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 GrimDork wrote:
I would like to stay right at the sweet spot. I just hope they don't do too many fantastic fantasy sculpts that I can't skip... or open up KoW stock for use with the book of depravity...

I kind of hope they do- then I'd have a reason to pick up those Mystery Boxes they keep selling every Xmas. It could be anything- it could even be a boat!

In this case the material should be good. We've seen the Mars Attacks production minis and they seem to be rather nice, this will use exactly the same material.. and by the time it gets made DBX will have been produced in the same material as well so they'll have plenty of experience with it.

The advantage of pre-assembled PVC is that you can take it straight out of the box and get playing, it is a material aimed squarely at the board gamer market.

Looks like they're even handling basing on these as well with sculpted dungeon floor detail on them.

Also, from an economic perspective, it makes sense for Mantic to be board gamer friendly.. Mars Attacks is *already* their best selling board game product purely on the backs of distributor orders (and possibly Topps pulling some strings there too).. the thing with all their previous games is a lot of distributors said no or only put in small orders due to the games requiring assembly with glue.

As someone with too many minis to paint already and pretty much zero free time, having a game that I can play without too much painting is great. I can see myself painting up the heroes, then spray black, drybrush bases heavily grey, drybrush rest of mini lightly with grey and then it being good to go with room to go back and finish the monsters some other time.

 scarletsquig wrote:
Found bigger pics of the skeleton and zombie:

Those must be Remy's work. You can tell they are both women French-sculpted from the knock knees and pigeon toes.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:


Those must be Remy's work. You can tell they are both women French-sculpted from the knock knees and pigeon toes.

I've never understood that about French artists. It's not just the sculptors!

It's like they've been taking cues from the bulk of Japan's female population on how to pose properly.

Heath Foley did quite a bit of art for this game, and the pieces I've seen look really, really great. Heath was also responsible for much of the Rebs art (if not all) in Deadzone.

If they can manage to clean up their abysmal casting and can translate Heath's art into miniature, there could be some really great models in this game. Unfortunately, that translation hasn't always been seamless for Mantic.

 cincydooley wrote:
Unfortunately, that translation hasn't always been seamless for Mantic.

Just one more reason to pledge the entry fee and wait for the Pledge Manager to spend the real money.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 highlord tamburlaine wrote:

I've never understood that about French artists. It's not just the sculptors!

It's like they've been taking cues from the bulk of Japan's female population on how to pose properly.

Much orthopedic knowledge was lost during the war.

I get the feeling that Bob is just getting warmed up for this one

Cyporiean wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
As an opening point, I wonder why they have only artwork of the barbarian, dwarf and elf? The miniatures of those do exist, they were shown on the Beasts of War interview with Ronnie Renton the other day.

Maybe the painter isnt done yet?

Yes I wonder if that's it. Minis in the interview video were painted, but only viewing them from a distance I wonder if they are not 'studio standard'?

Eldarain wrote:

 Cyporiean wrote:
Same style of PVC like Mars Attacks.

Is that good or bad?

As ScarletSquig has said, comments from Mars Attack have been positive.

Just had a look at Boardgamegeek, and .. it actually looks pretty upbeat over there. I think this one is definitely aimed at the board gamers as well with the whole 'straight out of the box/no assembly required' thing.

PVC: The Revenge!



So Mantic are just straight up making Warhammer Quest now?

I hope so. Let's not get too negative this early on, that would be a shame!

I'm pretty excited about this one. I like the concept. I like the world of Mantica. I like most* of the sculpts. Mantic tends to run a good kickstarter with lots of ups and downs and fabulous prizes. What's not to be positive about?

*I might just have to replace the zombies with something else, anyway. Zombies are verboten in this house.

But I'm still not dropping $100 until I have my Mars Attacks figures in my hand and no sense of regret in my genechtagazoink heart.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
PVC: The Revenge!



So Mantic are just straight up making Warhammer Quest now?

You say that like it's a bad thing...........

The biggest thing for me is I don't want to hear stories (Myth....this product really exists right?) or find out once the product is in hand (Sedition Wars) that describing the rules as a "beta" set is being generous.

I think what worries me most about this is Jake Thornton doing the rules,

He's good, but he's got so much other stuff on his plate what with

polishing dreadball (where the later season teams need some tweeks)

Lots to do with Dreadball extreme

Fixing Deadzone where some of the stuff (mainly the rebels) just does not work, and that's before the later factions appear

Mars attacks and whatever fixes that needs once it's out in the wild (although I guess they may just let that sit as it's really meant to be a stand alone)

good as he is something has to suffer from all this split focus

Does Mantic really need to use Kickstarter? I thought it was intended for up and coming projects that couldn't be funded in any other way besides crowdsourcing. I refuse to believe that this is the only way mantic could bring this product to light, in fact it's not so much a kickstarter as it is a way of guaranteeing pre-orders for your new product. Poor show Mantic.

 Azazelx wrote:
I hope so. Let's not get too negative this early on, that would be a shame!

Last thing we want to do is overeat to every little thing that happens.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Last thing we want to do is overeat to every little thing that happens.

You'd quickly put on a lot of weight of you did that. And that might cause great shame.

I think they probably do if they want to do anything 'large',

I'm sure most of their profit is being re-invested in what is basically a young company that's still growing (for example their move to a new site/new warehouse just recently)

traditional funding (eg borrowing from a bank) is not easy for something as niche as a gaming company (with assets that are hard to sell if they need to call in the loan)

and might let them make something comparible to the original Dwarf Kings Hold or Project Pandora,

or a Dreadball with only 2 teams (Ronnie has said that's what would have come out if the KS had failed, and maybe another couple in metal if theyreally wanted to roll the dice on the future of the business)

PapaSoul wrote:
Does Mantic really need to use Kickstarter? I thought it was intended for up and coming projects that couldn't be funded in any other way besides crowdsourcing. I refuse to believe that this is the only way mantic could bring this product to light, in fact it's not so much a kickstarter as it is a way of guaranteeing pre-orders for your new product. Poor show Mantic.

Couldn't disagree with you more.

Our hobby is quite small. Even if Mantic is becoming one of the "bigger players," it's still very small.

I think using Kickstarter as a risk mitigation tool for your product is completely appropriate. So much so that I think GW should use it to produce their Specialist games and other "pet projects."

Given what Mantic were able to come up with pre-KS, and what they've been able to do with KS, I think it's a very reasonable way for them to grow their company and cover their production costs while getting a bigger "early adopter" presence for their retail products.

PapaSoul wrote:
Does Mantic really need to use Kickstarter? I thought it was intended for up and coming projects that couldn't be funded in any other way besides crowdsourcing. I refuse to believe that this is the only way mantic could bring this product to light, in fact it's not so much a kickstarter as it is a way of guaranteeing pre-orders for your new product. Poor show Mantic.

Not this old chestnut again...

Mantic is still tiny in the grand scheme of things. While they are becoming a fairly big name, they only just surpassed 20 employees last year.

Mantic could probably bring this game to retail without KS, but would have to seriously compromise on components to do so. It would likely be closer to the original DKH where they reuse KoW miniatures rather than having specific board-game miniatures for it. What KS allows them to do is not only produce the minis specifically for the game (new sculpts, molds etc) but expand the game much faster than a retail release would allow, improve the components in the base game and get a community ready from the moment it launches.

So, Dreadball is often used as a case study. Mantic could have released it without KS. There would be a print run of 2000 copies which were estimated to take 12 months to sell. Two teams in plastic, two teams in metal. The game would be a slow seller because the community would take time to build up and it would likely be a year before Mantic could think about releasing anything new for it - and likely in metal rather than plastic.

The Kickstarter sold more than 3000 copies straight off the bat. It upgraded the core box with additional minis. It funded 10 teams in plastic, plus 12 boosters for those teams - most of which were in plastic - plus numerous MVPs, all in plastic. The rest of the first 6000 copy print run sold out through retail pre-orders. They are now on their 5th/6th(?) 6000 copy print run just over 18 months after release so about fifteen times more copies sold than their best projections if they did it directly to retail and with a solid, established community now in place.

The sequel is now being produced with another 12 teams, plus associated MVPs. Through retail release they would now only just be thinking about making the 7th and 8th teams for the original run. There's a good argument that without KS, Mantic wouldn't be able to build the community needed for such a game in such a short length of time so the game might not have been produced.

PapaSoul wrote:
Does Mantic really need to use Kickstarter? I thought it was intended for up and coming projects that couldn't be funded in any other way besides crowdsourcing. I refuse to believe that this is the only way mantic could bring this product to light, in fact it's not so much a kickstarter as it is a way of guaranteeing pre-orders for your new product. Poor show Mantic.

Going the traditional route for a games company means you release a core set, then an expansion several months later. New releases trickle out which in turn leaves some substantial gaps in the line-up and has the added effect of putting the entire project at risk of failing due to an ill-timed release. The classic example is DreadBall, which Daedlah covered well enough. Keep in mind though that smaller runs would also drive up costs, since making thousands of something is cheaper per unit than making hundreds, and that cost invariably gets passed on to the consumer.

Trying to play alternate history for a moment, I'm not sure DeadZone would have all the different battlezone types if not for the KS, and their absence and needed on-going work for DZ might have complicated getting the license from Topps for MA. That in turn would push back production of that game, assuming they still eventually got the license, which would be a major loss to the company. It also begs the question of how DBX would have gone in terms of material had they not been doing the production work for MA and had some early results.

Instead, they're able to launch projects of significantly larger scope and, unlike many companies that use KS, carry them off in roughly the time they say they will. The consumer gets a goodly discount for the risks they're incurring, Mantic gets the benefits of scale, and the market gets a new fleshed-out game system. I'm not sure who's losing out completely here, though it does arguably suck for retailers depending how KS-involved the locals are.

I look forward to seeing the offering, but this is likely ill-timed for me financially. It would take an incredibly impressive pitch, which may end up happening, before I'd go in. Not sure I need to add yet more plastic to the growing pile glaring at me accusingly.

 Krinsath wrote:
(...) I'm not sure who's losing out completely here, though it does arguably suck for retailers depending how KS-involved the locals are.(...)y.

While on the face of it this is a concern, it hasn't materialised for any of Mantics projects. Both Dreadball and Deadzone sold more retail copies through their initial print run in the first month than they were projected to sell in the first twelve months, let alone additional sales for the extra teams/strike teams funded through KS.

Will hope to get an early bird on this. Depending what stretches there are, I may drop out later on if it does not develop in a way that gives me what I am looking for.

The one thing I hope they've learned about the EBs is not to create 2 (or more) levels you might possibly want so that people have to park them on separate accounts and then decide later thus artifically inflating the start and causing a drop off near the end. Have 1 level and stick with it. Gets everything levels are great but not from day 1 when there's no clue what it will contain at the end.

 Baragash wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
PVC: The Revenge!



So Mantic are just straight up making Warhammer Quest now?

You say that like it's a bad thing...........

The biggest thing for me is I don't want to hear stories (Myth....this product really exists right?) or find out once the product is in hand (Sedition Wars) that describing the rules as a "beta" set is being generous.

I know it's off topic, but what happened to Myth? I remeber thinking it looked pretty cool...

On topic, this looks pretty cool. If it's like warhammer quest that'll be awesome, been playing that a lot on my iPad.

 Daedleh wrote:

 Krinsath wrote:
(...) I'm not sure who's losing out completely here, though it does arguably suck for retailers depending how KS-involved the locals are.(...)y.

While on the face of it this is a concern, it hasn't materialised for any of Mantics projects. Both Dreadball and Deadzone sold more retail copies through their initial print run in the first month than they were projected to sell in the first twelve months, let alone additional sales for the extra teams/strike teams funded through KS.

As I said, it's an arguable concern and it's primarily going to be locality-specific. As the usage of Internet goods/services in an area goes up, demand for retailers goes down (in general, not just gaming). If a market has such a situation, buying into a KS as a store is risky because there's no way to compete on price with a KS and somewhat difficult to offer value adds to compete with discounters. If everyone in the area who would be interested already got what they wanted, a store can be left holding onto a lot of stock.

Bones is the classic example of that, but that one was wildly popular where a local market could be depleted. Obviously there's a nice sweet spot where a project is popular enough to have widespread notice but not popular enough to have saturated the market, and I'd not be surprised to find that Mantic typically falls into this category. However, if you had to say who "loses" in a KS project, the retail sector is the most likely to lose on a completed project.

To steer this back on topic, games like this are an interesting riddle for retail. On the one hand, it's a genre that's well-loved and existed forever and still generates lots of interest. On the other, it's a well-loved genre that already has shelf space in many stores with Descent (usually) and similar games which are already well-supported. How they entice store owners to give over some of that space when their post-KoW KS have been reasonably unique offerings will be interesting.

Posted on facebook

Mantic Games Nope - normal early bird system
4 hours ago

So normal limited first come first served EBs

Seems like a project that's not going to have a lot of high cost variance between pledge levels that would cause a lot of pledge parking ie MA was $100($90)/$150($140)/$300, DBX was $100/$150($140)/$385($350)

I see this one being having a $40, $60 and $100 structure (ignoring the super high vanity pledges and the low pdf rules only pledges) with earlybirds $10 below. There's a small enough difference between them all that I can't see parking being a problem like it was the last two times.

Yeah, for sure. Though i wonder what the base price of the boxed game will be... 40 seems.. optimistic, unless you're talking about just getting the minis and some rules or something, then maybe not as much so.

I can probably stick out the sweet spot 100 pledge, as long as battle systems is gentle with their ideal sized fantasy range pledge.

I was figuring $40 to be pdf rules, the new board tiles and the 4 heroes to use with your existing DKH/KOW collection, but it's just a guess

They usually have a low-end buy-in, look at recon for dz and uhh.. whatever it was they had for the others, my mind blanks. I think dbx had a pretty small pledge too didn't it.