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 plastictrees wrote:
Also, why does everything in this thread look so good, and so much in the Kings of War thread look terrible?

Don't worry, Plastictrees. There's still time for Mantic to ruin them in production.

 plastictrees wrote:
Also, why does everything in this thread look so good, and so much in the Kings of War thread look terrible?

I find myself wondering the exact same thing every time I open the KoW thread. I really have not seen any fantasy models from Mantic outside of the skeletons (which have been out forever) I'd be even remotely interested in, yet I've overall been very happy with what I've gotten from Dreadball. Even in DeadZone the only models that I really haven't liked are the Marauders and the rocket-girl holding the launcher weirdly. Everything else I've seen from DZ I've liked and of the two waves of Dreadball the only team I was a bit put-out with was the Robots due to some excessive flash; not enough to be actually mad about, but disappointed at the amount of work to clean up what QA should have caught.

The only team out of all the ones I've seen that I didn't think "neat!" about was the Asterians. They don't seem quite distinct enough from humans in the photos I've seen, but maybe in the flesh they'll be better.

It's really odd that they can make sci-fi stuff that I want, yet whiff on almost every single fantasy model they make.

http://quirkworthy.com/

see the 2 or 3 posts to do with the changed/revised ball launch rules.

I really have not seen any fantasy models from Mantic outside of the skeletons

Give the orcs another look, they are some seriously great models. I collect both orcs and undead, and they're easily Mantic's best fantasy ranges on all measures, certainly the only ones that can be considered serious competition for GW.

Goblins aren't quite as bad as you might expect either, the bodies are rather nice, and with the hybrid kits, the rest of the mini is metal and doesn't have the issues that the archers do (the hybrid metals cost the same as the plastics, too).

There is the option to buy the metal goblins for £1.50/model too if you want the sculpts in proper quality.

Mantic's sci-fi is definitely looking better, but we're just looking at renders and WIPs for the most part.. all I can say from personal experience is that the Corporation and Forgefather minis (not the plastics) are all great.

Warpath isn't really all that playable at the moment due to the lack of properly-formed armies with vehicles... deadzone will help with that quite a bit but it still needs the proper high quality hard plastic and not whatever crap led to the mushy-tooled, overscaled, badly sculpted, badly overscaled men-at-arms.

The same 3d guys that did the men-at-arms also did all the deadzone stuff... they're not bad sculptors, they just fail hard at sculpting organics (faces, cloth etc). Hopefully scale issues won't rear their head again either, warpath minis are really rather slender compared to GW, even the enforcers.

 scarletsquig wrote:

I really have not seen any fantasy models from Mantic outside of the skeletons

Give the orcs another look, they are some seriously great models. I collect both orcs and undead, and they're easily Mantic's best fantasy ranges by far.

Agreed. Mantic's Orcs are my favorite Orc miniatures in the universe, by far. I'm not a fan of gorilla/ape arms and evil watermelon heads (so no GW) but I like my Orcs to have bulk (so no LOTR orcs). Mantic's are perfect for me!

 scarletsquig wrote:

I really have not seen any fantasy models from Mantic outside of the skeletons

Give the orcs another look, they are some seriously great models. I collect both orcs and undead, and they're easily Mantic's best fantasy ranges on all measures, certainly the only ones that can be considered serious competition for GW.

Goblins aren't quite as bad as you might expect either, the bodies are rather nice, and with the hybrid kits, the rest of the mini is metal and doesn't have the issues that the archers do (the hybrid metals cost the same as the plastics, too).

There is the option to buy the metal goblins for £1.50/model too if you want the sculpts in proper quality.

Mantic's sci-fi is definitely looking better, but we're just looking at renders and WIPs for the most part.. all I can say from personal experience is that the Corporation and Forgefather minis (not the plastics) are all great.

Warpath isn't really all that playable at the moment due to the lack of properly-formed armies with vehicles... deadzone will help with that quite a bit but it still needs the proper high quality hard plastic and not whatever crap led to the mushy, overscaled, badly sculpted men-at-arms.

I can agree the Orcs are at least nice-looking models, but I've never cared for Greenskins of any kind so they're still not interesting to me. In a collection of over 4,000 models across a variety of manufacturers and ranges the only Greenskins I have are the ones that came with Assault on Black Reach, a box of Night Goblins and the DreadBall Marauders. I also have a few goblins and Uruk-hai from LotR but I wouldn't count them as "Greenskins" per se. When DeadZone arrives with the 40 or so Marauders I'm getting, that will be the largest Greenskin force I'll have owned in nearly 25 years of being in the hobby.

If I were to decide to do a Greenskin army, Mantics Orcs would certainly be the ones I'd go with, but I'm not starting one so it's somewhat moot.

Just had my dreadball invoice. It was for $2 less than I thought I had requested. I'm wondering if I accidentally left out a decal sheet.

winterdyne wrote:
My shots of the Nameless Spawn:

Aww, the first Nameless sculpt I'm not a huge fan of :-/. Ah well, it is OK, but could've been amazing.

 Krinsath wrote:

 plastictrees wrote:
Also, why does everything in this thread look so good, and so much in the Kings of War thread look terrible?

I find myself wondering the exact same thing every time I open the KoW thread. I really have not seen any fantasy models from Mantic outside of the skeletons (which have been out forever) I'd be even remotely interested in

Not sure whether it is still true, but I heard that the Mantic Zombies were responsible for 40% of the company's sales at one point. You can't imagine the Skeletons being that far behind - certainly, I don't think I've seen a WFB Vampire army in it recently that didn't have these unit fillers in there somewhere.

That being said I really like the Orx.. got boxes of the things waiting to make into an army if I ever get round to it. Certainly there is a lot of potential there, I hope Mantic can turn the KoW Kickstarter around and towards some of the more positive examples that they are undoubtedly capable of producing.

^That's entirely possible, although keep in mind that would have been ages ago, when the only products in Mantic's line were elves, dwarves and undead.

The Corporation and Forgefathers sell rather nicely for Warpath, whether people are buying them for that game is another matter entirely.

I do love the Enforcers, and bought into them fairly heavily. Assuming they turn out like the painted prototypes we saw during the DeadZone campaign, they'll likely occupy a solid 3rd or 4th place on my favorite ranges list (The Grey Knights and Imperial Space Marines are hard to shift...they've had those spots forever).

I really need to get around to painting more of the DB models though. In just shy of a year's time I've sort of finished one concept model from the S1 teams and that's it. Now, I'm about to get the rest of them here in a few week's time. Um...I wanted to paint all the members of a team at the same time rather than have inconsistencies from a year of separation! Yeah, yeah...that's it...

Hello there, I notice that on the Mantic pre-orders page on the photos of the Alpha Simian there is a picture of a "different" Orc/Orx player in the background. Does anyone know if this is a new sculpt, one of the alternatives or just a conversion?

I will post a link to it if such a thing is allowed.

Thraxas

^ Good spot!

That'll be the alternate sculpt Orc:



I'll post the rest of the Dreadball preorder pics that haven't already been posted here as well, for convenience (it'd take ages to click through all the thumbnails on the mantic site):





Nameless and Teratons are definitely the stand-out sculpts there, both look lovely (and their MVPs do too).

Awesome! Was hoping they would release another Guard.. is that guy going to be part of the wave 3 releases I assume?

I wonder if he will be sold separately?

Thank you, that is the one. Mantic seem to like hiding little easter eggs like that on their advance order pages. Has anyone seen the Barricade and Dozer models? I like them a lot, and sure they could be put to good use in other game systems if Dreadball is not your thing. I plan to use Dozer once I get my hands on Deadzone.

We also have a prone/injured Goblin in the Painmaster Yurik photo.

I'm already putting together a mini warpath force with the dreadball Zz'or.

Asterians got a repaint, it doesn't make the sculpts look any better though.

I'm not a fan of the whole bald thing with the asterians. I don't mind the rest of them though.

Hmmm...... anyone got any thoughts on some appropriate helmeted head bitz that could be used on the Asterians?

You sound like my kind of guy/gal! For all the complaints I see about Mantic their larger Sci-Fi models (and also to a lesser extent their Kow ones) have all been excellent, and at a very reasonable price. The multi-hex Dreadball ones are great.

Thank you for the welcome here at the Dakka Dakka forums,

Thraxas

@Baragash: Mantic elves might do the trick, and the shoulderpads on the sprue mgiht be useful too, along with the dead elf as a prone counter?

@Thraxas: Welcome aboard! Keep unearthing cool stuff like this and we'll have a lot more to talk about.. it's true that mantic sometimes leaves easter eggs, but on the other hand, they're sometimes unintentional.. I was the first to figure out the name of the "8th race" (the veermyn) by photoshopping part of a document that they'd run a black marker over to reveal the text underneath.

Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
Has anyone seen the Barricade and Dozer models?

Barricade was in the latest KS update, but I don't think we've seen Dozer. If anyone knows though it'll be the Squig.

Barricade:

Dozer is this guy:

So multi-hex models:

A: How many hexes do they occupy?

B: Will we be getting a bigger perspex base to put them on? (I doubt this, but hope that we do).

@Scarletsquig: Dozer seems perfect for an alternate Terraton in Deadzone, maybe a TT assasin?

Normally I'm not one to go in for giant apes (unlike my brother), but that Alpha Simian does look really nice. I kind of like the looks of the Zees too. Their smirking MVP reminds me of a character I've seen before though, but I can't quite put my finger on who he reminds me of.

 scarletsquig wrote:
Dozer is this guy:

GAL, I believe?

 scarletsquig wrote:
Dozer is this guy:

Isn't Dozer a gal - female Terratons are larger than males hence her size.

Ninja'd by Compel

Thraxas Giants are on 3 Hex bases - they come with a Tri-Hex base apparently - I wasn't expecting that but it's listed on the pre orders
http://www.manticgames.com/Shop-Home/DreadBall/Giants/Product/Dozer.html

 Barzam wrote:
Normally I'm not one to go in for giant apes (unlike my brother), but that Alpha Simian does look really nice. I kind of like the looks of the Zees too. Their smirking MVP reminds me of a character I've seen before though, but I can't quite put my finger on who he reminds me of.

Not quite the same, but his cockiness reminds me of the classic halfling star player from Blood Bowl - Puggy Baconbreath.



I really like the Zees though, and they weren't a concept I thought too highly about.

Really dislike the Asterians, maybe with a head swap of Nightshade MVP? Can't make my mind up about the Zees though as well as the Nameless, though I love the Teratons!

 scarletsquig wrote:
@Baragash: Mantic elves might do the trick, and the shoulderpads on the sprue mgiht be useful too, along with the dead elf as a prone counter?

Lol, this possibility was almost too obvious (models from the same company.... who knew ). Though it depends on the "beefiness" of the Asterians in comparison to the Elves, if the Asterians are similarly proportioned to the humans then I think the heads will be too small.

^ I think it's a pretty safe bet that they'll be tiny, pretty much all the dreadball minis are smaller than you might expect, and the bodies are about as slim as you can get.

Anyway, onwards to some Deadzone news, this is what the retail box for deadzone will look like, along with its contents: