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 Alpharius wrote:

 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'?

At that time, I want to say all they had out was undead and elves, and they didn't like the look of the models. I think they also imagined people buying the cheaper Mantic stuff and not the expensive GW stuff, so they would lose some $$$.

 Theophony wrote:
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.

Mantic just started an updated sale that looks like it ends on Jan 31st.
It's limited but they're clearing out stuff like Mars Attacks.
The base set is selling for 37% off what my FLGS is selling it for at MSRP of $80.

Make mine Mantic!
Or was that Marvel?

from facebook

Mantic Games


4 hrs ·
.

Important announcement

Over the next week the warehouse will be close as they perform a complete stock take. During this time, we will not be dispatching any items. Normal dispatch operations will resume on Monday 11th January.

For those of you who are waiting on missing items or pledges, the Customer Service team are working through these as quickly as they can.

If you have a webstore order placed earlier than the 26th December that is still awaiting dispatch, then please contact us through the contact form on our site.

Thank you for your patience

Huh. That's weird. Does anyone know if that's normal?

 Da Boss wrote:
Huh. That's weird. Does anyone know if that's normal?

It's the first time I can recall that they completely shut down for a week.

Doing a hard count inventory on a regular basis is pretty common, but spending a whole week seems a bit much. It could be a good sign that the new managers seem to realize that they need to reboot the whole operation.

That's what I'm hoping

I'm still waiting on the MDF trays I ordered with my KOW pledge, but weren't included in my Wave1 box. I was assured a month ago that they were shipped out, but even at Christmas time a month is a pretty health time to cross the pond.

I think that Mantic realize they need to fix what's going on. let's hope they get it right!

Soon they will find out one of their packers has a house made of battlezones and 100,000 points of each army, then it might click that they have an inventory issue .

having to clean 100,000 points of Mantic restic is enough punishment, I would think...

A week seems excessive for a inventory of product....But then again I used to work at Best Buy and we inventoried an entire store with 10 people in a single evening so what do I know.

A week is a long time for a stocktake and usually you can do cycle counts these days with no stoppage of output.

Maybe though they are going to do a full stocktake and then do a rearrangement of stock to make the warehouse more efficient.

Its easy for a warehouse that adds many new lines to become inefficient unless the manager is on top of his game and is managing the stock and sales volumes closely.

Jan/Feb is usually the best time of year for this sort of thing as stores are usually still stocked from xmas and orders diminish as people get their credit card bills

Is anyone else still unable to access the Mantic forum?

 MangoMadness wrote:
A week is a long time for a stocktake and usually you can do cycle counts these days with no stoppage of output.

Maybe though they are going to do a full stocktake and then do a rearrangement of stock to make the warehouse more efficient.

Its easy for a warehouse that adds many new lines to become inefficient unless the manager is on top of his game and is managing the stock and sales volumes closely.

Jan/Feb is usually the best time of year for this sort of thing as stores are usually still stocked from xmas and orders diminish as people get their credit card bills

The old warehouse manager left a few months back, I'm assuming they'll have hired a new one by now who wants to get the place resorted to their scheme. As you say, Jan is the best time to upend everything and put it back together.

They are also going to be sending out the "Crazy Boxes" next week, which I imagine would be a good opportunity to clear out excess stock. Everyone gets Deadzone v1.0 rulebooks!

Postman just dropped off my KoW wave 2!

My order was super simple this time (2x Abyssal starter) and it paid off, for once everything is there as it should be.

Sprues are sharp and even the restic gargoyles look excellent, they seem to have been updated to DBX era restic and are as sharp as the HIPS. Really happy with everything.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Really happy with everything.

Who are you and what did you do to Lord Blackfang.......Removes mask and finds Ronnie Renton

Would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for us meddlin kids

You only have to be worried when AlexHolker says the same...at which point you should phone the authorities as clearly Ronnie is holding a gun to his head.

The Abyssals were another army I was actually pondering, mainly because I can envision a paint scheme for the succubi, so it's good to hear that they turned out well enough to please someone who's not hesitant to be critical. Might actually grab a box to futz about with when they're released to retail. Now, it's doubtful I could *execute* my envisioned scheme of course, but that's a separate problem; my painting skills are very much almost.

I really like my Abyssals. Many don't find the aesthetic appealing but the quality of the minis themselves is very nice, especially the plastics.

The Imps are a nice touch too, in the same vein as the Orclings on the Orc sprues. The Naiad sprues have little animals too. Great that they add these little touches for adding to bases or making units out of them.

My nature and abyssal armies arrived yesterday. A bit overwhelming the sheer pile of stuff in that box.

Honestly? That rock elemental isn't all that bad, especially when you give it a more gorilla- like pose with its knuckles on the ground.

Odd that the abyssal sprue is significantly larger than in size than both the Naiad and Salamander one, yet the latter two both have pieces clipped off.

I was worried the clipped stuff would be restic, or yanked off the sprues, but it all seems pretty decent. Would still rather have clipped it myself, but that's a small complaint.

Also, that druid is one of the most spindly figures I've seen in a while. Both staves were already broken!

I also have no idea where some of those shambler pieces are supposed to go.

 highlord tamburlaine wrote:
Honestly? That rock elemental isn't all that bad, especially when you give it a more gorilla- like pose with its knuckles on the ground.

Agreed. The (in)famous "hands in the air like it just don't care" pose makes it look far sillier than it looks in Gorilla-mode.

The issue is that the fluff for rock elementals is that they're the party animals of Mantica, and that they're constantly in a state of partying like they just don't care.

 Polonius wrote:
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.

Oh no doubt, their cust svc is pretty ass. Here's hoping the new hires and expanding company make things run smoothly in 2016. Seems like Mantic is at least gaining more customers than it sheds, but it would be nice to see them turn into a big boy company.

 judgedoug wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
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.

Oh no doubt, their cust svc is pretty ass. Here's hoping the new hires and expanding company make things run smoothly in 2016. Seems like Mantic is at least gaining more customers than it sheds, but it would be nice to see them turn into a big boy company.

Zak was my manager for a bit when I red-shirted at GW just over 10 years ago, I have no doubt he will whip them into shape. GW had a history of sending him into key stores they felt were under-performing.

Well all 5 of their customer service bods are locked away from the upcoming KS working to fix all the issues from the past according to all the new KS updates

Got my KoW wave 2 box and went through it today. Nothing missing, which is pretty good. The Naiads and Salamanders being clipped seemed odd, but everything was there, and I have got to say that these new plastics are very good. They're not at the GW level yet, but these are by far the best plastics I've seen from Mantic. In a bit of hilarious irony, it turned out that I did in fact order a nature starter army, so I now have that bloody golem! Dunno what to do with him. Perhaps I'll sculpt him some new legs over the top of the existing ones. I do very much like his 75x75mm base, though. I'd buy some more of those if they put them in the store.

One messed up thing was that my campaign book had a whole bunch of nasty gouges in the front cover. Who'da thunk that if you place a softcover book on the bottom of a box, then chuck a large pile of pointy plastic sprues and a bunch of metal models on top (not all of which were in bubblewrap pouches) that something bad could happen to the book? For the cost of a folded-over bit of cardboard, less than 1p worth of tape and maybe a minute of a packer's time they could have saved the cost of a damaged rulebook.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Polonius wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Well, we're getting shortchanged on the Forge Fathers sprues too, aren't we? It's just one of those things Mantic does.

Honestly, I think GW is one of the only manufacturer's to build truly dual purpose sprues. The convention pretty much anywhere else is to have some overlap. Look at Perry Historicals, or Warlord's WW2 range, or any other third party manufacturer: most kits produce one thing, and if they produce two, you usually have to split the box.

To a degree. Weapon Options are pretty common in historical boxed sets. Whether it's dual-purpose Crossbows or Pikes. Spears or Swords or Polearms. It's cheaper to tool a dual-purpose kit than to tool two kits, after all - even if only half of the models in the kit can be built as crossbowmen or bows/bills/etc. This is usually in kits with about 40 models in them, so that's quite a lot squeezed onto the sprues. That's aside from extra Machineguns, SMGs or Rifles in WW2, etc kits. So you're right that you often have to "split the box", but these boxes are usually producing either a unit that's supposed to be split (bows and bills) or multiple units with their 40 figures.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Thanks for that.

Hmph. Looks like the campaign book only went out to folks who pledged LL through the KS, not the PM.

And can anyone point me to a shop that carries Uncharted Empires and won't fleece me on EU shipping? I've been pestering Mantic to add my country to their online store but it's exactly the sort of thing they suck at.
(I want the physical version)

I'd recommend Firestorm Games. I'm still waiting for my copy, but then I ordered it with some other OOS items (it was OOS when I ordered it, too).

Were we supposed to get printed campaign books with the God of War pledges, or just the pdf?

Gotta go get me some plastic cement today so I can start building stuff.

I've got 100s of Mantic plastics that need to get built this year. I smell a new project coming on... ah, Testers plastic cement smell. Nostalgia!

I thought it was just the PDF, certainly that was all I was expecting!

But I got one in my box anyway. And the starter Nature army I'd ordered suddenly became a mega Nature army (which was literally x2 of everything).

Still never got my hardback rulebook or counters though.

In unrelated news, Mantic is undertaking a inventory of its warehouse this week....

I didn't get a either a campaign book or a PDF (though I was a $1 pledge and upped to God of war in the pledge manager). but my Forces of Nature mega army was exactly right. Same as Wave 1, and Dungeon Saga, DBX before that, etc etc. I never seem to be missing anything, but on the other hand I never seem to get the benefit of one of these awesome 'loads of unexpected extras' mispacks either.

They did offer the PDF to backers for free. I already downloaded it. It seems people have been getting phsyical copies that didn't actually order one, which is why I asked.

I've had a few mix ups with Mantic, but they've come through for me every time. Now if only I could say the same for my brother who lives just a few blocks from me...

Biggest "whoops" I can accuse Mantic of was giving me teams I didn't order for DBX like many other people.

Huh, I didn't get any PDF's other than the original Rulebook. Were we supposed to get the campaign as well? I'm pretty sure we weren't supposed to get Uncharted Empires, though it would be nice since I already bought a paper copy to have the digital too.

Mantic should do that even if GW doesn't.