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I dont know what you guys ae complaining about those peacekeepers...

Each sprue comes with bits for 5 guys, including 5 with combat shields, or 5 without. You have 2 "big guns" and 4 "1 arm rifles", in the sprue, and lastly, 2 options for "2 arms rifle", booth simplified for easy assembly...

It is not a GW or Dream Forge level of variety, but the price is also a fraction of those ones...

 The Dwarf Wolf wrote:
I dont know what you guys ae complaining about those peacekeepers...

Each sprue comes with bits for 5 guys, including 5 with combat shields, or 5 without. You have 2 "big guns" and 4 "1 arm rifles", in the sprue, and lastly, 2 options for "2 arms rifle", booth simplified for easy assembly...

It is not a GW or Dream Forge level of variety, but the price is also a fraction of those ones...

A fraction of dreamforge prices? I suggest you look around a bit more. http://www.miniaturemarket.com/catalog/product/view/id/35268/s/dfg-in-001/

$31.50 for 20, highly detailed miniatures and enough extra bits to choke on. Interestingly enough, not a single melted weapon arm. Mantic should probably hire Mark to design their sprues for them.

The problem with the enforcers is that as a board game, the melted arm thing isn't an issue but if they're going to try and push this kind of lazy, cheap crap off on modelers and wargamers for an eventual Warpath release, people who are spoiled for choice already, they should have thought it through a bit more carefully.

 agnosto wrote:

 The Dwarf Wolf wrote:
I dont know what you guys ae complaining about those peacekeepers...

Each sprue comes with bits for 5 guys, including 5 with combat shields, or 5 without. You have 2 "big guns" and 4 "1 arm rifles", in the sprue, and lastly, 2 options for "2 arms rifle", booth simplified for easy assembly...

It is not a GW or Dream Forge level of variety, but the price is also a fraction of those ones...

A fraction of dreamforge prices? I suggest you look around a bit more.http://www.miniaturemarket.com/catalog/product/view/id/35268/s/dfg-in-001/

$31.50 for 20, highly detailed miniatures and enough extra bits to choke on. Interestingly enough, not a single melted weapon arm. Mantic should probably hire Mark to design their sprues for them.

The problem with the enforcers is that as a board game, the melted arm thing isn't an issue but if they're going to try and push this kind of lazy, cheap crap off on modelers and wargamers for an eventual Warpath release, people who are spoiled for choice already, they should have thought it through a bit more carefully.

I think they've thought it through just fine for their plan. Sure it's not ideal for most of us, but they are making items that can be cross game compatible. People can buy bunches of these and get an army ready to go for beer and pretzel game night/launch of warpath free rules, OR I'm sure later on they will release more models to help flesh out the Warpath universe which will also be more detailed and more variety. They are just following the GW standard of make snap fit marines (3rd edition starter type) to get intrest in the game and get people playing/fund the growth. Then start making "blood enforcers", "dark enforcers", "Viking enforcers", "smurf enforcers" and " spiky enforcers". They are hitting their targets, just our idea of the target and theirs are not the same .

 agnosto wrote:

A fraction of dreamforge prices? I suggest you look around a bit more.http://www.miniaturemarket.com/catalog/product/view/id/35268/s/dfg-in-001/

From my research Dreamforge and Mantic (and Warlord and Prodos) are more or less the same price for a basic box of troops, Mantic just scales a lot better when you start talking about 3+ boxes of troops and maybe a vehicle because they do better bulk discounts.

 agnosto wrote:


A fraction of dreamforge prices? I suggest you look around a bit more.http://www.miniaturemarket.com/catalog/product/view/id/35268/s/dfg-in-001/

$31.50 for 20, highly detailed miniatures and enough extra bits to choke on. Interestingly enough, not a single melted weapon arm. Mantic should probably hire Mark to design their sprues for them.

The RRP for those is 42$ which Mantic beats with resin minis and when they hit plastic they are probably drop in price even more.

 agnosto wrote:

The problem with the enforcers is that as a board game, the melted arm thing isn't an issue but if they're going to try and push this kind of lazy, cheap crap off on modelers and wargamers for an eventual Warpath release, people who are spoiled for choice already, they should have thought it through a bit more carefully.

I don't see the problem with having some "melted" arms on the sprue, especially as those guns that have melted arms also have a hand sculpted to them so you are probably gonna want to stick the weapon the chest anyway.

 NTRabbit wrote:

 agnosto wrote:

A fraction of dreamforge prices? I suggest you look around a bit more.http://www.miniaturemarket.com/catalog/product/view/id/35268/s/dfg-in-001/

From my research Dreamforge and Mantic (and Warlord and Prodos) are more or less the same price for a basic box of troops, Mantic just scales a lot better when you start talking about 3+ boxes of troops and maybe a vehicle because they do better bulk discounts.

They're cheaper because they don't offer anywhere near the options so they damn well better be cheaper.

DF, 10-man box $16.50 @ miniature market:



Mantic, 5-man peacekeeper box:




bear in mind sprue size for DF is substantially larger than Mantic's. I'm not sure what the price for the peacekeepers will be, I think someone mentioned $20 for the 5-man box at retail....There better be some massive bundle discounts to bring that down to DF levels.


edit: sorry, all of this is off topic so I'll just leave it at I value the DF models much higher than Mantic's. To each his/her own.

I think it depends what country you are in. I can buy 10 Imperial guard troops cheaper from Wayland than I can buy Dreamforge.

Yes, Dreamforge is awesome and if Mantic could get even close to what Mark puts into his stuff they'd print money. On the other hand, Mantic's release list for 2014 versus Dreamforge's list of releases is worth comparing too. Sure, awesome kits are great but there's something to be said for "good enough right now" too.

Looking at those arms, they appear to be "aiming down the sights" sort of arms. Does this mean that everyone with that arm will look similar? Sure. You know what else looks oddly similar? Any human aiming down the sights of a gun or firing from the shoulder; human anatomy is funny that way. Is it a bit lazy? Sure, but it works for that intended purpose. It DOES lower the value of the kits in comparison to other manufacturers who don't take such shortcuts, but I don't think it moves them into the realm of "garbage," especially at the prices you'll be able to acquire them at.

I think Mantic's motif is a steady stream of average stuff. Sometimes they get really good stuff (those DBX models are great, IMO...pending the transition to board game plastic being seen), sometimes they honk miserably (M@A, nuff said). Overall though, it's serviceable kits at a reasonable price. Not the best kits, not the best value but an okay combination of the two. Certainly we'd all benefit if they could step up the quality, but I'm happy enough with what's being shown. I'd like to know when I could expect to see it and some better shots as others have commented, but that's a different gripe...

 Krinsath wrote:
Yes, Dreamforge is awesome and if Mantic could get even close to what Mark puts into his stuff they'd print money. On the other hand, Mantic's release list for 2014 versus Dreamforge's list of releases is worth comparing too. Sure, awesome kits are great but there's something to be said for "good enough right now" too.

Looking at those arms, they appear to be "aiming down the sights" sort of arms. Does this mean that everyone with that arm will look similar? Sure. You know what else looks oddly similar? Any human aiming down the sights of a gun or firing from the shoulder; human anatomy is funny that way. Is it a bit lazy? Sure, but it works for that intended purpose. It DOES lower the value of the kits in comparison to other manufacturers who don't take such shortcuts, but I don't think it moves them into the realm of "garbage," especially at the prices you'll be able to acquire them at.

I think Mantic's motif is a steady stream of average stuff. Sometimes they get really good stuff (those DBX models are great, IMO...pending the transition to board game plastic being seen), sometimes they honk miserably (M@A, nuff said). Overall though, it's serviceable kits at a reasonable price. Not the best kits, not the best value but an okay combination of the two. Certainly we'd all benefit if they could step up the quality, but I'm happy enough with what's being shown. I'd like to know when I could expect to see it and some better shots as others have commented, but that's a different gripe...

All fair points. I guess I just come from the "if you're going to do, you might as well do it right" school of thought, which is how I was reared and apparently Mark is from the same school of thought. Sure he produces some fantastic kits but his release schedule is glacial but he's also a one man operation that had a $200k budget versus the more than a $1million for Mantic which meant he couldn't dictate terms to WGF on the release schedule.

On the kits themselves (dang I need to stop straying off-topic); I guess I'm just disappointed yet again by Mantic. They had an opportunity here, flush with cash from Kickstarter, to make something really fantastic. If it took investing some company money in addition to what they got from KS, they should have done it to make sure that they made something that wows. I think you're right in that they appear to be more concerned with producing average to below-average quality at an accelerated pace versus actually taking the time and effort to make something truly awesome.

As for the firing poses. I don't know about you, but when I fire a rifle, you can tell where my clothes end and the rifle begins, much like you can with any other company out there that doesn't go the lazy route and just makes what we've seen here. Again, for a boardgame, this is fine but if you're going to translate this into a Wargame, which I thought was the eventual intent (why else do plastic otherwise?), wargamers and modelers have different expectations and they should realize that.

I thought I heard somewhere perhaps it was even Ronnie himself said it that the DZ KS money wasn't enough to cover everything and they've put anther $80k or so in themselves since. It looks like they are restricted to that size of sprue and layout by their manufacturers capabilities. Extras would be great but I guess they are looking at it from a Warpath point of view - a mass of troops on table what each individual one looks like is less important than the overall look. which is how they seem to approach KoW as well - not to everyone's tastes mind. At $10 for 5 I consider these a good buy retail remains to be seen.

 DaveC wrote:
I thought I heard somewhere perhaps it was even Ronnie himself said it that the DZ KS money wasn't enough to cover everything and they've put anther $80k or so in themselves since

Doesn't sound likely.

Just look at what Dreamforge did with less than 1/5 of the Deadzone money: Two 28mm-scale hard plastic titans with dozens of alt weapon options, the same thing again tooled in 15mm, Eisenkern troops with more alt bits and weapons than you could ever use, same thing again for heavy armour dudes, same thing again for female troopers, as well as a few hard-plastic aliens for good measure. Oh, and that massive APC too, again with variant builds and options., etc.

I thought there was outside money added to the Dreamforge Kickstarter as well and even shares in the company given to Wargames Factory... Or so I was lead to believe.

Like I say just a vague recollection of some interview or other (plus Deadzone isn't just miniatures there's a whole game and all that goes with it to produce). Aren't WGF bank rolling some of the Dreamforge stuff against future sales? (EDIT I see RobertsMinis mentioned similar above me)

 DaveC wrote:
Like I say just a vague recollection of some interview or other Aren't WGF bank rolling some of the Dreamforge stuff against future sales? (EDIT I see RobertsMinis mentioned similar above me)

Never heard of that.

But let's just assume that DFG paid only the tooling from their KS, and financed everything else (KS-fees, shipping, packaging, design, postage, etc., etc.., etc.. by some other means).

If you roughly divide 1) Leviathan, 2) Mortis, 3) APC, 4) 15mm Titans, both variants, 5) Eisenkern + accessories, 6) other infantry + accessories by the 200.000 DFG got, that's just over 30.000 per multiple sprue kit tooled. The leviathan alone has .. um .. 6 or 8 large separate sprues?

If Mantic is spending 80.000 on a paltry little 3-sprue tooling like this, they need to punch somebody.

[edit]

And other companies seem to work in the same range.

Admittedly, it didn't fund, but Pro Gloria put a 30.000 EUR (!) price-tag on multi-sprue hard plastic Landsknecht troops with lots of options (incl. shipping, postage, fees, etc..).

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/plastic-landsknecht-box

So the tooling for a multi-pose, multi-part hard plastic infantry box with 3 sprues or so of the Space Marines/Enforcers/Eisenkern/Landsknecht caliber, is probably in the USD 30.000,- range at worst. Possibly lower.

Wonderwolf wrote:

 DaveC wrote:
Like I say just a vague recollection of some interview or other Aren't WGF bank rolling some of the Dreamforge stuff against future sales? (EDIT I see RobertsMinis mentioned similar above me)

Never heard of that.

But let's just assume that DFG paid only the tooling from their KS, and financed everything else (KS-fees, shipping, packaging, design, postage, etc., etc.., etc.. by some other means).
If you roughly divide 1) Leviathan, 2) Mortis, 3) APC, 4) 15mm Titans, both variants, 5) Eisenkern + accessories, 6) other infantry + accessories by the 200.000 DFG got, that's just over 30.000 per multiple sprue kit tooled. The leviathan alone has .. um .. 6 or 8 large separate sprues?

If Mantic is spending 80.000 on a paltry little 3-sprue tooling like this, they need to punch somebody.

That would be a flawed assumption. Mark made it clear during the KS that the kits were being financed by WGF as you will see in his updates references to his credit going as far as it would go. From http://dreamforge-games.blogspot.com/2014/04/eisenkern-apc-keilerkopf-in-plastic.html:

Just to give you an idea of what it takes to make a kit like the APC; the time and resources required for such a large and complicated kit requires the dedicated effort of a skilled engineering staff many weeks of concentrated effort. The APC’s tool cost at retail would have been roughly 1/3 the total amount raised by the Kickstarter.

So clearly, it's not exactly cheap. Could Mantic have done better? If they wanted to spend more time probably, but they're also past when they thought this would be over with just to get this far. Again, time is not without value and at some point you hit a point of diminishing returns. Dreamforge has done awesome work at a decent price, but they've also had my money tied up for two years. Similar story with KD:M. You will notice in both of those campaigns a lot of backer fatigue due to the delays.

Wonderwolf wrote:

 DaveC wrote:
I thought I heard somewhere perhaps it was even Ronnie himself said it that the DZ KS money wasn't enough to cover everything and they've put anther $80k or so in themselves since

Doesn't sound likely.

Just look at what Dreamforge did with less than 1/5 of the Deadzone money: Two 28mm-scale hard plastic titans with dozens of alt weapon options, the same thing again tooled in 15mm, Eisenkern troops with more alt bits and weapons than you could ever use, same thing again for heavy armour dudes, same thing again for female troopers, as well as a few hard-plastic aliens for good measure. Oh, and that massive APC too, again with variant builds and options., etc.

Dreamforge took out a very substantial loan in addition to the KS money,
got in on the ground floor with WGF so probably got rates that a new project would not be able to get,
Has a project creator who is doing the 3d sculpting and fiddling fo back and forth on mould design
and is running very, very late

so while superficially better value probably not a worthwhile comparison

Well... Dreamforge stuff is priced well, but until they significantly alter the aesthetic, the models do *nothing* for me. Seem like a good deal for people who like that not-ww2 vibe though.

 agnosto wrote:
I guess I just come from the "if you're going to do, you might as well do it right" school of thought, which is how I was reared and apparently Mark is from the same school of thought.

Which goes double when you're working in HIPS. These are kits that you could still be selling in fifteen years, so don't half-ass them. Every unit that needs a second kit later because you cut corners is a unit that never gets a first kit.

I haven't seen anyone do a proper unboxing of Dreadball Xtreme yet, so I figured that now that mine has arrived (after some drama with Royal Mail), I'll correct that.

First off, to add in a bit of context, I'll show off... The Shame.



These are the Deadzone Wave 2 models that I haven't got round to assembling yet. Fortunately, it's only a handful of actual models, with the rest being terrain.

However, Dreadball Xtreme! The box that arrived is surprisingly not that huge.



Opening it, it's very well packed.



After several minutes clearing out peanuts, I have:



So, there's some loose bits outside the box. - Including, 2 decal sheets, a set of tokens and a leaflet.



We've also got the box art photograph signed by a certain Ronnie.



And the rulebook itself. I was a little surprised to see it only included the rules for the first 2 sponsors, though. I'm going to wonder if there's enough variation with the free agents to keep people occupied for that.



Also loose in the box, were 2 accessory sets.



Also, the Free Agents set. This was unexpected, as I thought they would have come with the retail game. - Maybe it's just the individual Warden and Blaine models in the retail.



We then have, the box itself.



It's tightly packed, with the glorious mousemat mat and another leaflet. - Except, this time, the leaflet has the lovely lovely Mantic Points on the back of it!



The mat itself, is just awesome looking and is slightly smaller than the Deadzone one, at 22 inches. However, it's just glorious.



Part 2 after dinner!

The mat is glorious, although I think the paint is rubbing off a bit.

I've been digesting my first game. I liked the gameplay a lot, although it will take some time go wrap my brain around. It's a very different game from anything I've played before.

I have two complaints. Feel free to chime in if I'm wrong.

1) Setup is long and tedious. We used the default teams, so usually it will take even longer with the army building added in. Before the game, you have to set up ~two dozen crates, first putting a random lid on them without looking at it, and working from a tiny, tiny setup diagram in the book. And there are 6 different layouts, so good luck learning them by heart.

2) There are a lot of meaningful tactical decision to make within a single Rush, but the game is so random that setting up any long-term strategy seems like an exercise in futility. It seems to me that the height of forward planning is "I have a few actions to spare this Rush, I'll spread out my guys a bit so I have better odds of being close to the next ball launch."

I've only really played the beta test version of the game so far but...

Point (1) does sound about right and similar to Deadzone although I guess good practice can make things go a bit quicker. - For example, putting the lids back on once you're done with the game so they're there ready for next time.

Point (2), you've got it nailed down pretty much exactly. It's usually the main point I make when talking to a Blood Bowl fan. Blood Bowl is a strategic game, you do the exact same predefined strategy (Dwarf cage etc), turn after turn and it's all about whether your chosen Strategy defeats your opponents strategy.

Dreadball, and dreadball Xtreme is all about the tactics as opposed to the strategy. You might have a vague plan depending on the opponents (kill the human strikers, for example), but it's all about adapting to the current situation and trying to maximise your odds of, whatever the game and opponent decides to throw at you, to put you in the best situation.

There's a second set of tokens in the box itself. I'm guessing the ones outside the box are incase any of the tokens there went missing. - As you can see, they fell out very easily.




The main box comes with an internal tray to help ensure that you're read to play. - It comes with 2 slots for your cards, plus a team tray and extra space at the back for the scenery.




Here are the 2 card types, Sabotage (I think this used to be called Dirty Tricks in the beta?) and Special Move cards. Unfortunately, Mantic have chosen a really very odd size for the cards that done fit the Fantasy Flight games 'mini american card game' sleeves. To be honest, this is really quite disappointing for me. Darn it, Mantic!




Shiny shiny new bases, 12 of each colour and some new dice as well. Helpfully, the base colours seem to match the colours on the mat. This is far better than me trying to use the GW glazes to colour my own bases.



We have the minis now. There's 2 identical bags, containing both Kalyishi and Convicts. - There's even 2 prone models for each team in each bag.



I'm guessing the retail set will just come with 8 models, plus the prones for each side. What is neat is the Grogan comes with alternative head/arms. 2 balls in the bag as well. - One thing I can't remember is if you might need 3 balls as well.



I suppose that's good for us in the Kickstarter, as we have 4 balls with the second bag. I've got to say, the Convicts really do look ace.



Here is a close up of the Kalyshi models. One thing I'm a little worried about when it comes to painting them, especially after undercoating them, is that the faces of the most lightly armoured type models may end up being very shallow. - I'll need to be very careful when undercoating these...



Unfortunately, Mantic didn't manage to make even this small dropoff be error free. - One of the Guard type models has had a missing arm. Yet another trip to the missing parts form for me, I'm afraid. It's good that the minis all come preassembled at least.




The 2 sets of scenery gives you plenty of crates and 4 scoring zones. - I'm guessing these will need to come in the retail box as well



They seem nicely detailed and I'm thinking these are proper 'hard' plastic as opposed to board game plastic. Though I don't think you need to glue any, and they just push fit together without glue. - Great for the boardgame-ey nature of the set.




Here are the closeup of the crate lids. - They even have the numbers sculpted on. If I remember right, that's the number of attack dice you roll.




And finally, here is the unboxed 'Free Agents' set. There's lots of weird, random aliens here, from Tree monsters to squid-spiders and the mighty Blaine. The detail on these really are great, even with the Zees and I can see people having a great time trying out all sorts of crazy colour schemes with the free agents.



And that's the Dreadball Xtreme Kickstarter Wave 1 unboxed!

 agnosto wrote:

edit: sorry, all of this is off topic so I'll just leave it at I value the DF models much higher than Mantic's. To each his/her own.

I love the Dreamforge plastics but I do not own any (any longer). I do not like the aesthetic in the least bit.
Which is why I do not own any Wargames Factory greatcoats.

The Enforcer design is far superior to the Eisenkern design. Hands down. Mailfaux plastics also look great but I own zero because I have no desire to own them or use them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Krinsath wrote:
Yes, Dreamforge is awesome and if Mantic could get even close to what Mark puts into his stuff they'd print money. On the other hand, Mantic's release list for 2014 versus Dreamforge's list of releases is worth comparing too. Sure, awesome kits are great but there's something to be said for "good enough right now" too.

Well, did Dreamforge actually release anything in 2014?

Thanks for the DBX unboxing, informative. Looking forward to my own.

 agnosto wrote:
On the kits themselves (dang I need to stop straying off-topic); I guess I'm just disappointed yet again by Mantic.
...

wargamers and modelers have different expectations and they should realize that.

Waiting and ready to buy your Peacekeepers!

A monopose kit would have done the exact same with those arms, except it would have been not multipose. They'd be unformed on the side that plugged into the chest. See: all monopose plastics in existence.

The Peacekeepers sprue gives you the option of either a monopose-shooting-rifle-pose or multipose dancing-a-jig poses. It is superior for me.

 agnosto wrote:

 The Dwarf Wolf wrote:
I dont know what you guys ae complaining about those peacekeepers...

Each sprue comes with bits for 5 guys, including 5 with combat shields, or 5 without. You have 2 "big guns" and 4 "1 arm rifles", in the sprue, and lastly, 2 options for "2 arms rifle", booth simplified for easy assembly...

It is not a GW or Dream Forge level of variety, but the price is also a fraction of those ones...

A fraction of dreamforge prices? I suggest you look around a bit more. http://www.miniaturemarket.com/catalog/product/view/id/35268/s/dfg-in-001/

$31.50 for 20, highly detailed miniatures and enough extra bits to choke on. Interestingly enough, not a single melted weapon arm. Mantic should probably hire Mark to design their sprues for them.

The problem with the enforcers is that as a board game, the melted arm thing isn't an issue but if they're going to try and push this kind of lazy, cheap crap off on modelers and wargamers for an eventual Warpath release, people who are spoiled for choice already, they should have thought it through a bit more carefully.

I Agree with you here, i wished i had backed dream forge KS, instead of DZ (i must assume). My love is on Forge Fathers, and Mantic is only doying bad things with them since i give them money (the general size of the minis made me feel cheated, even the Iron Ancestor is so tiny you need to raise the base for him to stand like a dreadnought), and Forge Guard will eventually size up as regular marines, not the terminator sized things i was hoping for. What i to expect next? A wartank supposed to be a Land Raider but rhino sized?

Actually, i am very disapointed with DZ stuff, and seriosly considering sell my stuff for "KS price"...

I wonder if the missing arm is a "thing". I have one missing as well.

It sucks that you ended up disappointed, but you wanted your dwarfs to be the same size as space marines and are put out that they're short? That Dwarfs are short. The Iron Ancestors are a bit smaller than dreadnoughts but whoever said they were supposed to be the same size? Smaller dude inside, different set up. I like my trio. Kind of wish I got one from the KS for the different parts but meh oh well.

The Iron Ancestors are my favourite Mantic model by far, I really, really like them. So far I have painted 2, and I know I have at least one more in my RLP pile... perhaps 2, I cant remember!

I didn't notice any missing limbs but I left the box at a friend's place, so can't double check.