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 Bolognesus wrote:

Spoiler:

 Dysartes wrote:

 Bolognesus wrote:
Could you ask the mantic crew a few questions, please? (they seem to take their bl**dy time answering email atm )
- Will the Basilean army deal include any command bits? Are command bits going to be included in unit boxes as sold into retail (while apparently not being present in the BOGOF deals)?
- What material are the upgrade bits made out of? I''m talking command packs here, but also for example the basilean MaA crossbows. Metal or restic? Precisely which components will be in those packs? (pics would be nice, but just a simple list of components would get us by).
- I remember mantic stating, in the comments on update #66, that while they couldn't get the PDF's out to us on time they'd try to at least give us a peek at the lists in the books so we can decide what to get and what not. How is this coming? there's only about two weeks to get that survey sent in and I'd like at least a few days to mull over lists etc. I don't think anyone would mind something which looks sloppy, just stamp a big fat "Layout WIP" over the bunch of it; I can't for the life of me imagine the rules aren't finalized yet...
- The ogre named character, grokamarok. Same as the 'regular' hero we get? survey doesn't have it listed with an * so I'd say not but I don't see an option for the 'regular' character either so could go either way?

Managed to corner Stewart Gibbs and get answers to these, after prodding Ronnie about Q4 during the seminar. Not sure how happy you'll be with the answers.

1a, No. 1b, Apologies, I missed that question.
2, Upgrade kits are metal.
3, Both Stewart and Ronnie were prodded to make sure we get to see everything before the end of the survey - apparently there is quite a bit awaiting Golem to finish painting at the minute. We may get a Word doc version of the Basilean list to look at to jhudge your pledge.
4, The named Ogre is the one that the KS backers get as a "regular" hero. According to Stewart, the KS backers get a resin version, while the general release version will be restic.

Okay, thanks. I'll refrain from shooting the messenger
1a. Meh. Kinda missing the ball there, mantic... 1b Hmm shame, that was actually the one most likely to induce significant amounts of rage...
2. okay, figures. thanks. ...The Ogre bits too? that's going to see a lot of weighed-down bases for that musician. Oh well.
3. MAY see? Dang, that's disappointing - and rather sloppy on their part.
4. fair 'nuff. Won't say I like it but it's not too bad

On 3, Bologneseus, I'm putting it as a may as I didn't get a definite yes, Ronnie is aware that previews haven't been as timely as they should have been, and isn't that happy about it. Unfortunately, pretty much all their staff have spent the last three weeks packing & shipping Dreadball season 2 stuff, which hasn't helped with getting pictures online. Stewart did say he'd look into getting a Word doc online, but didn't say "it'll be up by Friday", for example - I don't want to be seen to be putting words into their mouths.

I'll get my pictures and seminar notes up tomorrow.

Some of the arms on the Basilean nuns look BAD. Also annoying that I won't be getting any command bits for the large Basilean army I ordered, and that I won't want those bits anyway because they're metal. So the Basileans have been Mantic'd right up. Ebay for them.

Pleasantly surprised by how nice the Orc chariot/fight wagon looks (I'm guessing that's the wagon shown). So I'll have that and the trolls for my Night Goblins at least.

Mummies look good too. And the werewolves look better than I expected - though I don't think I'll go with naked wolves!

 Taarnak wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:
the Mummies look amazing, the goblin Mincer looks ridiculously awesome, and the Werewolves look better than I thought

I thought the Mummies were average. But other than that I agree with what you've said here.

The Werewolves look much better now they the arms have been glued on in a somewhat logical position, the gaps filed, and a coat of paint has been applied. I might even get a few to (heavily) modify and use.

Some of the female troops had weirdly long arms. Not sure how that was allowed to get through.

~Eric

The mummies look okay. I won't be unhappy to get them as freebies, but I won't go out of my way to buy more. I'm glad my faith in the werewolves sculpt pics from earlier has come out. I'll just shave down the nipples and they'll be fine. I like that goblin chariot thing. Looks like I'll be swapping some trolls out for a couple more of them. I noticed the elongated arms on the girls as well as something weird going on with their oversized hands with elongated fingers. I suppose they can be cut down easily enough. I guess it's just Mantic's poor QC. Again, other than the arms they look okay, but not amazing. Same deal with the armoured infantry. No change to my opinion of the trolls.

 Dysartes wrote:

 Bolognesus wrote:

Spoiler:

 Dysartes wrote:

 Bolognesus wrote:
Could you ask the mantic crew a few questions, please? (they seem to take their bl**dy time answering email atm )
- Will the Basilean army deal include any command bits? Are command bits going to be included in unit boxes as sold into retail (while apparently not being present in the BOGOF deals)?
- What material are the upgrade bits made out of? I''m talking command packs here, but also for example the basilean MaA crossbows. Metal or restic? Precisely which components will be in those packs? (pics would be nice, but just a simple list of components would get us by).
- I remember mantic stating, in the comments on update #66, that while they couldn't get the PDF's out to us on time they'd try to at least give us a peek at the lists in the books so we can decide what to get and what not. How is this coming? there's only about two weeks to get that survey sent in and I'd like at least a few days to mull over lists etc. I don't think anyone would mind something which looks sloppy, just stamp a big fat "Layout WIP" over the bunch of it; I can't for the life of me imagine the rules aren't finalized yet...
- The ogre named character, grokamarok. Same as the 'regular' hero we get? survey doesn't have it listed with an * so I'd say not but I don't see an option for the 'regular' character either so could go either way?

Managed to corner Stewart Gibbs and get answers to these, after prodding Ronnie about Q4 during the seminar. Not sure how happy you'll be with the answers.

1a, No. 1b, Apologies, I missed that question.
2, Upgrade kits are metal.
3, Both Stewart and Ronnie were prodded to make sure we get to see everything before the end of the survey - apparently there is quite a bit awaiting Golem to finish painting at the minute. We may get a Word doc version of the Basilean list to look at to jhudge your pledge.
4, The named Ogre is the one that the KS backers get as a "regular" hero. According to Stewart, the KS backers get a resin version, while the general release version will be restic.

Okay, thanks. I'll refrain from shooting the messenger
1a. Meh. Kinda missing the ball there, mantic... 1b Hmm shame, that was actually the one most likely to induce significant amounts of rage...
2. okay, figures. thanks. ...The Ogre bits too? that's going to see a lot of weighed-down bases for that musician. Oh well.
3. MAY see? Dang, that's disappointing - and rather sloppy on their part.
4. fair 'nuff. Won't say I like it but it's not too bad

On 3, Bologneseus, I'm putting it as a may as I didn't get a definite yes, Ronnie is aware that previews haven't been as timely as they should have been, and isn't that happy about it. Unfortunately, pretty much all their staff have spent the last three weeks packing & shipping Dreadball season 2 stuff, which hasn't helped with getting pictures online. Stewart did say he'd look into getting a Word doc online, but didn't say "it'll be up by Friday", for example - I don't want to be seen to be putting words into their mouths.

I'll get my pictures and seminar notes up tomorrow.

Yeah, I figured something like that - it's just that since they'll obviously have the rules done by now, something as important as this, which would only take one guy a few hours to knock up on a desktop, should have *just* *been* *done* before that second survey went out. As much as I love mantic most of the time, some of these glitches are really pretty damn unprofessional, and make them much less reliable for us as consumers to spend a significant chunk of cash with...
Again, definately not intended to shoot the messenger

Seminar vid from today (KoW stuff starts about 48 minutes in):

This video is private...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I thought I mentioned it earlier, but apparently not -

A big THANK YOU to you guys who took the time to take and post images from the Mantic Open Day in this and the other threads.

Much appreciated!

My fault, try it now.

Just went back and looked over the photo's people have posted up. A bit disappointed with the Paladin's now, as they have huge monkey hands on them with exceedingly long digits. Was looking to do a nice unit of them for Greatswords, but it looks like that's not so much the go now.

I am a big supporter of Mantic, but going away from truescale is a big mistake. Heroic scale annoys the hell out of me, and it was one reason why I invested so heavily in the Kings of War undead line. To see it come back to these new sculpts (especially with the Basilean Sisters and their terrible out of proportion arms and hands) is really disappointing. They can be saved with the right amount of converting, but good luck finding appropriate sized arms/hands for the sisters.

I know Mantic likes to make a lot of value for people, but I would prefer quality to be a good standard to have as well.

So far it looks like my BOGOF choices have eliminated most of my previous decisions, and I am tentatively hoping the Men-At-Arms hold the same proportions as their older style miniatures (realistic sizes for body parts rather than goofy heroic ones). If so I am down for 120 of them, and the rest will likely be heroes, books and other addons.

Now I will have the $225 amount of free figures which I might see if I can't swap out with other people for things I want, otherwise they'll become bitz fodder. I am feeling I am getting less value out of this than I had at the beginning, as the freebies I am getting from the pledge really aren't worth all that much to me to be honest.

Riquende's video is for the session I was in - in fact, I think I was sat immediately behind him as he was filming.

Think the mummies look kind of cool (and nice they haven't just gone for the usual Boris Karloff 'covered in stained tissue paper' style), the barbarian dude looks kind of nice as well. Is he a special character for one of the other factions?

I have to say I really liked the mummies. Brilliant idea to make them into a more generic 'elite undead' looking unit, whilst still giving them enough of a bandaged look to be immediately identifiable as mummies if needed.

Oh, I dunno if this is a known fact, but Stew confimed that the Wight sculpts were originally commissioned as 2-handed Revenants, but they weren't happy with them so repurposed them as the Wights.

I'm a little late to the party (darned need to catch up on sleep), but I've finally finished sorting out my coverage of the Open Day.

There might be a couple of angles in there that haven't been shown yet.

What's the story on those Twilight Kin Dark Knights? Are they restic or metal? And are they mounted or on foot? If they're restic and on foot, I can easily see myself getting tons of those.

 Barzam wrote:
What's the story on those Twilight Kin Dark Knights? Are they restic or metal? And are they mounted or on foot? If they're restic and on foot, I can easily see myself getting tons of those.

They'll be restic, and mounted (I think Mantic are making a generic horse model that the two Elf cavalry units will share, presumably with different heads).

I did ask Stew about the future of the Twilight Kin and he said they have plans to revisit the range properly, but it's a low priority at the moment (due to kickstarter obligations). I pressed him on whether an updated range would match the aeshetic of those Knights and he said it was likely.

So at some point in the future (and I'm guessing that's well into 2014 at the earliest) you might see some Darksome Guard looking very similar to that concept art.

Great pics Dysartes. Some better angles and some new pics not shown in the other postings. I want a lot of those paladins...

Paladin Scale shot from Remy's website.



Still not looking good. Scale creep on a massive level, and the hands are far too massive, even for a miniature of that size. Compare it to the hand size of the skeleton (yes I realise it's a skeletons hand, but even so). The arm doesn't seem to be attached properly, so I am not 100% on the length of the arms, but again they look too long.

I am really hoping for Mantic to pull something out of the bag, but with each shot coming out from different sources, it's looking more and more bleak.

The skelly is about 1mm too small...and that's assuming its for a regular man-sized model and that the paladin isn't chosen for his size and skill-maybe the men chosen to the ranks of paladin in the Basillean army are of gigantic proportions. I, for one, think they're amazing. Hello great swords (and paladins, of course, in my Bas. Army).

Yeah...I think those Paladins look pretty great. I don't mind a little scale creep from basic troops to the elites. Hopefully the men-at-arms are similar size to the skeletons (eg, only a tiny bit bigger).

A bit small but then they don't need to necessarily be the same race unless the undead line has skeletal Angels as well. D&D has humanoid races which appear quite human but are not (Aasimar being a close example). I don't know the background story of the Baasilica faction so don't know if this is the case. Additionally, we are all a bit smaller without skin and muscle and ligaments holding us up to higher proportions than our mere bones would amount to. Take the cartilage out from between your vertebrae and you'd be substantially shorter as the each disc amounts to 3-45mm as they get larger the further down the spinal column you go.

Restic process shrinks that paladin by about 5-10% though, right?

 judgedoug wrote:
Restic process shrinks that paladin by about 5-10% though, right?

Yep, they've started to sculpt things slightly larger so that the Restic shrinks it to the right size.

Right so Remy's paladin sculpts is about 5-10% larger than the Skeleton next to it? So when it gets done in restic, the final piece will be only slightly larger than the skellie.

I still think the werewolves look pretty bad. Their forearms are thicker than their thighs, and they have exaggerated V-shaped torsos that would even make the Hulk feel insecure in his body image. Since only 1% of humans and 0% of wolves have the ability to achieve such a warped physique, it seems like an odd choice. And like Christopher Walken, these werewolves desperately wish they had tails. I never thought my army of plastic Confrontation Wolfen would be the healthy-body-image alternative.

The Sisters also look pretty bad, unless you go for the Boxing Helena army. I guess there might be some Perry or WGF arms that will fit them, so it's not all bad.

The mummies look enough like generic undead elites that I think they work quite well. The paladins look excellent, despite or maybe because of their heroic scale.

Have we seen the finalized plastic Men at Arms yet?

 Cyporiean wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
Restic process shrinks that paladin by about 5-10% though, right?

Yep, they've started to sculpt things slightly larger so that the Restic shrinks it to the right size.

Yes, they've been doing this for over a year now. They made the shrinkage mistake once with the stormrage veterans and have made sure not to repeat it.

Paladins look brilliant IMO, the nuns could be better, but they're not bad sculpts, either. Obviously no-one will be using the standard bearer arm since the sculpting on that is just plain terrible.. I don't understand how it's possible to even get forearm length wrong.. all you have to do is bend a piece of wire in half and use that as the the dolly to sculpt the arm on to make sure that the proportions are correct. Musculature is a trickier proposition, but proportions are not difficult when you're sculpting humans, there's a pretty obvious and easy to follow template in place that anyone working in a creative capacity should be more than familiar with... a fully bent forearm with a clenched fist is roughly in-line with the tip of the shoulder (well, slightly higher, but it's better to go under than over)... the sculptor seems to have followed some kind of different and completely wrong anatomical standard here whereby the entire upper arm (shoulder joint included) is shorter than the forearm alone without the hand. It's really not hard, you don't need to do life drawing, just looking at your own arm for a few minutes makes it quite easy to figure out the rough x-to-y proportions.

Again, it comes down to "sculpted by Remy" vs. "Not sculpted by Remy"... the Remy Baslieans (the angels, paladins, men at arms and lion hero) are gorgeous models. The rest, not so much. They're not bad sculpts, just average.

The Sisters also look pretty bad, unless you go for the Boxing Helena army. I guess there might be some Perry or WGF arms that will fit them, so it's not all bad.

If anyone has any good suggestions on this point let me know, I actually quite like the nuns other than the arms. The main problem would be getting hold of 2-handed flail arms that aren't overly massive, and have a command option in the same style.

Any ideas?

A bit small but then they don't need to necessarily be the same race unless the undead line has skeletal Angels as well.

This would be an insanely awesome set of miniatures to have on the table, I've loved the sheer creepiness/freakiness of that concept ever since it appeared on the simpsons.

 Fenriswulf wrote:
Paladin Scale shot from Remy's website.



Still not looking good. Scale creep on a massive level, and the hands are far too massive, even for a miniature of that size. Compare it to the hand size of the skeleton (yes I realise it's a skeletons hand, but even so). The arm doesn't seem to be attached properly, so I am not 100% on the length of the arms, but again they look too long.

I am really hoping for Mantic to pull something out of the bag, but with each shot coming out from different sources, it's looking more and more bleak.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to use that emoticon!

I think with the explanation of resin shrinkage it will probably turn out right.. the problem is that a lot of the skeletons on the market (especially the GW ones), which follow the 'Ghouls 'n' ghosts' style of having massive heads and hands that are bigger than the heads of humans (which are supposed to have flesh and muscles on top!)

Also, finally (and perhaps most importantly!), am I the only person who thinks that guy looks really great? Really looking forward to seeing what the rest of those guys look like..

Well, I am willing and hoping to be proven wrong. If they do indeed shrink, that will actually be a very good thing. I am still not so chuffed about the hands, but we'll see how they go.

I am hoping Mantic has some finalised versions up for show soon. Having to judge from 3rd party photo's is becoming a real pain.

 scarletsquig wrote:
If anyone has any good suggestions on this point let me know, I actually quite like the nuns other than the arms. The main problem would be getting hold of 2-handed flail arms that aren't overly massive, and have a command option in the same style.

Any ideas?

You could probably find some two-handed weapons that fit them from historicals somewhere. The rules probably just have piercing to represent the flails, so it isn't an issue IMO.

The Paladins look good to me. THen again, I like fully armored figures regardless or species/gender, so I am a bit biased. I'll be getting some when they hit retail. I also think the nuns look decent. I only glanced at them, but I didn't think they seemed that out of proportion.

The paladins will have lots of different uses since you can easily make them look much different with minor conversions and paint schemes. They could easily be used as revenants with two-handed weapons.

Well...submitted my survey - swapped out a whole bunch of BOGOFs for a pair of ogre starters. That will give me a great dual purpose army (panthers from the celestial riders will be my sabertusks).

decker_cky wrote:


Well...submitted my survey - swapped out a whole bunch of BOGOFs for a pair of ogre starters. That will give me a great dual purpose army (panthers from the celestial riders will be my sabertusks).

So we can swap out our BOGOFs for the new army deals? Because I might as well - if I swapped my Basileans BOGOFs for the Basilean army deal I'd wind up with basically the same stuff (minus 20 sisters, plus 10 sister riders - which I don't care because they're gak) but get a free chariot, for which I might be able to find a use.