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 Alpharius wrote:
Links to/screen shots of said jokes and PMs please!

I'll see if I can dig it up later. My wife flew down to be with her dad and it's just me with the boys so I'm a bit shorter on time than normal. Looking through my messages, I don't see the directly snarky comment so it may have been in the comments section which will take a lot longer to dig up. I can produce a screenshot of someone from Mantic assuring me that the tiles should be the same thickness as the Descent tiles though (gimme a bit if you want to see it, I have to make dinner). Looking at my messages, the update in question is probably from August 20 something.. I'll get the specifics of that later as well.


This is a copy/paste of part of the message. This is NOT from the person who made the remarks but one of their friendly follow ups after you drop a pledge.

Thanks for getting in touch - and I've very sorry to hear that you feel that way. Certainly we don't try to upset our backers so I'm sorry you feel a response was snarky, it was definitely not intended that way.

The card tiles will be the same thickness as the tiles in descent - they are made of the same material. The counters are made of the same material, and we'd like do the same with the character mats too.

The tiles in the Beasts of War video were bits of paper that we used in our prototype version.

Well, at least they apologized to you!

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 AlexHolker wrote:
If only somebody could have predicted that the dragon would look like gak.

Oh. Wait.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day

Unless it's digital.

Well, if all people have to complain about is the dragon in this latest batch of releases, that's not too bad.

I actually quite like the dragon now it's in my hand, but you know different strokes and all that nonsense.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
For every Enforcer Peacekeeper sprue full of magic, they release a doggie no-no scoop full of Greater Obsidian Golem. According to their only (ex) in-house sculptor, Mantic doesn't care how the miniatures turn out. Well, it shows.

But the Greater Obsidian Goolem is really cool looking I'll probably be getting one of his Greater Earth Elemental cousins at some point

All my dungeon saga stuff arrived today and on first inspection everything seems present and correct. The dragon instantly stands out as it's a gigantic piece of plastic, it's going to look spectacular in the game. Not hand a chance to closely inspect things as I had to get back to work, but I'm very impressed so far. I was almost positive they'd get my order wrong as I added a couple of things late on, but it seems to be spot on. I'll have to go through it all to make sure, but there is nothing obviously missing.

A lot of hot water treatment is going to be required though, predictably. The colour coding of the models is going to be very useful in sorting everything out.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 AlexHolker wrote:
If only somebody could have predicted that the dragon would look like gak.

Oh. Wait.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day

But not this time.

I quite like the fat dragon, and am going to use it as exactly that - a dragon grown fat and lazy.... (Like the Shire Dragon by long defunct Grenadier, there is always a place for fat and lazy dragons.)


Available from Mirliton.



*EDIT* Added image from http://tolkiengateway.net.
*EDIT 2* And the Shire Dragon can still be purchased, through Mirliton.

The Auld Grump

BigOscar wrote:
A lot of hot water treatment is going to be required though, predictably.

Only one of my weapons need the hot water treatment, the big guy with a spear. Must of got a good batch!

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I remember the huge discussion we had about anatomy when the first rendered images came out. AlexHolker was there. He predicted that the dragon would look bad if they didn't fix it before it went to production, and thus it came to pass.

Frankly, I don't think those excuses give Mantic a pass at all. They've had so, so many chances to get it right and they keep whiffing. For every Enforcer Peacekeeper sprue full of magic, they release a doggie no-no scoop full of Greater Obsidian Golem. According to their only (ex) in-house sculptor, Mantic doesn't care how the miniatures turn out. Well, it shows.

And yet....their quality has increased noticeably with every release. There's a page of 8 new sculpts, and there's one model that most don't like, and one that's split.

Mantic needs to step up their monster game for sure, but overall, mantic's miniature quality is increasing by leaps and bounds.

Personally I think while their technical quality is increasing, their art direction is still as ugly as ever, resulting in sub-par sculpts from great sculptors. The Enforcers and Undead are very cool, and some of the Forge Father troops nail it, but that's about it imo.

Any declaration of increased quality over time forgets that the very first sprues that Mantic put out were the KOW Infantry ones from Renendra.

They just didn't stick with Renedra because of the costs involved and the stacked nature of the Renendra schedule meaning that they would be forced into sporadic and delayed releases.

That said Zombie trolls

I think the only fault of Mantic's dragon is that they chose to release a boardgame model that was designed to fit into a 75mmx75mm area as a wargaming model.

As it stands, it's a badass boardgame/Bones style model. And a mediocre wargaming one.

I'm far more interested in the Naiads. The Abyssals were interesting back during the KoW KS but my overall malaise with Mantic KS means that I didn't back, but I'm not sure the realized models have won me over that much. The pictures of the Naiads though make them seem like they might be among Mantic's better kits.

Those are still on track for the coming year?

 Krinsath wrote:
I'm far more interested in the Naiads. The Abyssals were interesting back during the KoW KS but my overall malaise with Mantic KS means that I didn't back, but I'm not sure the realized models have won me over that much. The pictures of the Naiads though make them seem like they might be among Mantic's better kits.

Those are still on track for the coming year?

Much like Warpath looks to me like the Coolest Sci-Fi Saturday Morning Cartoon Ever (and so therefore I pledged a ton), the Naiads look like they'd fit in with the Coolest Fantasy Saturday Morning Cartoon Ever aesthetic that Mantic appears to be going for with it's recent releases.

I hope Mantic follows through with those Naiad serpent riders.

We've got stats for them, we've seen art for them... now just get those models made!

The problem is not so much the dragon itself, which works well for what it was intended, a boardgame. The problem is that they released it as a centre piece model for a wargame army. A problem which is made worse by lazily sticking riders (which are not bad by themselves either) on top of them.

And as Mymearan pointed out. Mantic desperatly needs some art direction, because it is obvious that they do not have anyone with designskills in that position.

Can't wait to get my stuff.. between this and my Blood Rage goodies I'm gonna OD on plasticrack

Also trying to figure out how to set up my blood rage vikings as an Armies of Men army for KOW.. troops are easy enough, but not sure how to handle the giants/ogre sized minis. Was looking over the list last night and there's an option for a warbeast or something that looks to be on a chariot sized base, so maybe I can do the blood rage giants in pairs of 2 on 1 base as a kind of proxy? or would that look silly?

 judgedoug wrote:
I think the only fault of Mantic's dragon is that they chose to release a boardgame model that was designed to fit into a 75mmx75mm area as a wargaming model.

As it stands, it's a badass boardgame/Bones style model. And a mediocre wargaming one.

I think Bones is the biggest issue with this dragon. There's at least a half dozen Bones dragons that fit in the 75x75 square, are much cheaper than whatever the Mantic dragon will release for, and are much better looking. Calling it a badass Bones style model is miles off the mark.

decker_cky wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
I think the only fault of Mantic's dragon is that they chose to release a boardgame model that was designed to fit into a 75mmx75mm area as a wargaming model.

As it stands, it's a badass boardgame/Bones style model. And a mediocre wargaming one.

I think Bones is the biggest issue with this dragon. There's at least a half dozen Bones dragons that fit in the 75x75 square, are much cheaper than whatever the Mantic dragon will release for, and are much better looking. Calling it a badass Bones style model is miles off the mark.

Honestly, I can't judge right now. I have several Bones dragons and the details are all soft. I don't have this guy in hand so I can make a comparison. The thing that the Mantic dragon has really going against it is that it had to be sculpted to fit a boardgame tile. If he was stretched out lengthwise or heightwise he'd be a lot more impressive.

I have a bunch of the dragons from Bones II, and not a one of them fits inside the 75mmx75mm base size bar the small Silver Dragon, and the very silly Verocithrax. All of the others have either a wing or a tail curling well outside the footprint.

Well, does a wing outside the base dimensions really matter? I used to have one of the bones steampunk Dragons which Name I forgot. I put it on a 50x100 base, but it would've easily fit on a 50x75

https://www.reapermini.com/Miniatures/Bones/latest/77177
That's the one. Got it for 10 usd :x

RoninXiC wrote:
Well, does a wing outside the base dimensions really matter? I used to have one of the bones steampunk Dragons which Name I forgot. I put it on a 50x100 base, but it would've easily fit on a 50x75

https://www.reapermini.com/Miniatures/Bones/latest/77177
That's the one. Got it for 10 usd :x

It does when it's at ground level and liable to sweep away other mins, as with Narthrax. Cinder, Blightfang and Nathavarr all have tails sweeping out, while Nathavarr also has a substantial base.

That's why you have a replacement base to put down if you need to

If memory serves, and it had better since I don't want to go out and rummage through the massive box Cinder and Nathavarr are also deceptively large compared to the original KS photos, they both outsize Blightfang and Narthrax by a fair bit.

Silver Dragon would probably fit, but imo it seems more like a teenage dragon to me, not quite full grown yet, kinda lanky and its spikes haven't grown in.

Worth saying I didn't back and don't own any Bones 1, so I can't comment on all those dragons, sot no I don't have too many dragons.

Which is to say that I'm gonna get a few more from Bones 3.

By which I mean I'm getting Tiamat and she's getting on the table somehow

There are very few large dragons I've seen that fit well within a zone like that. The D&D boardgame, Wrath of Ashardalon's dragon comes to mind. He doesn't seem that big but if you compare his size to a humanoid, he's pretty big.

For the longest time I used a Heroscape skeleton-dragon w/rider thing as my Undead monsterous-mounted hero, and again it fit beautifully.

I love Mantic, everyone here knows it... but a design misfire, is a misfire. It happens.

 judgedoug wrote:
I think the only fault of Mantic's dragon is that they chose to release a boardgame model that was designed to fit into a 75mmx75mm area as a wargaming model.

As it stands, it's a badass boardgame/Bones style model. And a mediocre wargaming one.

Well, I have 1st edition Descent, and the Mantic dragon looks to beat the hell out of the Descent dragons on just about every metric, but on the other hand, I can run, ski and shoot better than a stroke victim but you don't see anyone lining up to give me a gold medal, either.

I have many of the Bones Dragons, and they all have better anatomy, better poses, and all around better design than the Mantic dragon, for a cheaper price. I did skip that silly Verocithrax one, though. i don't buy the base-size pose limitations excuse since the old descent dragons had limbs and wings jutting out all over the place. It comes across like an artist sent in a rough draft and Mantic didn't bother asking for any changes, even when they were planning to use the base mini to create centerpiece minis for several of their armies.

Mantic makes a lot of good minis, yes, but the dragon isn't one of them for me.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
I think the only fault of Mantic's dragon is that they chose to release a boardgame model that was designed to fit into a 75mmx75mm area as a wargaming model.

As it stands, it's a badass boardgame/Bones style model. And a mediocre wargaming one.

Well, I have 1st edition Descent, and the Mantic dragon looks to beat the hell out of the Descent dragons on just about every metric, but on the other hand, I can run, ski and shoot better than a stroke victim but you don't see anyone lining up to give me a gold medal, either.

I have many of the Bones Dragons, and they all have better anatomy, better poses, and all around better design than the Mantic dragon, for a cheaper price. I did skip that silly Verocithrax one, though. i don't buy the base-size pose limitations excuse since the old descent dragons had limbs and wings jutting out all over the place. It comes across like an artist sent in a rough draft and Mantic didn't bother asking for any changes, even when they were planning to use the base mini to create centerpiece minis for several of their armies.

Mantic makes a lot of good minis, yes, but the dragon isn't one of them for me.

Yeah, even GW struggled with base sizes, but if you look at the old school Asarnil:



You'll see a model that, despite being 20 years older, is arguably better than the Mantic Dragon.

I would take the Mantic dragon over Asarnil any day.