Man, I'm just not having the same problems. I got all my Deadzone stuff assembled with no problems within a span of a few hours while watching TV.

I can't figure out why the heads for some of these minis need to be separate pieces. They're fething tiny.

After 2 weeks of fooling around with Mantic's "restic" for the first time, I'd say it's my second favorite material for minis. A distant second (after hard plastic, obviously) but still second. I'd say about on par with good metals but noticeably better than PP's and Soda Pop's semi-plastic or any variety of pure resin.

Yes I think it's fine. The cast quality isn't up there with the best, but it's certainly what I would class as acceptable. For the amount these miniatures cost, once painted think they look pretty good on the tabletop.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I can't figure out why the heads for some of these minis need to be separate pieces. They're fething tiny.

Does this indicate one of HBMC's miniatures is now sans head?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I can't figure out why the heads for some of these minis need to be separate pieces. They're fething tiny.

lol. QFT. I've got got a solid coating of glue on my thumb and forefinger from trying to attach heads and arms that only fit one way. It puzzles me why most of these minis weren't made in one piece; is it to give the illusion of customization?

The material's fine and the quality is great. If these had been plastic, I'd be doing nothing now but singing praises. It's really too bad that Mantic got hooked up with such a shady Chinese manufacturer because I when I compare the Deadzone kits to Dreamforge's Eisenkern line, I just have to wonder how good it could have been. Mark did everything in plastic and with much less money. He's had extensive delays but the awesome quality thus far has made it well worth the wait.

Mantic seems determined to just churn out as many kits, regardless of quality, as it can in as short a time as possible. I keep seeing cost and comments similar to Pacific's but really how great of a deal are we getting? The Deadzone faction starter minis breakdown to about $3/each at a retail of $35. In comparison, I can get a copy of Zombicide for $71 at Walmart(?!?) or closer to $60 with a little google-foo. 71 models in the Zombicide box (also funded via Kick starter) comes to around 1buck per mini without considering other box contents. I'm not sure of the mini material but they look to be hard plastic. Another comparable example would be sedition wars box sets on Amazon for $42.50 and comes with 50 minis....

Thanks for pointing out how cheap SW is on Amazon... hope they still have that in the middle of next month they look neat.

Isn't zombicide like 13 scuplts for 70 some minis? Not making an arguement, just wondering.

Still only have like 4 proper dz models so I still can't put in much of a solid point.

Sedition wars minis are a similar material to Deadzone/Dreadball etc and have the same mould line cleanup & warping issues. Sadly the game has failed to find traction and is being heavily discounted (RRP is $80)

Zombicide's plastic is even softer (and to my mind) less good, although they still paint up well, and are much better for boardgamers as there's not the fiddly assembly to contend with

that said if mantic can get good quality polystyrene done it will be great (but don't expect it to be cheaper)

Aren't the Mars Attacks figures supposed to be in a new plastic? It will be interesting to see how they come out.

it's meant to be in whatever Loka was done is but I've not handled anything from that KS

(I think it's closer to Zombicide/boardgame plastoc type than anything else, but I could be wrong)

I believe its supposed to be like the gears of war plastic. I have a couple of LOKA pieces, it seems OK.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
Sedition wars minis are a similar material to Deadzone/Dreadball etc and have the same mould line cleanup & warping issues. Sadly the game has failed to find traction and is being heavily discounted (RRP is $80)

Zombicide's plastic is even softer (and to my mind) less good, although they still paint up well, and are much better for boardgamers as there's not the fiddly assembly to contend with

that said if mantic can get good quality polystyrene done it will be great (but don't expect it to be cheaper)

Thanks for the info. I wasn't trying to say that I don't feel that the minis are a good value; I just don't feel that since they're not GW price they can be crap (not saying Pacific said or meant this). The warstore has Dreamforge's hard plastic at $33.99 for a 20-man box and these are outright amazing in quality and are true multi-part kits. That's $1.69/mini for hard plastic with no concerns of quality or missing pieces, mold lines, etc. Mark funded 34 new, hard-plastic kits with a $205,971 Kickstarter. Mantic accrued well over a million dollars and has trouble producing restic of consistent quality. Yes, Mark has had HUGE delays but he's also a one-man show, not a company with several employees (not saying Mantic's a massive conglomerate but there are definitely more than 1 person working there).

I'm just saying that a good deal is no reason to accept a low quality product and I certainly feel that Mantic is capable of doing better as other organizations are able to do so.

Oh I agree with you,

(Dreamforge is doing a great job no doubt about it, and clearly shows what you can do with a great digital sculptor and a great company doing the casting)

I really want the gears of war board game. Been playing the xbox games with my girlfriend and would love to try the board game.

Sounds a lot of fun to play too.

I think we can add Wyrd to the regrettably short list of companies with great hard plastic kits. And they managed to convert their range without a Kickstarter and for a game system where players are unlikely to need more than 1 of each kit.

Seeing that, there really is no excuse for anyone to still be using gak materials like Finecast, Restic, PP pseudo-plastics and the like.

 carlos13th wrote:
I really want the gears of war board game. Been playing the xbox games with my girlfriend and would love to try the board game.

Sounds a lot of fun to play too.

Wow, missed that one. The minis look great too.

I have the Sedition Wars miniatures, and they are made from a "restic" mix very similar to the one Deadzone uses. As I believe Scarlet Squig has mentioned, they're also the perfect scale to use with Deadzone figures.

Orlando is also right that Sedition Wars figs have the same clean-up and warping issues. The warping is easy to fix with hot water, but the clean up is often, if anything, much worse than the Deadzone figures, with mold lines frequently running down across faces and other high-detail areas.

If you're willing to do the work, though, the Strain figures make excellent additions to, or replacements for, the Plague. Keep in mind that the Strain are decidedly techno-organic, though, not just organic mutations like Mantic's Plague. (I might just do a little fluff work around with different Strains of Plague, get it? Wa ha ha.)

And although the Sedition Wars miniature troopers are too small to use with Games Workshop, they actually scale perfectly with Mantic's corporation / human Rebs figures, so pretty much the entire SW set is very useful. (Mantic's figures turn out to be a bit smaller than I was expecting.) The SW human heroes would make nice Rebs character figures.

Orlando's also right about Sedition Wars having troubles and being heavily discounted. If it were selling as intended, you'd never be able to pick it up so cheap, so not really a fair comparison with Deadzone.

I also have Gears of War, and the quality of the GoW figs is in my opinion much higher than what I've seen of the LOKA ones. With all the talk of Deadzone representing Mantic's best "restic" results yet, I'm wondering if they won't have trouble when Mars Attacks is released if the "softer" figures from that set aren't as crisp. Mantic have been very clear from the start that they weren't doing the MA figures in the same mix as Deadzone, but I could still imagine some backers leaping to that conclusion (and there's evidence of it in the Mars Attacks KS comments section) and being upset when they get their figures and learn otherwise.

Deadzone paid off, but I'm a little weary of taking risks with KS purchases at the moment. Since I liked DZ so much and it's a known quantity, I'm planning to shift the majority of my MA pledge towards the purchase of DZ battlezones and mats. The $15 I'm effectively putting towards the Mars Attacks base game with my early bird pledge isn't much of a risk, and should be easy to recoup if the figures don't turn out well. And the free Mars Attacks figures I'm getting for buying Deadzone scenery with my (already committed) Mars Attacks pledge make me love Mantic's cross-game merchandizing.

I'm kind of considering swapping support for MA to DZ as well. Depends on how much I love BZs. Would be hard though, I really really like a lot of the MA stuff. Like the giant robot, bugs, trucks, and so on.

 agnosto wrote:

 carlos13th wrote:
I really want the gears of war board game. Been playing the xbox games with my girlfriend and would love to try the board game.

Sounds a lot of fun to play too.

Wow, missed that one. The minis look great too.

They really do look good. It sounds like a really fun game. £50 is a little steep for me though.

 agnosto wrote:
The warstore has Dreamforge's hard plastic at $33.99 for a 20-man box and these are outright amazing in quality and are true multi-part kits. That's $1.69/mini for hard plastic with no concerns of quality or missing pieces, mold lines, etc. Mark funded 34 new, hard-plastic kits with a $205,971 Kickstarter. Mantic accrued well over a million dollars and has trouble producing restic of consistent quality. Yes, Mark has had HUGE delays but he's also a one-man show, not a company with several employees (not saying Mantic's a massive conglomerate but there are definitely more than 1 person working there).

I think the difference is that Mantic owns their sculpts and tools and such and Dreamforge does not.

 judgedoug wrote:

 agnosto wrote:
The warstore has Dreamforge's hard plastic at $33.99 for a 20-man box and these are outright amazing in quality and are true multi-part kits. That's $1.69/mini for hard plastic with no concerns of quality or missing pieces, mold lines, etc. Mark funded 34 new, hard-plastic kits with a $205,971 Kickstarter. Mantic accrued well over a million dollars and has trouble producing restic of consistent quality. Yes, Mark has had HUGE delays but he's also a one-man show, not a company with several employees (not saying Mantic's a massive conglomerate but there are definitely more than 1 person working there).

I think the difference is that Mantic owns their sculpts and tools and such and Dreamforge does not.

Another thing is that WGF put money in too. The KS exclusive models were paid for by WGF.

Are you all sure about that? I don't see Mark going through all of that work just to sign over the rights of his years of hard work to WGF. My understanding was that they are the contracted middle-man, manufacturer, distributor.

Even if that's the case, I don't see WGF kicking in a million dollars which would be the difference between the two kickstarters.


Edit:

WGF Website:
In addition to providing the manufacturing of Dreamforge-Games kits, we will also be handling distribution of the product to stores. After we finish shipping all Kickstarter stage 1 orders, we're excited to release the kits for general distribution. Look for these amazing sets on store shelves in early 2013!

http://www.wargamesfactory.com/announcements/dreamforge-games-tooling-complete?A=SearchResult&SearchID=5901047&ObjectID=49668&ObjectType=7
Doesn't sound like they own anything to me.


Edit 2:
In KS, Mark says that WGF made the Shadowkesh warrior for backers, apparently gratis.

 agnosto wrote:
Are you all sure about that? I don't see Mark going through all of that work just to sign over the rights of his years of hard work to WGF. My understanding was that they are the contracted middle-man, manufacturer, distributor.

Even if that's the case, I don't see WGF kicking in a million dollars which would be the difference between the two kickstarters.

Getting off-topic a smidge here, but the information here is a bit buried:

From Mark



There were other comments to the effect that WGF was providing said credit, as this is not an uncommon practice in the industry. The molds are almost assuredly owned by WGF, hence the company name on each and every sprue.

For further corroboration, Adam Poots is all but confirmed to be working with WGF for KD:M, and he made this comment:

The mold cost for the Dragon King is outrageously high ( Est. $60K+) And committing something I am not totally and absolutely in love with just does not work for me. Thomas is amazing and his work is simply superb. I think if anyone else here had to make the call, they would do the same thing as me.

Now, the Dragon King is one of the larger models in that game, but do you think it's larger than the DFG Leviathans and APCs? It's likely not, and if something smaller costs that much then it becomes fairly clear that DFG did not pay for everything free-and-clear. Napkin math would say that the two scales of Leviathan at 60k each and the APC which Mark has referenced as having a similar number of sprues would put the costs well north of the money raised when you start adding in the infantry. That's fine for a one-man operation and honestly the results for Mark have been excellent (delays notwithstanding) and wouldn't have been possible any other way.

However, throw in that WGF is beset by a number of major projects and as a result many delays and you can see why Mantic might be leery of working with them, especially given Mantic's own luck with outside contractors and their desire to move quickly. WGF's work with DFG has been awesome, but you have to balance that against the fact that Mantic has started and then fully delivered one and could easily be three KickStarters in the time it will take the one to be fulfilled. Not using that to hand-wave some of the major gaffes that were made along the way by Mantic, but that is a point to consider as well.

In the main, I don't disagree that hard plastic is far superior and I look forward to the upcoming Enforcer plastics as a gauge of what interest I may have (if any) in WarPath. However, for a game designed to have a fairly low model count overall, I don't see where the restic plan was somehow a problem. It does sound like you may have gotten a particularly bad batch. For the ones I received, I've gotten far, far worse from GW metals and FineCast.

Krinsath, Sorry about off topic and all but I'm honestly interested. Credit and ownership are two different things. Credit implies a repayment whereas the previous posters were stating that WGF outright owned Mark's sculpts, tools and even kicked money in (though to be honest, they did if you consider that the Shadowkesh was a freebie they threw in to sweeten the pot).

I would hazard a guess that if all the cards were on the table, current Dreamforge sales are funding the tooling of the Wave 3 APCs. I would even postulate that WGF might have fudged the production schedule until Mark was able to pay back enough to fund the tooling for them. My experience with businesses in Asia sort of point in that direction but I have no first-hand knowledge.

Somewhat more on topic.
I agree completely with your sentiment; the plastic Enforcers will be my gauge of any future commerce I have with Mantic.

Part of the problem, and the reason for my angst, is that I have little experience wiith resin and next to none (except for KoW) with restic. Sure, I've been in the wargaming hobby for more than 20 years but in that time I've dealt more with metal and plastic than anything else and mostly plastic. I have very little hobby time so if I have to spend a great deal of time dealing with a flawed material, I become impatient.

I have sprue clippers and a complete set of files and until now, that's all I've needed. With restic the files don't seem to be taking the flash off as well, instead of just removing it, it bends the mold line or flash over and just seems to scrub it on the model until sheer friction rubs it off. I thought it was my files so I went out and bought a new set with the same results (GW file set).

This Deadzone batch is nowhere near as horrid to deal with as the KoW material was but still far less than the breeze that hard plastic generally is. In my correspondence with Ronnie, I told him the same that I'll put here; if I have to get a hair drier, soak something in hot water or otherwise waste my valuable time to correct your factory flaws, what the heck am I paying you for? It's bad enough that random bits turn up missing and/or entire parts are gone; a little QA is needed here.

Anyway, I'll shut up and let people enjoy their stuff.

And you certainly should be providing that feedback to Mantic; every company can improve and unless the customers tell them where there's a chance they might put efforts in the wrong places or, worse, no effort at all. FineCast shows that even the big boys make colossal mistakes at times with their product.

Restic is an odd beast, and I'll agree with that all day long as I eye a box of models needing a hot water bath. However, when I look at the whole equation of things I'm very satisfied with how most of it turned out. Then I pop over to GW and see what they want for 160 Tyranids in their bundle... ($1533 USD for those who object to visiting their site for religious reasons).

Model-for-model the Tyranids definitely have a leg up on most of the sculpts outside of the G1 Plagues and Plague Teratons and a few others. However, I paid noticeably less than that GW number for a larger number of models (when all is said and done; bear in mind I had a very large DZ order), multi-use terrain, rules for a fun game, mats and counters/dice. Yes, GW is insane with what they ask for, but I offer that more as a counter-point. I agree that Mantic has a long way to go in some areas (customer communication chief among them IMO, which is odd given that they do fairly well at customer service), but let's not forget that on the whole they've done a good job overall and, in general, are getting better over time.

That said, definitely offer the criticisms so they won't just be an "okay" company you'll look into from time-to-time and instead become a great one.

I'm not sure it's making any difference, the problems I had in Dreadball miniatures are the same with the Deadzone ones, despite being in a new mix.
I still haven't received my missing items from Dreadball.
After citing cast quality as the reason I dropped my Mars Attacks pledge I would have expected some kind of response.
Mantic have been the only kickstarter products I've received that have been disappointing.

I had a running email chain with Ronnie for a bit regarding my displeasure with the quality of KoW and my concern for Deadzone. I think that I've done about enough griping to them (and here too) to get my point across. As to value. Yes, Mantic is great value and I suppose that's why I've been so disappointed. They suckered me in with fantastic quality, low-priced plastic undead and then shove a pile of restic at me ever after.

I avoid GW like the plague (no pun intended) these days. I have plenty of money to spend on whatever I would like from them but the cost vs. my value of the product prohibits me from spending anything with them anymore. Forgeworld I stay away from completely after the block of resin I got from them that was supposed to be a Barracuda flier and I got the same talk from them that I got from Ronnie about hot water and such.

I guess I'll just keep waiting for some company to come along that will be reasonably priced, decent quality and believe in hard plastic. Really, I've got a pocket full of money to throw at any company that doesn't think $8/mini is a good price. I thought it would be Mantic but they seem stuck on restic for the now.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I think we can add Wyrd to the regrettably short list of companies with great hard plastic kits. And they managed to convert their range without a Kickstarter and for a game system where players are unlikely to need more than 1 of each kit.

Seeing that, there really is no excuse for anyone to still be using gak materials like Finecast, Restic, PP pseudo-plastics and the like.

Are the softer details, increase in model parts for monoposed models and dependence in a manufacturer outside their country worth the transition they did to plastic?

Plastic is not a panacea, despite the brainwash GW has done to the average wargamer and it is not a benefit for all companies, games, or sculpting styles.

Yes, mantic and their vision of how their games should be played (or models used) would benefit more from going to hard plastic, but then again only for their main range, what they did so far beyond KoW are not mass combat games and plastic is not what they should be looking for, the buildings, sure they will go on as terrain for a variety of game systems, that's why they are plastic.

If you want super sharp models for your display cabinet, that's fine. There's a slew of garage companies catering to that.

Anything else belongs in hard plastic, certainly for any company (Mantic, PP) that states budgetary concerns, not detail level, as their reason to use pseudo-plastic. Especially when all these pseudo-plastics are prone to horrendous mold lines, warping and brittleness that makes them an absolute pain to work with. Frankly, I don't even want to touch another PP "plastic" model in my life. Saying that it could be in any way superior to hard plastic is hilarious.

I have been a critic of mantic's restic. However, I think that there is room for more than plastic in budget gaming. Restic miniatures can be cast in one or two pieces. Naturally such models can be assembled quickly, and thus appeal to the nonhobbyist. They generally look better than one or two piece plastics, because restic allows undercuts. They are also much less costly to cast, and thus a variety of miniatures can be produced inexpensively. So, for the budget gamer who does not want to fiddle with plastic parts, and or wants a variety of sculpts, restic can fill the role.

In terms of cost, cheap plastic models are about 1 USD. Restic models are 2.50 USD. However, the kind of plastic models mentioned in this thread are 2.20 USD, which is only slightly cheaper than restic.

 spaceelf wrote:
I have been a critic of mantic's restic. However, I think that there is room for more than plastic in budget gaming. Restic miniatures can be cast in one or two pieces. Naturally such models can be assembled quickly, and thus appeal to the nonhobbyist. They generally look better than one or two piece plastics, because restic allows undercuts. They are also much less costly to cast, and thus a variety of miniatures can be produced inexpensively. So, for the budget gamer who does not want to fiddle with plastic parts, and or wants a variety of sculpts, restic can fill the role.

And yet many of my Deadzone figures are cast in way more than one or two pieces. And the tiny soft detailed pieces, fitting tabs that don't fit, lack of instructions for which of the tiny parts goes with what figure are not really going to appeal to the 'nonhbbyist'. Your points may be accurate in some cases, but they don't seem to apply to what Mantic delivered for the Dreadball or Deadzone kickstrters.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:

Yes, mantic and their vision of how their games should be played (or models used) would benefit more from going to hard plastic, but then again only for their main range, what they did so far beyond KoW are not mass combat games and plastic is not what they should be looking for, the buildings, sure they will go on as terrain for a variety of game systems, that's why they are plastic.

I think this is something that is overlooked. DeadZone is a skirmish game, and intended to be a low model count. Heck, people are talking about struggling to use all the Enforcers that came with the box set in a "normal" sized game. For small production runs like that, I see no issue with not using hard plastic. As has been said, it's not a panacea because the tooling costs are still quite expensive. Sure, many people (including myself) bought in big to transplant the models into WarPath armies, but just because we opted to do that doesn't make Mantic beholden to suddenly alter their plans and convert everything to mass-battle game hard plastic.

I think the fact that the Peacekeepers, Enforcers and Forge Guard are being tooled in hard plastic is exactly how things should proceed. Those are kits that will see massive use in WarPath, as they're much more likely to be used in bulk. That they couldn't do it for the Rebs and Orx is unfortunate, but that would have been pushing their luck. I don't think anyone anywhere wants a repeat of the M@As incident, and that's exactly what happens when you reach too far, too fast.

I'd much rather Mantic confirm, slowly, that they have a plastic supplier capable of executing the designs before they go whole hog. So far, that appears to be the course they're taking, and I'll reserve judgement until we see the Wave 2 plastics. If they're good, Mantic will see a fair bit of coin from me. If they're just passable, I'll stay where I am but keep an eye on their future stuff. If they're M@As v2, I might just take the stuff I'm getting, be happy with that, and then move on to other manufacturers.

I'd be shocked if I'm unique in that regard, as I suspect that's pretty much how the cards read now for most folks. No pressure at all Mantic!

 CptJake wrote:

 spaceelf wrote:
I have been a critic of mantic's restic. However, I think that there is room for more than plastic in budget gaming. Restic miniatures can be cast in one or two pieces. Naturally such models can be assembled quickly, and thus appeal to the nonhobbyist. They generally look better than one or two piece plastics, because restic allows undercuts. They are also much less costly to cast, and thus a variety of miniatures can be produced inexpensively. So, for the budget gamer who does not want to fiddle with plastic parts, and or wants a variety of sculpts, restic can fill the role.

And yet many of my Deadzone figures are cast in way more than one or two pieces. And the tiny soft detailed pieces, fitting tabs that don't fit, lack of instructions for which of the tiny parts goes with what figure are not really going to appeal to the 'nonhbbyist'. Your points may be accurate in some cases, but they don't seem to apply to what Mantic delivered for the Dreadball or Deadzone kickstrters.

I was not defending Mantic in this instance. I was just saying that there is room for restic.

I think Mantic needs to carefully consider who is going to buy its products. If they want to market to beginners or the non-hobbyist, then they need to produce simple one or two part models, whether they be plastic or restic. At present, their products are not particularly well suited to many 'classes' of wargamers. The painters do not like the lack of detail in their resin or plastic models. The low budget gamers do not have enough plastic from them. Beginners find models with too many parts, and ones that do not fit well.

 Krinsath wrote:
Peacekeepers, Enforcers and Forge Guard are being tooled in hard plastic is exactly how things should proceed.

And Asterian Cyphers and the real test of hard plastic organics, the Plague zombies.

 Krinsath wrote:
I'd much rather Mantic confirm, slowly, that they have a plastic supplier capable of executing the designs before they go whole hog. So far, that appears to be the course they're taking, and I'll reserve judgement until we see the Wave 2 plastics. If they're good, Mantic will see a fair bit of coin from me. If they're just passable, I'll stay where I am but keep an eye on their future stuff. If they're M@As v2, I might just take the stuff I'm getting, be happy with that, and then move on to other manufacturers.

I'd be shocked if I'm unique in that regard

You're spot on as far as I'm concerned. I like Deadzone a lot, but I can't see backing a hard plastic Warpath kickstarter if they don't prove themselves here.

Warpath *has* to be all about 'hard plastic', or else, what's the point?

Seriously though - no way I'm in on that one if it isn't all hard plastic with 'restic' only showing up for one offs and/or special characters and the like.

 Alpharius wrote:
Warpath *has* to be all about 'hard plastic', or else, what's the point?

Seriously though - no way I'm in on that one if it isn't all hard plastic with 'restic' only showing up for one offs and/or special characters and the like.

Hard Plastic troops and vehicle, Restic elites and bigguns is the plan.

 spaceelf wrote:

I think Mantic needs to carefully consider who is going to buy its products. If they want to market to beginners or the non-hobbyist, then they need to produce simple one or two part models, whether they be plastic or restic. At present, their products are not particularly well suited to many 'classes' of wargamers. The painters do not like the lack of detail in their resin or plastic models. The low budget gamers do not have enough plastic from them. Beginners find models with too many parts, and ones that do not fit well.

Let's not kid ourselves, the entire non-historical segment of the wargaming industry specifically targets ex-GW gamers

Right, but because Dreadball/Deadzone/Mars Attacks are actually being sold/going to be sold as boardgames, sometimes in actual physical shops, I do think they need to be more accessible to put together and get a game going. I was aghast when I saw that the DB Dwarves had to have individual fists glued on to them, for example!

Incidentally, I was undercoating some Necromunda Escher the other day - these are all single-piece metal models, and they look damn good! Perhaps not super dynamic legs sticking out, but a good impression of 3D depth and I had them glued, bases filled and cleaned up in less than 30 mins. Much closer to what I'd expect.

Of course, if Mars Attacks lives up to its promise, that's exactly what we'll be getting - anything multi-part will be pre-assembled.

 sukura636 wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
Warpath *has* to be all about 'hard plastic', or else, what's the point?

Seriously though - no way I'm in on that one if it isn't all hard plastic with 'restic' only showing up for one offs and/or special characters and the like.

Hard Plastic troops and vehicle, Restic elites and bigguns is the plan.

...and metal figures showing up randomly and without warning for some sculpts. Now just try and guess which ones!

 Azazelx wrote:


...and metal figures showing up randomly and without warning for some sculpts. Now just try and guess which ones!

Actually, if Deadzone is any indication you can guess which ones with reasonable accuracy. Here's the logic:

A. Is the figure an add-on?

B. Is the figure included in any well discounted bundle deals?

If A is true and B is false, the figure will not sell well, so it will be cast in metal.

I give up! These fething enforcers are going to be the death of me. None of the guns fit the arms, the torsos are too big for their waists, most pain in the arse models to put together >_<

 Alfndrate wrote:
I give up! These fething enforcers are going to be the death of me. None of the guns fit the arms, the torsos are too big for their waists, most pain in the arse models to put together >_<

Really? I just shaved down the waist fits to remove flash and made sure each one fit before gluing. Are you prepping them? Maybe you got an odd bunch of arms? I just sorted out which one went with which before starting and that helped a lot.

Now, a couple of the marauders required pressure and bending to fit their arms on. That was a good time.

I think the hot water trick applied to the legs bit allows you to sink the torsos in. Not sure about the arms.

I look forward to the day when "Hot Water Trick" and "Mantic" won't ever show up in the same sentence/post/thread ever again...

I'm not sure that's going to happen. They seem pretty sold on restic for their elite models. Even if they go all-out hard plastic for troops and vehicles, even on some elites... some other elites and characters will almost have to be restic unless they're limited enough to end up metal.

Just like GW ran metal until they switched to finecast, I think the characters and possibly elites will always be a secondary material, and they seem to favor restic for whatever reason.

I don't think that's unreasonable. Having popular/high sellers in hard plastic and elite/low sellers in restic sounds like a pretty good deal.

As GrimDork said, Plastic/metal worked great for GW.

Good points - I know I'll be happy when the majority of stuff is available in 'hard plastic' and 'restic' is for the unlucky few models.

I think I'd rather restic over metal, its not ideal but its easier to cut and has a weight more consistent with hard plastic.

My Enforcers were a breeze to put together, comparatively. Rebs are the real pain with their wavy hair and tiny arms and long tails sticking out every which way.

Protip: a good hairdryer is perfectly adequate to get restic up to "noodly soft" temperatures.

 Alfndrate wrote:
I give up! These fething enforcers are going to be the death of me. None of the guns fit the arms, the torsos are too big for their waists, most pain in the arse models to put together >_<

Alfindrate, let me know what gun arms you need-I have extras. Maybe I can help.

 GrimDork wrote:
I think I'd rather restic over metal, its not ideal but its easier to cut and has a weight more consistent with hard plastic.

Generally I still prefer metal if I'm paying a high price for individual models - well-cast metal has good detail and far less clean-up involved, in my experience. That said, realistically the Kickstarter model means everything that can be produced in plastic/restic will be - 'true' resin is too fragile (for human-sized models anyway) to ship without being very carefully packaged, and metal is just too heavy and costly for the discounts typically expected.

Also, I don't think metal is a good material for a lot of Mantic stuff - their adherence to 'true scale' means that some of their thinner metal minis are extremely fragile, and their love of bigger models can lead to issues like the wings of those angel characters.

EDIT Epic fail on my part lol EDIT

 pretre wrote:

 Alfndrate wrote:
I give up! These fething enforcers are going to be the death of me. None of the guns fit the arms, the torsos are too big for their waists, most pain in the arse models to put together >_<

Really? I just shaved down the waist fits to remove flash and made sure each one fit before gluing. Are you prepping them? Maybe you got an odd bunch of arms? I just sorted out which one went with which before starting and that helped a lot.

Now, a couple of the marauders required pressure and bending to fit their arms on. That was a good time.

The specialist pack (sniper, rocket launcher, etc...) went together without any issue, mold lines just made me go insane for a bit. The regular enforcer 5 pack we got can rot in the lowest circle of hell. Got my torsos together after trimming them down, and one of them still doesn't look quite right. Went to put the arms on, figured. "It'll be easier to attach arms to bodies once I've attached guns to arms." So take the heavy weapon, pick out the arms that not only look right, but also seem to fit the best. I attached some glue and accelerant to my contact points, and let it sit. Then I go to fit it to the body, and lo and behold it's too damn wide. So I say feth it and set it aside, and try to find a set of left arms that will hold the rifles and the right arms that will hold the stock. Nothing seems to want to go into the holes. Most frustrating models ever, and it's a damn shame because the Plague models were a breeze with the exception of the dogs (just a little too thin in the ankles)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 timetowaste85 wrote:

 Alfndrate wrote:
I give up! These fething enforcers are going to be the death of me. None of the guns fit the arms, the torsos are too big for their waists, most pain in the arse models to put together >_<

Alfindrate, let me know what gun arms you need-I have extras. Maybe I can help.

I might just use the Nova models I got from Reaper Bones I Kickstarter for these guys...

 Alfndrate wrote:

The specialist pack (sniper, rocket launcher, etc...) went together without any issue, mold lines just made me go insane for a bit. The regular enforcer 5 pack we got can rot in the lowest circle of hell. Got my torsos together after trimming them down, and one of them still doesn't look quite right. Went to put the arms on, figured. "It'll be easier to attach arms to bodies once I've attached guns to arms." So take the heavy weapon, pick out the arms that not only look right, but also seem to fit the best. I attached some glue and accelerant to my contact points, and let it sit. Then I go to fit it to the body, and lo and behold it's too damn wide. So I say feth it and set it aside, and try to find a set of left arms that will hold the rifles and the right arms that will hold the stock. Nothing seems to want to go into the holes.

I used the instructions from the update http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1744629938/deadzone-the-sci-fi-miniatures-board-game/posts/691466 that said which arms to use and they went together superquick.

But yeah, I much prefer the style of the Deadzone Enforcers versus the older Warpath ones. Thankfully these were the freebies to hold us over til the real ones come out. I'm personally not too concerned with the assembly or paint jobs of the stop-gap Warpath Enforcers as it won't be too long now til the official Deadzone ones get sent to us.

 Alfndrate wrote:
"It'll be easier to attach arms to bodies once I've attached guns to arms."

That's quite a... novel... approach.

Yeah, I test fit each set to the torso before gluing. Still required a bit of bending during assembly, but it wasn't crazy.

I have had very minimal issues with the enforcers going together, but I could see how they could be an issue with no instructions. Still, if I can help, lemme know.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Alfndrate wrote:
"It'll be easier to attach arms to bodies once I've attached guns to arms."

That's quite a... novel... approach.

In practice with everything else that's not a space marine, this has been the best approach I've had. With Space Marine models, the guns are so bulky and fit a wider range of motion, that the gun can be placed on last. With Mantic's pegs and holes, if I attach the arms to the body first, my pegs may not line up with the gun which means that I just glued something in the wrong position. Like I said, once I had the gun attached to the arms (via the pegs and holes provided on the model) the pose was too wide for the body.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

pretre wrote:Yeah, I test fit each set to the torso before gluing. Still required a bit of bending during assembly, but it wasn't crazy.

My arms had to bend so much that the left arm snapped off of the gun, so now I have a wrist with a peg stuck in it...

timetowaste85 wrote:I have had very minimal issues with the enforcers going together, but I could see how they could be an issue with no instructions. Still, if I can help, lemme know.

I'll let you know.

judgedoug wrote:

 Alfndrate wrote:

The specialist pack (sniper, rocket launcher, etc...) went together without any issue, mold lines just made me go insane for a bit. The regular enforcer 5 pack we got can rot in the lowest circle of hell. Got my torsos together after trimming them down, and one of them still doesn't look quite right. Went to put the arms on, figured. "It'll be easier to attach arms to bodies once I've attached guns to arms." So take the heavy weapon, pick out the arms that not only look right, but also seem to fit the best. I attached some glue and accelerant to my contact points, and let it sit. Then I go to fit it to the body, and lo and behold it's too damn wide. So I say feth it and set it aside, and try to find a set of left arms that will hold the rifles and the right arms that will hold the stock. Nothing seems to want to go into the holes.

I used the instructions from the update http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1744629938/deadzone-the-sci-fi-miniatures-board-game/posts/691466 that said which arms to use and they went together superquick.

I'll check this link out tonight, but I have a feeling my luck won't be that good... The guns and arms all looked similar and yet none of them felt like going together.

I did one arm (the right/trigger hand) and once it set, did the left (forestock) arm and weapon at the same time. I was using Plastruct Plastic Weld so had a little working time. Once I had the left shoulder attached I worked the pegs of both arms into the weapon, and adjusted the left arm as required to get them all to align correctly. It worked well for me, though I REALLY don't like the figures very much. The soft detail heads are just awful.

Which brings me to my next point, if that soft detail is what I can expect for 'special' characters, while the regular troopers are better detailed in hard plastic, I submit Mantic will be screwing the pooch.

Keep in mind that these are the 'make do' enforcers and are not indicative of deadzone. They're the Warpath old ones that are crappy.

 pretre wrote:
Keep in mind that these are the 'make do' enforcers and are not indicative of deadzone. They're the Warpath old ones that are crappy.

The heads on the restic DZ enforcers they sent were no better than the 'make do' Warpath ones. Soft detailed.

I thought all of the ones we got were the Warpath ones?

Maybe I misremembered.

Yeah, most of the head detail was soft on the enforcers. Maybe it is just a design problem.

 pretre wrote:
I thought all of the ones we got were the Warpath ones?

Maybe I misremembered.

Yeah, most of the head detail was soft on the enforcers. Maybe it is just a design problem.

Yeah, almost all of my enforcers have soft detail on the heads. The engineer (the dude kneeling down) has some really soft detail on his piece of equipment in his left hand... it looks like a flat bit of plastic on mine.

Ditto Alf.. it took me a tick to figure out what it was; the same with the rebel lady.

All the specialists (engineer and his remote control trucks, sniper, AT missile dude, terminator armor dude) were made for Deadzone as far as I know. Only the 5 others are older Warpath ones.

Though I've been wrong more than once...

1) Glue Right arm
2) Dry fit Left arm and Gun (this is usually quite snug)
3) Glue Left Arm
4) Leave gun off for painting (optional)
5) Glue gun into place.

There are three sets of arms; one pair for the burst laser, and two of each other pair. Basically one with the gun held lowered, and one with it raised.

Complaints about assembling the restic enforcers?

Try the hybrid metal assault enforcers if you want Mantic's most infuriating model kit ever:



Yes, those really are two separate and tiny metal upper arm and metal hands.

*This* is what Mantic produces when it can't use kickstarter to fund production.

Man, and you thought mold lines/flash were bad on the Restic.

Interesting blog post:

http://manticblog.com/2014/01/07/looking-back-and-looking-forward-again/

In short, yearly tournament packs (more info on the 2014 one tommorow) and new minis for Dreadball as ongoing support for the game, not kickstarter-funded.

Dreadball Xtreme coming soon.

Some stuff about the plague zombie sprue coming very soon and a re-iteration of the "need good hard plastics in place before we touch warpath" thing.

So Dreadball Extreme KS is end of Feb beginning of March according to the blog. Be interesting to see tomorrows blog we already know Brokkr team and convicts are coming and Yndij have been heavily hinted at.

 scarletsquig wrote:
Complaints about assembling the restic enforcers?

Try the hybrid metal assault enforcers if you want Mantic's most infuriating model kit ever:

Spoiler:

Yes, those really are two separate and tiny metal upper arm and metal hands.

*This* is what Mantic produces when it can't use kickstarter to fund production.

I didn't find those particularly difficult to assemble. The metal is as soft or softer than the lead-based alloys that were in use before the introduction of the adamantium-pewter alloy that GW used. Drill and pin worked wonders.

Sounds like building these guys is going to be a blast!



Anyway, anyone know when I can expect to hear back from Mantic RE: my missing objects?

Good question!

I sent my list of missing things in a while ago, and haven't heard a peep back yet.

They will send it once you have painted each and every model and piece of terrain they sent the first time round. In my case this would mean several years before it arrives...

 CptJake wrote:
I did one arm (the right/trigger hand) and once it set, did the left (forestock) arm and weapon at the same time. I was using Plastruct Plastic Weld so had a little working time.

How well does that work with restic and PP plastic? I've boon looking for a glue that will work with those media while giving me time to attach arms, guns and bling before completely setting.

 agnosto wrote:

I guess I'll just keep waiting for some company to come along that will be reasonably priced, decent quality and believe in hard plastic. Really, I've got a pocket full of money to throw at any company that doesn't think $8/mini is a good price. I thought it would be Mantic but they seem stuck on restic for the now.

Wargames Factory...and all of their client companies. They make good stuff (now).

Also, Reaper's Bones material is much, much easier for 'noobs' to work with than restic, and the detail is about the same. I can't wait to see how Mars Attacks minis compare. After Sedition Wars, PP, and KoW, I friggin' hate restic.

 Alpharius wrote:
Good question!

I sent my list of missing things in a while ago, and haven't heard a peep back yet.

They'll get around to it real soon. They've just got a Kickstarter to prepare/run/ship/prepare/run/ship/prepare/run/ship before they can get onto it...

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 CptJake wrote:
I did one arm (the right/trigger hand) and once it set, did the left (forestock) arm and weapon at the same time. I was using Plastruct Plastic Weld so had a little working time.

How well does that work with restic and PP plastic? I've boon looking for a glue that will work with those media while giving me time to attach arms, guns and bling before completely setting.

I'm happy with it. It is different than using Tamiya glue on styrene models in that it seems to have a longer cure time, and on this restic stuff it does not 'grab' as quickly so you need to hold the pieces you are gluing together for up to 30 seconds. It does not seem to melt the restic as quickly as my Tamiya glue does to styrene. The bottle recommends allowing 24 hours to fully cure, and after that time even the fiddly figures have passed my drop test (held at shoulder height over the hard wood floor and dropped). If you apply pressure to the join before it is fully cured to do risk it coming apart. This means in my example above, the right arm was allowed to cure over night before attempting to attach the gun and left arm. I tried after a couple of hours and pulled the right arm off by accident. Once assembled and cured, the join seems as close to permanent as I've ever seen. None of the brittleness that CA glued joins seem to have.

The fumes are a little hefty. Working in a decently ventilated area is a good idea. The brush applicator works well. The preferred application method according to the bottle is to hold the two pieces to be joined together and brushing the join with the solvent. Capillary action then draws it into the join. Hold the two (or more) pieces together for a few seconds and set aside to cure.

I have only used it on this Mantic stuff.

Jake

 CptJake wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 CptJake wrote:
I did one arm (the right/trigger hand) and once it set, did the left (forestock) arm and weapon at the same time. I was using Plastruct Plastic Weld so had a little working time.

How well does that work with restic and PP plastic? I've boon looking for a glue that will work with those media while giving me time to attach arms, guns and bling before completely setting.

I'm happy with it. It is different than using Tamiya glue on styrene models in that it seems to have a longer cure time, and on this restic stuff it does not 'grab' as quickly so you need to hold the pieces you are gluing together for up to 30 seconds. It does not seem to melt the restic as quickly as my Tamiya glue does to styrene. The bottle recommends allowing 24 hours to fully cure, and after that time even the fiddly figures have passed my drop test (held at shoulder height over the hard wood floor and dropped). If you apply pressure to the join before it is fully cured to do risk it coming apart. This means in my example above, the right arm was allowed to cure over night before attempting to attach the gun and left arm. I tried after a couple of hours and pulled the right arm off by accident. Once assembled and cured, the join seems as close to permanent as I've ever seen. None of the brittleness that CA glued joins seem to have.

The fumes are a little hefty. Working in a decently ventilated area is a good idea. The brush applicator works well. The preferred application method according to the bottle is to hold the two pieces to be joined together and brushing the join with the solvent. Capillary action then draws it into the join. Hold the two (or more) pieces together for a few seconds and set aside to cure.

I have only used it on this Mantic stuff.

Jake

I had no idea. I use Plaststruct Plasticweld for my normal plastic models and superglue for restic/pvc. This opens up a whole new world for me. Thanks man!

The Azure Forest Dreadball pack is now up for preorder limited to 3000 sets only ships 27th January

http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/pre-order/dreadball/product/galactic-tour-series-azure-forest.html?Action=Cookie



£14.99

CONTENTS

This set contains a 32 page rulebook, 14 new DreadBall cards, the new MVP A’teo “The Savage” Adysi and the Azure Forest Trophy – everything you need to adapt your games of DreadBall!
Including:
32-page rulebook
14 DreadBall cards
Metal MVP A’teo Adysi
Metal Azure Forest Trophy

More info on the blog

So my first Yndij (from the christmas box of course) went together no problems. This Sorak, however, needed what I would term "hot water surgery". The both-arms-are-attached-to-the-gun-so-you-better-pray style weapon arms needed bent pretty well at both wrists. The gun itself may be just a tad deformed but it's at the point that I'm not sure so from 3 feet away I don't think it'll show (if its even there). Still going to have to glue the arms with a bit of pressure against the bond, and use a teeny bit of greenstuff.

Of course, at the rate I intend to go through these guys, a little extra work isn't a huge deal. I would hate to do it to blocks and blobs of infantry, but on even a high percentage of a 5-10 man team I'm not too concerned.

 DaveC wrote:
The Azure Forest Dreadball pack is now up for preorder limited to 3000 sets only ships 27th January
...More info on the blog

Looks cool. Thanks for sharing that.

I really like the overall idea of small expansions like this.
Also must compliment them on a non-KS item.
The limited edition aspect isn't my favorite.

I suspect rather than it being a limited edition they are just being honest and saying it's a limited pre-order of 3000 as that's all they've got coming in from the factory

if it bombs that will indeed be it (but you'll be able to get it as nobody else has wanted one),

but if they sell out they'll order another bunch

The blog entry suggests otherwise

This is a limited edition release – we’re going to make 3000 copies, after which it will only be available digitally, so get clicking now if you want to make sure you get a copy!

It's possible the MVP will be available on it's own later but I'd say they did one minimum order print run and that's will be it unless it's very popular there's something like 10,000 copies of Dreadball in gamers hands so 30% of that should cover everyone who wants a copy and keeps up to date with all the latest releases.

It probably is pretty difficlult to get 30% of your player base to buy an expansion, but I HATE the idea of limited releases. It's so GW. I hope this doesn't turn into a trend for Mantic as well.

Based on responses from James on the Mantic forum it looks like after it sells out (however long that may take):
Cards & MVP stay available separately
Rules available digitally
Trophy goes the way of the dodo

I'm also against game content not being generally available, but I could live with the above scenario.

I think as long as the trophy is the only limited thing, that's fine.

I've been wondering if we'll see any Deadzone stat cards for the up and coming Dreadball stuff. It might be fun to just have those convicts run wild against a Plague infestation. I'd imagine they'd be some pretty rough and tumble scrappers when the action gets up close and personal.

Worst case I could try coming up with stats myself I guess.

I kinda like the idea of an annual pack, it shows that Mantic are really in it for the long haul and Dreadball will be getting something fresh every single year for as long as Mantic are around, and it'll be a new way to play the game + tournament support focused.

Yeah... if I had dread ball stuff... like all of it or more than the base game at least.. I'd probably not mind spending $25 a year to get new cards and an extra MVP thingy. If they do something like that for deadzone I'll be on board for sure. Even if its a whole new team or bz type.

Dreadball is 100 on my list of games I will eventually pick up. I like the sound of annual updates too.

 carlos13th wrote:
Dreadball is 100 on my list of games I will eventually pick up. I like the sound of annual updates too.

What are games 1 through 99 on that list?

 DaveC wrote:
The Azure Forest Dreadball pack is now up for preorder limited to 3000 sets only ships 27th January

http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/pre-order/dreadball/product/galactic-tour-series-azure-forest.html?Action=Cookie



£14.99

CONTENTS

This set contains a 32 page rulebook, 14 new DreadBall cards, the new MVP A’teo “The Savage” Adysi and the Azure Forest Trophy – everything you need to adapt your games of DreadBall!
Including:
32-page rulebook
14 DreadBall cards
Metal MVP A’teo Adysi
Metal Azure Forest Trophy

More info on the blog

Is it going out through retailers as well, or just direct from Mantic? It's much easier to order from other online UK retailers due to shipping.

I think it's just available direct from Mantic. I teased them a bit about the Limited Edition thing on facebook but yeah, it does make sense.

For one thing, it's pretty much a tournament/league pack. It wouldn't surprise me if the card deck was able to be drawn by the organiser and then be applied against every player for a specific turn.

Something like, *draws card* "Rainstorm, due to the slipperness of the pitch, all dash attempts on turn 8 are 1 dice harder (on top of any event cards being played).

 GrimDork wrote:
Yeah... if I had dread ball stuff... like all of it or more than the base game at least.. I'd probably not mind spending $25 a year to get new cards and an extra MVP thingy. If they do something like that for deadzone I'll be on board for sure. Even if its a whole new team or bz type.

I'm not interested in buying a new metal Deadzone character every year - I don't even plan to get any of the metal characters from the original kickstarter campaign. On the other hand, I would be interested in picking up entirely new, full deadzone factions in the future. Besides the Corporation army, there are a lot of Warpath races featured in Dreadball that I'd like to see make the limbo jump to Deadzone.

That's what I meant. I don't know that I'd want a single character for the pack, I was thinking more along the lines of a faction starter and or booster. I guess what I failed to imply and meant to say was that a faction starter/booster was what I would prefer, even though it would cost more than the DB set.

Another nice expansion/bundle they could (potentially) do would be a new design for the mat along with another BZ type, in the spirit of the DB yearly release, but with more meat on it so to speak.

 Compel wrote:
I think it's just available direct from Mantic. I teased them a bit about the Limited Edition thing on facebook but yeah, it does make sense.

Hm, direct from Mantic is a bit gak. Their minimum order to get free shipping for internationals is more than I'm really likely to spend direct, wheras from Firestorm or Troll Trader I could pick up the pack, plus some paints, brushes, other models, etc and get free shipping.

 Azazelx wrote:

 Compel wrote:
I think it's just available direct from Mantic. I teased them a bit about the Limited Edition thing on facebook but yeah, it does make sense.

Hm, direct from Mantic is a bit gak. Their minimum order to get free shipping for internationals is more than I'm really likely to spend direct, wheras from Firestorm or Troll Trader I could pick up the pack, plus some paints, brushes, other models, etc and get free shipping.

Find some other upsideowners who want a pack too to qualify for free shipping (or at least to split the costs?)

 GrimDork wrote:
That's what I meant. I don't know that I'd want a single character for the pack, I was thinking more along the lines of a faction starter and or booster. I guess what I failed to imply and meant to say was that a faction starter/booster was what I would prefer, even though it would cost more than the DB set.

Another nice expansion/bundle they could (potentially) do would be a new design for the mat along with another BZ type, in the spirit of the DB yearly release, but with more meat on it so to speak.

I think we agree on all points. A new mat would be particularly nice to alleviate the sameness you get when you put 4 or 6 of the current ones together to make a larger board.

For Deadzone I could see them producing a special faction hero or a mercenary along with a chunk of objective terrain and a special scenario or set of linked scenarios.

^While I would prefer a whole faction, this is likely also acceptable, especially if there are scenarios.

I'm hoping they eventually release a mission/scenario pack like they did for Infinity, supposedly the scenarios add a lot to that games gameplay. Of course, dead zone already has missions beyond simple kill points, but special scenarios with different deployment/variable points/other interesting mods... could add alot down the road.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:

Find some other upsideowners who want a pack too to qualify for free shipping (or at least to split the costs?)

Good idea in theory, but DB just isn't that popular here.

When in doubt, buy a crazy box along with it :p

Of course, regarding Deadzone expansions, I think the following is likely as a roadmap:

- Asterians and Forge Fathers later this year.
- Martians and Humans from Mars Attacks even later this year. This includes 2 new mat designs and 2 new scenery 'battlezones' - it just depends on whether you think any of this is tonally consistent with Deadzone.
- A second boxed game, possibly without terrain to keep the size down, next year. With Veer-Myn vs. a second popular race.

That would put them at 10 distinct factions (8 of which are 'proper'), which is plenty for a skirmish game like this. I'd be interested to see where they go with narrative campaigns though, as I thought that was the most interesting part of both this and Mars Attacks.

 Compel wrote:
When in doubt, buy a crazy box along with it :p

I've already got more than enough of the Men-At-Arms.

They've just uploaded the rules for the 3 KS backer MVPs to Wargame Vault, links are going out by KS messenger.



They painted up alright I might get round to painting them up at some point.

EDIT: they are now selling them as a pack of 3 on Mantic store as well for those that missed them £14.99 for the 3. Hmmm they should have put these up the other day so people could combine shipping

http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/pre-order/dreadball/product/manticorp-showboaters-all-stars-mvp-pack-3-figures.html

and the Azure Forest pack will be available to retailers as well.

This set will be available retailers from the 27th January and includes the new A'teo MVP and Trophy.

Interesting backer funded minis. The half-cyborg guy is alright I guess. The kid riding the t-rex is pretty hilarious. Does the guy on the top right look like someone famous or something? He kind of looks like just another human (no helmet ofc) player, unless there's a notable person he resembles (and I'm unaware of).

The details on the kid (face, maybe hands?) seem a little soft but the t-rex and other two seem alright.

Backers paid ($4k to $5k each) to have these made - the head coach, MVP and Man of the Match pledge levels. They where designed by the backers the concept art is in the rules download I assume the first two are based of the backers own likeness I know the guy who had Drake made had his kid used as the basis for the rider. The minis - faces anyway aren't a patch on the concept art and personally I wouldn't have signed off on them as they are if I'd paid $5,000 for them. Plus as I mentioned when I got them they are out of scale with alot of the other minis possibily as they have been cast in metal but they may have been sculpted with restic casting in mind and shrinkage was allowed for which didn't happen once cast in metal.

I kind of love the kid riding the dinosaur. Thats pretty awesome.

I quite like the kid on the trex. In terms of the concept rather than the sculpt.

Not a fan of the others though. Really dont like any of the faces.

Anyone run across this yet?:

Ronnie Renton posts his yearly blog on the direction of the company and let’s slip a little nugget: DreadBall Xtreme is coming to Kickstarter in February!

“We thirst for more [DreadBall] – more teams, more ways of playing, more ways to pick and individualise our own rosters – and for getting out from under the bright lights of the the DreadBall arenas.
We want to play in the darkest corners of the Corporation, where anything goes and money talks! We want to take DreadBall to a deeper and nastier place. We hinted at it with the very last stretch goal of
the first campaign – Blaine – and gave it a page in the Season 3 rulebook. Yes, we want to play DreadBall Xtreme! We hope you’re as excited about the idea as we are, and we can proudly announce that
it will be coming to a Kickstarter near you in February! Let the violence begin…”

So Dreadball Extreme KS coming at the end of February possibly early March, I don't play dreadball myself so more time to save up for the warpath KS, which I'd
assume is going to happen late Q3 early Q4 if this KS is happening so soon.

Here's a teaser of the Asterians/Cylons from the 128th KS update for Deadzone..

By Your Command...

Hmm. Now that the second DZ survey is approaching, I'm trying to figure out how whole hog I want to go...

Anyone trying to get rid of any Deadzone while I decide?

The Asterian looks nice unlike the promo backer figs from Dreadball... not a fan of those sculpts.

Wish I knew if I liked everything to know if i wanted to go whole hog or not. Kind of already did, but more terrain is potentially tempting. Hopefully they keep the second survey open for at least a month, or they won't be getting any additional funds from me, too too soon. And I guess I better hope they send my belated box in time for me to fill out the missing parts survey, or something. Oh well.

Glad they're doing the DBX kickstarter in feb, will let me save up some funds for other stuff. Maybe a token backing just for support .

Cypher looks pretty cool, at least. Hopefully the hard plastic for the plague zombies worked out and they get the zombies, forgeguard, cyphers, and peacekeepers done in time to send out for the second wave.

 Rolt wrote:
Anyone run across this yet?:
[

So Dreadball Extreme KS coming at the end of February possibly early March, I don't play dreadball myself so more time to save up for the warpath KS, which I'd
assume is going to happen late Q3 early Q4 if this KS is happening so soon.

Yay, another KS.

Nice the Cypher looks great so far, might change the head for a more sleeker design.

@Grim
Yeah I think were gonna have tons of time to save up the penny's for the Warpath KS, keep in mind not only will we have the DBX KS but also a possible Dwarf Kings hold KS this year.
Mantic have hinted towards this a few time in their podcast that they intend to kickstart a special edition/re-release of DKH which will put it in a similar vein to Deadzone's relation
to Warpath, an entry level game in to the wider KoW universe. Its all good, personally I'm much happier to hear Mantic taking their time with Warpath than rushing it out the door.

Yeah. After seeing the kind of hard plastic they used for the MaA compared to the renedra undead sprues... they can wait to do WP until that contract runs out as far as I'm concerned. The maa hard plastic seems closer to the new restic than gw/renedra plastic. Kind of hard/brittle.

DKH may get some of my monies but probably just for the basic/sweet spot. I know I said that about MA but fantasy holds less sway for me.

Oh there's a mini KoW kickstarter to come as well, even more time to try and get wp right. I just hope the resulting rulebook comes with a bunch of fluff though that seems like a thing that gets left aside in a kickstarter.

Does James still post here? Or was that just damage control?
I'd really like to get the message to Mantic just how poorly I rate my experiences with both Dreadball and now Deadzone.
The quality of the miniatures is not what I'd expect from a retail company. Soft detail to the point of being featureless, parts that don't fit, the worst mold lines I have seen on miniatures in almost 30 years in this hobby.
There are large items missing from both and Mantic have been very slow to respond. The odd component I could understand, but entire items? A playing mat?
The constant spam. Updates are for the kickstarter we backed, not for you to advertise your next release.

I was really impressed with my first Mantic purchases (undead), the quality of the sculpts and the casting was excellent. When do we get the Mantic that made those kits back?

Joyboozer wrote:
Does James still post here? Or was that just damage control?
I'd really like to get the message to Mantic just how poorly I rate my experiences with both Dreadball and now Deadzone.
The quality of the miniatures is not what I'd expect from a retail company. Soft detail to the point of being featureless, parts that don't fit, the worst mold lines I have seen on miniatures in almost 30 years in this hobby.
There are large items missing from both and Mantic have been very slow to respond. The odd component I could understand, but entire items? A playing mat?
The constant spam. Updates are for the kickstarter we backed, not for you to advertise your next release.

I was really impressed with my first Mantic purchases (undead), the quality of the sculpts and the casting was excellent. When do we get the Mantic that made those kits back?

I'm sure if you ask nicely they'll send you some replacements...

Joyboozer wrote:
Does James still post here? Or was that just damage control?
I'd really like to get the message to Mantic just how poorly I rate my experiences with both Dreadball and now Deadzone.
The quality of the miniatures is not what I'd expect from a retail company. Soft detail to the point of being featureless, parts that don't fit, the worst mold lines I have seen on miniatures in almost 30 years in this hobby.
There are large items missing from both and Mantic have been very slow to respond. The odd component I could understand, but entire items? A playing mat?
The constant spam. Updates are for the kickstarter we backed, not for you to advertise your next release.

I was really impressed with my first Mantic purchases (undead), the quality of the sculpts and the casting was excellent. When do we get the Mantic that made those kits back?

You could always go the the Mantic forums and let folks know how you feel.

Just kidding. I mentioned how poor the Marauder Pyro figure is and was basically told I should be thankful for the privilege of getting to assemble it.

Not by Mantic, they don't seem to bother to address issues folks bring up on the forums (that I have read), but by some of the fans.

 CptJake wrote:

Joyboozer wrote:
Does James still post here? Or was that just damage control?
I'd really like to get the message to Mantic just how poorly I rate my experiences with both Dreadball and now Deadzone.
The quality of the miniatures is not what I'd expect from a retail company. Soft detail to the point of being featureless, parts that don't fit, the worst mold lines I have seen on miniatures in almost 30 years in this hobby.
There are large items missing from both and Mantic have been very slow to respond. The odd component I could understand, but entire items? A playing mat?
The constant spam. Updates are for the kickstarter we backed, not for you to advertise your next release.

I was really impressed with my first Mantic purchases (undead), the quality of the sculpts and the casting was excellent. When do we get the Mantic that made those kits back?

You could always go the the Mantic forums and let folks know how you feel.

Just kidding. I mentioned how poor the Marauder Pyro figure is and was basically told I should be thankful for the privilege of getting to assemble it.

Not by Mantic, they don't seem to bother to address issues folks bring up on the forums (that I have read), but by some of the fans.

I had some slight warping on the Marauder Pyro but nothing that wasn't fixable...

I haven't had any problems with mold lines or missing bits in any order (KS or not) from Mantic. Either I'm getting lucky or others are getting very unlucky.

 angelofvengeance wrote:

I had some slight warping on the Marauder Pyro but nothing that wasn't fixable...

Though fixable, that gap is not acceptable.

The 'hot water' fix gives you a weapon that looks like it should get a bonus firing around corners to the left. Having to fill the gap with green stuff in order to compensate for poor design and/or poor production isn't something I should have to do. It isn't a 'miscast' as I've seen some describe it, as nothing is deformed/missing, it just does not fit the way it is supposed to when assembled out of the bag.

 CptJake wrote:

 angelofvengeance wrote:

I had some slight warping on the Marauder Pyro but nothing that wasn't fixable...

Though fixable, that gap is not acceptable.

The 'hot water' fix gives you a weapon that looks like it should get a bonus firing around corners to the left. Having to fill the gap with green stuff in order to compensate for poor design and/or poor production isn't something I should have to do. It isn't a 'miscast' as I've seen some describe it, as nothing is deformed/missing, it just does not fit the way it is supposed to when assembled out of the bag.

That could almost be the pic for our burgeoning Mantic meme:

Mantic. Almost.

And this, of course, is what I'm talking about when I say that to get to that proverbial "next level" Mantic is going to have to leave 'restic' behind.

And develop and empower a really good Quality Control department.

So with their email instructing us to fill out Dreadball problems by the 31st of March, I've gotten out my last wave box again to have a look at it, and it's just the typical Mantic box filled with grey plastic with no fething idea what any of it is. Also, there's 8 sets they didn't send me, which they still haven't actually sent me.... I guess I should mention those when I email them.

So anyway, is there a guide anywhere to what all this DB stuff actually is, or do I need to play "Guess what this is supposed to be!" all the way through the box?

 Azazelx wrote:
So with their email instructing us to fill out Dreadball problems by the 31st of March, I've gotten out my last wave box again to have a look at it, and it's just the typical Mantic box filled with grey plastic with no fething idea what any of it is. Also, there's 8 sets they didn't send me, which they still haven't actually sent me.... I guess I should mention those when I email them.

So anyway, is there a guide anywhere to what all this DB stuff actually is, or do I need to play "Guess what this is supposed to be!" all the way through the box?

I played 'guess'.

I got a corporation army box from the war store and it was all intact. A few guns were mildly bent and there's what seems likea ppersistent issue with the weapon team gunner, but I'm happy with that purchase.

Got two Christmas boxen, both fine. A hand full of other 5-10 model kits which are all fine. The 4 dz minis from those boxen were reasonable in terms of mold lines and restic bend.

My dz order got clerical errored into oblivion so I can't really saymuch else about tthat one yet.

Is this the Forge Father keeper? (guy dead in the middle)

The Pyro severely annoyed me as well. Am I drunk, quite possible, or was I supposed to get some mercenaries with my stuff? (obviously not the two paid add-ons).

Strike team had a bag of 8 mercs.

 Azazelx wrote:
Is this the Forge Father keeper? (guy dead in the middle)

I think it's the star player Australians got. Yay.

 pretre wrote:
Strike team had a bag of 8 mercs.

Damn. Something else I'm missing then.

So after doing my DB inventory, I'm missing:

1x Dozer
1x Marauder Keeper
1x Forge Father Keeper (maybe?)

and the not-supplied items:

2x Female Corp Upgrade Packs
2x Judwan Upgrade Packs
2x Zzor Upgrade Packs
2x Robot Upgrade Packs

On a related note, does anyone know which GW Skaven kits might have the most non-oversized spare heads in them? If I'm ever going to assemble the Veermyn, they'll all need some surgery, and the heads are the worst-offending parts of their models. Would the current plastic Stormvermin heads look massively oversized? What about Plague Monks' heads?

I just looked, all of the newer kits are probably the same nowadays? The old stormvermin have huge noggins. A caution about plague monks is that they seem to have missing skin and hoods, unless you're into that kind of thing for your Veer-Myn.

Joyboozer wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
Is this the Forge Father keeper? (guy dead in the middle)

I think it's the star player Australians got. Yay.

It's a standard FF Guard.

overtyrant wrote:

Joyboozer wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
Is this the Forge Father keeper? (guy dead in the middle)

I think it's the star player Australians got. Yay.

It's a standard FF Guard.

Really? It's the Dreadball mini that came in my Deadzone!

Agree that the render looks pretty cool, makes me hopeful regarding the miniatures.

But, now bring on the Forge Fathers!

 squall018 wrote:
I kind of love the kid riding the dinosaur. Thats pretty awesome.

I can't decide whether that is the best thing or the worst I have seen so far this year

@Joyboozer: the Keeper should have been in a single baggie on his own (the mould lines are so heavy on mine I'm asking for a replacement).

 CptJake wrote:

 angelofvengeance wrote:

I had some slight warping on the Marauder Pyro but nothing that wasn't fixable...

Though fixable, that gap is not acceptable.

The 'hot water' fix gives you a weapon that looks like it should get a bonus firing around corners to the left. Having to fill the gap with green stuff in order to compensate for poor design and/or poor production isn't something I should have to do. It isn't a 'miscast' as I've seen some describe it, as nothing is deformed/missing, it just does not fit the way it is supposed to when assembled out of the bag.

*shrug* No-one said Mantic were perfect lol. I doubt $1.2m is anywhere near a big enough investment for a spectacular manufacturing facility like GW has (as far as plastics are concerned that is)

 Rolt wrote:
So Dreadball Extreme KS coming at the end of February possibly early March, I don't play dreadball myself so more time to save up for the warpath KS, which I'd assume is going to happen late Q3 early Q4 if this KS is happening so soon.

It does bode ill for Warpath, definitely. Shame, really. Out of all of their projects, I thought that had the biggest chance to be something I'd want to play.

 angelofvengeance wrote:
*shrug* No-one said Mantic were perfect lol. I doubt $1.2m is anywhere near a big enough investment for a spectacular manufacturing facility like GW has (as far as plastics are concerned that is)

In the context of his grievance, "No one said Mantic was perfect" is a complete nonsequitur.

I'd say a later warpath ks was for the best.

Time to nail down the plastic production more firmly,

Time to get more concept art (maybe even 3D stuff) done beforehand too

Time to see how deadzone goes, what factions are popular 'in the wild' etc

And I'll add that other companies somehow are able to QC their product off of similar funding amounts. If you can't ensure a decent product, don't offer it.... *cough* Men at arms *cough*

No, the problem here is Mantic's complete lack of corporate integrity and consistency when it comes to the quality of their product. The incredibly sad thing is that people are willing to accept Mantic's "good enough" attitude because they think $3 per miniature is cheap. This may be true when compared to GW but there are 3rd party companies producing excellent resin miniatures for a like amount without quality issues.

I don't get this attitude unless i've somehow found myself in a community of millionaires. Why would you just like to keep throwing your money at a company that repeatedly shows that they care not one bit about your continued custom? You backed a KS or bought a nice looking box online and you get a box with a bunch of unlabeled plastic bags, no assembly instructions and missing and malformed miniatures. I promise that if you tell people these things up front, many to most won't buy Deadzone.

I guess I was the only one angry about even the need for a missing item survey. It scares me to read KS comments where backers are being told that Mantic is unable to fulfill their pledge, has offered a refund and has then backed out on the refund. They should just move their offices to China because that's seems to be the way they prefer to conduct business.

 angelofvengeance wrote:


*shrug* No-one said Mantic were perfect lol. I doubt $1.2m is anywhere near a big enough investment for a spectacular manufacturing facility like GW has (as far as plastics are concerned that is)

I dont see how "Mantic being perfect" is relevant here. Or how big GW are. The fact of the mater is he received a Sub Par product from Mantic which he paid for.

 angelofvengeance wrote:

 CptJake wrote:

 angelofvengeance wrote:

I had some slight warping on the Marauder Pyro but nothing that wasn't fixable...

Though fixable, that gap is not acceptable.

The 'hot water' fix gives you a weapon that looks like it should get a bonus firing around corners to the left. Having to fill the gap with green stuff in order to compensate for poor design and/or poor production isn't something I should have to do. It isn't a 'miscast' as I've seen some describe it, as nothing is deformed/missing, it just does not fit the way it is supposed to when assembled out of the bag.

*shrug* No-one said Mantic were perfect lol. I doubt $1.2m is anywhere near a big enough investment for a spectacular manufacturing facility like GW has (as far as plastics are concerned that is)

I love Mantic, but I don't feel this statement is appropriate. We know they're not perfect, we know they're busting ass, but this picture in particular sounds like a problem for most, if not all, of us. That suggests a major design flaw in the casting process. It shouldn't have gone out, or if it had to, at least let everyone know specifically it was a problem (like they did with the kneeling Orx commander). I've bought and put together plenty of GW models with issues-metal Phoenix guard, anyone? Gaps are a thing. Just give us heads up. Communication goes a LONG way towards placating issues.

 CptJake wrote:

 angelofvengeance wrote:

I had some slight warping on the Marauder Pyro but nothing that wasn't fixable...

Though fixable, that gap is not acceptable.

The 'hot water' fix gives you a weapon that looks like it should get a bonus firing around corners to the left. Having to fill the gap with green stuff in order to compensate for poor design and/or poor production isn't something I should have to do. It isn't a 'miscast' as I've seen some describe it, as nothing is deformed/missing, it just does not fit the way it is supposed to when assembled out of the bag.

I've had this exact issue on GW/PP models.

Oh, well that's alright then. As long as other people do it....

 agnosto wrote:
Oh, well that's alright then. As long as other people do it....

'Fecal Matte Happens'?

Models that require you perfectly line up 3 bits in order to no see a gap are the worst to attempt to QC.

I seem to remember Mantic acknowledging that something did go wrong with the pyro but Hot Water should be able to do it.

So just wondering here... might it possibly be more constructive to create a new thread either in the mantic sub forum or maybe discussions in which to lodge these (generally legitimate) concerns and complaints? They seem to be breeding a lot of heated back and forth but are neither news nor rumors.

Yeh?

I was under an impression that QC issues are to be brought before QC desk. When something is faulty, contact the supplier. Don't like filling bubbles in Finecast? GW should replace it. Don't like the gap in restic? Mantic should replace it. Or maybe even ask for refund, but then You may have to ship the faulty goods to the producer. This works with cars, computers and furniture, it is REQUIRED by law in many countries.

So, please, make a Mantic QC thread and bring the complaint where it belong - to the manufacturer. I will surely post there about my misfortunes with Mantic as soon as they happen.

Thank You

 Cyporiean wrote:

 agnosto wrote:
Oh, well that's alright then. As long as other people do it....

'Fecal Matte Happens'?

Models that require you perfectly line up 3 bits in order to no see a gap are the worst to attempt to QC.

If you can't do it correctly, don't do it?

Compel wrote:I seem to remember Mantic acknowledging that something did go wrong with the pyro but Hot Water should be able to do it.

I heated the models to bend the weapon to match but as Capt Jake already pointed out, you end up with a comically warped weapon that looks like it's meant to shoot the guy next to you rather than the enemy in front of you.

Issues are issues but it seems that Mantic has an attitude of "oh well, we gave it a shot" while voicing a stronger stance of "we will not allow these quality issues to stand". In other words, their continuing actions do not match their words. In other words, they're full of fecal matter. Like I said, their business practices are very much in alignment with the country of origin of their product; little to no QA and QC, haphazard warehousing and logistics, poor communication, questionable business practices (see the posts from an aggrieved KS backer trying to receive a refund after being told he'll not receive his goods and then being danced around with no refund in sight and now resorting to posting on the KS page after more than a month of trying to either receive good he paid for or a refund.

Yesterday

Mantic Games, it has been over a month since you contacted me about shipping issues to my address. Three different employees have responded to my email replies saying that a refund would be issued. The last communication from Mantic was three days ago, which I promptly replied to. Please issue a refund within 24 hours or I begin to work to ensure that my funds are returned to me via my credit card company. I hate to take it to this level, but feel that Mantic has had ample time to deal with this situation in a professional manner. Thanks.

Four days prior

I've tried contacting Mantic via twitter, their website, Kickstarter and phone. No real communication for the last month about the order they canceled. I have roughly $200 that should be refunded. Mantic, please contact me, or I'm going to have to contact the BBB, consumer affairs at your state attorney general's office and ask my credit card company to do a charge back.

What is the issue the backer is having with receiving his goods?

 Azazelx wrote:
Is this the Forge Father keeper? (guy dead in the middle)

No, he's part of the 'normal' team. A guard. The keepers are the upgraded goalies, with even more armor.

 warboss wrote:
What is the issue the backer is having with receiving his goods?

Dunno. He lives in Italy apparently and Mantic informed him they were unable to ship to him for some reason. He requested a refund, they agreed and have been giving him the old, shady business tactic of revolving customer service personnel for over a month while sitting pat on his money.

The Keeper is the 1 I've circled in red.

From back left the picture is

Jack, Striker, Striker, Jack
Prone, Guard, Keeper, Guard, Prone

I intend on giving my Keeper a black helmet (rather than white or puple the others have) so he stands out from the guards.

That explains it. Italy seems to be a hotbed for internet scammers unfortunately for honest gamers living there. Italy is second only to Russia as the most excluded from shipping country I've seen over the past decade for both private offerings like the swap shop as well as ebay auctions.

 Azazelx wrote:
So anyway, is there a guide anywhere to what all this DB stuff actually is, or do I need to play "Guess what this is supposed to be!" all the way through the box?

It's a little vague at times, but I noticed that Mantic does a lot of 'keying' on the minis, so you can't easily use Corporation arms on Goblins or vice versa.

 warboss wrote:
That explains it. Italy seems to be a hotbed for internet scammers unfortunately for honest gamers living there. Italy is second only to Russia as the most excluded from shipping country I've seen over the past decade for both private offerings like the swap shop as well as ebay auctions.

They could have told him months ago if they weren't going to fulfill his order... I need to stop reading the KS comments:

I'm on a suppression team (3 boxed game) with friends and only get one box....
We were happy to get this before christmas, but now we are very disappointed...
We spend more than $1.100on this kickstarter, we was hoping a little bit more from you...

Really?? there are people in my local area who are missing half their original package, damaged scenery and whole starter sets of the races missing?? You really can't be arsed to sort out the problems with the initial shipment before rushing out the next?? Glad to see the Mantic focus on great customer service is alive and well....or dead at the bottom of a grave depending on your definition of the word great.

For those of us who still have not received our first shipment, or any tracking information, do we complete the "missing bits survey" and note that we have not received anything at all???

I've not had anything yet at all and everything I ordered was from the first wave. I have had confirmation that Mantic have received my missing parts comments, but sad to hear it won't even be looked at until after January and dealt with when new stock arrives!

I wouldnt mind to wait for my missing parts another two months or so if only some minor things were missing. But I am missing one complete strike team pledge (I am an assault team backer and got only one ST)! I really dont like to read that I have to wait a long time after January for this! You should make sure, that such big glitches get fixed asap, that would be a professional manner. Send you my survey on 13. December.

Those are a few...

Well to be fair a lot issues reported in December will have hit their Deadzone shut down (they did say the company was going to be totally focused on shipping out that) not that will make those with missing bits feel better

and then the Xmas shut down

It's also clear (from one of the above comments) that some of the issues are stock related, and if Mantic haven't got any they can't send replacements until new stock arrives from china

As to the refund, there's clearly a problem there, but what it is and why it's happening is very hard to say (especially with only one side of the story)

 warboss wrote:
That explains it. Italy seems to be a hotbed for internet scammers unfortunately for honest gamers living there. Italy is second only to Russia as the most excluded from shipping country I've seen over the past decade for both private offerings like the swap shop as well as ebay auctions.

I think its partly that and partly that the italian postal service is awful.

I had people in rome tell me if I wanted to send out post and was visiting the vatican wait and post it from there instead.

My thoughts on this are that they should not have done the limited retail release before they did the first shipment to backers. It is just daft that 5000 odd copies of the game were sent out for retail whilst some backers got none, ditto for faction starter sets, battlezones etc etc.

They knew how much stuff they had to send out, once they discovered that they could not meet backer demand and their, albeit limited, retail release they should have pulled the retail sales via their website. Note that I have no issue with some retail purchasers getting their copies before KS backers, more of an issue with them getting their orders whilst some backers got very limited/non existent first wave deliveries.

Bingo. Ding ding ding. Make sure your backers have their stuff before you ship out non - backer retail packages.

Had the retail release been limited to 3/4000 copies a lot of the problems with backers could have been avoided whilst also not aggravating retail stores that they sell to. Case in point there were 5 unsold copies in my FLGS this very afternoon.

Also note that I have no axe to grind about my KS experience as I got my delivery pre open day and with nothing missing. I am also very happy with the quality if product that I got.

As much as I like mantic.. I do have to agree that I'd rather have my stuff now than uhh... not. Although I think it was some kind of clerical error, perhaps I was marked as shipped or something. I'm not sure the limited retail run affected me so much.

I'm glad they had a chance to retail the boxen and make some monies, but the suggestion to hold some of those 5k back to fix ks orders is probably a good one.

Yeah I don't know what's so hard about ordering a little bit extra of everything from China to cover miscasts and mispacks. As it is, they even ran out of some things, never mind having spares on hand to handle mistakes.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Yeah I don't know what's so hard about ordering a little bit extra of everything from China to cover miscasts and mispacks. As it is, they even ran out of some things, never mind having spares on hand to handle mistakes.

Because minimum qty you can order is a production batch of 10000 shots + it takes time on slow boat approx. 4 to 6 weeks to UK. That's is the reason why they have re-launched the KS survey as well, to get more orders to cover the minimum qty for production batch without having lots of unwanted product in stock (bits I mean)

And all this is so much cheaper than plastic sprues... Lost time, customer goodwill, sales. Going restic saved them production costs but is going to bite them in replacement of miscast/missing merchandize. Bad experience means means me and probably many others won't buy more product...etc.

Retailers were KS backers too, so there isn't a distinction to make in this case.

Not that I blame anyone for being fed up with Mantic's almost antics.

Not all retailers were kickstarters. Mantic also set out a limited run of some 5000 boxes to non-backer retailers if I recall correctly.

Oh ffs, I give up, this is just gak! Some of the gaps between arm joins on marauders are a few mm wide!
Is it easier assembling the miniatures as part of a gaming group?
Not for the help but to give you a hug and tell you everything will be alright!

Any US deadzone backers looking to quit, go ahead and shoot me a PM. I'll buy your boosters.

god.ra wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Yeah I don't know what's so hard about ordering a little bit extra of everything from China to cover miscasts and mispacks. As it is, they even ran out of some things, never mind having spares on hand to handle mistakes.

Because minimum qty you can order is a production batch of 10000 shots + it takes time on slow boat approx. 4 to 6 weeks to UK. That's is the reason why they have re-launched the KS survey as well, to get more orders to cover the minimum qty for production batch without having lots of unwanted product in stock (bits I mean)

They should have ordered 10100 instead of 10000 (or whatever) is what I'm saying.

 Baragash wrote:
Retailers were KS backers too, so there isn't a distinction to make in this case.

Not that I blame anyone for being fed up with Mantic's almost antics.

Scarletsquig has posted the number of retailer KS backers in this thread somewhere, it was not a lot, something like 29/30 IIRC.

I just do not get the logic in sending copies of the boxed game and all the other retail bits out when they sent some backers orders that were short of basic bits that they had thousands of in mid December.

That said, I do not wish to try and bash Mantic. I do not believe they willingly try and dissappoint customers. Their hearts are in the right place, but their heads and business sense are often not.

Sending retail copies out and selling them on the mantic website was done to make money, to actually turn a profit after the kickstarter process rather than tread water. At least I'd assume. What lord blackfang said though, would have been a nice thought to get a bit extra so they had stuff on hand to fulfill missing pieces somewhat.

My guess is they placed the order before the pledge manager had closed

(but after it had been open a while to give them some idea of numbers)

but there was more of a 'rush' for some stuff at the end than expected so while they thought they'd have enough + spares they were wrong

Can't wait for the second survey so I can get my not-Squats. Wonder when they will ship? Summer?

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Can't wait for the second survey so I can get my not-Squats. Wonder when they will ship? Summer?

Q2, so hopefully spring.

I am getting super excited for the second survey too. My gaming group is starting to get into it so we're working up a big order and trying to find folks who don't want their stuff to as well.

I'd rather it ship in Summer, hopefully after some quality control on the miniatures. I was planning a 2nd survey order until I found out I wouldn't be receiving my missing items until some after the second survey's complete.

Seriously Mantic. You want more money from me when you haven't given me all of what I paid for the first time? Yeah, not happening.

I'm hoping my stuff comes in before the mispack corrections or I'll have not seen anything in person before the survey. I want the peacekeepers zombies and maybe walkers... but I'm not sure I'm willing to spend more than I have on this and ma w/o seeing anything.

Wonder if we'll be hearing anything about that new scenery sprue any time soon.

 GrimDork wrote:
I'm hoping my stuff comes in before the mispack corrections or I'll have not seen anything in person before the survey. I want the peacekeepers zombies and maybe walkers... but I'm not sure I'm willing to spend more than I have on this and ma w/o seeing anything.

Wonder if we'll be hearing anything about that new scenery sprue any time soon.

I feel for you. If I were in your shoes, I would not be nearly as calm nor as forgiving.

 pretre wrote:
Any US deadzone backers looking to quit, go ahead and shoot me a PM. I'll buy your boosters.

Seriously, I'll pay $50 plus a share in shipping for just the plague booster bundle (leaving you with the other BoGoF booster bundle free ).

Yeah, not hearing about what's up with the missing or miscast stuff and not seeing a lot more of the 'Unknowns' now and possibly before the Second Survey closes?

Although, I'm not sure if we know how long the Second Survey will be open for yet.

Hopefully long enough for all of the above to be addressed...

 Bolognesus wrote:

 pretre wrote:
Any US deadzone backers looking to quit, go ahead and shoot me a PM. I'll buy your boosters.

Seriously, I'll pay $50 plus a share in shipping for just the plague booster bundle (leaving you with the other BoGoF booster bundle free ).

Heck I will take this deal

Yeah, I really want to order more stuff on the second survey, but I just about *have* to get my hands on something more than the two yndij and sorak I have before I can commit more funds. If I hadn't front loaded so much I'd seriously consider picking up a copy of the base game or a faction starter from miniature market or the warstore... but yeah too much in already

 primalexile wrote:

 Bolognesus wrote:

 pretre wrote:
Any US deadzone backers looking to quit, go ahead and shoot me a PM. I'll buy your boosters.

Seriously, I'll pay $50 plus a share in shipping for just the plague booster bundle (leaving you with the other BoGoF booster bundle free ).

Heck I will take this deal

...well finally, dropped you a pm. shame about the US flag (shipping wise ) but still, good.

I saw the flag, or I totally would have taken you up on the deal.

Thanks Bob and Dave - looks like I'm missing the FF Keeper as well. Time to fill out the survey then...


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 Alpharius wrote:
Yeah, not hearing about what's up with the missing or miscast stuff and not seeing a lot more of the 'Unknowns' now and possibly before the Second Survey closes?

Although, I'm not sure if we know how long the Second Survey will be open for yet.

Hopefully long enough for all of the above to be addressed...

It's Mantic. They only have half an arse. There were several sets of figures with no photos (Elf cavalry, TK Cavalry, some others - the MAA?) before the third-and-final KoW Pledge Manager closed.


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 GrimDork wrote:
I just looked, all of the newer kits are probably the same nowadays? The old stormvermin have huge noggins. A caution about plague monks is that they seem to have missing skin and hoods, unless you're into that kind of thing for your Veer-Myn.

hm, well, anything's got to be better than the stock heads, right? Oddly, Vermyn seem to be bigger than humans in Mantic's scale, while Skaven are generally smaller than humans in GW's - so hopefully it can work...

Skaven live in tunnels, Veer-myn are giant mutated rat monsters, seems fair enough that they're bigger. But what ever will you do with a distinct lack of scifi goggles and whatever else those things have... gas masks?

It may be a blessing to get a later print run of the rulebook.

The first printing of the rulebook has several items that have already been errata'ed. This includes no stats and several rules clarifications for sentry guns as well as what's legal for chaining free actions, a fairly basic piece of the game.
They note on Quirkworthy that these corrections are being made in subsequent print runs (they've apparently run through the first print). My copy has stickies patched throughout to fix just the errata ID'ed thus far.

 Azazelx wrote:



hm, well, anything's got to be better than the stock heads, right? Oddly, Vermyn seem to be bigger than humans in Mantic's scale, while Skaven are generally smaller than humans in GW's - so hopefully it can work...

How many spare beakie marine heads do you have?

I wonder about Q2 for the second shipment. Thats' what we were originally told, but the latest update (on the blog, I think) just said "this year". Which smells of a roundabout hint of delays to me.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I wonder about Q2 for the second shipment. Thats' what we were originally told, but the latest update (on the blog, I think) just said "this year". Which smells of a roundabout hint of delays to me.

Not news; they've already said that if they have to delay, they will. The overwhelming response from the community has been a position of "quality even if it's late" versus Mantic's original "on time and we reaaaallly hope it's good". The hard plastic Enforcers were tooled but weren't great, so Mantic sent them back for retooling and instead of delaying the Enforcers they threw in the freebie baggie of restic Warpath Enforcers as a "hold you over" til the plastic Enforcers get finished properly.

Worth noting that they were expecting the first test shots of the plague zombie sprue early in December, so not having seen them yet might be down to the sprue being retooled.

It's in the contract they have with their supplier now, if it turns out poorly, they have to retool.

I'd love to see the wording of that contract!

I'd like to see the expiration date.. these renedra skeletons are so good.

 Alpharius wrote:
I'd love to see the wording of that contract!

In my experience such contracts tend to contain the phrases "reasonable" and "in good faith" a lot, together with a big fat arbitration clause.
Also, refusal of product denies right to sell product, and will generally be grounds for termination.

Generally speaking, Mantic wants to get something to market and do so in a reasonable time frame, so once their supplier supplies them with decent quality product, it's not in their interest to drag things out over ten more cycles over the course of five more years.
Signing a contract like that is always a bit of a gamble but really, you'd be surprised how often medium-sized businesses (certainly in this kind of manufacturing) work partly on contract, and partly on trust and good faith.

If only the backers had such a "Do it again, stupid" clause.

I do know I would like to see some of the Forgefather figures for Deadzone before I determine what I want to spend. We've seen stuff like the Marauder weapon platform/tank, the Hulk, etc but I think this second survey really needs to have a solid theme based upon seeing the actual plastic Enforcers, and the Forgefather and Asterian starters and expansions.

I would have thought those three things would have been something they would have been previewing over the winter...seeing as they were the things that are "new" to the second survey.......

Obviously I don't want to spend 75 bucks on Forgefathers if they are not going to look like something I'd spend 75 dollars on.

They probably didn't want to clutter everything up as most of the Mantic news were "you're supposed to have these parts, here's pics and a breakdown of what they do, here's the link to the form if you're missing stuff." over the holidays. Adding renders of unreleased models to the mix would probably make the situation even more confusing as from what I understand many backers haven't read the KS updates and don't know about the Enforcers situation, what contents they should have, etc.

I can understand lots of people not reading the KS updates considering how many of them are just adverts.

Well I'd imagine form the updates, that we are going to hear about how the hard plastic situation is resolved before the second survey. I know that they are working on this issue right now, however my intel is out of date, so I have nothing to report, really.

If there's no info, then I shall e-mail Ronnie, direct.

 primalexile wrote:

 Bolognesus wrote:

 pretre wrote:
Any US deadzone backers looking to quit, go ahead and shoot me a PM. I'll buy your boosters.

Seriously, I'll pay $50 plus a share in shipping for just the plague booster bundle (leaving you with the other BoGoF booster bundle free ).

Heck I will take this deal

Okay, let's clarify this since apparently I was insufficiently clear the first time round: anyone who can ship to me within 5 business days a complete, decently cast plague booster bundle, will get $55 including shipping from me.

That second survey will be with us in two weeks or so, though - I don't really expect them to have hard plastic in hand by then given how little updates we've had on the process so far. I might order booster bundles for asterians and FF (less hard plastic, relatively much larger discount) and risk only a very small portion of that $50 - some zombies and peacemakers is basically funny money so worth a risk but I'm still a bit reluctant to take that leap for any serious amount of $$$...

edit yes, I was the third or fourth pledger to be precise if I recall correctly

Have you already pledged on dead zone then?

If you haven't ill let you piggyback on my pledge to get what you are after in the second survey. But it sounds like you have already pledged and want a booster now.


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Just started putting together the marauders and they have quickly sapped my excitement for Deadzone.

Lots of flash, hard to remove mould lines, ill fitting pieces and at least one piece that had snapped before I opened it. I decided to stop building after three.

 carlos13th wrote:
Just started putting together the marauders and they have quickly sapped my excitement for Deadzone.
Lots of flash, hard to remove mould lines, ill fitting pieces and at least one piece that had snapped before I opened it.

It's the truth, but after all the swearing (and still untouched mold lines I just recently discovered while painting them) these guys are really some of my favorite, and I did NOT want Maruaders at any point in the campaign, pretty much from the get go. Hated those original pictures we saw.

Odd how time changes your mind on things.

 highlord tamburlaine wrote:

 carlos13th wrote:
Just started putting together the marauders and they have quickly sapped my excitement for Deadzone.
Lots of flash, hard to remove mould lines, ill fitting pieces and at least one piece that had snapped before I opened it.

It's the truth, but after all the swearing (and still untouched mold lines I just recently discovered while painting them) these guys are really some of my favorite, and I did NOT want Maruaders at any point in the campaign, pretty much from the get go. Hated those original pictures we saw.

Odd how time changes your mind on things.

Yeah, my favourite faction was Rebs until I got the miniatures...
So, now my favourite faction is Asterian!

I think my favorite faction is the Infinity models I got for christmas, and I haven't even gotten my stuff yet to be disappointed in it. Ehh, in seriousness, so far I haven't encountered anything on the warpath enforcers, yndij, or sorak models to aggravate me more than trimming a space marine backpack. Though I'm biased and hate those things.

Some of the details on the yndij I'm almost done with are a little softer than I'd like (not sure what one of his equipment pouch thingies is, it's more angular, almost like it should be a gun, but the lines aren't there to tell you), but so far no heavy complaints (beyond the obvious I won't shut up about ).

I dunno, I'm still excited to hear about whatever they've got worked on, last update seemed to suggest more would be forthcoming.

I'm putting together one of each kind of ripper suit right now, and haven't had any problems with them, hardly any flash, minor mold lines, and slight trimming for one arm socket and the binoculars.

I gather the problems are with other Marauders in the line?

I think the biggest issue is with the marauder pyro, although large mold lines and in bad places (like the face) have been reported as well.

I'd liked the Marauders even when they were those "horrible" original sculpts. Unfortunately, I have a hard time building enthusiasm to get them painted up. So far, I've only actually completed two of them despite already doing the prep work for more. I'm really finding that the Plague have been my favorites to work on.

I'm really wishing I'd chosen an easier color scheme for my Enforcers though since I went all in on them. Asterians hopefully will be easier though.

 GrimDork wrote:
I think the biggest issue is with the marauder pyro, although large mold lines and in bad places (like the face) have been reported as well.

I assembled a few more yesterday, two commandos and the kneeling sniper. Parts fit was okay, though the one commando with two guns needed the lug trimmed down on his left are for it to fit the hole in the torso. Mold lines were bad. Not as in really heavy, as in in bad places including down the middle of the face on one of them. Could be worse I guess.

My Marauders were much nicer to put together than my Enforcers, though I didn't have much trouble with the Enforcers (mainly because I'm lazy and missed a lot of lines).

I have encountered the issue with the marauders having lines down the center of the face, which is ok with the masks, but not when it goes over the finer details of the mouth.

NTRabbit wrote:
I'm putting together one of each kind of ripper suit right now, and haven't had any problems with them, hardly any flash, minor mold lines, and slight trimming for one arm socket and the binoculars.

I gather the problems are with other Marauders in the line?

It was the two standard troopers and the leader than came in the same bag as the dogs.

The commanders spear type thing arrive snapped off at the end

The commanders arms didn't fit together properly even after hot water trick there is still a gap between the main arm and the part of the spear he is holding is slightly bent. Gonna need to fill it with some green stuff.

The mould lines in everyones heads are pretty bad too.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also is the marauder captins back foot meant to touch the ground? Because it doesn't on mine.

The bad news: Restic gets bent out of shape. My brother's big plague leader guy almost looked like it was pirouetting due to how close together the legs got bent (compared to the proper spread out pose).
The good news: Very hot tap water is enough to repose the model (reposing the pirouette back to normal), or to repose the model however you'd like.

No amount of complaining will cause the restic to become hard plastic.

 solkan wrote:

No amount of complaining will cause the restic to become hard plastic.

Ha!

Good one there.

And sadly, too true...

I saw some of the Marauders in-Person this weekend.

Are you guys *REALLY* ok with heavy mold lines destroying detail on critical parts of the models? This is a sign of just crappy model/mold design.

I also noticed when pouring through my Friend's models that 100% of the failures from the previous KS are still in full effect. Harsh mold lines, Torn from sprue, Warping, damage to face due to poor mold design.

How many times is it going to be 'fool me 4 times, shame on me?' And with the 'at the end, we randomly stopped filling boxes and shipped them incomplete hoping no one would notice' and 'we are out of stock because we sold your models to retailers', I don't see how anyone can honestly support these KS or this company anymore. Things are actually getting worse, not better in product quality and company fulfillment.

I got everything I ordered (except 4 dice, which they missed for everyone) and none of my models were damaged in the way you're talking about. So yes, I will continue to support them.

In fact, my gaming group is going for another couple hundred on Survey 2.

 pretre wrote:
I got everything I ordered (except 4 dice, which they missed for everyone) and none of my models were damaged in the way you're talking about. So yes, I will continue to support them.

In fact, my gaming group is going for another couple hundred on Survey 2.

same here, everything but dice, no particularly bad mold lines beyond maybe 1 or 2, and these were not in critical spots and only one of the marauder pyros had the arm gap

DZ was my first foray into restic and I find it about as involving to work with as metal, and the casting no worse than PP's. I'll take it over anything else except hard plastic any day.

All the twisting/ tearing off of the sprue I've experienced so far has had the everything still attached to the sprue (which was yanked off of whatever larger sprue they had), so I don't really care if they want to tear those apart.

Some figures seem to suffer moldline- itis worse than others. My dreadball MVP was completely free of any imperfections. A few of my Marauders and Plague were as well. Then again, I had similar figures (some of the same sculpts for the plague in fact) that had all kinds of work needed on them.

The trollblood champions I'm working on right now from Privateer are just as bad with the bad mold lines.

I certainly hope we'll see some more renders prior to the survey rolling out.

We still haven't seen the female enforcer and her bike yet, even as concept art.

nkelsch wrote:
I saw some of the Marauders in-Person this weekend.

Are you guys *REALLY* ok with heavy mold lines destroying detail on critical parts of the models? This is a sign of just crappy model/mold design.

I also noticed when pouring through my Friend's models that 100% of the failures from the previous KS are still in full effect. Harsh mold lines, Torn from sprue, Warping, damage to face due to poor mold design.

Well, I've finished assembling all 4 ripper suits now, and there were no mold lines on critical parts of the models, the mold lines that were there wren't harsh, being torn from the sprue did no damage, there is no warping and the faces are perfect.

Only problem was one set of arms needed extra trimming around the peg to fit into the hole at the angle I wanted, and the shoulder mounted autocannon didn't really seem to have anywhere it was supposed to mount, so I trimmed down one end a little and got it to sit exactly how it looked in the photos.

Going to try some Commandos tomorrow - I pulled out a Pyro and noticed the wrist gap, so there is that.

So far these have been an order of magnitude better than the horrible, seemingly mismatched in the mold stuff I got in my Cyriss battle box. My Cipher body was like two separately cast halves stuck together after the fact like an old fashioned easter egg, only off by 1mm.

I just finished assembling my Plague and my impressions are quite high. I have not opened up any other faction bags yet, so I can't say yet how I feel about those from a quality perspective.

The Restic is much easier to work with than the earlier DB restic. takes a light scraping without feathering like the old blend. Still requires a very sharp knife, but I'm fine with that. Plague had some mold lines, but that's to be expected and nothing that couldn't be cleaned up fairly easily. No hot water treatment needed for any of the models. Had to trim a couple pegs on the 3A's to get a good fit, but much less than Dreadball.

That Stage 1A is a big hunk-o-plastic. I received 3 bags of the Plague Extra 1 (the one with the heavy machine gun) and I will say that all 3 HMG and all 3 of the trooper with the carbine held in both hands fit perfectly.

I see a lot of growth from Mantic on both the quality of sculpts and final product...at least in regards to the plague. Fulfillment issues aside.

 solkan wrote:


No amount of complaining will cause the restic to become hard plastic.

This is my first time working with restic. I am looking back at it and sadly its still not hard plastic.

 carlos13th wrote:
This is my first time working with restic. I am looking back at it and sadly its still not hard plastic.

If you want productive advice on how to work with restic, you should be able to find it in the modeling and painting areas of the forum. Not the news and rumors section of the forum.

I wasn't asking for advice. I have searched elsewhere for that. I was stating my opinion and experence on a product I have received.

Nkelsch,I also felt burned by mantic and hate restic. That's why I only pledged $11. $1 which I bumped up 1,000% to show how strongly I support their late announcement for plastic enforcers.

I'm honestly baffled why a head cast as a separate piece would have the mold line through the face.
Can't imagine when the mold was created someone asked where should the two halves meet and someone replied "through its face!".

You might be surprised how that works, other alternatives might make the mold line even worse.

I finally got my little Rebs starter and booster (was part of another guy's kickstarter order).

The weird thing I found was... I got some of this before xmas with the 2013 mystery box, which contained a couple of rebs. They were great, with very little cleanup or mould lines to remove. The ones in my starter/booster had massive mould lines that projected from the model almost 4mm. Same models, way different 'quality'

I guess the mould was getting tired by that point.

 Micky wrote:
I finally got my little Rebs starter and booster (was part of another guy's kickstarter order).

The weird thing I found was... I got some of this before xmas with the 2013 mystery box, which contained a couple of rebs. They were great, with very little cleanup or mould lines to remove. The ones in my starter/booster had massive mould lines that projected from the model almost 4mm. Same models, way different 'quality'

I guess the mould was getting tired by that point.

Or the guy running the machine was being rushed.

Triple9 wrote:
I just finished assembling my Plague and my impressions are quite high. I have not opened up any other faction bags yet, so I can't say yet how I feel about those from a quality perspective.

The Restic is much easier to work with than the earlier DB restic. takes a light scraping without feathering like the old blend. Still requires a very sharp knife, but I'm fine with that. Plague had some mold lines, but that's to be expected and nothing that couldn't be cleaned up fairly easily. No hot water treatment needed for any of the models. Had to trim a couple pegs on the 3A's to get a good fit, but much less than Dreadball.

That Stage 1A is a big hunk-o-plastic. I received 3 bags of the Plague Extra 1 (the one with the heavy machine gun) and I will say that all 3 HMG and all 3 of the trooper with the carbine held in both hands fit perfectly.

I see a lot of growth from Mantic on both the quality of sculpts and final product...at least in regards to the plague. Fulfillment issues aside.

Agree totally. Started putting together my Plague last night and found everything fitted really well. The restic was much harder than I'm used to but a switch out to a newer blade on my xacto and it was a bit better. Got a lot of scratches but once I airbrushed some primer on it looked fantastic!

I've lopped of all of the stands on the 3A's as I'm using SWM resin bases.

I've built a few figures from each faction so far. I haven't had a single figure with a mold line running down the face yet. I think the worst I've dealt with were the mercs, and they were still passable. Only my Dreadball MVP was truly bad and I really hope they replace it.

The biggest problem is just the variability. One model might need almost no cleaning, another might need to be boiled and required 20 mins of cutting/scraping.

And it's never consistent within a single model either - I actually have 2 Strike Teams ("when you consider the extra free faction, hardback book, scenery and mat, I'd be crazy NOT to...") and there can be a huge variation. The Enforcer Captain's cloak is flawless in one bag, while it had a huge raised ridge on another.

This creates the unfortunate problem of being 'lucky' or 'unlucky' with your castings, which really isn't acceptable with a premium modelling product. Neither is having to boil everything - not a single one of my large models has stood straight without being heated, and not a single sniper has had a straight gun barrel.

It has taken a truly titanic amount of time simply to assemble one each of the Faction starters + boosters: the number of pieces, the number of really tiny pieces, the amount of cleaning required, the boiling and repositioning. I'm actually quite happy with all of the models, but this is bonkers for a small-level skirmish/boardgame.

^ Yeah, getting it all together has taken a hellishly long amount of time.

Often a mini is a case of:

- File mould lines off of 4 seperate parts, which may or may not be large or small, may or may not be running over details making it take much more time.

- Test fit pieces, hot water bend as appropriate.

- Superglue, fill gaps with liquid green stuff.

As far as cleanup and assembly time goes, I'm averaging 20 minutes per mini, sometimes 30-45 minutes on the larger or more difficult ones.

I like painting but dislike assembly and hate mould line removal with a passion.

I think after I (finally) put my Basilean army together, and Deadzone, I'm pretty much done with mass amounts of restic from Mantic.

I know people have a mixed opinion of Mantic's earliest hard plastics, but on the other hand I could clean and assemble a whole unit of 20 dwarfs in a few hours, easy.

I'm starting to become acutely aware of the "time cost" of certain miniatures, which in many ways is just as important as the price cost.

I found myself halfway through cleaning up my restic stop-gap Enforcers and stopped after thinking "screw it, why not just wait for the hard plastics?".

Yeah, I'm okay with restic in general, but I'm not keen on having loads of models in it at once due to all the prep work. I was never going to use my Marauders, but I was 50/50 on Plague until I decided I didn't want to have to build another starter.

I think there's something in the 'rushed production' theory, as all my older KoW restic is perfect, and it's only been KS models that are prone to hugely variable quality.

Anyway, I'm just glad that the Enforcers and Asterians will be on sprues, as these are the two I'm planning to have 'armies' of.

A good point - those Orc boar riders I got from the first wave of the KoW Kickstarter were near-perfect!

I suppose the other aspect of this is that Kickstarter is completely contrary to how people normally buy these things. If you picked up a faction starter to give the game a go, you're looking at 11-13 models before you're ready to go. If you want to later on give yourself a few more options, then you get a booster - another 5-6 models. And that's it. My Necromunda gang never had more than 11 models, even.

That being said, Kickstarter is rapidly becoming the way things are done, and I think SS is definitely right in the 'time cost' aspect becoming increasingly apparent. I'm almost, almost dreading the arrival of some packages because of the time investment they represent! And it means that miniatures that don't require assembly (e.g. Shadows of Brimstone, Mars Attacks) do become increasingly more attractive.

 GrimDork wrote:
Skaven live in tunnels, Veer-myn are giant mutated rat monsters, seems fair enough that they're bigger. But what ever will you do with a distinct lack of scifi goggles and whatever else those things have... gas masks?

Enjoy the non-awful heads on my Space Skaven.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:



hm, well, anything's got to be better than the stock heads, right? Oddly, Vermyn seem to be bigger than humans in Mantic's scale, while Skaven are generally smaller than humans in GW's - so hopefully it can work...

How many spare beakie marine heads do you have?

uh..... dunno. Not many since I plan to make a RT-inspired Crimson Fist force at some stage, and also a small detachment of Raven Guard for my SM Crusade Army. I'd rather use Skaven heads on the Veermyn anyway rather than modified beakie helmets. I'll probably Hoard O bits a set of the Stormvermin and Plague Monk heads, then see how they look when I get around to the Veermies.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Bolognesus wrote:

That second survey will be with us in two weeks or so, though - I don't really expect them to have hard plastic in hand by then given how little updates we've had on the process so far.

Hm, so will there be a third survey as with KoW when everything is actually ready, or is the second going to be the final one and another care of "Buy blind! It'll be great! We promise! You can trust us!* Disclaimer: Product may not actually be great. Promise not valid for product purchased. You may not actually be able to trust us."?

 Azazelx wrote:

 GrimDork wrote:
Skaven live in tunnels, Veer-myn are giant mutated rat monsters, seems fair enough that they're bigger. But what ever will you do with a distinct lack of scifi goggles and whatever else those things have... gas masks?

Enjoy the non-awful heads on my Space Skaven.

Off topic slightly - I love the Veer-Myn models (just bought a hundred of them actually) but I would like some variety - what specific GW heads are you using?

Round two of assembly. Put together the Enforcers and Rebel Faction.

Still very impressed with the new restic blend. It's very hard, but cleans up much easier than the softer blend. It doesn't remold as well with hot water, but I haven't had to heat very much yet.

Enforcers new sculpts all assembled well. I surprised myself by assembling the Captain with open helmet. No hot water and only one weird mold line (horizontal line across the captains cape). The Warpath Enforcers were a real pain. I can say without a doubt that if I had started with the Enforcers instead of the Plague, I would have a different perception of the assembly overall. Assembling the 5 Warpath Enforcers left me in a very foul mood, but afterwards also made me realize how far Mantic has come with assembly. They do look good, I'll give them that, but I never want to assemble one again. Restic is just not a good material for unkeyed assembly.

The Rebels had a couple issues. One of the Teratons wrist blades(?) was snapped off, but glued back cleanly. Otherwise it went together very well and like the Plague 1A, it's a big hunk o' plastic. The Grogan Desolator gun was bent...badly. The one piece I've worked on through the 3 starters so far where I had a WTF moment wondering how it passed QC. This is where I discovered the new restic doesn't heat bend as well. I managed to get the piece assembled in a "good enough", but it's still going to bother me. Also, was missing the second Reb Extra 1 bag.

Still happy, only one miscast across 3 factions so far. Will add all the faction boosters and vehicles when they re-open the pledge manager.

On the topic of survey, the 6 Booster Bundles for the price of 3 is just too tempting to pass up.

I'm still torn on the vehicles though. Waiting for pics before I decide.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, moving this from the Gameplay thread:


Re: Hardback Compendium.
Is it 300 during the initial KS or 300 during both surveys combined?

Here's what I found which doesn't clear it up entirely:

If you have made a total pledge of $300 or more, including any add-ons and shipping, you'll become a Deadzone Veteran and will get a FREE printed copy of the Ultimate Gamer’s Guide included with your package. This will be a limited edition Veteran Edition of the book, signed with a personal message of thanks from Ronnie. It will also have an exclusive cover with alternate art, available only to Veteran backers.

So if I bump up over 300 total between initial and second survey, do I become a Deadzone Veteran?

 judgedoug wrote:


Off topic slightly - I love the Veer-Myn models (just bought a hundred of them actually) but I would like some variety - what specific GW heads are you using?

Due to the single-part skaven, your options are:

Stormvermin:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/WARHAMMER-BIN-BITS-SKAVEN-STORMVERMIN-24x-HEADS-/330914277826?pt=Games_US&hash=item4d0c0729c2

Nightrunners: (probably best)
http://www.ebay.com/itm/WARHAMMER-BIN-BITS-SKAVEN-NIGHT-RUNNERS-28x-HEADS-/350780587230?pt=Games_US&hash=item51ac26fcde

expensive gas mask heads:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/WARHAMMER-BIN-BITS-SKAVEN-WARP-LIGHTNING-CANNON-3x-GAS-MASK-HEAD-/360836494993?pt=Games_US&hash=item540387f691

If I allow myself to spend anything (gotta see this stuff in person first), I'll be looking at the hard plastic element mostly. If it's ready. I'll also kind of want the stuntbot, iron ancestor (just because I have an accidentally growing FF army) and *possibly* the striders. I have two DB big mechs from crazy boxes, so it'll be down to how much cooler the striders come out.

I wonder if I shouldn't just convert my skaven into veer-myn directly. Might need a second fantasy games army sometime though...

 scarletsquig wrote:
^ Yeah, getting it all together has taken a hellishly long amount of time.

Often a mini is a case of:

- File mould lines off of 4 seperate parts, which may or may not be large or small, may or may not be running over details making it take much more time.

- Test fit pieces, hot water bend as appropriate.

- Superglue, fill gaps with liquid green stuff.

As far as cleanup and assembly time goes, I'm averaging 20 minutes per mini, sometimes 30-45 minutes on the larger or more difficult ones.

I like painting but dislike assembly and hate mould line removal with a passion.

I think after I (finally) put my Basilean army together, and Deadzone, I'm pretty much done with mass amounts of restic from Mantic.

I know people have a mixed opinion of Mantic's earliest hard plastics, but on the other hand I could clean and assemble a whole unit of 20 dwarfs in a few hours, easy.

I'm starting to become acutely aware of the "time cost" of certain miniatures, which in many ways is just as important as the price cost.

I found myself halfway through cleaning up my restic stop-gap Enforcers and stopped after thinking "screw it, why not just wait for the hard plastics?".

I feel much the same about mantics restic. Will finish off what I have in the box. Buy the Asterians which I have already pledged for (And are apparently mostly hard plastic) but probably only put more money into mantic in the future for hard plastic.

TBH I think considering all the models only go together one way it would have been better to make the one piece models.

I'd rather have the multi-piece. Even though they 'only go together one way', they are still much easier to convert and kitbash this way (I've done that quite a bit with my plague for instance).

And I just made a mortar team from two 3As and some leftover IG bits.

I've kit bashed a couple enforcers already. I'm glad they're separate pieces.

Mind sharing the kitbashing?

 pretre wrote:
On the topic of survey, the 6 Booster Bundles for the price of 3 is just too tempting to pass up.

Yes it is. I applaud Mantic for making us think that buying 3x as much as you need for a strike team is a good idea.

If anyone gets confirmation on the spending 300 for the veteran status, please post it here!

Depending on what we see with those hard plastic sprues it very well could push me up into that realm.

 carlos13th wrote:
Mind sharing the kitbashing?

Which one? I can probably get a pic of my plagues, if you want.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

lord_blackfang wrote:

 pretre wrote:
On the topic of survey, the 6 Booster Bundles for the price of 3 is just too tempting to pass up.

Yes it is. I applaud Mantic for making us think that buying 3x as much as you need for a strike team is a good idea.

It's a gaming group thing. I am now buying for 3-4 guys. Booster bundle gives you the ability to have really diverse strike teams (70) and actually have all the models for a whole strike force (140) on the shelf. AND it allows two players to play the same faction.

highlord tamburlaine wrote:If anyone gets confirmation on the spending 300 for the veteran status, please post it here!

Depending on what we see with those hard plastic sprues it very well could push me up into that realm.

I messaged them on KS. I'll let people know.

 carlos13th wrote:
Mind sharing the kitbashing?

They're in the "show off your Deadzone" thread. Small kit ashes for two of them, but the engineer at Taarnak's suggestion hasn't hit yet. I have sergeants with action poses instead of just standing there though.

Stuff I've not seen before (posted by TheImp on Frothers)

pretre wrote:

 carlos13th wrote:
Mind sharing the kitbashing?

Which one? I can probably get a pic of my plagues, if you want.

Any is fine. Just intrested how people have changed the models.

timetowaste85 wrote:

 carlos13th wrote:
Mind sharing the kitbashing?

They're in the "show off your Deadzone" thread. Small kit ashes for two of them, but the engineer at Taarnak's suggestion hasn't hit yet. I have sergeants with action poses instead of just standing there though.

Thanks will check it out.

With so many spare models, I've got intentions of modeling at least the most commonly place mutations for the plague. At least those you start with, swapping models in mid game due to the card is too improper given how important model dimensions are to LoS. This shouldn't be hard though, a lot of the mutations only have one or maybe two good targets.

I think my rebs will get some corporation tech too, I have a decent supply of extra marine arms and guns.

Some of the buying too many models 'cause it's a good deal' thing is mitigated if one is getting them for warpath. But yeah, lot of models, hopefully the multi-mat gameplay will be awesome and justify the otherwise ridiculous volume I have coming.

Thanks for posting those Orlando - at the risk of sounding like a spoilt kid, does anyone have any more close-ups of them though?

Particularly interested in those demon-looking dudes in the back, and hoping desperately that the Brokkr are more like mining-style Forge Fathers, and not angry screaming dwarves in very small shorts!

I think that's one of the better pictures of the Brokkrs I've seen, it's clearer at least, not as sure about the demon thingies.

There's another closer shot of the Molochs but I put that in the KOW news thread as I think they're for that?

I've seen the Brokkrs in the flesh. Burly, muscular, trousers and belts. Think less Hulk more Mad Max. There are two un-bearded models, and lots of shoutyness. Valkyrs are much the same.

There's a joke going around that the Brokkrs will take everything that isn't nailed down, everything that is nailed down, and the nails, too!

I like that approach for the forge fathers. And how they seem to do elves/asterians, if humanity is going to be blatantly evil for the most part, its fitting (and more fun) if the space dwarfs and elves are that way too.

 judgedoug wrote:

Off topic slightly - I love the Veer-Myn models (just bought a hundred of them actually) but I would like some variety - what specific GW heads are you using?

At this point, none, yet. I'll be buying some of the Plague Monk and Stormvermin heads and I'll see how they look/scale up.


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nkelsch wrote:

Nightrunners: (probably best)
http://www.ebay.com/itm/WARHAMMER-BIN-BITS-SKAVEN-NIGHT-RUNNERS-28x-HEADS-/350780587230?pt=Games_US&hash=item51ac26fcde

expensive gas mask heads:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/WARHAMMER-BIN-BITS-SKAVEN-WARP-LIGHTNING-CANNON-3x-GAS-MASK-HEAD-/360836494993?pt=Games_US&hash=item540387f691

Thanks! I hadn't seen the latter two. The gas mask heads are more than I'd be willing to pay to un-crap some mantic restic, but the Nightrunners could work...

 GrimDork wrote:
I like that approach for the forge fathers. And how they seem to do elves/asterians, if humanity is going to be blatantly evil for the most part, its fitting (and more fun) if the space dwarfs and elves are that way too.

The main FF are all about honour and commerce (profitable) but for those on the bottom, the mining class, life is a bit tougher. Forget those concepts. They can put 'nids to shame in terms of planet stripping, though.

Sounds pretty standardly dwarfish, not badguys, but also not much kindness/softness/understanding. And then the even less nice downtrodden class, cool beans.

Even they sound like the dwarfs in the Dragon Age series.

Not that I'm complaining.

And I've finished putting all the factions together.

No bones about it. The Marauders sucked. Big Time. Pyro and Commandos both required multiple hot water treatments to get things lined up. One of the ripper suits' legs were pratically together and the captain needed some love as well. Some pretty bad mold lines along faces on some of these as well. Definitely wouldn't have been happy with this faction if it was the only one I got.

Mercenaries were very good. Minimal mold lines, everything went together pretty well. No hot water needed. Recons knife was broken at the hilt, but managed to find the blade and it glued up just fine. Wraith was a little fiddly at first, but went together surprisingly well in the end.

Overall impression is quite favorable. Plague, Rebs and Mercenaries all were top drawer; Enforcers were a mixed bag due to the Warpath sculpts and Marauders ended up looking good, but really tested my patience. What I particularly like is seeing the improvement from each season of Dreadball carry over to Deadzone. Can't wait for Wave 2.

Does anyone know if you can add whole pledges to the second survey? Like could you add another Strike Team or Recon?

You could on the first survey, and what was on the 1st survey is supposed to be on the second. But that doesn't really guarantee anything.

Thanks. I have someone who is trying to hop on my pledge.

The mold line thing is a bit odd, because some of the figures illustrate that Mantic can be very smart in how they place them.

I haven't assembled as many figures as tiles, but I did get the nine piece Rebs Teraton done. The mold lines came off very well with a blade, but what I appreciated most was how intelligently they were positioned. All of them ran along ridges that circumvented delicate features. I had a very different experience cleaning up my Warpath Veer-myn, so I was very impressed.

We always knew the Rebs Teraton was going to be one of the stand-out models of the game, but it's nice to see that confirmed when you hold it in your hand. It's truly sculpted "in the round", with interesting detail and motion from every angle you look at it, an expressive face full of character, a dynamic pose that actually makes sense . . . it's just brilliant.

Everything the Marauders get wrong, the Rebs Teraton gets right. I hope Mantic give this sculptor a lot more work in the future, and that their other sculptors take notice and learn from his work.

The Rebs Teraton was easily the model I was most looking forward to getting my hands on.

In saying that, I'm pretty sure buying 4 wasn't my best plan...

Plus the 2 Dozers I ended up with for Dreadball / crazy box.

If you want to get rid of one or two I could trade you something from my trade thread for one. Especially dozer.

 Vermonter wrote:
Everything the Marauders get wrong, the Rebs Teraton gets right. I hope Mantic give this sculptor a lot more work in the future, and that their other sculptors take notice and learn from his work.

Fairly sure it was Steve Saunders who sculpted the Rebs at this point. He's a Ral Partha veteran and his work for Mantic tends to be extremely good.

Edit: Confirmed by Jake here: http://quirkworthy.com/2013/06/15/deadzone-sorak-close-ups/

Interestingly he didn't sculpt the Teraton or Survey drone. Every other Rebs mini is is his work though.

He's doing all the restic forgefathers too (well, anything that isn't a 3d sculpt, anyway) so I think we'll be quite happy with that faction.

 scarletsquig wrote:


He's doing all the restic forgefathers too (well, anything that isn't a 3d sculpt, anyway) so I think we'll be quite happy with that faction.

Happy with the poses and sculpting probably, happy with the production and QC of the figures? We'll see.

Jake (who is currently scraping mold lines from the faces of Marauders and HATES it.)

nkelsch wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:


Off topic slightly - I love the Veer-Myn models (just bought a hundred of them actually) but I would like some variety - what specific GW heads are you using?

Due to the single-part skaven, your options are:

Stormvermin:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/WARHAMMER-BIN-BITS-SKAVEN-STORMVERMIN-24x-HEADS-/330914277826?pt=Games_US&hash=item4d0c0729c2

Nightrunners: (probably best)
http://www.ebay.com/itm/WARHAMMER-BIN-BITS-SKAVEN-NIGHT-RUNNERS-28x-HEADS-/350780587230?pt=Games_US&hash=item51ac26fcde

expensive gas mask heads:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/WARHAMMER-BIN-BITS-SKAVEN-WARP-LIGHTNING-CANNON-3x-GAS-MASK-HEAD-/360836494993?pt=Games_US&hash=item540387f691

What do you think of:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/WARHAMMER-BIN-BITS-SKAVEN-PLAGUE-MONKS-40x-HEADS-/360645203828?pt=Games_US&hash=item53f8211774

Regarding head-bitz for Veermyn, Microart studios have some relevant bits. Although for some reason they aren't on their webstore so I had to use Cmon instead.

Gasmasks - https://www.coolminiornot.com/shop/nezumi-heads-chem-set-1.html

Bare - https://www.coolminiornot.com/shop/conversion-lab-1-1/conversion-lab-nezumi-heads-set-1-5.html

Ashigaru - https://www.coolminiornot.com/shop/conversion-lab-1-1/nezumi-ashigaru-heads-set-1.html

Samurai - https://www.coolminiornot.com/shop/conversion-lab-1-1/nezumi-samurai-heads.html

Ah because when Microart split apart, Basicks took the heads. Thanks for the, err, "heads-up"! Those chem heads look perfect.

http://basicks.eu/shop/index.php?id_product=211&controller=product&id_lang=1

 scarletsquig wrote:

 Vermonter wrote:
Everything the Marauders get wrong, the Rebs Teraton gets right. I hope Mantic give this sculptor a lot more work in the future, and that their other sculptors take notice and learn from his work.

Fairly sure it was Steve Saunders who sculpted the Rebs at this point. He's a Ral Partha veteran and his work for Mantic tends to be extremely good.

Edit: Confirmed by Jake here: http://quirkworthy.com/2013/06/15/deadzone-sorak-close-ups/

Interestingly he didn't sculpt the Teraton or Survey drone. Every other Rebs mini is is his work though.

He's doing all the restic forgefathers too (well, anything that isn't a 3d sculpt, anyway) so I think we'll be quite happy with that faction.

Thanks for that info Squig, it's very interesting. Unfortunately it makes it more likely that I'll want to buy an FF starter now, which doesn't exactly fit my budget plan.

http://quirkworthy.com/2014/01/16/some-new-deadzone-mercs/

3 of the named special characters from late in the kickstarter just got stats. Radgrad is brutal, catbacca seems interesting, and the dwarf is very interesting. The flight suit is a jump pack plus glide and also allows him to stop in mid air... crazy

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DreadBall is going digital!

On the 27 January, five new DreadBall e-books are being launched, alongside a companion app for your IOS or Android device of choice, and web browser.

"Mantic Digital is all about buying once and reading anywhere. That means every book and companion app will work as well on the web as on your tablet [and] smartphone."



Sounds cool huh? Read the whole story on the blog, and watch out for more coming in the month!

blog link
http://manticblog.com/2014/01/17/welcome-to-the-future-of-dreadball/?utm_source=Mantic+Games+Newsletter&utm_campaign=e36b0d8254-Mantic_Games_Newsletter_238&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_20fe4cf5a8-e36b0d8254-201384889

Looks like you buy it once it automactically updates and you can use it on any platform once you own it. Now for the price?

Better solution than GW currently has for their digital stuff.

Buy once, use everywhere is the way things should be done.

Assuming it works it sounds good

I saw it pre-demo-ed at the open day. It seems pretty neat. The possibility to manage your, for example, rulebook, rosters/armylists and your entire campaign forces, even going as far to rolling for what skills you get on the tablet seems great.

However, I'm less enthused about Dreadball Season 1, 2 and 3 being different products. I'd be more interested if they were all in 1 fully integrated digital thing, even if it cost more.