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 Alpharius wrote:
Same here, and for a lot if others too, I think.

Some good news though is what we heard about an 'improved formula' that debuted with Dreadball Season 3 releases.

Here's hoping!

I've just been compiling my "tale of woe" (things that need correcting) for Dreadball and the newer restic at first glance does appear generally better, not perfect, but in comparison to my S1 & S2 stuff it does appear to have less issues.

If I remember correctly mantic did state that all the options would be available in the second survey except the third party add ons. It would be odd for them to turn down your money!

They did indeed state that. I didn't have the capitol to invest in Deadzone, but I did at least buy into the PDF rules, so I would have access to the surveys. I really want all the Firgefather stuff, but as it doesn't even come out until all the other stuff from the #2 survey, I might as well save up some money and spend it in the spring.

Also lets me hopefully see how Forgefathers shape up in reality rather than just concepts before I spend the money, as I plan on spending about 100 bucks on just the Deadzone Forgefathers material, before adding anything else.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
Dreadball news via KS

"We were expecting the shipping to be done by now, but we had a slight delay with some items - following the recent survey it turned out we needed not only a lot of the Gabe, Drake, Chris Nord and James Sylar figures, but more of the Season 3 alternate sculpts, prones and keepers than expected - they've been very popular! They're now being cast in metal but as we cast our metal figures in-house we're able to take them straight from the mould to your Kickstarter shipments.

The detail on these premium metal miniatures is sharp, and it's easier to remove mould lines. They're otherwise just as easy to work with as the plastic ones that the rest of the DreadBall range is made of. Metal miniatures cost more to produce than plastic ones, but there's no extra cost to you - you're still getting the same great Kickstarter prices on these teams! As further reassurance, our casting wizard Alberto is a legend when it comes to quality control, as you can see in the link above!

We've spent several days putting the last pledges together and we're aiming to finish shipping the last of the rewards next week - we'll post an update as soon as it's done"

bit puzzling that they didn't twig they needed more of the figures before now, but I'm not too fussed if my stuff ends up as metal

good to know this will soon be done and dusted and they can concentrate more on Deadzone & Mars Attacks

Have they updated if they've shipped the last of the rewards? I'm waiting on a season 3 team for Dreadball from someone else's pledge, and was surprised it hadn't been shipped yet...

 RiTides wrote:
Have they updated if they've shipped the last of the rewards? I'm waiting on a season 3 team for Dreadball from someone else's pledge, and was surprised it hadn't been shipped yet...

Update today :

Good news!

As of tomorrow, the last of the DreadBall Shipment 3 packages will have shipped!

We’re down to our last lot of packages and the guys and gals in the warehouse are steaming along trying to get as many out today as possible - it's going to be close, but to be safe we're going to say that it looks they'll all be done by tomorrow.

This means that we’ve sent out Season 3 Teams, Giants, MVPs, Acrylic pitches, MDF pitches, accessories, Team Boosters and more over the past couple of weeks!

The whole business has pitched in to try and ensure that everything was shipped as quickly as possible, and we’re all really pleased to have nearly completed the operation.

Expect the unexpected

As it stands we have had one or two expected problems or delays along the way, not least the Ultimate Cards and Counters being late from our manufacturers.

Not only this but a very small minority of packages that are currently being dispatched are doing so without the Season 2 Team Boosters and/or Season 3 Rulebook.

Back at the start of September we recognized we wouldn’t have enough of either of these, so we placed orders for more. Unfortunately this delivery has never arrived, so we’ve taken the decision to part-ship these last few orders to get stuff into people’s hands we wait for it to turn up. You can expect a small package in the post following this delivery that will include your missing items.

We are very sorry about this, but we hope that your digital copy of the rulebook (which was sent to you several weeks ago) will let you start making use of you’re the miniatures you have received. If you have not yet downloaded your copy, and cannot find the link, please email sarah.clark@manticgames.com and Sarah will sort it out for you.

To say sorry, anyone who has been affected by the part-shipped orders will receive something extra in their package.

Seems like Mantic has hit quite a few stumbling blocks in terms of getting manufacturers who are reliable, both in timeliness and quality. Is this a common growing pain for companies expanding at the rate they are, or are there other non-GW mini companies with similar issues that we know of?

Sad to say but it appears that Mantic has decided to become a company that bounces from one Kickstarter to another, producing lackluster kits for a fair price. Things would be pretty different if they slowed down long enough to support their lines appropriately with hard plastic instead of shoddy quality restic.

Yes, making a plastic kit can be expensive but it can also be done right, see Perry Miniatures as an example of a smallish firm that has avoided what Mantic seems determined to become, mediocre.

...and its agnosto from downtown!

Huh?

 agnosto wrote:
Sad to say but it appears that Mantic has decided to become a company that bounces from one Kickstarter to another

Why do you think this is bad? Funding from the end users makes the company beholden to the end users. Funding from investors...

producing lackluster kits for a fair price.

Which kits in particular are you referring to? The latest Dreadball season 3 stuff looks great, and what we've seen of Deadzone is the same imo.

 Yonan wrote:

Why do you think this is bad? Funding from the end users makes the company beholden to the end users. Funding from investors...

That's a fair question. My thought is that investors are nowhere near a necessity or anywhere in their business plan; heck even large-ish companies like Privateer Press are not publicly traded, it's a non-issue. What's wrong with wanting a quality, unrushed product? People will obviously pay for it since GW seems able to squeeze $60 out of a 10-man box of Dark Elf Witches... I mean, seriously, there has to be a happy medium between cheap crap and overpriced quality.

Nosegoblin from Dreamforge games should be a posterchild for how a miniature-based kickstarter should work. Everything done in hard plastic, high quality, reasonably priced ($20 for a 10-man unit with lots of options or $75 for a leviathon nearly the size of a warhound). He hit some glitches and missed some expected delivery dates but he's been there every step of the way, actually communicating with backers. A quality, one man show producing quality products at a reasonable price without cutting corners and running a kickstarter every few months. He's stated that he won't do another until all the waves from the current are in backers' hands.

To be fair, Mantic has decent customer service and even offered to refund or swap models that people didn't like. They also hardly ever communicated with backers on the KoW and pulled a bait and switch with several models (trolls, battle nuns, men at arms, etc.) No greens, no unpainted tests and when called on it, they stated "Oh, we sent those directly to the manufacturer" as if a 10 second stop to take a picture would have killed them. I think they knew the backlash they were going to get and were just trying to avoid it for as long as possible. Shady.

 Yonan wrote:
Which kits in particular are you referring to? The latest Dreadball season 3 stuff looks great, and what we've seen of Deadzone is the same imo.

Nearly everything that came out of the Kings of War Kickstarter had issues and the restic they used was nearly impossible to work with, as in files could not take the mold-lines off of the minis. I wound up with a heap of models that I was excited to be getting during the kickstarter but the finished products looked little or nothing like the concept art. Some people like Trolls with tiny legs, I don't know anyone who does, but.... I just dumped them on a friend and he didn't even like them being free and is going to give them to his 5 year old for some son/daddy painting time. You know it's bad when you can't even give models away for free.

Looking through the Dreadball threads I've seen reports that the new restic formula that Mantic is using still has issues. I bought into the Dreadzone before I realized what a crap job they did with the KoW kits; don't get me wrong, I have a mountain of their undead line but that is apparently not the direction that they want to go in the future (or present apparently) because those are plastic kits that compete well against even GW.

Overall, their business model has turned me from Mantic fan into someone that is hoping he doesn't wind up with another pile of crap that nobody wants for free in a couple of months.

I can understand your opinions but one point I have to pull you up on is

You have to learn to work using techniques appropriate to the material

cut with a new sharp knife rather than file to remove mould lines

Actually, filing works just fine as far as I can tell.

Good quality files are needed, but other than that it works the same as hard plastic, just takes a little longer.

I find the warping to be more of an annoyance... and the higher price tag/ lack of options, too. It's just not the right material for their vision of an affordable alternative to GW.

Of course, China still needs to be babysat or they'll produce crap... one interesting thing to note (heard on the recent ep of Mantic radio) is that Mantic has sent a UK employee with specialist tooling skills over to China to work in their production facility and oversee everything. So, they're starting to get their own hands into the production end of the business too. He sorted out the new restic mix and is overseeing hard plastic production for deadzone.

Hopefully that leads them to eventually in-house, even if it was just done in a limited, very slow and careful capacity (3-4 sprues per year) it could be great. Not for restic where the labour costs are a bit higher but for hard plastic there aren't really any labor costs once the machine is running, no mould-pulling or sorting or anything, just run the machine and it spits out sprues.

Other little interesting things from the radio ep:

- Mantic currently has 21 employees.
- Warpath coming in 2014.
- Molochs and Abyssals in sculpting, possibly gearing up for an early 2014 KoW 2.0 Kickstarter judging by the other rumblings we've heard.
- They're getting their own in-house sculptor Slyvan (this is the guy who had to fix the marauder sculpts) to sculpt more minis.
- They got 20 submissions for the deadzone short story writing... they had 5 slots available and picked the best ones to fill them.. that's just the amateur writing side of the compilation, established writers will be contributing too.

Looking highly likely that the 2014 plan is going to look something like a second KoW KS as the last bits of Deadzone are being delivered and a Warpath KS just as Mars Attacks is wrapping up in the summer.

Ronnie has stated that Mars Attacks will probably be the last IP tie-in they'll do (at least for a very long while) since he wants to get back to the core games and their own IP in future.

I'm kinda glad that's the case, I have a Mars Attacks pledge and it looks like fun, but part of me is kinda sad that it's not a Warpath Ks and that the giant hard plastic vehicles (the robot is basically mantic selling a riptide-sized (!) model in hard plastic for $25) currently being funded there aren't Corporation and Forgefather tanks to go with the infantry models I've had knocking around for ages.

 Yonan wrote:

 agnosto wrote:
Sad to say but it appears that Mantic has decided to become a company that bounces from one Kickstarter to another

Why do you think this is bad? Funding from the end users makes the company beholden to the end users. Funding from investors...

producing lackluster kits for a fair price.

Which kits in particular are you referring to? The latest Dreadball season 3 stuff looks great, and what we've seen of Deadzone is the same imo.

I am quite pissed off that I've received 4 half-teams in metal.

 scarletsquig wrote:
I'm kinda glad that's the case, I have a Mars Attacks pledge and it looks like fun, but part of me is kinda sad that it's not a Warpath Ks and that the giant hard plastic vehicles (the robot is basically mantic selling a riptide-sized (!) model in hard plastic for $25) currently being funded there aren't Corporation and Forgefather tanks to go with the infantry models I've had knocking around for ages.

I for one love the fact that I am (potentially) getting a hard plastic modern truck to go with my models. Of course it won't see much wargaming use, but great for modern setting RPGs I love to do.

But I can see how people like you are sad about being pushed back. I am not invested in Warpath, so it doesn't bother me.

My only wish is they would have gone with someone like WGF (you know, skilled at production) to do MA. They would be the best looking martians and humans on the market!

yes, GW prices are too high

oh wait, wrong thread

The Perry brothers are considerably wealthy. Perry Miniatures as a company is considerably larger than Mantic - they move plastics by the tens of thousands of boxes.

If anyone was unhappy with the KoW minis they got, they can resell them. Considering they were all free stretch goals, you can make free money! If you did any BOGOF's, you can easily easily resell them for at cost. I'm still buying fleabags.

i personally don't mind pvc plastic. i would prefer polystyrene but i understand why smaller companies use it. my personal hope is that mantic grows and is able to produce polystyrene again.

also, my files work just fine on pvc plastics. like the same hobby files i've had for 15 years. i've not been able to replicate the problems others have had with it.

 judgedoug wrote:
yes, GW prices are too high

oh wait, wrong thread

The Perry brothers are considerably wealthy. Perry Miniatures as a company is considerably larger than Mantic - they move plastics by the tens of thousands of boxes.

If anyone was unhappy with the KoW minis they got, they can resell them. Considering they were all free stretch goals, you can make free money! If you did any BOGOF's, you can easily easily resell them for at cost. I'm still buying fleabags.

i personally don't mind pvc plastic. i would prefer polystyrene but i understand why smaller companies use it. my personal hope is that mantic grows and is able to produce polystyrene again.

also, my files work just fine on pvc plastics. like the same hobby files i've had for 15 years. i've not been able to replicate the problems others have had with it.

It would be interesting to see how the two companies compare side by side. Perry has a much bigger range of miniatures, was started by 2 of the best sculptors in the business and I'm betting that the market for historical miniatures is much higher than alternative fantasy miniatures. It wouldn't surprise me if their plastics shifted several times as fast as even Mantics best sellers, like the zombies.

They are also investors / part-owners in Renedra. Remember, the guy who owns Renedra is the former head of GW's plastics before they switched to CAD. The Perry brothers invested heavily into Renedra starting up in 2007 - the first plastic release was Perry ACW figures!

Got my Dreadball wave 3 stuff today, I got a mixed set of metals and restic (I could tell by the weight of the box before I even opened it) but the metals only cover half the season 3 teams you get the other half in restic, the metal casting looks a bit rushed in places but overall it's fine the Terratons are seriously heavy in metal!

Overall I'm happy with my Dreadball pledge. The new restic is a big improvement and hopefully Deadzone comes in this new formula far less mold lines and those that there are, are easier to clean. That said a lot of the booster stuff is in the older formula restic and has some bad mold lines it's clear they where made awhile ago but not in time for wave 2.

The 3 backer MVPs are pretty poor they are out of scale being to big and the sculpts are quite crude I'm not surprised they didn't show pictures of the finished sculpts in the survey I wouldn't have spent the money on them if I'd seen the sculpts prior to getting them.

Blaine looks great and looks like he's Mantics new KS mascot (whether he fits or not )

I got the acrylic pitch upgrade for ultimate there's a lot of parts. it's difficult to figure out how it all goes together I had to look at the rubber mat to figure it out. The acrylic pitch is great for 2 player games but there's far to many parts for mutliplayer if you knock the board it will break up all over the place. I'll probably stick to the rubber mat for games and I might glue the ultimate acrylic extensions together to make it more stable.

Roll on Deadzone next month and now I can finally finish my Forgefathers team.

Finally big thanks to Stewart I was missing some Void Siren arms from wave 2 he remembered to include them - actually he sent a full pack of 8 extra Void Sirens. Mantic's customer service is great.

The 3 backer MVPs are pretty poor they are out of scale being to big and the sculpts are quite crude I'm not surprised they didn't show pictures of the finished sculpts in the survey I wouldn't have spent the money on them if I'd seen the sculpts prior to getting them.

And there goes my confidence in Mantic for Deadzone again...

 DaveC wrote:
Got my Dreadball wave 3 stuff today, I got a mixed set of metals and restic (I could tell by the weight of the box before I even opened it) but the metals only cover half the season 3 teams you get the other half in restic, the metal casting looks a bit rushed in places but overall it's fine the Terratons are seriously heavy in metal!

I think it changes depending on box.

For example, in my case, the only things metal were:

1) The 3 backer MVP's.
2) The alternate poses sets for the Zees, Teratons, Asterians and Nameless
3) The Keepers for the Teratons, Asterians and Nameless



Truth be tolde, I'm not certain how a hologram of a kid on a dinosaur can be described as 'out of scale.' And I suppose, if I looked really closely, I could realise that their heads can't fit in the male corp helmets but hey... Judge for yourselves.

Which MVP figs are out of scale? Mine all seemed fine. And how many of you guys got metal teams? All of mine was restic. Gabe was my only metal mini in the entire KS.

There's a size difference from wave 1 to the backer MVPs.

Could it be because restic shrinks and metal doesn't? Maybe they were sculpted assuming restic?

Very true ain't restic a pain all round anyway as I said I'm happy with everything else not the end of the world.

On the other hand, one guy has robotic legs, and the other dude appears to be in high heels.

I wouldn't exactly call it cause to panic about Deadzone.

 DaveC wrote:


There's a size difference from wave 1 to the backer MVPs.

The second one from the right has a tiny head.

It takes a lot for smallish scale things to bother me. I mean some people are actually different sizes. Its a bit funny how close in height everyone in our wargame squads are as it is... That said, guy in the middle does have a fairly large noggin, but it doesn't grind my own particular gears. Stuff like elbows going down the the thighs or arms dragging the ground are more like it.

I'm gonna have to take a shot of the Abraham Lincoln statue we've got in my town by the court house thing. He's got a nasty case of gorilla arms and may be worth a laugh

I got metal for

1) The 3 backer MVP's.

2) The alternate poses sets for the Zees, Teratons, Asterians and Nameless

3) The Keepers for the Teratons, Asterians and Nameless

4) The main nameless team

also none of the season 2 upgrade packs as they'd run out (I'd have been happy if those had been metal too), but I've got to wait for them

maybe with luck they'll be restic V2.0

(they also included a 10% discount code good till the end of the year as an apology which was nice even though I probably won't end up using it.... unless the bargain box looks good this year)

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
I got metal for

2) The alternate poses sets for the Zees, Teratons, Asterians and Nameless

3) The Keepers for the Teratons, Asterians and Nameless

How do those compare size-wise to the original Restic figures from before?

~Eric

Those two metals there...I have no idea what they are. What was the pledge level you needed for them? Cuz I didn't get them.