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 NTRabbit wrote:
In what way do you find the Pathfinder plastics disappointing? I'm just curious, because from the painted masters I think they're the best human minis Mantic has ever made - great details, interesting aesthetic, excellent proportions, and proper women minis with aggressive poses rather than cocked leg cheesecake.

The proportions seem off, and as Mymearan mentioned - the waists are terrible. The armor is a bit off too as Alex said, especially the thigh plates. The aesthetic really is boring to me as well. I thought Mantic did a decent job making "not space marines," with the Enforcers, but these guys are very clearly SM scout knockoffs. From the haircuts to the half-faced gas masks.

I will give Mantic some kudos for making the female model in the group A) Dressed properly for a combat environment B) Reasonably proportioned anatomically, and C) Being positioned in like a combatant rather than a pin-up (looking at you Infinity). And bonus for no "Combat Heels." Those kill miniatures for me, which is a shame because CB makes a lot of female models that I would otherwise like a lot.

You guys do realise the mini with the narrow waist is a woman, and consequently has the narrow waist of an athletic woman, yeah?

 NTRabbit wrote:
You guys do realise the mini with the narrow waist is a woman, and consequently has the narrow waist of an athletic woman, yeah?

The narrowness of the waist should only really be obvious relative to the hips, not so much the chest. Even if wearing body armour on the chest and not the abdomen, you're still not going to get that kind of hourglass shape without restricting the movement of her arms, unless she's wearing a corset.

 Vain wrote:

 Alex C wrote:
Mantic seems to be more concerned with backer count than money generated. Any time that someone mentions the slow funding they hit back with "The important thing is we gained X backers!"

I think I can guess a reason why. High backers and low money means that they pay the kickstarter fees on that lower amount of cash and then extend the pledge manager for 6+ months and allow for stretch goals to be hit then when the large number of backers add an extra $5 to $500 bucks to get the extra terrain or 16 jet bikes they always wanted.

If they can save a chunk of cash not going to Kickstarter by doing it this way, I figure someone is going to be happy. That someone is probably in Mantic rather than the target audience for this Kickstarter but...


Of course this is based on my understanding, so I might be missing something.

Well, that and:

1) One of their jobs in managing the Kickstarter is to be as enthusiastic as possible to promote confidence in the product. You wouldn't expect them to go "yeah, we're pretty worried actually", and they will clearly look for anything they can to spin.

2) Kickstarter is a tremendous marketing exercise - it gets people engaged with and talking about a product months in advance of release, and particularly for wargames it's extremely helpful if the game has a ready-made community when it arrives. More backers = a larger community. Even though Deadzone is an existing product, I think that Mantic is hoping to both get existing players to re-engage and to bring in new people (with debateable success, as discussed earlier).

3) A backer that is in for even a dollar has a much, much greater chance of spending at least some money eventually, than someone who isn't in at all. These are the people who are going to be given marketing materials every time an update is posted, and multiple opportunities to add money in the Kickstarter and Pledge Manager. Even if they don't spend a further penny, when the product goes to retail they will at least know a lot about it, and theoretically be more likely to either spend money on it or mention it to friends who might spend money on it.

 AlexHolker wrote:

 NTRabbit wrote:
You guys do realise the mini with the narrow waist is a woman, and consequently has the narrow waist of an athletic woman, yeah?

The narrowness of the waist should only really be obvious relative to the hips, not so much the chest. Even if wearing body armour on the chest and not the abdomen, you're still not going to get that kind of hourglass shape without restricting the movement of her arms, unless she's wearing a corset.

Aside from being slightly taller, this mini pretty much matches the proportions of the woman triathlete who lives across the road from me, and that's the kind of person I think of when talking about the elite of the elite, enhanced super soldiers.

 NTRabbit wrote:

 AlexHolker wrote:

 NTRabbit wrote:
You guys do realise the mini with the narrow waist is a woman, and consequently has the narrow waist of an athletic woman, yeah?

The narrowness of the waist should only really be obvious relative to the hips, not so much the chest. Even if wearing body armour on the chest and not the abdomen, you're still not going to get that kind of hourglass shape without restricting the movement of her arms, unless she's wearing a corset.

Aside from being slightly taller, this mini pretty much matches the proportions of the woman triathlete who lives across the road from me, and that's the kind of person I think of when talking about the elite of the elite, enhanced super soldiers.

Does your friend have an equally narrow waist when wearing fully covering body armor?

Mymearan wrote:

 NTRabbit wrote:

 AlexHolker wrote:

 NTRabbit wrote:
You guys do realise the mini with the narrow waist is a woman, and consequently has the narrow waist of an athletic woman, yeah?

The narrowness of the waist should only really be obvious relative to the hips, not so much the chest. Even if wearing body armour on the chest and not the abdomen, you're still not going to get that kind of hourglass shape without restricting the movement of her arms, unless she's wearing a corset.

Aside from being slightly taller, this mini pretty much matches the proportions of the woman triathlete who lives across the road from me, and that's the kind of person I think of when talking about the elite of the elite, enhanced super soldiers.

Does your friend have an equally narrow waist when wearing fully covering body armor?

I doubt he has seen her in Enforcer pathfinder armor

Hopefully they'll put up the news on the terrain only pledge so I can decide if it's worth following this. I really want to like mantic but the figure sculpts really don't appeal to me (with a few rare enforcer exceptions).

She jogs past me in the street wearing training gear while I'm walking my dog. We're not on a first name basis, I don't feel comfortable asking about her Enforcer armour.

 NTRabbit wrote:
In what way do you find the Pathfinder plastics disappointing? I'm just curious, because from the painted masters I think they're the best human minis Mantic has ever made - great details, interesting aesthetic, excellent proportions, and proper women minis with aggressive poses rather than cocked leg cheesecake.

Look again. The proportions are way, way off. More on this when I get home.

Every miniature thread ends up being about female proportions as of late.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Every miniature thread ends up being about female proportions as of late.

There are females?...

Thinking about dropping down to just the rulebook bundle. Pathfinders are meh, and the Veermyn aren't much better. The jetbike is mostly ok, but way too long.

~Eric

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Every miniature thread ends up being about female proportions as of late.

To be fair, this one was also about the drone's proportions. Which are also bad.

Why people aren't holding on to see what happens when the add-ons come in is beyond me. It just goes to show there is this bit of "what's cool right now" mentality with gamers. Success breeds success with campaigns and stalling breeds stalling. Nothing new there though.

 Taarnak wrote:


Thinking about dropping down to just the rulebook bundle. Pathfinders are meh, and the Veermyn aren't much better. The jetbike is mostly ok, but way too long.

~Eric

I thought about doing this, and maybe adding on a couple of things which may catch my eye. My total spending would still be lower than the big pledge.

BUT I have the previous hard cover, and honestly it is a big disappointment (to me). No title on the spine, the inside is just the separate soft cover books basically stapled together. No combined index or even continuous page numbers. It just reeks of short cut/amateur hour product.

I want to know what this new hard cover is going to be like. If it is more of the same it would annoy me quite a bit.

I've still got my early bird, but that's about all I pledged during the actual campaign the first time around as well.

I too thought this was to fund an easy access beginner's box. Where is it?

Earth Dragon wrote:
Why people aren't holding on to see what happens when the add-ons come in is beyond me. It just goes to show there is this bit of "what's cool right now" mentality with gamers. Success breeds success with campaigns and stalling breeds stalling. Nothing new there though.

It's a stall collapse. There's still time to turn it around with add-ons, but the initial pledge offerings were too sparse and lacked enough extras to entice people to pledge more for.

The other "small and slow" Mantic Kickstarter, Kings of War 2, started out with bundle deals for all their existing armies in addition to the promise of funding the new rulebook and new armies. For some reason, this campaign lacks that - I have no idea why there weren't faction starter deals for every existing faction to give people more to pledge for than just Pathfinder, Ver-myn, and new Battlezone sprues plus a rulebook.

It also doesn't help that coming in as a retail customer and hearing two years of stories from the initial Deadzone backers of getting all kinds of stuff early and how so many are rolling in piles of cheap Enforcer and scenery sprues, I am utterly underwhelmed by $10 single jetbike sprues and the like. Which doesn't even matter yet, as we've spent two days NOT funding the first generally available non-sprue model for the new faction.

It's frustrating, and we're a third of the way into the campaign and Mantic hasn't done much at all to spice things up. It feels like four wasted days, even compared to KoW2. I can understand why people are dropping. I'm tempted, but I was in the DS campaign so I'll keep faith in add-on Wednesdays and hold onto my early bird until the end. But frankly, if I don't see a plastic Plague sprue and/or good deals on existing faction stuff, I'll probably drop out altogether and just pick up the rulebook through my FLGS.

Earth Dragon wrote:
Why people aren't holding on to see what happens when the add-ons come in is beyond me.

Why does Mantic play games with the unlocks that we all know they planned on including in the first place? It just is what folks do with this type of KS that Mantic runs.

 Psychopomp wrote:
I have no idea why there weren't faction starter deals for every existing faction to give people more to pledge for than just Pathfinder, Ver-myn, and new Battlezone sprues plus a rulebook.

Maybe they were trying to stick to the letter of their "restic-free project" promise?

Terrain pledge and add ons are up:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1744629938/deadzone-infestation-sci-fi-skirmish-game/posts

The terrain pledge doesn't come with a mat?

Looks like definite 'Wait For Retail' on the terrain - unless I'm missing something?

 CptJake wrote:
The terrain pledge doesn't come with a mat?

Why would it?

 pretre wrote:

 CptJake wrote:
The terrain pledge doesn't come with a mat?

Why would it?

Why wouldn't it? Isn't a mat part of the terrain?

 CptJake wrote:

 pretre wrote:

 CptJake wrote:
The terrain pledge doesn't come with a mat?

Why would it?

Why wouldn't it? Isn't a mat part of the terrain?

I guess... That's more part of the game though. The terrain only pledge is just terrain.

Updated the first post, pegging the terrain at about $4-5/sprue retail (going off their prices on the webpage)


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Based off the retail, it may be better to just wait for full release on the terrain.

I'm gonna be dropping my Early Bird pledge ($110) and going for the scenery-only pledge instead. I'll wait till later tonight some time. If anyone is desperate to save $5 and wants my spot, PM me and we can coordinate a time so you can try and snatch it up as soon as I switch

 Alpharius wrote:
Looks like definite 'Wait For Retail' on the terrain - unless I'm missing something?

I posted in the comments since I have the same question.

Honestly, A-O W did nothing for me. When the eventual added HIPS Enforcer new items come, that's when I care!! Currently, I'm really excited for plastic bikes and pathfinders. And friggin Blaine!! We'll see if I keep my $110 pledge or drop to just add-ons.

For those who bought the previous battlezone terrain kits, does the amount of plastic bits on the industrial sprues correspond with the number of panels/walls/etc on the previous battlezone sprues?



What are the chances that they'll sweeten the terrain only pledge with extra battlezone sprues from the previous kits? Did they sweeten the previous deadzone terrain pledge with extras as stretch goals?

If the pictures are accurate, the new sprues are about the same, maybe two or three more of the tiny extra bits per sprue.

Old sprues have 4 tiles' worth of stuff, same as new.

http://www.e-minis.net/images/SPRUES-MANTIC-BATTLEZONE.jpg

One old battlezone was 8 sprues (4 each of 2 types) for $25

The new deals are noticeably worse.

And I'm pretty sure on day 1 there was at least one extra 1/4 sized panel shown per sprue. So the layouts aren't even final.