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 Azazelx wrote:
Is this the Forge Father keeper? (guy dead in the middle)

No, he's part of the 'normal' team. A guard. The keepers are the upgraded goalies, with even more armor.

 warboss wrote:
What is the issue the backer is having with receiving his goods?

Dunno. He lives in Italy apparently and Mantic informed him they were unable to ship to him for some reason. He requested a refund, they agreed and have been giving him the old, shady business tactic of revolving customer service personnel for over a month while sitting pat on his money.

The Keeper is the 1 I've circled in red.

From back left the picture is

Jack, Striker, Striker, Jack
Prone, Guard, Keeper, Guard, Prone

I intend on giving my Keeper a black helmet (rather than white or puple the others have) so he stands out from the guards.

That explains it. Italy seems to be a hotbed for internet scammers unfortunately for honest gamers living there. Italy is second only to Russia as the most excluded from shipping country I've seen over the past decade for both private offerings like the swap shop as well as ebay auctions.

 Azazelx wrote:
So anyway, is there a guide anywhere to what all this DB stuff actually is, or do I need to play "Guess what this is supposed to be!" all the way through the box?

It's a little vague at times, but I noticed that Mantic does a lot of 'keying' on the minis, so you can't easily use Corporation arms on Goblins or vice versa.

 warboss wrote:
That explains it. Italy seems to be a hotbed for internet scammers unfortunately for honest gamers living there. Italy is second only to Russia as the most excluded from shipping country I've seen over the past decade for both private offerings like the swap shop as well as ebay auctions.

They could have told him months ago if they weren't going to fulfill his order... I need to stop reading the KS comments:

I'm on a suppression team (3 boxed game) with friends and only get one box....
We were happy to get this before christmas, but now we are very disappointed...
We spend more than $1.100on this kickstarter, we was hoping a little bit more from you...

Really?? there are people in my local area who are missing half their original package, damaged scenery and whole starter sets of the races missing?? You really can't be arsed to sort out the problems with the initial shipment before rushing out the next?? Glad to see the Mantic focus on great customer service is alive and well....or dead at the bottom of a grave depending on your definition of the word great.

For those of us who still have not received our first shipment, or any tracking information, do we complete the "missing bits survey" and note that we have not received anything at all???

I've not had anything yet at all and everything I ordered was from the first wave. I have had confirmation that Mantic have received my missing parts comments, but sad to hear it won't even be looked at until after January and dealt with when new stock arrives!

I wouldnt mind to wait for my missing parts another two months or so if only some minor things were missing. But I am missing one complete strike team pledge (I am an assault team backer and got only one ST)! I really dont like to read that I have to wait a long time after January for this! You should make sure, that such big glitches get fixed asap, that would be a professional manner. Send you my survey on 13. December.

Those are a few...

Well to be fair a lot issues reported in December will have hit their Deadzone shut down (they did say the company was going to be totally focused on shipping out that) not that will make those with missing bits feel better

and then the Xmas shut down

It's also clear (from one of the above comments) that some of the issues are stock related, and if Mantic haven't got any they can't send replacements until new stock arrives from china

As to the refund, there's clearly a problem there, but what it is and why it's happening is very hard to say (especially with only one side of the story)

 warboss wrote:
That explains it. Italy seems to be a hotbed for internet scammers unfortunately for honest gamers living there. Italy is second only to Russia as the most excluded from shipping country I've seen over the past decade for both private offerings like the swap shop as well as ebay auctions.

I think its partly that and partly that the italian postal service is awful.

I had people in rome tell me if I wanted to send out post and was visiting the vatican wait and post it from there instead.

My thoughts on this are that they should not have done the limited retail release before they did the first shipment to backers. It is just daft that 5000 odd copies of the game were sent out for retail whilst some backers got none, ditto for faction starter sets, battlezones etc etc.

They knew how much stuff they had to send out, once they discovered that they could not meet backer demand and their, albeit limited, retail release they should have pulled the retail sales via their website. Note that I have no issue with some retail purchasers getting their copies before KS backers, more of an issue with them getting their orders whilst some backers got very limited/non existent first wave deliveries.

Bingo. Ding ding ding. Make sure your backers have their stuff before you ship out non - backer retail packages.

Had the retail release been limited to 3/4000 copies a lot of the problems with backers could have been avoided whilst also not aggravating retail stores that they sell to. Case in point there were 5 unsold copies in my FLGS this very afternoon.

Also note that I have no axe to grind about my KS experience as I got my delivery pre open day and with nothing missing. I am also very happy with the quality if product that I got.

As much as I like mantic.. I do have to agree that I'd rather have my stuff now than uhh... not. Although I think it was some kind of clerical error, perhaps I was marked as shipped or something. I'm not sure the limited retail run affected me so much.

I'm glad they had a chance to retail the boxen and make some monies, but the suggestion to hold some of those 5k back to fix ks orders is probably a good one.

Yeah I don't know what's so hard about ordering a little bit extra of everything from China to cover miscasts and mispacks. As it is, they even ran out of some things, never mind having spares on hand to handle mistakes.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Yeah I don't know what's so hard about ordering a little bit extra of everything from China to cover miscasts and mispacks. As it is, they even ran out of some things, never mind having spares on hand to handle mistakes.

Because minimum qty you can order is a production batch of 10000 shots + it takes time on slow boat approx. 4 to 6 weeks to UK. That's is the reason why they have re-launched the KS survey as well, to get more orders to cover the minimum qty for production batch without having lots of unwanted product in stock (bits I mean)

And all this is so much cheaper than plastic sprues... Lost time, customer goodwill, sales. Going restic saved them production costs but is going to bite them in replacement of miscast/missing merchandize. Bad experience means means me and probably many others won't buy more product...etc.

Retailers were KS backers too, so there isn't a distinction to make in this case.

Not that I blame anyone for being fed up with Mantic's almost antics.

Not all retailers were kickstarters. Mantic also set out a limited run of some 5000 boxes to non-backer retailers if I recall correctly.

Oh ffs, I give up, this is just gak! Some of the gaps between arm joins on marauders are a few mm wide!
Is it easier assembling the miniatures as part of a gaming group?
Not for the help but to give you a hug and tell you everything will be alright!

Any US deadzone backers looking to quit, go ahead and shoot me a PM. I'll buy your boosters.

god.ra wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Yeah I don't know what's so hard about ordering a little bit extra of everything from China to cover miscasts and mispacks. As it is, they even ran out of some things, never mind having spares on hand to handle mistakes.

Because minimum qty you can order is a production batch of 10000 shots + it takes time on slow boat approx. 4 to 6 weeks to UK. That's is the reason why they have re-launched the KS survey as well, to get more orders to cover the minimum qty for production batch without having lots of unwanted product in stock (bits I mean)

They should have ordered 10100 instead of 10000 (or whatever) is what I'm saying.

 Baragash wrote:
Retailers were KS backers too, so there isn't a distinction to make in this case.

Not that I blame anyone for being fed up with Mantic's almost antics.

Scarletsquig has posted the number of retailer KS backers in this thread somewhere, it was not a lot, something like 29/30 IIRC.

I just do not get the logic in sending copies of the boxed game and all the other retail bits out when they sent some backers orders that were short of basic bits that they had thousands of in mid December.

That said, I do not wish to try and bash Mantic. I do not believe they willingly try and dissappoint customers. Their hearts are in the right place, but their heads and business sense are often not.

Sending retail copies out and selling them on the mantic website was done to make money, to actually turn a profit after the kickstarter process rather than tread water. At least I'd assume. What lord blackfang said though, would have been a nice thought to get a bit extra so they had stuff on hand to fulfill missing pieces somewhat.

My guess is they placed the order before the pledge manager had closed

(but after it had been open a while to give them some idea of numbers)

but there was more of a 'rush' for some stuff at the end than expected so while they thought they'd have enough + spares they were wrong

Can't wait for the second survey so I can get my not-Squats. Wonder when they will ship? Summer?

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Can't wait for the second survey so I can get my not-Squats. Wonder when they will ship? Summer?

Q2, so hopefully spring.

I am getting super excited for the second survey too. My gaming group is starting to get into it so we're working up a big order and trying to find folks who don't want their stuff to as well.

I'd rather it ship in Summer, hopefully after some quality control on the miniatures. I was planning a 2nd survey order until I found out I wouldn't be receiving my missing items until some after the second survey's complete.

Seriously Mantic. You want more money from me when you haven't given me all of what I paid for the first time? Yeah, not happening.

I'm hoping my stuff comes in before the mispack corrections or I'll have not seen anything in person before the survey. I want the peacekeepers zombies and maybe walkers... but I'm not sure I'm willing to spend more than I have on this and ma w/o seeing anything.

Wonder if we'll be hearing anything about that new scenery sprue any time soon.

 GrimDork wrote:
I'm hoping my stuff comes in before the mispack corrections or I'll have not seen anything in person before the survey. I want the peacekeepers zombies and maybe walkers... but I'm not sure I'm willing to spend more than I have on this and ma w/o seeing anything.

Wonder if we'll be hearing anything about that new scenery sprue any time soon.

I feel for you. If I were in your shoes, I would not be nearly as calm nor as forgiving.

 pretre wrote:
Any US deadzone backers looking to quit, go ahead and shoot me a PM. I'll buy your boosters.

Seriously, I'll pay $50 plus a share in shipping for just the plague booster bundle (leaving you with the other BoGoF booster bundle free ).

Yeah, not hearing about what's up with the missing or miscast stuff and not seeing a lot more of the 'Unknowns' now and possibly before the Second Survey closes?

Although, I'm not sure if we know how long the Second Survey will be open for yet.

Hopefully long enough for all of the above to be addressed...