[Kings of War] Mantic Fantasy News & Rumors

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**timetowaste85**

scarletsquig wrote:
timetowaste85 wrote:
Some BOGOF stuff from the final survey missing, but most other things look to be there. And I'm not sure about everybody elses MaAs, but mine are fine: the detail is good, the height is the same as the Paladins...either I got a perfect batch or something went horribly wrong for you guys (or both). I'll put a picture up later, but I compared their size to the sisters, and they're about 1 mm taller in the shoulder area, which is accurate as men are biologically larger than women most of the time, and while both are in the bag right now, I compared to the Paladin legs, and those look accurate too.

Here's a size comparison without arms. The MaA body is the middle one. Now, I'm not a rocket scientist...but it looks to me like my bodies are accurately sized. I have no need to do any cutting. I'm not judging any of you that are unhappy with yours-but I'm just giving the heads up that mine are totally fine.

The heads and arms are a large part of the problem...the men-at-arms have *gigantic* arms, weapons and heads, none of which seem to fit properly, or stick out at odd angles; which, combined with their beanpole torso makes things look horribly gangly.

Eh, they have some slightly odd angles, true, but the biggest issue I saw was the height issue, but mine are of fine height. If I cut them as you did, they'd end up shorter than the sisters. I'll be leaving mine set as is.

**scarletsquig**

My conversions are the same height as the sisters torso-to-torso (comparing the two upright bodies), but still taller once the heads are stuck on, and around the same height as the paladins (with their in-scale heads).

Mass is the main difference, the MAA have lots of it, sisters have none. Their thighs can be held in a MAA hand like a stick.

Height isn't everything, mass counts for a lot, that's the primary reason why I converted, to give the models less of a tabletop presence in large units. Toning the height down was just the easiest option without buying new parts. With the height, plus the mass, plus the chicken wing arm poses, plus the Games Workshop "5 foot gangsta bling swords held in one hand" all combined things get very ugly, very quickly, and also become impossible to rank up in regiments.

Another way of doing this would be to replace the heads and arms... you're right about the height and the fact that the torsos aren't too bad when viewed in a vacuum.

The swords add a ton of height too, one of the MAA swords is taller than an entire sister model.

I'd definitely say that replacing the arms and heads might remove the need for converting the torso, but by the time you've bought the bits from another company to do that, you might as well have just bought the historicals to use.

That said if you're fine with the heroic scaling, you'll get on quite well with the miniatures, there's no problem at all with liking them. I quite like the much-maligned Mantic elves due to having a higher tolerance for truescale and no attachment to GW stylings.

**Kroothawk**

Krinsath wrote:

The head looks fine, but the body ...

And to be fair, I didn't post in my post, what my expectations were

**scarletsquig**

Loka is now up for pre-order:

http://www.manticgames.com/Shop-Home/Advance-Orders/Advance-Orders-LOKA.html

£40 for the box (36 minis + board, rules, tiles, dice), £15 for individual chess sets (18 minis each).

**BobtheInquisitor**

Their US $ prices seem to be a bit higher than the conversion rate would suggest. Still, I have a chess board just begging me to pick up the Air and Fire packs.

**Bolognesus**

Yes, it's intended to be. However, if you order over 35 quid ($50 I believe, though it could be $60 or even $75), you get free shipping. Naturally, and especially for something relatively heavy such as a boxed board game, that's relatively expensive to the US so those ordering in any significant quantity from the mantic webstore don't have it all that bad

**Compel**

So, just so I'm not wanting to drag the sci fi thread off topic.

Dwarf Kings Hold, then... Is it something that I could easily take along to my lunchtime board games club? EG, 2 hours max to play, less than 5 minutes of pre-game rules explanation.

**Pacific**

That game is made for lunchtime board games club, I couldn't pick another game that would be more suited.

**Compel**

Unfortunately, it looks like it's mostly a 2 player game (except for the 'ancient grudge' expansion).

That pretty much rules it out, unfortunately. It's the same reason I haven't taken dreadball down to the club.

**timetowaste85**

I just wanted to post this picture, as it's relevant to the MaAs issues. The arms are definitely long, but they are in scale, height wise. It'll come down to personal discretion, but I have no issue running 2 blocks of 40 of these guys. If anybody has another 40 they are bummed about going in on a BOGOF for, I'll pay you the BOGOF price for them. You can make your $25 back, as I'd like a sword&board unit too.

**plastictrees**

That is the ugliest plastic model I've seen in 10 years.
I appreciate that the fact that everyone paid 60c mini is mitigating the spontaneous projectile vomiting that should be occurring worldwide as people open these boxes, but dear god.

They may be 'fine' for massed ranks of troops, but there's no reason that they needed to be so absurdly poor. I've been waiting for a multi part plastic 'generic fantasy guy in armor' kit for ever, but I wouldn't touch these if they were free.

**Fenriswulf**

Received all of my stuff. There's a hell of a lot of it for what I pledged.

The quality varies a lot, from the really bad Men-At-Arms to the very good metal miniatures. The Ogres are good, but the proportions ruin what would otherwise be very cool figures. I think I will sell them off rather than having to try to take an inordinate amount of time to set them right.

The miniatures which impress me the most are probably the Obsidian Golems. They really did nail the design of them, and I can always use them as K'daai Infernals if I ever get a Chaos Dwarf army together. They're very good.

The Troll legs are as bad as I had thought, and the faces are badly molded as well. I think I might be able to salvage them by putting on different legs and trying to get different heads for them. Time will tell for those ones.

I am missing 3 Ogre Warriors, an Ogre Command Pack and the Mantic Splat Dice, but apart from that everything else is there. Contacted them and should be able to get a swift resolution I would say.

**RiTides**

Wow, the arm holding the spear looks like it could touch his ankle if stretched out downwards

Fenriswulf wrote:
The miniatures which impress me the most are probably the Obsidian Golems. They really did nail the design of them, and I can always use them as K'daai Infernals if I ever get a Chaos Dwarf army together. They're very good.

That's exactly what I'll be using them for, Fenris!

**timetowaste85**

So, if they do a second KS, are the abyssal models going to be included in it? I'd love to see Mantic's take on Daemon Princes (abyssal whatever's), their lesser daemons, mounted daemons, molochs, etc. I can use my extensive GW Daemon army, but there would be a lot of mix n matching gods there. I'd rather have a uniform look. I can see my pledge for that army being quite extensive: 3 princes, 5-6 heroes, 6 infantry units, 4 moloch units, 3-4 cavalry units, etc. Plus more gargoyles.

**rosafari**

To be fair to Mantic I emailed about a complaint about the Men at Arms and asked for an exchange or refund, they got back to me incredibly quickly with an apology and said they were happy to do either. (I'm going to swap, for immortal guard or golems).

Here's the exchange if anyone's curious. I thought it best to give them a detailed breakdown of the kit's many faults, the more negative feedback they hear the better ultimately:

Spoiler:

In other news, I unpacked and assembled some Paladins and was a bit disappointed when I realised the mounted and foot models have the same (four) head sprue. This means I have thirty models with only four different heads between them - granted they are wearing helmets and I have plenty of alts but still. Also a little disappointed when I realised the Elohi have only two different bodies which is a bit weak for a kit sold in threes...

**Fenriswulf**

Yeah it looks like the whole two body thing is present in a lot of instances. Trolls, werewolves, Golems. The Brock Riders only have one. I am guessing they didn't have the cash to fund several.

**timetowaste85**

I'm not going to lie, the Men at Arms are definitely NOT fantastic sculpts. They are the weakest of the Basilean group. That said, I have plenty because they will work for regimented troops and the heights are fine. The bodies are dynamic and I like those. The arm joining area is rough and the faces suck. With a flesh wash though, they'll likely be usable. I plan on posting pics when I have a couple done so people can see my non-Mantic paint job as a casual player's work. Hopefully that'll help give a decent show, for good or for ill, for everybody.

**Pacific**

Think the guy with the 2-H sword looks quite cool, other chap looks like he would probably need a bit of conversion work..

**Polonius**

that's a classy response from Mantic. I'm guessing it's basically a stock paragraph they have, but good on them for at least owning the quality of the product.

I'm not sayign it's making my confident to buy more mantic sight unseen (oh wait... I pledged deadzone...), but I'm glad they're staying in touch with their customers now.

What they need to learn is to bring in some outside voices before investing in another spure, to avoid this fiasco.

**scarletsquig**

Yeah, it's a good response *but* the thing is (particularly for some kickstarter backers), the same line was used back when the plastic goblins turned out poorly. So there's a little less patience amongst the community this time. If deadzone sprues are crap (and there is certainly some dodgy "I'm sculpting these minis for 40k, not for mantic" stuff going on there even with the renders), that's not going to turn out good at all, especially after everyone paid for restic during the campaign.

IMO, the men-at-arms are worse than the goblins as well. I'd be happy to buy more of the goblins in future (they are really really nice sculpts even if the tooling is a bit soft, and the hybrid metals give them nicely detailed arms for the same price as the plastics), can't say the same for the men-at-arms.

I'm still trying to figure out a fix for the models (my initial conversion was good, but it ended up highlighting and exaggerating the real problem, the arms), chopping up some of the arms at the moment and seeing how it looks. The bulk of the bodies is still an issue, but one that I might be able to sort out with trimming from the top down rather than doing the more complex midsection removal.

Whoever posed them ended up elongating the arms oddly... you have an arm as if it was sculpted at a normal angle initially, then this giant void-of-detail cylinder sticking out to make the arm in a "sticky out" pose. I'm thinking if I can reduce that down, it'll help.

I'll need to obliterate the chainmail detail to do the conversion properly, but that's not as much of a concern when you factor in that the left arms have zero detail anyway due to undercut errors in tooling.

I'm also considering filing down the helms and removing the feathers (which I like, but they add additional bulk to an already gigantic model).

**Some_Call_Me_Tim?**

timetowaste85 wrote:
I just wanted to post this picture, as it's relevant to the MaAs issues. The arms are definitely long, but they are in scale, height wise. It'll come down to personal discretion, but I have no issue running 2 blocks of 40 of these guys. If anybody has another 40 they are bummed about going in on a BOGOF for, I'll pay you the BOGOF price for them. You can make your $25 back, as I'd like a sword&board unit too.

Holy crap, I've seen miniatures from the 80s that are better than that MaA. My jaw literally dropped in shock. Mantic has gotta get on top of their quality control problems...

~Tim?

**Barzam**

I don't have them in hand or anything, but I don't think the pictures make the MAA look all that bad. I think actually a great use for them would be to use them as statues. Someone posted some earlier that were primed white and given a brown wash. It gave them a nice, marble look. Mount them on some pillars and you've got some decent fantasy scenery.

**scarletsquig**

Okay, after several more hours of chopping bits around, my opinion on them is now:

"Feth it, I'll wait for the perry foot knights to come out, buy 120 of those and glue the the MAA spears and shields on them to get the fantasy styling".

The arms and hands are hopeless, and three out of the five heads are hideous, with underbites that would make Beavis and Butthead look like paragons of orthodontistry.

I really tried to get them workable, but it's looking more like 15-20 minutes per figure total once the arms are factored in to fix them up, and I have better things to spend 40 hours of time on.

**Eilif**

timetowaste85 wrote:
I just wanted to post this picture, as it's relevant to the MaAs issues. The arms are definitely long, but they are in scale, height wise.

I'm sorry, but that statement is flatly wrong. The arms are NOT in scale height wise, lenght wise or any other 'wise' compared to the rest of the figure. If the elbows were bent strait they would dip to below the knees. There are almost no humans with arms that long compared to their height.

I agree that they wouldn't look terrible ranked up, but with other better options, I don't see any reason to bother.

Nice to see that the fig's height is relatively in-scale with the rest of the range though. The smaller female figs that other's have shown, don't bother me as most female's are shorter anyway.

**Barzam**

At least it look like the Paladins are good. I haven't seen anyone complaining about them.

**timetowaste85**

Eilif wrote:
timetowaste85 wrote:
I just wanted to post this picture, as it's relevant to the MaAs issues. The arms are definitely long, but they are in scale, height wise.

I'm sorry, but that statement is flatly wrong. The arms are NOT in scale height wise, lenght wise or any other 'wise' compared to the rest of the figure. If the elbows were bent strait they would dip to below the knees. There are almost no humans with arms that long compared to their height.

I agree that they wouldn't look terrible ranked up, but with other better options, I don't see any reason to bother.

Nice to see that the fig's height is relatively in-scale with the rest of the range though. The smaller female figs that other's have shown, don't bother me as most female's are shorter anyway.

Sorry Ellif, I meant the models themselves are in scale, height wise. I also said the arms were long. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Height wise, MaAs are fine. Heads are soft in detail, arms are wicked long.

**Eilif**

timetowaste85 wrote:

Sorry Ellif, I meant the models themselves are in scale, height wise. I also said the arms were long. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Height wise, MaAs are fine. Heads are soft in detail, arms are wicked long.

I get it now. Has anyone checked to see if parts from perry or GW would look good on these guys? Maybe the arms would be better sized than the stock versions.

**Dawnbringer**

Eilif wrote:
timetowaste85 wrote:

Sorry Ellif, I meant the models themselves are in scale, height wise. I also said the arms were long. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Height wise, MaAs are fine. Heads are soft in detail, arms are wicked long.

I get it now. Has anyone checked to see if parts from perry or GW would look good on these guys? Maybe the arms would be better sized than the stock versions.

I'll try and get some up tomorrow.

**timetowaste85**

I'm starting to paint mine up at this point. Some pics should be up tonight or tomorrow. Paladin first, because dammit, I wanna paint a Pallie first!

**Thraxas Of Turai**

Eilif wrote:
timetowaste85 wrote:

Sorry Ellif, I meant the models themselves are in scale, height wise. I also said the arms were long. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Height wise, MaAs are fine. Heads are soft in detail, arms are wicked long.

I get it now. Has anyone checked to see if parts from perry or GW would look good on these guys? Maybe the arms would be better sized than the stock versions.

GW parts on the M@A are on page 56 of this very thread, Empire heads/arms and a HIgh Elf weapon.