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There is the issue of sculptor availability, I had a list of sculptors I wanted to hire for EFT's Kickstarter, but kept getting 'Busy till at least July' responses.

Yeah, it would be good if they were able to save some money up and get some good designs/sculpts up front. If they are going to go heavy on one specific faction for other kickstarters, perhaps that's a good time to get one or two specific sculptors to work on that range alone, and have an art director ensure that the work matches up to any and all concepts they have on hand.

The extra cost for a really good sculptor will be a trivial price if what they create sells well and is in demand for a long time. As RiTides said, the majority cost is in the tooling. Why pay to tool something sub-par, when for the same price you can have something outstanding instead?

IMO the CAD sculpts (or whatever it's called when they do it on the computer) are really stunning. I strongly feel they should move more down the digital lane and they can then say get a 3D printing machine for examples/tests and what not.

I guess so much of it comes down to conception.. there have been some models released over the years that almost make me physically sick to look at (.. going slightly OTT ), yet I've seen many other people happily shunting them around a tabletop, spend an unhealthy amount of hours painting them etc.

I suppose the crunch point is 'would I hand over money for them'? Under normal circumstances that won't be an issue - the model just gets left on the shelf. However, the KS raises problems where you have that disconnect with the final product (and people pledging a lot of money based on concept art) - all of our opinion's about what is good are different, some have more of a sense of expectation (I won't say 'higher' or 'unreasonable'). It's not always going to hit 10 out of 10.

Personally I'd probably hand over money for about half of the stuff that's come out so far. I think some of it looks ace, some isn't terribly well realised, and some just doesn't appeal. At least from this perspective it's good that Mantic have left some manoeuvrability with people's pledges, and also seem willing to change concepts of some things.

 Alpharius wrote:
Ugh.

my thoughts exactly..

Handbags at dawn guys?!

I agree that there's a lot of top-notch sculptors out there who aren't under contract to anyone. Tre', Jody, Stephane Simon, Andy Foster, Kev White... (and I'd love to see some work offered to Kev Adams when he's well enough to work again!)

If Bob Naismith did the fantasy ghouls, he's shown that he can produce top-quality stuff in the Mantic scale. (I think those are Bob's). Mark Copplestone is still working, and does some great truescale work that would perfectly fit the Rebs or the Corporation.

I realise a lot of these guys now own their own small companies, but any of them who also do work-for-hire would result in some really kick-arse figures for Mantic. Just get the sculpts done before starting a campaign.

I'd pay handsomely for Tre Manor-produced figures for Mantic (especially plastics)

Same. Bob Naismith did the original designs for the Battle Nuns (now Basilean Sisters) and they look damn ace. If they had of only followed through with that instead. Seems like they dropped Bob and went for some other sculptor, though for the life of me I can't understand why.

 Fenriswulf wrote:
Same. Bob Naismith did the original designs for the Battle Nuns (now Basilean Sisters) and they look damn ace. If they had of only followed through with that instead. Seems like they dropped Bob and went for some other sculptor, though for the life of me I can't understand why.

Are there pics of the original Basilean Sisters from Bob?

The original series of concept sketches were by Bob. As can be seen here. The final concept that they went with was by Heath Foley. Not sure who sculpted them.

Quite a lot on this blog post:
http://bitzkrieg.net/archive/1334

Oh, wow. I remember those now. I much prefer the Heath Foley sketches. The original Battle Nuns were cliched garbage. Reminds me of the terrible Sisters of Sigmar from Mordheim.

Hi, long time lurker and first time poster!

I backed this at 175 and am currently thinking of upping it to 225 with extras, does anyone know if this would I'd get the 225 bracket freebies, such as the Mincer and Heroes?

Thanks for any help!

 Valar_JS wrote:
Hi, long time lurker and first time poster!

I backed this at 175 and am currently thinking of upping it to 225 with extras, does anyone know if this would I'd get the 225 bracket freebies, such as the Mincer and Heroes?

Thanks for any help!

I believe this to be true, though email Stewart at mantic just to be sure.

Yeah as far as I know it is. Go hog wild

Cool, thank you! Planning to get a bunch of extra angels and it would be nice to get the heroes thrown in as well.

I'd like to see the finished results on the angels. I think with a little work you could get them to look like ones from Diablo.

 Cyporiean wrote:
There is the issue of sculptor availability, I had a list of sculptors I wanted to hire for EFT's Kickstarter, but kept getting 'Busy till at least July' responses.

Noticed this mentioned a few times throughout various threads on Dakka, is there really that much of a lack of available sculptures at the moment ? I assume alot of its down to the current rise in kisckstarters and sculptors personal projects right?

Sorry for being off-topic but I'm very curious about this.

Is there a lack of sculptors ?

Probably not, but there is a real problems with some of the leading lights in the industry being booked up 6 months to a year in advance

for example Mierce tend to use such high end sculptors (for their expensive highly detailed resin minis), and had trouble getting the ones they wanted to work on their KS funded minis (some wont be free to start to November/December),

Soda Pop look to have switched sculptors for some of their stuff (probably due to availability)

Arena Rex haven't finalised who's sculpting as the sculptors they have got won't/can't commit to doing everything (presumably again due to other work being booked in)

It's also an issue if you get a sculpt that needs (for whatever reason) changes, you might find the sculptor is not free to make them (or not in the timeframe you need)

Using new/inexperienced sculptors is a bit hit and miss, you need to pay them even if they produce something you don't want to release (eg Kingdom Death commissioned the twilight knight 4 times to get the mini we know). Fine if you can afford to re-do it, and have the time to wait

If however you're lucky you get a great mini (eg the nameless sculpt from Dreadball) and the sculptor will tend to favour you for giving them their 'break'

 judgedoug wrote:
I'd pay handsomely for Tre Manor-produced figures for Mantic (especially plastics)

Heck, he's got a pledge level in his KS for this! Although for that one he retains the rights as it is a campaign for him to cast more figs in the RBG scale.

We haven't seen anything for a few days now. Hoping that we do indeed get to see everything before the cutoff date. Even the ogre was one figure rather than all the sculpts and they haven't been forthcoming yet on whether the ogre kit contains the 2h weapon options - or if the ogre "units" at the $110 pledge level have 3 or 6 figures in them.

Well I know the Ogre unit contains the 2H weapon options - that's been mentioned several times as I recall.
I don't think all the "later in 2013" models will get shown - a look at that paladin cav, though, would be good - painted shots of the golems and gargoyles, and any pics of the immortal guard at all, should still be shown before the weekend as well.

I hadn't seen clarification on the 2h weapons, but then if it was mentioned in the comments I don't follow those, pretty much only the updates.

On (not) showing the models, it's pretty poor form in that case, especially after the multiple promises to have everything shown. I think people would rather see unpainted shots over nothing.

The way they handle the end of KoW will decide the way I go with my DeadZone pledge, as well as anything Mantic that comes afterwards.

 Azazelx wrote:
We haven't seen anything for a few days now. Hoping that we do indeed get to see everything before the cutoff date. Even the ogre was one figure rather than all the sculpts and they haven't been forthcoming yet on whether the ogre kit contains the 2h weapon options - or if the ogre "units" at the $110 pledge level have 3 or 6 figures in them.

It has been a bank holiday weekend, Azazel, so if they're waiting ona delivery from Golem to shoot & publish, that might explain it - let's see if we get new communications today, as this should be the start of their work week.

OK fair enough. I'm not up to date on public holiday dates in other countries (or even here generally).

As of this moment, we're still missing out on the photographs for the following units/heroes from the Kings of War Kickstarter -

Elohi
Paladin knights
Sisterhoood lancers
gargoyles
Immortal Guard
Obsidian Golems (we have decent pics of the greens on these)
Elf Palace guard
Stormwind calvary
Fleabag Riders
Twilight Dark knights
Berosos
Herneas
Kernow
Grokagamok
Atlak Nakh
Mikayel
Lord Malak
Pantehr Chariot
Druid hero
Air Elemental hero
Goblin hero set
Abyssal Dwarf fire team

Repeated attempts at having Mantic show us photographs have resulted in no contact whatsoever. I am beginning to think we're unlikely to see nearly all of them in time so we can at least make some informed decisions on our choices for this Kickstarter.

Be careful those who are thinking of the Deadzone kickstarter, make sure you go for stuff that has definitive pictures of miniatures, because you never know what you'll be getting.

If anyone would like to post in the comments thread of the Deadzone kickstarter to try to get their attention in regards to posting more pictures for the KoW kickstarter, go right ahead. They seem to be a hell of a lot more active over there.

Have we seen anything painted in the updates that we didn't see at open day? The Men at Arms I guess? If they were waiting for Golem at that point and still are, then Golem is really screwing the pooch on this one.

BTW, regarding Immortal Guard, I did see some discussion that I haven't seen mentioned here in this thread:
http://forum.manticblog.com/showthread.php?4230-does-KS-mean-a-Abyssal-Dwarf-repack

Orcsbain wrote:Thats right, what I took away from the conversation that the restic was destroying the molds with most "spins" hence the reason for "going back to the drawing board" with them and that they cast enough to fill out the KOW orders.

So apparently, because they're chewing through molds, the restic immortal guard are basically a kickstarter exclusive. I really want to see some shots of them as the one model I had seen didn't impress me.

Got my reply from Stewart on the Soldier pledge level:

Pledge $110 or more
Veteran – Soldier
(Soldier – A Kings of War Hardback Rulebook, Mini-rulebook and 10 Dice)
+ 2 units of Werewolves + 2 units of Ogres + 1 unit of Ogre Shooters + Wound Counters + Undead Vampiress from the cover art

Stewart wrote:
The units listed as part of the Veteran Pledge are boxes of 3, as this is what we planned during the Kickstarter.

Anyone have time to work out the RRP of Soldier based on the retail prices that have been revealed? I have to run off to work.

RRP on those models works out to 2*25+30+15=95, then there's the vampiress, counters, rulebook, dice and the >$100 pledge benefits.
Not disastrous but TBH, it could do with another baggie of ogres at least.

If someone that has not filled out their second pledge manager I would love to get my hands on a human army!

 Bolognesus wrote:
RRP on those models works out to 2*25+30+15=95, then there's the vampiress, counters, rulebook, dice and the >$100 pledge benefits.
Not disastrous but TBH, it could do with another baggie of ogres at least.

Thanks Bolo.

Yeah, I'm going to have to reply to Stewart tonight and point out that the "kickstarter value" of that pledge level has been gutted. Shifting the goalposts is okay if you move all of the associated goalposts, not just some of them. Sure, there's a lot of freebies, but cathorse and those trolls have little to no value to me. Between shifted value on the ogres, bad sculpts like the nuns and cathorse, stuff that doesn't resemble the concept art like the trolls, this has turned out to be a rather large disappointment, paid up a year in advance.

If they're not willing to do something about it, I think I'm done with Mantic. I'm not willing to go in on something like Warpath with the same kind of optimism or trust as I did KoW after these issues, certainly not to pay a year in advance. The "value" that some posters often mention is a bit dubious anyway, since Mantic stuff doesn't hold particularly good value secondhand, and a lot of those dollars are tied up in cathorses, stretch-armed nuns, trolls and so forth.

Complaining about the secondhand value on these miniatures seems a bit...odd...