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.

My FLGS won't carry the models, which I can't blame them for, but they've been selling rulebooks like hotcakes. They'll also order anything for me. Ogre Hunters don't look very essential, but I'm a completist and its good to be spending some money at a new store.

One of our local shops is doubling down on KoW now that Fantasy died. He's actually running a tournament in January so we'll see how it goes.

Doesn't hurt that it looks like the entire GT fantasy circuit is shifting to KoW here in the states either. At least the Masters circuit anyway.

My KOS kickstarter arrived yesterday, FoN army. I'm actually pretty pleased with it, the Salamanders are cool with a lot of options, although I am struggling to see how you'd ever get them to line up in rank and file as with their shields they are too wide for the bases?

The earth elementals aren't as bad as I thought looking at pictures. I don't know if mine have bent in transit, but they lean forwards more than the pictures I've seen and have a real hulking gorilla type look to them. They look like they obviously should have their knuckles on the ground instead of in the air. My bigger complaint is the socket/hole for the head is far too big, so I'll have to do a bit of work making it fit and look right.

Haven't got round to the Naiads yet and I'm avoiding the metal stuff for the time being as I bloody hate sticking it together. The druid looks alight, if a bit like a female Radaghast from the GW Lotr's.

BigOscar wrote:
My KOS kickstarter arrived yesterday, FoN army. I'm actually pretty pleased with it, the Salamanders are cool with a lot of options, although I am struggling to see how you'd ever get them to line up in rank and file as with their shields they are too wide for the bases?

The earth elementals aren't as bad as I thought looking at pictures. I don't know if mine have bent in transit, but they lean forwards more than the pictures I've seen and have a real hulking gorilla type look to them. They look like they obviously should have their knuckles on the ground instead of in the air. My bigger complaint is the socket/hole for the head is far too big, so I'll have to do a bit of work making it fit and look right.

Haven't got round to the Naiads yet and I'm avoiding the metabl stuff for the time being as I bloody hate sticking it together. The druid looks alight, if a bit like a female Radaghast from the GW Lotr's.

Multibase the Salamanders. No need to force them all onto single bases if you're planning on using them for KoW. You can stagger them, or whatever works to look good and fit on the unit base. Embrace the freedom!

Valete,

JohnS

BigOscar wrote:
the Salamanders are cool with a lot of options, although I am struggling to see how you'd ever get them to line up in rank and file as with their shields they are too wide for the bases?

I've found it difficult to squeeze as many models as Mantic suggests onto multibases regardless of the troop type, so I've only been filling to about 75% or so on Regiments and Hordes. Means the models stretch further too so I can get an extra unit out of my collection.

 cygnnus wrote:

BigOscar wrote:
My KOS kickstarter arrived yesterday, FoN army. I'm actually pretty pleased with it, the Salamanders are cool with a lot of options, although I am struggling to see how you'd ever get them to line up in rank and file as with their shields they are too wide for the bases?

The earth elementals aren't as bad as I thought looking at pictures. I don't know if mine have bent in transit, but they lean forwards more than the pictures I've seen and have a real hulking gorilla type look to them. They look like they obviously should have their knuckles on the ground instead of in the air. My bigger complaint is the socket/hole for the head is far too big, so I'll have to do a bit of work making it fit and look right.

Haven't got round to the Naiads yet and I'm avoiding the metabl stuff for the time being as I bloody hate sticking it together. The druid looks alight, if a bit like a female Radaghast from the GW Lotr's.

Multibase the Salamanders. No need to force them all onto single bases if you're planning on using them for KoW. You can stagger them, or whatever works to look good and fit on the unit base. Embrace the freedom!

Valete,

JohnS

Aye, I figured I'd have to do that as it would be a genuine struggle to get even 5 of them to stand next to each other. They look like they'd need a bigger base than the standard mantic little square they provide, maybe the old larger GW square ones.

BigOscar wrote:
Aye, I figured I'd have to do that as it would be a genuine struggle to get even 5 of them to stand next to each other. They look like they'd need a bigger base than the standard mantic little square they provide, maybe the old larger GW square ones.

Salamanders are supposed to come on 25mm bases.

BigOscar wrote:

 cygnnus wrote:

BigOscar wrote:
My KOS kickstarter arrived yesterday, FoN army. I'm actually pretty pleased with it, the Salamanders are cool with a lot of options, although I am struggling to see how you'd ever get them to line up in rank and file as with their shields they are too wide for the bases?

The earth elementals aren't as bad as I thought looking at pictures. I don't know if mine have bent in transit, but they lean forwards more than the pictures I've seen and have a real hulking gorilla type look to them. They look like they obviously should have their knuckles on the ground instead of in the air. My bigger complaint is the socket/hole for the head is far too big, so I'll have to do a bit of work making it fit and look right.

Haven't got round to the Naiads yet and I'm avoiding the metabl stuff for the time being as I bloody hate sticking it together. The druid looks alight, if a bit like a female Radaghast from the GW Lotr's.

Multibase the Salamanders. No need to force them all onto single bases if you're planning on using them for KoW. You can stagger them, or whatever works to look good and fit on the unit base. Embrace the freedom!

Valete,

JohnS

Aye, I figured I'd have to do that as it would be a genuine struggle to get even 5 of them to stand next to each other. They look like they'd need a bigger base than the standard mantic little square they provide, maybe the old larger GW square ones.

Isn't the standard Mantic little square base 20mm? The Salamanders are meant to go on 25mm

 lord_blackfang wrote:

BigOscar wrote:
Aye, I figured I'd have to do that as it would be a genuine struggle to get even 5 of them to stand next to each other. They look like they'd need a bigger base than the standard mantic little square they provide, maybe the old larger GW square ones.

Salamanders are supposed to come on 25mm bases.

Well that makes a hell of a lot more sense. Mantic just sent me an arse load of 20mm bases and no 25mm's. Classic.

 Alpharius wrote:
Have you tried being the 'KoW Guy" in your area?

A Mantic Evangelist?

A Fantic? A Manatic?

 Polonius wrote:
My FLGS won't carry the models, which I can't blame them for,

Why?

My salamanders have arrived too and Succubi (I didn't go for the Naids

The salamanders are pretty good but there's a big undetailed bit on one leg of each of the bodies which is going to annoy me,

(it looks like that leg should have been cast separately to avoid 2 part mold limitations here)

One of the bodies also has a weirdly small foot which I'm sure is unintentional,

but overall a pretty good kit

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Clearly a single website not working is the fault of anyone and everyone else except the people running that website, as long as you believe they can do no wrong. I'm out.

edit - removed snark.
But I'm glad that you accept that blame goes where blame is due: gandi hosting and cloudflare nameservers (and to some extent, vBulletin. but it seems mainly cloudflare). AKA all the people running the website.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
When you defend them, do you honestly believe this situation is just fine and that Mantic should not bother to improve their website's accessibility?

so not following the party line is equivalent to defending them? Of course Mantic should pay someone to have as many nines uptime as possible. Their only recourse during this should be to switch to yet another host/provider. Hell, I'm the Director of Information Technology for my company and the worst part of any job is relying on vendors to actually provide the services they claim to offer. I've been waiting on EMC to give me CloudArray whitepaper and proper quotes for the entire month of December so our VNXe's can offload their snapshots. It's like companies don't want money to just work as advertised. If Mantic was hosting their own site on Ronnie's laptop and they just turned it off for Christmas break, that'd be one thing. They've paid another vendor to do it, and that vendor is doing a terrible job.

 mugginns wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
My FLGS won't carry the models, which I can't blame them for,

Why?

Many of the models are weak, they've been slow sellers for other game stores in the area, many of the people buying rule books are converting GW armies, and the Kickstarters really devalued the retail product.

I've seen Mantic models pop up in a few stores, so clearly not everybody is on board, but KOW isn't a range I would buy into as an FLGS right now. Maybe some day, but I'd also want to see if KOW can keep up its momentum with no rules releases between editions.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 judgedoug wrote:
But I'm glad that you accept that blame goes where blame is due: gandi hosting and cloudflare nameservers (and to some extent, vBulletin. but it seems mainly cloudflare). AKA all the people running the website.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

They've paid another vendor to do it, and that vendor is doing a terrible job.

This might very well be true, but assigning blame is an idle pastime at best. The reality is that the Mantic forums were down completely for nearly a week, and remain buggy. That it was a third party vendor, and not Ronny himself, doesn't change the fact that this reinforces the idea that Mantic can't do anything completely right.

They're a business, not a schoolboy. I don't care about third party vendors, or Chinese manufacturers, or delays at customs. I want professional customer service, and until we start seeing that, I am going to continue to view Mantic as a glorified garage shop.

From the sounds of it, mantic arent even able to manufacture enough KoW minis to sell in a store now anyway.

That's why they're not doing a fantasy crazy box.

 infinite_array wrote:

 scarletsquig wrote:
^ That's the point. That *is* the official concept art for that model, the one in the photo.

Isn't the official concept art this:



Found it on the Mantic blog back in July.

Why does God need a starship?

Why does a rock golem need a helmet and shoulder pads?

 kronk wrote:
Why does a rock golem need a helmet and shoulder pads?

To look awesome, duh!

 kronk wrote:

Why does a rock golem need a helmet and shoulder pads?

Maybe like Ballchinians in MIB and Newcomers in Alien Nation, the "sensitive" areas are located elsewhere?

Dino-riders style brain box.

The elemental needs the armored shoulders and helmet to make it into an obsidian golem

 GrimDork wrote:
The elemental needs the armored shoulders and helmet to make it into an obsidian golem

That's what I said, brain box. Abyssal Dwarfs are actually Rulons.

 Alex C wrote:
I've found it difficult to squeeze as many models as Mantic suggests onto multibases regardless of the troop type, so I've only been filling to about 75% or so on Regiments and Hordes. Means the models stretch further too so I can get an extra unit out of my collection.

I have a similar practice. I still individually base each mini, but for my KoM army, much of my infantry are Battlemasters and early GW Chaos warriors. KoW uses 20mm for human infantry, but these beyond-heroic-proportioned guys barely fit on 25mm squares. 20mm is a non-starter and to make 25mm work I have to base half towards the front and half towards the back of their bases and alternate them.

In most cases as long as they're on the right size tray no one cares. Even though this results in 12 figures instead of 20 on a 100x80mm tray, I've found that when figs are painted and nicely based, folks are unlikely to quibble over such things. Like this where I've got the wrong size bases on the right sized tray and my buddy (using vintage Ral Partha dwarves) has the right diameter of bases on a slightly oversized tray.

Of course the staggered basing on the chaos helps to confuse the eye also.

 Polonius wrote:

 mugginns wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
My FLGS won't carry the models, which I can't blame them for,

Why?

Many of the models are weak, they've been slow sellers for other game stores in the area, many of the people buying rule books are converting GW armies, and the Kickstarters really devalued the retail product.

I've seen Mantic models pop up in a few stores, so clearly not everybody is on board, but KOW isn't a range I would buy into as an FLGS right now. Maybe some day, but I'd also want to see if KOW can keep up its momentum with no rules releases between editions.

Ah, those are definitely some valid reasons. I tried to get my store to stock them years ago and they didn't.

I like the look of the dwarfs, the way they're based. I have plans to do something similar but with several of the models permanently glued to the base, just a few able to socket out for use in other systems.

Chaos warriors are filling out their movement tray, I don't see much room to complain tbh.

 mugginns wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

 mugginns wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
My FLGS won't carry the models, which I can't blame them for,

Why?

Many of the models are weak, they've been slow sellers for other game stores in the area, many of the people buying rule books are converting GW armies, and the Kickstarters really devalued the retail product.

I've seen Mantic models pop up in a few stores, so clearly not everybody is on board, but KOW isn't a range I would buy into as an FLGS right now. Maybe some day, but I'd also want to see if KOW can keep up its momentum with no rules releases between editions.

Ah, those are definitely some valid reasons. I tried to get my store to stock them years ago and they didn't.

Why?










Did any of their reasons match Polonius'?

 Alpharius wrote:
Did any of their reasons match Polonius'?

I've seen a lot of stores with a lot of dead mantic stock on their shelves. The fact that even beyond kickstarters, there's a lot of heavy discounts to mantic products even from Mantic themselves makes it tough to move the product at or near MSRP. A lot of their games (like Dreadball) had some support, then just died out.

I think that KOW2 might be a turning point with some products starting to gain traction. It's both a game I anticipate being supported by the gaming community over time, and Mantic showing improved quality in their miniatures.

Also now that Mantic will suppossedly be store/distribution friendly, maybe stores will be inclined to order things. Previously they were playing second fiddle to the kickstarters and with pledgemanagers reopening over and over again people could keep adding funds to the totals and it drew attention and $$$$ from the stores. Also the hit and miss concept to reality of sculpting meant that if stores (like one near me) ordered a bunch on a kickstarter for future stock, they got stuck with a lot of slow moving items. The deadzone section at another store near me is sad to say the least. The box art also does no good for sales support and baggie style sales wrapping for some items that are hung by little cardboard tags really looks amateur hour.

Didn't they reopen the Dungeon Saga PM like yesterday?

 Mymearan wrote:
Didn't they reopen the Dungeon Saga PM like yesterday?

Fairly recently, so we could have the privelege of giving them more money for a book they should have corrected in the first place, and the oppertunity to spend $20 on a book box that takes KS expansion costs over MSRP.

Got my abyssal mega army yesterday and spent some time assembling about half of it. The models are pretty good for the most part; a couple of the succubi parts are a little over inflated with poor detail (a couple of the leg pieces) but overall everything looks pretty good.

The lower abyssals also match up with arms and weapons I have from my WoC and Lizardmen, and I think that GW ghoul heads would be able to fit in the neck socket with interesting results.

Just wish the tails were not all straight out to the side on these models as it gets in the way of the shields and is not very dynamic...

Also, does anyone have a link to any concept art or fluff for any of the other abyssal units currently without models? Before I got the rulebook, I thought the abyssal cavalry were supposed to be several lower demons fused together but that seems to have changed...