Mantic Games - Sci-fi News & Rumors: Sci-Fi Zombies released.

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**GrimDork**

Not that MA has been busy...

Nah we're finally getting over our slump over there, got our Giant stompy robots locked in on top of a batch of free mercs (if you sign up early enough!), closer to our truck upgrade than not... Could be worse

I'm hoping the proposed "deadzone week" for the mantic blog this week is at least 1 part news to 1 part rehashing. Some of the mantic blog stuff is informative only if you haven't been keeping up on your own. Hopefully we get a decent update with proper shipping details this week or at least soon. We're down to almost a month to the shipment of our goodies

**RiTides**

Yonan wrote:
Good summary of the metal issue SS.

Completely agree, that was a perfect description of the problem... here it is spoilered below for anyone who missed it:

Spoiler:

**overtyrant**

The DB MVPs were fine so im not seeing a problem for the Deadzone special characters.

**scarletsquig**

Have to admit, I'm pretty keen to see some DZ news, just got back from an internetless holiday, very surprised to see nothing, not even in the newsletter... the KS page last friday (10 days ago!) had a pic of the shrink-wrapped retail box and a message saying "stay tuned for one hell of an update next week!"... followed by a week of nothing. :p

The last time I asked for sprue pics/ previews of stuff close to shipping and didn't get any was the KoW men-at-arms. I still added an extra $50 of men-at-arms to my third survey anyway. Not so smart.

Mantic being silent is never a thing that inspires confidence since historically silence or lack of marketing has preceded one of their "argh, we know we screwed up bigtime but here it is" releases.

It takes at least 2 weeks for the slow boat to reach the UK so they should have their hands on all the final production minis for wave 1 shipments at this point. No photos of any of them, though (resin masters don't count).

Also, what is going on with the hard plastic sprues and stuff, if the minis used to be restic, and are now hard plastic do we now get more of them or what?

If China has fethed up the hard plastic enforcers/ plague zombies, mantic are screwed.

**Yonan**

Hoping it's just a combination of MA and the metal DB taking their time atm, but you're right the lack of communication is worrying. It's not Raging Heroes level yet though ; p Though I guess that's more annoyance than worrying hehe.

**Mr Gutsy**

At this point i'm done accepting awful hard plastic models from Mantic, I wasted nearly $200 during the KoW Kickstarter on barely useable plastic Goblins and Men at arms models. I understand that most people prefer hard plastic to PVC, But all Mantic are accomplishing by releasing terrible plastic kits like the Goblins and Men at Arms is throwing money away on products that will struggle to sell along with losing the trust of their loyal supporters.

It also doesn't help that Mantic actually announced that they were unhappy with the way certain plastic models turned out, and yet still willingly released them to paying customers. Quite frankly, whenever Mantic pulls gak like this it actually makes me believe that they have zero respect left for their fans/customers.

I like Mantic, I honestly do. I've spent roughly $900+ between both KoW and the Deadzone KS. But if Mantic expects me to willingly accept horrible quality plastic miniatures from the Deadzone Kickstarter then they're sorely mistaken.

**lord_blackfang**

Maybe DZ is so bad they don't dare show anything until MA ends so we don't cancel our pledges there...?

**OrlandotheTechnicoloured**

A lot of the staff were away at the big german trade show in Essen (SPIEL 2013),

(I know James Hewitt for example won't be back until 29th October from an out of office email reply thingy)

so there's probably not going to be anything until the top staff get back

**Daedle**

lord_blackfang wrote:
Maybe DZ is so bad they don't dare show anything until MA ends so we don't cancel our pledges there...?

The miniatures haven't arrived at Mantic HQ and aren't due for at least 3 more weeks.

**judgedoug**

Why don't we actually wait to see pics and details instead of making haphazard random guesses?

**darkPrince010**

judgedoug wrote:
Why don't we actually wait to see pics and details instead of making haphazard random guesses?

Nonsense.

I heard the delay is because their headquarters caught fire from the meth lab in the warehouse, and Ronnie was too busy admiring his baby-seal-leather boots to make any of the sculpts.

**Taarnak**

Daedle wrote:
lord_blackfang wrote:
Maybe DZ is so bad they don't dare show anything until MA ends so we don't cancel our pledges there...?

The miniatures haven't arrived at Mantic HQ and aren't due for at least 3 more weeks.

But they should have production samples for everything that is coming. No reason not to show those off, right? They did it with the terrain.

~Eric

**Daedleh**

Taarnak wrote:
Daedle wrote:
lord_blackfang wrote:
Maybe DZ is so bad they don't dare show anything until MA ends so we don't cancel our pledges there...?

The miniatures haven't arrived at Mantic HQ and aren't due for at least 3 more weeks.

But they should have production samples for everything that is coming. No reason not to show those off, right? They did it with the terrain.

~Eric

They have 3D printed production samples. If they showed them off then people would complain that it's only 3D printed and obviously they're planning to do a bait and switch on the final quality.

**Taarnak**

Daedleh wrote:
Taarnak wrote:
Daedle wrote:
lord_blackfang wrote:
Maybe DZ is so bad they don't dare show anything until MA ends so we don't cancel our pledges there...?

The miniatures haven't arrived at Mantic HQ and aren't due for at least 3 more weeks.

But they should have production samples for everything that is coming. No reason not to show those off, right? They did it with the terrain.

~Eric

They have 3D printed production samples. If they showed them off then people would complain that it's only 3D printed and obviously they're planning to do a bait and switch on the final quality.

I have no doubt that they have the 3d prints, but those are not production samples. Production samples would be items pulled from production molds for approval.

They received and showed off production samples of the Terrain. If they don't have production samples from all of the other items, they are worse off than I thought...

~Eric

**Daedleh**

Taarnak wrote:

I have no doubt that they have the 3d prints, but those are not production samples. Production samples would be items pulled from production molds for approval.

They received and showed off production samples of the Terrain. If they don't have production samples from all of the other items, they are worse off than I thought...

~Eric

Why would they be? The restic production copies of the Dreadball sculpts have been fine, especially the S3 digital ones. The plastic production samples for the terrain were necessary following the factories ridiculous screw up with the Men At Arms sprues. For a retail release, they're getting the DZ production samples 4 months before launch.

The only sculpt>production problems have been the hard plastics, which Mantic have samples of and are good quality. Waiting for production runs of the Restic stuff, which has never been a problem in the past, will just delay sending stuff out to backers. The previous problems with Restic mold lines were as a result of the factory stepping up production, so wouldn't have been caught by production samples.

**lord_blackfang**

So what you're saying is that Mantic had a container or three full of minis loaded onto the slow boat without checking a single one to see if they're done properly?

Either you have no freakin' clue what you're talking about or I better go cancel my MA pledge because that is just amazingly, staggeringly incompetent.

**judgedoug**

Thoroughly enjoying the "let's make up stuff" discussion occurring on this news thread.

**scarletsquig**

Update #115 posted 11 days ago states that Mantic has a production sample of the final box in the UK, their Finance Director took it with him on the flight back from China:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1744629938/deadzone-the-sci-fi-miniatures-board-game/posts/633506

All we're waiting on is the unboxing pics which Mantic haven't had time to do yet I guess. It has been a really busy week with the Mars Attacks Ks, Deadzone shipping and Essen Speil.

Wouldn't surprise me if today and tomorrow are days off after the staff had a really busy weekend over in Germany.

**lord_blackfang**

Well, by their own admission they've been sitting around the studio just twiddling their thumbs all day today, so what better time to take some pictures? If they're not posted by tomorrow, they're too embarrassed to show them.

**judgedoug**

If they're not posted by tomorrow, Ronnie's a transvestite and the Deadzone figures are made out of dogfood (but somehow work with polystyrene cement) and Mantic is actually owned by GW and the rulebooks are printed on napkin grade paper and when you get your pledge and open the box Stew pops out and slaps you and laughs and says your peepee it teeny

**RiTides**

Yeah... like I said, judgedoug, your posts in this thread have become as noisy as those who detract Mantic no matter what :-/

Scarletsquig, THANK YOU for posting a fact-based, useful post! It is totally valid to ask why Mantic hasn't posted Deadzone pics if they've had the production sample of the final box in studio for a week and a half, and posted so, saying they would take pics.

Please, please don't drag this thread off-topic with nonsense posts! It makes it very hard to read, and is frankly very frustrating, and I don't care which "side" is doing it (as in fact, both have been).

Stick to the facts, please! Thanks...

**lord_blackfang**

As I keep telling people, the ignore list is there for a reason. Nobody is being forced to read that garbage. A much more pleasant forum experience is just 1 click away.

**overtyrant**

lord_blackfang wrote:
As I keep telling people, the ignore list is there for a reason. Nobody is being forced to read that garbage. A much more pleasant forum experience is just 1 click away.

I totally forgot about that!

In other news, apparently its Deadzone week on there Blog, but as Monday is coming to a close no news in sight!

**scarletsquig**

@Rtides: I did ask that very question in the DZ KS comments, but the question was rapidly buried under a discussion of... lets see...

- About a dozen "where's the update?" comments.
- A long discussion of the AvP KS.
- A triple post of three pictures of Brian Blessed.

Pretty much business as usual over there.

Oh, and keep in mind that Daedleh is a better source for more accurate info beyond what is posted on the KS page. Mantic has sent people over to properly supervise DZ production and have a staff member over there to manage production.

**edlowe**

Sorry ssquig, the bb pics were my fault, I think people are going a bit stir crazy waiting for an update, me included

**lord_blackfang**

Probably better to ask for a DZ update in the MA comments than in the DZ comments. At least we know they still read the MA comments!

**judgedoug**

@SS I saw your post (and the weird attack on it from that one dude), and honestly I'm curious about the plastics, too. But I was under the impression that the post-KS announced plastics would be coming at the very end, and the initial pledges and such would still have pvc figures?

**scarletsquig**

edlowe wrote:
Sorry ssquig, the bb pics were my fault, I think people are going a bit stir crazy waiting for an update, me included

At least it's not as bad as the "woogoo" discussion in the MA KS comments that has been taking place at the same time as the pledge total decreasing by $3k. :p

@judgedoug - Surely the enforcer sprue at least would have to be part of the retail box? Unless they're doing separate tools for restic and hard plastic and the KS backers get restic now and retail gets hard plastic later?

I don't mind too much either way, just wondering what is happening with that.

As far as we know it's a sprue of 5 minis with all the weapon options other than the big shield and shotgun which will be separate restic pieces. Pretty eager to see it since it could be Mantic's flagship product if it turns out well, I added an extra $50 for a couple of enforcer booster bundles when I heard they were going to be hard plastic, hoping to put together a warpath army with them (magnetized arms and everything!).

**warboss**

scarletsquig wrote:
At least it's not as bad as the "woogoo" discussion in the MA KS comments that has been taking place at the same time as the pledge total decreasing by $3k. :p

I had to look that up... I'm not sure I want to know which one of the possible definitions actually applies...

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woogoo

I'm not sure what it is about Mantic KS comment sections that attracts such really weird commentary. I had to ask during deadzone or dreadball (can't recall) what a Brian Blessed was as well.

**edlowe**

warboss wrote:
scarletsquig wrote:
At least it's not as bad as the "woogoo" discussion in the MA KS comments that has been taking place at the same time as the pledge total decreasing by $3k. :p

I had to look that up... I'm not sure I want to know which one of the possible definitions actually applies...

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woogoo

I'm not sure what it is about Mantic KS comment sections that attracts such really weird commentary. I had to ask during deadzone or dreadball (can't recall) what a Brian Blessed was as well.

Im not sure I really wanted to click on that link! Discussions like that would really put me off pledging!

im hoping if the enforcer sprues are nice enough that they'll let us order individual sprues in wave 2.