Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I've had a look through the historical options and have decided to pick up some fireforge foot sergeants to replace the arms and heads as cheaply as possible:



Now that's what a good sprue looks like, and the equipment options are spears, hand weapons, crossbows.. same as the men-at-arms. A single box of those contains enough arms for 36 spears, 36 hand weapon and shield, 24 crossbows which should sort out 100-odd of the mantic minis and let me get the army together without having to convert stuff.

I'll still be using the bases, bodies, shields and spears from the men-at-arms.

Of course, the best option for anyone building a Basilean army for KoW would be to just buy the fireforge guys in the first place, but I've already got over 150 M@A now and might as well do something with the parts of them that are usable.

I've moved on to putting together the paladins and angels which really are lovely miniatures.

The sisters aren't bad either, but the arms don't fit to the point where it's laughable. All of them are really warped. They'll be okay with some hot water bending, but if you were a casual FLGS buyer who wasn't aware of that trick (which is not mentioned anywhere on the packaging), you'd throw them in the bin and never buy mantic again.



That isn't me gluing them together funny or anything, the arms and flail are a single piece (which is a good thing, in theory, works fine on the paladins).

Their Chinese manufacturer is still cutting corners and pulling stuff out of the moulds too quickly, resulting in massive warping.

Crikey that is warped, have not tried to put mine together yet but those arms look nearly an inch off. You are right about some sort of insert, or disclaimer from the box about the "hot water trick" being a necessity to put together a lot of the resin plastic minis. For example if you want the gargoyles to rank up you have to do some hot water bending on the wings, otherwise it just isn't happening. As far as I am aware the older kits I bought in the material never had any such instruction, I shall have to look at the boxes of the newer trolls/Werewolves etc but I doubt they carry any such instructions either.

 scarletsquig wrote:
I've had a look through the historical options and have decided to pick up some fireforge foot sergeants to replace the arms and heads as cheaply as possible:

Spoiler:

Now that's what a good sprue looks like, and the equipment options are spears, hand weapons, crossbows.. same as the men-at-arms. A single box of those contains enough arms for 36 spears, 36 hand weapon and shield, 24 crossbows which should sort out 100-odd of the mantic minis and let me get the army together without having to convert stuff.

Coincidentally, I just ordered a box of everything from the fireforge range. They really are great kits, all of them. The sergeant footmen are especially good value, but the teutonic and templars do look sexier.

This is...not good.

To me, there really is no 'saving' the Men at Arms - they are that bad.

Once again, Mantic's "QA" department really lets them down, as does "Upper Management" who decided to release these things knowing full well how awful they are.

Had a problem where one of my horses was so badly warped that I couldn't do the hot water trick. And boy, did I try. The bodies aren't thin though, and it just wasn't having any modifications. I haven't noticed getting any extra horses, so a quick email was sent out to Mantic for a replacement horse side. Hopefully the rest of my order hadn't gone out and they were able to just stuff it in there.

Yeah, at the closest inspection I have done for the MAA, there really isn't much saving them that doesn't require a hell of a lot of components from another manufacturers kit. In which case, why wouldn't you just buy from them instead?

Some good things were made with this kickstarter. But man, they've got to move away from the beancounter method of sales. It's only going to burn them in the long run.

I feel for those of you who invested heavily in this kickstarter- seems like Mantic really dropped the ball here. Those M@A are shockingly bad. The negative reactions here are really justified.

I liked the majority of the stuff from the KoW KS but the MaA are some if not the worse models I've seen to date. Which makes me slightly concerned as I'm in deep for the Deadzone KS, BUT I've absolutely loved all the Dreadball stuff which alleviates that concerned a tad. It seems they have made more of an effort for there sci-fi/Jake Thorntons games. If they do as well with the Deadzone KS as they have with the Dreadball one I will be a happy man and very happy to drop another load of cash once the Warpath KS hits.

Here's a picture of my first Paladin. They actually sent me 6 in the pack instead of 5, so this one is going to be The Captain. Or whatever other special character I want on foot. The red symbolizes his stature, as the other ones will have reversed coloring on that material: white with a red stripe at the base of it. The purple will stay as is, as I happen to love the look. The men at arms will have a similar paint scheme, and I'll paint one up as soon as I get back from having breakfast at Barnes & Noble.

That is a great looking model!

My MAA will probably just be fodder for my girlfriend to practice techniques on.

I started working on the freebie orcs from round 2 of shipping, and I am disappointed with the amount of extra plastic at the feet. They looked horrible. I cut out the excess but ruined the feet in the process... again, they are mainly fodder.

 Da Boss wrote:
I feel for those of you who invested heavily in this kickstarter- seems like Mantic really dropped the ball here. Those M@A are shockingly bad. The negative reactions here are really justified.

I spent well over $500 on this Kickstarter and got one of the best return on investments I've had in any Kickstarter. My initial pledges were for the currently existing models - offered at a heavy discount over retail price. Even if there had been no stretch goals, it would have been a great value for the money. My first wave was Kings of War rulebook, a giant Orc army and a giant Goblin army. I painted and assembled them and I've played Kings of War dozens of times, where it quickly became my favorite active miniatures wargame. My 2nd and 3rd shipments all contained the free stuff. I may dislike the trolls, some characters, the men at arms, the sisters, but they were all free. I like the ogres and the other basileans. I love the chariots, fight wagons, mincers, fleabag riders, palace guard, stormwind cavalry, dark knights, brock riders, elohi,immortal guard, gargoyles and others - all, also free. Free free free free free. The only additional money I spent was on some more fleabag riders, the fleabag sniff metal bits, and the metal goblin characters, and they are sweet sculpts.

I sit here and look at the literally hundreds and hundreds of figures I've gotten, I reflect on the awesome ruleset that I started playing because of the Kickstarter... are you kidding? This Kickstarter was a tremendous deal and I am entirely satisfied and happy with it. Could some things have been better? Sure, the men at arms are pretty gak.

But for me personally... no, it was a steal. I feel like I ripped off Mantic with the amount of free stuff I got.

Great model timetowaste, the paladins look really nice.

 Da Boss wrote:
I feel for those of you who invested heavily in this kickstarter- seems like Mantic really dropped the ball here. Those M@A are shockingly bad. The negative reactions here are really justified.

There's a few bad models, a few that some people will hate stylistically, and a whole bunch of good to great models. For much of it, you could switch your order around after the fact to get good models (although the shots they gave of the MaA were misleading, which rightfully should lead to some unhappiness). I ended up with an ogre army and an abyssal dwarf army (along with lots of additional tidbits), and I'm very happy with what I got.

I was kind of forced in going into taking the Ogre Army because that's the only real set of figures I thought I would like to use, and I already had a ton of other Mantic figures from their other lines. I think I can make back my investment if I sell them off, as well as a majority of the freebies.

If you chose Basileans (like I did initially), you're likely to have come out worse out of all this.

I'm glad you are happy with your stuff, but I wouldn't feel the same way if I had invested heavily in the KS. There are only a few models (paladins are one) that I thought were particularly nice, the rest were fairly disappointing. I guess I am not a fan of the cartoony look to a lot of them.

 Fenriswulf wrote:
I was kind of forced in going into taking the Ogre Army because that's the only real set of figures I thought I would like to use, and I already had a ton of other Mantic figures from their other lines. I think I can make back my investment if I sell them off, as well as a majority of the freebies.

If you chose Basileans (like I did initially), you're likely to have come out worse out of all this.

I heavily went into the Basileans (got the preorder army deal they offered that included the free chariot) and I'm not terribly disappointed. I've even picked up an additional 80 Men At Arms from another backer who didn't want them. So I've got 160 of the bloody guys. I'm planning on doing a bunch up with crossbows, as the crossbow arms are properly sized, so only the heads look a bit goofy. I have 20 crossbows, and would like a further 20, so I'll either need bitz from Mantic (if they sell those individually later) or a friendly pal on here (any offers?). I'm going to end up with 80 with spears, 40 with Sword&Board, and 40 with Crossbows. I won't need any more Men At Arms, for sure, but painting one up now and with washes to fill in the cracks and painting the areas as they're supposed to be, he isn't turning out badly. Pictures up in another hour or so.

Man at Arms, finished except a wash on the boots and gloves, which I forgot. Should be able to get the idea though-they aren't so bad when painted up. Bare plastic...pretty close to hideous. Painted, they'll make really good rank and file.

Other than the gorilla arms those don't look half bad. As a mob of rank and file that get chewed up on the front lines as it is, I don't think I'd be too worried about their proportions. Their job is to hold the line, die, or keep my opponent out of my hair- not look fabulous to the point that every person in the unit stands tall as a man among men..

If I saw a set of those Men at Arms for a reasonable price I might be inclined to pick some up just to paint and fiddle with.

Other than that they wouldn't do a whole lot for me, but then again, I've never played a human army. Ever. I don't see that changing any time soon either.

If (when) Mantic do another Kings of War kickstarter, I hope to see some more exotic races.

 Fenriswulf wrote:

If you chose Basileans (like I did initially), you're likely to have come out worse out of all this.

This, unfortunately. But also unfortunately - a lot of the excitement the last week of the KS was about the Basilieans. It was they (imo) that prompted most of the big influx of cash towards the end.

I went in for them big and was pretty disappointed (mostly by the Men at Arms & Sisters - but then that's a good third of the army).

Tons of the other minis I received are quite nice though - they are just for armies I have little to no interest in. The Ogres are great - but I have a full GW Ogre army. The elf riders/palace guard seem very nice - but I don't like elves. The Abyssal golems are cool - but I don't want a hybrid plastic/metal army. Etc, etc, for most of the freebie units I got.

So I don't think the whole KS was a bust. Just a bust if you wanted the Basileans.

I certainly won't be buying into any other Mantic KSs minis unseen though. And I think their reputation will (rightly) take a decent hit from the MaA & Sisters.

 scarletsquig wrote:


Now that's what a good sprue looks like, and the equipment options are spears, hand weapons, crossbows.. same as the men-at-arms. A single box of those contains enough arms for 36 spears, 36 hand weapon and shield, 24 crossbows which should sort out 100-odd of the mantic minis and let me get the army together without having to convert stuff.

I'll still be using the bases, bodies, shields and spears from the men-at-arms.

Not sure if it's too late, but I'd hold off on buying the FF for bits for the MaAs. I've been trying it and it's not working out. At this point I'm wondering if everyone's MaAs are all the same size, as mine are definately bigger than the paladins. Though the FF heads are good fit for the Paladins, as I find the Mantic ones, ironically, too small.

I'll try and get some pics up soon.

 timetowaste85 wrote:

Wow.. I don't think the previous pictures portrayed just how horrible those ape arms and no detail shield shoulders are... Wow... that sculpt overall is about as good (from memory) as the old GW milton bradley not-warhammer fantasy boxed minis I picked up 20 years ago used.

The paladin looks great. I hope the knights paint up that well also. The men at arms, I just can't justify ever getting those.

Warboss, that's also a single model. Ranked up, in unit blocks, it won't look bad at all. Even tilted at the right angle on my desk he looks good. Better painted, but yes, they definitely came out as the worst of the KS models. Still very usable though, in large numbers. Actually, if I took the section I painted white out of each arm, they'll be just about the right sized arms. Might do so and post pictures. I think I'm going to start doing a Men At Arms fixings and happiness thread in the Mantic Subforum, as it's not really necessary in the N&R section anymore.

Who are you guys e-mailing about missing stuff in your shipments? I sent them a message through the Kickstarter about some parts I'm missing a week ago, and haven't heard anything back.

I've emailed Stew and Tim. Even when I've emailed Stew, Tim is usually the one who responds. It's taken all of 24 hrs (except weekends) for him to respond to me, tops. I'd say that's pretty quick, when lots of people are having issues. I posted the email address in the Mantic Subforum under customer service-head on over there for a look-sie.

warboss wrote:

 timetowaste85 wrote:

Spoiler:

[spoiler]

[/spoiler]

Wow.. I don't think the previous pictures portrayed just how horrible those ape arms and no detail shield shoulders are... Wow... that sculpt overall is about as good (from memory) as the old GW milton bradley not-warhammer fantasy boxed minis I picked up 20 years ago used.

Actually the mantic figs look worse. I've just painted up a batch of the "Battlemasters" figures you're describing. They are monopose and chunky heroic and the detail level is similar. However, the proportions are great, and the sculpts neatly done.

scarletsquig wrote:I've had a look through the historical options and have decided to pick up some fireforge foot sergeants to replace the arms and heads as cheaply as possible:

Spoiler:

.

Looking forward to pics of the bits on the mantic figs. I heard that fireforge is on the small side of 28mm, but it's probably going to be better than the arms that come with the MaA figs.

When I stop being lazy (I'm enjoying Injustice on the iPhone, atm), I'll be setting up a thread on ideas for fixing the MaAs. SS, I hope you'll also post your fixes in there as well, so people can see the options to correct theirs and make these things work.

How about just a Basilean fix thread in general. I'd like to see some other head options on the angels.

I actually started the Men at Arms thread already, but I have angel head fixes too. I'll post a primed one over there too. Also, I don't really bother with minor mold lines, so if you see them on my models...they're there. It's all good. If they're bad, I remove them. Paladins had some bad excess, my MAA mold lines are minor, and I don't feel like fixing 160 of the flaming bastards.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
I actually started the Men at Arms thread already, but I have angel head fixes too. I'll post a primed one over there too. Also, I don't really bother with minor mold lines, so if you see them on my models...they're there. It's all good. If they're bad, I remove them. Paladins had some bad excess, my MAA mold lines are minor, and I don't feel like fixing 160 of the flaming bastards.

link to thread?