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Nothing like throwing in an ad hominem for no reason, eh Duncan?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
To be fair, nkelsch, whoever did the Rebs has done good work. I think the issue is just as much around strong Art direction/editing as around sculptors.

I don't know where ScarletSquig got his info, or if it's correct or not, but he claimed that the Hordes/Trollblood sculptor did the KoW trolls. The Hordes Trollbloods are IMO some really good, characterful models. So if SS's info is correct, the problem isn't with the sculptor - but either the Art Director being too weak to say "No! Do it again!" or the final (unseen by us) concept art being gak. Which is a Mantic communication issue.

The actual sculpting on the nuns is fine. It's no Jes Goodwin work, but as miniatures go, it's fine. The arm length (and giant flipper-hands) on the Nuns, however should have been picked up before they went to production. You know, as soon as there were enough body parts to blu-tac together, someone should have picked up on it and sent them back for some quick surgery.

Even those much-maligned Orx aren't terrible sculpts in terms of the detail work. It's the proportions and posing that are messed up (like Remy's knock-kneed Ogres). And the heads were pretty awful as well.

So

To be even more honest, I find even you way more refreshing than him. You at least come from a different angle every time.

nkelsch wrote:
the very valid criticism leveled by dozens of posters and customers

You have been so very loud and so very repetetive that I honestly don't know if there are criticisms by dozens of posters; it feels like the same criticism posted dozens of times by you.

nkelsch wrote:

No other company posting models on dakka has as much excuses made about why the models look b ad in photographs but somehow the very real flaws 'somehow' are better in person...

Many models suffer from this. For instance, Mantic Elves look like crap on their website but are some of the most beautifully detailed plastic models I've ever had. Conversely, GW somehow managed to make it's Empire infantry look better on their site, which is pretty amazing as they look like crap and are somehow even worse in person.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Duncan_Idaho wrote:
To be even more honest, I find even you way more refreshing than him. You at least come from a different angle every time.

Dude, just don't even bait nkelsch. He had a valid complaint when he got some miscast Dreadball models but instead of getting replacements he just got it all refunded. He has no problem being an incredibly, uh, vocal, opponent of Mantic now, even on threads for ranges for which he has no models of. The more you feed him, the stronger he grows and the more he regenerates.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Hey Azazel, someone posted on the comments that Stew allowed them to swap their Veteran Pledge + BOGOF for an Ogre Army + kings and legends book; and the Ogre Army also gets the +50% Ogre models count increase. So, like 27 warriors, 18 shooters, 2 cmd upgrade bits, and the hero.

Mantic models are not always the best and they have misfires (Goblins are specifically an annoyance).
That said, the WFB sweat pants and house slippers Ogres are not exactly anything to write home about.

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat670005a&prodId=prod1320015a&rootCatGameStyle=

 judgedoug wrote:


Dude, just don't even bait nkelsch. He had a valid complaint when he got some miscast Dreadball models but instead of getting replacements he just got it all refunded. He has no problem being an incredibly, uh, vocal, opponent of Mantic now, even on threads for ranges for which he has no models of. The more you feed him, the stronger he grows and the more he regenerates.

And the poor quality sculpts of the Asterians validates one of my criticisms that models do not end up looking like their concept art and makes my decision to opt out of the season 3 shipment even more valid. I can't trust that mantic will be faithful to the promised concepts or that the funhouse mirror photography somehow makes the models look worse than they really do. And 40$ international shipping makes me want to not gamble on cast quality.

The only way for me to get models from Mantic is to see the sculpts in person, see the casting quality in person, then hand over my hard earned money to a vendor who I can return the product to without costing more than the model. Mantic realizes the best way to make customers is to make people happy with their purchase, not trick them into being stuck with sub-standard models. Lots of other people have had the same experience as me and continue to have issues. I don't think any favors are done by squashing discussion or hiding experiences from people.

As someone who is highly interested in the ogres, these are a huge disappointment as they do not match the concept art from the waist down and would take conversion and repair to make them useable.

So on Ogres alone, the *NON* me comments were:

I agree that they are kind of posed in the "i gotta pee!" kid pose strangely.

Yeah the legs could be designed better

love all but the legs! Man

I think the Kickstarter update explains why the Ogres squeeze their legs together like that. They don't have anything between them.

but a few of them do have odd leg posing issues.

And as soon as people start discussing the real issue, Ogre legs, You and Duncan immediately start attacking to divert the discussion from what is obviously the issue... The Ogre legs which show the 'BEST sculpt they have’ is still not 100% and having issues for people, even those who like the model have issue with the legs. You seem like you are personally invested in needing to invalidate criticism, even when valid, or at least try to confuse people by pretending I maintain 30ish sock puppet accounts with years long posting history simply to make up Anti-mantic issues. Maybe I photoshop their official photos as well to make the models look bad too? And I break in to the post office and glue extra plastic to the mold lines?

nkelsch wrote:

And as soon as people start discussing the real issue, Ogre legs, You and Duncan immediately start attacking to divert the discussion from what is obviously the issue... The Ogre legs which show the 'BEST sculpt they have’ is still not 100% and having issues for people, even those who like the model have issue with the legs. You seem like you are personally invested in needing to invalidate criticism, even when valid, or at least try to confuse people by pretending I maintain 30ish sock puppet accounts with years long posting history simply to make up Anti-mantic issues. Maybe I photoshop their official photos as well to make the models look bad too? And I break in to the post office and glue extra plastic to the mold lines?

Well, even if the legs are not great, you must admit that the ogres look 100x better than the fat, Mongolian ogres that GW puts out-Mongolian faces, Arabian slippers, and American-Gamer sweatpants. Those things need serious help.

These guys are way better than GW's fatties. The knock-kneed legs don't even bother me. What bothers me more is that if I just glance at them, a lot of them wind up looking like they're wearing thigh-high stripper boots. I know they're not, but unless I look at them closely, it looks kind of like they are.

I really dont see ogres in these and more orcs.

As for the sculpts the legs are not that bad and I have far more issues looking at those malformed biceps, they are just to damn big and look out of place... like you have a torso that cannot support such big lumps, the muscles are not credible either.

With all this said, its miles better than most of the new stuff which has been VERY disappointing so far.

As for the discussion, I do see reasons for people to be unhappy with this... well I have not invested one penny on this and its still sad for me to see the quality levels they are aiming for...

Painting is also subpar... all is just looking cheap at most levels...

Anyone at salute would have noticed the many small companies in there with FULLY painted ranges with superb sculpts and state of art paintjobs etc... Those do deserve more my money, they actually invested more in providing good quality stuff.

Also I would like to mention that Mantic seems to be going to fast and cutting corners to keep up this ridiculous speed... speed and quality is a hard thing to accomplish.

 timetowaste85 wrote:

Well, even if the legs are not great, you must admit that the ogres look 100x better than the fat, Mongolian ogres that GW puts out-Mongolian faces, Arabian slippers, and American-Gamer sweatpants. Those things need serious help.

What's wrong with Mongolians?

I personally don't like either company's ogres, but at least the GW ogres are made out of a material that is fun to work with. The more I deal with restic, the less enthusiastic I feel about buying more of it.

Also, debating about each model in piecemeal is not the best strategy for dodging the issue: Mantic's treatment of the KoW range has been a huge disappointment, burning the fingers of 'early adopters' and tainting their range for years to come. You can't hide that by pointing to GW sculpts and saying "tu quoque".

nkelsch wrote:
And as soon as people start discussing the real issue, Ogre legs, You and Duncan immediately start attacking to divert the discussion from what is obviously the issue... The Ogre legs which show the 'BEST sculpt they have’ is still not 100% and having issues for people, even those who like the model have issue with the legs. You seem like you are personally invested in needing to invalidate criticism, even when valid, or at least try to confuse people by pretending I maintain 30ish sock puppet accounts with years long posting history simply to make up Anti-mantic issues. Maybe I photoshop their official photos as well to make the models look bad too? And I break in to the post office and glue extra plastic to the mold lines?

When have I attacked you? I even said your Dreadball complaints were valid and Mantic needed to respond to your emails, because they were failing you as a customer. (if you wanted to google me, you'll see me blasting Mantic's poor handling of the KoW KS on their own forums!) But you're also incredibly obnoxious and repetetive. Everyone gets it. You don't like Mantic or whatever. You had lots of problems with your pledge and lots of problems contacting anyone. Everyone on Dakka knows that by heart now because you won't stop bringing it up in every thread you're in. It seems like you've made it your perogative to respond to anything with your copypasta criticisms. Your name on a post is a joke to me now because as I'm scrolling through a thread, I'm pretty much assured that the post will be Mantic bashing. How about just put a few select copypasta quotes into your sig and stop reposting the same thing?

I like the Ogres, a lot, personally. I hate the trolls, which is really annoying and disappointing (because they look nothing like the concepts, which looked GREAT), because I was looking forward to using them (instead I am using Mierce trolls for my Goblin army, which are infinitely superior sculpts). I think the nuns are crap, I'm hesitant on the men at arms; but the angels, orc chariot and goblin mincer are fantastic... but I'm getting all this gak for free because I had two >$225 pledges, so I'm not too worried. All those regiments were free as stretch goals for me. My initial pledges paid for lots and lots of minis which I've already assembled and painted and had a blast playing Kings of War with.

New characters:




Pretty good, overall.. goblins are fun sculpts, mounted Twilight kin is a bit of a miss, but the one on foot more than makes up for it.. excellent sculpt.

I love love love the goblins. I'm definitely adding those on for my goblin army. The TK ones are KS freebies, right?

Why does Mantic take photos so close up that you can see brush strokes? It actually detracts from seeing the figure. God, half the size please.

^They're displayed smaller on the kickstarter page since the site downsizes them.

I just grabbed the URLs for them (which are the basic, huge image).

Anyway, a good sculpt looks good regardless of image size, I tend to find.

There's nothing wrong with the mounted TK character that won't be solved by slicing away the weird goat-horn holders on the side of the helmet and a different paint job. I love purple, but the effect here doesn't make it look like flames, it looks more like some sort of horse-poodle.

Dude... left horse hoof... purple brush strokes across the horse flesh.

Super giant pics always exaggerates crappy paint jobs, shrug.

I'd still honestly rather have unpainted, black-ink-washed shots of sprues and bits. Way easier to imagine how I want to paint them.

Most of these miniatures are rather goofy looking.

The Ogres remain the best of the bunch, as flawed as they are too.

This is troubling.

That Goblin wizzard is amazing, I can't wait to paint him.

 Alpharius wrote:
Most of these miniatures are rather goofy looking.

The Ogres remain the best of the bunch, as flawed as they are too.

This is troubling.

What? The Goblin heroes are fantastic! I don't much like the Twilight Kin, but there are lots of people who like the spiky armor aesthetic.

New sculpts look cool. Is anyone besides me getting a "mini" Sauron vibe from this model?

 Alpharius wrote:
Most of these miniatures are rather goofy looking.

The Ogres remain the best of the bunch, as flawed as they are too.

This is troubling.

Have to agree, the sculpting is bad on most of them... the painting is horrible.

I like most of those, but why oh why does the twilight kin on foot need a giant metal loincloth!

If they'd just gone with the cloak it would look much better

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
I like most of those, but why oh why does the twilight kin on foot need a giant metal loincloth!

He's a tripod.

 NAVARRO wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
Most of these miniatures are rather goofy looking.

The Ogres remain the best of the bunch, as flawed as they are too.

This is troubling.

Have to agree, the sculpting is bad on most of them... the painting is horrible.

I'll go ahead and totally disagree with you about the goblin hero sculpts (but agree with you on the paint jobs).
I mean, they might be bad compared to Tre Manor or Tom Mier, but they look fantastic compared to most of the crap other companies put out.
I'm very happy with those goblin characters.

 judgedoug wrote:

 NAVARRO wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
Most of these miniatures are rather goofy looking.

The Ogres remain the best of the bunch, as flawed as they are too.

This is troubling.

Have to agree, the sculpting is bad on most of them... the painting is horrible.

I'll go ahead and totally disagree with you about the goblin hero sculpts (but agree with you on the paint jobs).
I mean, they might be bad compared to Tre Manor or Tom Mier, but they look fantastic compared to most of the crap other companies put out.
I'm very happy with those goblin characters.

That's what they call 'damning with faint praise'!

This could all just be some much better...

At this point I feel compelled to mention that the Goblins are not Kickstarter-funded sculpts.

So, if you don't like them, that's an issue separate to the kickstarter, and related to Mantic in general.

It looks like the dodgy twilight kin is one of the custom backer-funded sculpts (probably someone called Michael since the name of the mini is "Mikayel"), so they'd have had to sculpt the person's face on the mini and pose it how they wanted it etc. That's just an educated guess from me, though.

In fact one of the reasons for the third shipment delay is that it took ages for the backer-funded sculpts to be finalised via slow email exchanges. I can see why they haven't offered single-backer-funded sculpts as freebies in future KS's.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
I like most of those, but why oh why does the twilight kin on foot need a giant metal loincloth!

If they'd just gone with the cloak it would look much better

Easy repair to take away the metal loincloth at least. I'm a big fan of that model and of the goblin heroes. The Mounted TK hero I'm less of a fan of. Don't really like the head, nor to I like the fur above the hoofs. If it's intended to be flame - that could be pretty cool, but I hope it's not there to that degree on the rank and file models.

The Twilight Kin on foot is okay, but I don't like those Goblins very much. I mean they're competent sculpts but they're not blowing me away or anything. GW's recent Goblins are much better.
The Twilight Kin on horseback is a bit meh, but mostly because of his fashion choices. I actually think the face and so on are pretty good and the proportions aren't bad.

I like the goblin wizard. The rest are pretty average to mediocre.

It'll be nice to have actually seen everything by Wednesday. Does anyone know what the deadline is on the survey now?

 Da Boss wrote:
The Twilight Kin on foot is okay, but I don't like those Goblins very much. I mean they're competent sculpts but they're not blowing me away or anything. GW's recent Goblins are much better.
The Twilight Kin on horseback is a bit meh, but mostly because of his fashion choices. I actually think the face and so on are pretty good and the proportions aren't bad.

Which recent GW goblins? The shaman and the forest goblins on the arachnarok are very nice, but I'd say that the heroes/mages that were released with the 7th edition sculpts are about on par with the new Mantic goblin characters. Out of the 10 foot character released in that GW batch, there's only two I'd say I clearly like better (3/11 if we count the limited edition goblin hero that came with WD subscription).

The mantic goblins are also much better than the recent forgeworld night goblin command (which is the only GW goblin BSB that's been released outside of Grom's chariot).

I don't have a problem with any of these. They're all reasonable. The mounted TK's head isn't really doing the model any favours, but as a freebie, he's acceptable. (Wouldn't spend cash on him, though). On that note, the Goblins aren't free KS sculpts? How much are they asking for them?

Objectively, the paint isn't bad either, given that the images are shown at about 12,000x the sizes of the actual models.