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That same pattern is developing a slow downward trend, though.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/1230/648800.page#8284311

Not sure if the next (licensed) one will be an exception. It if's something big and it's well done, it could be a real exception. Of course, it could also AVP if they pull the usual shenanigans post-PM...

I'm glad I only went in for $1 on the Warpath KS to get the rulebooks. These kinds of changes are why I'm really hesitant to preorder stuff on Kickstarter.

 Krinsath wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
Having just caught up with this thread late on, could someone please very quickly summarise the material change and for what game system?

DeadZone Infestation at the moment; resin and metal for some models -> Dungeon Saga-style plastic by Dust Studios.

OK many thanks Krinsath. So is this just Deadzone, not Warpath?

Having just got Dungeon Saga, while that material is fine for a board game, I've always thought of Deadzone as more of a miniatures game and not sure that's a good change.

Looking at the kind of stuff that Warlord is doing with plastics with Gates of Antares, the Dungeon Saga material doesn't even come close. And compared to the AvP resins, it's not even on the same planet, let alone the same ball park.

Some of the figures crossover into the new Warpath stuff don't they? So I'd guess it impacts Warpath as well.

With the Chem thrower and crew going to Dust plastic rather than resin I'm absolutely certain that the 'small' vehicles (veermyn doomwheel, corp mule etc) from the warpath KS will do the same thing

fair enough if they tell us that's what is going to happen before we fill in the PM (they should be able to shouldn't they?.....)

They should...but they didn't this time. I was pretty set to order the mules because good resin price. But I'd hate to have to ask for a refund. If they make them in bendy plastic I'm not as sure if I'm crazy for them for $13.33 each. Still not bad... but other things have come up, and maybe the new post apoc is worth waiting to invest in instead..

Speaking of which, when is this miracle property supposed to be announced and/or KS kicked off?

January, I think.

privateer4hire wrote:
If I were pulling in the kind of dosh they're doing by following the same pattern, I would be a fool to change. That's not silly.

At this point, I think you'd be a fool to buy resin figures from a Mantic Kickstarter if you expect to receive them in resin. I think you're better off as a potential future Mantic customer knowing that they can't be trusted to deliver on that.

I'll bet Mantic would like to be CMON right now. Their impressive level of dosh is a complete joke next to what CMON regularly pulls in. What do you think will sell better at retail: Dungeon Saga, with its cut corners and errors, or Black Plague, which will likely be a pretty smart package? I can tell you exactly which one of those I expect to find on clearance in a year or two. Here's a hint: it's the one made by the same company whose products regularly end up there, year after year. I think Mantic could be doing quite a bit better than they are.

Do you always applaud when companies make a lot of money and screw over their customers? Do you think Prodos Games has done an admirable thing by taking so much KS money and refusing to ship the final product to most of their backers? I mean, they made a lot of dosh doing that, and it's yet to be seen how much it will hurt the sales of their property via retail. Should they be praised and encouraged for ripping people off? Because what? Schadenfreude? I don't get your motivation. If a company screws some gamers over and they complain about it, more power to them. It informs me as a customer and might save me from the same fate. It might even help get the company to change their ways for the better. Saying "Bravo, Mantic!" doesn't get me anywhere, unless perhaps I'm toadying for a job with said company, in which case it makes perfect sense and is morally admirable.

Saying "good for you" when a company switches materials on customers this late in the game . . . you're free to do it, but beyond playing Devil's advocate for the hell of it or vicariously twirling your moustache, I don't see the point, benefit, or motivation. Even Scarlet Squig is on record saying this is a legitimate issue. The KS comments are boiling over with complaints from backers without me having to stir the pot there at all. For Mantic to simply count their money and ignore all that seems both morally dubious and bad for business. If you're going to argue that no, on the contrary, it's very good for business, do you really think it's better business than having your backers happy with your product and fired up to give your next KS campaign a go? Do you really think future backers new to Mantic won't get nervous when they do a little internet research and find out that their most recent campaigns ended in controversy? That sort of thing has warned me away from participating in several KS campaigns, personally. Negative customer response certainly didn't help Studio McVey, who may be recovering now, but whose million+ flagship KS property remains as dead as the dodo. (Which is a real shame - they had damn good space horror designs.) Personally, I think McVey would be in a better business position if Sedition Wars had gone over big and made their backers happy. So they pulled in over a million on the campaign. So what? Think of the millions they could have made if people had actually supported the game afterwards. If their legions of backers had gone out and talked it up with their friends.

Whether you approve of them or not, you're not Mantic. My beef just isn't with you, and I'm not going to shadow box with you as a surrogate for the company. I guess if you think they're doing everything right, and that negative blowback from angry customers is completely irrelevant to their profits, your conventional wisdom / common sense and mine are completely different. We aren't going to agree on this. I say we let it go.

I don't back Mantic so there's no shadow-boxing opportunity. My point is when people continue to reward them for what they're doing, then there's no incentive for them to change course.

But I like your 'let it go' suggestion. Let's.

A backer asked Paolo Parente about this and he doesn't know anything about the change to "plastic" and said its a competitor not Dust Studios that are working on Deadzone they only did DS.

http://s184.photobucket.com/user/red_starrise/media/Deadzone/Screenshot_2015-11-28-16-49-45_zpsopaeap8g.png.html

The Hard Plastic sprues referred to are probably the stuff that's already done FF, Terrain etc.

 Vermonter wrote:
What do you think will sell better at retail: Dungeon Saga, with its cut corners and errors, or Black Plague, which will likely be a pretty smart package? I can tell you exactly which one of those I expect to find on clearance in a year or two. Here's a hint: it's the one made by the same company whose products regularly end up there, year after year. I think Mantic could be doing quite a bit better than they are.

To be fair, the retail version of Dungeon Saga don't seem to have much errors in it as far as I understand. The problems is mostly with the KS addons and the adventurers companion in particular. The base game is very well received and by the time any additions land at retail they'll have had the opportunity to fix the errors.

The KS backers seems pretty shafted though admittedly. And even as somewhat of a Mantic fanboy I'd be pretty hesitant about backing any of their Kickstarters.

Granted, Zywus, and peace, privateer4hire. I got Mantic road rage over the resin issue. I do hope they resolve this better, but yes, I went a bit too far with my ranting. Just a tiny bit.

I saw that news about Parente's comments too, DaveC. Odd.

Wait... so... wait, what? A Dust competitor is doing them, NOT Dust, and they are hard plastic kits now?
WTF is going on?

 judgedoug wrote:
Wait... so... wait, what? A Dust competitor is doing them, NOT Dust, and they are hard plastic kits now?
WTF is going on?

I think "chinese whispers" is confusing everyone.

Just wait for the official response imho.

well the official line is

'These plastic miniatures are being made by Dust Studios, the manufacturer behind the Dust Tactics and Dust Warfare games, and the great miniatures in Dungeon Saga. '

from the update,

so either Paolo doesn't know what his company has signed up to do (possible as he's not the owner and clearly is not totally on top of the business side of things as the Dust KS debacle revaled)

or

Mantic plans to contract with Dust to do the work, but have not done so yet and are assuming they'll agree based on the dungeon saga work going well, being paid on time etc with all the potential pitfalls of production slots this generates

I'd say the odds of both are pretty much even

For what it's worth, even the Germans - yes, those wacky, easy-going, "Quality? Who cares?" Germans, of all people! - are in a tizzy over the switch from Resin to PVC. This is fast becoming a global catastrophe that will plunge the planet into a grim future of darkness and war and all sorts of nasty badness!

http://www.brueckenkopf-online.com/?p=156966

Wow. I don't think the world has ever seen the Germans so angry.


Mantic has struck dark deals with Prodos, Dust Studios, and mysterious Chinese factories, a true trio of terror, a brotherhood of badness, a convocation of conniving cons. Signs and portents all point to one thing:
Mantic is paving the way for Tony Reidy's triumphant return.

This time, no backer will be spared.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Wow. I don't think the world has ever seen the Germans so angry.

I suspect anyone who lived through a world war might disagree. In any case, I'm not surprised backers are unhappy about this sudden unilateral change. I personally find it more surprising that the word gak storm is used as is in German without a translation in the comments.

 warboss wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Wow. I don't think the world has ever seen the Germans so angry.

I suspect anyone who lived through a world war might disagree.

I hate to be that guy, but



Anyway, it seems every Mantic fan has a breaking point, and for whatever reason Mantic is systematically testing them all.

 Alex C wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
Wait... so... wait, what? A Dust competitor is doing them, NOT Dust, and they are hard plastic kits now?
WTF is going on?

I think "chinese whispers" is confusing everyone.

Just wait for the official response imho.

Unfortunately, the official response from Mantic can be ...changable.

I think it's something to do with the phase of the moon at any given moment.

Heh, of only. Lunar orbits are actually predictable.

Touche'

Posted by Mantic in the KoW comments

.... there's an update coming for DZ:I today - it's not hard plastic and it's not resin plastic. It is the same plastic used in the Wrath of Kings wargame and the Kings of War dragon.

...'Wrath of Kings' as in CMON's game?

That's certainly an...interesting statement to make.

I like the WoK plastic, so that's welcome news.

Indeed it is - if it really is that!

Also:

Of course, if you are no longer happy with your choices regarding these miniatures not being in metal or resin we are more than happy to cancel those items and refund your for them. Just message us and we’ll get that sorted for you.

And finally...

I'd like to address the notion of ‘bait and switch’ which we’ve heard in the community a little bit.

We do not use Kickstarter as a pre-order system, we use it to fund the development of a project.

We hope that the extensive discounts you receive and exclusives you can’t buy anywhere else helps off-set the fact that you are not buying a finished retail product, that you are getting at least twice as much stuff as you would at retail for the same price for participating on a journey that leads to the creation of a product.

However, as with the development of any new product, sometimes things will change. We try not to change things - we don’t go into a project and promise something we don’t intend to deliver – and we try to plan as far in advance as we can. But there are some things – like volumes, like demand, like quality – which you can only try your best and plan for.

We did not think our metal quantities would be as high as they are, and that the miniatures quality would suffer as a result of it. We hadn’t had experience of the quality resin we were getting when we first started the project, or the reliability issues we’ve had.

Where we have to change things, we try and make it for the better, and when we screw up – as we clearly did by the confusion our last update caused – we only try and make things better and right again.

Of course, not everyone will be happy with a change, and as we’ve said before – if you think you’re not getting what you pledged for, we will happily cancel your pledge and give you your money back. We don’t want anyone getting anything they aren’t happy with.

We are a team of 25 hobbyists (and a few boring accountants) looking to make great miniatures and great games, looking to build an inclusive community that shares a great hobby experience. In this case, we’ve been able to take some of the great miniatures the studio has created and put them in a material we think is better for the game and better for the community.

We’ve had more than a few value-related questions back in response, and we’ll address those by putting more value back into the pledge level.

Anyone who pledged and is now upset over the bait and switch 'funding and development' "system" that Mantic's using - vote with your wallet and/or by taking advantage of the Refund Policy!

Maybe the 'few boring accountants' will then take notice?

Mantic: Euphemisms

The rest of the update

Hello backers,
It’s clear that there was some confusion surrounding the contents of the last update.
Regarding the metal and resin figures listed in the update as being moved into plastic. When we ran the Kickstarter a lot of the feedback surrounded the use of metal as a material, and the plastic we are able to use with these miniatures is the same plastic used in wargames like Wrath of Kings, and games like Dungeon Saga and The Others: 7 Sins.

It is not sprued hard plastic like the Pathfinders or Night-crawlers or "resin plastic" like original Deadzone faction starters.
The figures will not be pre-assembled, you will still be able to build them yourself.
The material will allow for better casts than we can produce in metal, whilst reducing the weight of miniatures like the Veer-myn weapon platform and plague aberration, stop paint chipping, and has a smaller chance of the finer details breaking. They will be better quality for gaming, whilst also improving the quality of the figures that are remaining in metal as we can spend more time casting them and checking the quality of them.

Regarding the resins, we’ve recently experienced a massive drop in the quality of resin we are able to reliably get due to the demand we have been receiving. We recently refunded a batch of resin items for our Dungeon Saga Kickstarter.
With figures as nice as the Piper, Blaine on Jetbike and N7-117, we didn’t want the sheer quantum of resin figures we needed (approximately 2000 of each) to compromise on quality in a mad rush to produce them all.
However, we appreciate that some of you feel that we have taken some of the value out of the items, and we will be adding something cool and exclusive to the pledge levels that include these miniatures to make this up.
We think that $10 for the Piper (which is 3 miniatures) and $8 for N7-117 – both Kickstarter Exclusive miniatures - in plastic is perfectly reasonable and is in line with what we have charged for other plastic miniatures on Kickstarter before. However we agree that $15 for Blaine on Jetbike is a bit sporty, and will include something extra for those who have bought an extra one separately to bulk up the value.
Of course, if you are no longer happy with your choices regarding these miniatures not being in metal or resin we are more than happy to cancel those items and refund your for them. Just message us and we’ll get that sorted for you.
On Wednesday Ronnie has an update talking about the extensive work we’ve done on the rules, and will also cover the additional items we are adding to the pledge level and Blaine on Jetbike add-on.

It's good to see that they're doing the right thing after the "bait and switch" and offering refunds to those that are not happy with the change.