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I'm totally done with Kickstarters as a whole. And Mantic's way of doing things as of late is also starting to seriously annoy me, even if I'm in no position to complain as (luckily) I haven't taken part in any of their crowdfundings.

In my experience, miniature-based crowdfundings end up being mere pre-orders where you get a reasonable discount in exchange of not knowing when you're going to get what you paid for. I know of a very few select companies that have successfully completed crowdfundings and delivered everything within expectations (mostly small bloodbowl/fantasy football crowdfundings) but most of the time things are prone to going south pretty quickly.

@Polonius, well said. I think the biggest fault though lies squarely on their use of their own pledgemanager system. If you remember it lost 200 backers basic pledge levels, so any breakage that they had planned simply was swallowed up by that......except for your trays that were not part of a basic pledge level.

I haven't decided if I will post continuously in the walking dead kickstarter about the FUBAR that this kickstarter has been. I feel sorry for anyone who backs The Walking Dead without knowing Mantics background. Yes! Yes! people should do research before backing any projects, but for most people they will read mantics little blurb about we have successfully delivered XXX many kickstarters and we are a growing company that has done a tremendous amount of behind the scenes work to get this project ready so far.

Also just ordered Uncharted Empires from Thewarstore.com. I love KOW, Mantic....not so much.

My FLGS started carrying Uncharted Empires and I picked up a copy last night. Great to see it gaining traction around here!

I'm starting to drift quite deep into Mantic fanboi territory, but I'd still be wary of getting involved with any KS of theirs.

The Walking dead one is supposedly a simple one without a load of addons and levels. If they take that route in the future I might consider backing.

Most KS's that's too convoluted inevitably runs into delays and faulty shipping.

 Zywus wrote:
I'm starting to drift quite deep into Mantic fanboi territory, but I'd still be wary of getting involved with any KS of theirs.

The Walking dead one is supposedly a simple one without a load of addons and levels. If they take that route in the future I might consider backing.

Most KS's that's too convoluted inevitably runs into delays and faulty shipping.

If they go this route I really don't see the point of backing it, there has to be some incentive to back the game over buying retail (discounts). Hopefully the Kickstarter version will have alternate sculpts or something to make it worthwhile.

Isn't a discount and some limited ed. sculpts enough you think?

Given:
1) Mantic's KS shipping fethup record.
2) Mantic's material-change with no notice record.
3) Mantic's variable sculpt quality.
4) Mantic's "may or may not closely or vaguely resemble the concept art" record.
5) Mantic's model QA record (major warpage!)
6) $100 KS buy-in for a $50rrp game.
7) Shipping charges on top which erode the discount...
8) ...with potential customs charges for US backers if they send FedEx that erode the discount even more.
9) Versus waiting to see what the final product is like...
10) ...and getting it at a substantial discount from Miniature Market or other discount retailers...
11) ...if it's actually any good.

Then they may need to do a bit more than a discount and some LE sculpts. For some of us, anyway.

My point is having convoluted campaigns with too many different add-ons and pledge levels was precisely what has caused the Mantic KS's to have such problems with deliveries.

I'd preferably have a simple KS, made to fund the basics, at a simple discount and then see the add on stuff appear at retail; rather than promising the world and then making a mess of it trying to fit everything into a KS, getting stuff out a year or two late and half the packages containing the wrong stuff.

The other issues (such as material-change or the final product not resembling concept art) is another issue and anyone feeling let down by previous KS's should probably sit the next ones out until they see that amends have been made.

Yeah, I won't be ordering anything from their KS's without seeing very good quality shots of the miniatures before I do so. I was caught out on the first Kickstarter, expecting to have an awesome Basilean army for use, and then we saw the sculpts and welp... I had to shift over to buying Ogres instead, which I haven't used at all.

One thing I did want to get from KoW 2.0 was one of the goblin catapults. But in the pledge manager it was an extra $20US to ship to me! For a $15 item! No thanks.

As an aside... Mantic I really do like your Dwarf Beserkers. But $25US for 5 miniatures??? Come on guys!

 Fenriswulf wrote:

As an aside... Mantic I really do like your Dwarf Beserkers. But $25US for 5 miniatures??? Come on guys!

I don't think they are actually Mantic minis, are they? I seem to remember them being made by another company.

As for the Goblin war machines, I wonder how easily they could be scratch built?

 Nostromodamus wrote:

 Fenriswulf wrote:

As an aside... Mantic I really do like your Dwarf Beserkers. But $25US for 5 miniatures??? Come on guys!

I don't think they are actually Mantic minis, are they? I seem to remember them being made by another company.

As for the Goblin war machines, I wonder how easily they could be scratch built?

Mantic has metal berserkers. Avatars of War sells plastic berserkers that come in a box of 20 for, uh, maybe $40. The AoW berserkers are in GW style and damn fine plastics. The Mantic berserkers are Mantic scaled in that they are kind of true scaled, but out of scale with the Mantic plastics.

Avatars of War, that's what I was thinking of. I thought they were the ones Mantic sold. My mistake.

Is the Mantic Forum still unavailable? Or is it just me?

 Zywus wrote:
My point is having convoluted campaigns with too many different add-ons and pledge levels was precisely what has caused the Mantic KS's to have such problems with deliveries.
I'd preferably have a simple KS, made to fund the basics, at a simple discount and then see the add on stuff appear at retail; rather than promising the world and then making a mess of it trying to fit everything into a KS, getting stuff out a year or two late and half the packages containing the wrong stuff.

I'm in full agreement with you here on this stuff.
I was simply suggesting why a small discount, and a couple of unique sculpts might not be "enough" for some people.

 Nostromodamus wrote:
I don't think they are actually Mantic minis, are they? I seem to remember them being made by another company.

As for the Goblin war machines, I wonder how easily they could be scratch built?

Yeah, as above they are Avatars of War... But since I will be using LotR Dwarves for a Dwarf force of miniatures, the Mantic ones scale a lot better and look a lot more similar than the AoW ones.

As for the Goblin war machine, I was hoping to see if I could snag an old style Goblin Man Mangler from way back and use that. Or more likely, do a conversion of the existing skeleton catapult and make it magnetised to be both a sharpstick shooter or catapult as needed. While I like some parts of the new Goblin catapult, it does have some lackluster design looks to it, which is unfortunate.

Which is Mantic's problem all round. I want to play Kings of War, I just don't really want to play it with too many of their miniatures. If they've hired a new customer service team to keep customers happy, they should also invest in some good sculpters, either in physical media sculpting or 3d sculpting. If they came out with kits again that were as good as the original skeletons, or better, at a good price point, they could really capture a big corner of this market. Unfortunately it seems this is thrown out the window in an effort to get more average-poor kits produced quickly, just so they have product to sell.

Mantic - Invest in making some really great minis and it will pay big dividends for you. Now you have a lot of the forces fleshed out, select one force and have someone re-do the miniatures for that line from the ground up, making them fit together thematically and start offering some sprue plastic sets which give people the ability to use parts of these to do conversions within their units, increasing their desirability. You at minimum need an art director and at least one or two talented sculpters that can follow and emulate concept art closely so that the finished miniature looks as close as possible to it (and so you don't have a repeat of the failures of such units as the Basilean Sisterhood, Trolls, or Werewolves).

Or just stay as you are using kickstarter after kickstarter to try and churn as many sales as possible, while not being able to capitalise on them nearly as much because people don't want to buy the figures at anything more than KS prices, or the miniatures just aren't as nice as to warrant more interest for them than there is, and retailers want to stay away for the above two reasons. Kickstarter and your successes with it should be a golden opportunity to mark out a very definitive spot for you in the market with long term selling opportunities on miniatures which should be made to as high a quality and standard as possible. Letting sub-par sculpts slip through and form the core of your KoW line is a wasted opportunity.

Some of their stuff is getting better, thankfully. The Lizardmans from the KoW KS are quite nice. Nice enough ti prompt me to buy two of the GW "Start Collecting: Seraphon" boxes. Add those to the Mantic Lizards and the stuff I already had, and now I've got a Lizardmans army for KoW. Only some of it is Mantic models, but it's an improvement on many of their other lines.

The problem is that they're not consistent, and I'm now too cautious to lay money down on anything that's not a HIPS render. Trusting them on anything resin just went out the window with the recent WP stuff, and their new boardgame plastic isn't something I can trust after my DS experience. Even if people who haven't actually fixed their warped models yet "don't anticipate any problems".

So.. yeah. HIPS or GTFO.

sithkhan wrote:
Is the Mantic Forum still unavailable? Or is it just me?

You may need to delete your history and your cookies to fix that problem. That worked for me when I was having the same problem.

 Azazelx wrote:
Some of their stuff is getting better, thankfully. The Lizardmans from the KoW KS are quite nice. Nice enough ti prompt me to buy two of the GW "Start Collecting: Seraphon" boxes. Add those to the Mantic Lizards and the stuff I already had, and now I've got a Lizardmans army for KoW. Only some of it is Mantic models, but it's an improvement on many of their other lines.

The problem is that they're not consistent, and I'm now too cautious to lay money down on anything that's not a HIPS render. Trusting them on anything resin just went out the window with the recent WP stuff, and their new boardgame plastic isn't something I can trust after my DS experience. Even if people who haven't actually fixed their warped models yet "don't anticipate any problems".

So.. yeah. HIPS or GTFO.

The new KoW kits are fantastic, really happy with the Abyssal army I'm building at the moment. Best models Mantic have released in a very long time and mark a return to the quality of the Undead miniatures line.

I have to agree that HIPS is king, both in terms of value and quality, which is why I've gone ahead with the Shieldwolf KS as a way of adding to the abyssal army (Orcs as abyssal warriors, Xena girls for mortals and Varagnur allies).

The more non-GW manufacturers the better, really. With the amount of army lists now available, KoW can take pretty much any fantasy mini from any manufacturer that you throw at it, and provides a lot of flexibility for making any fantasy army you want to make.

I'm not sure the new night stalkers army even needs basenmodels, just grab a 3 foot tube of green stuff and go. Really looking forward to raiding my bits box and testing my sculpting/casting skills to make some gross and terrifying nonsense. Lot of good stuff in uncharted empires and the core book was solid to start.

 GrimDork wrote:
I'm not sure the new night stalkers army even needs basenmodels, just grab a 3 foot tube of green stuff and go. Really looking forward to raiding my bits box and testing my sculpting/casting skills to make some gross and terrifying nonsense. Lot of good stuff in uncharted empires and the core book was solid to start.

I haven't looked through the list in depth, but the glance-over makes me think "Cthulhu Wars models" along with "The Others: 7 Sins models". So, I guess I'll have a Night Stalkers army whenever I get around to going through my K'tulu stuff properly. And paint them.

Squig - any idea if the Historical lists for KoW are still going to be a thing?

They're definitely going to be a thing, have seen the draft document.

 Azazelx wrote:

 GrimDork wrote:
I'm not sure the new night stalkers army even needs basenmodels, just grab a 3 foot tube of green stuff and go. Really looking forward to raiding my bits box and testing my sculpting/casting skills to make some gross and terrifying nonsense. Lot of good stuff in uncharted empires and the core book was solid to start.

I haven't looked through the list in depth, but the glance-over makes me think "Cthulhu Wars models" along with "The Others: 7 Sins models". So, I guess I'll have a Night Stalkers army whenever I get around to going through my K'tulu stuff properly. And paint them.

Squig - any idea if the Historical lists for KoW are still going to be a thing?

I've used a combination of Reaper Bones, PP Hordes, Atchung Cthulhu, RAFM Cthulhu and some other odds and sods. Just waiting on another order from Reaper and my movent trays and I'll be good to go.

Does it have armies from different periods in it? As in Romans, Greeks, Vikings and English Civil War - or are they more to a certain era like Ancients/Black Powder/Dark Ages

 Azazelx wrote:
Does it have armies from different periods in it? As in Romans, Greeks, Vikings and English Civil War - or are they more to a certain era like Ancients/Black Powder/Dark Ages

Yes, different eras.

Excellent. Any rough ETA on playtesting or release? I assume it'll be compatible with the existing rules and forces?

Are the historical armies going to be historical with rule changes to go with it or is it just an expansion of the Kingdom of Men for a wider range of models?

 Azazelx wrote:
Excellent. Any rough ETA on playtesting or release? I assume it'll be compatible with the existing rules and forces?

Playtesting: no idea
Release: no idea
Existing rules: completely
Existing forces: depending on which day of the month it is, and whether there was 3cm or 4cm of rainfall in Scotland, the answer is either or , so TBC, but the last stuff I saw was somewhere between "not really" and "very much no".

AFAIK, it's in internal playtesting with the council now, and it's being balanced against the existing forces.

 MasterSlowPoke wrote:
AFAIK, it's in internal playtesting with the council now, and it's being balanced against the existing forces.

Someone might be looking at it, but I assure you the RC hasn't seen the document for at least 6 months

 Baragash wrote:

Existing forces: depending on which day of the month it is, and whether there was 3cm or 4cm of rainfall in Scotland, the answer is either or , so TBC, but the last stuff I saw was somewhere between "not really" and "very much no".

I mean in terms of playing "Orcs vs Romans" and having the point costs worked out using the same overall values. After all, if they'll be worked out so that the New Model Army can (theoretically, and obviously very ahistorically) fight Spartans in terms of points and rules it's not that much of a stretch to have them fight Orcs.

Because yes, I'm looking to have many more "Kingdoms of Men" and units I can dip into - to play fantasy games, historical games or interesting mixtures. Besides, I've been building a "Mythical Greek" army with both the Historical and Mythical aspects of Ancient Greece, and it'd be cooler to have actual rules for peltasts and helots and the Spartan Phalanx vs the Theban, etc in that army...