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@judgedoug, You're looking at the bundles and not just the boosters. I'm not making stuff up. As Scarletsquig stated, the boosters themselves are a bad deal while the bundles are a great deal.

@Scarletsquig, more connector sprues are welcome news and the retail on the big terrain box is still a nice deal. I love the terrain.

 warboss wrote:
I'm assuming that the landing pads go together like legos like the other buildings and towers. Are the ones shown (unlikely) big enough to fit something like a chapterhouse converted storm raven?




I did some additional conversion on top of that but the footprint is the same.

How long is a Storm Raven? The landing pads built as demonstrated are 9 inches from side to side across the middle, and the railings at the edge come up at a 45 degree angle rather than a straight up fence, but you could easily combine 2 landing pads battlezones to make a much larger landing pad if you needed it, or use parts from the new bit of everything sprue and the other battlezones to achieve the same.

I had to make a 3x4, or 9"x12", pad to accommodate a a Valkyrie. Sorry for quality, today is dreary and my light doesn't fit in on top of the other terrain.



I also have a little 2" square pad that accommodates a storm talon fairly well, but don't have a storm Raven to check.

Thanks for the pic! With the conversion kit, I'm guessing the Storm Raven hull is about the same size as the valkyrie (although I shortened the tail to look more like a thunderhawk among other things). I'll take a measurement of my storm raven and post it when I get back home.

edit: The hull (not including the shortened tail) is 8.5" long and the wings are 10" wide.

 judgedoug wrote:
So it's more like complaining for the sake of complaining.

No. The standalone boosters and the standalone starters in the survey aren't a good deal. Nor are the standalone characters at $8 each - or even as a $45 bundle.

I finally sent in my second survey. I think I showed remarkable restraint, and kept it down to only $256.

NTRabbit wrote:
How long is a Storm Raven? The landing pads built as demonstrated are 9 inches from side to side across the middle, and the railings at the edge come up at a 45 degree angle rather than a straight up fence, but you could easily combine 2 landing pads battlezones to make a much larger landing pad if you needed it, or use parts from the new bit of everything sprue and the other battlezones to achieve the same.

The storm raven I converted is 8.5" long so it might squeak into that landing pad just barely!

I went a bit daft and went just over $300, the again with the current strength of the pound vs the dollar it is currently a very good deal. the majority of my survey is plastic in the form of Zombies, peacekeepers and Battlezones. I cannot wait for the new terrain.

I sent it in too, got the full range of new FF and Asterians (but not the Warpath FF characters) and 8 new diagonal wall sprues, 4 striders and 1 of each other mech, etc. Skipped the metal special characters.

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
I went a bit daft and went just over $300, the again with the current strength of the pound vs the dollar it is currently a very good deal. the majority of my survey is plastic in the form of Zombies, peacekeepers and Battlezones. I cannot wait for the new terrain.

I can't blame you, the peacekeepers look good and if I needed more terrain, would have bought quite a bit more. I actually converted some of it into a gun tower...

Was there anything irresistible in the first survey that wasn't included in the second?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, what's the deal with the Sgt with power fist/medic/burst laser/incinerator/etc? I think they were shown as renders in the original survey. Are they included on the plastic sprue now?

As per the update:

the Sgt is now on the sprue as one of the 5 bodies and the right selection of arms/head/etc, the burst laser and incinerator likewise, same for assault enforcers

the defenders are on the sprue, and all of their parts are also on the sprue excepting the shields, which are restic Edit correction: the shotgun for the defenders is also restic, and by on the sprue I mean you can make two defenders from the 5 torsos and legs that you make any of the others from, you don't get an additional 2 torsos on top for them

the medic is still its own restic figure

the engineer is still its own restic figure

the missile launcher is still its own restic figure

Thank you!

I hope the 'restic' Enforcer specialists scale well with their "hard plastic" Enforcer brethren...

A wise man once said: "Hope is not a method"

Yeah.

Thankfully I'm not holding my breath...

How are people possibly justifying that the starters are not good deals? I keep hearing that, and it sounds to me like complete crap.

I am still pondering the Forge Father starter, as it would be a great small Squat force for 2nd edition for less than a current SM tactical squad sells for.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
How are people possibly justifying that the starters are not good deals? I keep hearing that, and it sounds to me like complete crap.
I am still pondering the Forge Father starter, as it would be a great small Squat force for 2nd edition for less than a current SM tactical squad sells for.

Because they're pretty much the same price at retail. You know who told me this? ScarletSquig - who is the biggest Mantic fan here. (and I checked, he's 100% correct). You'd be better off getting Booster Bundles with your KS money, and then buying the starter sets that you're interested in later on at retail. Or right now at retail.

I've said it before, the cases that you get with retail mantic purchases are pretty nice. I still need to do some experimenting to get the wider cases to comfortably fit normal 25mm based minis (all of the deadzone starters look to come in the wider cases, I've got 4 from my late DZ shipment and they're the bigger size), but it'll be easy when I get around to it. So definitely no reason for me to frontload starters, though I already got my EU bundle and a booster bundle for each and am not going to make any kind of fuss over it. What's in there 10 forge guard two character/heroes two bikes, drill thingies, at least a squad or Brokkrs, for the equivalent of $50... I'm not arguing that you may or may not be able to achieve something similar at retail, but certainly I feel like my money is working hard enough in this case.

I don't use the VHS cases for storage myself, but I see how others could find them useful. I've actually got a whole pile of them here that I got with my Forgefather dreadnought-things and some Wights, etc. If it wasn't ridiculously cost-prohibitive, I'd send them all over to you, since they're probably going to end up in the recycling when I do another purge of crap that's taking up space.

A lot of it is perceived value too, one assumes that we will be getting a lot of stuff pre-retail release and some will place some value in that. Others may prefer a retail purchase to gain the cases (which as Grim says are very useful, the DZ black ones are very snazzy), Mantic points or support their FLGS or whatever. There is also the benefit of being more sure of the quality of sculpt that you will be getting.

Personally I went for the Forge Father and Asterian starters to hopefully get them early and because I like the mix of minis in the sets. If they are equal to or even slightly more than retail price then so be it. Though the minute you buy 2 for $50 that ceases to be a problem. However, that is not a move I would make on individual $8 restic characters which you can buy from retail over here for the equivalent of $6 or less (at current exchange rates). That 2 buck difference over a single figure seems like too much compared 3-5 buck difference when buying a single 10-12 model faction starter.

 Azazelx wrote:
I don't use the VHS cases for storage myself, but I see how others could find them useful. I've actually got a whole pile of them here that I got with my Forgefather dreadnought-things and some Wights, etc. If it wasn't ridiculously cost-prohibitive, I'd send them all over to you, since they're probably going to end up in the recycling when I do another purge of crap that's taking up space.

i find the things useful when i need a small container to mail something

And a tiny bit of news for those of you Stateside that are attending Adepticon. They have the Central City Quadrant available to pick up for £99.99. That is 46 plastic terrain sprues (mix of core world/ landing pad/ defence line/ fortifications) and 8 connector sprues.

Given that a core worlds box for £25 is 4 terrain sprues and 1 connector (plus 1 accessories sprue) that seems like an insane deal. The caveat is with new terrain pre-orders going up this week the deal may look worse (or better value) in the future.

Details here:

http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/events-and-tickets/product/pick-up-your-scenery-at-adepticon.html

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
And a tiny bit of news for those of you Stateside that are attending Adepticon. They have the Central City Quadrant available to pick up for £99.99. That is 46 plastic terrain sprues (mix of core world/ landing pad/ defence line/ fortifications) and 8 connector sprues.

Given that a core worlds box for £25 is 4 terrain sprues and 1 connector (plus 1 accessories sprue) that seems like an insane deal. The caveat is with new terrain pre-orders going up this week the deal may look worse (or better value) in the future.

Details here:

http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/events-and-tickets/product/pick-up-your-scenery-at-adepticon.html

That is probably the one SS mentioned earlier in the thread. I'm trying to make sense of it and not compare apples to oranges but the deadzone kickstarter mega set (urban war) only seemed to have 8 battlezones (4 sprues each) plus 4 accessory sprues for $185 (36 sprues).

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1744629938/deadzone-the-sci-fi-miniatures-board-game/posts/488267



The one in your link has 46 sprues for less ($166) which is the equivalent of about 11 battlezones. While there is a premium for picking and choosing exactly which ones you want in the KS versus getting an unknown selection in this bundle, it does seem like a sweeter deal which is odd.

I'll be happy for other gamers if they can get battlezones as cheap or cheaper than I did, but if someone does the math on this and definitively proves it to be the case... might have to call it done with doing kickstarter backing if I can get a better deal at retail. Close, even equivalent, is one thing, especially from a discount retailer (and especially if they are prone to clearance events), but if it proves to be cheaper to buy it from Mantic/their webstore than I paid on the kickstarter, the value of backing for me will be greatly diminished.

I'm seeing $175, which is really close to the 185 dollar bundle. Do you get any accessory sprues with this new set? Surely, but it doesn't mention specifics.

But isn't 46 sprues / 8 sprues per battlezone only equivalent to 5.75 battlezones? BZs used to be 4 sprues, but all of the sprues got halved in size and doubled in quantity out of necessity/convenience at some point during the kickstarter. Plus if there are any accessory sprues that they're counting... Still not necessarily a bad deal at all, but perhaps not so insulting to backers in this light?

At any rate, this sounds like a nicer deal than the prison scenery bundle they were trying to sell with DBX...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ahh yeah that's where you were derailing and making me confused/angry Warboss, you weren't considering the halved/doubled sprues thing that happened, the urban war thing would be 8 bzs (8 sprues each) or 64 (before accessory sprues!).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
DZ update #124
In case you don't trust me The break down for fortification and landing pad exist somewhere too, those were something like 3 each of two sprues and then 2 defense line sprues, or something.
*Ahem... same page, didn't scroll all the way to find out.

Barring pre-order/bundle shenanigans, terrain on the survey is going to be much cheaper than retail. Miniature Market sells the core world battle zone for $32, including discount. That's 4 sprues with an accessory sprue and connector sprue (total 6).

Yeah, it took serious willpower not to add any more battlezones to my survey apart from two bundles of the new long wall sprues. I had to remind myself I already have 10 battlezones plus close to $700 worth of Makitainers on the way.

Not to mention a bunch of MA terrain and about a billion DBX crate sprues.

Okay, time for me to come along and clean this up with the facts again.

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
And a tiny bit of news for those of you Stateside that are attending Adepticon. They have the Central City Quadrant available to pick up for £99.99. That is 46 plastic terrain sprues (mix of core world/ landing pad/ defence line/ fortifications) and 8 connector sprues.

Given that a core worlds box for £25 is 4 terrain sprues and 1 connector (plus 1 accessories sprue) that seems like an insane deal. The caveat is with new terrain pre-orders going up this week the deal may look worse (or better value) in the future.

Details here:

http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/events-and-tickets/product/pick-up-your-scenery-at-adepticon.html

A core worlds sprue is not 4 sprues + 1 accessory + 1 connector, it was advertised as such in the KS, but later split into 8 sprues for tooling purposes. The accessory sprue was also split into two.

So, a current core worlds BZ has 10 sprues + 1 connector sprue for £25

The £100 boxset will have 46 sprues + 8 connector sprues, so roughly 5 battlezones (the sprue count varies with landing pad/ fortifications), and 8 connector sprues for them rather than 5.

I'd say that the £100 box + webstore discount will probably end up fairly close to KS prices, but not cheaper. It's one of the reasons I didn't go big on battlezones on the initial DZ survey, I had a hunch that a bundle box would happen.

It was only when Mars Attacks came along and I had $125 to spend but didn't really want to get too much of Mars Attacks itself that buying the battlezones with the credit there made a lot of sense.

I'll have 7 BZ's total when it all gets delivered, can see myself getting a bundle box and extra ruins on top, though!

I've decided ruins for deadzone, intact buildings for Warpath (so I can just go ahead and make cool buildings without having to worry about removable roofs or interiors).

Really, GW had the right approach with Mordheim and Necromunda for terrain in skirmish level games, you need open terrain that still looks good while making sense as a functional structure, like ruins or industrial walkways so you can get the minis inside the terrain easily. The paintball arena deadzone setup doesn't look very good, but intact buildings have their own problems. Out of the core worlds the most useful pieces are the X shapes, to use for scaffolding, towers, walkway supports and other "accessible" terrain.

I still think its ridiculous how few connectors they give you.

Thanks for the breakdown SS. Miniature Market is selling 4 (6 including the accessory and connector) sprues for $32 so the mantic bundle or the KS survey are fantastic deals if you need terrain.