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Melted arms?

 GrimDork wrote:
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.

I actually was pretty happy with their size in the steel warriors sprue (not with the sculpt), and KoW dwarfs scale perfectly to me... Those new forge fathers are just to small: just compare sizes of the metal hibrids, and characters... They stand to the brokks as if they where wearing a Forge Guard armor, aven when they have all the look of "half armor" or even "brokk armor" in one case. They are not just "short" they are "small", i like them as short and stocky, but the brokks look to me like "hobbit bodybuilders", not as dwarfs...

Its a matter of taste in the end, and well, i was planning to use them in 40k, not the official use for them...

 Riquende wrote:
Melted arms?

not 'melted' but hollowed out on the back of two of the arms where they go against the chest. It's I assume to get a closer fit for the peacekeepers who are aiming down their rifles. But you do get enough arms on the sprue not to have to use them if you wish.

edlowe wrote:

 Riquende wrote:
Melted arms?

not 'melted' but hollowed out on the back of two of the arms where they go against the chest. It's I assume to get a closer fit for the peacekeepers who are aiming down their rifles. But you do get enough arms on the sprue not to have to use them if you wish.

It basically means that there are a couple arms that can only be used in the default pose. One of the advantages of styrene plastic is how easy it is to convert things, but with those arms, if you do anything other than have the aiming down the gun pose, you'll expose that the inside of the arms and guns don't have detail at all. I'd be more okay with it if it was just the gun, so the arms could still be used for other conversions, but it's also the hand and forearms and even part of the upper arms.

The plastic peacekeepers were the thing I was waiting for from Mantic to see if I wanted to give them another try after being disappointed with some of their previous products and between the melted arms and the inconsistent hand sizes (which I get, are just in the tradition of GW terminators with one marshmellow fist and one normal sized hand) I'm going to pass on them and go for some historicals instead.

I think the best looking build of the peacekeepers will be the riot shield build. They look great.

in part it reflects the problem that if you stick a real human body in big chunky power armour you find that it can't take up the poses you want it to,

so you either have to redesign the whole thing, or fudge things which is what they've done here to get a 'combat ready' pose

I'd rather have a arms only useable for that pose (since you get extra) that have them all fudged with extra long upper arms or similar

I've set the board up to get a few rushes in before bed.




It might be an idea when you get the game to sit the mat out under a couple of boxes overnight to flatten it down.




I learned my first tactical lesson for Dreadball Xtreme.

We see here, the Grogan Thug attempting a first turn slam to take out the Pusk Rampager - the only Guard on the opposing team.



However, there is a Kalyshi Jack nearby. - Jacks are usually something I don't worry about much in normal Dreadball games. This Jack has some ability called backstab though... I wonder what that does.



The Pusk then doubles a standup and automatically pushes the Grogan back when it slams.

Third wave is finally starting - anyone who was expecting Enforcers, and only Enforcers, in the third wave has a package on the way already. Everyone else starts next week.

So still a little while for those of us with peacekeepers and forgeguard, but it's all on the move soon. Cool.

Yes! Another update without pics of just what some assembled unpainted hard plastic Enforcers, Peacekeepers, and Forge Guard look like.

 judgedoug wrote:
Yes! Another update without pics of just what some assembled unpainted hard plastic Enforcers, Peacekeepers, and Forge Guard look like.

Yep. But I would rather hear that they are working on shipping them.

 pretre wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
Yes! Another update without pics of just what some assembled unpainted hard plastic Enforcers, Peacekeepers, and Forge Guard look like.

Yep. But I would rather hear that they are working on shipping them.

It is inconceivable and inexcusable that they'd be shipping final product without thinking no one would want to see what it looks like. And, no, they are not so busy that they cannot spend 30 minute assembling a handful of dudes and taking a pic. Hell, you know some of their employees already have their and have assembled them and have probably played a few games with them already.
I'm a Mantic fan but not a Mantic sycophant. Ugh.

We've seen the models repeatedly in their updates. I don't get the complaint.

 pretre wrote:
We've seen the models repeatedly in their updates. I don't get the complaint.

Assembled plastic Enforcers and Peacekeepers and Forge Guard? So far I've seen the one plastic Peacekeeper from a random blog, not Mantic itself. Everything else has been a painted resin master that's been around for ages.

I think he wants to see the new sprues maybe clipped or something, the assembled models in grey before painting, preferably with some variant blue-tacked poses. I get the desire but I've seen the sprues and I'm not fussed.

 GrimDork wrote:
I think he wants to see the new sprues maybe clipped or something, the assembled models in grey before painting, preferably with some variant blue-tacked poses. I get the desire but I've seen the sprues and I'm not fussed.

Precisely. In fact, we haven't even seen the proper Forge Guard sprues, unless I'm mistaken. The only pic we've seen of the actual sprues was a picture of a portion of the sprue months ago showing the sinkholes as the reason they were sent back for retooling (and the delay), plus a cad shot of the proposed sprue layout.

Regarding the Enforcers and Peacekeepers, there's a world of difference between nicely painted 3d-printed resin masters (what we've seen) and actual production plastics. (edit: unless there's no difference, which would be amazing, but I'd still like to see what some assembled plastics look like!)

The DBX models have remarkably few moldlines of note.

I've picked a couple now that I'm pretty sure I just ran my knife over something I had imagined.

Also, if I had any modelling talent of note, I'd really like to replace the mohawks on the Kalyshi and turn them in Asari...

I cleaned my whole DBX box today very few mold lines the only tricky ones were the Kalyshi jacks as there is more armour/skin transitions so they have more flash. The models scale well with DZ the Grogan Keeper head fits the DZ Grogan without any cutting or filling and I converted the Yndij Reaver into a DZ Sergeant with just a hand swap.

I was hoping to do my Enforcers this week but it looks like I'll be painting the Convict team instead.

 judgedoug wrote:

 GrimDork wrote:
I think he wants to see the new sprues maybe clipped or something, the assembled models in grey before painting, preferably with some variant blue-tacked poses. I get the desire but I've seen the sprues and I'm not fussed.

Precisely. In fact, we haven't even seen the proper Forge Guard sprues, unless I'm mistaken. The only pic we've seen of the actual sprues was a picture of a portion of the sprue months ago showing the sinkholes as the reason they were sent back for retooling (and the delay), plus a cad shot of the proposed sprue layout.

Regarding the Enforcers and Peacekeepers, there's a world of difference between nicely painted 3d-printed resin masters (what we've seen) and actual production plastics. (edit: unless there's no difference, which would be amazing, but I'd still like to see what some assembled plastics look like!)

Maybe the feel that if they stuff is good you'll buy it at retail (rather than KS discount) if you decide not to add it to the pledge manager which is probably better for them financially, and for their sales partners,

and if it's not good you won't buy it anyway?

 GrimDork wrote:
I think he wants to see the new sprues maybe clipped or something, the assembled models in grey before painting, preferably with some variant blue-tacked poses. I get the desire but I've seen the sprues and I'm not fussed.

Some of the biggest problems with the Men at Arms were not evident from sprue pics alone.

At this point, unless the new plastics are stellar, I am more excited with the prospect of board game plastic minis. At least Mantic got those right for Mars Attacks.

I'm very pleased with both the DBX and Mars attacks board game plastic minis.

Me too! The tiger corps dudes came out especially well! The scenery and vehicles are also really solid for MA.

Got my DBX today too, thought it was my 2x christmas boxes. Not complaining! Looking really nice, damn I love my Dreadball. Will be waiting a while for the forge guard and stuff too I think but no rush.

I've played a bunch of MA games and even got my ~6 year old niece into it as I hoped (with some hand holding ofc), I love Mantics game design being simple enough for kids but deep enough for adults. I can see why not everyone would, but the quick action play really does it for me after the cumbersome 40k I started tabletop with.

Will need to take a closer look at your MA Grim, see what more ideas I can pinch ; p

If they can get them out to Australia by now... I can hold out hope for dreadball xmastreme myself

My new occasional tabletop opponent seemed pretty entertained by Mars Attacks as well. I love all of the random events, and sometimes it's nice to just roll three dice a piece and see models go splat instead of carefully stacking bonusi as you do with DZ.

Feel free to pinch away, though I'm mostly just painting through the main box game at the moment

 GrimDork wrote:
Me too! The tiger corps dudes came out especially well! The scenery and vehicles are also really solid for MA.

Are the Tiger Corps exceptionally good for this material? I only got them and the Martians, so I am basing a lot of my opinion of Board Game Plastic on how they turned out, an they're incredible.

How are the DBX figures in comparison?

This batch of DBX seems to be restic to me. The same hard, sharp restic used for the DZ Forge Fathers, which is the best restic yet, but, you know, still restic.

Tiger Corps being exceptionally good for board game plastic... I dunno. Maybe it's just that they're the most exciting sculpts, being all unique alien dudes in power armour. Well, the large, alien heads might conceal the usual... "slightness" of human faces, which is more a scale/proportion thing than a material thing, I think.

DBX is not restic, you're simply wrong there.

Well the board game plastic is just going to be yet another formulation of PVC but its not the same as the previous restic models. I do think these are a bit different again to MA although the colours might have something to do with that. I think the fact that they went with the same grey confuses things it would have been nice to get coloured plastic orange for convicts and red or light blue for Kalyshi. The mold lines are far better now and cut away easier. I did notice while I was cleaning them that the plastic has a slightly waxy smell when cut which I never got from the earlier restic.

iirc they decided that making each of the teams a different plastic colour would make the game too visually confusing, which is why they're all grey plastic and the bases are team coloured.

That is a pretty weak excuse.

 CptJake wrote:
That is a pretty weak excuse.

Due to the nature of team construction in DBX it actually makes a lot of sense.

You pick a sponsor and then choose players from a variety of "teams". There's no point to each team having their own color as you'll be mixing and matching anyway. That's the idea behind the colored bases, so even if you have the same models as your opponent you can identify which ones are yours by base color.