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Seems like something you wouldn't so much want to bring to a pick-up game and try to get fly, but that could be pretty awesome for a custom campaign. Like the solo zombie campaign but for two or more players.

So, it'll be about another month until all of Mars Attacks has finished shipping.

DBX was supposed to ship by then, but I guess it'll be pushed back so the gap between MA and DBX will remain the same as originally intended - about 3 months IIRC?

Mantic now have the Contagion stuff and various bundles up for preorder.
http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/pre-order/deadzone.html

Also on the latest newsletter we appear to have the name for the next Deadzone Kickstarter, Deadzone Infestation with a tiny and largely gibberish image:

Looks like they found a lot of chatter about outbreaks, viruses, and pandemics, is that how they'd refer to Veer-Myn?

Also, I really hope they focus on hard plastic. I'm putting some of the zombies together right now and you can barely see the mold lines, and they take a few seconds to remove. If the peacekeepers, enforcers, and forgeguard are this good... much happiness. The plastic mix feels "right" this time around too. The men at arms I got in the crazy box were hard plastic but they seemed stiffer or more brittle or something, not restic but not ideal hard plastic. I can't tell the difference between my KoW zombie/ghoul parts and the new scifi zombies, it's good stuff. Almost wish I'd gotten a second bundle at this point

My only complaint about the zombies is that as modular as they are it's kind of an illusion, or at least it is without greenstuff. One torso has a single head option without extensive conversion leaving 6 torsos, and some of the heads seem shoehorned onto specific torsos given how they mount. Easily fixable, I mean I did the old Z-corp kitbash no problem, these just aren't as out-of-the-box-no-cutting-putty-skills-accessible as I thought they might be. Still a solid B+ or A kit, but the modularity stuff kind of steals the + off the A for me.

Someone needs to teach Mantic about ball joints. I got an email from Sarah asking me to specify which of my Plague Stage 2 is missing it's head. and which Enforcer legs were miscast. This pissed me off rather a lot, since my missing parts form went in about 2 weeks ago now. I replied back tersely to the effect that I don't have the time nor inclination at this point to go burrowing through all that restic gak to push-fit each figure together in order to figure out exactly which one is missing/which sets of arms go with which head. I can make any of the heads work. I also mentioned I was on the verge of setting the lot of it on fire and putting the result on youtube when I received it. (which was completely true.)

So anyway - the point of my rant is that even on the Restic models, they need to start using ball joints instead of L-joins. They won't of course, because Mantic as a miniature producing company seems to have a learning disability and an inability to see the bleeding obvious.

 Azazelx wrote:
Someone needs to teach Mantic about ball joints. I got an email from Sarah asking me to specify which of my Plague Stage 2 is missing it's head. and which Enforcer legs were miscast. This pissed me off rather a lot, since my missing parts form went in about 2 weeks ago now. I replied back tersely to the effect that I don't have the time nor inclination at this point to go burrowing through all that restic gak to push-fit each figure together in order to figure out exactly which one is missing/which sets of arms go with which head. I can make any of the heads work. I also mentioned I was on the verge of setting the lot of it on fire and putting the result on youtube when I received it. (which was completely true.)

So anyway - the point of my rant is that even on the Restic models, they need to start using ball joints instead of L-joins. They won't of course, because Mantic as a miniature producing company seems to have a learning disability and an inability to see the bleeding obvious.

That's the spirit, give em hell! I didn't even bother checking wave two, just put the box away with the realisation that I just don't care what's in it.

I had no problems assembling mine

so....

"If you backers have any issues then here's a few really clear pictures with labels so you can identify anything that might be missing and we'll fix it"

"I'm missing a part"

"Which part?"

"HOW DARE YOU ASK ME TO TAKE A LOOK AT THE INFORMATION YOU ALREADY PROVIDED US TO SOLVE THIS EXACT TYPE OF ISSUE?! THAT WILL DEFINITELY TAKE ME 5 MINUTES, POSSIBLY ALMOST 10! I ALREADY TOLD YOU: IT'S A PART! THE KIND THAT FITS ON ANOTHER PART! THAT'S IT, I'M DONE! I'M BURNING ALL THE REST OF IT!"

Sounds reasonable.

You left out the part where this is the fifth KS he felt burned him.

I completely sympathize with not wanting to trawl through all the restic. I haven't even checked all my Relic Knights for missing parts yet. Not everybody has the time to put everything together immediately, or the space to leave all the bits in neat piles on a table for weeks, or the patience to either re-bag everything in new zip loc bags or to throw it all together and then re-sort everything when you want to build them.

You cut open the bag, you lay the parts in the bag on the desk, you check it against the labeled photo provided at Mission Control, you do a quick once over for irreparable casting issues, you jot down any problems you find, you put the bits back in the bag and the bag back in the box.

Takes 5 minutes a bag at most, no more space than you use to build and paint your minis, and can be spread out over a week with a large order. Not feeling the sympathy.

 Kalamadea wrote:
so....

"If you backers have any issues then here's a few really clear pictures with labels so you can identify anything that might be missing and we'll fix it"
"I'm missing a part"
"Which part?"
"HOW DARE YOU ASK ME TO TAKE A LOOK AT THE INFORMATION YOU ALREADY PROVIDED US TO SOLVE THIS EXACT TYPE OF ISSUE?! THAT WILL DEFINITELY TAKE ME 5 MINUTES, POSSIBLY ALMOST 10! I ALREADY TOLD YOU: IT'S A PART! THE KIND THAT FITS ON ANOTHER PART! THAT'S IT, I'M DONE! I'M BURNING ALL THE REST OF IT!"

Sounds reasonable.

It was stuff not included in those pictures. The information was in an old KS update and not linked from their website or anywhere. You're also conflating the original issue with the more recent one.
Solution to the second one: just send me two torsos and any stage 2 head and I'll fething make them fit. I'm also well fething over wasting time on their gakky lack of QA. I already spent more time on going through each unlabelled baggie of gak restic than the models deserve.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

NTRabbit wrote:
You cut open the bag, you lay the parts in the bag on the desk, you check it against the labeled photo provided at Mission Control, you do a quick once over for irreparable casting issues, you jot down any problems you find, you put the bits back in the bag and the bag back in the box.
Takes 5 minutes a bag at most, no more space than you use to build and paint your minis, and can be spread out over a week with a large order. Not feeling the sympathy.

I've already done that, and noted down what was missing (it took well over an hour). I'm just not interested in going through the pile of gak to find the exact two bags (I have more than 1 of each) and then playing push-fit for 20 minutes to find the exact head from the exact model when I can just make any appropriate head or torsos fit. Now they got back to me with "which of the models is missing the head?" when - guess what, braniac? The heads on mission control all look the fething same and aren't individually labelled. I got a new pair of pictures with the expectation that I was going to go through them again and play push-fit so I could see which individual almost-identical figure parts are miscast.


Oh yeah, it also took them almost 2 weeks to get back to me to ask "which tiny head and legs exactly?"

I should also point out that I'm not feeling charitable to spending the time going through all of their gak, and a large part of my "set this gak on fire" rage is not only due to the large number of unlabelled baggies or the relatively small number of miscast and missing figures (there were also a few of those), but also because they didn't even add my three expansion rulebooks to the invoice, unsurprisingly resulting in no rulebooks.

I'm just over their inability to pack things competently. Every fething order from them I've ever gotten had required fixing up, often over weeks turning into months of back and forth before I've finally got it all properly in hand. With this in mind, my patience with Mantic has gotten much smaller.

Basically, if they hadn't fethed up on sending me my rulebooks, I'd be much more ambivalent towards the rest of it. And I'm sure I would have even played a game of DZ instead of putting it all in a couple of boxes in the shed in disgust. As it happens, the whole thing just pisses me off, and I want it to be over ASAP so I can forget it exists for awhile. Much like Sedition Wars is still put away.

NTRabbit wrote:
You cut open the bag, you lay the parts in the bag on the desk, you check it against the labeled photo provided at Mission Control, you do a quick once over for irreparable casting issues, you jot down any problems you find, you put the bits back in the bag and the bag back in the box.

Takes 5 minutes a bag at most, no more space than you use to build and paint your minis, and can be spread out over a week with a large order. Not feeling the sympathy.

Not everything listed on the Mission Control page has a link to pictures.

Please don't be unpleasant to CS staff. They're rarely associated with the cause of your problem, and are only trying to help and get things right for you.

It just helps no one, in the end.

Can we be unpleasant to QA staff instead?

I thought Mantic just had three employees and a dog..?

Joyboozer wrote:
Can we be unpleasant to QA staff instead?

Go for it. You think they get smiled at for thing going wrong?

 sukura636 wrote:

Joyboozer wrote:
Can we be unpleasant to QA staff instead?

Go for it. You think they get smiled at for thing going wrong?

I'm not sure, but it's not working.

So, has anyone seen Scarlet Squig lately? Is he all right?

Man. I don't get some folks. I really had no problem identifying missing or bad parts and getting it sorted. It's not rocket surgery.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
So, has anyone seen Scarlet Squig lately? Is he all right?

I don't know, but I assumed that he's spending more time on the official playtesting group, now that he's a member. He may be busy conversing more directly with Mantic staff and getting the lowdown on what's actually happening at Mantic HQ, rather than speculating about it like we do here.

That's what I'd expect to happen if Mantic hired him full-on, anyway. The playtest group seems like a sort of "foot in the door" / unpaid internship sort of thing, and those generally vary quite a bit in terms of how much the official crew participate with the volunteers. If he's lucky, he's making concrete changes to the Deadzone Rebs deck and debating with Ronnie about what will be on the Veer-myn hard plastic sprue.

It's a loss for us if he's moved on to better things, but good luck to him.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
You left out the part where this is the fifth KS he felt burned him.

Being asked to identify which items are miscast does not seem too heavy of a burden to place on those who got mispacks/miscasts.

NTRabbit wrote:
You cut open the bag, you lay the parts in the bag on the desk, you check it against the labeled photo provided at Mission Control, you do a quick once over for irreparable casting issues, you jot down any problems you find, you put the bits back in the bag and the bag back in the box.

Takes 5 minutes a bag at most, no more space than you use to build and paint your minis, and can be spread out over a week with a large order. Not feeling the sympathy.

Mantic need to get their QC to the point where this isn't necessary. It is bizarre that this quality and level of customer service is considered ok.

There is no company on Earth today that has good enough QC that I won't open and inspect whatever it is I have bought from them to ensure everything is intact and present, and then email or phone if something is wrong.

Not a single company, not even Samsung.

How many times in a row have those companies sent both you missing and defective items?

Joyboozer wrote:
How many times in a row have those companies sent both you missing and defective items?

Games Workshop 4 times in 9 purchases, all from finecast

Amazon 2 times in about 14 orders, one was a bluray case that was shattered from being improperly packed with a heavy book, one was a calendar that arrived 3 weeks later and water logged because someone left it on the Heathrow tarmac in an open topped crate in a snow storm

Mantic 1 time in about 11 orders/KS shipments, which was the 4 or 5 missing bits in shipment 1

Sony-Ericsson 1 time in 5 purchases, a dodgy phone

Samsung 0 times from 1 purchase

Spartan Games 0 times from maybe 25 purchases, lost count

I still check all of them, because that's what you're supposed to do if you want to ensure you're not the 1 in 5, or 1 in 5 million, or 1 in 50 million who was on the receiving end of a glitch, shipping damage, human error. It's not rocket surgery, it's common sense, and it takes hardly any time or effort to do. Insisting on QC so perfect you never need to check your items before you'll purchase from a company is setting an impossible standard that no company can ever meet.

NTRabbit wrote:
There is no company on Earth today that has good enough QC that I won't open and inspect whatever it is I have bought from them to ensure everything is intact and present, and then email or phone if something is wrong.

Not a single company, not even Samsung.

So when was the last time Samsung told you to open the phone and tell them which chip burned out?

 lord_blackfang wrote:


So when was the last time Samsung told you to open the phone and tell them which chip burned out?

Because looking at your plastic figures and counting the parts is the same thing.

If you wanted to make an actual comparison, you would be comparing the contents of your phone box against the image in the manual, looking for the battery, power cords and other accesories, which is also really simple to do, and I imagine if you contacted Samsung and said "There's a cable missing from my box" and they replied "Which cable?", the wrong answer would be "How dare you question me this is terrible customer service you should know better", while the right answer would be "data cable with the ID#XXXX-X in the manual".

This gak is only hard if you want something to complain about.

Or just not up to the standard I expect when choosing what product to purchase. I don't have to buy Mantic and as a result of the constant errors and poor quality unmatched by any other company I've purchased from, I've stopped. No other product I buy has had a 100 percent error rate. Seriously, why would I continue to buy a product from them? Everything else about Mantic is great, just not the product you end up with.