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Lots of different axes being ground in this thread. Here's some loose change of mine:

- I don't really love when Mantic ribs GW, I've largely broken up with the Dub and no longer have an antagonistic relationship with the company. For my tastes, GW makes models that largely do not appeal to me and focuses on games that are not worth playing beyond a casual level with friends.

- I do think some of Mantic's motivation is because geographically they and GW are neighbors with a shared history and in Mantic's mind they're peers, which I don't think GW agrees with. But GW also doesn't openly acknowledge any of the other wargame companies (because to do so would be to open their followers' eyes to the existence of alternatives, which any good gaslighter avoids at all costs). I do however think the first several The Other World posts from WarCom were directly inspired by the success of Kings of War 3E. Yes, especially that first one within a week of KOW 3E's financial success, when Dub told the world that something about WHFB was definitely coming eventually please believe us do not leave come back stay we love you here's the thing you once loved (please).

- I've seen Conquest on the shelves of precisely as many stores as I've seen the new Warmachine (i.e. one), and only recently heard anything about it being a game that a person should play. Sounds like the rules are good, the sculpts run the gamut from old and terrible to new and great (sounds familiar!), but I hear PB has a really draconian modeling requirement for events. Shame.

- The game I've seen the most on shelves, apart from Dub Stuff, is ASOIAF. Part of me is tempted, I really love Game of Thrones and want more. Have dug a little into the meta and it seems like there's a balance problem being worked on, which is pretty typical for an early edition of a game. I can't tell much about the hobby aspect, as the only games I've seen in person are 100% unpainted and I've never seen a conversion or alternate sculpt on any platform yet.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Personally I value the freedom to make my army the way I want it on all levels from composition to model count to looks and I've found it very satisfying to collect a visually coherent and lore appropriate force from dozens of models lines.

Good looking Dwarfs, BF!

- On that note, I play Kings because a) the rules are great; b) the rules are balanced externally and internally; c) the rules continue to be actively balanced at a manageable pace (i.e. annually); d) I can hobby however I want; e) and am actively rewarded for doing so; f) other people give a gak about hobbying and do it; g) my club plays it; and h) events are plentiful enough for my schedule and genuinely fun to be at.

When I compare that list to GW's offerings, it's clear how little the Dub has to offer me, and it's a high bar for all the other games kicking around, even just from a "Are people actually invested in the hobby / do people actually play with painted models?" standpoint.

But also Mantic dunking on GeeDub has nothing to do with me liking Mantic.

 Boss Salvage wrote:
within a week of KOW 3E's financial success

Citation needed.

As far as I can tell the majority if miniature gamers didn't even notice the new edition had been out for a month by the time GW made its announcement.

 Boss Salvage wrote:

- I do think some of Mantic's motivation is because geographically they and GW are neighbors with a shared history and in Mantic's mind they're peers, which I don't think GW agrees with. But GW also doesn't openly acknowledge any of the other wargame companies (because to do so would be to open their followers' eyes to the existence of alternatives, which any good gaslighter avoids at all costs).

This always seems odd to me that people blame/complain/criticise GW for not talking about other game brands, however how many other firms do that?

Seriously I've never seen another brand do it, the only time I actually see miniature makers talking and marketing other miniature makers are
1) When they own a webstore that sells outside of their own brand - even then they often have the store and their game wing under totally different names (eg Wayland Games owns Warcradle, but you'll never see Warcradle talking about other things Wayland sells).

2) 3D printing creators doing cross promotion marketing. Where honestly the markets are tiny, super niche and its a LOT of garage style companies (even the big ones are tiny).


Otherwise I've never seen Mantic talk about Warcradle; Warcradle talk about Infinity, Infinity talk about Malifaux. Everyone markets their own game in their own bubble and doesn't talk about the other firms at all.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Citation needed.

As far as I can tell the majority if miniature gamers didn't even notice the new edition had been out for a month by the time GW made its announcement.

Late October/Early November 2019: Kings of War Third Edition hits shelves
November 15, 2019: Games Workshop issues this vague statement about The Old World. WarCom would continue to hold space for TOW over the coming years. The only mention of rules development during these years would be a note about base size changing.

We know for a fact that WHFB was sunset because it was declared financially dead. It seems too suspicious to me that KOW's successful launch was met by a well-timed, vacuous marketing hype piece for an obviously similar product.

Also this thread is about the relationship of Mantic and Games Workshop, not the perceptive powers of ill-informed individual gamers. It's a safe bet that GW keeps tabs on its competitors, despite its ivory tower mentality.

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 Overread wrote:
Everyone markets their own game in their own bubble and doesn't talk about the other firms at all.

Sure, fair point. Maybe that's why Mantic's winks are so weird, because they're breaking the marketing wall and gesturing to The Other Guy. Maybe that's why I also don't like it, it just feeds back to GW one way or another.

EDIT 1: I've seen a lot of retro Warhammer stuff recently, including all these photos from White Dwarf where old lead is kind of intermingled and there's a lot of slop in the Nottingham mini world. Maybe some of the nostalgia of that era has rubbed off on me / Ronnie and crew.

EDIT 2: Does Games Workshop attend any cons and stuff these days? They were definitely absent for a long time, which added to my feeling of their elite douchiness. A manufacturer conspicuously apart from their peers.

EDIT 3: And I'd also point to the overwhelming Games Workshop Models Only policy that GW adopted whenever and that is STILL parroted by Warhamsters, as feeding my feelings above. Like a month ago I was at my friend's place with some 3D printed Tyranids and he was like, wait, you know those aren't legal, right? Bro, legal for what?????

 Boss Salvage wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Citation needed.

As far as I can tell the majority if miniature gamers didn't even notice the new edition had been out for a month by the time GW made its announcement.

Late October/Early November 2019: Kings of War Third Edition hits shelves
November 15, 2019: Games Workshop issues this vague statement about The Old World. WarCom would continue to hold space for TOW over the coming years. The only mention of rules development during these years would be a note about base size changing.

We know for a fact that WHFB was sunset because it was declared financially dead. It seems too suspicious to me that KOW's successful launch was met by a well-timed, vacuous marketing hype piece for an obviously similar product.

Also this thread is about the relationship of Mantic and Games Workshop, not the perceptive powers of ill-informed individual gamers. It's a safe bet that GW keeps tabs on its competitors, despite its ivory tower mentality.

All well and good, but where's the proof of supposed "Financial Success"?

 Boss Salvage wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Everyone markets their own game in their own bubble and doesn't talk about the other firms at all.

Sure, fair point. Maybe that's why Mantic's winks are so weird, because they're breaking the marketing wall and gesturing to The Other Guy. Maybe that's why I also don't like it, it just feeds back to GW one way or another.

EDIT 1: I've seen a lot of retro Warhammer stuff recently, including all these photos from White Dwarf where old lead is kind of intermingled and there's a lot of slop in the Nottingham mini world. Maybe some of the nostalgia of that era has rubbed off on me / Ronnie and crew.

EDIT 2: Does Games Workshop attend any cons and stuff these days? They were definitely absent for a long time, which added to my feeling of their elite douchiness. A manufacturer conspicuously apart from their peers.

EDIT 3: And I'd also point to the overwhelming Games Workshop Models Only policy that GW adopted whenever and that is STILL parroted by Warhamsters, as feeding my feelings above. Like a month ago I was at my friend's place with some 3D printed Tyranids and he was like, wait, you know those aren't legal, right? Bro, legal for what?????

GW not only attends events they also do big promo previews at them - like the LVO coming up soon.

As for point 3 that's also a thing other firms have too - its just most firms don't have their own shops and only sponsor a very small number of competitive events. So the impact is way smaller than GW because GW has their own stores on the highstreet. Plus any event they attend/sponsor/back has to comply. Again its the same thing other firms would and do do - if they are organising a big event they want their models on the tables being played; so that its stuff they make that people are interacting with, taking photos of and soforth for their marketing.



This is what all the other firms do. The ones that don't are often so tiny that they are happy for just any sale or they don't have a company mindset behind them which might mean they are a hobby level business.



GW gets flack for it, but honestly its what other firms 100% do as well. Gw is just more obvious because they are bigger and thus it happens more times than not. Though on the 3rd party models front I'd also argue that GW gets copied WAY more than the others. No one in the 3D print world really cares to copy anything but GW for wargames if they are copycatting. So again its not that other firms wouldn't come out with 3D print rules that are similar, they just don't have the problem to start with right now.

 Overread wrote:

This always seems odd to me that people blame/complain/criticise GW for not talking about other game brands, however how many other firms do that?

GW goes so far as to not acknowledge that its market exists outside of itself. Can you imagine Ford not acknowledging that Fords are cars and that other cars exist and calling roads and traffic lights "Ford infrastructure"

I'm in favor of anybody taking the piss out of GW . It's long tradition in the Wargaming world.

That said, aside from writing my favorite set of Fantasy mass battle rules, there's little else that they have come up with in the last 5 years that I actually want to buy.

Of course, I could say almost the same about GW.

 SgtBANZAI wrote:

Correct. I have seen multiple posts by both former and current WHFB players lamenting the changes to rules, base sizes and armies from the TOW's previews, but still insisting that they are going to - no, they have to rebase all of their stuff, modify army compositions or even start a new army outright because their old units are not properly supported/have a dubious future/are probably very weak rules-wise at the moment. I've already encountered proclamations from different people that they fully intend to throw away/sell off their current armies they have been using for WHFB or WAP for many years until now and buy Bretonnian/Tomb Kings' starter boxes to start "officially supported" factions again. Even if they hate Bretonnia and Tomb Kings or have so much of their stuff it's effectively a useless purchase. I've also seen examples of people tearing down and cutting out their (sometimes very impressive looking) old bases and trays and quickly gluing together their models on cheap PVC and MDF with virtually no additional work to make them look better - anything to rebase hundreds of models as quickly as possible for the TOW's release date. People whine, moan, swear at GW and lament the amount of terrible misfortunes awaiting their unsuspecting models before they get to work on making them "rules legal", yet they still are fully commited to actually doing it. Whatever they've been playing is now getting put on an indefinite hold, it's all about TOW and "officiality" now. Some of them are questioned if they are going to check some other ruleset with their miniatures, and the answer is consistently along the lines of "Why would I want to? It's not GW, it's not official". To me it looks very unhinged.

I was thinking to myself last night "What if GW didn't change base sizes?" I don't think we would have all this craziness. Except for non-supported armies. That is a different topic on itself. WIth this uproar about base sizes, I wish Mantic would poke fun at GW by showing off their rules for basing because you have multiple options. I haven't checked social media to see if Mantic has done it. But if they have it would have been perfect, maybe bring some more people over who are interested in a game where they don't have to worry about modifying their miniatures to play.

 Overread wrote:

GW gets flack for it, but honestly its what other firms 100% do as well. Gw is just more obvious because they are bigger and thus it happens more times than not. Though on the 3rd party models front I'd also argue that GW gets copied WAY more than the others. No one in the 3D print world really cares to copy anything but GW for wargames if they are copycatting. So again its not that other firms wouldn't come out with 3D print rules that are similar, they just don't have the problem to start with right now.

Mantic does not. It's a big reason that a lot of fans like them.
Ronnie (Mantic CEO) is on record saying that although he prefers that Mantic models are used, people playing his game is more important.
You can show up at a Mantic event with 0 Mantic models.

The are prizes for Manatic armies, as encouragement, but no requirement to play.

You can get stls of Mantic's resin models from Mantic and their minis don't cost as much, so not as worthwhile to copy.
OPR has rules for Mantic factions though, so we might get there.

and the STL market is a very different thing and by a point its own self fulfilling prophecy
GW is the most expensive one and the one that only allows official models

3D printing being the cheap option to get official GW models as once painted hardly anyone can tell the difference
(and cheaper here means that not just material cost in resin but buying the printer)
while for other brands, buying the original plastic is still cheaper, so no reason to make a carbon copy of a Mantic or Northstar model in resin
and a lot of people I know who started resin printing early on don't do miniatures any more outside of small scale things that are not available otherwise (and don't bother any more printing a GW army but rather buy plastic alternatives instead)

like 200€ get you a Kings of War army with Mantic or historical models in plastic, why should you buy a 200€ printer + cleaning + resin + going thru the work/mess the make carbon copies (because you can make another one for cheap is not really an argument as faction hopping is not really a thing outside GW games)
while 800€ for a 40k/AoS army were only official models are allowed, buying the equipment and make one is tempting, specially as you know you might need a new army with the next balance update

Overread wrote:Seriously I've never seen another brand do it, the only time I actually see miniature makers talking and marketing other miniature makers are.

outside of some local brands, owned by the same company making fun of each other for advertising, I remember that Pepsi used to joke about Coca Cola or Coca Cola and RedBull taking on each other in advertising

than there is the question who is the target group of the "joke" as Mantic making a video about "Rank and File was never gone" is not dunking on GW directly, but on influences/community posts acting like R&F is something new GW invented with TOW

and while companies do not recognise others and their products, somehow in the wargaming world everyone feels the need to mention GW and their products no matter the topic but gets annoyed if others are mentioned in GW topics
"this is the 40k of historical gaming" is perfectly fine even if the comparision makes no sense at all

like taking the article from wargamer.com about new Twilight Kin for Kings of War
the article is using TOW several time as reference long before we even got a release date of TOW

you won't find an article about a GW game referencing upcoming or existing games from others (and specially not something like, "this is GWs take on Infinity style games"

 DarkBlack wrote:

Ronnie (Mantic CEO) is on record saying that although he prefers that Mantic models are used, people playing his game is more important.
You can show up at a Mantic event with 0 Mantic models.

I believe this in the context of Mantic events, but not in the context of Mantic the corporation. When it comes to KoW, the best thing for it's success is for as many folks as possible to be playing it.

For the success of mantic as a company, it's far more important to sell miniatures than game rules.

Not to say Rules and Games don't often go hand-in-hand, but when it comes to Ronnie's bottom line selling minis is the most important thing.

Mantic makes money selling models, but they're clever enough to know that people playing their game with non-Mantic models are still free advertising for Mantic. We have seen KoW become slightly more prescriptive with 3rd edition, matching base sizes and unit height class to Mantic models, but for the most part it's still pretty free.

What's nice about Kings of War is that you have options on how you want to base your miniatures. Multi-basing is popular but I still put my miniatures on individual bases because I love how a full regiment or horde unit looks. I hope Mantic doesn't get rid of putting models on separate bases. At least they're not pushing their fans to rebase on bases 5mm bigger than their original.

I like having multiple basing options. I also base individually because KoW is not the first or last game my minis will see battle in.

As long as KOW units are based on a specific permanent footprint it will make no difference whether the figures are singly or multi based.

yes, Mantic makes money selling models and they are a model company first
but for selling models you don't need to make your own games and it is easier to just make the models and ignore the gaming part if a company want to do that

but they also like to play games and the approach is more to have working games and get people in wanting to use mantic models for those games rather than forcing them to or having the games only as tool to sell models
(not sure who it once said but they know that they are selling more of their SciFi models to 40k players)

 Eilif wrote:

 DarkBlack wrote:

Ronnie (Mantic CEO) is on record saying that although he prefers that Mantic models are used, people playing his game is more important.
You can show up at a Mantic event with 0 Mantic models.

I believe this in the context of Mantic events, but not in the context of Mantic the corporation. When it comes to KoW, the best thing for it's success is for as many folks as possible to be playing it.

For the success of mantic as a company, it's far more important to sell miniatures than game rules.

Not to say Rules and Games don't often go hand-in-hand, but when it comes to Ronnie's bottom line selling minis is the most important thing.

They do go hand-in-hand.
Ronnie regognises that the more people play KoW, the more the community grows.
The bigger the community, the more people buy Mantic models.
To play KoW as well as because Mantic is more visible.

People don't need to play games to buy models, but we do need models to play wargames.
Especially for models that are made to be game pieces, like Mantic's (which is why I prefer Mantic models over GW).

I opened up a mega army box of nightstalkers several years ago and there were no assembly instructions, the components were in multiple bags, and each bag had bits from different models in it. A nightmare indeed.

I like the KoW rule set a lot. I enjoy Firefight too. But I take their digs at other companies with a heavy grain of salt. They've had years to up their game, and have not in certain respects.

Ah yes back when they made some PVC warbands for a skirmish game, then repurposed them for the mass battle game by just packing multiple identical copies. Not a good look.

I like mantics rules but when I was collecting up my armada fleets I experienced more mispacks, omissions, chipping than with any other company i've ever bought from and it wasn't close.

They did fix those things no questions asked and free of charge, but that is kind of the bare minimum for something that's supposed to be a premium product

Grunk wrote:
What honestly is the reason for people's inability to move beyond games workshop? Is it some kind of formative childhood experience where it was the first best thing? A "I couldn't afford an army before but now hoo boy!" kind of deal?

My friend latches onto the first thing he encounters as being the genuine thing and everything else is a knock off, so to him everything that isn't GW is a cheap copy and to be avoided. He also won't drink any cola beverage that isn't Coke or Pepsi, or any ketchup that isn't Heinz, and so on. I had a hard time getting him to buy a GW kit from a 3rd party for 20% off instead of the GW a few doors away, and he's otherwise incredibly stingy.

I suspect there are a lot of gamers like that.

There's also market share - Only GW has stores, and White Dwarf is in a lot of newsagents so it's easily the first place to enter the hobby if you don't already know someone, and they've done an incredible job of re-imaging "the hobby" as buying, building, painting and playing with GW kits. To some extent it's true, because you can almost certainly find an opponent for a current GW game in any area whereas the other stuff is very hit and miss.

Compared to being able to take part in the hobby, miniature and rules quality, cost, etc are secondary.


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 Overread wrote:
Everyone markets their own game in their own bubble and doesn't talk about the other firms at all.

Whilst they don't often broadcast it, most smaller gaming companies will get on fairly well with the others and share kits (like scenery from company A in company B's books), or recommend competitors if they don't do something.
I've been at conventions before where people have sent me to competitors for stuff they don't have.


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 Boss Salvage wrote:

Also this thread is about the relationship of Mantic and Games Workshop, not the perceptive powers of ill-informed individual gamers. It's a safe bet that GW keeps tabs on its competitors, despite its ivory tower mentality.

It definitely does and makes the odd obscure reference to stuff. Like talking about "kickstarting collections" just as Kickstarter was getting big and IIRC one of the competitors campaigns were running.

I'm sure the re-release of Blood Bowl was brought about after the success of Dreadball (which may even have been the kickstarter I mentioned), so I also wouldn't be surprised if the success of KoW was a factor in ToW since they'll have seen that instead of all the gamers moving to AoS plenty went to Mantic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, taking a pop at the market leader is a pretty common thing, especially when said market leader is doing something stupid. GW is always going to be the elephant in the room and a lot of people remember GW of old which could at least poke fun at itself (Remember that Mantics CEO used to be a director at GW back in the 90's).

Like when Samsung congratulate Apple on inventing something Samsung release years earlier.

I am shocked, SHOCKED, that a predominantly GW board would not like it when Mantic takes a shot at GW.

Me, I really do not care what Mantic do in their marketing.

Mantic is backrupt from a creativity standpoint. That is why they are focusing on well established IPs because they can't create an interesting concept to save their life.

That I agree with. Not sure how it's possible, but everything they make is a creative miss for me. It all just looks wonky and amateurish.

And yet they persist, on the strength of their rulesets.

Persisting and thriving are two different things.

Also not generally a fan of their rules. They are serviceable but uninspired and basic.

Persisting is better than a lot of businesses can manage!

I'm glad Mantic exists, and I enjoy some of their games and miniatures. Especially Dungeon Saga, Kings of War on the rules side and I like a good few of their models too.

There are a lot of misses for me as well - deadzone didn't really land for me, I don't care much for their future sports game, and there's a good chunk of their catalogue that I would describe as being influenced way too heavily by fantasy video games and not enough by any sort of logic or believable culture for their forces.

But honestly I'm more likely to play a Mantic game than a GW one these days, and have bought fairly equal amounts of mantic and GW minis in the past year. Though I've bought more North Star than either.

I guess they have a market, and I'm in it. But I don't think they're anywhere close to perfect, and it's a bit surprising to me how they continue to get some stuff wrong that I feel they should be doing better on at this stage.

Still, a wargaming world with more companies doing stuff is better than one with only one company. Choice is good!

There are plenty of companies in the wargaming world - a lot of them are doing really great stuff... I don't consider mantic to be one of them.

Sasorijap wrote:Mantic is backrupt from a creativity standpoint. That is why they are focusing on well established IPs because they can't create an interesting concept to save their life.

That subjective though. I find nightstalkers interesting, to say the least.
I also think the do well at adding their own stamp on fantasy tropes while keeping those tropes recognisable. Like their take on halflings or dwarfs.

chaos0xomega wrote:That I agree with. Not sure how it's possible, but everything they make is a creative miss for me. It all just looks wonky and amateurish.

It's possible if you're looking for something not to like.

chaos0xomega wrote:Persisting and thriving are two different things.

Also not generally a fan of their rules. They are serviceable but uninspired and basic.

Mantic's capability has definitely improved, they are growing and can produce more stuff than they used to. Which I would consider thriving.

Clearly, one wargamer's "basic" is another wargamer's "streamlined" and "rules getting out of the way".
Different people prefer different things and just because something isn't your preference doesn't make it bad.
For example: I prefer Mantic or North Star miniatures over GW miniatures, but that doesn't make GW minatures bad. They are marvels of plastic modelling, but not what I am looking for.