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Yeah, I have 2 of those stupid bases. Not gonna use them.

They are hard plastic, and have been sent with all newer large-size Deadzone stuff! Like Peacekeepers ordered in the 3rd wave, for example. Like them or lump them! I think they fit in better with the solid standard-type bases at least.

My missing stuff from Deadzone wave 3 arrived today, so that's KS complete for me

What were you waiting for? Just out of interest.

I was missing 1 sprue each of Forge Guard and Enforcers from my wave 3 box

I got my forge guard, too. And a Mars Attacks hardback, which looks great.

I really like the hardback. I kind of wish for a reformat to make it actually feel like a compendium and not just 4 books mashed together... even a single added page to tell you what order the books were in and how many pages they were maybe.... But other than that... pretty sweet. Just the right size too, the 40k 6th edition book was too big, so heavy and chunky, I like the smaller 'comic book sized' MA rulebooks and compendium.

Mars Attacks preorders for April are up, the giant stompy robot will be $40:

http://www.e-figures.com/store/manticmarsattacksgallery.php

I think we got a good price in the KS then? I only got the pair as part of the large pledge level, but they were 3 for $75 as an add on iirc

Also I got my hardback the other day as well, corners a little dinged thanks to either transit or the postie jamming it into my letterbox, but otherwise nice.

We always tend to get a good price on Mantic stuff during Kickstarters - not least because they're selling the stuff direct and without any packaging, so they must have greatly improved margins!

That $18 Martian Dredd price is funny though - at least in the UK, it's "only" the equivalent of $15.50 and comes with 3 extra dead models.

Also nice to know that there's going to be an easy way to get Supreme Regents, Standard Bearer & Beloss Bel.

$40 seems kind of high for the BSR, but he's pretty awesome. Would probably be worth it once, especially at third party discount retailers.

Those prices for boardgame style pieces.. BSR gets a pass because it looks to be higher detail but the rest.. haha.. wow.. I actually thought the MA KS prices on the boardgame pieces (I refuse to call them miniatures) and expansions and stuff were bordering on absurd.

I would have paid those prices for actual miniatures. All day and twice on Sunday. Just not what they ended up producing.

The prices do seem high to me, too. 20 bucks per mutant bug is unfeasible in a post-Bones miniature market. At 15 before discount, they would be more attractive. However, it seems like the Tiger Corps are the same price they were in the pledge manager, which means I paid more than I should have. Oh well, I'll just sedition wars a few boxes via Miniature Market's clearance sale.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It occurs to me that Mantic is pricing their minis with an eye towards massive sales, artificially inflating the MSRP so that the miniatures will look far more attractive when reduced to a more realistic price.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The prices do seem high to me, too. 20 bucks per mutant bug is unfeasible in a post-Bones miniature market. At 15 before discount, they would be more attractive. However, it seems like the Tiger Corps are the same price they were in the pledge manager, which means I paid more than I should have. Oh well, I'll just sedition wars a few boxes via Miniature Market's clearance sale.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It occurs to me that Mantic is pricing their minis with an eye towards massive sales, artificially inflating the MSRP so that the miniatures will look far more attractive when reduced to a more realistic price.

I agree with this.. and the bit about catching it on clearance. A lot of their stuff ends up there.. especially on Miniature Market.
They have a lot of good things going as a company but I really don't understand their current version of a business strategy. If you just look at it from face value.. it seems they've shifted their business model to reliance on Kickstarters with post-sales being a secondary thought.

At the flgs, it seems like Mantic products just don't move at MSRP. So they get clearanced, which trains us customers to just wait for the clearance sales.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The prices do seem high to me, too. 20 bucks per mutant bug is unfeasible in a post-Bones miniature market. At 15 before discount, they would be more attractive. However, it seems like the Tiger Corps are the same price they were in the pledge manager, which means I paid more than I should have. Oh well, I'll just sedition wars a few boxes via Miniature Market's clearance sale.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It occurs to me that Mantic is pricing their minis with an eye towards massive sales, artificially inflating the MSRP so that the miniatures will look far more attractive when reduced to a more realistic price.

Bones should not be a comparison to anything. For me it was a throwaway material similar to pencil erasers. It bends, it's squishy, doesn't bond well, and once misshapen I can never get it to repose no matter how much hot water I use.

To me it's right up there with Finecast and Restic, except Reaper actually priced it correctly. Cheap materials should be cheap products.

Mr.Church13 wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The prices do seem high to me, too. 20 bucks per mutant bug is unfeasible in a post-Bones miniature market. At 15 before discount, they would be more attractive. However, it seems like the Tiger Corps are the same price they were in the pledge manager, which means I paid more than I should have. Oh well, I'll just sedition wars a few boxes via Miniature Market's clearance sale.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It occurs to me that Mantic is pricing their minis with an eye towards massive sales, artificially inflating the MSRP so that the miniatures will look far more attractive when reduced to a more realistic price.

Bones should not be a comparison to anything. For me it was a throwaway material similar to pencil erasers. It bends, it's squishy, doesn't bond well, and once misshapen I can never get it to repose no matter how much hot water I use.

To me it's right up there with Finecast and Restic, except Reaper actually priced it correctly. Cheap materials should be cheap products.

You've had a bad experience. My Bones minis were mostly great, and I had the bad ones replaced. If you are throwing Bones away, I will pay postage for you to send them to me. After HIPS, Bones is my favorite medium, possibly tied with Mantic's board game plastic. In fact, the two materials seem very similar to me, which might be why I think they should be priced similarly. If Bones is garbage to you, I am honestly surprised you think Mars Attacks minis should be so pricey as they are. That's just mind-blowing.

Huh. I like the bones material. Bendy means almost zero chance of drop breaks, except on the biggest multipart models like cthulu and what not. I'm having no trouble getting paint to stick to it either. And I've had pretty good look straightening stuff out with near-boiling water.

The mars attacks stuff seems to be a slightly stiffer (or much stiffer, depends on the color of mars attacks plastic it seems) variant of the bones material. The details aren't as crisp as infinity, malifaux, gw, or some other companies, but they aren't god-awful bad either. I really like painting my MA stuff.

Cleaning it is a pain though, same with bones. Basically the same technique as restic but with less cursing... not nearly as fun as hard plastic though.

I agree that the MA retail prices are a bit high. Kind of depends on what you're buying them for, but even in a vacuum a box of 10 monopose minis of the softer plastic persuasion is a bit bitter of a pill at $25. Maybe a bit better than buying a lower end sculpting metal squad box, but it could be better too.

Mantic has always seemed to be best when got in bundles or sales/clearance though.

Also that cheap materials should be cheap products... isn't hard plastic one of the cheapest materials? I guess I'm twisting words and you maybe meant cheap production costs... or something.

I just got my Bones II stuff in last week and the dragon from Dragons Don't Share is gorgeous. This batch from the latest Kickstarter underwent a lot more rigorous QA. They also made the mix slightly more rigid.. which I didn't think they were actually going to do.. but it seems to have helped with detail retention on a lot of the pieces.

However, a lot of Bones stuff is a righteous pain right out of the box and a huge percentage of them end up with really soft details.

As far as Mantic.. yeah.. I've learned that there are two major things you need to know about dealing with them.
1) If it's a kickstarter throw in a dollar, wait for pictures of production models, then make your decisions during surveys.
2) Clearance.

I would also throw in never buy their restic but that would rule out Striders and a couple of other things that I really like the designs on.. and are unfortunately only available in that wretched material.

In my mind, Mantic is leveraging a couple of things they have going for them.

First, the KickStarters I'm sure mostly pay for the tooling/sculpting of the models themselves. Maybe not the HIPS stuff fully, but the restic/board-game plastic stuff almost assuredly. This does make it were the secondary sales are somewhat just gravy versus a traditional model where there's an investment that must be recovered with each release. The on-going production costs are comparatively low, and they side-stepped interest and other issues of traditional financing quite neatly. On the flip-side, consumers get to purchase at wholesale prices which works a mild bit in their favor. A decent enough exchange, and it frees Mantic up a bit from the feast-and-famine cycle that plagues smaller companies who can't afford to take a chance on something that may/may not sell.

Second, some of the market leaders (e.g. - GW for miniatures and FFG for boardgames-with-minis) have what some would call absurdly high prices which leaves plenty of space for them to inflate the MSRP a bit with an eye towards Internet discounters. For comparison, the upcoming Rebel Troopers pack for Imperial Assault carries an MSRP of $15 (or $50 for a squad of 10 for even model count comparisons). Board game plastic, monopose, and while they come with lots of bibs and bobs beyond just the figures, how many of those are useful in duplicate is certainly questionable. I don't think I even need to mention GW's prices as being rather high. So for Mantic it's not about "price what they cost", it's about "price where we're not the most expensive" and then they have tons of room to do crazy discounts and the like without having a disastrous effect on their bottom line. Sure, people are conditioned to expect sales and reserve buying outside of them, but if the "crazy insane sale" price point is still turning a profit.........

Where this plan runs awry is in dealing with FLGS, who typically don't like dealing with margins like that, nor with a product where the supplier will undercut you frequently (and at times where you'd normally be doing really good sales such as Christmas). I don't think it's entirely coincidental that Mantic is trying really hard to get FLGSes on board with their referral program, because that's a segment that the above two overall advantages they have become a problem.

However, that's an issue for expanding reach. So long as the bills are getting paid and the work improves, it's hard to say they have a flawed model. There may come a point where KS doesn't bring in the cash they need though, and at that point not having a fallback of a more traditional model could be problematic. Not sure we're at that stage yet, though past performance is not a guarantee of future results, etc. etc.

I think a lot of FLGS have strong resentment towards Kickstarter and companies that continually send product there. I"ve heard both Mantic and Reaper mentioned specifcially. New release sales are usually huge for these types of stores along with pre-orders. A lot of time this pushes retailers away.. or.. forces them to buy in at kickstarter prices just like the rest of us.. just so they can have the merchandise when it hits the streets.

Which leads me to another thing..
When Mantic's practices have set in, it drives up secondary retailers like e-bay stores and whatnot.. who buy into the kickstarter and then undercut Mantic. There's a tiny profit margin for these guys unless they're breaking kits down into bits but I'm seeing a lot of this type of thing. Plastic Enforcers from Deadzone being an example. Those are going for about $15 a sprue on ebay. IIRC in KS they were $5 a sprue. In Mantic's Webstore, they're $20 a sprue.

I can only guess as to the long term effect of this but at first glance, it would seem like they're creating an artificial gap in their sales. Miniature Market, as an actual retailer does appear to be in on this type of sales strategy as well. They have 2 remaining sprues of plastic enforcers at $16ea. I am unsure as to whether or not their pricing will have to go back up when their KS stock runs out but I think it's worth studying, just to see what kind of patterns emerge.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

Mr.Church13 wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The prices do seem high to me, too. 20 bucks per mutant bug is unfeasible in a post-Bones miniature market. At 15 before discount, they would be more attractive. However, it seems like the Tiger Corps are the same price they were in the pledge manager, which means I paid more than I should have. Oh well, I'll just sedition wars a few boxes via Miniature Market's clearance sale.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It occurs to me that Mantic is pricing their minis with an eye towards massive sales, artificially inflating the MSRP so that the miniatures will look far more attractive when reduced to a more realistic price.

Bones should not be a comparison to anything. For me it was a throwaway material similar to pencil erasers. It bends, it's squishy, doesn't bond well, and once misshapen I can never get it to repose no matter how much hot water I use.

To me it's right up there with Finecast and Restic, except Reaper actually priced it correctly. Cheap materials should be cheap products.

You've had a bad experience. My Bones minis were mostly great, and I had the bad ones replaced. If you are throwing Bones away, I will pay postage for you to send them to me. After HIPS, Bones is my favorite medium, possibly tied with Mantic's board game plastic. In fact, the two materials seem very similar to me, which might be why I think they should be priced similarly. If Bones is garbage to you, I am honestly surprised you think Mars Attacks minis should be so pricey as they are. That's just mind-blowing.

While Mantic's pricing structure isn't ideal (I'll admit that) they're constantly improving their sculpts and plastic quality from what Dreadball (Almost all freaking restic *Shudder*) started with and they do offer deals, bundles, sales, and whatnot from time to time. Even still I don't find the price all that bad compared to industry standards.

Mostly I'm just tired of hearing that Bones is the new saving grace of the industry and is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I've worked with it tried to love it and failed miserably. What i will give it is the price is bang on for what it is, it's a great material for testing and beginning painters, and it strips wonderfully well due to all you have to do is bend it around like Gumby till all the paint falls off, also it's durable as heck.

Still, like I said, even with all my complaints it's still leagues better than Finecast or Restic. I'm just worried that Reaper is trying to start a race to the bottom pricing structure for minis. You know a sort of "Why buy from another company when you can buy bucket loads of subpar stuff from us?". That kind of stuff leads to great consumer prices but horrible times for the companies that produce stuff.

I would love a race to the bottom pricing structure. It would be a nice change of pace.

Some painted bones stuff..






Some of these are pretty good paintjobs but a lot of them are pretty standard tabletop quality.
While the details are not on par with industry leading miniatures, they are definitely above a LOT of the smaller guys out there (Centerstage, Black Cat, that type of company).
I own a lot of Bones now.. but only a few of them are from the first KS. The quality has gone up.. some of the ones I got in.. if I were to paint them up next to their pewter counterpart, you would be hard pressed to figure out which one was the original. I actually do have a few models of both the pewter and Bones.. and if I get time I will in fact do this exact thing. Like I said above.. there are major consistency issues.. but the models that really work well in Bonesium turn out very usable.

The Bonesium (it's PVC right?) material is not superior to metal, quality styrene, or well done resin.. but it IS capable of producing very usable miniatures and not just boardgame wannabe pieces.

This is pretty off topic for a Mantic thread though. .. that said.. if Mantic did go the route of Bones for single piece static pose Mars Attacks and similar.. and priced it like Bones.. I'd be all over it.

I didn't go very far into pledging on Dungeon Saga because of the material.. I do want to own resin copies of a few of the more individual pieces but I personally think their QA allows too much to slip through on the boardgame material they use and it's a major turnoff. If I see some photos from people once the main game ships and we can see actual production copies from actual retail packages.. not hand-picked best of the batch.. then I'll reconsider but after the bad reviews I saw of Mars Attacks boardgame pieces... it's hard to fall in love with.

That's another thing.. they can't make up their mind with Mars Attacks.. they label it as a tabletop/miniatures game but in the same breath refer to it as a boardgame. They get a pass on pricing it like a tabletop game because of this gray area and they get a pass on lax quality in the figures because "eh they're just boardgame pieces". Which is it? Deadzone is very similar in nature and there is no such distinction issue or write-off on quality.

Well since bones minis run 2-3 dollars for a single human sized model... technically the martian/human/tiger corps unit boxes *are* right in line with that.

Mantic does seem to be a little.... crazy?.... about pricing individual models though. Martian Dred for 18 dollars? I realize he comes with the dead figures but even $5 a piece for individual MA figures is a bit much.

Oh and the bug+handler is a bit nuts... would hope to see those at like 10 bucks maybe.. not what they are.

That's retail.
At Mini-Market the 3 packs of bones human infantry will set you back $4.87.
I'm not sure what to look for to compare that to the Mars Attacks packs. On this issue, I'm not trying to argue.. I actually would like to know what the price comparison adds up to.. but like I said I'm not really sure what to look at :/
I see a pre-order for the Tiger Corps Expansion and it's listed at $20 pre-order .. but I can't seem to find any info on what that includes so I can't do a breakdown for comparison.

EDIT: Also.. MSRP On Martian Dredd is $20, not $18.

Can you buy blisters of figures for the likes of Myth or SDE? That would seem to be a good starting point to look for comparisons

My mistake on dredd. I knew it was too high is all.

Tiger corps is 10 models, 5 named tiger corps heroes, corax, and 4 bounty hunters. Or something close. Some of the better detail retaining sculpts of the whole release.


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Best I can do on math between bones 3packs and MA is 10 3packs vs 3 Ma 10-man sets... ~49 at MM for the 30 bones minis you mention, 60 for 39 MA figures.

Bones is about 16-17% cheaper in that case.


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Its personal taste a bit I do feel that tiger corps poop all over something like IMEF, and they scale better with my other models.

I have some Myth stuff NTRabbit.. what were you trying to find out?

GrimDork - Yeah.. it really is.. and I'm not super keen on either.. but I am also not at a loss for sci-fi dudes..

Someone know what is the limit date for missing parts claim on deadzone 3rd wave stuff? I did not get any of my stuff yet, and im starting to get worried...