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^ By 4, Miniature market mean 8.

Basically, double up the sprue count if it looks too low, a lot of the info on the trade listings is incorrect.

In fact, even the listing on Mantic's own site gets the sprue count wrong:

http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/deadzone/scenery/product/deadzone-scenery-upgrade-pack.html

Yeah its written that way on the mantic web store too... just needs updating.

 GrimDork wrote:

Ahh yeah that's where you were derailing and making me confused/angry Warboss, you weren't considering the halved/doubled sprues thing that happened, the urban war thing would be 8 bzs (8 sprues each) or 64 (before accessory sprues!).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
DZ update #124
In case you don't trust me The break down for fortification and landing pad exist somewhere too, those were something like 3 each of two sprues and then 2 defense line sprues, or something.
*Ahem... same page, didn't scroll all the way to find out.

Yup, I was going off of the info in the link I posted and more specifically the picture I spoilered in the same post that said 4 sprues per battlezone. It seems like that isn't accurate anymore so the relative discount between the two changes dramatically when you double the sprue count in one at a later date and not the other. Still, 5 battlezones doesn't seem like a bad haul at that cost.

Huh. Well the survey is still a good deal at $25 vs $32.

If we're being really picky a $25 KS Battlezone doesn't come with an accessory sprue (worth $5 at KS prices) the retail version does. For every 2 KS Battlezones you got 1 accessory sprue thrown in.

Never enough connectors though I went for 2 bundles of them on the survey. I ended up adding the Forgefathers today having the hard plastic sprues sold them to me in the end and I wanted another plague starter so $50 for the 2 is good otherwise I would have waited for retail.

So, the peacekeepers are listed as 5 for $10, but listed on the individuals page. I assume listing "2" will get me 2 packs of 5, right?

 DaveC wrote:
If we're being really picky a $25 KS Battlezone doesn't come with an accessory sprue (worth $5 at KS prices) the retail version does. For every 2 KS Battlezones you got 1 accessory sprue thrown in.

Never enough connectors though I went for 2 bundles of them on the survey. I ended up adding the Forgefathers today having the hard plastic sprues sold them to me in the end and I wanted another plague starter so $50 for the 2 is good otherwise I would have waited for retail.

I'm trying to be positive here..


@timetowaste, that's my assumption as well.

Went in for a new terrain thingie, one fortification, more connectors, 10 additional peacekeepers, 80 zombies, another mat, 2 metal enforcer specialists, a Sorak Swordspawn, Plague enforcer 2 striders and two booster bundles. I'm skipping out on the FFs and Asterians for now, can get them later from my friend who stocks Deadzone at his store.

I'm guessing their email system has shut down again no confirmation email after todays submission anyone get one today? The dedicated PM system for DBX can't come soon enough.

 scarletsquig wrote:


In fact, even the listing on Mantic's own site gets the sprue count wrong:

http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/deadzone/scenery/product/deadzone-scenery-upgrade-pack.html

When trying to be helpful I put my size 11's in it (size 12 in the US)

That was the source for the figures in my post. Whatever the numbers it is still a great deal, I am even assuming that the £99 deal does not include 92 sprues (the 46 stated doubled). It just shows how just a tiny amount of attention to detail at Mantic HQ could solve a lot of questions and issues amongst their customers. (like the above Plastic Peacekeepers being under individuals when we are all assuming they are in sprues of 5 rather than a single Peackeeper, I hope my order of 3 garners 15 models rather than 3).

Ultimately if you are going to Adepticon and want a Gakload of Sci-fi terrain at a crazy price then this is your deal.

Personally terrain wise in my second survey I have gone 1 of every battlezone, bar core worlds, and 3 of the connector combi packs. That should be plenty with my 4/5 core world sets that I already have.

I'll be ending up with 5 terrain pieces and two boards in total. That should be plenty for me. But yes, those Peacekeepers are definitely oddly placed on the survey, and if the time comes and I get charged for only 2 individuals and shipped 2 individuals, I'll be contacting Mantic to rectify their mistake-I'll paypal them the extra $16, but I'll expect my further 8 models.

Yeah I think almost 6 bzs is pretty good for $175. 32x6=192 so we're already under discount retail pricing. Of course you get 6 accessory sprues with the later thing, and we don't know yet if those are included in the new bundle or not. Still pretty solid overall.

I changed my mind over the survey on the last day a few times. I got emails for 2 of my submissions, but not yet one for my final resubmission. Will be glad when they change to a real survey system, this google stuff just isn't built for the challenge.

They are switching as of Dreadball Xtreme, thank goodness! Although it should have been out by now.

Another great piece of news is that we have a new pledge manager and it will be a LOT simpler than those horrid google docs we have been making you use!

Also interesting because, for the first time, they're going to be unlocking Stretch goals from Pledge Manager contributions directly! This is heartening, because they had a fair number of $1 pledges and I heard several times that people were dropping their pledge until the survey. I assume it would be completely impossible to track this using Google Docs.

It wouldn't be impossible, but it'd be fairly annoying due to responses not overwriting. You'd have to look at timestamp and email addresses and hope nobody typo-ed that information since it's not verified; you could cross-check it against an array of backer emails but holy performance nightmare Batman. Keeping it accurate in something close to real-time would probably be inadvisable, but it would certainly be do-able to run a query periodically on the data. Definitely not ideal though and while I like Google Docs for the "quick-and-dirty" solutions, I'm not a big fan of it when you're talking about money. While my addons in DBX will be minimal, if they exist at all, I do look forward to seeing their new PM.

In the end for DeadZone I added the FF and Asterian booster bundle. While I skipped them initially, I decided I didn't want the factions to be short some of the options (except the Marauders) and I added a few of the random models added and some of the terrain expansions. I thought really hard about adding more terrain, but I already have a literal tub full with 3 more BZs on the way as it is so in the end I backed away.

Looking forward to June now though.

My final second survey tally was higher than I intended, but was aimed mostly at "deals" and so was very reasonable for what I'm getting. 4 booster bundles, 3 connector bundles, 1 new walls bundle, 2 Striders, 1 Antenociti Med Centre, and perhaps a Swordspawn (can't remember if I ended up adding that one or not, I changed my order so many times). I was mightily tempted by the Goblin Stuntbot, but since $20 is a bit much to shell out on the basis of concept art and I was already stretched thin, I decided to wait and see.

Although I got the Forge Father booster deal, I didn't get the FF starter. I was in at Strike team and ended up with 5 out of the six faction starters, and since I had no use for a duplicate starter of any faction, the 2 for $50 deal made no sense to me, nor did buying one starter for $35. If I like the FF boosters I receive, I'll pick up the starter later at retail, or make a trade deal with someone for the FF cards and a couple brokkrs. I'm planning on swapping the majority of Brokkrs out for Stormrage Veterans anyway, as I prefer my space dwarfs armored and helmeted.

I pledged a small amount for a few Dreadball bits and bobs, but beyond that I intend to stop buying miniatures for awhile. (I will of course continue trading.) At this point Deadzone and Mars Attacks should keep me busy for years, and it's high time I shifted my mindset away from the "shopping spree" of what I want to buy towards the "hobby" of what I'm doing with what I have.

 agnosto wrote:
@judgedoug, You're looking at the bundles and not just the boosters. I'm not making stuff up. As Scarletsquig stated, the boosters themselves are a bad deal while the bundles are a great deal.

The KS compositions are all different. The point was made that the "Kickstarter prices are higher than retail prices", which has now been demonstrably shown to be false - in fact, you get twice as many models for less cost than retail.

After add ons, I think my second survey was around the same cost as my first. Grand total of $450-60 spent, but I'm comfortable with that. I have a massive enforcer army now, huge marauder army, and can shift stuff with Deadzone models. I'm quite happy with what I've gotten so far. If I don't hear from Mantic in a couple days about my survey pledge going in, I'll contact them. Not too worried. They're very good about people giving them more money.

 Azazelx wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
How are people possibly justifying that the starters are not good deals? I keep hearing that, and it sounds to me like complete crap.
I am still pondering the Forge Father starter, as it would be a great small Squat force for 2nd edition for less than a current SM tactical squad sells for.

Because they're pretty much the same price at retail. You know who told me this? ScarletSquig - who is the biggest Mantic fan here. (and I checked, he's 100% correct). You'd be better off getting Booster Bundles with your KS money, and then buying the starter sets that you're interested in later on at retail. Or right now at retail.

You know, people keep saying this and I've just believed them all along until this past weekend, and then I took the time to check it out, and it's basically not true at all.

So to start off, let's see, we can compare KS base pricing and MSRP first
Plague starter set KS - 14 figures at $35
versus
Plague starter set at friendly local gaming store or wherever 11 figures at $35 MSRP
okay, so "Retail is cheaper" is FALSE.

So, now let's compare KS Discount pricing versus Retailer Discount pricing
Plague and Rebs Starter from KS survey = 14 miniatures and 14 miniatures... 28 miniatures at $50
versus
Plague and Rebs Starter from Miniature Market = 11 miniatures and 11 miniatures... 22 miniatures at $56
okay, so "Retail at discount is cheaper" is FALSE

Okay, now let's compare "get everything". We'll even pretend you only really want one strike team so KS full price will be in effect
Plague starter KS base pricing plus booster bundle = $85 - 29 figures and this is not even counting that the booster bundles are buy-one-get-one-free, in which case it's actually $85 for 44 figures
versus
Plague from Miniature Market starter + Monsters Booster + Support Booster + Troops Booster = $84 for 26 figures
AND the KS packs have two Teratons and Two Mortars and two Grenades while this Miniature Market discount order does not (had to add the cheap pack of troops in order to make it even close to the cheapness of the KS, otherwise it'd be FAR more expensive)
okay, so "Retail at discount 'get everything for your faction' is cheaper than KS 'get everything for your faction and don't get your starter team at a discount' " is also FALSE

Conclusion: retail is not cheaper, and KS bundles are arranged in such excellent ways that 2 x starter teams and 2 x booster bundles = $100 from KS pricing and gives you the equivalent of ... over $200 MSRP, easy.

and actually, because I figured this out last night, Mantic got a bunch more of my money as I went in for full Asterian and Forge Fathers, as I can't figure out how anyone would be able to ever get them cheaper at retail

By waiting for Mantic or multiple retailers out there to do a discount sale where things are normally 30% off?

Basically, because they failed to offer the FF as stand alone sprues similar to the Peacekeepers and due to getting burned on the characters in the first survey this turned into a purely terrain kickstarter for me. Granted, I did get a ton of it (16 Battlezone and 2 of the expansion bundles) but that is all this felt like it was worth for me. I'll grab the models to play a "team" if it takes up locally but it'll likely cost me pretty much the current amount I'd have spent here. I won't have as many extranious models I will never do anything with but I'm ok with it

NTRabbit wrote:
I changed my mind over the survey on the last day a few times. I got emails for 2 of my submissions, but not yet one for my final resubmission. Will be glad when they change to a real survey system, this google stuff just isn't built for the challenge.

The challenge of people not knowing what they want? Seriously, how hard is it to just wait until you're sure and fill it out once?

 lord_blackfang wrote:


The challenge of people not knowing what they want? Seriously, how hard is it to just wait until you're sure and fill it out once?

A couple pages of people flicking between whether the terrain was good/bad value and whether the starters were good value or the boosters better value contributed to my state of confusion when selecting things other than the peacekeepers, new types, named characters and the vehicles.

There's also the notion that I was going to have to make my decision while the rest of you still had a day to decide, on account of living in a time zone where I would be missing the last 8 hours of debate period before the deadline.

By all means though, instruct us all in the proper way of internet mail order shopping.

 Hulksmash wrote:
By waiting for Mantic or multiple retailers out there to do a discount sale where things are normally 30% off?

I used Miniature Market's standard 20% off, but I can do a quick recalculate KS prices versus retailer 30% discount (which retailer has 30% off Deadzone btw?)

"getting started"

two starter sets KS survey = 28 minis for $50
two starter sets retail mythical 30% off = 22 minis for $49

versus "getting everything for a faction"

Plague starter KS base pricing (not even at the discount) plus booster bundle BOGOF = $85 - 44 figures
versus
Plague from Miniature Market starter + Monsters Booster + Support Booster + Troops Booster at mythical 30% off = $73.50 for 26 figures

versus "getting everything for two factions"

two starters and two booster bundles KS discount price = $100 for at least 58 figures
two starters and 2x specialists and 2x support and 2x troops at mythical 30% discount = ~$140 for at least 52 figures

etc

Retailers would have to offer 35% off for it to be a better deal for smaller purchases and at least 50% off for larger purchases for it to be a better deal than KS.

So just reinforcing my decision that I'm glad I bought the FF and Asterians starters and booster bundles from KS as there's no way I'd get that discount from anywhere else...

There's also the fact that I got mine in early to make sure I got confirmation (what with the google issues) and then did refinements later.

edit: Also reminded me to double check my survey to make sure it was correct before the end of the day. 104 items.

@Judgedoug

Seriously? Mythical 30% off? Do you use Miniature Market (as one example) often? They regularly do clearance sales on mantic and spartan games stuff. Which is normally priced between 30%-50% off.

And no matter how you spin the numbers a single starter is bad. No one is saying, that I've seen, that the bundled starters for $50 or the BOGOF Super Boosters are bad deals. They aren't. They are actually not to likely to get priced down below what I could get at retail release.

As it stands characters and single starters are better at retail. Bundles ARE a better deal than we'll see at retail and no one is disputing that. For non completionists it might make more sense to wait for retail instead of paying similar prices for additional models they won't ever use or like. When I want bulk I'll go in on their big game kickstarter that's all plastic. I don't need or want this much more restic.

Not sure if it's intentional or not but you seemed to have missed the point most people were making. Either way, glad you're a happy camper.

 Hulksmash wrote:
@Judgedoug

Seriously? Mythical 30% off? Do you use Miniature Market (as one example) often? They regularly do clearance sales on mantic and spartan games stuff. Which is normally priced between 30%-50% off.

Ayup, I buy a ton of stuff through MM as they have good prices and free shipping for larger orders. Their standard discount is 20% on Deadzone. If we start assuming they might have what you want at some point at 50%+ off, then we can also add into the equation that maybe one day someone will sell you their Deadzone pledge with everything ever made for $1, in which case, sure, waiting for that guy selling his stuff for a $1 would be a better deal. Additionally, waiting for a 50% off on what you want might also be a better deal via the KS regardless (depending, as I previously pointed out, as some KS pricing was over half off retail) I was comparing what was readily available. Also, some people also buy only from their FLGS which would put it straight up against MSRP (plus feel goods for supporting FLGS)

Don't forget the $ vs £ differences, generally Mantic stuff is a bit cheaper to buy in £ than $, so as a UK backer that makes a difference to me. Unless the discount is huge and I'm buying a lot I generally prefer to buy it from my LGS.
Total wargamer in the UK offers 30% or sometimes 40% off so that's usually my own retailer comparison when figuring out what to bulk buy in ks surveys.

I'm finding that I really enjoy hunting around for retailer discounts and sales, as well as jumping in on black friday and similar sales. I probably won't be going in on any kickstarters as heavily as I did deadzone. I'll get some stuff when warpath comes out, possibly DKH4, MAYBE the KoW KS since I want a nice rulebook for the game... but it's kind of fun to do Mantic's big bundles and sales, and to look for good deals at certain times of the year.

I regret nothing about my deadzone pledge, but it is very likely that it is the only kickstarter that I'll ever spend that much on. Will probably stick to the sweet spots or just token pledges to support and nab specifics/exclusives...

 GrimDork wrote:
I'm finding that I really enjoy hunting around for retailer discounts and sales, as well as jumping in on black friday and similar sales.

Jiggity jam! Absolutely. your recommendation and the fortuitousness of the Mini Market black friday sale got me a big ass corporation army for diiirrrttt cheap. Thanks, BTW, as that was a slippery slope because I then also bought Veer-Myn and Forge Fathers, and then a counts-as Marauder army using 80 DV Chaos Cultists and a half-dozen Raptor, Raptor Quad, Bull, Bull Quad warpath vehicles (it's my Marauder Chaos Mad Max army...) sigh... I do love them toy soldiers.

I find it hard buying just about... anything gaming related after the deals that we got this past Black Friday.

Sad I still didn't get more Confrontation and Forge Father stuff when I had the chance, especially as the bulk of it didn't end up on my dime.