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Quick reminder for anyone who hasn't filled out their survey yet, I have a nice easy list of its contents in the first post of this thread to minimize the amount of buggering about with the google docs form that you have to do.

Edit: Top of the page is a good place to post today's new pics, including some Mars Attacks stuff:

Hard plastic Forge Guard and Enforcer Peacekeeper render



Stealth Martians and Giant Spider render

Shame that it looks like the Google Doc will not be changed with the option to buy sprues of Forge Guard, half of my 2nd survey spend is currently hard plastic.

The more I see of Mars Attacks the more I wish I had backed it.

Edit: In a slight bit of other news today I got my confirmation of dispatch of the Nexus Psi 1 click collection, so it looks like it has started shipping in the last few days.

 Alpharius wrote:
While there's a lot of 'good news' in this update, there's a lot of changes without pictures and such.

Mixed bag...

No joke.

The MA spider render is decent, wish Mantic had seen fit to release it before the MA survey was due.

 scarletsquig wrote:


Hard plastic Forge Guard and Enforcer Peacekeeper render

I believe that's a painted resin mini and not a hard plastic mini.

Early Prototype Forge Guard painted by Curis Webb in the Nethyr Edge colour scheme. Curis said that there is a lot of detail on the model, but felt the figure was a little too small, so we’ve bumped up the size for when they are produced in hard plastic...

 judgedoug wrote:
as I posted on the comments:

"Okay... so what's the deal with the hard plastic Enforcers and Peacekeepers? What weapon loadouts are on each sprue? What comes with the Enforcer boosters and bundles? What do I do about all the individual Enforcer sculpts that I ordered? Are there literally no pictures of test models to show? I am terribly afraid of Men-At-Arms quality coming out since we have zero idea what the final product will look like."

fething christ Mantic, I'm a pretty big supporter but what the feth are you doing.

Same old gak from Mantic, unfortunately.

How do we switch the asterians out for credit before the survey closes?

I'm not sure I like the stealth martian color scheme. But the model looks fine. It isn't poorly done, I just dunno that I'll copy it for my own stealth martians.

I'm only getting a few sprues of peacekeepers and a starter/booster of both EU factions. Well and 80 zombies, the new terrain, lots of stuff really, but I'm not as worried about the peacekeepers personally. If they tank, and I sincerely hope they do not, I won't be out too terribly much.

They'd be fools not to get some pics of the Enforcer sprue up in the next several days, and not to add Forge Guard and Enforcer hard plastic sprues to the survey. They said they'd work on getting more images up before the survey closes, so all is not lost.

Currently, Forge Father boosters are less a deal than they were before (-1 Forge Guard figure so it's just 3 units now), but buying the booster deal gets you slightly more than before with the 6 man hard plastic Forge Guard sprue thrown in.

I agree about the starter sets. They really blew it pricing them at $35 each, a price you'd have to work very hard to find listed as high anywhere else. Even at $25 each for two, you're only saving about $2 compared to online retail, and if you're at Strike Team or above, you're paying for a duplicate starter you probably don't want or need. The only sensible option Mantic have left us is to buy the one starter you want from an online discounter for $2 more. They priced themselves out on their own survey.

Interesting that the best monster models for Deadzone, with the exception of the 1st Gen Plague lord and Rebs Teraton*, are the Mars Attacks bugs. Heck, the spider even looks like a Plague beast. I really hope Mantic give the Zz'or a full cg make-over when ever they decide return to them - if they were as cool as the Mars Attacks spider and ant, they'd sell tons of them. Very glad I ordered a spider right now.

Mars Attacks went from being a negligible side step, to an indispensable Deadzone expansion.

(* If you count the Teraton as a "monster," that is.)

I also don't get this:

- Forge Father Booster Bundle – because we can’t really do single figures from a hard plastic frame, we’ve removing the Forge Guard with Missile Launcher. Don’t forget there’s a vehicle in the booster though

- Forge Father Booster Bundle – we’re throwing in a complete hard plastic Forge Guard sprue, meaning you can build the Forge Father with Heat Cannon and Hailstorm Autocannon in the specialist booster, the Forge Guard with missile launcher plus you’ll get 2 additional Forge Guard with Hailstorm Rifles AND a bonus Forge Guard Huscarl.

The "boosters" have a missile launcher each. And there's two "boosters", plus the "specialist booster" in the "booster bundle". Obviously, Ronnie got confused and called both of them a "booster bundle" here.


So it looks like with the change to hard plastic, they're giving you one less figure in each $20 "booster", and adding one sprue to the $50 (bogof) "booster bundle"?

^ That's accurate.

Check my comment in that update, they got the booster bundle contents wrong.

End result is, the $50 booster bundle gains one model (and loses the option to build one of the forge guard with a missile launcher).

The $20 faction booster loses one model, going down to 3 models from 4 (crappy deal, don't buy it, if you already have, get the refund).

I have to say, that's pretty poor form given the whole "HIPS=cheaper models=larger armies" thing.

Mantic: Almost

Love the new hard plastic forge fathers. What is that orange stuff on the bases though?

Not as keen on the MA Stealth martians. It might be the paint job though. I would like to see them in a different color scheme, or just bare plastic.

Looks like orange lichen.

So I bought the 4 booster bundle, getting one free. I got a Forge Fathers one naturally.

Would my wisest course of action be to ask for a swap, or get some sort of partial refund?

Kind of miffed about the situation. Hope they can figure out a good solution.

So second survey in, looks like im going big for 3 warpath armies. Lots of zombies (yea!) Plenty of enforcers still to be delivered however whats the best deal for forge fathers? Im hoping s.squiq esq. Will pop up and tell me where to spend my cash! )

I think that booster bundle will still be desirable. I'm still getting mine.

They changed the booster deal today, still not quite sure where to put my cash!

I don't see how anyone who got the booster bundle could possibly be upset?

Unless you really wanted just 2 missile forge guard, you now get an entire sprue of 6 forge guard, so you're trading out 1 missile guard for an extra 2 regular guard and a Huscarl - and if you bought the faction starter you get that second missile guard back on account of the starter now coming with a 6 man sprue plus the full heavy weapon set instead of 5 guys in restic with just the guns.

Original Starter + Booster bundle:
Forge Guard Huscarl
4x Forge Guard + 1 autocannon
2x Forge Guard with missiles
2x Forge Guard w/ one autocannon + 1 heat cannon
+all the other stuff that hasn't changed

New Starter + Booster
2x Forge Guard Huscarl
10x Forge Guard + 2 autocannon + 2 heat gun + 2 missile launcher
all in ABS
+ all the other stuff that hasn't changed

The only people with a right to be upset are those who bought just the $20 booster, who now get shortchanged in comparison.

So im trying to work out whats best, 2x starter or 2x boster for more forge father goodness

 scarletsquig wrote:
End result is, the $50 booster bundle gains one model (and loses the option to build one of the forge guard with a missile launcher).

@Scarlet Squig - My understanding was that the Forge Father hard plastic sprue comes with enough to build 5 Forge Guard and one Forge Guard Huscarl.

The old format FF boosters had 1 missile launcher Forge Guard each, and the specialist booster included with the bundle had 2 additional Forge Guard in it.

So unless I'm wrong, under the original booster deal, you got a total of 4 Forge Guard models (two with missile launchers), but now we're getting 5 Forge Guard models and a Huscarl model from the 6 - man hard plastic sprue. So if you buy the $50 booster, you come out ahead 2 models rather than one (one additional Forge Guard + one Huscarl.)

Or is my math off?

No disputing that buying a single booster now nets you a much worse deal.

Nice breakdown.

Right so ive gone 2 ff starters is this the best way to spend my cash?

I was considering adding another Marauder booster bundle because I love those guys, now with 2 for 1 I'm definitely getting one and another FF bundle. Gonna have lots of space dorfs and angry green spacemans

 edlowe wrote:
So second survey in, looks like im going big for 3 warpath armies. Lots of zombies (yea!) Plenty of enforcers still to be delivered however whats the best deal for forge fathers? Im hoping s.squiq esq. Will pop up and tell me where to spend my cash! )

Going for big WP armies, you're probably better off waiting for the WP KS when a lot more of this stuff will be in hard plastic, and they may have finally decided finally if they want to sell models for slightly less than GW or considerably less. Of course, if you're planning to paint and use them ASAP you can disregard that point.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 edlowe wrote:
Right so ive gone 2 ff starters is this the best way to spend my cash?

Also interested in feedback on this. With a single starter, you might as well buy them at retail, so double-starter is a bit better, but not sure if it's preferable to getting the bogof booster bundle?

I think double starter vs starter+bundle comes down to the question:

Do you want 10 Brokkrs for $70, or do you want 5 Brokkrs, 2 Brokkr bikes and 4 specials for $85?

Noting of course that they aren't the only things in the packagse for that money, just that outside of those both come with the same number of forge guard (12) and mining lasers (2)

Well heres the Mantic mix up for everyone to see, and whats got me thinking.

The change to hard plastic has a few knock-on effects:

- Forge Father Booster Bundle – because we can’t really do single figures from a hard plastic frame, we’ve removing the Forge Guard with Missile Launcher. Don’t forget there’s a vehicle in the booster though

- Forge Father Booster Bundle – we’re throwing in a complete hard plastic Forge Guard sprue, meaning you can build the Forge Father with Heat Cannon and Hailstorm Autocannon in the specialist booster, the Forge Guard with missile launcher plus you’ll get  Forge Guard with Hailstorm Rifles AND a  Forge Guard Huscarl.

Given you can buy one Faction Booster Bundle and get another of your choice for free this makes the faction Booster a very sweet deal.

So I get the complete sprue I would have got at starter plus more, at a better dkscount if I buy 4?

can I note I'm mostly in this for warpath hence I want full units

*yawn* It's late and I can't be arsed to go into my usual Mantic rant. Suffice to say that I'm not surprised and am actually insulted when they say things like "they'll be in resin as was intended all along" even though they have an update saying that good zombies=hard plastic Forgeguard AND Asterians.

Yes, Mantic, some of us can read.

I and the Mantic fans on this board will be most happy for June. Me, because I'll finally be done with Mantic for all and good and the fans so they won't be burdened with my comments.

Carry-on.

Amen!

 pretre wrote:

Mantic Update wrote:From the Forge


While we are talking all things Asterians we have killed off the Drone Swarm! We nominated them because we could never quite get the concept right, they always looked weird and never really fit in with the feel of the army. So what we’ve done is replace these with a Cypher with the new Force Rifle, so you'll be gaining a new special weapon and a full infantry figure instead of 2 small spidery things. Much cooler, and much more befitting the army!

Secondly, we’ve also rebalanced the Asterian Faction Booster Bundle, dropping the basic Cypher with Flux Rifle, and replacing him with a very-awesome specialist Black Talon instead.

If the drones swarms or the Flux rifle were the absolute clincher for you then let us know and we can credit or swap to a different faction - but I think the Asterian faction looks and feels a lot cooler this way and you will be very pleased with the results.

No drone swarms.

And I'd been considering ordering a half dozen for sci fi mechanical baddies.