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Those Abyssal Dwarf look nice and detailed, it will be interesting to see how much of that detail makes it through the casting process. Here's hoping for some new Imperial/Clan Dwarf sculpts to shove in front of the nasty looking oldies.

Well... thanks for that random reminder that Phil Foglio is one of the great cancers of geekdom.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Well... thanks for that random reminder that Phil Foglio is one of the great cancers of geekdom.

Who?

MtG original artist/ comic book dude.

I'm also unsure how his name is somehow tied to Kings of War or what heinous acts he's been up to.
Always seemed like a chill dude whenever I've seen him.

Now you've got my curiosity...

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Well... thanks for that random reminder that Phil Foglio is one of the great cancers of geekdom.

For those puzzled by the above remark, it is in response to Cygnnus earlier post, which links to Girl Genius, the webcomic by Phil and Kaja Foglio. Phil also drew "What's New with Phil and Dixie" for Dragon Magazine back in the 80's.

As for lord blackfang's seeming animosity towards Mr. Foglio, he'll need to explain that himself.

First time I've ever heard anything really negative about him, let alone describe him as a "great cancer of geekdom". He's an indy/freelance artist that's done art for everything from Magic:TG art to D&D comic strips in Dragon Magazine to actual comics to porn comics. He's got a pretty distinctive art style and is fairly prolific. Is it just the fact that he'll do art for anybody that pays him? Or because his actual writing ability/jokes are fairly mediocre?

The KoW RPG KS is live this is being run under licence by Red Scar rather than Mantic themselves.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1178384921/kings-of-war-the-roleplaying-game/description

I'm interested for the new background content. I thought C L Werner was writing a novel for KoW, too. Hopefully that will become available as an add on.


Oh, and Mantica now wants to be called Pannithor? Okay.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Oh, and Mantica now wants to be called Pannithor? Okay.

Mantica is a small part of Pannithor, which is the ... planet?



IDK

Re: the RPG, I'd be interested in being a part of a 5E version

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I'm interested for the new background content. I thought C L Werner was writing a novel for KoW, too. Hopefully that will become available as an add on.


Oh, and Mantica now wants to be called Pannithor? Okay.

He's writing a trilogy, but not as part of the RPG KS.

Awesome! Although I suppose it means I have to wait longer.


Do you have a second Adventure Game Book planned along the lines of Rise of the Shadow King?

I've asked Winged Hussar to consider it.

 mattjgilbert wrote:
I've asked Winged Hussar to consider it.

Another site I frequent found it by accident because they're not on the mailing list, and were expecting to get a backer message from the Mantic KS projects they backed in the past. Waiting until the final week/72 hours before pushing out a mail through the other projects, or not going to do that at all?

Huh, I could have sworn that they were planning on using 2D20 for the system, and now they are saying TriStat.

The Auld Grump

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
Huh, I could have sworn that they were planning on using 2D20 for the system, and now they are saying TriStat.

The Auld Grump

Ya, the were when originally announced but then switched systems.

Not overly excited by TriStat, to be honest. (Enough so that unless something wonderful shows up, I am skipping this KS.)

The Auld Grump

Well the new Mantic webstore had its first real test today with the preorder release of Hellboy expansion The Wild Hunt and LE resin Nimue

people have spent hours trying to buy them, often unsuccessfully

and worse yet it's now showing (& charging) the numerical $ prices but in £ for some customers

I thought there would some problems because any website never performs as well as the site builder promises but this seems worse than I expected

(especially the overcharging which a fair few on Facebook now think is Mantic gouging as the stuff proving very popular... it's not as they're already trying to get in contact with people reporting this issue to sort out refunds but not everybody is going to read that far down in the comments)

Edit: hopefully Mantic will be able to get some money back from the website designer as they seem to have overpromised and underdelivered

Ah, that's too bad to hear. Hopefully they get it sorted. People would be well advised not to attribute to malice what can be explained by ineptitude (the website designer).

I don't think it's fair to blame the web designer. Website backends are notoriously poorly optimized as they really don't need to be (as they are meant to just be given more server resources) and most web people aren't real backend devs so they only deal with the front end that runs on the clients box (which isn't ever the issue with these stores). Those that are capable of full stack and good at optimization end up working for much later companies or more cloud tech startups. So whoever is Matic's webguy is just using some off the self backend as it would cost mantic well over 6 figures to roll their own.

What's really causing the issue is lack of spending money on a more powerful server or more processing power if in AWS/Azure. Companies Mantic's size really don't want to spend a few thousand a month on servers just for a release so they don't and this happens. It's also hard to get a good engineer that can properly load test a site to see how much traffic it can handle and sales people at the hosting company probably told Mantic their $100 a month plan could cover the total number of expected people (which is could) but not all of them showing up in the same 10 minutes.

They again managed to lose every download in my library - I have to say that people should not buy Mantic digital products - this is not the first time that they managed to lose my account.

BIG thumbs down.

The Auld Grump - and I say this as somebody that loves Mantic games.

Tough to see someone like Auld having this trouble as they are obviously a dyed in the wool supporter. Just frustrating all around as they have been a paragon of strength in the "other than the 100 pound gorilla" option in the marketplace when it comes to fantasy rank and flank and somewhat in the sci-fi skirmish arena as well.

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
They again managed to lose every download in my library - I have to say that people should not buy Mantic digital products - this is not the first time that they managed to lose my account.

BIG thumbs down.

The Auld Grump - and I say this as somebody that loves Mantic games.

I have a few Mantic Digital products I've purchased over the years. I have no idea where a link to these even is on the new website. Mind you, I think most are now out of date or will be by December.

Mind you, I bought CoK19 and that had about as much shelf life as a GW book.

The CoK books have all by definition only had a shelf life of 1 year, being advertised as annual updates with releases of '17, '18, and 19'

Just accept Mantic Games is a cheap GW, and you'll be fine.

at least the Mantic shop saves your cart after switching currency's

 Sarouan wrote:
Just accept Mantic Games is a cheap GW, and you'll be fine.

A cheaper GW with better rulesets, Sounds good enough for me

dyndraig wrote:

 Sarouan wrote:
Just accept Mantic Games is a cheap GW, and you'll be fine.

A cheaper GW with better rulesets, Sounds good enough for me

QFT!

Y'all see this?



Love it myself, tho I'm hoping this is the only hit to Double 1's and we don't get a double nerf.

That's awesome!

I realize people like the drama of potential double 1's, but it's too often the decider in a close game IMO.

This is a good compromise. It's still a big boon to have a unit survive against the odds, but you're still guaranteed something for grinding it down above it's whole routing value.

 Gimgamgoo wrote:

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
They again managed to lose every download in my library - I have to say that people should not buy Mantic digital products - this is not the first time that they managed to lose my account.

BIG thumbs down.

The Auld Grump - and I say this as somebody that loves Mantic games.

I have a few Mantic Digital products I've purchased over the years. I have no idea where a link to these even is on the new website. Mind you, I think most are now out of date or will be by December.

Mind you, I bought CoK19 and that had about as much shelf life as a GW book.

Though, given that CoK is a yearly update... it is kind of excusable. (Remember when Mordheim was supposed to get yearly updates, and did... once?)


***

Mantic dropped all of my old orders into Dropbox for me - it appears that the root of the problem - both times - is that I was registered on Mantic Digital via Kickstarter - and their service provider did not supply the names and e-mails of those that came in from Kickstarter when Mantic took it in house. (I gather legal action of some flavor was involved in the process.)

So as far as their new system was concerned, I was a brand new member. as opposed to having been there since the KS for the first edition of Kings of War. So their host dropped me the first time because they had not bothered storing all of the customer info?

Fortunately, I am an e-mail pack rat, and had order numbers for about 80% of the missing files.

A bad habit that gets reinforced by the number of times it turns out to have been a good habit....

The Auld Grump

 Boss Salvage wrote:

dyndraig wrote:

 Sarouan wrote:
Just accept Mantic Games is a cheap GW, and you'll be fine.

A cheaper GW with better rulesets, Sounds good enough for me

QFT!

Y'all see this?



Love it myself, tho I'm hoping this is the only hit to Double 1's and we don't get a double nerf.

Yes, a special rule made for a very specific case that happens not that often in game, just because of the drama some players like to make a bigger deal of it on the Internet.

Doesn't sound like a better ruleset to me. Actually, it really sounds like what GW would have done for WFB in the past. Thanks for this series of quotes, indeed, I appreciate the irony here.