new sketches? The rules were the same as the preview months ago with one lunch break's worth of revisions.

They could have done the KS a month later with properly prepared material and support and still released the models at the same time in 2016.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Like I already said, Mantic obviously rushed this and knowingly sacrificed a higher pledge total in order to get some money fast, which suggests that they're desperate for cash.

They almost completely sold out of KoW a month ago, why do you keep saying they're desperate for cash? It's a narrative only you think is true

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Badly enough to forgo any decent marketing and go to KS with what, two painted 3D prints, 5 new renders and 2 new sketches? The rules were the same as the preview months ago with one lunch break's worth of revisions.

They could have done the KS a month later with properly prepared material and support and still released the models at the same time in 2016.

How did they fund multiple non-KS sculpts, molds and production for current/upcoming KoW items if they're so short of cash?

I'd say it's far more likely they're finally content with where their toolmaker's capability to produce vehicles is, they're in the lull between KoW and DZ:I waves, and they have some third party IP KS lined up for after the first of the year, so this was their slot to do it in the next six months and get product out for Christmas 2016.

And they could have done a much more successful Kickstarter a few weeks later and still released the models at the exact same time in 2016. It's not like rushing the KS will let them release earlier. Cause, ya know, they don't even have renders yet for half the stuff, and they don't even know what they're going to do about rules. A KS a month later wouldn't impact production time at all, because they certainly need that extra month. It would just let them hype it up more and have more product to show. The only difference an earlier KS makes is getting the cash earlier.

You're the only one believing the fanciful shortage of cash idea

 agnosto wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
Yeah, that's pretty much it.

I suppose I'll have to choose my words super-ultra-carefully next time?

Hey! Plastic army-mens is serious business, bud so be careful not to defame the most holy of holies ( insert whatever company someone's invested too much emotion into).

It's not about emotional investment, but about scale.

I like the new battle-tech kickstarter. I hope it does well. But if somebody said they'd hope it would be a "serious contender" to a 180 Million dollar Juggernaught like .. Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto, I'd question their sense of scale.

I like Battletech. I never played GTA or Call of Duty. I still see the differences in scale. Same with Mantic and GW.

It is far more likely they favor smaller more consistent influxes of work and cash. A huge kickstarter will overwhelm areas of their supply chain (I'm thinking distribution as the obvious one), tool making and CAD->milling probably being the other.

It also makes sense that they would want to run a new KS before the last delivered since the resources at the start of the production sequence (sculpting, art etc) will have finished the last wodge of work while manufacture and distribution are still not finished.

Wonderwolf wrote:

 agnosto wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
Yeah, that's pretty much it.

I suppose I'll have to choose my words super-ultra-carefully next time?

Hey! Plastic army-mens is serious business, bud so be careful not to defame the most holy of holies ( insert whatever company someone's invested too much emotion into).

It's not about emotional investment, but about scale.

^This.

Like I said in the other topic, Mantic know that this won't be the case now or even in the near future. Like KoW it's about developing a game that will be able to stand on it's own, which KoW can now do, which is why there is and will be non-KS'd models released for KoW. It's taken, what, 6 years (?) for KoW to get to that stage and 4 public rule releases. WP is on it's second one right now and FF will be on it's second one when that comes out*, so there's a long, long way to go.

*Counting and dividing each by whether it was an "individual" or "squad" based ruleset.

The reason it was launched now is due to production and development schedules. There was meant to be a licensed product launch now but for whatever reason it isn't ready so here we are instead.

Also, the total is not that important to Mantic, the objective is to get the books published. If that means people delay sales until it hits retail, that's not a bad thing as Mantic is trying to adjust their approach so it works better for retailers.

There are retailers that carry Mantic?

If I include the word "Mantic" in any sentence at my FLGS, the manager cuts me off with "I don't give a gak"

I just had my first flick through of the Warpath product base since it first launched, and my initial impression was a resounding....'meh'. Nothing seemed to grab me, all the sculpts seemed chunkier than a Space Marine in Tetris armour (even when they were skinny, which was quite an achievement), and for some reason, everything looks a bit like a cheap plastic kid's toy(and not in a good way).

Not for me, I don't think.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Like I already said, Mantic obviously rushed this and knowingly sacrificed a higher pledge total in order to get some money fast, which suggests that they're desperate for cash.

I can tell you straight away that this is completely bogus. Mantic are not in the least bit desperate for cash and right now have the healthiest books they've ever had.

I've my own theory for why this KS was brought forward and have to stress this is complete conjecture on my part and nothing to do with any kind of insider knowledge. I suspect that Ronnie has some inside information about upcoming 40k changes (Age of Heresy perhaps?) similar to how he knew AoS was coming. By the time the major 40k change hits (if there is one coming - again this is pure conjecture) he wants to have a solid product ready to offer disenfranchised 40k players. In order to get timing as good as they did with KoW then they need to start proper development now. If they leave it any later then they risk the 40k exodus missing them completely, same as if KoW hadn't been ready for another year or so and missed the WHFB exodus.

 Daedleh wrote:
I suspect that Ronnie has some inside information about upcoming 40k changes (Age of Heresy perhaps?) similar to how he knew AoS was coming. By the time the major 40k change hits (if there is one coming - again this is pure conjecture) he wants to have a solid product ready to offer disenfranchised 40k players. .

Indeed... Given that we already know the Horus Heresy stuff is coming, it's entirely possible that they just wanted to have this kickstarter up and running before everyone went and spent all of their cash on tht instead.

 insaniak wrote:

 Daedleh wrote:
I suspect that Ronnie has some inside information about upcoming 40k changes (Age of Heresy perhaps?) similar to how he knew AoS was coming. By the time the major 40k change hits (if there is one coming - again this is pure conjecture) he wants to have a solid product ready to offer disenfranchised 40k players. .

Indeed... Given that we already know the Horus Heresy stuff is coming, it's entirely possible that they just wanted to have this kickstarter up and running before everyone went and spent all of their cash on tht instead.

If Horus heresy: Age of the Emperor is as much of a complete shower of gak as Age of Sigmar turned out to be - and given the ominous statement from Rountree in the last report, it's almost certainly heading that way - then I don't think very many people are going to be spending their money on it anyway; more about Mantic (and Warlord for that matter) positioning themselves to have a quality 28mm product, shiny and well populated with SKUs, on the shelves for when the bomb drops, because people aren't going to wait around very long when it does.

It's an... interesting thought. I don't think 40k players will jump ship all that readily, though. 40k is already much closer to AoS than WHFB was, down to barely having any meaningful points structure and army composition rules left as is. Anyone who can still play it now (I can't) will probably be able to play the new thing.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
It's an... interesting thought. I don't think 40k players will jump ship all that readily, though. 40k is already much closer to AoS than WHFB was, down to barely having any meaningful points structure and army composition rules left as is. Anyone who can still play it now (I can't) will probably be able to play the new thing.

If you play and collect nothing but Marines or Chaos (or Chaos Marines!), sure. Think you might find a few other armies consigned to the silly rules section and bereft of new releases forever, though.

Even if HH is "AoS Sci-fi", I think any seismic damage to 40k would have to also be predicated upon GW withdrawing 40k from sale like 8th Ed - I just don't see that part happening.

Yeah but then again, how many people (who didn't have inside info) actually saw them ending WHFB as a game and withdrawing all 8th related material from sale? It took rumours and photos of 8th material being stuffed in return to sender boxes, a fortnight before AoS hit retail, before even the pessimists first figured out what was happening

GW are a sequential terrible decision machine, it makes sense for Mantic, Warlord and anyone else wanting to get into the market segment to position their product ready to benefit from the next terrible decision cluster.

The thing is, while Mantic is a lot smaller, before Warpath there effectively wasn't ANY viable contender or alternative choice to 40K. So if you didn't like 40K's Gothic fantasy counter-reformation aesthetic, and you wanted to play a game with multiple hard plastic army options, you were just out of luck. Granted, Mantic's armies aren't entirely hard plastic either, but even so, after this KS an alternative will be out there. That's new, at least on this scale.

Maybe not new for very long, with Maelstrom's Edge (although that's skirmish) coming and Gates of Antares starting to show an interest in producing plastic minis. In fact, I hope a number of other companies break the hard plastic sci-fi barrier in the coming years, because I love modding and I love variety.

The other thing about Heresy-era minis coming and Mantic's Warpath line is that it provides the perfect confluence to stage some of future Warhammer's most interesting battles - the pre-Grimdark era of the wars of compliance. I'm pretty much out of 40K now except for getting bits to do mods with, and still enjoying the odd book here and there. But staging compliance war battles vs. Mantic's sci-fi armies might even get me back into buying some GW product. Particularly since I'd do it with an open future in mind, where the triumph of Chaos isn't assured and the Horus Heresy's outcome isn't engraved on a holy stone tablet. I really liked the hope vibe in Horus Rising, before everything fell apart.

It's a shame that GW themselves can't launch an alternative sci-fi line with a completely different flavor. They have the money and resources to do so easily, but they're powerless to try it because of their brand (and business-wise, it wouldn't make any sense), so only companies with much less wherewithal can attempt it.

For those looking to build pre-Heresy human armies, the fifth book, Tempest, has the Imperial Militia army list, with an option called Survivors of a Dark Age that allows for neat options along the lines of power armoured mortals toting high-powered weaponry.

 Vermonter wrote:
The thing is, while Mantic is a lot smaller, before Warpath there effectively wasn't ANY viable contender or alternative choice to 40K. So if you didn't like 40K's Gothic fantasy counter-reformation aesthetic, and you wanted to play a game with multiple hard plastic army options, you were just out of luck. Granted, Mantic's armies aren't entirely hard plastic either, but even so, after this KS an alternative will be out there. That's new, at least on this scale.

Maybe not new for very long, with Maelstrom's Edge (although that's skirmish) coming and Gates of Antares starting to show an interest in producing plastic minis. In fact, I hope a number of other companies break the hard plastic sci-fi barrier in the coming years, because I love modding and I love variety.

The other thing about Heresy-era minis coming and Mantic's Warpath line is that it provides the perfect confluence to stage some of future Warhammer's most interesting battles - the pre-Grimdark era of the wars of compliance. I'm pretty much out of 40K now except for getting bits to do mods with, and still enjoying the odd book here and there. But staging compliance war battles vs. Mantic's sci-fi armies might even get me back into buying some GW product. Particularly since I'd do it with an open future in mind, where the triumph of Chaos isn't assured and the Horus Heresy's outcome isn't engraved on a holy stone tablet. I really liked the hope vibe in Horus Rising, before everything fell apart.

It's a shame that GW themselves can't launch an alternative sci-fi line with a completely different flavor. They have the money and resources to do so easily, but they're powerless to try it because of their brand (and business-wise, it wouldn't make any sense), so only companies with much less wherewithal can attempt it.

I was just about to ask "If I want to play a SF mass battle game with plastic infantry and vehicles, and I don't want to play 40K, what are my options?"

There aren't many, are there?

Maybe Spartan's stuff, but is any of it plastic?

And have they stopped changing the rules too frequently?

Is there something else?

 MasterSlowPoke wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Like I already said, Mantic obviously rushed this and knowingly sacrificed a higher pledge total in order to get some money fast, which suggests that they're desperate for cash.

They almost completely sold out of KoW a month ago, why do you keep saying they're desperate for cash? It's a narrative only you think is true

Two different systems; there might be some crossover but fantasy gamers and sci-fi gamers don't necessarily have to be the same people.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 dragqueeninspace wrote:
It is far more likely they favor smaller more consistent influxes of work and cash. A huge kickstarter will overwhelm areas of their supply chain (I'm thinking distribution as the obvious one), tool making and CAD->milling probably being the other.

It also makes sense that they would want to run a new KS before the last delivered since the resources at the start of the production sequence (sculpting, art etc) will have finished the last wodge of work while manufacture and distribution are still not finished.

This makes the most sense. They're having KS fund their regular release schedule and it makes more sense to do small Kickstarters that fund a few products versus what we saw with the first few Kickstarters. Ideally this will also allow them to have tighter controls over QC though I won't get my hopes up since what I've seen so far could be done in someone's garage, not what I would expect from a professional organization.

 NTRabbit wrote:
Yeah but then again, how many people (who didn't have inside info) actually saw them ending WHFB as a game and withdrawing all 8th related material from sale? It took rumours and photos of 8th material being stuffed in return to sender boxes, a fortnight before AoS hit retail, before even the pessimists first figured out what was happening

GW are a sequential terrible decision machine, it makes sense for Mantic, Warlord and anyone else wanting to get into the market segment to position their product ready to benefit from the next terrible decision cluster.

Yep, if nothing else GW are ridiculously good at doubling down on bad decisions.

GW are wholly behind AoS type gameplay (or at least Rountree is) and do see it as the future. 40k is already most of the way there towards AoS so it wouldn't take much of a push to take it over that edge. From what I've heard from internal sources, the poor sales of AoS are being blamed on staff rather than the product.

Like I say, it's pure speculation on my part, but it fits a lot of what I've been seeing. Warpath was brought forward and done a lot quicker than normal. There was no marketing campaign like every other post-KoW1 KS, it was done before they had core rules to show off like they had in every other KS and obviously it was way sooner than anticipated. Mantic also seem to make sure that they have at least one Open Day before a KS campaign so that they can show things off and have seminars about the upcoming KS. That didn't happen this time so something made Mantic bring it forward and last time they did that it was because Ronnie knew that AoS was coming and they had to launch to compete with it.

From the GW side, we know that GW are wholly behind AoS and do not see its flaws. It's the style of game they've been playing in the studio even before AoS was a concept (FORGE THAT NARRATIVE - WHO NEEDS POINTS) and comments from the shareholder meeting confirm that they're very happy with it. I've been told that poor sales are being blamed on staff, so they're not recognising that it's not a very good game and we know that they believe customers will buy anything that they release, regardless of gameplay quality. They don't care about losing customers as long as they keep the "collectors" on board, so 8th edition 40k being made into an AoS clone doesn't seem far fetched to me. They might not destroy the setting or try to embarrass people with older armies by giving them joke rules (HAHA IF YOU HAVE A MOUSTACHE YOU GET TO RE-ROLL DICE) but I really wouldn't dismiss them switching the system over.

From Mantics side I'm sure they're well aware that they don't have as much cross-sales opportunity as they did with WHFB to KoW, but if even a fraction of 40k players make the switch then it'll be a bigger influx of customers than even the one following KoW 2nd ed.

Edit: It's far from an exact science, but KoW groups on Facebook have seen about an influx of about 1500 members from WHFB groups that have about 7000 members (though a number of those may have quit the WHFB groups first). If that's indicative of the general population then you're looking at a good 20% of the WHFB population making the switch which tallies up with anecdotes that I've seen. The 40k groups have 20,000 members so even an 8% switch would net Mantic more customers from 40k to WP than WHFB to KoW.

Why are people discussing a possible AoS-ification of 40k? I don't see that as a possibility, given that 40k is selling well and their approach right now is working... Basically the polar opposite of Fantasy before the reboot. HH might be similar, but that won't impact 40k.

Just my idle speculation/theory for why Warpath has come about quickly.

I wouldn't be so sure about 40k working. We know that GWs sales have been dropping year on year and while a good portion of that will have been WHFB sales, that's not to say that they're not also seeing a smaller drop in 40k sales.

I don't recall seeing anything in the last few years of financials that said anything about 40k being in growth (actually I think I did basic thought experiments based on a bit of insider knowledge of the other game systems that suggested it was also in decline for 2 of the last 3 years - the other one didn't have enough info to do it).

As someone who writes financial commentary for companies, if 40k (insert any company's flagship product here) were growing, it would be stated clearly in the report, front and centre.

 Alpharius wrote:
Many of us really did envision this as a serious contender for 40K and GW.

9 days in (12 to go), I thought we'd be WAY past $250K.

It's doing like an order of magnitude better than Maelstrom's Edge, but that thing was stillborn.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MasterSlowPoke wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Like I already said, Mantic obviously rushed this and knowingly sacrificed a higher pledge total in order to get some money fast, which suggests that they're desperate for cash.

They almost completely sold out of KoW a month ago, why do you keep saying they're desperate for cash? It's a narrative only you think is true

Not only KoW rulebooks, but army sets, too. Basilean and Goblin army sets. Yeah.

There's zero evidence that Mantic needs "money fast".

 judgedoug wrote:
It's doing like an order of magnitude better than Maelstrom's Edge, but that thing was stillborn.

That's a colorful way of putting it. To be fair, Maelstrom's Edge was completely brand new. Warpath has been building a fan base, as well as at least 70% of the product that they're currently selling on this campaign, through smaller releases over several years. ME didn't have a hugely successful kickstarter campaign - it's starting to look like the days of hugely successful Wargame kickstarters (as opposed to boardgames) may be over - but its creators are still plugging away at it. Give it time.

 judgedoug wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
Many of us really did envision this as a serious contender for 40K and GW.

9 days in (12 to go), I thought we'd be WAY past $250K.

It's doing like an order of magnitude better than Maelstrom's Edge, but that thing was stillborn.

2 + 2 = 14!

 judgedoug wrote:

 MasterSlowPoke wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Like I already said, Mantic obviously rushed this and knowingly sacrificed a higher pledge total in order to get some money fast, which suggests that they're desperate for cash.

They almost completely sold out of KoW a month ago, why do you keep saying they're desperate for cash? It's a narrative only you think is true

Not only KoW rulebooks, but army sets, too. Basilean and Goblin army sets. Yeah.

There's zero evidence that Mantic needs "money fast".

Probably about the same amount of evidence as GW is going to "AoS-ify" 40K!

 agnosto wrote:

 MasterSlowPoke wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Like I already said, Mantic obviously rushed this and knowingly sacrificed a higher pledge total in order to get some money fast, which suggests that they're desperate for cash.

They almost completely sold out of KoW a month ago, why do you keep saying they're desperate for cash? It's a narrative only you think is true

Two different systems; there might be some crossover but fantasy gamers and sci-fi gamers don't necessarily have to be the same people.

Got nothing to do with crossover or same people, being sold out of all the first print run rule books and much of the second, and a lot of armies - remember this is after all the KS backer product had been ringfenced - shows Mantic have plenty of retail profits flowing in just from KoW. ie there is no cash shortage

 NTRabbit wrote:

Got nothing to do with crossover or same people, being sold out of all the first print run rule books and much of the second, and a lot of armies - remember this is after all the KS backer product had been ringfenced - shows Mantic have plenty of retail profits flowing in just from KoW. ie there is no cash shortage

Well, no. None of that actually shows that at all. And is pretty speculative, at that.

 Vermonter wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
It's doing like an order of magnitude better than Maelstrom's Edge, but that thing was stillborn.

That's a colorful way of putting it. To be fair, Maelstrom's Edge was completely brand new. Warpath has been building a fan base, as well as at least 70% of the product that they're currently selling on this campaign, through smaller releases over several years. ME didn't have a hugely successful kickstarter campaign - it's starting to look like the days of hugely successful Wargame kickstarters (as opposed to boardgames) may be over - but its creators are still plugging away at it. Give it time.

I would say the days of hugely successful kickstarter campaigns for any old garbage (Sedition Wars) are over, which is why Medge failed so hard.

My point was Alpharius' quote "Many of us really did envision this as a serious contender for 40k and GW" which is what the perceived tagline and goal of the "NEXT-GEN!!1!1" Medge was, and that fell flat on it's face at, what, 70 grand? If Warpath ended today with 250 grand, by Alpharius' own deduction, Medge is a serious contender for perhaps, the popularity of Void 1.1 in 2003; it's rules and design decisions are certainly the spiritual successor


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Alpharius wrote:
2 + 2 = 14!

Sorry buddy, you made the false equivalency. If 250k is not a 40k Contender, then my analogy of Medge being a Void 1.1 Contendor is pretty spot on

These arguments would sure be easier to have if Mantic were a publicly traded company and had to publish their earnings. It would probably do wonders for their creative output, too, like it did for GW's.

 Alpharius wrote:
Probably about the same amount of evidence as GW is going to "AoS-ify" 40K!

Man, I really hope they do. AoS is incredibly fun, and the death of Warhammer meant that I have now tripled my KoW player pool at the FLGS _and_ have awesome AoS models and the most fun beer and pretzels game GW has released ever. I've dropped a few hundred on Stormcast releases, I can't imagine how much I'd drop on an AoS 40k!

I'm sorry, Judgedoug. I didn't know that MEdge killed your father. I'd call their work stillborn garbage if they hurt my family, too.

judgedoug wrote:
Not only KoW rulebooks, but army sets, too. Basilean and Goblin army sets. Yeah.

And people try to tell parents that wargaming is a brain-boosting hobby.

judgedoug wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
2 + 2 = 14!

Sorry buddy, you made the false equivalency. If 250k is not a 40k Contender, then my analogy of Medge being a Void 1.1 Contendor is pretty spot on

I think it was more along the lines of 'what the unmentionable has Maelstrom's Edge got to do with Warpath slowly trundling to a stop?'

At least, that's what's going through my head.

Yup, that's what was going for too.

I hope Mantic figures out some stuff soon and can turn this around.

Competition for GW and 40K is a good thing!

I don't know what would be a greater disaster, GW dropping the 40k line (if we're talking rewinding the timeline to the Heresy, that's a lot of xenos that don't even exist as factions yet) or the current lot of local players switching over to Mantic.

Are we really saying that a $250K KS qualifies Warpath as a 40K Challenger?

If it's there, ready to absorb players when (if) 40k is killed off, then yes, it's a challenger, regardless of how much money it makes today.

I don't think so - but I thought WP was supposed to be one?

There are enough disgruntled/dissatisfied 40k players out there that it could be one....

 Vermis wrote:
I think it was more along the lines of 'what the unmentionable has Maelstrom's Edge got to do with Warpath slowly trundling to a stop?'

At least, that's what's going through my head.

Oh, it's simple, see, this was said:

 Alpharius wrote:
Many of us really did envision this as a serious contender for 40K and GW. 9 days in (12 to go), I thought we'd be WAY past $250K.

Which is interesting, because another game, Medge, was actually billed as the next 40k, and one can see how well that did.

You seem to be taking these things way too personally.

Maybe take it down a notch or two?

And FYI, I've got absolutely zero to do with MEdge.

@Judgedoug - I apologize for being obnoxious in my last post. My only complaint with your comments is the tone, which feels a bit like Chaos dancing on the ashes of Mankind after everything's over. I don't see grounds for schadenfreude over Maelstrom's Edge and their KS campaign. Unless you feel threatened by MEdge as a Mantic supporter, which I definitely don't as a supporter of both, why the venom?

Honestly, I'm pretty happy to see any new sci-fi 28mm lines coming out, especially in hard plastic. Even if I have no interest in the rules or universe (although I usually do), it's more conversion fodder for the games I do play. I've even made use of Sedition Wars figures to improve my Mantic ones (specifically a 2nd Gen). Relying on 40K plastics alone for conversions has gotten really old, and given the Gothic specificity of much of what they make, really tedious.

 Alpharius wrote:
You seem to be taking these things way too personally.

Maybe take it down a notch or two?

Haha, I would say the same about you and Vermonter I'm just pointing out these totally subjective definitions of success. Hell of a moving target when one can claim 70k is a success and 250k is disappointing But I personally hold no cows as sacred

 judgedoug wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
You seem to be taking these things way too personally.

Maybe take it down a notch or two?

Haha, I would say the same about you and Vermonter I'm just pointing out these totally subjective definitions of success. Hell of a moving target when one can claim 70k is a success and 250k is disappointing But I personally hold no cows as sacred

Point taken and acknowledged. But see my last post. I'm trying to reign it in.

The last point I'd like to make on the subject is that it isn't necessary to denigrate MEdge to argue that Warpath has merit. They're different products at different stages. I like and support both.

 Vermonter wrote:
@Judgedoug - I apologize for being obnoxious in my last post. My only complaint with your comments is the tone, which feels a bit like Chaos dancing on the ashes of Mankind after everything's over. I don't see grounds for schadenfreude over Maelstrom's Edge and their KS campaign. Unless you feel threatened by MEdge as a Mantic supporter, which I definitely don't as a supporter of both, why the venom?

Honestly, I'm pretty happy to see any new sci-fi 28mm lines coming out, especially in hard plastic. Even if I have no interest in the rules or universe (although I usually do), it's more conversion fodder for the games I do play. I've even made use of Sedition Wars figures to improve my Mantic ones (specifically a 2nd Gen). Relying on 40K plastics alone for conversions has gotten really old, and given the Gothic specificity of much of what they make, really tedious.

Nothing to apologize for, I don't really take toy soldiers very seriously. Honestly, I wish Medge all the best, but the rules and models just aren't for me, and that's a deadly combo. re: Warpath, the models _are_ for me - they are evocative of a badass Saturday morning cartoon and for some reason that strikes some chord that makes me want them, lots and lots of them. I could honestly care less about the Warpath rules. If anything, Gates of Antares has me quite excited after Manchu's overview of the ruleset.

And yes, I agree about any 28mm sci-fi plastics. I can't stand 40k aesthetics any longer, honestly.

 Vermonter wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
You seem to be taking these things way too personally.

Maybe take it down a notch or two?

Haha, I would say the same about you and Vermonter I'm just pointing out these totally subjective definitions of success. Hell of a moving target when one can claim 70k is a success and 250k is disappointing But I personally hold no cows as sacred

Point taken and acknowledged. But see my last post. I'm trying to reign it in.

The last point I'd like to make on the subject is that it isn't necessary to denigrate MEdge to argue that Warpath has merit. They're different products at different stages. I like and support both.

Agreed!

It feels goofy and petty to drag MEdge in here to somehow show that Warpath is doing...great?

I want a serious competitor to challenge GW and 40K.

I was thinking Warpath might be it - sorry, my mistake!

The truth of it all is that the GW will make more money in pre-orders for the Horus Heresy plastics than Mantic will make in a year.

They're going to sell a gak load of Horus Heresy plastics.

I dunno if I'm willing to give Mantic another chance unless they can show me some Rebels HIPS. Beyond that, nothing really gets my juices flowing.

 judgedoug wrote:
they are evocative of a badass Saturday morning cartoon and for some reason that strikes some chord that makes me want them, lots and lots of them.

It's funny . . . I really like the aesthetic of Mantic's sci-fi figures too, with some exceptions. I definitely prefer them to GW's heroic style, although some of Mantic's stuff does emulate that. (Mantic has multiple styles right now, sometimes even within the same faction, not a unified house style.) But if Mantic's figures reminded me of a "badass Saturday morning cartoon," I probably wouldn't like them. That's not a criticism, just interesting that we both like the look but see it differently.

 judgedoug wrote:
I could honestly care less about the Warpath rules.

Weird Al might compel me to correct your grammar there, but I agree with the sentiment. I'm basically in this for Deadzone stuff, which in a way makes buying in easier. All the brouhaha over how good the Warpath / FF rules will be, or even what they will be, doesn't worry me.

 judgedoug wrote:
And yes, I agree about any 28mm sci-fi plastics. I can't stand 40k aesthetics any longer, honestly.

If there were a viable sci-fi alternative out there of equal quality, depth, and breadth but a less cartoony / Gothic vibe, I might drop GW entirely. As it is, I still check in to see what useful bits I can pull from the new sets. That requires a lot of filtering - too many bits with skulls all over, too many huge powerfists, too many chunky armor legs, and frankly, for the industry leader, a surprising amount of genuinely poor sculpts. Like, the kind of sculpts associated with Mantic at its worst. GW also has, within it's particular style, many successes. But for the legendary top dog, there are more stinkers in the bunch than I would expect.

I find that's worth remembering when a smaller company puts out an embarrassing sculpt, provided that it's an occasional thing and not stamped across the entire line. Even the big boys still make bad sculpts sometimes. (That doesn't mean I buy said bad sculpts. But I might not piss on that smaller company quite as hard for the error, either.)

 judgedoug wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
You seem to be taking these things way too personally.

Maybe take it down a notch or two?

Haha, I would say the same about you and Vermonter I'm just pointing out these totally subjective definitions of success. Hell of a moving target when one can claim 70k is a success and 250k is disappointing But I personally hold no cows as sacred

Did anyone bill MEdge as a success in that regard?


Some Karists, Angels and drones would sure make for a great plastic Revel army in WP, though.

I am actually a little bit shocked that the Plague and Asterian stretch goals have not made the total rise a fair bit more into the realm of other stretch goals thus far. Admittedly they have increased the pace a bit after a slow weekend, but I guess people have just switched their faction in their pledges of choice rather than contributing more money.

It is also probably indicative that "most" people do not want 50-100 basic infantry to paint up for a sci-fi battle game. I doubt add on terrain weds will do much either, personally if I wanted it now I could order it today and have it by Saturday.

Sure Warpath is a contender for 40k

Not a massive one by any stretch of the imagination.

But I was toying over starting a new CSM army.

or Warpath

I opted for Warpath - as the balancing mechanics employed by Games Workshop do my nut in.

I doubt there's many out there like me. But its money that was going to GW now going to Mantic

 Alpharius wrote:


It feels goofy and petty to drag MEdge in here to somehow show that Warpath is doing...great?

I thought it was pretty well understand that for superfans, they have an almost tribal allegiance to their product. Given that people here are on rules committees or otherwise carry serious water for Mantic, you're going to get some personal responses to critiques. Not right, not altogether wrong, but definitely a thing.

I want a serious competitor to challenge GW and 40K.

I was thinking Warpath might be it - sorry, my mistake!

I think we all do, but the reality is that 40k is leagues beyond what anybody could fund right now without high eight figures in funding. Even a relatively minor faction like Dark Eldar has what, two infantry boxes, bikes, skyboard riders, jump infantry, two transports, gunboat, monster, and a fighter. that's ten plastic sprues, all stuffed with bitz and options, and all of very high technical quality.

Nobody is going to be able to churn that out without major corporate backing. Looking at the fairly major kickstarters, most companies struggle to get 10 sprues total out the door, and 40k has that just for a single, lower tier faction! I think we all need to redefine what we mean by "40k alternative," because we're not going to see a true competitor that can go toe-to-toe. We simply are not. Warpath is at least mass sci-fi combat with vehicles.

Now, as rules go... A rule set that takes over 40k like KoW took over from fantasy is obviously much more doable, but I'm worried by the schizophrenic nature of the rules development at this point. We are also unlikely to see the not-ravening hordes book that KoW will get.

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
I am actually a little bit shocked that the Plague and Asterian stretch goals have not made the total rise a fair bit more into the realm of other stretch goals thus far. Admittedly they have increased the pace a bit after a slow weekend, but I guess people have just switched their faction in their pledges of choice rather than contributing more money.

It is also probably indicative that "most" people do not want 50-100 basic infantry to paint up for a sci-fi battle game. I doubt add on terrain weds will do much either, personally if I wanted it now I could order it today and have it by Saturday.

Well, the comments are still full of nutters who want a 8-battlegroup pledge, tho. I think we'll see at least a moderate surge once Mantic sweetens the pot. And you know they will.

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
I am actually a little bit shocked that the Plague and Asterian stretch goals have not made the total rise a fair bit more into the realm of other stretch goals thus far. Admittedly they have increased the pace a bit after a slow weekend, but I guess people have just switched their faction in their pledges of choice rather than contributing more money.

I have so much Plague and Asterian already from previous KS it isn't even funny. I understand they will be hard plastic but they are still going in the pile of lots of stuff I already have and would mean they would get sidelined since I'm not just going to simply replace existing to replace.

Now if Corporation was to make an appearance.. that would be a different thing since it is one of the factions that everyone didn't get overloaded in from multiple Kickstarters.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
I am actually a little bit shocked that the Plague and Asterian stretch goals have not made the total rise a fair bit more into the realm of other stretch goals thus far. Admittedly they have increased the pace a bit after a slow weekend, but I guess people have just switched their faction in their pledges of choice rather than contributing more money.

It is also probably indicative that "most" people do not want 50-100 basic infantry to paint up for a sci-fi battle game. I doubt add on terrain weds will do much either, personally if I wanted it now I could order it today and have it by Saturday.

Well, the comments are still full of nutters who want a 8-battlegroup pledge, tho. I think we'll see at least a moderate surge once Mantic sweetens the pot. And you know they will.

So I'm a nutter for wanting a deal for buying in bulk?

It's a little early for a post-mortem on Warpath. Regardless of what the campaign's final total is, it will get several viable forces out there. It's not like Mantic have to publish all 12 (or whatever the number is) of the Warpath armies at one go to make it viable. Over the years, it will probably see not only new armies introduced, but the phasing out of PVC and metal figures for even more HIPs kits.

The one thing I don't get about Mantic and HIPs is how it squares with Wyrd's Malifaux range. If you look at how Mantic approaches it with extreme caution, HIPs is an extremely costly investment, and therefore dangerous to get into too heavily without some backing or assurance of market viability. So Mantic focuses on core troopers for their main armies, and leaves specialists etc. as PVC, metal, or resin.

Meanwhile, Wyrd puts out kit after kit of figures so obscure they would be hard to fit into any other setting. Bayou Gremlins. Pig-a-pults. Undead ballerinas. There's just no cross-market appeal for these things: they fit their Malifaux niche, and that's it. Even bits-wise, it's hard to find a Malifaux kit that could have much use outside of its intended purpose. And I'm assuming that Malifaux isn't the next Magic: The Gathering in terms of sales. I'm hoping that it's doing moderately well with a dedicated fan base, but I can't imagine it's a phenomenon. Furthermore, Wyrd has put out a lot of these kits without KS backing.

So how do these two approaches square? How can Sphyr troopers in hard plastic be "yeah, sure, that'll be the day, dream on," when Wyrd is putting out a gothic rock 'n roll band in the same material?
Is the guy who runs Wyrd independently wealthy? Or insane? Or about to go broke?

Or are Mantic way too gun-shy with hard plastic?

 Alex C wrote:
So I'm a nutter for wanting a deal for buying in bulk?

For wanting that much stuff, not for wanting a good deal

@Vermonter, I am a member of a number of Wyrd social media groups. Its popularity is growing, but it has more of a boutique feel. For many it has an almost Pokemon "got to catch them all" type feel. The patrons seem to be quite wealthy, as every time Gencon/Black Friday rolls around most people seem to talk about dropping $500-$700+ on product like it was nothing, people love the sculpts. For further evidence of the money spent check ebay for the very high costs that exclusives fetch, I have no idea how many of these people buy, but surely nothing like as many as a core infantry line for a mass battle game. The sculpts are often very complex as well, seperate 3 piece faces, separate fingers etc etc. I think it is a range for painters and modellers that are prepared, and able to, spend big. I think that by the time that 2015 ends Wyrd will have put out at least 50 HIPS kits this year alone, ranging from crew boxes to $9 single figures.

For Mantic/Warpath it seems like more of a gamers range. Big armies, on the cheap and for many it seems like some of the sculpts will "just do". As to why Mantic seem to find the whole HIPS production a scary prospect I think they were initially burned by the failure of HIPS KOW Elves, and possibly Dwarves. These were slow to sell, and discounted everywhere. I still do not know if the Elves have made back their tooling costs some 5 years after they were made.

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
I am actually a little bit shocked that the Plague and Asterian stretch goals have not made the total rise a fair bit more into the realm of other stretch goals thus far. Admittedly they have increased the pace a bit after a slow weekend, but I guess people have just switched their faction in their pledges of choice rather than contributing more money.

It is also probably indicative that "most" people do not want 50-100 basic infantry to paint up for a sci-fi battle game. I doubt add on terrain weds will do much either, personally if I wanted it now I could order it today and have it by Saturday.

That's actually a good point. 40k grew in size over 25 years to become the beast it is today. It has an enormous amount of momentum. But when it comes down to it... Do people actually want a 28mm mass battle sci-if game?

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Alex C wrote:
So I'm a nutter for wanting a deal for buying in bulk?

For wanting that much stuff, not for wanting a good deal

I like it. I save money buying it all up front in bulk. Seems reasonable to me

 Mymearan wrote:
But when it comes down to it... Do people actually want a 28mm mass battle sci-if game?

At the scale of modern 40K and what Mantic seems to want Warpath to be? Not I.

I'd really like it if Firefight turned out to be a solid game at around 40K 2e size with a model range along the lines of early 3e 40K, where basic troops and vehicles were HIPS, but you might still have metals (or resin these days) for the more one-off or rarer inclusions for your army.

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
@Vermonter, I am a member of a number of Wyrd social media groups. Its popularity is growing, but it has more of a boutique feel. For many it has an almost Pokemon "got to catch them all" type feel. The patrons seem to be quite wealthy, as every time Gencon/Black Friday rolls around most people seem to talk about dropping $500-$700+ on product like it was nothing, people love the sculpts. For further evidence of the money spent check ebay for the very high costs that exclusives fetch, I have no idea how many of these people buy, but surely nothing like as many as a core infantry line for a mass battle game. The sculpts are often very complex as well, seperate 3 piece faces, separate fingers etc etc. I think it is a range for painters and modellers that are prepared, and able to, spend big. I think that by the time that 2015 ends Wyrd will have put out at least 50 HIPS kits this year alone, ranging from crew boxes to $9 single figures.

For Mantic/Warpath it seems like more of a gamers range. Big armies, on the cheap and for many it seems like some of the sculpts will "just do". As to why Mantic seem to find the whole HIPS production a scary prospect I think they were initially burned by the failure of HIPS KOW Elves, and possibly Dwarves. These were slow to sell, and discounted everywhere. I still do not know if the Elves have made back their tooling costs some 5 years after they were made.

Thanks for that informed response, Thraxas. It's always puzzled me how Wyrd has been able to do what it has done. I'm glad they are, though. Most of their kits are too Malifaux-specific for me, but every now and then they put out a good monster or something less stylized that I can use. The Razorspine rattler, for example, is the great hard plastic Plague monster that Mantic would never dream of publishing.



I hope Wyrd will get around to putting out their hard plastic Insidious Madness kit sometime in the coming months. The new design for that was great for mutants / Cthulhu inspired stuff.

 Vermonter wrote:
So how do these two approaches square? How can Sphyr troopers in hard plastic be "yeah, sure, that'll be the day, dream on," when Wyrd is putting out a gothic rock 'n roll band in the same material?
Is the guy who runs Wyrd independently wealthy? Or insane? Or about to go broke?

It might be a materials one - HIPS moulds come in different materials, which vary wildly in their machining costs, and consequently vary wildly in the number of sprues that can be pushed out before they suffer irreparable damage. Wyrd could simply be using one of the cheaper materials like aluminium or soft steel to do short runs for their small market, while Mantic is using hard aluminium alloys or tool steel anticipating much higher production runs. Hardened steel is what they use for enormous production runs like light switches, fittings, fridge door handles, etc.

 Psychopomp wrote:

 Mymearan wrote:
But when it comes down to it... Do people actually want a 28mm mass battle sci-if game?

At the scale of modern 40K and what Mantic seems to want Warpath to be? Not I.

I'd really like it if Firefight turned out to be a solid game at around 40K 2e size with a model range along the lines of early 3e 40K, where basic troops and vehicles were HIPS, but you might still have metals (or resin these days) for the more one-off or rarer inclusions for your army.

That's what I'm hoping for too!

I will most likely end up with a Forgefathers army of about that size...

@Vermonter, very good call on the Rattler. A model like that has two releases for Wyrd, the first via a crew box and then a single small box release as you can add multiples to your crew. It can be a small 6-8 model game but due to the rules (different "schemes/missions") you choose your crew on a game to game basis so it is good to have a pool of models to choose from, thus more spending.

Anyway I will try and get back on topic to the Warpath KS...do we see a tipping point where Mantic will get a bit manic and throw oodles more minis into the pledge levels? Or are they happy with how it is going and a total under 500k?

 NTRabbit wrote:

 Vermonter wrote:
So how do these two approaches square? How can Sphyr troopers in hard plastic be "yeah, sure, that'll be the day, dream on," when Wyrd is putting out a gothic rock 'n roll band in the same material?
Is the guy who runs Wyrd independently wealthy? Or insane? Or about to go broke?

It might be a materials one - HIPS moulds come in different materials, which vary wildly in their machining costs, and consequently vary wildly in the number of sprues that can be pushed out before they suffer irreparable damage. Wyrd could simply be using one of the cheaper materials like aluminium or soft steel to do short runs for their small market, while Mantic is using hard aluminium alloys or tool steel anticipating much higher production runs. Hardened steel is what they use for enormous production runs like light switches, fittings, fridge door handles, etc.

It's also a matter of who is doing the manufacturing. Wyrd is using Wargames Factory for their plastics (same company that did Kingdom Death, Dreamforge Games, and Secret Weapon Miniatures table tiles).

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
Anyway I will try and get back on topic to the Warpath KS...do we see a tipping point where Mantic will get a bit manic and throw oodles more minis into the pledge levels? Or are they happy with how it is going and a total under 500k?

It's going to be very interesting. I doubt they'll do anything until they see how adding the terrain goes over. I suspect it won't do much, personally. But then we'll see one of two things:

1. Sweeten-the-pot Mantic will do something that makes the main pledge a lot more attractive. Maybe add another vehicle to it. Or they might start adding one plastic sprue of all new troopers (the ones funded during this campaign) to the main pledge, so that it sweetens the pot, but also tempts people to invest in other forces, both during the campaign and after they get their rewards a year later. At no materials cost to themselves but with more sorting, they could bend and let people get 3 different vehicles in the bundles.

2. Tough-as-tacks Mantic, last seen during the Dreadball Xtreme KS, will say lump-it-or-like-it, our back is against the wall and we can't add any more value.

#2 will turn a stall into a backslide as more backers drop out than new ones come in. If they take option 2 it will cost them funding, so it's only worth doing if accepting that cost is better than the alternative. Otherwise, if their back isn't really against the wall, they'll be shooting their campaign in the foot.

If it were me, I'd improve the deal, even if it meant gambling a bit on the growth of the KS afterwards to offset it, or if it meant digging into my own pockets a little. The interesting thing is that ordinarily sweetening the pot is exactly what Mantic does, but this campaign is meant to proceed in the manner of KOW 2, where the value is in the discounted armies rather than an overstuffed pledge level. If that approach stops working and things stop cold or backslide, they may need to re-think that.

 Polonius wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:


It feels goofy and petty to drag MEdge in here to somehow show that Warpath is doing...great?

I thought it was pretty well understand that for superfans, they have an almost tribal allegiance to their product. Given that people here are on rules committees or otherwise carry serious water for Mantic, you're going to get some personal responses to critiques. Not right, not altogether wrong, but definitely a thing.

I love that you consider me a superfan with a tribal allegiance and carrying water for... wait, I really like Age of Sigmar and I'm heavily critical of Warpath's rules. What just happened? It's cute though. Stupendous logical fallacy aside.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vermonter wrote:
The one thing I don't get about Mantic and HIPs is how it squares with Wyrd's Malifaux range. If you look at how Mantic approaches it with extreme caution, HIPs is an extremely costly investment, and therefore dangerous to get into too heavily without some backing or assurance of market viability. So Mantic focuses on core troopers for their main armies, and leaves specialists etc. as PVC, metal, or resin.

Meanwhile, Wyrd puts out kit after kit of figures so obscure they would be hard to fit into any other setting.

Regarding Wyrd, they have some pretty talented 3d sculptors and a contract with Wargames Factory - working on credit/sales, much like Dreamforge. Mantic is obviously not using Wargames Factory.

Just wanted to say thank you to everyone for all the commentary on producing hard plastic / how Wyrd does what it does. I am greatly edified.

I now return you to your regular Warpath rambling . . .

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
Anyway I will try and get back on topic to the Warpath KS...do we see a tipping point where Mantic will get a bit manic and throw oodles more minis into the pledge levels?

Nope.

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
Or are they happy with how it is going and a total under 500k?

Yes. They said, what, a year and a half ago, that their goal is a series of 3-4 Kickstarters per year, all of a manageable size, with limited customizability. This is after the "oodles of minis" of KoW1, DB1, DZ1, where their logistics were overwhelmed by their success. It seems that a lot of armchair generals in this thread are either unaware, have forgotten, or choose to ignore this.

Since then, they've had continuously improving logistics, quality, and turnaround times. If Warpath ended today, it would be a huge success as it will have funded several new kits that will continue Mantic's viability in the marketplace. Then, they'd launch another in six months to fund more kits.

However, it's easy to say that Mantic's current and last few Kickstarters are failures if your entire goal is to criticize them; all evidence, however, would not be on your side.

If anything, Mantic has learned how to strategically control their growth. Contrast to someone like Warlord who has continual supply and retail issues because they cannot keep up with their growth, or FFG who continually have failures because their supply cannot meet their demand.

 judgedoug wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:


It feels goofy and petty to drag MEdge in here to somehow show that Warpath is doing...great?

I thought it was pretty well understand that for superfans, they have an almost tribal allegiance to their product. Given that people here are on rules committees or otherwise carry serious water for Mantic, you're going to get some personal responses to critiques. Not right, not altogether wrong, but definitely a thing.

I love that you consider me a superfan with a tribal allegiance and carrying water for... wait, I really like Age of Sigmar. What just happened? It's cute though. Stupendous logical fallacy aside.

I apologize if you're offended, but I tried to avoid more emotionally charged terms (fanboi, white knight, etc). You are a vociferous commenter about mantic on multiple forums, and you clearly are invested in their success, even if only as a dedicated customer. My point was, I don't think you're out of line for reacting to critiques of Mantic, given your demonstrated attachment to the company and their product.

It is possible you're getting a little too bunkered in if you think my comment was some sort of attack.

@Judgedoug:

I kindof agree, nearly $250k is no chump change. I think a lot of perceptions are formed by the massive successes of DZ 1 and DB 1. But they also welcomed in the buoyant board game market, something that Warpath does not appeal to.

 NTRabbit wrote:

 agnosto wrote:

 MasterSlowPoke wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Like I already said, Mantic obviously rushed this and knowingly sacrificed a higher pledge total in order to get some money fast, which suggests that they're desperate for cash.

They almost completely sold out of KoW a month ago, why do you keep saying they're desperate for cash? It's a narrative only you think is true

Two different systems; there might be some crossover but fantasy gamers and sci-fi gamers don't necessarily have to be the same people.

Got nothing to do with crossover or same people, being sold out of all the first print run rule books and much of the second, and a lot of armies - remember this is after all the KS backer product had been ringfenced - shows Mantic have plenty of retail profits flowing in just from KoW. ie there is no cash shortage

Mind you I'm not even attempting to say they have a cash shortage. I'm just saying that if you're only measure of success depends on an unknown data point like how much actual stock was on hand before it sold out, you're just guessing as much as the people saying they're broke and need money NAOW! GW manage stock on items all the time and laud themselves as things sell out when they only ever had 1000 copies to begin with (hurry and buy it now before it sells out).

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
@Judgedoug:

I kindof agree, nearly $250k is no chump change. I think a lot of perceptions are formed by the massive successes of DZ 1 and DB 1. But they also welcomed in the buoyant board game market, something that Warpath does not appeal to.

I do think that might be part of it. Our reptile brain figures that a kickstarter for a game with more minis must make more money, when in fact mass combat (or even skirmish) games that are not boardgame-ish are a much smaller market than hobby boardgames.

I'm still trying to figure out exactly what the market for this kickstarter is. KoW (both 1&2) had pretty solid rulessets already out there, and they both funded pretty substantial armies, as well as books (KoW funded Basileans, Ogres, and Goblins, IIFC, while KoW2 funded Abyssals and Nature). So, the appeal was to people that liked the established, if Beta, rules that were out there, also people that wanted to create new armies, or buy into old ones for cheap.

this one doesn't have the advantage of goodwill towards the rules. The biggest draw are the armies, but the new stuff has oozed out. Also, not much of it can be used in 40k, compared to the very direct ports available to KoW models. So, you need to get people to like sketched out models to play on sketched out rules. It's a much bigger leap of faith for a company, that, with all due respect, hasn't earned a lot of trust.

 Polonius wrote:
I apologize if you're offended, but I tried to avoid more emotionally charged terms (fanboi, white knight, etc). You are a vociferous commenter about mantic on multiple forums, and you clearly are invested in their success, even if only as a dedicated customer. My point was, I don't think you're out of line for reacting to critiques of Mantic, given your demonstrated attachment to the company and their product.

It is possible you're getting a little too bunkered in if you think my comment was some sort of attack.

You're right, it's a vicious cycle of self-hatred because I'm such a white knight and cannot stand criticism of any kind of Mantic yet I continue to be critical of mistakes that Mantic makes. Please, Polonius, tell me what to do! Even if you have to invent a fiction, as you have just demonstrated your excellent ability to do.

Yeah, maybe some of us were a bit unfair. It's been a long time since any strictly wargaming KS raised this sort of money besides Mantic.

 judgedoug wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
I apologize if you're offended, but I tried to avoid more emotionally charged terms (fanboi, white knight, etc). You are a vociferous commenter about mantic on multiple forums, and you clearly are invested in their success, even if only as a dedicated customer. My point was, I don't think you're out of line for reacting to critiques of Mantic, given your demonstrated attachment to the company and their product.

It is possible you're getting a little too bunkered in if you think my comment was some sort of attack.

You're right, it's a vicious cycle of self-hatred because I'm such a white knight and cannot stand criticism of any kind of Mantic yet I continue to be critical of mistakes that Mantic makes. Please, Polonius, tell me what to do! Even if you have to invent a fiction, as you have just demonstrated your excellent ability to do.

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but I might be doing a very poor job of communicating if that's the message you're receiving.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Yeah, maybe some of us were a bit unfair. It's been a long time since any strictly wargaming KS raised this sort of money besides Mantic.

I mean, think about it this way. If million dollar kickstarters produce huge delays, a 25% to 75% good to bad sculpt ratio, and poor quality materials, I'd much rather have a series of smaller kickstarters producing no-to-light delays, a 50% to 50% good to bad sculpt ratio, and reasonable quality materials.

With the small/controlled Kickstarters (and I use the term "small" loosely, $250,000 is still two hundred and fifty thousand dollars) like KOW2, DZ2 and Warpath, there's a majority of sculpts in a material I like; versus a big fat KS remiscent of DZ1 and Dreadball, that we'll be waiting forever on, that will be totally mispacked when we do get it, with hands that don't actually fit to a model's arms, etc.

If Mantic starts throwing in a bunch of free crap and Warpath soars to a million bucks, I'd be sorely tempted to Azazelx my pledge because I know that Mantic simply cannot handle that much all at once.

Well, the terrain-heavy add-on wednesday arrived...

... and the pledge total is going down.

Not sure whether to laugh or cry.

All I really want out of this KS are some cheap HIPS troops and cheap HIPS vehicles of decent quality. 20 for $20 troops and $20 tanks or dropships will get me to spend. Great designs will get me to spend slightly more.

Anything else will be met as a challenge.

I'm trying to find a good balance between having enough for a Firefight game and supplementing all the goodies I've already gotten from both Deadzone campaigns.

Problem I have like many is I got plenty from both Deadzone sets, so I don't have a real need for an entire other battleforce.

A mix of vehicles and new troop sprues is all I'm really after.

I guess I could go for more specialists to toss in the DZ.

Got the add on Wednesday info...so be ready for an honest critique. No discount from buying multiple terrains. Each terrain is $35. No slight discount for buying 2, 4, 8 or anything. First time I've seen that from them. Not going to lie, it's kind of a stinker. And that's me as a fanboi.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Got the add on Wednesday info...so be ready for an honest critique. No discount from buying multiple terrains. Each terrain is $35. No slight discount for buying 2, 4, 8 or anything. First time I've seen that from them. Not going to lie, it's kind of a stinker. And that's me as a fanboi.

Unless I'm mistaken, the chart shows that higher terrain pledge levels have bonus accessory sprues.

The main thing any Battlezone set needs is more connector sprues, are they available to add on?

 Alpharius wrote:
I was just about to ask "If I want to play a SF mass battle game with plastic infantry and vehicles, and I don't want to play 40K, what are my options?"

There aren't many, are there?

Maybe Spartan's stuff, but is any of it plastic?

And have they stopped changing the rules too frequently?

Is there something else?

Dust... although that isn't "just" scifi but also a mix with historical. Over a decade ago, Warzone tried and failed due to reasons unrelated to their actual game (the parent company IIRC went belly up). There weren't many choices before kickstarter because the barrier was so high. Even GW took decades to get to *MOSTLY* plastic and they're not done with that switchover even now.

 Alex C wrote:
Well, the terrain-heavy add-on wednesday arrived...

... and the pledge total is going down.

Not sure whether to laugh or cry.

Hmm? It's gone up, at least $500, since the update.

 judgedoug wrote:

 Alex C wrote:
Well, the terrain-heavy add-on wednesday arrived...

... and the pledge total is going down.

Not sure whether to laugh or cry.

Hmm? It's gone up, at least $500, since the update.

At the time I posted it had gone down a couple of hundred.

Yeah, I'm not gonna lie, that's a little odd. - Even a cumulative $5 discount or something would make sense.

Or some extra accessory sprues, it's just a doubling up. Seems meh, yeah.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Got the add on Wednesday info...so be ready for an honest critique. No discount from buying multiple terrains. Each terrain is $35. No slight discount for buying 2, 4, 8 or anything. First time I've seen that from them. Not going to lie, it's kind of a stinker. And that's me as a fanboi.

Unless I'm mistaken, the chart shows that higher terrain pledge levels have bonus accessory sprues.

Spoiler:

Ah. Yes and no. You get a free sprue per each battlezone after the first. So a discount from 1->2, then just one accessory/expansion sprue per grouping. So buying 2 is better than 1. But 8 is no better than 2 or 4.

And unless I'm mistaken, both Mantic's own bundle deals and independent retailers' individual battlezones would end up cheaper than this, and ship immediately to boot? I get they didn't like the hit on shipping they must have taken in the DZ1 KS but this is a fairly poor deal.

I mean, who would not rather take the $199.99 urban quadrant over the $280 deal here? That's $80 to spare to get some of the DZ:I scenery and in the end you'll simply have more scenery for the same price, and most of it probably at least half a year earlier as well.

One thing to keep in mind. - The term "battlezone" isn't consistent across everything. The number of actual sprues and what kind change depending on what box or deal you pick up at any given time...

For mass battles, you can use the Warmachine rules, it does scale up now a bit. If you alter your thinking outside of the original setting and think of it like a hacker/decker/rigger controlling drones you can easily move it over to a more futuristic setting.
How does that apply to Mantic? Well, focusing on their models, you could pretty easily come up with some proxies. Vehicles would mostly be out though.

That said, I buy a lot of Warpath and other sci-fi models to do custom scenarios. Other people use it for upscaled Tomorrow's War or Gruntz even. I have also heard people using them for games like Hammers Slammers or Stargrunt 2.
So.. if you don't like Mantic's rules and don't want to play proxy hammer or simply use the old 3rd ed 40k books (that's what we've been doing a bit of lately) then you can use the Warpath stuff in some of the smaller rules that are trying to get a foothold. The systems are quirky but a lot of them are flexible enought to allow you to use whatever models. For me, I like a lot of the stuff Mantic released for Deadzone and have/will be using them like this. I will likely pick up a few things from this KS because I know that if I don't like the rules I do still have ways to use the models.

 Compel wrote:
One thing to keep in mind. - The term "battlezone" isn't consistent across everything. The number of actual sprues and what kind change depending on what box or deal you pick up at any given time...

Fair enough. However the eight or so battlezones I got from the original KS didn't seem like that much more stuff than the urban quadrant an FLGS around here got (and had us build, mostly for Infinity use). I'm fairly sure it's the same ballpark. I'll try to do the math on it this weekend or so but I'm fairly sure discounted retail is cheaper than KS, and via KS you'd have to wait, what? half a year? more? There's just no 'deal' to be had on the scenery as currently marketed via the KS from what I can see.

 MLaw wrote:
For mass battles, you can use the Warmachine rules, it does scale up now a bit. If you alter your thinking outside of the original setting and think of it like a hacker/decker/rigger controlling drones you can easily move it over to a more futuristic setting.

Rules aren't really the issue but rather the availability of plastic minis. I have a copy of HG Well's mass battle rules published around 1900.

Well, it's picking up a bit now. We still gained less than $3k since I got up 12 hours ago, though.

 Polonius wrote:
Given that people here are on rules committees

Was this necessary?

 Baragash wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
Given that people here are on rules committees

Was this necessary?

No good deed goes unpunished, I guess.

I was pointing out, to a moderator no less, who was expressing some angst over the tone of Doug's posts, that a certain emotional response is to be excepted among people that are emotionally invested in something.

I was, in fact, defending, or at least explaining, the actions of some of the people propping up Mantic in this thread.

So, no, it wasn't necessary. Indeed, I'm regretting trying to help any of you out!

New FF tank/APC renders the face is more subtle now







Next goal adds the dozer blade and dragon breath flamer

The back of the APC looks strangely devoid of detail (not to mention the yuuuuuge 'teeth' on what looks like the hatch). I guess it's not an issue as long as you can feasibly build it with the back of the tank and just pretend that that small hatch works for the APC but still it looks sort of unfinished.

 judgedoug wrote:
Which is interesting, because another game, Medge, was actually billed as the next 40k, and one can see how well that did.

No it wasn't. At least, not by the guys making it.

 Mymearan wrote:
But when it comes down to it... Do people actually want a 28mm mass battle sci-if game?

Absolutely.
Or more specifically, I want a game that allows for games around a similar size to a 1500-2000-point 40K game, that also scales up to larger games without getting too bogged down and taking a week to play.

MEdge isn't that game, and was never intended to be (it's aimed at the spot in between 40K and the ever-increasing collection of small skirmish games) so I'm really not sure how it got dragged into this discussion.

Warpath was looking like it could be that game, but the hub and/or multibasing rules kill it for me. Although it's also possible that what I'm really looking for is 40K, but written properly and run past an editor before printing, so it's entirely possible that I'm going to find something that I hate about any other ruleset that is supposed to replace it... So in the interests of kicking out of that groove, I guess I'm probably going to have to wait until Warpath has finished rules and then, I don't know, try it or something...

 warboss wrote:

 MLaw wrote:
For mass battles, you can use the Warmachine rules, it does scale up now a bit. If you alter your thinking outside of the original setting and think of it like a hacker/decker/rigger controlling drones you can easily move it over to a more futuristic setting.

Rules aren't really the issue but rather the availability of plastic minis. I have a copy of HG Well's mass battle rules published around 1900.

Ah.. well, I'm not partial specifically to plastic so I suppose I have more options in that regard :/

The tanks for the FF look a bit better. It'd be nice to see inside so we can tell whether or not detailing an interior (like with a Rhino) is a possibility.

I like that a lot, considering it still has a face and two hands with pinkies extended. For $20, I'd get two.


I'm really trying hard not to make some terrible jokes about the tank's rude gesture.

 DaveC wrote:
New FF tank/APC renders the face is more subtle now

Yeah, that's a big improvement... Back end is still a bit boxy, and the turret doesn't really fit. But it's definitely coming along.

I'm curious how big those tanks are going to be.

I know we saw a render early on with an FF next to one.

Ought to put a Steel Warrior in each photo just to give a sense of scale.

DaveC wrote:New FF tank/APC renders the face is more subtle now

I take your meaning; but overall there's not much about that tank that says 'subtle' to me...

I like this new version of the FF Tank a lot better!

The APC version does look nicer - as noted the turret doesn't quite seem to 'fit', but this is certainly an improvement!

FF tank is awesome, very cool that it has 3 options included as standard, all of which look quite distinct and different from each other.

I kinda want 12... although 6 and a bunch of magnets will probably have to do.

There are plenty of real world tanks/AVs with turrets that don't quite seem to fit either, so that's almost a plus point towards realism

Yeah, and those are aesthetically unappealing too - as effective as they may (or may not) be.

I'm OK with missing out on that level of realism when my Space Dwarves are fighting Space Rats and Space Elves!

I'm warming up towards this project right now. Dunno.

I've had this idea to do a sort of post apocalyptic wargame loosely based around Fallout for a long time.

With a mix of the 20th century brick and urban/industrial battle zones, I could make a pretty nice "near future apocalypse" board.


Plague make decent Super Mutants.
Enforcers make good power armoured Enclave.

I might want to do up some Forge Fathers as a Squats homage, but I'm not sure I want to do an army.

If the Rebs made it in, they could be credible Wastelanders. Ho hum. Probably all a pipe dream.

 Alpharius wrote:
Yeah, and those are aesthetically unappealing too - as effective as they may (or may not) be.

I'm OK with missing out on that level of realism when my Space Dwarves are fighting Space Rats and Space Elves!

People like you are the reason we can't have hard sci fi space ratmen. Not that we wanted any.

How many turret options are included with the tank? If it comes with a spare turret about the size of the defense laser in the terrain kit, that would be a big selling point for me.


...So, are they making any sponsons for the tank?

I like the renders on the new Forge Fathers tanks. I see they've got an Urban Assault Vehicle version planned as a stretch goal. The only problem I have with the design is when someone says "urban assault vehicle", this is what I think of:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
I like the renders on the new Forge Fathers tanks. I see they've got an Urban Assault Vehicle version planned as a stretch goal. The only problem I have with the design is when someone says "urban assault vehicle", this is what I think of:

Spoiler:

The EM50 Urban Assault Vehicle from Stripes.

Now that's the kind of urban assault vehicle I'd accidentally drive into East Germany

Once it hits $260k the kit will have both the Hailstorm and Heavy Dragonbreath Turrets - it remains to be seen if they are entirely separate or share parts. The alpha army list also has a magma cannon turret I doubt they will fit a 3rd one in though.

I might get some Puppetwars turret platforms and mount the spare Hailstorms on them to use as Jotunns

 Alpharius wrote:
I like this new version of the FF Tank a lot better!

The APC version does look nicer - as noted the turret doesn't quite seem to 'fit', but this is certainly an improvement!

the turret is a bit tall, but I think the bigger clash is that the mantlet is curved, on a vehicle with all angled armor plates. It's a much better looking vehicle, and could become something really cool.

 Polonius wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
I like this new version of the FF Tank a lot better!

The APC version does look nicer - as noted the turret doesn't quite seem to 'fit', but this is certainly an improvement!

the turret is a bit tall, but I think the bigger clash is that the mantlet is curved, on a vehicle with all angled armor plates. It's a much better looking vehicle, and could become something really cool.

The whole tank is tall, that's what looks off to me. There's a reason tanks have low profiles, the FF tank looks like it would struggle to hit anything that wasn't as high off the ground as the turret.

That (non-turreted) APC looks pretty sweet!! What material is it being made in again?

Prestor Jon wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
I like this new version of the FF Tank a lot better!

The APC version does look nicer - as noted the turret doesn't quite seem to 'fit', but this is certainly an improvement!

the turret is a bit tall, but I think the bigger clash is that the mantlet is curved, on a vehicle with all angled armor plates. It's a much better looking vehicle, and could become something really cool.

The whole tank is tall, that's what looks off to me. There's a reason tanks have low profiles, the FF tank looks like it would struggle to hit anything that wasn't as high off the ground as the turret.

I categorically refuse to consider such "real world" concerns. I just want tanks that look cool.

I certainly understand when others think that's important, but I just see an odd clash in proportion and lines.

It's a shame the quad gun option looks like it will be restricted to aiming straight ahead only.. it looks AA to me :/

There's a possibility the whole gunshield might traverse upwards maybe?

Am I wrong in saying that, concept wise, the gun is kinda howitzer-ish than autocannon-ish?

It's a mortar type gun, I think. I really like the dwarf tank, 3 of them might be my sole battlegroup choice.

 Bolognesus wrote:
The back of the APC looks strangely devoid of detail (not to mention the yuuuuuge 'teeth' on what looks like the hatch). I guess it's not an issue as long as you can feasibly build it with the back of the tank and just pretend that that small hatch works for the APC but still it looks sort of unfinished.

I sort of agree with this sentiment but I also think that part is intended to slam down into the ground. It looks like a heavy skid plate to me. I'll end up weathering it (physically and with paint) so it looks like worn heavy machinery right there.

As for the tank profile being too high.
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-02/why-armys-new-tank-so-heavy
EDIT: Here's a picture of the tank for people who don't want to click the link.. Long story short.. new prototype tank is massively heavy and can carry 9 troops (thanks Grimdork).



It really depends on your philosophy it seems. In this instance, imaginary space dwarves tend to think like the designers of that tank I suppose.

 DaveC wrote:
Once it hits $260k the kit will have both the Hailstorm and Heavy Dragonbreath Turrets - it remains to be seen if they are entirely separate or share parts. The alpha army list also has a magma cannon turret I doubt they will fit a 3rd one in though.

I might get some Puppetwars turret platforms and mount the spare Hailstorms on them to use as Jotunns

The Magma Cannon will probably be a resin gun swap into the Hailstorm turret, same as how the Enforcer Arbiter is resin heavy cannons to replace the standard off-the-sprue heavy burst lasers on the normal Interceptor

The article you linked says that new 84 ton tank carries a team of 9 rather than the 6 of the Bradley it's replacing. I guess there was a misprint stating 6 when they first put it up.

Apparently the tank is so heavy because they wanted to engineer it to have extra armor, a bigger gun, and more room for the passengers to be armored (and for some space cushioning or whatever) and to count all that in along with a bigger engine from the start. I guess they started tacking extra armor and whatsits onto the Bradley for the Iraq/Afghanistan stuff and the engine was too small for the extra weight.

I guess the tank is more heavily armored to deal with the long ground wars in those areas. So I guess a big chunky forge father tank engaged in ground wars to take precious mineral veins/resources might have a similar design requirement. I mean surely they could nuke the planet from orbit but if they want to take and hold it they've gotta fight on the ground.

Gotta make an exclusive addon for the 3-pack. The first 3 variants are all on the sprue.

Love the FF tank renders. Will be snagging 3 or 6, not sure yet.

 Mort wrote:
Love the FF tank renders. Will be snagging 3 or 6, not sure yet.

This is another reason I want to see the rules finished (for FF especially). If transports are deathtraps like in some versions of 40k, then I would likely just get the tank variants. If the rules allow for Rhino Rush style play though, I would be inclined to form up a column.

Polonius wrote:I categorically refuse to consider such "real world" concerns. I just want tanks that look cool.

D'you know what's cool? Tanks that aren't purposely designed to have shot traps all down their front.

http://khurasanminiatures.tripod.com/28mm-red-banner.jpg

 MLaw wrote:

 Bolognesus wrote:
The back of the APC looks strangely devoid of detail (not to mention the yuuuuuge 'teeth' on what looks like the hatch). I guess it's not an issue as long as you can feasibly build it with the back of the tank and just pretend that that small hatch works for the APC but still it looks sort of unfinished.

I sort of agree with this sentiment but I also think that part is intended to slam down into the ground. It looks like a heavy skid plate to me. I'll end up weathering it (physically and with paint) so it looks like worn heavy machinery right there.

As for the tank profile being too high.
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-02/why-armys-new-tank-so-heavy
EDIT: Here's a picture of the tank for people who don't want to click the link.. Long story short.. new prototype tank is massively heavy and can carry 6 troops.



It really depends on your philosophy it seems. In this instance, imaginary space dwarves tend to think like the designers of that tank I supposed.

No offense to PopSci, but that's not a tank. That's an IFV (or whatever the Army decides to call it down the road). Tracks and a turret alone does not a tank make...

Valete,

JohnS

 Vermis wrote:

Polonius wrote:I categorically refuse to consider such "real world" concerns. I just want tanks that look cool.

D'you know what's cool? Tanks that aren't purposely designed to have shot traps all down their front.

http://khurasanminiatures.tripod.com/28mm-red-banner.jpg

You do know that's basically a 28mm Merkava with sci-fi stuff slapped on it right?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 cygnnus wrote:

 MLaw wrote:

 Bolognesus wrote:
The back of the APC looks strangely devoid of detail (not to mention the yuuuuuge 'teeth' on what looks like the hatch). I guess it's not an issue as long as you can feasibly build it with the back of the tank and just pretend that that small hatch works for the APC but still it looks sort of unfinished.

I sort of agree with this sentiment but I also think that part is intended to slam down into the ground. It looks like a heavy skid plate to me. I'll end up weathering it (physically and with paint) so it looks like worn heavy machinery right there.

As for the tank profile being too high.
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-02/why-armys-new-tank-so-heavy
EDIT: Here's a picture of the tank for people who don't want to click the link.. Long story short.. new prototype tank is massively heavy and can carry 6 troops.

Spoiler:

It really depends on your philosophy it seems. In this instance, imaginary space dwarves tend to think like the designers of that tank I supposed.

No offense to PopSci, but that's not a tank. That's an IFV (or whatever the Army decides to call it down the road). Tracks and a turret alone does not a tank make...

Valete,

JohnS

The FF tank is also a transport.

And.. for the sake of accuracy.. here's the definition of a tank: a heavy armored fighting vehicle carrying guns and moving on a continuous articulated metal track.

 MLaw wrote:

 Vermis wrote:

Polonius wrote:I categorically refuse to consider such "real world" concerns. I just want tanks that look cool.

D'you know what's cool? Tanks that aren't purposely designed to have shot traps all down their front.

http://khurasanminiatures.tripod.com/28mm-red-banner.jpg

You do know that's basically a 28mm Merkava with sci-fi stuff slapped on it right?

Nope, it is a kind of a SciFi Russian T-90. Not close to the Merkava at all really. It does have a LOT of modern Russian style elements though (intentionally, hence the Red Banner name).

 DaveC wrote:
New FF tank/APC renders the face is more subtle now

The new tank is definitely an improvement over the corny rogue traderish original concept art. I like it but I do have a minor quibble that has been partly mentioned so I'll add to that chorus in case Mantic is reading this. The back looks too plain and doesn't specifically have enough rivets. The front of the tank looks like an early war WWII tank with all those rivets but the back has less than a third of them for the surface area compared with the front. I realize that for space dwarves they're largely aesthetic but it would be nice if the two evened out a bit. Either way, a big improvement over the Michael Bay Ironhide dwarf space tank previously shown.

 MLaw wrote:


And.. for the sake of accuracy.. here's the definition of a tank: a heavy armored fighting vehicle carrying guns and moving on a continuous articulated metal track.

Not a very good or accurate definition. For example, Wiki defines them

A tank is a large type of armoured fighting vehicle with tracks, designed for front-line combat. Modern tanks are mobile land weapons platforms, mounting a large-calibre cannon in a rotating gun turret. They combine this with heavy vehicle armour providing protection for the crew, the vehicle's weapons, and its propulsion systems, and operational mobility, which allows them to position on the battlefield in advantageous locations.

Your IFV or what ever doesn't have the large calibre weapon nor the heavy armor to really be a tank.

 Vermis wrote:
D'you know what's cool? Tanks that aren't purposely designed to have shot traps all down their front.

You know what else is cool? Space Opera.

The shot traps are irrelevant, because the tank is made of handwavium, or unobtanium, or dwarfium, and joints that would be weak points on conventional armour are actually the strongest parts of the tank.

Or the tank was designed specifically for use on battlefields full of energy weapons that don't ricochet.

Or the dwarfs are so convinced of their own physical prowess that they don't care if the tank doesn't last more than 3 minutes on the battlefield.

Mantic isn't making hard scifi. They're making toys of elves and dwarfs in space.

Wikipedia is not recognized by most academic institutions as a credible source..
There are tanks from WW2 that had lighter armor than this tank and oh yeah.. AA mounts meaning much smaller caliber.

The bottom line, the FF tank, is being classified by Mantic as a tank in their game.

The vehicle I linked to is being classified as a tank by the US government. Wiki is literally an edit away from having their definition changed... so yeah.

A source that IS recognized by academic bodies.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tank

And another

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/tank

one more

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/tank


EDIT: Sorry guys, got carried away.. it's time for dinner I think..

Oh dear. A discussion on what does, and what does not, constitute a tank. Probably best if everyone who doesn't immediately decide to have a go at that debate check back at page 25 or so - that's probably going to be less than 12h knowing how these things usually go

@MLaw
I see your point. still it could have done with not literally being a 3ft (to scale) solid metal (or whatever) plate. I know they're dwarves but hell, you'd say they'd have gotten *some* idea of fuel efficiency by now.
...Not even to mention you'd really want all that additional thickness up front. Maybe evening out the zillion shot traps. (gah, now I'm doing it too!)

I do however really like the front of that thing more and more every time I see those renders. It's perfectly corny, yet somehow not quite too much. Shame I have no interest in forge fathers as a whole, but those will be cool to see on the table. ...as long as they're coming at you, that is

 MLaw wrote:
The bottom line, the FF tank, is being classified by Mantic as a tank in their game.

And that's probably sufficient for this thread.

If anyone really wants to continue the discussion on the definition of a tank, Off Topic would be the place to do it.

 Bolognesus wrote:
Oh dear. A discussion on what does, and what does not, constitute a tank. Probably best if everyone who doesn't immediately decide to have a go at that debate check back at page 25 or so - that's probably going to be less than 12h knowing how these things usually go

@MLaw
I see your point. still it could have done with not literally being a 3ft (to scale) solid metal (or whatever) plate. I know they're dwarves but hell, you'd say they'd have gotten *some* idea of fuel efficiency by now.
...Not even to mention you'd really want all that additional thickness up front. Maybe evening out the zillion shot traps. (gah, now I'm doing it too!)

I do however really like the front of that thing more and more every time I see those renders. It's perfectly corny, yet somehow not quite too much. Shame I have no interest in forge fathers as a whole, but those will be cool to see on the table. ...as long as they're coming at you, that is

Yeah, I'm with you. It really is not perfectly practical. Having it be segmented and with a skid bar or something might make a little more sense. Hopefully there is still time for them to slim it up a bit and add a few greebles.

Here's to hoping it doesn't just look like they hadn't finished that particular bit yet. We'll see.

Actually, the tank is the first thing that's made me think I might be able to justify getting 3. Not to field at once, but for the variety. Somehow the dropship doesn't quite do that for me, even though it has basically the same range of uses, from troop transport to assault unit.

I still think $30 is too much for a Kickstarter. We won't all agree on that, but can we at least agree that in practice $30 hasn't been low enough to pump this KS campaign full of adrenaline? $20 would blow the doors off this thing; even $25 would be a reasonable price point. Get four vehicles for $100 - I could see a lot of people doing that. Of course, it would help if they dropped this "only bundles of the same vehicle" stuff.

They already have 3 for $75. It hasn't worked. They need to push back harder if they're going to save this patient!

20cc's of $20 tanks--stat, dammit! Stat!

That's a fair point- I realize Bonesium is not the same material, but the Victoria Miniatures Basilisk BFG boomgun with crew was a $30 add on in that campaign.

Now in Mantic's defence, the three pack of vehicles IS in fact 25 dollars per vehicle. And as far as I can tell, most of their figures are down to the dollar a mini level, as long as you buy at least 20. Price point seems quite reasonable.

It's not bad. We were all hoping for $20 tanks and if this happened back when Deadzone was running instead... maybe. But prices go up as time goes on.

Still.. if there was some kind of 5 tanks for $100... but ehh, I'll probably still buy some at the 3/75 price point, just not as many, maybe miss out on a faction or two because of things are arranged, but it's not a big deal.

Still waiting for GCPS, kind of excited after seeing the concept art... but we'll see.

 Gitzbitah wrote:
That's a fair point- I realize Bonesium is not the same material, but the Victoria Miniatures Basilisk BFG boomgun with crew was a $30 add on in that campaign.

She produces expensive, niche products even for our hobby, and it was still too expensive. Plus, it was much bigger.

The reason I'm not on board for 3 for $75 (other than hoping for $20) is that I don't want to be on the hook for 3 of one type of vehicle at the moment.

Dropships, 1 will do it until I am convinced it's a better kit and that you need more than 1.

Tunneler - 2 is ideal for my purposes which have nothing to do with Skaven.

FF Tank is the only one I would consider going deeper on. I am not overly fond of the GWness of having an APC and the main tank based on the same chassis but as it were, this is not a terran tank so I can make a concession (yes I have some kind of neurosis where I have to make up explanations for why my plastic dudesmen do stuff).


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 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Gitzbitah wrote:
That's a fair point- I realize Bonesium is not the same material, but the Victoria Miniatures Basilisk BFG boomgun with crew was a $30 add on in that campaign.

She produces expensive, niche products even for our hobby, and it was still too expensive. Plus, it was much bigger.

In fairness, the type of "bonesium" it's to be made of is basically just white HIPS.


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 Gitzbitah wrote:
That's a fair point- I realize Bonesium is not the same material, but the Victoria Miniatures Basilisk BFG boomgun with crew was a $30 add on in that campaign.

Now in Mantic's defence, the three pack of vehicles IS in fact 25 dollars per vehicle. And as far as I can tell, most of their figures are down to the dollar a mini level, as long as you buy at least 20. Price point seems quite reasonable.

I can't argue that most of the infantry are very fairly priced, they are. Mantic painted themselves into a corner though with the choices they made starting this and their strategy to get out of said corner has been slow coming :(

To counter the 'Two vehicles on one chasis' thing, it's done in the real world, why be specialized when you can have a base chasis to put the specializations on? It's practical.
There, got that off my chest, wow, that Brandr looks incredible, given how my cities are compact, I may get a few tanks now!

There may be instances where it's done but I still don't care for it. There are practical reasons for the two roles to be separate but that's probably also an off-topic area discussion.

On a side-note. DZ:I showed a Terraton in an update today along with some vagueness about Warpath. I can't remember what they were about in DZ:I but if Terratons were in WP as mercs, that would be kinda awesome.

And I do remember Terraton Shock Troopers being mentioned somewhere, so you may be on to something!

krystalking wrote:
To counter the 'Two vehicles on one chasis' thing, it's done in the real world, why be specialized when you can have a base chasis to put the specializations on? It's practical.
There, got that off my chest, wow, that Brandr looks incredible, given how my cities are compact, I may get a few tanks now!

That does tend to end up with both specialized versions having just about the same level of protection, as well as inside space etc.
One vehicle that's very heavily armoured but only has room for a few crewmembers plus ammo would have a very different chassis from a vehicle that has much lighter armour, less weaponry and more personnel carrying capacity...
Although I wouldn't dare compare to any real world examples in this thread

Those shock trooper terratons are metal iirc and I'm not sure how much variability the sculpt is gonna have if people were trying to make small units of them... But maybe possible.

I think it was suggested that in the future Mantic should do some hard plastic infantry mercenary boxes, and their response on the kickstarter comments seemed positive though hardly anything concrete as a 'yeah that's a good idea, maybe sometime' kind of thing.

I'd definitely buy a box each of yndij, sorak, grogans, helfathers, maybe even hobgoblins and so on. Heck, maybe even zees if they ever manage to make them look decent. Maybe another kickstarter

 Vermonter wrote:
There's precedent for Mantic to raise prices due to people complaining about prices being higher on the original KS campaign.
But I don't really think they can afford to change the prices this time. If 20 for $20 deals suddenly changed to 20 for $30, or $15 plastic metal hybrids became $20, even more people would flip out than the people who are upset now.
The difference is that this is the Warpath kickstarter, and even moreso than Deadzone, people are going to want to get tons of troops cheaply. If Mantic can't sell 20 for $20 troop deals, that's a pretty major blow to the entire campaign.
Anyway, I've been a part of all the Deadzone campaigns and I've invested in most of the minis to some degree at previous prices. I'll be pissed if they reverse course and increase the better discounted prices of this KS.

I agree. It'd be a bad move for them to raise prices on figures in this KS, and I don't see it happening.


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 judgedoug wrote:
As a consumer who loves generic sci fi stuff, there's nothing on the market that can compare with the Mantic Dropship. The Valkyrie is very specifically a 40k aesthetic. Other alternatives are WAY too small (GZG,Old Crow) and non-existent (Antenociti's Workshop). The price is right around 1/48 model kits and don't have the side effect of looking like kitbashed Apaches or Hinds.

I think the Valkyrie is one of the better, more generic designs for this sort of thing. It fits with 40k, but doesn't have an overly-40k aesthetic to me.

I like my Valkyrie, though I'm not sure it looks like it can fly. It's nice and functional with sliding doors and a dropping ramp. The clear cockpit is nice but I'm more likely to fill it in than not.

I'm thinking the chunkiness of it will lend it well to being either a Marauder vehicle or something the plague dug up. Rebs maybe.

I tried to make this distinction earlier, but basically there's two arguments to be had. First we can have an ethical discussion about whether $30 per vehicle is a good enough price point for us. (And as others have said, it's the "buy three for 25 each but only if they're the same" that bothers me.) That argument is open and interminable.

The other argument is whether $30 a vehicle is actually working right now as a price strategy, or if the KS is slowing and stalling too much because it isn't. Personally I don't think the 20/$20 troop prices could be improved. The only other major new thing coming out of this is vehicles (yes, rules too, but I don't think that's driving as many people. "They're unfinished," "I hate the hub idea," and so on.) So if $30 per vehicle or $75 for 3-of-the-same is so wonderful, why is this campaign crawling now, right when major stuff is getting unlocked like a new faction and a tank?

Put another way, your opinion doesn't matter, and neither does mine. We're already interested and invested, to varying degrees. The opinion of all the people who aren't pouring in to take advantage of $30 vehicles is the one that counts, and arguing with them that they're wrong to think that way because (insert market comparison or moral reason) is not a working sales pitch. "The deal isn't good enough for you to pledge? Well, it should be. Shame on you." Yep, that will bring them in in droves. Now we can be cynical and say, "what potential customers?", i.e. that this Kickstarter has topped out with as big an audience as it was ever going to get, and that's why it's stalling. I don't believe that. And one reason I'd like to see $20 vehicles is because it would put this KS on overdrive, maybe even to the point where the GCPS would become assured and Mantic would start thinking about other factions again. As a fan, I'd like to see that happen.

Oh, and as for "the campaign IS working, we just unlocked a faction and a tank!" Actually, we didn't. Both of those stretch goals needed to be a lot higher than they were for Mantic to afford them. What Mantic is currently doing, and which will have to change back soon, is taking the buffer stretch goal money that they got on the first day that was well in excess of what they needed for some things, and applying that to get us through some helpful goals quicker. Think of it like a duck in an egg. Right now, Mantic is using the yolk to drive this KS. But the duck can't stay in the egg because the yolk gets used up and there isn't any more coming, so Mantic is going to have to get out and starting finding some grain (more backers and a lot more money coming in) pretty soon, or this duckling isn't going to grow. This is why Mantic won't be introducing the GCPS faction anytime soon. They need more real money coming in - a lot more than $15,000 or whatever the Asterian faction goal was - to even consider it, because the real cost of producing hard plastic soldiers is a heck of a lot higher, and their surplus from the first day won't cover it.

 GrimDork wrote:
Those shock trooper terratons are metal iirc and I'm not sure how much variability the sculpt is gonna have if people were trying to make small units of them... But maybe possible.

I think it was suggested that in the future Mantic should do some hard plastic infantry mercenary boxes, and their response on the kickstarter comments seemed positive though hardly anything concrete as a 'yeah that's a good idea, maybe sometime' kind of thing.

I'd definitely buy a box each of yndij, sorak, grogans, helfathers, maybe even hobgoblins and so on. Heck, maybe even zees if they ever manage to make them look decent. Maybe another kickstarter

I would buy metal ones or resin if they can't do plastic, really, as much as I am loathe to admit it, the restic Terraton from DZ is one of the best examples of that materials use. It's not ideal IMO but maybe we need to explore a middle ground where the game and ranges can grow with figures that a KS like this can sustain?

We got the FF tanks basically wrapped up, so that seems to be Enforcers, FF, Veer-Myn buttoned up (right?) and Plague is mostly done minus some vehicles maybe? Then Asterians need their transport right?
Is the plan after that the Corp/Plague vehicle to wrap up Plague and transition into Corp? With 10 days left (meaning another add-on Wed) this seems plausible unless I missed something. Something that is off-putting though is how long these "alpha" (I thought they were beta already) rules have been out with nothing for the Corporation.
Corporation would have:
Striders (already exists)
Dropship shared with Plague from rumors
Possibly an infantry kit that could double up as a elite unit (rumors surrounding the concept art)
Probable leader

I would think another idea for a kit could be a wheeled APC (like a BMP) that you could swap the upper hull on for a light wheeled fighting vehicle like that 6x6 that Secret Weapon makes.

Am I missing anything?

I'm really hoping to see a plague/gcps vehicle and then a gcps/plague vehicle. That way both factions get two, mad synergy Corporation is supposed to have tanks, and I think we need some other tanks on the board or the forge fathers are going to have brought a ground fighting vehicle to a dropship/fighter skirmish. But dropship for the corporation/plague would be great too. Hoping fervently for both, as well as hard plastic GCPS that don't completely mock my old restic boys.

I think if they're gonna do a GCPS marine sprue, they really need to do their best to give it the Steel Warriors treatment and get an extra sprue of bits to allow them to be rangers. The default guys can already cover veterans (paint them differently, slightly different weapon options that should be easy to include by default), and with just some helmets and maybe grav chutes they should be pretty easy to roll into a rangers/marines box too.

The 'almost looks like ronnie' GCPS leader model they have in metal already is pretty solid still, I think he holds up well enough.

I was hoping for some light vehicles for the various factions, but those would probably have to wait for epic funding.

Corp should really have an APC, along with a heavy dropships that can lift the APC (or three strikers or something).

Do we have any idea if the Rebs from Deadzone are going to make it into this game in any fashion? Seems like some of the miniatures could make good mercenaries.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Corp should really have an APC, along with a heavy dropships that can lift the APC (or three strikers or something).

That's kinda where I was thinking of the multi-role wheeled kit and Dropship (I coulda sworn the rumor was plague and corp shared dropship, hadn't heard the tank one).

In my mind, Corporation tends to be an urban reactionary force, meaning heavy armor might not be as ideal as faster wheeled vehicles that can be carried by aircraft.
like version A of the kit could make



But that seam around where the headlights are and up is where the build would split if you wanted to make a tank instead, making something like



Adding a skirt to cover half of the rear wheels would help distance the two visually but it would still be essentially the same kit.

I'll be in for everything GCPS. Humans aren't my faction of choice as I'm more of a creature / robot guy, but I do need them, and I have a feeling I'll like Mantic's much better than anyone else's. Also, great fodder for Plague conversions.

From the way Mantic are framing their updates, I think it's clear that they really want the GCPS to happen, and conversely, that they're pretty solidly convinced that further factions beyond that will not be happening. I wouldn't be surprised to see the GCPS funded through the survey if they don't make it during the campaign (although I think they will make it during the campaign). But if you're holding out for Rebs in plastic, I think you'll be disappointed unless Mantic does do some game-changing deal tomorrow that takes this far beyond their expectations. If we get to $750,000 with the final days to spare and momentum running hot, (I seriously doubt it will happen) maybe then they'd start talking a new faction beyond GCPS. But if we wrap this where most people think it will end, around $500,000, that's the GCPS, hopefully all the vehicles, and a bunch of metal specialists / hybrids. Again, that's due to the actual cost of producing these kits, rather than the discounted cost that they're currently strategically buffering with their diminishing first-day surplus.

Anyhow, that's my Nostradamus prediction.

 Vermonter wrote:
I tried to make this distinction earlier, but basically there's two arguments to be had. First we can have an ethical discussion about whether $30 per vehicle is a good enough price point for us. (And as others have said, it's the "buy three for 25 each but only if they're the same" that bothers me.) That argument is open and interminable.

The other argument is whether $30 a vehicle is actually working right now as a price strategy, or if the KS is slowing and stalling too much because it isn't. Personally I don't think the 20/$20 troop prices could be improved. The only other major new thing coming out of this is vehicles (yes, rules too, but I don't think that's driving as many people. "They're unfinished," "I hate the hub idea," and so on.) So if $30 per vehicle or $75 for 3-of-the-same is so wonderful, why is this campaign crawling now, right when major stuff is getting unlocked like a new faction and a tank?

Put another way, your opinion doesn't matter, and neither does mine. We're already interested and invested, to varying degrees. The opinion of all the people who aren't pouring in to take advantage of $30 vehicles is the one that counts, and arguing with them that they're wrong to think that way because (insert market comparison or moral reason) is not a working sales pitch. "The deal isn't good enough for you to pledge? Well, it should be. Shame on you." Yep, that will bring them in in droves. Now we can be cynical and say, "what potential customers?", i.e. that this Kickstarter has topped out with as big an audience as it was ever going to get, and that's why it's stalling. I don't believe that. And one reason I'd like to see $20 vehicles is because it would put this KS on overdrive, maybe even to the point where the GCPS would become assured and Mantic would start thinking about other factions again. As a fan, I'd like to see that happen.

Oh, and as for "the campaign IS working, we just unlocked a faction and a tank!" Actually, we didn't. Both of those stretch goals needed to be a lot higher than they were for Mantic to afford them. What Mantic is currently doing, and which will have to change back soon, is taking the buffer stretch goal money that they got on the first day that was well in excess of what they needed for some things, and applying that to get us through some helpful goals quicker. Think of it like a duck in an egg. Right now, Mantic is using the yolk to drive this KS. But the duck can't stay in the egg because the yolk gets used up and there isn't any more coming, so Mantic is going to have to get out and starting finding some grain (more backers and a lot more money coming in) pretty soon, or this duckling isn't going to grow. This is why Mantic won't be introducing the GCPS faction anytime soon. They need more real money coming in - a lot more than $15,000 or whatever the Asterian faction goal was - to even consider it, because the real cost of producing hard plastic soldiers is a heck of a lot higher, and their surplus from the first day won't cover it.

I think another aspect, one that is certainly affecting MY pledge level, is the familiarity people have with Mantic's Kickstarters and the knowledge of the impending Pledge Manager. I'm in for an Early Bird lot, and I don't 'need' to pledge any more because I know that I can increase my pledge to any level at all after the Kickstarter finishes. Why bother committing my money now (or, upon campaign completion) when I get an extra month or 3 or 6 window while the pledge manager is resolved?
I think you're a bit wrong about the 'real cost' of producing the sprues though: 15k is definitely in the ballpark for the cost of a HIPS 5-model sprue.

That's why they value the number of backers more than the total take. They know all those PM spenders will increase that take considerably.

As for $15,000 to make a 5 model HIPS sprue, I wish that were true. Then we could have all the new models in HIPS with none of this metal / resin nonsense.

Oh, and I actually have a good argument for why you should spend money now. Are you married? Will your wife flip out if she sees a charge for $600 or whatever on your credit card bill? Then invest $300 in the campaign, and $300 several months later in the pledge manager.

I'm evil.

 Vermonter wrote:


Oh, and I actually have a good argument for why you should spend money now. Are you married? Will your wife flip out if she sees a charge for $600 or whatever on your credit card bill? Then invest $300 in the campaign, and $300 several months later in the pledge manager.

I'm evil.

C'mon Vermonter, that's Kickstarter 101. Pledge enough to let it slip past the significant other, slowly pile in the PM all you can get away with afterwards.

I'm really curious about what the deal will be tomorrow as well. Lockdown was a crazy deal when all was said and done. Hope this one will be too.

I could stand a few more alien mercs though...

You guys keep suggesting wheeled and tracked vehicles for the GCPS. As I recall, Mantic had originally stated that the GCPS uses hover vehicles. The intent was that they're trying to show their technological superiority by having fancy, flashy flying tanks.

Am I the only one hoping that they'll offer up some Mars Attacks Battlezones as well? I'd love for another chance to get those at decent prices. If they offered a Battlezone add-on with those buildings, I'd probably throw down for some.

 Barzam wrote:
You guys keep suggesting wheeled and tracked vehicles for the GCPS. As I recall, Mantic had originally stated that the GCPS uses hover vehicles. The intent was that they're trying to show their technological superiority by having fancy, flashy flying tanks.

But hover vehicles look like gak. Get a competent concept artist and you can make a fictional tank, armoured car, helicopter or aeroplane look like something that really drives or flies. A hover vehicle cannot do that - it must always rely on "It just does, okay?"

A couple things about the vehicle deals bug me.

$30 seems a bit high to me, especially not having good scale pics or final design yet. $25 each or 5 for $100 mix/match would be much more interesting. I'd like to get 1-2 vehicles for armies I'll only play FF with DZ/DZI guys already bought and 4-6 for a couple mass battle armies.

Second issue is having to buy a bundle of three, at least for interceptor so far, to get all options. The tunneler isn't as bad, as I could buy 2 to make a double. It would be ideal in both cases to just pay $5 and buy the "upgrade" kit to magnetize and outfit vehicles on a per-game basis.

I'm sure this would make packing more of a PITA, but I'm on the fence about getting vehicles other than beard tanks right now, which also dulls my interest in picking up any additional infantry. On the other hand, if I only spend 1/4 to 1/3 of what I'd planned to beforehand, more for something else.

 Polonius wrote:

 Baragash wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
Given that people here are on rules committees

Was this necessary?

No good deed goes unpunished, I guess.

Fair enough, I did slightly misconstrue the intent of your post. I was just a bit miffed that since none of the RC actively shill for Mantic, and will publically criticise them when they put their pants on their head, why bring us into a tangent we weren't even involved in?

 AlexHolker wrote:

 Barzam wrote:
You guys keep suggesting wheeled and tracked vehicles for the GCPS. As I recall, Mantic had originally stated that the GCPS uses hover vehicles. The intent was that they're trying to show their technological superiority by having fancy, flashy flying tanks.

But hover vehicles look like gak. Get a competent concept artist and you can make a fictional tank, armoured car, helicopter or aeroplane look like something that really drives or flies. A hover vehicle cannot do that - it must always rely on "It just does, okay?"

Eh, I think it really depends on who is designing it and what the overall aesthetic they're going for is. The Asterian "tank" for instance is supposed to be a hovercraft and it looks pretty cool. Eldar and Tau vehicles are all hovercrafts and they look decent. Heavy Gear, actually, has some pretty cool looking Earth-built hovertanks. There's also the two hovertanks that Antenociti's Workshop did. They don't all need to look like flying deodorant sticks like the Hammer's Slammers or the multitude of others based on them.

Well, to compare pricing directly, you have to look at GW or Dreamforge.

With something like the FF tank, with 3 different build options including two completely different turrets, a different hull top and back, and a dozer blade, it's approaching the kind of variety you have with GW's Astra Militarum tanks, where you get all the stuff you need to magnetize between multiple variants.

Leman Russ is £31 or $47 ($35 is about as low as you'll get as a discounted price on it).

Forgefather tank for $30, or $25 in bundle deal compares really well.

I guess the only thing lower than that you could really compare it to is the space marine razorback, which is a bit of a stretch since it only has a custom pintle rather than alternate hulls, turrets, dozer blade.

Any hard plastic that comes in under the £20 mark is awesome as far as I'm concerned, so paying £16.50 for the forgefather tank with the bundle is something I'm fine with.

Buying 6 of them comes to £99, which sounds like a good deal to me. Quite similar to when GW did £50 for 3 vehicle bundles back when Apocalypse was released.. those bundles were actually Ronnie Renton's idea when he was working for them as head of sales!

Ronnies a smart bloke, why hasn't he done a Kickstarter to steal Jes Goodwin?

The main issue I have with comparing KS prices of vehicles(be it Mantic or whoever) to other companies retail is I know exactly what I am going to get at retail for my money. All it takes is a few changes in production of a vehicle to take it from something you actively desired to a disappointment. So with the deals it is just a case of YMMV. Would you rather spend up to double on something you know you want or half that on something you think is passable? This is where I think this KS is quite good in that a good percentage of the product in the deals, in the form of infantry, is already at retail or is on the cusp of full production.

Personally I really like the Forge Father tank variants and hope that Mantic nails the production of them. If they match the concepts I think that the 3 for $75 is a really good deal. I think that Mantic have done some cost benefit analysis to prevent lines that they actually made a loss on like some of them did in the early Kickstarters.

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
Would you rather spend up to double on something you know you want or half that on something you think is passable? This is where I think this KS is quite good in that a good percentage of the product in the deals, in the form of infantry, is already at retail or is on the cusp of full production.

I have to say, after picking up their previous hard plastic figure releases, Mantic has my trust on this one. Technically there's room to botch the new things - the Asterians, the Third Gens. But after the Enforcers, the Plague Zombies, the Peacekeepers, the Forge Guard - I'm really not worried at all.

Vehicles are newer for them. I guess they should be easier to do than figures, like their terrain, which I also trust. But the Mars Attacks vehicles were not produced to the standard I want from Warpath, even though the Mars Attacks terrain was good. (Mostly my problem with MA vehicles is due to the highly visible, difficult-to-impossible-to-remove seams on things like the giant robot.) So I'm not sure. I will say that if the Warpath vehicles were produced to the same standard as the Mars Attacks ones with no improvement, I wouldn't want to buy a single one of them.

But yeah, if they can produce the Forge Father tank to live up to the render, that's a great vehicle.


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Joyboozer wrote:
Ronnies a smart bloke, why hasn't he done a Kickstarter to steal Jes Goodwin?

GW should count their blessings that Goodwin never left to start his own company.

Agreed, I have all the recent plastic infantry releases bar the Forge Guard and the quality is great. The VeerMyn and Pathfinder sprues seem to be another step forward for the company and the Steel Warriors look like they are going to be brilliant.

I guess you take a chance with the vehicles. If you get them for $25 each that could be a steal if they are good/great quality as the retail could be anything from $35-$40+.

Who knows how predictive it is, but at Miniature Market a Mars Attacks saucer currently goes for $19.99. A Giant Robot goes for $31.99. (Those prices are discounted, of course.) If Warpath vehicle prices were similar, that would mean $30 a vehicle actually isn't much of a Kickstarter deal.

That's a sizable if, though. Personally I'm hoping the Warpath vehicles will be a lot more sophisticated and better made, therefore worth pricing higher at retail. (Because while that Saucer is a simpler, smaller model, the Giant Robot isn't.) If they're priced higher simply because GW is out there pricing similar things ridiculously high, but otherwise they're no better made than the Mars Attacks vehicles,* I wouldn't find that a compelling reason to buy Warpath vehicles at $30 each.

Again, my hope is that they'll be better. But that's the gamble I'm hesitant about taking with vehicles at the current price.

*Having received one from the KS campaign, I wouldn't pay $30 for another Mars Attacks robot. If you're happy with that model, ymmv.

 Vermonter wrote:
(Mostly my problem with MA vehicles is due to the highly visible, difficult-to-impossible-to-remove seams on things like the giant robot.)

 NTRabbit wrote:


That's because the Mars Attacks stuff is all preassembled, ie built to the standard of boardgame components. The seams are where two pieces that would otherwise be on the sprue of a Warpath vehicle have been glued together at the factory, with all the care and precision of a production line worker, rather than one of us sitting at a desk, with tamiya super thin cement, and a packet of diamond files. Horses for courses.

That's a great point. Also an obvious one. (Smacks forehead.)

Damn. I'm going to have to buy some vehicles now.

Or maybe not. Looks like October will see the best damn Slaan models ever made hit Kickstarter. But back to the topic at hand.

 MLaw wrote:
That said, I buy a lot of Warpath and other sci-fi models to do custom scenarios. Other people use it for upscaled Tomorrow's War or Gruntz even. I have also heard people using them for games like Hammers Slammers or Stargrunt 2.

Same here. I've got a bunch of Mantic's sci fi stuff (as well as Pig Iron, Copplestone, Urban Mammoth, etc) because I love generic sci-fi stuff. The Warpath beta rules don't really interest me.
Hell, I actually used about 8 of the Mantic Orx Marauders vehicles and kitbashed them, along with around 80 40k chaos cultists, to make a Mad Max Wastelanders army... for whatever system.

I've posted this before in another thread, but for those who missed it, here's a 3-D print of the Asterian drone:




Excellent.

 MLaw wrote:
As for the tank profile being too high.
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-02/why-armys-new-tank-so-heavy

That's been canceled though!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 warboss wrote:
The new tank is definitely an improvement over the corny rogue traderish original concept art. I like it but I do have a minor quibble that has been partly mentioned so I'll add to that chorus in case Mantic is reading this. The back looks too plain and doesn't specifically have enough rivets.

I would disagree with your assertion. It has too many rivets.
Riveted construction was abandoned in the 1930's specifically because it was awful.
Unless we're fighting in the Space Spanish Civil War then none of these tanks should have rivets :(

Yeah but people expect rivets on tanks. Noone really cares about "realism" in a game with space rats. Or do you?

Rivets give tanks a tank look. That's the reason wargaming tanks have rivets.