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Mantic subforum on this site, it's the very top thing right now.

 Eilif wrote:
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.

That's incorrect. The Men At Arms are bad, but I'm looking at them right now. The Men At Arms are far, far superior in terms of tooling and crispness of detail compared to the Battlemasters figures. Additionally, the Battlemasters figures are actually less proportionate, as the Empire infantry would all be roughly 4'6" tall in 28mm scale, though properly wide. Are you just comparing pictures, or are you physically comparing them? Because there's no comparison, the Men At Arms (whilst gakky) tooling is superior to the Battlemasters tooling.

I don't know, I looked at them both side by side, and I think that the Battlemasters figures are actually better (at least the tooling). The details are definitely sharper, and the chain is a lot better. The proportions on the battlemaster figures are at least cohesive for squat little humans. The upper arm length on the MAA is all over the place, as is the length of the forearms.

That being said, it isn't really doing Mantic any favors to have their newest completely crowd funded hard plastic sprue being compared to figures from a board game released over 20 years ago.

In fact, I have no desire to interact with a company in any way that would fly their CEO to China to inspect these sprues, decide to release them anyway, and even have the temerity to ask their backers for more money for them knowing how bad they were. Why hold out for quality when everything is already paid for and you have another million dollar pre-order campaign to run?

If I had backed Deadzone (thank goodness I didn't), I would be trying to get a refund based off the MAA sprues alone. Think those plastic Enforcers are going to turn out great? Yeah...

Could we move the discussion about the M@A to the appropriate forum now please as it is neither news or rumours.

Just a very quick note that I took a trip to Mantic towers today and saw the greens for a very lovely looking Beserker lord on brock. Much more of an rearing/vicious pose than the current ones and looking great. Unfortunately I wasn't allowed to get a photo of it.

I was, however, able to get a photo of the WIP WIP WIP WIP Ogre Warlock. I repeat this is a WORK IN PROGRESS AND IS NOT ANYWHERE CLOSE TO BEING FINAL.



Apologies for the blurryness, my camera did not want to focus on it.

...The day after I ordered something to replace it with, assuming Mantic's customary gaps in the line would remain for a year or two in that list, of course. Oh well, more variety the merrier

Two more bodies in that style and some "made for bashin' " arms and we have the berserker braves done. Okay, that's a bit wishful perhaps

That thing to the right, is that the first gen DZ Plague model?

Mantic's Ogres are sweet. The pic's blurry but I think that model will fit in well. Thanks for sharing it!

 Bolognesus wrote:
...The day after I ordered something to replace it with, assuming Mantic's customary gaps in the line would remain for a year or two in that list, of course. Oh well, more variety the merrier

Two more bodies in that style and some "made for bashin' " arms and we have the berserker braves done. Okay, that's a bit wishful perhaps

That thing to the right, is that the first gen DZ Plague model?

That thing to the right is the first gen alt sculpt. Lovely model!

Also, that sculpt is a long, long way from release. I was told that it might not even get a release if it's not up to scratch, but I thought it was.

Daedleh wrote:

Also, that sculpt is a long, long way from release. I was told that it might not even get a release if it's not up to scratch, but I thought it was.

lol - suuuure it won't.

Seriously though - like all of Mantic's Ogres it looks pretty nice.

Not up to scratch?

It is already better than the vast majority of everything else that came out of the KoW KS!

 Alpharius wrote:
Not up to scratch?

It is already better than the vast majority of everything else that came out of the KoW KS!

I agree. But potentially not up to scratch versus their standard for Deadzone. A lot of the KS stuff was way, way before their current standards and quality control. The Beserker lord I saw was up to Deadzone quality and I've every reason to believe that Mantic are going to be holding that level of quality going forward. I reckon 2014 will be the year when Mantic stop being seen as "cheap" and start being seen as "quality at excellent prices".

I'd like to believe that, but the problem as scarletsquig has pointed out is that they said the same thing after their horrible goblin sprues. And, despite the MaA sprues being horrible and their admitting so, they released them anyway!

Still, like I said, I'd like to believe . I love the Deadzone sculpts so far, for the most part, which is surprising to me. We'll see if the molding issues truly are worked out... personally, I am wary of believing that a good looking sculpt will result in a good looking molded part at this point, though.

Mantic should call up WGF and get some advice from them on how to get things to work right in plastic!

Deadzone will be the litmus test on how well Mantic has improved. It will be the last straw if they haven't.

sparkywtf wrote:
Mantic should call up WGF and get some advice from them on how to get things to work right in plastic!

Deadzone will be the litmus test on how well Mantic has improved. It will be the last straw if they haven't.

Agreed on all counts!

I personally have WAY too much in this one - if the pull a KoW on this one... whoo boy!

I'm only in on DeadZone for a tiny amount. If they can actually show some consistent finished quality for a change, I might go in properly in the next survey.

Ogre Warlock looks lovely, it doesn't look even slightly WIP or "not up to scratch" to me, it looks great.

I hope it doesn't end up being unreleased, Mantic has a lot of stuff like that knocking around, like these orc archers that must have been sculpted about 3 years ago, along with some extra head and weapon variants that didn't make the cut:



And then there's that hens-teeth Dwarf king sculpt that was released only via a very brief Wayland Games promotion about a year ago.

I'm sure it'll all get a release eventually, but probably not before 2015. Just when you think the release schedule can't get anymore packed, it becomes more packed! They've moved to a 2-week release window for new releases, Loka was released in the middle of this month and there will be another release at the end of the month for the new elves, then tons more stuff for Dreadball season 3, then some more KoW KS stuff, then deadzone.

There's already way too much to be released even before taking Mars Attacks into account (which should be pretty quick and easy for Mantic, at least... using the same template as Deadzone means a lot of the hard work is already done).

They're certainly good at volume, and might overtake GW in terms of output within the space of a year or so, since they're basically a leaner version of GW that doesn't have all the overheads and can get on with releasing as many minis as possible as quickly as possible.

It has been hinted that a second KoW Kickstarter is likely to be next after Mars Attacks, Ronnie wants to get a couple of new armies and some big monsters done alongside filling out the existing ranges.

 judgedoug wrote:

 Eilif wrote:
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.

That's incorrect. The Men At Arms are bad, but I'm looking at them right now. The Men At Arms are far, far superior in terms of tooling and crispness of detail compared to the Battlemasters figures. Additionally, the Battlemasters figures are actually less proportionate, as the Empire infantry would all be roughly 4'6" tall in 28mm scale, though properly wide. Are you just comparing pictures, or are you physically comparing them? Because there's no comparison, the Men At Arms (whilst gakky) tooling is superior to the Battlemasters tooling.

As for height, they aren't modern 28mm figs. They are what was called "Heroic 25mm" back then.

As to proportion, it's a matter of the style of BM figs. They and like similar Heroic 25mm figs of that era (GW, old glory, Foundry) they are round and chunky. They are very close copies (legal copies) of the Warhammer MaA figs of that time. However, that's intentional and the various parts of the body are in proportion to themselves. None of that monkey arm or tiny head issues that the MaA.

Now they do have their downsides, the tooling -while pretty crisp- Is more for game pieces, so there are some pretty large flat areas, and the sprue attachment points are not always in the most convenient locations. And there's the issue of them all being single pose miniatures. Still, I feel like BM figures are much better executed overall and feel like a finished, cohesive product. I can't say the same for mantic's MaA.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
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.

Hm. I've got a lot of cavalry, a lot of it was warped, and some quite badly - and no plans to assemble any of it immediately. It'll be interesting to see if they stand by their product when I get around to trying to assemble them in 6 months or a year's time. (It took a year+ to get the figures - I'm not going to rush through them all in a month, after all...)

 Eilif wrote:

As for height, they aren't modern 28mm figs. They are what was called "Heroic 25mm" back then.

As to proportion, it's a matter of the style of BM figs. They and like similar Heroic 25mm figs of that era (GW, old glory, Foundry) they are round and chunky. They are very close copies (legal copies) of the Warhammer MaA figs of that time. However, that's intentional and the various parts of the body are in proportion to themselves. None of that monkey arm or tiny head issues that the MaA.

Now they do have their downsides, the tooling -while pretty crisp- Is more for game pieces, so there are some pretty large flat areas, and the sprue attachment points are not always in the most convenient locations. And there's the issue of them all being single pose miniatures. Still, I feel like BM figures are much better executed overall and feel like a finished, cohesive product. I can't say the same for mantic's MaA.

Oh, I am very aware of Battlemasters figures; I used to use them to play Warhammer with back in the mid 90's. I also have at least two hundred lead Empire soldiers from 3rd/4th edition of Warhammer, including the weapon-plug ones (halberdiers, crossbowmen, sword/shield) and at least 50 of the old Citadel adventurers/townsfolk/mercenaries etc. The Battlemasters figures are too short and squat and are not in proportion to any miniature range that existed (they are, as you say, 25mm to the eye; however, all the Citadel slotta-era-figures are 28mm); they are in proportion only to the Hero Quest figures including the UK-only expansions (I would assume they were sculpted by the same person). Though, nowadays, using them with current Warhammer figures would give you skinny halflings.

I do agree that they are quite nice for boardgame pieces; but in terms of using them outside of Battlemastes, while the Halberdiers are certainly acceptable, the crossbowmen and archers were pretty bad (their faces are almost nonexistent) and the beastmen were atrocious. The knights, however, were great and could easily fit into even current armies, especially the excellent horses.

Regardless, the original point was that the Mantic Men At Arms look worse and that Battlemasters had great proportions. Owning both of them I can certainly see that the Men At Arms are much crisper and have sharper detail and the Battlemasters figures are not proportionate to anything but themselves. But, again, while the Men At Arms are nice and sharply defined, it's like nice and sharply defined gak.

The pics of MaA do not look "nice and sharply defined" to me. Even "nice and sharply defined gak". Maybe the pics aren't doing the molding justice, but I haven't seen others posting that the casts are great, judgedoug.

Regardless, this would be the epitome of the expression "polishing a turd" imo... there's really no defending those models. Better to move on and hope Mantic redeems themselves with Deadzone... but saying "they're not as bad as these other crappy figs" doesn't mean much

 RiTides wrote:
The pics of MaA do not look "nice and sharply defined" to me. Even "nice and sharply defined gak". Maybe the pics aren't doing the molding justice, but I haven't seen others posting that the casts are great, judgedoug.

Regardless, this would be the epitome of the expression "polishing a turd" imo... there's really no defending those models. Better to move on and hope Mantic redeems themselves with Deadzone... but saying "they're not as bad as these other crappy figs" doesn't mean much

Yeah, I thought they were pretty mushy until I got my KS shipment. They're sharper than the pics look (remember, they're being blown up several times on your monitor), and they are very definitely sharper than Battlemasters figures. I still dislike them which is why I've just gotten rid of them, lol.

Okay as long as we're clear on that

On to other things...!

Mantic is the world leader of "it looks better in person".

Wish they had released those Orc archers! I wonder if an official mini of those will ever come along?

^ Yeah would have been awesome.

Sadly, I'm not sure if they'll be able to release them now that they're not using Renedra for tooling anymore, and they can't really fund the tooling via KS due to the 18-month lead times that Renedra requires, it would have to be done from their own pocket.

While I'm not the greatest fan of Mantic's orcs, I don't see why regular (ie: non-kickstarted) releases are an impossibility for them.

 scarletsquig wrote:
^ Yeah would have been awesome.

Sadly, I'm not sure if they'll be able to release them now that they're not using Renedra for tooling anymore, and they can't really fund the tooling via KS due to the 18-month lead times that Renedra requires, it would have to be done from their own pocket.

3-month lead time. Perry Bros have stated Renedra goes from submitting the 3-ups to finished sprue within 3 months.

That's aside from the reportedly long waiting list for a time slot in their production lines though, isn't it?

 Bolognesus wrote:
That's aside from the reportedly long waiting list for a time slot in their production lines though, isn't it?

Apparently not anymore. the 3 months is submission ('here's the 3ups, Renedra!') to completion ('thanks for the pile of sprues, Renedra!').

But they are expensive. Which is probably the overriding concern.

 judgedoug wrote:

 Bolognesus wrote:
That's aside from the reportedly long waiting list for a time slot in their production lines though, isn't it?

Apparently not anymore. the 3 months is submission ('here's the 3ups, Renedra!') to completion ('thanks for the pile of sprues, Renedra!').

But they are expensive. Which is probably the overriding concern.

I wonder what the sales difference would have been if the goblins were well-tooled and the sprues a bit more full (let's say including the other two weapon options). Stylistically, I think the goblins are as good as anything on the market, and they would be the clear best hard plastic goblins (considering night goblins different) on the market.