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Yeah... I. Could get behind that.

Oooh.

What about a murder ball scenario for dz? Either no shooting.. or shooting I dunno. Standard dz terrain maybe preferant to thepaintball aesthetic... goal is to run the ball to opposite end, probably would have to steal from or outright use the db rules but with cubes like dz.

The necromunda/gangsofnewyorkbuttheyplayfootball would be awesome too

 scarletsquig wrote:


Wow, you've just described the one thing that could get me interested as well... Deadzone decks for the minis and possibly a melee-combat focused expansion for DZ with extra actions for melee etc?

That would be brilliant. It could represent street gangs fighting it out to earn the rights to star in the next big game.

I'd also be quite keen to see some more sci-fi terrain sprues that could integrate with the deadzone stuff. Wrecked hovercars, street furniture, obstacles... kinda like the stuff that mars attacks had but for the warpath IP.

Guys, stop it. No more %%#^! Deadzone compatibility. That's what got me suckered into Mars Attacks. Which I loved.

Not feeling very tempted yet, though. I'm not wowed by the convict team sculpts, and while the Brokkr team looks good, I'd rather have Deadzone Brokkrs.

ScarletSquig, that's EXACTLY what I had been thinking.

Why wouldn't I want to run around with a band of escaped convicts, fighting off the plague or just fighting over turf with knives and chainsaws?

Not every battle needs Peacekeepers and Striders deployed.

DZ stats for everything and some new scatter terrain would probably end up pulling in people that might not necessarily be interested in a sports game, but could get some more bang for their skirmishing bucks.

I think I just sold myself on it.

I am also well aware of DKH4. I am also incredibly impatient and want it RIGHT NOW, since none of my other big boy dungeon crawl KS games have bothered to ship out yet.

Heaven forbid I play a game I already own though, right?

 Alpharius wrote:
You should get that cough looked at.

Meanwhile - I'm work blocked.

What's behind that link?

I've developed my own Dreadfleet and Battlefleet Gothic-scale games a year or so back for use with Mantic rules (Modified, of course), called, respectively Bloodfleet and Battle Fleet Mantic (BFM)

From a pathfinder on the mantic forums:

UPDATE FROM RONNIE (PARAPHRASED):

Hi everyone, the pathfinders have been passing on everyone's feedback about hard plastic Asterians/Forgefathers directly to Mantic. Ronnie has given us an update (with permission for us to pass it on) that they are looking again at the hard plastics due to the feedback. There will be an official update coming when they've worked things out.

At the moment it has to be stressed that IT IS FAR FROM CERTAIN THAT THE PLASTICS CAN BE DONE. While Mantic are looking at it again, the timescales were not the only reason why they were changed to restic. There were other concerns that I'll leave up to Mantic to disclose when they make their update.

At the moment it's about a 50:50 chance of the HP Forgefathers/Asterians happening. They'd love to make them happen but they need to overcome other factors first.

Thank you everyone for your patience. Please feel free to spread this around to other forums.

I doubt it's going to happen and I think this is just an acknowledgement of fans concerns to shut them up in time for the next kickstarter.

Zond wrote:
I doubt it's going to happen and I think this is just an acknowledgement of fans concerns to shut them up in time for the next kickstarter.

Which, even in a worst-case where all they're doing is going through the motions of acknowledging fan feedback, is more than a lot of companies bother to do.

I wouldn't hold my breath either, but at least they said they'd take another (heavily conditional) look at it.

So they're going to take a look at fulfilling their original promise. This is great news!

I really don't understand why Mastic continually gets a pass for lying; it truly boggles the imagination.

Yeah, pretty much the reaction I expected Dakka to have.

Keep in mind that only 2 weeks ago, this thread was full of "I bet the plague zombies are going to be crap quality and so will the enforcers and we will be blind-shipped mishapen blobs, they should just stick with restic if they can't hack it".

Now, fast-foward to a sprue that is actually really good quality having been shown off and it's still pretty much ignored in favour of focusing on the negatives.

Not that I don't agree with the points on the negatives, it's just that this place is extremely one-track with it's opinions.

Company CEO listens to recent customer feedback and issues a temporary response within a few days pending a more detailed one?

Must be lying to take the heat off, no way is the scumbag company going to listen to its customers, it just wants to distract its mewling low-IQ fanbois so they buy into the next KS like lemmings.

Personally, I'm mainly just happy that the plague zombies are good. FF/Asterians are secondary. If I don't want them in restic I don't have to pay for them and neither does anyone else (even those who already have in the first survey are offered blanket refunds). As it stands from my own perspective that simply means $100 less spent on survey 2 and I'm okay with that.

News of a good quality sprue far outweighs the minor negatives in this case. Mantic has not released a good miniatures sprue since the middle of 2011, when the KoW Orc army was released... when the plague zombies get their retail release it'll have been three whole years of nothing really hitting the right quality/ price point from the company.

I've been waiting for them to get out of that rut for a long time now, I think the inability to do hard plastic has been the main reason behind their focus on skirmish games rather than mass battle, 2014 should see them getting back to (and surpassing) their much better 2010 levels of release quality. The KoW 2.0 KS with hard plastic infantry for the Abyssal and Nature armies should be a lot of fun.

Sure I would like a good quality plastic sprue, but for the purposes of playing Deadzone, I'm "fine"* with restic.

*Not a fan of the material itself, but in the context of the number of models involved and expecting everything to be restic anyway, I'm ambivalent in this case.

The big deal for me is that core units for Warpath get quality plastic sprues.

I think it's a shame they haven't revealed what the issues are, just from a general PR point of view, I think that would help reduce the level of cynicism this move attracts.

Careful Squiggy or you'll end up embittered and repeating yourself over and over ad nauseum (with little variation) like the very posters you decry.

There is no "Dakka", as nobody ever speaks for the whole community. GW has people who defend the most loathsome of business practices here, despite there also being a very strong anti-GW contingent here. You pay attention to this thread, so you see the complainers, but it tends to be the same group of people taking everything Mantic does and intentionally adding near-conspiratorial motives to everything. Some people just need more to do with their days... /shrug

My take is "if the plastics quality wasn't good enough for Mantic's leadership, it sure as hell isn't good enough for the customers." It's a bit of an indictment of Mantic's quality issues with releases, but it's not one they haven't earned either. After all, every sprue of M@As is a testament to this until more good sprues come out. Hence why I'm fine with them coming back with a no for an answer; I'd rather decent restic than terrible plastic.

 scarletsquig wrote:
News of a good quality sprue far outweighs the minor negatives in this case. Mantic has not released a good miniatures sprue since the middle of 2011, when the KoW Orc army was released... when the plague zombies get their retail release it'll have been three whole years of nothing really hitting the right quality/ price point from the company.

I've been waiting for them to get out of that rut for a long time now, I think the inability to do hard plastic has been the main reason behind their focus on skirmish games rather than mass battle, 2014 should see them getting back to (and surpassing) their much better 2010 levels of release quality. The KoW 2.0 KS with hard plastic infantry for the Abyssal and Nature armies should be a lot of fun.

If the "other concerns" are that they want to make sure these space zombies actually bloody work before blowing their load on four sprues that might turn out to be crap, I'm fine with that. That's the only thing the space zombies have going for them, as far as I'm concerned. There are space zombie concepts that I think work well, but these aren't it.

my suspicion is one of the hurdles is their supplier

for the zombies (& enforcers?) I belive they agreed that mantic did not have to pay if they were not happy with the results and have therefore redone (to what degree is not clear) things at least a couple of times

I suspect the supplier would not carry on operating under those terms... They now have better idea of what mantic need so will be more likely to get things right first time but even so

so Manitc & the Supplier probably need to negotiate over who pays what if they had to re-do future spues

^ Correct. Also, Chinese new year currently so don't expect an answer until it's over, even Mantic won't have one.

 scarletsquig wrote:


Company CEO listens to recent customer feedback and issues a temporary response within a few days pending a more detailed one?

Must be lying to take the heat off, no way is the scumbag company going to listen to its customers, it just wants to distract its mewling low-IQ fanbois so they buy into the next KS like lemmings.

I wish I'd typed this as my response. It's got all the vitriol and hate I missed, and lacks a wee sticky out tongue to take the edge off. Reading it I can feel the outcry of a million Mantic fans, suddenly silenced by disappointment upon seeing their KoW rewards.

 scarletsquig wrote:
Yeah, pretty much the reaction I expected Dakka to have.

Keep in mind that only 2 weeks ago, this thread was full of "I bet the plague zombies are going to be crap quality and so will the enforcers and we will be blind-shipped mishapen blobs, they should just stick with restic if they can't hack it".

Now, fast-foward to a sprue that is actually really good quality having been shown off and it's still pretty much ignored in favour of focusing on the negatives.

Not that I don't agree with the points on the negatives, it's just that this place is extremely one-track with it's opinions.

Company CEO listens to recent customer feedback and issues a temporary response within a few days pending a more detailed one?

Must be lying to take the heat off, no way is the scumbag company going to listen to its customers, it just wants to distract its mewling low-IQ fanbois so they buy into the next KS like lemmings.

I don't think my comments represent the overall sentiments of Dakka or even this thread. I admit that I am vocal in my disappointment with Mantic as a company as well as the products and service that I have received from them. I also don't believe that anyone, myself included, has characterized you or any other Mantic fan as "mewling low-IQ fanbois".

What I take issue with is a company that says, "We're going to do X!!" while they're trying to drum up more money then later says "We're actually going to do Y." I will grant that this is a step up for Mantic as a year ago they'd just ship the Asterians and Forgefathers as restic without telling anyone. I don't know how you perceive this but to me it's lying. You promised X and are now saying you never promised it; you're saying you actually said you'd look into when the record shows you PROMISED it. That's a lie. Not a misunderstanding, not a miscommunication, a lie.

As a consumer, it's not my problem that Mantic is in bed with a low-cots supplier which is appears completely incapable of making simple kits like the M@As without screwing the pooch. It was their decision to cut corners and save costs, not mine. As a consumer I'm only concerned with getting the product that was promised to me. I don't want 5 free of this or 10 free of that, I want what I paid for, plain and simple. Mantic drew my money by promising certain services and merchandise and then failed to deliver in the KoW campaign and are now doing the same thing with DeadZone. I'm not OK with this and noone should be. If you're OK with it, that doesn't make you a fanbois, but I might just have some prime swampland that you'd be interested in; the castle on it has only fallen into the swamp twice now. I don't owe Mantic anything; they owe me the product they promised. I'm willing to wait for my product if need be while they work things out with their supplier but delays are a part of Kickstarters.

I like the zombies. I am tempted to go back on my initial word of not giving Mantic any more money and actually buy some since I didn't pledge for any initially but they're not God's gift to plastic; that gets reserved for things produced by WGF, a Chinese manufacturer that actually does things correctly. The one pose with the zombie holding a wrench out seems uninspired to me; it's like he's trying to hand me a tool while I'm working on my car. But hey, to each his/her own; if people think they're the bees knees, more power to them.

And what's with the communication through non-official channels? Why are we getting such big word from a Pathfinder? Ronnie should be on KS but the fact is that Mantic has been a non-presence on the KS page for some time now outside of the recent update.

Also, Chinese New Year ended a day ago so that excuse has reached its limit. Not expecting immediate answers but it should have been a non-issue anyway considering, you know, they promised plastic to begin with.

Anyway, I'll go back to my corner.

I wasn't sure about agnosto's promise quote so I went back and checked and he's correct

Update 117

If the method works well on the zombies I will ensure everyone gets all of the Enforcers they ordered in their second shipment, along with the Forge Guard and the Asterian Cyphers in hard plastic. If it is not up to the quality we expect, I will keep all those kits in resin plastic as was originally planned in the Kickstarter, and we will put the Peacekeepers into Resin Plastic as well.

So on the basis that the zombies worked well then that looks like Asterians and FF should be hard plastic as well.

At this stage I expect restic and will be very surprised by HP if it happens.

@agnosto: That's fair enough. Different perceptions and all. However I don't see a change of plan due to unforseen events as a slight or a "break of promise".

To me:

- Men-at-arms situation of blind shipping 200 of the things to me without showing the sprues first, knowing that we'd probably think they were terrible = pretty much the worst thing the company has ever done. So, there's one thing we can agree on since we're both KoW backers.

- Dreadball teams should have been restic, not metal. Major u-turn that was only discovered when people opened their boxes. Massive fail from Mantic since they gave people no options to deal with that before shipping.

- FF/Asterian situation of saying hard plastic, but then saying restic and offering a full refund IN ADVANCE if you bought based on hard plastic = totally fine, and what they should have been doing in their other kickstarters.

For me, I don't mind if they screw up, as long as I'm not stuck with the screwup. I have 200 screwups in a drawer and don't want anymore! The final price/quality of the minis that I've chosen to invest in the production of via KS is my only concern. If, on the other hand I'd spent $100 on what I thought was hard plastic FF/Asterians and they turned up terrible quality, or as restic instead when I opened the box with bugger all word from Mantic about it, I'd be annoyed.

Good point about Chinese new year, this should get sorted fairly quickly then.

 Krinsath wrote:
I'd rather decent restic than terrible plastic.

And that is part of the problem, the restic figures delivered for DreadBall and Deadzone kickstarters have been of mixed quality, even among the same figure.

What I'm guessing is that Mantic there is a measurable drop in second survey pledges due to restic (and metal) and that has given Mantic some new motivation to have another look at hard plastic.

While I would be "okayish" with restic A/FF I appreciate that other people are willing to vote with their wallets in a big enough way to possibly affect the decision.

Dreadball Extreme details from the interview
Base game Convicts and Asterians - new Asterian team more brutal than the current one.

The only thing I like more than elves are brutal elves.

I may take the plunge this time. The Asterians nearly got me to start it anyway, I've very curious about the brutal Asterians.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
What I'm guessing is that Mantic there is a measurable drop in second survey pledges due to restic (and metal) and that has given Mantic some new motivation to have another look at hard plastic.

While I would be "okayish" with restic A/FF I appreciate that other people are willing to vote with their wallets in a big enough way to possibly affect the decision.

The way I heard it, they're doing it because feedback in every channel was so heavily in favour of hard plastic that they were compelled to explore it in depth again so that they could carefully explain why not if all of the different numbers still don't work, nothing to do with survey results.

 agnosto wrote:
What I take issue with is a company that says, "We're going to do X!!" while they're trying to drum up more money then later says "We're actually going to do Y."

Was the announcement about the HP switch during a survey? I can't be sure but I thought the first survey had closed at that point. And didn't we know about the restic switchback before the second survey? Honest questions, I don't recall the timeline of events.

Regardess, I'm okay with restic Asterians as I picked them way, way back before any of the HP talk had started. However, I will be cancelling any plans that I may have formulated since to get them in Warpath-suitable numbers, and they'll be staying solely the preserve of Deadzone.

 scarletsquig wrote:
@agnosto: That's fair enough. Different perceptions and all. However I don't see a change of plan due to unforseen events as a slight or a "break of promise".

To me:

- Men-at-arms situation of blind shipping 200 of the things to me without showing the sprues first, knowing that we'd probably think they were terrible = pretty much the worst thing the company has ever done. So, there's one thing we can agree on since we're both KoW backers.

- Dreadball teams should have been restic, not metal. Major u-turn that was only discovered when people opened their boxes. Massive fail from Mantic since they gave people no options to deal with that before shipping.

- FF/Asterian situation of saying hard plastic, but then saying restic and offering a full refund IN ADVANCE if you bought based on hard plastic = totally fine, and what they should have been doing in their other kickstarters.

For me, I don't mind if they screw up, as long as I'm not stuck with the screwup. I have 200 screwups in a drawer and don't want anymore! The final price/quality of the minis that I've chosen to invest in the production of via KS is my only concern. If, on the other hand I'd spent $100 on what I thought was hard plastic FF/Asterians and they turned up terrible quality, or as restic instead when I opened the box with bugger all word from Mantic about it, I'd be annoyed.

Good point about Chinese new year, this should get sorted fairly quickly then.

Why didnt you ask for a refund?

Agreed!

They've probably already seen next to no additional orders for those two troop types so far, so now they are properly motivated.

Additionally, there is that next Kickstarter due to launch in a few weeks...

 highlord tamburlaine wrote:
ScarletSquig, that's EXACTLY what I had been thinking.

Why wouldn't I want to run around with a band of escaped convicts, fighting off the plague or just fighting over turf with knives and chainsaws?

Not every battle needs Peacekeepers and Striders deployed.

You mean, why not just basically remake Necromunda?

Mantic got too cute trying to make their own world, and making the DZ factions warpath compatible, and IMO dropped the ball a bit. Making an "arcology" expansion, with multiple human gangs, would be awesome. I think they might be too worried about looking at only mining GW's ideas, but frankly, as Dreadball shows, somebody needs to run with those ideas.

Kow shows that people want simple, elegant, ranks and flanks fantasy. Dreadball shows a huge market for sportsball games. There are markets for gang-fighting skirmish, and fantasy skirmish, and probably even naval combat.

 carlos13th wrote:
Why didnt you ask for a refund?

Decided to use the shields and spears for converting some perry foot knights to look more "fantasy" when they're released (to use as basilean MAA). Also they come with bases which I'll need for the perrys.

The minis cost $0.62 each, and a mantic base bought separately costs $0.17.. so that's a quarter of the loss refunded already, leaving it at $0.45 for a fancy fantasy spear and shield bit.. cheaper than a bitz site for GW stuff, anyway.

Also, the crossbowmen look pretty good (they replace the arms which is the main thing that's horrible about the mantic MAA), so I may bitz order some crossbow arms from Mantic at some point and get a bunch of them to put on the spare torsos. The minis will do okay for converting war machine crew too.

 scarletsquig wrote:
@agnosto: That's fair enough. Different perceptions and all. However I don't see a change of plan due to unforseen events as a slight or a "break of promise".

To me:

- Men-at-arms situation of blind shipping 200 of the things to me without showing the sprues first, knowing that we'd probably think they were terrible = pretty much the worst thing the company has ever done. So, there's one thing we can agree on since we're both KoW backers.

- Dreadball teams should have been restic, not metal. Major u-turn that was only discovered when people opened their boxes. Massive fail from Mantic since they gave people no options to deal with that before shipping.

- FF/Asterian situation of saying hard plastic, but then saying restic and offering a full refund IN ADVANCE if you bought based on hard plastic = totally fine, and what they should have been doing in their other kickstarters.

For me, I don't mind if they screw up, as long as I'm not stuck with the screwup. I have 200 screwups in a drawer and don't want anymore! The final price/quality of the minis that I've chosen to invest in the production of via KS is my only concern. If, on the other hand I'd spent $100 on what I thought was hard plastic FF/Asterians and they turned up terrible quality, or as restic instead when I opened the box with bugger all word from Mantic about it, I'd be annoyed.

Good point about Chinese new year, this should get sorted fairly quickly then.

Fair points all and this is why I respect you SS; you've maintained a balanced perspective while I've decidedly gone the bitter route. I had high hopes for Mantic, they let me down, continue to let me down and now I just want done with them. As soon as this KS is over, I'm walking away whistling and will give the several thousand I spend each year on hobby purchases to another company.

The concern I have about a refunds is that I recall one backer who took them up on the refund and was still trying to get it two months later while three different Mantic staff gave him the run around; he posted all over the KS page about it. I think he eventually opened a dispute with his credit card company. So, no, I'll take whatever product they produce in whatever material they throw out and try to make do rather than chance their corporate culture on a refund.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Riquende wrote:

 agnosto wrote:
What I take issue with is a company that says, "We're going to do X!!" while they're trying to drum up more money then later says "We're actually going to do Y."

Was the announcement about the HP switch during a survey? I can't be sure but I thought the first survey had closed at that point. And didn't we know about the restic switchback before the second survey? Honest questions, I don't recall the timeline of events.

Regardess, I'm okay with restic Asterians as I picked them way, way back before any of the HP talk had started. However, I will be cancelling any plans that I may have formulated since to get them in Warpath-suitable numbers, and they'll be staying solely the preserve of Deadzone.

Update 103 on July 19, 2013 -

Mantic wrote:Sunday is your last chance to get your finalized survey into us.

Mantic wrote:Good news ladies and gentlemen – we’re going to be producing hard plastic sprues for the Enforcers, Asterian Cyphers and Forge Father Forge Guard!

So yes, they had that bit of news before the 1st survey closed.

They announced the change to restic at the same time they released survey 2. Interesting how the survey doesn't have a "give me my money back" option next to the Asterians and ForgeGuard.

Update 130, January 31:

Mantic wrote:We did suggest at one point they would go hard plastic too

Suggest? What a bunch of $#*! liars, you outright said it!

Usual Mantic bait and switch.

Mantic wrote:Plastic....plastic....Restic! Sucker, I can't believe you actually trusted us again!

 Polonius wrote:


Mantic got too cute trying to make their own world

Are you seriously suggesting Mantic should never have bothered making their own world, and just made a bunch of stuff you can play Necromunda with?

Me, I've never played Necromunda, not ever planning to either. I like that the Deadzone and Warpath factions are the same, and have an amount of interchangeability with the models, I think it adds immensely to the universe they're trying to build.

I'm pretty sure that the success so far, that being that Deadzone is now their highest selling item, indicates there was plenty of market for what they made.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 agnosto wrote:
[
They announced the change to restic at the same time they released survey 2. Interesting how the survey doesn't have a "give me my money back" option next to the Asterians and ForgeGuard.

You mean aside from the "we will give you a full refund" announcement with it?

I haven't been here all that long, but the people were right, Dakka

NTRabbit wrote:

 Polonius wrote:


Mantic got too cute trying to make their own world

Are you seriously suggesting Mantic should never have bothered making their own world, and just made a bunch of stuff you can play Necromunda with?

Me, I've never played Necromunda, not ever planning to either. I like that the Deadzone and Warpath factions are the same, and have an amount of interchangeability with the models, I think it adds immensely to the universe they're trying to build.

I'm pretty sure that the success so far, that being that Deadzone is now their highest selling item, indicates there was plenty of market for what they made.

I'm happy with Deadzone, I'm just surprised they didn't more actively go after the gangfighting die hards. It's not that they shouldn't; make a world, they just should have broadened the appeal a bit. My two cents.