scarletsquig wrote:The marauders are looking okay, glad people are happy with them. I'd like them a lot more if the hands were a touch smaller, though.

They're pretty much just 40k orks at this point if you give them a headswap in terms of sculpting style. Which, as far as a business decision goes, is probably a good thing since I can't imagine the range as it stands sells all that well currently.. might as well go the whole hog, make them GW shoe-ins and produce alternatives all the unit types. I'm okay with this, having orks in the Warpath universe at all basically screams 40k clone, so you might as well do it properly if you're going to do it and copy the Brian Nelson style.

Very firmly heroic scale, as the comparison to the truescale warpath marauder shows.

This is something you can get away with with orks because huge size and style variance is in the background... if these were human sculpts however, being compared to the original enforcers and corp marines we'd all be saying how terrible they are.

Just some food for thought on that point!

Rebs are looking really nice, though, very happy with those. Everything about those sculpts is looking top-notch, no complaints from me!

 warboss wrote:
It seems like they're putting more work/effort into making Deadzone and Dreadball stuff right whereas it feels like (from the pics and posting tone) they're just cutting their losses in KOW.

That's all well and good unless KoW is the game you're most interested in. :p

They do seem to have taken some advice to heart though - The Marauder Hulk is a lovely model that is everything the KoW Trolls should have been.

Can't see the whole model in those pics, but I can at least tell that it has legs, and the face is well-sculpted.

What are the hard plastic Enforcers and Plague like for scale, Daedleh? The right size?, look okay next to the Rebs?, Guns aren't 5 feet long? Hands aren't larger than their heads?

I'm concerned that they'll mess up like the men-at-arms and make the new enforcers substantially more massive than the existing restic ones, or make the restic Rebs and their weaponry look like midgets.

The same person who sculpted the MAA seems to be doing the deadzone stuff which is why I'm wondering about what they'll look like. Don't forget, even the men-at-arms looked okay as renders, not so much the actual models though.
I hope Mantic gives us a look at the 3d prints fairly soon.

As nice as the marauders are, you have to concede that rampant scale creep is starting to kick in, as someone who has bought heavily into both Rebs and Enforcers I'm hoping scale creep won't make one side look like it has 28mm truescale models, and the other side look like 35mm heroic scale. As it stands the scale consistency between different lines of minis (and even within armies) is all over the place.

privateer4hire wrote:

 edlowe wrote:

privateer4hire wrote:
These marauders look nice. Are they plastic or restic? Sorry if it says one type of another 50 different places in the pics.

Restic

Thanks and...

Crap! We hates restic for anything other than vehicles. We hates it.

 Bolognesus wrote:
Funny, if there's one place I'd loathe having to work with restic it's on vehicles. Infantry, not so much.

The current Warpath marauders are likely to become young and not mature marauders who get a hand-me-down gun shoved into their hands and sent off into battle as a bullet shield or as a right of passage. If they survive then they'll be allowed to take full military training while they're still growing, and at the end they'll be the mature and fully grown marauders you see in Deadzone and Dreadball.

 Commander Cain wrote:
I'm very impressed with all the pics that have been coming out lately. After spying on the KoW thread for a while now I was growing uneasy but Mantic seems to have done a fantastic job this time round!

Daedleh wrote:
Whether or not you think that Mantic should have handled the M@As better once they received them (admitting up front and allowing people to swap if they wanted), it was NOT Mantics mistake on how the M@As came out.

Daedleh wrote:

Again, the problems with the Men At Arms were not due to Mantic but the supplier. The problems appear to have been sorted with the scenery tiles. I can't go into much detail (Ronnie told us the exact situation and my jaw dropped) but if the factory had made the same mistakes then the scenery tiles would not fit together properly and would not have the sharpness that they do. As you said, the M@As looked alright as sculpts but that didn't translate to the hard plastic. Whether or not you think that Mantic should have handled the M@As better once they received them (admitting up front and allowing people to swap if they wanted), it was NOT Mantics mistake on how the M@As came out. I am fairly confident that the DZ plastics will be sorted.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

But on a serious note, either spill the details or admit that Mantic ARE completely responsible for the product they greenlit and chose to send to backers.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I believe you, internet stranger who tells unverified tales.

However, I just met the Shadow King of Tooling (nice guy, BTW), and he tells me that the problems were definitely on Mantic's end. In fact, when Ronnie saw the original prototypes, he demanded that they be fixed to look more like "the unflushed present I left in your office bathroom, jabroni. Merry Christmas." Then he got the factory owner in a headlock so Tony Reidy could kidney-punch him repeatedly. Unfortunately, due to the investigation, I can't share my proof with you at all, but the MaA models were definitely Mantic's fault. Biased sources have confirmed this.

But on a serious note, either spill the details or admit that Mantic ARE completely responsible for the product they greenlit and chose to send to backers.

Daedleh wrote:


Right, heroic scale is not creeping in. These are an alien species bred for war so them having weird proportions does not make them heroic scale - just alien.

The rebs are most definitely realistic 28mm sculpts and the starter box enforcers are in scale with the current range. The marauders are simply being redesigned, presumably due to poor reception in the gaming community. The current Warpath marauders are likely to become young and not mature marauders who get a hand-me-down gun shoved into their hands and sent off into battle as a bullet shield or as a right of passage. If they survive then they'll be allowed to take full military training while they're still growing, and at the end they'll be the mature and fully grown marauders you see in Deadzone and Dreadball.

Again, the problems with the Men At Arms were not due to Mantic but the supplier. The problems appear to have been sorted with the scenery tiles. I can't go into much detail (Ronnie told us the exact situation and my jaw dropped) but if the factory had made the same mistakes then the scenery tiles would not fit together properly and would not have the sharpness that they do. As you said, the M@As looked alright as sculpts but that didn't translate to the hard plastic. Whether or not you think that Mantic should have handled the M@As better once they received them (admitting up front and allowing people to swap if they wanted), it was NOT Mantics mistake on how the M@As came out. I am fairly confident that the DZ plastics will be sorted.

The zombies and hard plastic enforcers I saw were just the 3D prints of the parts. They were even an old version since the peacekeepers still had the much maligned power maul. Stew confirmed that they have changed it, but didn't show us what to. I didn't have any other figures to compare the 3D prints to at the time, but they didn't seem to be out of scale.

I do not concede that rampant scale creep is kicking in. ONE of the races are being redesigned as much bigger and bulkier aliens, while their originals are fitting in as a different unit in the background. It's a redesign, not a scale creep.

Daedleh wrote:
If Mantic decided to pull the plug on the men at arms then they'd be without core infantry for their new army. How would that work out?

 warboss wrote:

Daedleh wrote:
If Mantic decided to pull the plug on the men at arms then they'd be without core infantry for their new army. How would that work out?

I'm guessing better in the long run than releasing badly molded and scaled ones. It will hurt the bottom line for the short term but it would prevent damage to their rep down the line seeing as how this isn't apparently the first time it's happened. Either way, the discussion probably belongs in the KOW thread rather than here.

nkelsch wrote:
When Marauders become adults proven in battle, they undergo a ritual where they expose their hands to radiation where they grow to 5 times their normal size.

Great explanation for inconsistent art direction.

I have noticed the 'running' Marauder has 'gone away'? All of those poses seem to be of 2-legged on the ground standing marauders. So maybe the runny orc and the dancing gobbo went to the rubbish bin before 10,000 of them were cast? That is progress at least.

 DaveC wrote:
Running marauder is still there you can see him on page 43 in winterdyne's post as is dancing gobbo he's in the facebook pictures.

Maurader Captian is a great model.... If the entire Maurader line looked even half that good and had those proportions and poses, they would be bankrupting everyone else whomakes Sci-Fi orks.

Any idea what he is holding? Is it a pain stick or cattle prod?

Daedleh wrote:
Are you serious? Aliens with different anatomy to humans doesn't equal heroic scale and no-one's denying that they're being redesigned - that's the whole point.

Daedleh wrote:
Are you serious? Aliens with different anatomy to humans doesn't equal heroic scale and no-one's denying that they're being redesigned - that's the whole point.

Edit: seriously;

Maurader Captian is a great model.... If the entire Maurader line looked even half that good and had those proportions and poses, they would be bankrupting everyone else whomakes Sci-Fi orks.

Any idea what he is holding? Is it a pain stick or cattle prod?

3 months ago this art direction was a great thing to you. Now it's bad?

Your entire post history relating to Mantic is nothing but complaints about them.

 Alpharius wrote:
Ah, now I remember nkelsch and his...special relationship with Mantic!

"Kroothawk, is that you?" springs to mind too!

 Alpharius wrote:
Ah, now I remember nkelsch and his...special relationship with Mantic!

"Kroothawk, is that you?" springs to mind too!

nkelsch wrote:

I see that people who were all anti-GW orks seem deathly silent on the total change of design Mantic has taken.

 Alpharius wrote:
I think that, strangely enough, Mantic is 'fixing' their issues in terms of SF sculpts but oddly, they aren't doing enough on the Fantasy side of things.

Who knows why?

But they need to address the QC stuff across the board.

I think they're smart enough to realize that Deadzone represented a 'final opportunity' of sorts and if the failed here, they were going to be in serious trouble.

Of course, Dreadball must have given them a certain amount of confidence, but again, of the SF side of the equation...

 judgedoug wrote:
As long as they don't eff up my KoW Orcs, I'm just fine with them redesigning their space orcs. I personally have zero investment in them.

I coulda sworn everyone was like "fantasy orcs with rayguns are st00pid! mantic is a dumb!" when the original Marauders came out, and now they're being redesigned and now the cries are "they don't match the old ones oh noes! mantic is a dumb!"