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 Sarouan wrote:
...It is not exaggeration to want the full rules of your faction. His concern is valid - and yes, what Mantic Games asks for their Vanguard miniatures is significantly more expensive in comparison to what they have done before. We're paying the "Skirmish Tax" here for the same miniatures, let's be clear.

We have been over this a million times, but the full rules for all factions (except the dwarf models not available in retail yet) are on easy army now, accessible to all for free. And I don´t see a "significant" price increase, the Basilean and Nightstalker warbands feature all new models, the other two contain five old miniatures (a third of the warband), but feature two large/avalry models as well. "Skirmish tax"? Maybe, or maybe it is the other way around and you get a discount when buying army deals?

 Manchu wrote:
Doesn’t change the fact that Mantic is charging £95 for 18 figures. Gimgamgoo is right. And those figures are nowhere near as good as what GW (or various other companies) offers, we’re talking miles off. Mantic started as an alternative to the GW business model but now seems trying to scramble after GW’s famous theory that miniatures can never actually cost “enough” ... all while showing only very modest improvement in quality and to be honest basically no improvement in design.

Eight of these are character models made from resin. 8-12 £ for a character model made from metal or resin is pretty much what everybody charges, and what Mantic has charged for their character models so far. One just did not need that many for Kings of War. And as mentioned, you will not need these or any other Mantic models to play the dwarf warband in Vanguard with the full rules, you just have to wait for the upload of the stats accompanying the retail release. But is is certainly unfortunate that there will be no new hardplastic models at lower prices for the dwarfs in the near future, just resin and metal.

H0neyBe4r wrote:

We have been over this a million times, but the full rules for all factions (except the dwarf models not available in retail yet) are on easy army now, accessible to all for free. And I don´t see a "significant" price increase, the Basilean and Nightstalker warbands feature all new models, the other two contain five old miniatures (a third of the warband), but feature two large/avalry models as well. "Skirmish tax"? Maybe, or maybe it is the other way around and you get a discount when buying army deals?

Like I said before, that doesn't change the fact they won't remake the book and force people to use easyarmies as only alternative. It was a choice they did in the first time, without telling their backers then, some of them told them they weren't glad, Mantic didn't bulge for some time then finally decided to "go back" and act like it was "always the plan". It's just communication to turn something intially bad into something good.

Of course, the fact they're "new models" doesn't justify in any way the rise in price. The reason they ask so much is because they hide behind the fact it's a Skirmish game and thus asks less miniatures to play - thus saying it's okay to sell them at this price because you don't need to buy many to play. That's what I call the "Skirmish Tax" - it's basically marketing bs.

Eight of these are character models made from resin. 8-12 £ for a character model made from metal or resin is pretty much what everybody charges, and what Mantic has charged for their character models so far. One just did not need that many for Kings of War. And as mentioned, you will not need these or any other Mantic models to play the dwarf warband in Vanguard with the full rules, you just have to wait for the upload of the stats accompanying the retail release. But is is certainly unfortunate that there will be no new hardplastic models at lower prices for the dwarfs in the near future, just resin and metal.

They're not characters, they're just skirmish models. One is a ranger, another is a shieldbreaker. You COULD use them as characters, but they're not sold as such.

And yes, our point is still valid. These prices are sensibly higher than what they charge for Kings of War and goes indeed against their motto so far. Still GW makes superior stuff with true plastic, and we can't say the value is really in favor of Mantic here.

You're trying to defend Mantic at all costs, like a good old fanboy here.

I did not follow the communication between the kickstarter backers and Mantic, therefore I have no way of knowing if what you say is true or a misunderstanding.

Bitching and whining about the rules being accessible for free online instead of being available for money in printed form (= outdated at the first rebalancing) just seems somewhat stupid to me.

And while some of the resin models might not be character models, they still cost as much to produce and are therefore more expensive. If it was a wise choice to make so many resin dwarfs instead of the three models the other warbands have is a different question.

You also pay more for single models and smaller contingents in larger scale wargames, literally EVERY company in this business does it that way.

It seems you want to complain at any cost, are you by any chance a troll?

 Sarouan wrote:

These prices are sensibly higher than what they charge for Kings of War and goes indeed against their motto so far.

But we are talking about Vanguard and not KoW
It is not against their Motto as Vangaurd is still affordable Wargaming in Skirmish size and you won't pay as much for a Vangaurd Warband as you do for other Skirmish sized games

If you are going to use those models to build regiments in KoW, of course this is expensive, but they are not meant to be for that.


Not selling Card Packs is still a mistake and I hope they will change this as they are selling Team Cards for Dreadball too and have KoW Artifact Cards

I think I'll probably grab those resin dwarfs when they enter distribution in the states.

I thought long and hard about adding them during the campaign but ended up waiting. I like super steampunky dwarfs!

I was a KS backer, to the tune of $300+.
Looks like I'm going to have to spend £95 or so per extra faction just to get the rules for each faction. This sucks imo. I really wanted a Mantic model replacement for SoBH. I figure Vanguard isn't that game anymore.
I don't want free rules. I'm happy to pay for them.
Easy army is a waste of time and space for me. It will only let me play the exact game points value in the book. I can't play a smaller game using any models I want like I can with the cards.
All in all, I was happy with the game and the KS. Mantic's resins are really good. I'm just going to go elsewhere for games though as I can't access all the rules without a massive cost.

You are not the only one who wants to buy the cards without the models, if enough people ask about it, Mantic might offer them for sale seperately.

But I still don´t understand what the cards do that easy army does not? You can set point limits lower or higher than 200, in 25 point steps. And you do not have to set a point limit at all, it will still add up everything.

Dwarfs are also outliers since they're all resin and were sort of made on a whim, the other warbands so far are £50 for everything.

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
I was a KS backer, to the tune of $300+.
Looks like I'm going to have to spend £95 or so per extra faction just to get the rules for each faction. This sucks imo. I really wanted a Mantic model replacement for SoBH. I figure Vanguard isn't that game anymore.
I don't want free rules. I'm happy to pay for them.
Easy army is a waste of time and space for me. It will only let me play the exact game points value in the book. I can't play a smaller game using any models I want like I can with the cards.
All in all, I was happy with the game and the KS. Mantic's resins are really good. I'm just going to go elsewhere for games though as I can't access all the rules without a massive cost.

Consider giving easy army another look, I think it's excellent.

You could even create warbands just to print out a set of the cards - i.e., set the point value to the maximum, add one of each unit, print it, and cut out the cards. Now you have a complete set. They won't look quite as fancy as the purchased versions, but voila: a set of cards. And as soon as errata are released and plugged into Easy Army, your cards will be current. My fancy-pants printed ones won't!

Skirmish tax is in full force but not any worse than GW prices, where Shadepire warbands are 25 bucks for what should be a 15 dollar Easy Build kit, evidenced fairly obviously with Stormcast and Blood Reavers Easy Build vs. Shadespire sets. Hell, GW even has a skirmish tax on army-scale unit boxes. Look at Fyreslayers, at 60 dollars for 10 plastic dwarves. I once wanted to break up some Fyreslayer boxes to play an Indie skirmish ruleset (One page Rules), and it's over 100 US for a box of Berzerkers and a box of Hearthguard, 15 models.

I certainly do balk at the Vanguard booster prices, though. At least if I want sci-fi skirmish, Warpath/Deadzone models are super cheap online (which doesn't help Vanguard price comparisons).

I've been playing around a bit with EasyArmy, and despite some minor complaints (specifically that some cards end up larger or smaller than standard size), it seems like a good solution. Consider me mollified.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Skirmish tax is in full force but not any worse than GW prices, where Shadepire warbands are 25 bucks for what should be a 15 dollar Easy Build kit, evidenced fairly obviously with Stormcast and Blood Reavers Easy Build vs. Shadespire sets.

Wow, final proof that people will complain even about probably the cheapest game using HIPS miniatures on the market. $25 is suddenly too much for a full faction of 3-9 HIPS models, many of which are character sculpts, a full play deck and an expansion deck thrown in for good measure? I see companies out there charging that much for just cards.

Shadespire is a boardgame is therefore mist of the time compared to other boardgames.

Comparing it to Vanguard is difficult as it has some TCG elements, eg you need all Shadespire Teams to have all generic Cards available for Deck building, which is the only way to customise your Team (if you are a hardcore player you even have to get some Teams twice to have the needed amount of copies for your Deck)

Going with AoS Skirmish (yes there are explizit small scale Skirmish rules for Mass Skirmish game) it depends on the faction, going from 40 if you get the core box stuff or 100+ if you get regular boxes

At the moment Mantic has nothing similar to Shadespire for a direct comparison and GW has nothing like Vanguard.

 pancakeonions wrote:

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
I was a KS backer, to the tune of $300+.
Looks like I'm going to have to spend £95 or so per extra faction just to get the rules for each faction. This sucks imo. I really wanted a Mantic model replacement for SoBH. I figure Vanguard isn't that game anymore.
I don't want free rules. I'm happy to pay for them.
Easy army is a waste of time and space for me. It will only let me play the exact game points value in the book. I can't play a smaller game using any models I want like I can with the cards.
All in all, I was happy with the game and the KS. Mantic's resins are really good. I'm just going to go elsewhere for games though as I can't access all the rules without a massive cost.

Consider giving easy army another look, I think it's excellent.

You could even create warbands just to print out a set of the cards - i.e., set the point value to the maximum, add one of each unit, print it, and cut out the cards. Now you have a complete set. They won't look quite as fancy as the purchased versions, but voila: a set of cards. And as soon as errata are released and plugged into Easy Army, your cards will be current. My fancy-pants printed ones won't!

Re Easyarmy
I've played around a little bit. Yes I think I can print out some cards from it. I'm not overly fussed about sizes. It's just the people I play with like character cards, not warhammer style army lists. The main reason I don't get any games of DZv2 now is that they removed the cards from DZv1 and turned it into an army list game.
They added them to Vanguard but made it unrealistic to all have sets of cards for each faction.

If I use easyarmy to do this, I feel like a freebie sponger who isn't helping to fund the game.

They make free stuff available as a form of advertising. You're not a sponge if you use their free products to enjoy the game and tell others you are enjoying the game.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Skirmish tax is in full force but not any worse than GW prices, where Shadepire warbands are 25 bucks for what should be a 15 dollar Easy Build kit, evidenced fairly obviously with Stormcast and Blood Reavers Easy Build vs. Shadespire sets.

Wow, final proof that people will complain even about probably the cheapest game using HIPS miniatures on the market. $25 is suddenly too much for a full faction of 3-9 HIPS models, many of which are character sculpts, a full play deck and an expansion deck thrown in for good measure? I see companies out there charging that much for just cards.

How is my complaint completely unjustified? While I should have clarified better, I was talking about the boxes where they put the Shadespire warbands reboxed as grey plastic easy build kits, removing the card decks. 25 bucks for the Stormcast trios from Shadespire, but the Soul War Stormcast trios that are Easy to Build kits in the first place are 15 for the same amount of unique character models. Same for the generic Bloodbound figures that were easy to build, vs. the reboxed Garrek's Reavers, the generic 15 dollar Blood Warriors vs the 25 dollar Magore's Fiends, and before any argument is made about the Fiends including a Flesh Hound, the 15 dollar Castigators include a Gryph hound.

That's all I meant.

Plus, look at the price to field a prospective Fyreslayer warband in AoS Skirmish. At the very least you are (likely) looking at a 60 dollar box for 10 rank and file guys of the same type to start with, plus 25 for a heroic figure. At least the figures for the Mantic Vanguard Dwarven force are varied and about 15 dollars cheaper, and individual Support models can be bought. Whereas if you want to add the same sort of a specialist figure or two for your AoS Fyreslayer warband, it's either another 50 dollar chunk for as little as 5 dwarves even if you are looking to add just 1 or 2 of them, or you go to bitz sellers on Ebay (which is arguably somewhat better than buying Vanguard Dwarf support figures, as Hearthguard and Berzerker singles go for less than 10 bucks versus 15 for Vanguard stuff even though the latter is resin which is traditionally always more expensive).

Just using in-Mantic game comparisons Vanguard is more expensive per-figure than KoW or even Deadzone or Warpath, but not as bad as nearly any other skirmish-level game out there (at least for Brand-name ones). Right now I am building a Dwarven warband for local games of One Page Fantasy (a free ruleset meant to be played mainly with GW figures, much like the way in how Kings of War started out), and the only way I can build a warband at a comparable price/size for that of an official Vanguard warband is through a combination of good Amazon deals and Ebay bitz-sellers.

Some of the Vanguard booster prices make me really cringe, such as the Basilean one being 40 bucks for three figures, whereas at least the Northern Alliance and Nightstalkers ones have a somewhat larger figure in the mix for the same price.

 AegisGrimm wrote:


How is my complaint completely unjustified? While I should have clarified better, I was talking about the boxes where they put the Shadespire warbands reboxed as grey plastic easy build kits, removing the card decks. 25 bucks for the Stormcast trios from Shadespire, but the Soul War Stormcast trios that are Easy to Build kits in the first place are 15 for the same amount of unique character models. Same for the generic Bloodbound figures that were easy to build, vs. the reboxed Garrek's Reavers, the generic 15 dollar Blood Warriors vs the 25 dollar Magore's Fiends, and before any argument is made about the Fiends including a Flesh Hound, the 15 dollar Castigators include a Gryph hound.

Ah, I see. ETB that used to be in Shadespire are more expensive than ETB that are standalone. That is indeed odd.

Regarding the Fyreslayers, they were in the first wave of AoS factions, common assumption is they're the last remnant of Kirby's vision of AoS prices. Sadly they did not get price cut like the Stormcast did, apart from the SC! box.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:


How is my complaint completely unjustified? While I should have clarified better, I was talking about the boxes where they put the Shadespire warbands reboxed as grey plastic easy build kits, removing the card decks. 25 bucks for the Stormcast trios from Shadespire, but the Soul War Stormcast trios that are Easy to Build kits in the first place are 15 for the same amount of unique character models. Same for the generic Bloodbound figures that were easy to build, vs. the reboxed Garrek's Reavers, the generic 15 dollar Blood Warriors vs the 25 dollar Magore's Fiends, and before any argument is made about the Fiends including a Flesh Hound, the 15 dollar Castigators include a Gryph hound.

Ah, I see. ETB that used to be in Shadespire are more expensive than ETB that are standalone. That is indeed odd.

Regarding the Fyreslayers, they were in the first wave of AoS factions, common assumption is they're the last remnant of Kirby's vision of AoS prices. Sadly they did not get price cut like the Stormcast did, apart from the SC! box.

Yeah, the Fyreslayers indeed have the worst value even within AoS.

The Vanguard lists are now up on Easy Army - and linked from the Free Rules section on the Mantic website.

The Auld Grump

Painted Nightstalker Terror (by Angel Giraldez)

Good reuse of the Nameless Goliath



KoW army deals are 20% off on the Mantic store until January 5th.

That's not bad at all.

But someone wake me up once all the large infantry has been switched over to resin. I want the fishmen faction eventually but not while Gigas are metal.

Terror looks (unexpectedly) really good, lots more going on there than unpainted shots suggest. Dig all them faces in addition to toothy maws and gribble aplenty.

New Goblins

GOBLIN FACTION

The full release of the goblin faction, complete with superb new resin models, a full warband set and metal reinforcements. The goblin launch will be similar in style to the Dwarf release and will include a whole host of sexy new greenskins (if goblins can actually be considered sexy).

The faction launch will introduce miniatures for new units – like the Banggit and Luggit – but also create a selection of unseen units, such as the Winggit, Snaggit and extremely exciting Mawpup Launcher – some of which you can see below.

Forces of nature Druid and Trident Realms “Toad rider “

TOAD RIDERRRRR

But really, all about that mawpup launcher - they are so smiley

Hope they go all out on that warband with all new sculpts. the dwarfs are kind of let down by having the old, terrible, plastics in there IMHO. (then again those dwarfs have always been divisive in a marmite sort of way and the gobbos, aside from a general softness to the sprues, aren't anywhere near as bad to begin with)

I pitched A mawbeast cannon earlier this year. Where's my cut?

New armylist PDF up on the website, includes new warband lists for a lot of the not-GW armylists. Now has Twilight Kin (dark elves), Rhordia (Empire), Brotherhood (Brettonians), Kingdoms of Men (generic humans), Salamanders (lizardment), Herd (Beastmen), Varanguar (Chaos Mortals), and Ratkin (skaven)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/drxs8vnxvrsm9lx/Vanguard%20abridged%20Warbands-dec31.pdf?dl=0

more Terraincrate further details tomorrow

That rockin' throne and gr-gr-grand piano hit my keys perfectly! Will be watching the news with interest!

Goblin Vanguard warband May release date