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Yeah, I'm not too fussed by the Asterian fluff, it adds a bit of character if there's a risk to the operator (otherwise, playing them in-character you'd not care about any kind of defence as there's always another drone available).

It also makes far more sense than sending your small pool of combat-capable citizens into battle with cardboard armour and a gun you can throw further than it can shoot....

Just to confirm - everyone that's out of the World Cup gets the 25% discount, not just the US! It's just more time-limited than the 20% one, and you don't get the June-only free Deadzone accessory sprue.

Shame I'm not in the market to acquire a truckload more models, otherwise I'd have been on the Bloodmire Legion for £75 in a flash! One of the stronger arguments for PVC I've seen, if they can still turn a profit on this:

http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/kings-of-war/undead/product/the-bloodmire-legion-179-figures.html

Aww, no sprue for me? Thats ok, i've got like a bajillion of those anyway. I just hope they charged my card right, i may still send them an email so they can try to figure out what's going on with that so they don't piss off too many customers.

As to that big army box, the revenants, skeletons, ghouls, and zombies are for sure hard plastic. So 140 o the models in the box are hard plastic, leaving the mummies, werewolves, and cavalry as restic (i think). The characters at top should be metal and i know the catapults are hard plastic too.

 GrimDork wrote:
Aww, no sprue for me? Thats ok, i've got like a bajillion of those anyway. I just hope they charged my card right, i may still send them an email so they can try to figure out what's going on with that so they don't piss off too many customers.

As to that big army box, the revenants, skeletons, ghouls, and zombies are for sure hard plastic. So 140 o the models in the box are hard plastic, leaving the mummies, werewolves, and cavalry as restic (i think). The characters at top should be metal and i know the catapults are hard plastic too.

I thought Ilona was restic:?

I was going to register on the Mantic store but apparently my country doesn't exist.

Oh, well maybe she is restic then, i'm not as familiar with that character. Still all of the more basic infantry and warmachines are plastic, which is a lot better of a prospect than the entire box being restic, ehh?

Shes restic

http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/kings-of-war/undead/product/undead-vampiress-lady-ilona-1-figure.html

Found an interesting blog post, by a Brazilian who went to visit Mantic:

http://paintingfrog.wordpress.com/2014/07/03/visiting-britains-lead-belt-mantic-games/

Should hopefully give some better insight into the actual size of the company since you do still see a lot of "Mantic doesn't need the KS money" comments being posted.

Neat article!

I could care less about how much Mantic uses KS, or not.

I just want to Mantic to up their game in terms of concept art to miniature, QC and, of course, more 'Hard Plastic'!

 Paradigm wrote:
Yeah, I'm not too fussed by the Asterian fluff, it adds a bit of character if there's a risk to the operator (otherwise, playing them in-character you'd not care about any kind of defence as there's always another drone available).

Thinking in Logical terms, it also means that Cyphers can take part in the Deadzone campaign fully, merely by giving them a rule to reroll their injury/death results.

But, for the record so that everyone knows just what exactly the deal is.

Only four of his ten Cyphers had returned, another was severly damaged. Joshan Go had perished through the shock of disassociation. Preliminary reports suggested two others might never be fit for Cypher work again."

So, in other words. The use of remote controlled Cypher suits have basically decreased casualties by 50%. - And that's if you count the 'might never' as a full casualty.

It all seems pretty fair to me.

Even with an overload cutout circuit or something similar, the depth of control involved will leave a lasting scar on the individual in other ways. I imagine there's a lot of doing evil for the greater good kind of thing that tends to wear on the 'pilots'.

It is still 'bad science' and doesn't make a lot of sense.

But hey, at least the miniatures look good - for now!

 Alpharius wrote:
It is still 'bad science' and doesn't make a lot of sense.

But hey, at least the miniatures look good - for now!

Good thing it's science fiction and not science then.

It makes a helluva lot more sense than the similar technology and concepts found in Pacific Rim...

 Compel wrote:
It makes a helluva lot more sense than the similar technology and concepts found in Pacific Rim...

Don't slate Pacific Rim While it may be a bit thin on plot, giant stompy robots facing off against giant alien monsters from another planet is always a WIN in my book lol.

On topic, my brother had considered using the Asterians as Wraithguard for a 40k Iyanden army. After all, who says all Bonesingers have to have the same style?

 pretre wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
It is still 'bad science' and doesn't make a lot of sense.

But hey, at least the miniatures look good - for now!

Good thing it's science fiction and not science then.

Exactly. To be bad science, we'd have to know how transferring a consciousness works. At this time we don't know if it's even possible, and thus we have no ideas of what drawbacks may exist with this hypothetical process.

The Cyphers are good science-fiction. They're an outgrowth of an existing technology we know exists and works (drones) taken to an extreme progression with unknown processes. The reasons to use the technology versus not using the technology make sense; it's a compromise between complete safety ("true" drones) and complete risk (sending in the warriors themselves) and that has a ring of truth to it. Nothing is perfect, but there are certainly options that are better than others. For special forces missions (i.e. - anything in DeadZone, really), the leaders of a given theater obviously value the objective highly. If you have that high value of an objective, you send the most capable force you have at your disposal. If Cyphers are more capable than "true" drones, you send the Cyphers regardless of the risk to personnel.

This also introduces an interesting question. Can Cyphers be deployed as drones controlled remotely via more mundane methods as well as "piloted"? While less effective than the piloted version, that would make far more sense for the mass-battle scenario where your objectives are not as clearly defined. Once a high-value target becomes identified, having the Cypher team assume direct control </Mass Effect 2 reference> to carry out that limited mission in the scope of the battlefield (i.e. - a short-term stat boost) would be most interesting indeed.

I always thought it would have been better for the eldar to do something similar. If the soulstones on wraith units were encased in the super tough wraithbone, they'd "download" their consciousness into the wraithunits whose shells could be destroyed but leave the more "valuable" soulstones in the vast majority of cases still intact and ready to extract (ala geneseed for space marines). The eldar consciousness would then be transferred back into their bodies if the stones were recovered intact. The actual "death" rate would be likely lower than sending in hordes of lightly armed and armored civilians in any case. It would also open the door for tragic massive galleries of comatose eldar kept alive in perpetuity just in case their soulstones were recovered from a battlefield loss centuries or eons later. I don't like the asterian models at all but I prefer their fluff a bit more than that of the eldar in this limited sense.

I believe, from fluff, the Cyphers have a rudimentary AI system, to prevent the Phantom Menace problem.

Er, OK - for the pedantic nit pickers, it is still bad science in a science-fiction setting! Or, in other words, bad SF.

I'm really liking the look of the Asterians though, so I hope they transfer to PVC well...

 Alpharius wrote:
Er, OK - for the pedantic nit pickers, it is still bad science in a science-fiction setting! Or, in other words, bad SF.

I'm really liking the look of the Asterians though, so I hope they transfer to PVC well...

Fair enough, but please elaborate on why you feel it's bad science fiction. What part of it breaks from the setting or seems "too implausible" (allowing that we're talking about a setting where interstellar travel is possible, an ancient mutating plague is overrunning planets and all the other "standard" sci-fi tropes)? Not trying to argue, I'm genuinely curious as to how you arrived at this opinion from the same set of data as perhaps there's some nugget of information I've overlooked.

As far as bad science goes, at least they're not using doggerel like "reverse the polarity of the quantum flux capacitors to re-seal the hole in the space-time continuum."

No, no, everyone knows you 'reverse the polarity of the neutron flow!'

 Paradigm wrote:
No, no, everyone knows you 'reverse the polarity of the neutron flow!'

You rang?

On topic, however, I can feel the pressure of waiting starting to increase. I want my stuff!

And don't cross the streams....that would be very bad.

I did the kesla run in 12 parsecs...

 sukura636 wrote:
I did the kesla run in 12 parsecs...

Ah, my least favourite line in Star Wars! I mean, the Parsec is a unit of distance, not time, so that's like saying 'I can run from here to Texas in 12 miles!'

Oh, but of course, this is not the plot hole we're looking for...

 agnosto wrote:
And don't cross the streams....that would be very bad.

That's a big twinkie....


Anyone who says Ghostbusters is bad science fiction deserves to be shot.

 Paradigm wrote:

 sukura636 wrote:
I did the kesla run in 12 parsecs...

Ah, my least favourite line in Star Wars! I mean, the Parsec is a unit of distance, not time, so that's like saying 'I can run from here to Texas in 12 miles!'

Oh, but of course, this is not the plot hole we're looking for...

Or maybe Han knows a secret shortcut?

So, back on topic now, everyone, please?

Thanks!

 Paradigm wrote:

 sukura636 wrote:
I did the kesla run in 12 parsecs...

Ah, my least favourite line in Star Wars! I mean, the Parsec is a unit of distance, not time, so that's like saying 'I can run from here to Texas in 12 miles!'

Oh, but of course, this is not the plot hole we're looking for...

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kessel_Run

The Kessel Run was one of the most heavily used smuggling routes in the Galactic Empire. Han Solo claimed that his Millennium Falcon "made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs". A parsec is a unit of distance, not time. Solo was not referring directly to his ship's speed when he made this claim. Instead, he was referring to the shorter route he was able to travel by skirting the nearby Maw black hole cluster, thus making the run in under the standard distance. By moving closer to the black holes, Solo managed to cut the distance down to about 11.5 parsecs. The smuggler BoShek actually beat Solo's record in his ship, Infinity, but without cargo to weigh him down. A few months later, Han Solo beat both his own and BoShek's records in a run he made with Luke Skywalker.