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If nothing else, they should fix the posture on those cyborgs. Elves should not slouch, and neither should their space elf robots.

 Azazelx wrote:

 agnosto wrote:

Still waiting on my free ogres or even for the shooters I paid for. They sent me the melee ogres I paid for but no extras and none of the shooters I paid for. Email back and forth, blah blah blah... nothing. .but that was, what? 3 Kickstarters ago? Who's to expect them to take care if that now? That's not even mentioning the missing freebies (riders with no horses ).

Bah. Sure give me "free" stuff instead of what I paid for.

Basically you need to ring them. That's the only way I managed to get the clusterfeth of messups in my KoW KS order fixed. And it took more than 1 phone call over more than 1 week, too. It sucks, but it's the way I got them to fix it after getting dicked around for weeks at a time via email. There's your solution. Don't expect them to fix it by themselves at this point.

Nah, that ship has sailed. I'm out $50, they'll be out thousands as I won't buy from them again. I like the Ogres well enough and will use them but not enough to go begging and the amount I'm out isn't enough to spend hours on the phone trying to get action from them. Mantic has proven that they are unwilling/incapable of performing like a real company so I'll vote with my wallet and let them continue to soak money from kick starter suckers (like I was).

If you give them another email via the contact form:

http://www.manticgames.com/contact.html

There shouldn't be anything stopping them from sorting it out right away.

 judgedoug wrote:
The Deadzone mechs are considerably larger than the Dreadball ones, right?

 GrimDork wrote:
I swear I read that but its too hard to find stuff like that on my phone for me to confirm..

They said that at one stage, but Mantic say a lot of things that get changed without announcement. Like Resin > Restic, or Restic > Metal. Or the Trolls. They have some good rulesets, but they're not exactly trustworthy to follow up on what they say they'll do.

 scarletsquig wrote:
If you give them another email via the contact form:

http://www.manticgames.com/contact.html

There shouldn't be anything stopping them from sorting it out right away.

Except they said they are addressing LOKA, then will address Dread Ball, and then address DeadZone. They are slow as gak responding via their contact form, seemingly ignore you if you attempt to get some response from them.

If he uses it will he eventually have his problems fixed? Maybe. But to think it will be sorted 'right away' is silly. They have not shown any indicator they address any issues 'right away'.

 scarletsquig wrote:
Thanks for that, Saxon, those look amazing. Really pleased with them.

I wonder what the deal will be with the bases on those. Integral bases? "Moon Boots"-style overhangs on the small integral round bases like on a bunch of the other figures? As for the renders, I like the not-Predator masks, but at this stage I'd feel safer using (and even paying for) Wraithguard and Dire Avengers.

I hope they just do away with the integrals on the hard plastics at least.. quite easy to do with the warpath bases, just flip them over since there's no bevel.

Those "Not-Eldar" look neat. I'm not sold on their games other than Kings of War at this point (Dreadball doesn't interest me at all and Warpath seems to be taking a backseat to "Not-Necromunda" aka Deadzone which does actually look good) but those guys look cool.

Also, someone on an earlier page asked about the KoW Book "Bloodstone of Cerillion". I am reading it now. It's not bad, not amazingly great but decent. I say get it since it's so cheap

WayneTheGame wrote:
Those "Not-Eldar" look neat. I'm not sold on their games other than Kings of War at this point (Dreadball doesn't interest me at all and Warpath seems to be taking a backseat to "Not-Necromunda" aka Deadzone which does actually look good) but those guys look cool.

They do look good. I hope the delivered product does as well.

 AegisGrimm wrote:


As for the mechs, I can't get behind it being a "bait and switch" just so Mantic can make money. I think it was more of a wording issue, because while "restic" or "resin plastic" is a commonly held unique medium, it's still a kind of resin- just not what we associate with the term. At least by using the Iron Ancestor as a gauge, the DZ one is no more expensive than the one for Warpath, if you go by true retail off Mantic's site rather than internet discount.

They are purely optional, and I would gladly pay $20 retail as opposed to a discounted $16.99 for an advance copy of a figure (because who knows when they will be released outside of the KS). It's three dollars, people. That's less than the shipping on an existing $16.99 Iron Ancestor from The Warstore, even with Neal's awesome shipping rates.

Whether it was intentional or not (and I guess I don't think it was), it is still pretty sad that even Mantic can't keep it straight.

"Sprueless Plastic", "restic" or whatever is nowhere close to what everyone thinks of when they see and read "RESIN".

 scarletsquig wrote:
I hope they just do away with the integrals on the hard plastics at least.. quite easy to do with the warpath bases, just flip them over since there's no bevel.

No way they keep those ridiculous integrated bases when they go to 'true' 'hard' 'plastic', right?

 Alpharius wrote:

 scarletsquig wrote:
I hope they just do away with the integrals on the hard plastics at least.. quite easy to do with the warpath bases, just flip them over since there's no bevel.

No way they keep those ridiculous integrated bases when they go to 'true' 'hard' 'plastic', right?

Sure they could, they may have to put them all on platform boots like the Enforcer rocket dude though.

 Alpharius wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:


As for the mechs, I can't get behind it being a "bait and switch" just so Mantic can make money. I think it was more of a wording issue, because while "restic" or "resin plastic" is a commonly held unique medium, it's still a kind of resin- just not what we associate with the term. At least by using the Iron Ancestor as a gauge, the DZ one is no more expensive than the one for Warpath, if you go by true retail off Mantic's site rather than internet discount.

They are purely optional, and I would gladly pay $20 retail as opposed to a discounted $16.99 for an advance copy of a figure (because who knows when they will be released outside of the KS). It's three dollars, people. That's less than the shipping on an existing $16.99 Iron Ancestor from The Warstore, even with Neal's awesome shipping rates.

Whether it was intentional or not (and I guess I don't think it was), it is still pretty sad that even Mantic can't keep it straight.

"Sprueless Plastic", "restic" or whatever is nowhere close to what everyone thinks of when they see and read "RESIN".

I wish they would just say PVC, since that is what the material actually is.

 Alpharius wrote:

 scarletsquig wrote:
I hope they just do away with the integrals on the hard plastics at least.. quite easy to do with the warpath bases, just flip them over since there's no bevel.

No way they keep those ridiculous integrated bases when they go to 'true' 'hard' 'plastic', right?

Don't their current plastics have them? I'm 99% sure they do.

I really wish they would drop that dinosaur though.
~Eric

 Alpharius wrote:
No way they keep those ridiculous integrated bases when they go to 'true' 'hard' 'plastic', right?

The one style of base I would love to see is clear plastic. Dreadball had a great idea with the clear plastic bases.

I'm currently cutting the integrals off my deadzone stuff and using clear acrylic bases, really enjoying this approach simply because it saves time... no need to paint the base!

I keep them on while I'm painting since they're handy to hold on to, especially if you crocodile clip them.

A clear polystyrene sprue for them would be so much better than acyrlic, less scratchable, and injection moulded gives a more even finish than laser-cut (+no need to peel the plastic film off like you do with acrylic).

 scarletsquig wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
No way they keep those ridiculous integrated bases when they go to 'true' 'hard' 'plastic', right?

The one style of base I would love to see is clear plastic. Dreadball had a great idea with the clear plastic bases.

That is another great example of Mantic's Almost. Clear bases, great idea. Coupled with the integral restic bases, not as great.

 Vermonter wrote:
The Asterian cyphers aren't as well-designed or elegant or inventive or original as their parents the Eldar were, nor is their aesthetic different enough to be interesting in its own right. They're far from terrible, but they are dull.

They're based on Eldar? I thought they were robots?
They honestly look more like SST Skinnies (from the Roughnecks tv show) crossbred with Cylons

 judgedoug wrote:
They're based on Eldar? I thought they were robots?
They honestly look more like SST Skinnies (from the Roughnecks tv show) crossbred with Cylons

They are Eldar with more smarts. "Oh we are a dying race? Well then let us use our technology to fight for us, rather than waves of our finest men and women."

Pretty much Iyandan with Robots rather than Wraithbone...Wrobots maybe?

 Vain wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
They're based on Eldar? I thought they were robots?
They honestly look more like SST Skinnies (from the Roughnecks tv show) crossbred with Cylons

They are Eldar with more smarts. "Oh we are a dying race? Well then let us use our technology to fight for us, rather than waves of our finest men and women."

Pretty much Iyandan with Robots rather than Wraithbone...Wrobots maybe?

That sounds good to me

If Mantic put some more effort into Warpath I'm definitely picking these guys as my army I think (my brother likes the Space Skaven--I mean, Veer-myn), just right now the offerings are a little dull so going to wait for it to actually have some decent things.

Hmm. Had a look at the Eldar Wraithguard (haven't looked at Eldar models in years) and they didn't look as impressive as my "golden days of yore" memory had it. Turns out I'm just prejudiced against Space Elf robots in general, I guess. Strike the "GW did it better" element from my previous critique; evidently, they didn't.

I have some problems with the current Asterian poses, which seem more comic-book world inspired than militarily practical. There's more ambiguous gun-holding than gun-aiming than I'd like, the flying Cypher is posed in front of Mars Attacks brick scenery rather than Deadzone rubble, and the Cypher swordsman preparing to strike is completely exposing his flank and dangling his shield to the side like a fool. But I'll say this for Mantic: they make taking a chance on their Asterian faction a very low-risk proposition. I'm looking at buying 3 more faction boosters anyway, and I have no need of duplicates, so I could try out the Asterian booster for free. If I don't like it, I could sell or trade it on easily without taking a loss.

(Yeah, but is it really "free"? By any reasonable definition, you bet it is. The way they're splitting them up and pricing them for retail, you can't get the content in the Deadzone KS boosters cheaper at retail right now, so $20 a booster is already a good deal. A 4-for-3 "free" booster on top of that is a very good deal, and pretty easy to recoup on ebay, even at a discounted price.)

Since I'm already getting the Forge Father starter free, and I don't want an extra starter for any faction, the "buy two factions for $50" isn't as tempting as it might have been. I could get an extra Enforcer faction - love those guys, and they're uniform enough that multiples still look good - but I don't really need more of them. But I could get a free Asterian booster and pick up a starter at a favorable retail price later if I'm impressed with them.

In other non-news, I flirted with the dark side yesterday and bought new Games Workshop miniatures at a (not very) local game store for the first time in 20+ years. They were the repackaged Chaos Cultists from Dark Vengeance. I saw someone using them to replace his Plague 3rd gens on the Mantic forums, and the whole "medieval peasant rabble - IN SPAAACE!" thing went really well with the Plague 1st and 2nd gens. They're still not my ideal solution as they still have GW "heroic proportions," but they do hearken back to the creative grittiness of GW's youthful glory days in a way I quite like. And unlike the Sedition Wars Strain, they actually carry guns, making them a bit more reasonable as shooty 3rd gen replacements.

I still wouldn't have bought them at standard GW prices, but these guys were 5 for $10.

There are hints that Asterians don't usually live in the material universe, they have no planets, no space stations and the only territory they hold on any sort of permanent basis is the accretion disks of black holes.

I get the feeling that the bulk of the race already moved on to something else rather than "died out/ going extinct", the few that remain either enjoy being in the material galaxy more, or want to meddle with it despite it no longer being their home.

 Taarnak wrote:


Don't their current plastics have them? I'm 99% sure they do.

I really wish they would drop that dinosaur though.
~Eric

My two cents - they are absolutely fantastic for their fantasy models as the integrated base allows quick painting and very quick basing (it's pretty damn easy to plug 40 models into a premade Warbases regiment tray). But their sci fi stuff yeah... don't like the bases.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vain wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
They're based on Eldar? I thought they were robots?
They honestly look more like SST Skinnies (from the Roughnecks tv show) crossbred with Cylons

They are Eldar with more smarts. "Oh we are a dying race? Well then let us use our technology to fight for us, rather than waves of our finest men and women."

So they are Cylons

 scarletsquig wrote:
^ I prefer hard sci-fi and dislike "fantasy/historical in space", from that perspective the asterians are far more interesting to me than nazis/ russians/ americans in space (has already been done to death by so many different companies)... it just feels right that the most advanced faction in the game would use AI drones for the bulk of their combat forces.

If those Asterians are in fact hard plastic, and not restic in tons of separate thin and fiddly horribly warped pieces with double mould lines.. the I will be very happy indeed.

I'm at the point where I would seriously just be okay with mantic raising its prices on hard plastic to the same as its restic minis, if that's what it takes to get them tooled properly. £20 for 20 would be totally fine with me for multipart kits with lots of components, options and brilliant detail.

Fair enough on your aesthetic. Just watch out for the Forgefathers, Orx, Ver'Myn, Zombies and Enforcers with close combat weapons, lightning claws and capes. Because, you know, Warpath is already pretty heavily fantasy in space/not-40k

See, for me, I'm getting to the point where I'm happy to play Mantic's games (well, KoW) and willing to give the others a go, but no longer willing to buy their sub-par models based on the endless promises of them actually finally really-for-sure-this-time being good quality. And look, I'm not asking for GW or DFG quality. I'll be happy with Warlord/Perry/Mantic Undead quality (for restic or plastic). Actually, the Ogres are alright - just very limited. Great for a unit or three, but not enough variety for a proper army.

 scarletsquig wrote:
There are hints that Asterians don't usually live in the material universe, they have no planets, no space stations and the only territory they hold on any sort of permanent basis is the accretion disks of black holes.

Probably closer to dark eldar if you're looking for a 40k analogy.

Fluff-wise I see your point. Visually, they don't have any of the Goth S&M fetishism that saturates Dark Eldar models. I don't miss it.

 CptJake wrote:

 scarletsquig wrote:
If you give them another email via the contact form:
http://www.manticgames.com/contact.html
There shouldn't be anything stopping them from sorting it out right away.

Except they said they are addressing LOKA, then will address Dread Ball, and then address DeadZone. They are slow as gak responding via their contact form, seemingly ignore you if you attempt to get some response from them.
If he uses it will he eventually have his problems fixed? Maybe. But to think it will be sorted 'right away' is silly. They have not shown any indicator they address any issues 'right away'.

Yeah. Unfortunately at this point I put little faith in their online form or their response to email. Ringing and telling them to fix it in a firm but polite way seems to be the way to go - particularly for older stuff. But still, if agnosto already followed the procedure of the time for KoW and they never got back to him, it's pretty much bs that he has to keep chasing them - just as it was bs that I had to keep ringing them when email stopped being useful.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Alpharius wrote:

No way they keep those ridiculous integrated bases when they go to 'true' 'hard' 'plastic', right?

God I hope not, but then they're on the existing plastics for Elves, Orcs, Orx, Dwarves, Forgefathers, Zombies, Ghouls, Skeletons and Revenants ...so who knows?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vermonter wrote:
Hmm. Had a look at the Eldar Wraithguard (haven't looked at Eldar models in years) and they didn't look as impressive as my "golden days of yore" memory had it. Turns out I'm just prejudiced against Space Elf robots in general, I guess. Strike the "GW did it better" element from my previous critique; evidently, they didn't.

The plastic Wraithguard are quite good - much better than the metals. The ideal for this sort of thing (from my perspective at least) would be to use the old Eldar Ghost Warriors, but good luck getting any of those. I have two, and I doubt their numbers will ever grow unless Forgeworld picks up 30k Eldar...

Nice pick-up on the cultists, BTW.

The legs on this one are goofy looking as heck...



~Tim?

 scarletsquig wrote:
There are hints that Asterians don't usually live in the material universe, they have no planets, no space stations and the only territory they hold on any sort of permanent basis is the accretion disks of black holes.

Probably closer to dark eldar if you're looking for a 40k analogy.

Iyanden in the webway then, I guess. Not that GW's Space Elves using the racial name straight from Tolkien are made of originality either.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Some_Call_Me_Tim? wrote:
The legs on this one are goofy looking as heck...



~Tim?

Kung-Fu Dancing Predator-Face Robot!

 Azazelx wrote:

 scarletsquig wrote:
There are hints that Asterians don't usually live in the material universe, they have no planets, no space stations and the only territory they hold on any sort of permanent basis is the accretion disks of black holes.

Probably closer to dark eldar if you're looking for a 40k analogy.

Iyanden in the webway then, I guess. Not that GW's Space Elves using the racial name straight from Tolkien are made of originality either.

I don't know... if they don't actually have physical bodies and use robots to kill people or something, it's starting to sound like stretching to say they're Not-Eldar. At that point what similarities do they have?
Hell they'd be more like Therians in AT-43 (transhuman conscious living on the internet that use nanotechnology to build physical creations they control) than Eldar. Eldar are goofy space elves with organic technology that won't screw to save their species. (also the only 40k army I own)

So am I the only one that actually likes the look of the these Asterians Robits?

If they're proper hard plastic I'll pick up a bunch.

Gotta be honest, I think seeing Eldar in the Asterians is trying too hard to find an analogy.

Aside from being old and somewhat arrogant aliens, I don't really see a whole lot of parallels.

Also, I quite like the look of them

 Cyporiean wrote:
So am I the only one that actually likes the look of the these Asterians Robits?

If they're proper hard plastic I'll pick up a bunch.

No I like them quite a bit, I think they'll look great in 28mm especially if they're as thin and spindly as the Kings of War Elves. I'll pick up loads for sci fi wargaming.

Cyphers are AI, not the souls of the dead or anything.

If there's one thing in favour of the Warpath background, it is the lack of religion/mysticism.

I don't mind stuff like the odd laser sword so much since a lot of fighting occurs in extremely dense urban areas (deadzone), starships (project pandora) and other confined spaces. It's less of a crime against logic than a lot of other stuff. Even the marauders at least have some good background as rogue mercenaries, if you don't paint them green there's very little attaching them to fantasy.

If anything, their background is closer to these guys, loyal only to the highest bidder:



I do appreciate how the Corporation is effectively an evil twin version of the Federation or Culture, driven to consume and control with the concept of putting morality over profits seen as a sign of weakness. It is a more realistic future vision of humanity than other sci-fi, greed is more likely to be our motivation than anything else.