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Once every blue moon, I remember that Mantic does fairly affordable bunches of minis. I happened to remember this fact today, and checked their page to find that they finally added goblin miniatures(last time I checked, goblins were still "coming soon"). They seem to have some pretty great deals, so I'm idly playing with the idea of grabbing a bunch to act as random mobs during roleplaying games.

That said, I'm curious if anyone has any experience with these minis. What's the plastic like? Are they easy to assemble? Tons of mold lines? How do they compare in scale to GW gobbos? Any reviews and opinions are welcome.

 Mr. Grey wrote:
Once every blue moon, I remember that Mantic does fairly affordable bunches of minis. I happened to remember this fact today, and checked their page to find that they finally added goblin miniatures(last time I checked, goblins were still "coming soon"). They seem to have some pretty great deals, so I'm idly playing with the idea of grabbing a bunch to act as random mobs during roleplaying games.

That said, I'm curious if anyone has any experience with these minis. What's the plastic like? Are they easy to assemble? Tons of mold lines? How do they compare in scale to GW gobbos? Any reviews and opinions are welcome.

There are three differently armed goblins that Mantic offers. There are goblins with crossbows, goblins with spears and goblins with swords/scrap shields. The goblins with crossbows are the only ones that are fully in metal, any of the other weapon options will just get you the goblins with crossbows sprue and the metal conversion bits. It's the same plastic mantic uses for everything else and I would compare it pretty closely to the plastic that PP uses. There easy enough to assemble I guess... The metal arms for the other two variants are a pain to attach to the plastic bodies though. Mold lines on Mantic products can sometime be problomatic but it all depends on what you get. With Mantic you get what you pay for... If your looking for cheap they are great, if your looking for a great looking model you might find them lacking.

 Catyrpelius wrote:

 Mr. Grey wrote:
Once every blue moon, I remember that Mantic does fairly affordable bunches of minis. I happened to remember this fact today, and checked their page to find that they finally added goblin miniatures(last time I checked, goblins were still "coming soon"). They seem to have some pretty great deals, so I'm idly playing with the idea of grabbing a bunch to act as random mobs during roleplaying games.

That said, I'm curious if anyone has any experience with these minis. What's the plastic like? Are they easy to assemble? Tons of mold lines? How do they compare in scale to GW gobbos? Any reviews and opinions are welcome.

There are three differently armed goblins that Mantic offers. There are goblins with crossbows, goblins with spears and goblins with swords/scrap shields. The goblins with crossbows are the only ones that are fully in metal, any of the other weapon options will just get you the goblins with crossbows sprue and the metal conversion bits. It's the same plastic mantic uses for everything else and I would compare it pretty closely to the plastic that PP uses. There easy enough to assemble I guess... The metal arms for the other two variants are a pain to attach to the plastic bodies though. Mold lines on Mantic products can sometime be problomatic but it all depends on what you get. With Mantic you get what you pay for... If your looking for cheap they are great, if your looking for a great looking model you might find them lacking.

Just a couple quick corrections: They are armed with bows, not crossbows, and the bow ones are the only ones that are full plastic. The others are the plastic bowmen but with metal arms.

Well, the detail on those goblin sprues came out rather bad. they're quite okay, from a distance, once painted - but the detail is very, very soft. Just about any other mantic product I'd wholeheartedly recommend but those goblins, mehh. I have 180 of them lying around and well, I'm working on a painting method that will make them look good despite the production quality. That's not a good thing, in minis.

...OTOH 14 quid for 40 archers at the moment - and with some work, they do look quite okay on the table. It all depends on your priorities. They're nowhere near as good as many of their other products - in a different league, IMO - but well, they do have uses

 Catyrpelius wrote:

 Mr. Grey wrote:
Once every blue moon, I remember that Mantic does fairly affordable bunches of minis. I happened to remember this fact today, and checked their page to find that they finally added goblin miniatures(last time I checked, goblins were still "coming soon"). They seem to have some pretty great deals, so I'm idly playing with the idea of grabbing a bunch to act as random mobs during roleplaying games.

That said, I'm curious if anyone has any experience with these minis. What's the plastic like? Are they easy to assemble? Tons of mold lines? How do they compare in scale to GW gobbos? Any reviews and opinions are welcome.

There are three differently armed goblins that Mantic offers. There are goblins with crossbows, goblins with spears and goblins with swords/scrap shields. The goblins with crossbows are the only ones that are fully in metal, any of the other weapon options will just get you the goblins with crossbows sprue and the metal conversion bits. It's the same plastic mantic uses for everything else and I would compare it pretty closely to the plastic that PP uses. There easy enough to assemble I guess... The metal arms for the other two variants are a pain to attach to the plastic bodies though. Mold lines on Mantic products can sometime be problomatic but it all depends on what you get. With Mantic you get what you pay for... If your looking for cheap they are great, if your looking for a great looking model you might find them lacking.

Everything about this post is entirely wrong.

- The plastic for the goblins not the same as the PP-style plastic that Mantic uses for everything else, it is a hard plastic sprue.
- The basic goblin spitters are plastic, not metal, and have bows, not crossbows.
- The spearmen and rabble are metal upgrades to the plastic bowmen sprue.
- Mould lines on Mantic hard plastics are actually generally pretty good, especially on the hard plastic sprues which have less flash on them than GW sprues do.
- Mantic have *lots* of products which are both good-looking and extremely affordable, to the point where you often pay 4-5x more from GW for exactly the same model.

Additionally, you can also buy the spearmen as 100% metals, for £1.50 per mini.

The sculpting quality of the goblin minis is excellent, as is the casting quality of the metal components for them, unfortunately the casting quality of the plastic goblin archer sprue is not, as Mantic used a new Chinese toolmaker who aren't as good as Renedra (the people who make all of Mantic's other plastic sprues). So, the quality of that sprue (and that one sprue alone) is variable, some people report good casts, others do not.

For now, I'd recommend getting the metal goblins they sell, which are flawlessly cast in-house and fairly reasonably priced for metals. You don't need many minis for RPG usage anyway, so this is definitely the route you want to take.

Here's a comparison pic with GW gobbos, the Mantic one is the grey one in the middle. As you can see they are more in-scale with the older GW models rather than the current batch with giant heads and massive hands:

I'd also recommend their metal Goblins including the characters, maw-beasts, and war-trombone. All fantastic models.

Thanks guys! If/when I do decide to pick up some of these, I was looking at the deal that's $75 for 68 minis. I believe it's got 20 archers, 20 spearmen, 20 rabble, and a few other minis. I'm a sucker for goblins, and as I mentioned in my opening post, these would probably substitute in for random monsters on a roleplaying battle mat, rather than being used in games of Warhammer.

Sounds like the metal goblins are a good alternative though, and as was mentioned, it's not like I'll need a giant horde anyways. (Numbers are mostly awesome because well, goblins run in hordes.)

 scarletsquig wrote:


The sculpting quality of the goblin minis is excellent, as is the casting quality of the metal components for them, unfortunately the casting quality of the plastic goblin archer sprue is not, as Mantic used a new Chinese toolmaker who aren't as good as Renedra (the people who make all of Mantic's other plastic sprues). So, the quality of that sprue (and that one sprue alone) is variable, some people report good casts, others do not.

Would definitely second this. I got a 'horde' (40 minis) for a rather ridiculous sale price £15, in plastic. They aren't bad per se and look decent enough once painted, and for that money make excellent unit fillers, but I would definitely go for metal ones if you are prepared to spend a little more.

I have the plastic bowmen and the metal conversion bits (from mantic's kickstarter). You can make the plastic goblins look okay if you squint, but its a lot of work. I would avoid them until they fix the soft details and the casting problems. Stick with mantic's metal ones. The mawbeasts and wartrombones are fun little figures. I am also big fan of their skeletons, zombies and ghouls if you need undead. They are a snap to assemble, easy to paint, and look great with only a little bit of effort.




Depending on how long you want to wait, Tre Manor is going to redo his metal goblins in plastic via kickstarter. Should be able to pick up a whack of nicely sculpted goblins for a good price.

Two things to keep in mind, they are smaller than GW figs, and it could take a while to get them. But they have excellent 'character' for rpgs.

For RPG usage, one other company worth looking at is Four-A Miniatures, who have about 20 or so unique goblin sculpts that all look really nice:

 scarletsquig wrote:
For RPG usage, one other company worth looking at is Four-A Miniatures, who have about 20 or so unique goblin sculpts that all look really nice:

Nice! I am always looking for RPG models too bad they are in GBP with no USD option. With my banks currency conversion process and S&H they are too expensive to be worth it.

I love the Mantic line of miniatures for using as everyday monsters in my campaigns. Buy a box of orcs or goblin is way cheaper than buying individual ones from Reaper and bham! a horde of baddies for my PC's to kill at $1-2 per model.

As many posters have stated... whatever you do, try to avoid Mantic's plastic goblins. They came out really bad :-/

Mantic's newer offerings look a lot better, but those... the best I've heard anyone say about them is that they can make them look passable at a distance. With a lot of greenstuff and painting. Not good...