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 pretre wrote:

 edlowe wrote:

 pretre wrote:
Free terrain sprue giveaway for signing up for the newsletter:

http://www.manticgames.com/Free-Giveaway.html

Weirdly if you already support them and have signed up for the newsletter you get nothing....unless you place an order for more stuff

Or unless you happen to have an extra e-mail address.

Too be honest I've got ten of those sprues still yet to be used, just thought it was a bit odd an un-mantic like.

 pretre wrote:

 edlowe wrote:

 pretre wrote:
Free terrain sprue giveaway for signing up for the newsletter:

http://www.manticgames.com/Free-Giveaway.html

Weirdly if you already support them and have signed up for the newsletter you get nothing....unless you place an order for more stuff

Or unless you happen to have an extra e-mail address.

Their database also tracks your name and physical mailing address regardless of your email addy.
Also, there are only 500 of the FREE sprues available, per their website so folks will want to hurry.

privateer4hire wrote:
Their database also tracks your name and physical mailing address regardless of your email addy.
Also, there are only 500 of the FREE sprues available, per their website so folks will want to hurry.

Well, they might skip me then.

Silly idea, would a squad of 3 units per base with separate leader/specialist on a slandered base work better?, after
all don't most troops work in squads of ten. and it'd be small enough to fit around/in most terrain.

So a squad of ten troops breaks down into x3 joint bases with leader on a 25mm base for coherency purposes.
And a squad of Five would break down into x1 joint base with leader and specialist on x2 25mm bases.

It could be a good way of ranking up the grunts and reducing moving time while still retaining the flexibility
of troop movement and changing out the specialist/leaders for other options.

Uh...the sprue give away states its random for people already signed up. So...you are still entered in if you're already on their mailing list.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Uh...the sprue give away states its random for people already signed up. So...you are still entered in if you're already on their mailing list.

It does?

To celebrate the launch of the Battlezones range of affordable modular wargames terrain in May – and the impending launch of the Ruins - we’re giving away 500 FREE hard plastic terrain sprues!!
CLAIM YOUR FREE WARGAMES SCENERY SPRUE

Claiming your free accessory sprue is simple - all you need to do is fill out and submit the form below! Not only will we post you out your accessory sprue free of charge, but you’ll also be signed up to the Mantic newsletter where you’ll receive updates on all the latest rumours, gossip, Kickstarters and great offers.

Note that you’ll only receive the terrain sprue if you are not already signed up to the Mantic Newsletter. If you are already signed up please check out the newsletter released on the 6th June because we are doing something special for you as well!

It's in todays newsletter

Full of barrels, crates, railings, ladders, lamp posts and more, the accessory sprue is packed with goodness and, if you *place an order on the Mantic Webstore before the 30th June of £15, €17.50, $25 or more, we will include a FREE sprue in your Order!

BUT THAT'S NOT ALL!

Next week we will be randomly picking 50 lucky people who are already signed up to the newsletter to win one of these great accessory sprues - good luck!

Which is probably why it says that people who are already signed up get something different.

Ninja'd!

Rolt wrote:Silly idea, would a squad of 3 units per base with separate leader/specialist on a slandered base work better?, after
all don't most troops work in squads of ten. and it'd be small enough to fit around/in most terrain.

So a squad of ten troops breaks down into x3 joint bases with leader on a 25mm base for coherency purposes.
And a squad of Five would break down into x1 joint base with leader and specialist on x2 25mm bases.

It could be a good way of ranking up the grunts and reducing moving time while still retaining the flexibility
of troop movement and changing out the specialist/leaders for other options.

I think fire team bases make a lot of sense. Something like the ones the green jackets are in here:





But perhaps even more widely spaced.

Also, wanted to ask a general opinion of recently received sprueless plastic from mantic. The last stuff I saw was the Chromium Chargers a friend of mine got and they were bad in terms of both heavy mould lines/flash and heat twisting. Like far worse than any Privateer Press models using the same plastic. Are things still like that?

I want to like Mantic so badly (I've been buying some of their rules as ebooks and using them with other miniatures), but after see those twisted robots, I'm super wary of their miniatures.

Restic genuinely has much improved from the days of Dreadball Season 2. However, that really is not to say it's perfect or anything like that. - The deadzone minis do still have some incredibly awkwardly positioned moldlines for example (Rebs Commanders hair, I'm looking at you!)

However, the models genuinely do have the potential for damn awesomeness once cleaned up.

 highlord tamburlaine wrote:

I keep half expecting to see my dad in one of those pictures.

One of these days I'll just have to find some sort of historical gaming group and drag him to it. He'd probably enjoy it, especially since none of his kids share his passion for military history and recreating famous battles. Barzam does to a degree, but he'd much rather have his space stuff, and I'd much rather have big giant reptiles that could eat and step on all his pew pew spacemen.

I know everyone already has too many projects, but I bet you could make a nice self contained game set based off Deadzone with flocked squares and terrain and individually based soldiers. Pick an era you know he's interested in an keep it simple and self contained. My friend's wife hated miniature gaming until he made her a fully textured and painted Settlers of Catan set with the mountain hexes actually rising up and the brick hexes having little clay pits and straw piles and stuff. He made little huts and buildings and roads out of polymer clay and painted them up. He even found a miniature laden down with loot to be the robber and painted it up. After that she started to understand the attraction of miniature gaming and painting. PM me or start a thread about it in the Historical forum here and I'll be happy to talk about it more.

They keep tossing in those MVPs and I'm afraid I'll finally just have to break down and order a Rampage pledge. I'll wait until the giant spider shows up. I was really interested in that, and I think that will finally tip me over the edge.

The Astarian Kalyshi team is really growing on me. I think they'd be a great basis for a more wargaming appropriate conversion. I like this idea of not having missed out if I still want in.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Compel wrote:
Restic genuinely has much improved from the days of Dreadball Season 2. However, that really is not to say it's perfect or anything like that. - The deadzone minis do still have some incredibly awkwardly positioned moldlines for example (Rebs Commanders hair, I'm looking at you!)

Was the DB Season 2 just a low period where their factory was doing crappy or something?

When you talk about awkwardly positioned moldlines, like on the hair, is it the type of thing where their removal would destroy detail? With the chromium chargers, it was like a half mm strip of no detail all the way around the figure once my friend managed to actually get the mould lines off the things.

However, the models genuinely do have the potential for damn awesomeness once cleaned up.

Yes they do. I'll go searching for more painted up examples of different figures I might be interested in.

IMO, the Chromium Chargers are about the worst, and the worst by an incredibly large margin at least amongst all the Mantic sci-fi stuff I have. I've gotten all the DreadBall stuff had a huge DeadZone order, and the mold lines, while they existed, weren't even on the same continent as the ones that were on the robots. I'm overall pleased with the models and to my recollection the only ones where the castings had "always have to be fixed" issues is the Marauders; particularly the Pyros and the Commanders. The Enforcer Missile Launcher deserves special mention for the integral base that both has platform shoes and then doesn't fit into the "full base" either.

That said, PVC models are a different beast entirely from traditional plastic in that you can seriously just crap out on quality in a given order. I had one Pyro that was fine outside of the spindly fuel hose. I had another where the nozzle end looked like it was 45 degrees to the direction it should have been in and the gun barely attached. So if you get reviews from one person who says "everything is awesome" and another who says "they're complete and utter gak still", they might both be telling the truth.

On the flip side correcting those flaws, while annoying in a product you paid good money for, isn't particularly complex either. A dunk in ridiculously hot water and the model becomes entirely flexible. You then reposition what's out of sorts, dunk it in cold water to "save" this new position and you're done. Out of a few hundred models (edit for clarity: and it's right around 300 or so atm), I've had to do that maybe a couple dozen and it hasn't failed yet. This feature of the material also makes it surprisingly easy to do some light conversion work since you can just re-position arms and legs as well.

As I stated earlier, I overall am quite pleased with what I've gotten from Mantic for DZ and DB. There's certainly room for improvement and I do hope they take advantage of that, but in terms of feeling like I got something worthwhile I would go with "yes" as the games are fun and the models good (not great like a DFG/KD:M, but good).

Just a side note for those joining the mailing list for the free sprue.. it's like the mafia in that you're in for life. I've tried unsubscribing a half dozen times with the links in the messages to no avail over the past two years. I guess I could try manually emailing them about it but judging from the response times with their website contact form posted here in the thread, I suspect it would be just as effective as my unsubscribing has been.

See, I have the opposite problem; I'm on the mailing list, but I haven't gotten the link for the contest. Can someone please email me a link for it?

 warboss wrote:
Just a side note for those joining the mailing list for the free sprue.. it's like the mafia in that you're in for life. I've tried unsubscribing a half dozen times with the links in the messages to no avail over the past two years. I guess I could try manually emailing them about it but judging from the response times with their website contact form posted here in the thread, I suspect it would be just as effective as my unsubscribing has been.

Set up an email rule to auto-delete emails from the mailing list address?

 darkPrince010 wrote:
See, I have the opposite problem; I'm on the mailing list, but I haven't gotten the link for the contest. Can someone please email me a link for it?

It's not a contest in the sense that you have to do anything further.
If you are already receiving mantic newsletters then you're already entered for one of the 50 sprues.

If you don't already receive mantic's newsletter, then you can register and (as long as you're in time to be among the first new 500) automatically get a free sprue.

 Krinsath wrote:
IMO, the Chromium Chargers are about the worst, and the worst by an incredibly large margin at least amongst all the Mantic sci-fi stuff I have.

The only other Mantic stuff I've seen is the Warpath starter box Fate of the Forgestar or something and their plastic elves and undead for KoW. And the first Dreadball box game that he got through the local shop. And then he got the Chromium Chargers and I was all WTF?! What happened?

Good to hear it's their worst by an incredibly large margin and not normal. I'll let my friend know as he wanted to get some more DB teams, but was very, very wary after the chargers arrived.

As I stated earlier, I overall am quite pleased with what I've gotten from Mantic for DZ and DB. There's certainly room for improvement and I do hope they take advantage of that, but in terms of feeling like I got something worthwhile I would go with "yes" as the games are fun and the models good (not great like a DFG/KD:M, but good).

Thanks for the honest review. I'm in the process of selling off my Dystopian Wars stuff and I'll probably poke around for some more "in the wild" pictures of Deadzone stuff and get some of it.

if you would like, I can snap a picture of just about any model from DB and most of the models from DZ (except Marauders, I only have the base sets of them). Most of the DB stuff will be primered so details are slightly more apparent than bare restic though I haven't gotten to primering DZ stuff yet (got side-tracked by FoW...gaming ADD and all that).

 Krinsath wrote:
if you would like, I can snap a picture of just about any model from DB and most of the models from DZ (except Marauders, I only have the base sets of them). Most of the DB stuff will be primered so details are slightly more apparent than bare restic though I haven't gotten to primering DZ stuff yet (got side-tracked by FoW...gaming ADD and all that).

I'd really appreciate something like 1 guy from each DBO team.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Krinsath wrote:
if you would like, I can snap a picture of just about any model from DB and most of the models from DZ (except Marauders, I only have the base sets of them). Most of the DB stuff will be primered so details are slightly more apparent than bare restic though I haven't gotten to primering DZ stuff yet (got side-tracked by FoW...gaming ADD and all that).

I'd really appreciate something like 1 guy from each DBO team.

Not sure if you meant in a group or individually so I just went with both. I seem to have mislaid most of my Z'Zor though, so I only had the one random pair that I was sent with my S2 boosters. Group shot and link to images spoilered below. It's worth noting that I'm an incredibly lazy modeller, especially with DreadBall, so almost no clean-up outside of trimming sprues away was done. Also I'm using my airbrush spraybox as a lightbox so the images are not that awesome.



Going through the models again for this, there is definitely the wide variation of quality I mentioned, and that applies within teams sometimes. Season 2 teams (Judwan, Z'Zor, Female Corp and Robots) are certainly the worst offenders with the Robots still holding the title. Season 1 teams seem mostly okay from my batch though the Veer-Myn are noticeably worse than the Corporation or Marauders. Season 3 is harder to judge because of the amount of metal I was shipped so my sample size is smaller, however they seem much improved over the Season 2 models, and even the Season 2 boosters I received later were much better. Granted, that bar is not particularly high since the Robots were awful, but still worth noting.

Thank you very much for those pics, Krinsath.

Yes. Thanks. It looks like Mantic is on a case-by-case basis when it comes to their sprueless plastic.

How's the Big Mech? It seems like it has enough gun port like things that I could use it for sci-fi wargaming straight away with little or no conversion.

EDIT: Never mind, i found a bunch of pictures elsewhere. It's not great. And it seems a bit small. I guess that's why they made the description say it's powered by an AI because it's a bit too small to be piloted.

Yeah, you'd be better off waiting for the Strider to be released.

Double post somehow

I like the Big Mech, I was thrilled to get a pair of them in my christmas crazy boxen. I don't remember cleanup being a problem, and if you keep the intended pose, assembly was rather easy too. I just use him as a robot/merc, mostly for posing in pictures and looking cool. Weaponized this one with an imperial assault cannon and some missiles though he still needs a right hand weapon/gun...

Any news on the sci fi zombies?

They'll be released in December.

Rebs strider is looking great, as is Sgt Howlett



Apparently a few teaser shots elsewhere in the update too...

Can someone tell me when the deadline for paying for survey 2 is?

Thanks!