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That's assuming there are retailers in the US who want to carry Mantic products still.

Every time there seems to be a reliable source, they all end up clearancing them all out.

Surprisingly my local store has a pretty nice coverage in terms of Kings of War. We'll see what happens with the next iteration of Deadzone, and how Warpath gets packaged for retail.

I stayed pretty frugal for the Warpath PM, only adding a few sets of new plastics to check out and play with. I'm more interested in Deadzone & Firefight than Warpath proper as it is.

Shipping also wasn't super ridiculous. Around 25 I think when all was said and done for an Advanced Warfare pledge plus a few extra bits and bobs. Would I like to pay less? Absolutely. Did it surprise me? Not really.

The local FLGS has some KoW in stock, but put about two dozen elf boxes on clearance at 50% off. I don't know what that presages in terms of ordering Mantic product, but it doesn't look good for local support. I haven't seen any Deadzone since they cleared it out a while ago. They used to carry Mantic board games, but they cleared Pandora and I never saw any DS on the shelves. Dreadball is no longer supported. We'll see how Warpath shakes out, but with the latest batch of price hikes and Mantic's poor reputation with local sellers, I think it's going to end up available only through order.

More half off elves you say? I'm guessing they are the old white VHS boxes?

Perhaps I need to head off to the land of Vietnamese signs off the 22 Freeway...

For what it's worth, our local store has NONE of the old (classic?) Mantic boxes. it's all post-second kickstarter material. Army boxes, new ogre and troll kits, stuff like that...

Yep, old VHS boxes. It's almost worth it for the Mantic points... But then, I like their elves.

Well, this was weird. I wanted to finalize my pledge for Warpath tonight, but when I went in to do it, I got security warnings that said the pledge manager's security wasn't implemented correctly. Firefox wouldn't let me finalize it. I messaged them about it, but I suspect I won't be hearing anything before their deadline.

I haven't had any warnings from Chrome

The same thing happened to me, you just need to click on advanced in the middle of the screen to be given the option to proceed

I just tried it again with Chrome, got the same warning. My internet security software was also flagging the pledgemanager as being unsafe.

Weird, I didn't get a warning from Chrome, Windows 10, or Bitdefender

Strange, Firefox didn't even blink when I did the pledge manager. No security warnings at all.

I put in $1 during the campaign and have been waiting as long as possible to finish the pledge manager to see if DZI would ship.

As it hasn't I decided not to add anything and tried to close out the pledge manager with nothing in the cart and it's still trying to charge me $12 for shipping.

I think I'll just leave it open.

$12 for a box of air is pretty light. Might as well throw in a sprue of plastic for only $8 more in shipping.

Well they did credit me the dollar I pledged so technically it was only $11 for the empty box.

I'm half tempted to close the deal just to see if they'd send it to me.

I had no security issues from Chrome. Ordered my stuff, which I presume will be my last significant Mantic KS order. $75 shipping pretty much confirms that.

I probably wouldn't have bothered if I hadn't put a pile of money down in the first place. I guess now I wash my hands of Mantic's KS. Once the whole pledge arrives with whatever missing parts they manage to feth up sometime in 2017, anyway.

Okay, I tried again tonight. I had been using the link to the add-on store that was in the pledge manager itself. That's what was giving me the warning. So, this time I tried using the direct link to the add-on store that was included in the pledge manager email. That actually worked. No security warning or anything. So, I filled out the pledge manager and submitted without any further issues. Just on a whim, I tried to access the add-on store through the link on the pledge manager page again. Still give me a security warning. Weird.

I wound up getting a GCPS bundle, their flyer, the Veer-Myn special character, a sprue of Asterian drones and a sprue of Plague 3rd Gens. Since I didn't care about the rulebook, tokens, or dice, it actually wound up being a better deal than if I had gone with one of the regular pledges. I think, like AzazelX, this may be my last Mantic Kickstarter as well. They're going to have to really wow me if they want to sucker me in again.

I think I'm pretty much done with Mantic's campaigns for the time being as well.

They need to get things smoothed out BIG TIME.

I ended up with a Forge Father battle group, a Skaven drill tank, and a few sprues from each of the new plastic lines. No extra cash added. Was tempted too, but decided they've got enough of my fun money for the time being.

I'm still sore over the Dungeon Saga Adventurer's Companion and lack of really fleshed out rules.

Hopefully Infestation will show up soon and make me do a 180.

Went in for the KS exclusive characters (minus the asterian)

The 20 GCPS troops, 3 forge father APCs and the enforcer drop ship.

Nothing for me in this campaign, I guess they got my $1 for free anyone know when they're going to sell Deadzone dice?

In the same boat of probably not going for much more on Mantic's KS. Overall I like the product, but there's just been far too many missteps over the years to trust them up-front anymore, and the stories of Dakkanauts who have to contact support multiple times to still have no resolution is deeply concerning as well. I'll still keep an eye out for things available from retailers, but I have tons of models as it is that can be used.

Ended up with a GCPS Battlegroup, an Enforcer vehicle and a couple other things to poke at. Hopefully Mantic gets to the bottom of some of their logistic and support issues and takes care of them properly.

So, I'll ask this here in the hopes one of the Rules Committee members sees it, or something:

Are there any plans for a Shattered Empires style book for Warpath? I have a rather large Eldar army I don't want to go to the hassle of ebaying if I can find some use for, but they don't quite synch up to Asterians. I'd really like a force that uses not-Aspect Warriors instead of robots.

 Psychopomp wrote:

So, I'll ask this here in the hopes one of the Rules Committee members sees it, or something:

Are there any plans for a Shattered Empires style book for Warpath? I have a rather large Eldar army I don't want to go to the hassle of ebaying if I can find some use for, but they don't quite synch up to Asterians. I'd really like a force that uses not-Aspect Warriors instead of robots.

The last time there was an official response in public the answer was "no". I'm not aware that it's changed, but there's maybe only 3-4 people who would know and they ain't on the RC.

You could just use the 40k fluff in place of the Warzone fluff. As in apply their "robot" rules to your Aspect Warriors rather than use your Aspect Warriors for their Robots. Essentially the same thing, but the "mental distinction" difference being you'd be using their rules for your 40k Eldar rather than using your 40k models as Asterians.

They got my $1, until all the issues have been fixed, even then I'm finding other sources of better quality minis for cheaper.

Surprise of surprises, Zak in Mantic's customer service department actually came through. My missing DBX items finally arrived. He sent me an email on the 21st saying they'd been shipped, but I'd heard that line before. It turns out he really did find the items in the warehouse and sent them out to me. I got my Mechanites (in retail packaging, no less), my Medibot, and Eclipse. There was also something that looked vaguely like a forcefield marker or something. It was a bunch of free-floating hexagons. I'm not sure what that piece is or what it's used for, but it'll make a great Nano Screen for my Shasvastii.

 Barzam wrote:
Surprise of surprises, Zak in Mantic's customer service department actually came through. My missing DBX items finally arrived. He sent me an email on the 21st saying they'd been shipped, but I'd heard that line before. It turns out he really did find the items in the warehouse and sent them out to me. I got my Mechanites (in retail packaging, no less), my Medibot, and Eclipse. There was also something that looked vaguely like a forcefield marker or something. It was a bunch of free-floating hexagons. I'm not sure what that piece is or what it's used for, but it'll make a great Nano Screen for my Shasvastii.

The hex thing you describe, did it look like this DB trophy?
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=dreadball+trophy&view=detailv2&&id=11A5AA0D4BC217FB8150E402FC6789AB45E0C77B&selectedIndex=0&ccid=a1eByfO0&simid=608046977816595383&thid=OIP.M6b5781c9f3b4f5315ab1ccaa923fe0f2o0&ajaxhist=0

That is exactly it.

It sounds like my ticket has been diverted to Zak now. Will he close the ticket? Will he earn the coffee? I'm feeling optimistic.

And Barzam, I'm glad to hear that they fed you the same stories they fed me. They told me they shipped the items again and again, making me doubt reality, question my sanity, and suspect my neighbors of stealing Mantic boxes (while leaving behind the Amazon boxes and the two clearly marked iPhone boxes that the delivery guy just left on the porch without even a doorbell ring).

I sent them another email the other day, suggesting that I'd like a meaningful update since the last I'd heard was over two weeks ago telling me my stuff "is in a large queue" and that my first contact with them about the missing stuff was about 6 months ago.

Got a reply within a few hours from Rich, apologising and saying that he'd "resend" my missing items (which has an amusing implication that seems familiar given some of the stuff I've read here...) Which made me think "whua?" considering I hadn't heard anything about them ever being sent. I wonder what will be next in this endless saga?

I would be much, much more understanding if they just told me what was actually going on, even if it comes down to "we're months behind and tickets only get packed in the last hour on Fridays." The constant shiftiness and Jon Lovitzing in their emails makes me wonder if the whole company is untrustworthy or if there's just one guy pathologically lying both in and out of the company to cover his ass. It sure couldn't hurt to shuffle someone less surly and evasive into their PR/CS department.

I'd respond with something humorously sarcastic, but I wouldn't want to offend their delicate fething sensibilities and cause them to shy away from these forums.

After all, their quick and efficient handling of these CS issues might be affected.

On a more positive note - how are you enjoying your KoW stuff, Bob? I'm planning on a 24-hour Dungeon Saga session simply using proxies for all of my up-to-6-months-missing components. Right over Polonius and I make the unit trays for his army ourselves.

I just checked the "new ticket". Guess what the status is?

Waiting on Stock since 2 days 1 hours

So what the everliving feth does that mean? There's no indication of anything being shipped at any stage on the ticket system. Just a trail of "sorry, we'll get to you" messages. The last messages before I started agitating were:

Dave Symonds
said a month ago
Hi XXXXXX,

Thank you for your patience, it is much appreciated. Your missing items order is being processed and we are waiting for the warehouse to pack and send your items. I am really sorry that this has taken much longer than expected.

I will keep you updated,

Kind regards,

Matt
Customer service team
Mantic

Dave Symonds
said 20 days ago
Hi XXXXXX,

I am sorry for how long you are having to wait. Your order is in a queue to be packed and dispatched to you. We have a large back log of Dungeon Saga items for the warehouse team to work through.

Thank you again for your patience,

Matt

So just a revolving choir of CS people apparently not managing to do a fething thing. Just the same tired reiterations of "your order is in a queue". Apparently a queue that has taken longer to ship than the actual Kickstarter. And apparently anyone can log into Dave Symond's account, since the messages quoted above were both signed "Matt". Which means anyone can be logged into anyone else's terminal at Mantic, accountability in their warehouse area is clearly all kinds of fethed, and why doesn't Matt from the CST have his own login account for their ticket system? It shouldn't be hard for any passable IT system to create a new user account, and it should be pretty obvious for a workplace that handles h̶u̶n̶d̶r̶e̶d̶s̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶o̶u̶s̶a̶n̶d̶s̶ millions of pounds worth of product that each employee should have their own secure login. Because accountability matters (internally even more than to retail end-user schlubs like us).