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 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Nah. They're just trying to manage our expectations so that our first responses will be "they're better than I expected" or "they're not that bad."

EDIT: The real problem is the shamefully negative community of backers. If those tweenie boppers hadn't been weaned on Twitter and instant gratification, this never would have happened.

So Mantic's poor sculpts and quality control is the fault of their fans? Way to pass the buck.

Personally I think their fans would be much happier if Mantic had come out 6 months ago and said "We are not happy with our first pass at all the Basilean models, so rather than shipping out substandard products, we are going to ship 6 months late and spend that time getting them right."

I believe that's known as sarcasm, Willb2064.

willb2064 wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Nah. They're just trying to manage our expectations so that our first responses will be "they're better than I expected" or "they're not that bad."

EDIT: The real problem is the shamefully negative community of backers. If those tweenie boppers hadn't been weaned on Twitter and instant gratification, this never would have happened.

So Mantic's poor sculpts and quality control is the fault of their fans? Way to pass the buck.

It's sarcasm, and a direct reference to some stuff going on elsewhere on these forums and the internet. As is my "grumpy old man" reply to it.

 Azazelx wrote:


It's sarcasm, and a direct reference to some stuff going on elsewhere on these forums and the internet. As is my "grumpy old man" reply to it.

Well that shows me to reply to threads at 7.15am in the morning!

This is all very troubling...

As mentioned earlier, if Mantic themselves were unhappy with them - don't release them.

Scrap it, start over, and explain everything to everyone involved.

Maybe.

I don't know.

But what I do know is I'm a bit worried about the future state of all the Deadzone stuff I went in for - heavily.

 lord marcus wrote:

 Dawnbringer wrote:

 Cyporiean wrote:
IIRC the reason they haven't been using Rendra is because they can't, Rendra doesn't have the room for additional work.

Given the total number of new plastic sets Mantic have actually released since they made the switch(2), I'd bet that it was more of a cost issue. And now if Warlord have moved production in-house, it leaves the Perry's as Renedra's only consistent client.

Fireforge. Also Agema miniatures.

Victrix! Who are probably larger than Perry, Fireforge, and Agema combined.

 judgedoug wrote:

 lord marcus wrote:

 Dawnbringer wrote:

 Cyporiean wrote:
IIRC the reason they haven't been using Rendra is because they can't, Rendra doesn't have the room for additional work.

Given the total number of new plastic sets Mantic have actually released since they made the switch(2), I'd bet that it was more of a cost issue. And now if Warlord have moved production in-house, it leaves the Perry's as Renedra's only consistent client.

Fireforge. Also Agema miniatures.

Victrix! Who are probably larger than Perry, Fireforge, and Agema combined.

Are you sure Victrix don't do their own stuff? None of their releases have the "Made by Renedra" bit on the sprue, and their older releases don't look they what Renedra usually put out (different colour plastic, different base sprues). See http://www.victrixlimited.com/online_shop/product_info.php?cPath=32_58&products_id=255

I'd also argue that Perry and Victrix are about the same size, but with Victrix more concentrated on the Napoleonic wars.

Victrix sprues are made by SK Engineering.

Also, it should be pretty obvious why throwing a £10-£20k tool into the trash when there's plenty of people who would like to buy the models isn't something any company would consider.

The detail/sculpting on the GW empire state troopers is pretty bad*, but you're not going to see those remade anytime soon.

*When those were released GW were at a similar point where mantic is now with digital sculpting, good at hard armour/ weapons, can't sculpt organics.

 scarletsquig wrote:
Victrix sprues are made by SK Engineering.

There we go, another option for Mantic to go to get plastic sprues properly done. I've got some of their Athenians and they look great.

 scarletsquig wrote:


Also, it should be pretty obvious why throwing a £10-£20k tool into the trash when there's plenty of people who would like to buy the models isn't something any company would consider.

If they paid £10-£20k for that sprue they should have gone to someone else.

 scarletsquig wrote:


The detail/sculpting on the GW empire state troopers is pretty bad*, but you're not going to see those remade anytime soon.

*When those were released GW were at a similar point where mantic is now with digital sculpting, good at hard armour/ weapons, can't sculpt organics.

Problem is, I don't see Mantics Basileans competing with GW's empire state troopers, they are competing with guy's like Perrys, Fireforge, etc. GW can get away with having/not replacing crap stuff because their are still people out there who only buy GW stuff. I can't see Mantic having that much hold over people.

That said, I'm hoping that the bodies at least of the MAA come out ok, I can manage to scrounge up enough arms/heads from my Perry and Fireforge bits.

 scarletsquig wrote:

The detail/sculpting on the GW empire state troopers is pretty bad*, but you're not going to see those remade anytime soon.

Gonna have to call you out on this one. At least you can make out facial features on the State Troops...Actually, the facial feature definition on them is about equal to that of other GW figures. There are some areas on the waistlines of the figures, particularly when an organic item (scroll/skull) is next to a metallic item(dagger, hourglass).

~Tim?

Okay, having actually gone to the Mantic forums, the guy who posted the crappy pictures admitted to having a crappy camera on his phone and that the pictures don't do the models justice at all, as the details look very soft. I'm not seeing too many complaints about the detail from people that actually have them, mostly people complaining about the picture. Hopefully this suggests a crisis averted. I think with having the minis in front of me, a proper flesh wash to pick out the detail, and washes over the regular paint, and the models will look good. Maybe not "OMG, leaps and bounds over GW!!!!!" (obvious exaggeration), but will still be good and a phenomenal deal. Anybody who is unhappy with their goblins want to sell me a cheap 20-man squad? I'm thinking $15 shipped, which is likely the KS amount you paid plus the shipping needed to get them off your hands? I'd like to see how bad they are for myself.

 Some_Call_Me_Tim? wrote:

 scarletsquig wrote:

The detail/sculpting on the GW empire state troopers is pretty bad*, but you're not going to see those remade anytime soon.

Gonna have to call you out on this one. At least you can make out facial features on the State Troops...Actually, the facial feature definition on them is about equal to that of other GW figures. There are some areas on the waistlines of the figures, particularly when an organic item (scroll/skull) is next to a metallic item(dagger, hourglass).

~Tim?

Having personally bought the 7th edition GW state troops, I'm well-qualified to comment on their suckitude. The faces are poorly-sculpted monkeyish blobs, all of the details mush into each other, they're plastered with skulls, bones, and SIGMAR KARL FRANZ SIGMAR on every surface and quite generally look a bit terrible. The guy with no shoes doesn't even have any toe detail, it's just a big mush. Mould lines were terrible too, really thick and had lots of parts where the plastic seeped into the gap between the 2 mould halves. Also, the spears/ halberds are an absolute pain to assemble straight, I made a half-hearted attempt at gluing them together before selling them. Then the empire greatswords were previewed, and I thought "cool, I can make an army out of those instead, they got the Perrys to sculpt them".. and then of course, the £25 price tag hit, the first mark of GW pricing really going into fruitloop territory as opposed to "just about affordable if you buy from discount webstores".

Perrys and Warlord etc. are definitely better looking than either GW or Mantic for humans. Athough the Mantic ones do have the fantasy theme rather than historical, so if you like that and it is something you want, the option is there.

The intent of my post wasn't to declare the state troopers as competition, just relaying an experience with a GW kit I'd personally bought and disliked that was released when they were still struggling to make non-crap minis using digital sculpting.

Also wanted to point out that if GW is happy to let poor core troop sprues out of the door (and then, in a lot of cases, keep selling them for 20+ years without considering a replacement), then it just goes to show that the plastic tooling is a serious investment, not the kind of thing where you can afford to just throw it in the bin and start over if it's less than perfect.

As I've said, I'll review the things when I get them (my camera is decent enough), it's a little pointless for me to comment on them further at the moment when I could just wait a few more days and do it properly.

Although, that said, I can't imagine it'll be a rosy review, jusdging by what other people whose Kickstarters have arrived are saying...

Seen the men at arms in person now.

They are, awful.

They're too big, they tower over even GWs heroic scale Bret men at arms. The detail is lost in what seems to be cheap nasty plastic, and don't seem to fit together well either.

I'm still trying to source a pic of the elf and TK cavalry, so far all I know is that they seem to be restic, not hard plastic, so, good news there.

 Azazelx wrote:

Maybe it's because I'm older and wiser than you lot, but when I used to buy things, I'd hand the money over the counter and get my product immediately. No waiting at all! I'd also usually talk to the people I was buying things from, and either simply ask for my product, make small talk or even have a chat, depending on what I was buying. You know what they did? The people selling me products would talk back to me and communicate!

Not like you young whippersnappers, raised in an era of patiently waiting weeks, months or years for your items and communication from those selling things to you. No, in my day, when you spoke to someone, they spoke right back.

In my day, one waited hours for the cashier to total up one's purchase with her slide ruler and blue wax pencil. And that was if there was no line of precocious youngsters buying [see forum posting rules] hounds and penny candy at the general store.

Why the Kickstarter delays take me back to the days of mail-ordering my FASA starships through Starlog Magazine with SASE and cheque, waiting half a year for the delivery and then another half a year for the back-ordered majority of my original order. Good times are here again.

@Will, Sorry for the confusion. Kickstarter threads are just gold mines for sarcasm, memes and general human cruelty. They're so shameful.

 scarletsquig wrote:
Victrix sprues are made by SK Engineering.

Also, it should be pretty obvious why throwing a £10-£20k tool into the trash when there's plenty of people who would like to buy the models isn't something any company would consider.

The detail/sculpting on the GW empire state troopers is pretty bad*, but you're not going to see those remade anytime soon.
*When those were released GW were at a similar point where mantic is now with digital sculpting, good at hard armour/ weapons, can't sculpt organics.

Just checked them out. The faces are pretty bad, and the bare feet are an ...interesting aesthetic decision, but the rest of those kits, and the actual sprues, I'm sure beat the living snot out of the Mantic ones in sculpting and quality. "Similar" is being - let's face it, rather generous to Mantic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 scarletsquig wrote:

Also wanted to point out that if GW is happy to let poor core troop sprues out of the door (and then, in a lot of cases, keep selling them for 20+ years without considering a replacement), then it just goes to show that the plastic tooling is a serious investment, not the kind of thing where you can afford to just throw it in the bin and start over if it's less than perfect.

Well, any plastic core troops sprue that's 20 years old has to be considered with the aesthetics and technology of the day before you can fairly call them "poor". Which kits are you talking about in that instance? I still think of the old Skeleton Army/Horde stuff as quite good, and the Zombies were put together to be cross-compatible, and while not as finely detailed as the Mantic ones, still work well in a GW-context and by virtue of being so multipart. I've got easily converted ones for RPGs and Blood Bowl and they look perfect for both roles. (Since my "undead army" is a recent, unpainted and unassembled thing which is more off the tail of our LotR Army of the Dead figures, expanded, and the Mantic ones better fit that particular aesthetic).

As I've said, I'll review the things when I get them (my camera is decent enough), it's a little pointless for me to comment on them further at the moment when I could just wait a few more days and do it properly.
Although, that said, I can't imagine it'll be a rosy review, jusdging by what other people whose Kickstarters have arrived are saying...
I'm still trying to source a pic of the elf and TK cavalry, so far all I know is that they seem to be restic, not hard plastic, so, good news there.

I look forward to seeing all of these. Are Mantic using shipping notices, or just mailing stuff out?

I've never gotten a shipping notice, it's just arrived.

Can you get a bunch of pics of the elf cav stuff, please? I think those are in high demand (pics, at least )

Seconded, please!

Here's the best pic so far of scale vs. a GW model:



The swords look like they're bigger than the 2-handed swords on the paladins, and make the GW ones look positively truescale. /:

Forgetting about the current empire troops -which GW have taken in a pretty divisive aesthetic direction- these Mantic men at arms are objectively worse than their own initial plastics, and GW's 4/5/6th edition plastics from 16 BLOODY YEARS AGO.



I can't believe I swapped from nuns to more of these :(

looks like something from a bag-o-army men quality from the dollar store.

I think these are about on a par with the henchmen from Advanced Heroquest!

Don't like the M@A at all. Looking forward to getting my box as I like the photos of the vast majority of stuff just not the human stuff.

Sounds like I'll be able to pick up some Basilleans cheap, either discounted due to low demand or untouched second hand ; p They're not great but I like the style, even if the sculpting and casting isn't great. Certainly not the crisp Eisenkern plastics sadly, maybe they've spoiled me.

 scarletsquig wrote:
Victrix sprues are made by SK Engineering.

I stand corrected. Mantic needs to swtich to them ASAP. SK Engineering sprues are arguable better than some Renedra sprues I've seen.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dawnbringer wrote:
Problem is, I don't see Mantics Basileans competing with GW's empire state troopers, they are competing with guy's like Perrys, Fireforge, etc. GW can get away with having/not replacing crap stuff because their are still people out there who only buy GW stuff.

That's the crux... the only people who would be tricked into buying Empire State Troops are only Warhammer players; effectively Empire is it's own separate market. Perry and Fireforge (and Gripping Beast to some extent) are the Basilean's main competition, and only tangentally. The Men at Arms are basically the only true D&D-style fantasy plastic soldier kits, but they look to be so poor that there's basically no reason to buy them. The overall poor sculpting of the army convinced me to use Confrontation Lion figures for mine, with only the Elohi (with head swaps) and that cool character dude on Lion as the only Mantic figures in it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Azazelx wrote:

 scarletsquig wrote:

Also wanted to point out that if GW is happy to let poor core troop sprues out of the door (and then, in a lot of cases, keep selling them for 20+ years without considering a replacement), then it just goes to show that the plastic tooling is a serious investment, not the kind of thing where you can afford to just throw it in the bin and start over if it's less than perfect.

Well, any plastic core troops sprue that's 20 years old has to be considered with the aesthetics and technology of the day before you can fairly call them "poor". Which kits are you talking about in that instance? I still think of the old Skeleton Army/Horde stuff as quite good, and the Zombies were put together to be cross-compatible, and while not as finely detailed as the Mantic ones, still work well in a GW-context and by virtue of being so multipart. I've got easily converted ones for RPGs and Blood Bowl and they look perfect for both roles. (Since my "undead army" is a recent, unpainted and unassembled thing which is more off the tail of our LotR Army of the Dead figures, expanded, and the Mantic ones better fit that particular aesthetic).

Terrible sculpts are terrible sculpts. Mantic's plastic Men At Arms at least look to be better proportioned than the absolutely terrible plastic High Elves or Dark Elves. My bajillion point High Elf army is composed of, quite literally, a hundred metal 4th/5th edition HE archers and another hundred metal 4th/5th edition HE spearmen because I want to vomit when I look at the plastic melon-headed hamfisted High Elf soldiers. The Dark Elf/Mierce Khthones army I'm planning _had_ to be Gamezone based because of the awful GW Dark Elf plastics. The HE spearmen, archers, and DE warriors are all sculpted as 3-ups and pantographed for tooling, which is what Renedra uses as well... There are very few infantry kits that GW make even with their CAD tooling that are not laughable compared to, say, Perry Napoleonics.

All this is moot though, as this is about Mantic and the Men At Arms are garbage. I'll still use 'em for roleplaying figures, as they'll look fine as generic fantasy town guards or something.

SS, with that picture of putty instead of glue, I assume you have the models in hand now? Can you build and paint a single one, using washes and stuff to show off the detail so we can get a good view of them? Thanks man. I'll do the same as soon as mine come in, but an early look wouldn't hurt as well. Bare plastic can hurt detail with the camera flash.

 judgedoug wrote:

That's the crux... the only people who would be tricked into buying Empire State Troops are only Warhammer players; effectively Empire is it's own separate market. Perry and Fireforge (and Gripping Beast to some extent) are the Basilean's main competition, and only tangentally. The Men at Arms are basically the only true D&D-style fantasy plastic soldier kits, but they look to be so poor that there's basically no reason to buy them. The overall poor sculpting of the army convinced me to use Confrontation Lion figures for mine, with only the Elohi (with head swaps) and that cool character dude on Lion as the only Mantic figures in it.

Looking at the finished/unpainted figure above... what makes him a "true fantasy" figure? Oversized sword and oddly-designed shield? Silly looking helmet? The rest of him is really rather generic, and while you can take that as "generic fantasy" I see it as "easily proxied for almost anything else on the market."




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Well, any plastic core troops sprue that's 20 years old has to be considered with the aesthetics and technology of the day before you can fairly call them "poor". Which kits are you talking about in that instance? I still think of the old Skeleton Army/Horde stuff as quite good, and the Zombies were put together to be cross-compatible, and while not as finely detailed as the Mantic ones, still work well in a GW-context and by virtue of being so multipart. I've got easily converted ones for RPGs and Blood Bowl and they look perfect for both roles. (Since my "undead army" is a recent, unpainted and unassembled thing which is more off the tail of our LotR Army of the Dead figures, expanded, and the Mantic ones better fit that particular aesthetic).

I don't necessarily mean kits from 20 years ago that are out today, I mean terrible kits from GW currently that will be over 20 years old before GW even thinks about updating them. Although there are 20+ year-old things present in the range (empire horses, wolves, eldar jetbikes) that look like they'll be sold for at least another decade.

Stuff like high elf core infantry, probably won't get a new sculpt this side of 2020, GW only releases big monsters and whatnot these days, there has not been a single core infantry sprue released in the entire of warhammer 8th edition, last ones were the beastmen (which didn't really desperately need it and didn't change much).

The M@A pics aren't mine, and neither is this shot of the TK Dark Knights:

seems the fellow who took that pic didn't get any horses (though he did get an additional rider?) so no pics of those yet.

I kind of suspect that even if the horse on Mikayel (Twilight kin backer hero) isn't a plastic horse, it'll at least be quite similar to these models.

and if we really get that many heads in a single kit then building a Twilight Kin army has just become a lot more attractive.

Still, not the right size of pic to judge anything from and I don't really like the look of those bent spears - at least one of those is part-broken, not just the usual 'fix with hot water' thing I don't mind.

There may be 12 heads - but I'm only counting 4 unique ones.

And ouch - them spears :/

four new ones in addition to the metal ones in the other TK kits though - that makes for plenty of additional variety to add to otherwise a wee bit repetitive TK infantry units.