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Gosh, I've dropped thousands of bucks on Mierce, and will continue to do so. But I also think the last year's worth of Age of Sigmar releases have been the best GW has ever made, hands down - with Archaon being the best plastic model ever made by any company, ever. The only hiccups in GW's releases have been their 40k stuff.

That all being said, I've also dropped thousands on Mantic models - while I prefer cheap & good (Mantic Enforcers are the best example of that) but don't mind paying premium bucks for fantastic sculpts (hence my AoS Nurgle army)

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Which sculp are you talking about, Bolognesus? The only plague monster I recall was the bald Image Comics monster, and there's no way I'd put that in the same room as the G1 plague guy, let alone on the same shelf.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Right now, Mantic seems to returned to it's strength of producing nice, simple, good-not-great minis which would sell well at decent prices. The Abyssals are great fantasy plastics. The Enforcers have great designs. Forgefathers are simple, but fun. This seems like mantic's niche. I hope they remember that and work to strengthen their brand here rather than attempting to aim for premium anything.

It's the 60mm based gorilla thing. Not a fan then?

Honestly though NTRabbit, you're being a bit hyperbolic here, don't you think? paying slightly more for an actually good model, one you'll only be taking one of anyway? Little overblown response there.

 judgedoug wrote:
with Archaon being the best plastic model ever made by any company, ever.

Given that we live in a world where companies like Bandai or Hasegawa exist, I can never take seriously comments like that. I mean, really >_>.

 judgedoug wrote:
Archaon being the best plastic model ever made by any company, ever.

See kids? There really is no accounting for tastes

 Bolognesus wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
Archaon being the best plastic model ever made by any company, ever.

See kids? There really is no accounting for tastes

While I don't think he's the best thing since sliced bread, I'll agree that he is an utterly fantastic model, easily on par with some of Mierce's best stuff.

On topic, I'm impatiently waiting for my DZ stuff, ordered some Scouts and quite a lot of terrain accessory spruces (pipes, industrial, Dreadball scatter terrain). It's been sent already but since we moved house 3 days ago I'm worried there'll be problems... Luckily I don't think they use TNT here in Sweden, hopefully it's Royal Mail so it'll transfer to our normal postal service.

e: cutting it before a wild mod appears and uses red text (it's super effective)

 Bolognesus wrote:
Honestly though NTRabbit, you're being a bit hyperbolic here, don't you think? paying slightly more for an actually good model, one you'll only be taking one of anyway? Little overblown response there.

It's still $25 USD for one mini slightly smaller than a Strider. Don't care if I need 1 or 10, I'm not prepared to pay that much money for an extra 5% sharpness and a heavy chunk of resin on a mini that small. For $25 USD I'm expecting a tank multikit.

I got one as part of my pledge, didn't add any extras.

Haha, alright.

It's fairly easy to see that none of you guys have touched any recent GW kits like the Magmadroth. The plastics engineering blows away anything I have ever seen from Bandai, who to this day relies on thin frame tooling that they pioneered in the late 90's when their kits were actually innovative.

It's resulted in lazy sculpts, packed full of rookie CAD errors

Utterly and demonstrably false. Easily disproven by every plastics release of the last year.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mymearan wrote:
While I don't think he's the best thing since sliced bread, I'll agree that he is an utterly fantastic model, easily on par with some of Mierce's best stuff.

Hmm, I'd say on par with most of their range. Mierce's top tier stuff is still unreachable by any other company - you can tell they pay their contracted sculptors well (especially as they keep coming back). Archaon is simply the best engineered and sculpted plastic model. No plastics tooling can touch resin (esp lost wax) in terms of fine detail.

No, it's really not demonstrably false, it's patently true to every observer not suffering from sunk cost fallacy.

Square butts don't lie, friend

 judgedoug wrote:
Haha, alright.

It's fairly easy to see that none of you guys have touched any recent GW kits like the Magmadroth. The plastics engineering blows away anything I have ever seen from Bandai, who to this day relies on thin frame tooling that they pioneered in the late 90's when their kits were actually innovative.

Oooh, I can't let that comment slide. You're saying that because Bandai uses thin frames, a technology that works for them, they're not innovative and are inferior to GW? How do you come to that conclusion? When was the last Gundam kit you built? You do know that Bandai has continued to innovate how their models are developed and made, don't you? Like that all Gundam kits are designed using CAD and have been since around the time SEED came out. Or that they use multiple plastic types in different sections of a kit such as joints to prevent the parts from wearing down. Have you ever built a Real Grade? They have parts that are already fully articulated already in the sprue. When GW can figure out how to make their kits so that they don't need painting, then they'll be on the path to being "one of the greatest model makers." Until they can get at least that far, they will remain mediocre at best.

 NTRabbit wrote:
e: cutting it before a wild mod appears and uses red text (it's super effective)

 Bolognesus wrote:
Honestly though NTRabbit, you're being a bit hyperbolic here, don't you think? paying slightly more for an actually good model, one you'll only be taking one of anyway? Little overblown response there.

It's still $25 USD for one mini slightly smaller than a Strider. Don't care if I need 1 or 10, I'm not prepared to pay that much money for an extra 5% sharpness and a heavy chunk of resin on a mini that small. For $25 USD I'm expecting a tank multikit.

I got one as part of my pledge, didn't add any extras.

And thus it's folks like you we have to thank for the profusion of garbage on the market. Worse, garbage that could have been good if they'd just cut a couple fewer corners.

No, people like me refusing to pay $40 dollarydoos for a single non-vehicle miniature has nothing to do with whatever perception of quality in the marketplace you have.

AH. Supply andere demand stops being a thing when it doesnt sluit tour little race to the bottom. Wel thats the end of that, then. I do like how you resemble every last possible stereotype of a communications degree, there. ( Except for civility, but hey, forum. Fair 'nuff)

 Bolognesus wrote:
AH. Supply andere demand stops being a thing when it doesnt sluit tour little race to the bottom. Wel thats the end of that, then. I do like how you resemble every last possible stereotype of a communications degree, there. ( Except for civility, but hey, forum. Fair 'nuff)

The only one here whose civility is in question is you, friend. NTRabbit has been giving his opinions on Mantic product, you have been giving opinions on his opinions and him as a person.

If that's how you want to read it, by all means enjoy your own private version of reality. I'm not the one who kicked off the abrasive attitude, I'm just always happy to play along

 Bolognesus wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Which sculp are you talking about, Bolognesus? The only plague monster I recall was the bald Image Comics monster, and there's no way I'd put that in the same room as the G1 plague guy, let alone on the same shelf.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Right now, Mantic seems to returned to it's strength of producing nice, simple, good-not-great minis which would sell well at decent prices. The Abyssals are great fantasy plastics. The Enforcers have great designs. Forgefathers are simple, but fun. This seems like mantic's niche. I hope they remember that and work to strengthen their brand here rather than attempting to aim for premium anything.

It's the 60mm based gorilla thing. Not a fan then?

Honestly though NTRabbit, you're being a bit hyperbolic here, don't you think? paying slightly more for an actually good model, one you'll only be taking one of anyway? Little overblown response there.

No, not a fan of it. It lacks a lot of the confidence and balance that make the G1 so compelling. It's not bad, but just not in the same grade as Remy's classic.

Also, I have never bought any Mierce items and probably never will. For me, the slight increase in quality is just not enough to justify the higher prices. For my hobby purposes resin is an inferior medium, which means I am unwilling to pay the prices some companies demand. I would much prefer to convert and kitbash with a number of decent quality plastic kits than pay top dollar for a single assemble-and-done mini with no options. I feel like I have a better chance finding what I want with Mantic than you do. Mantic is no Mierce, Kingdom Death or Wyrd, and they compete on their competitors' turf at tremendous disadvantage.


GW and Bandai both create excellent plastics aimed at different markets. I don't see a direct comparison solving anything.

I received part of my DeadZone 2 pledge today; I'm pretty sure I'm getting two boxes due to the slip that has circled "two boxes" and the way the stuff I don't have happens to add up to the value not declared on the first box....almost anyway. Little odd, but I suppose that's the new volumetric billing that the shipping companies do where size is more costly than weight. Have to see if a second box shows up with the other half since it is a pretty hefty chunk of stuff (terrain, mats, metal models).

While I barely recalled what I ordered in the first place, I do like the look of the plastics at first glance. Between how they turned out and the early looks we had at the GCPS, I'm vaguely optimistic that Mantic can get HIPS right for a "mass-market" level of model. They're not going to be grabbing-attention like a table full of gorgeous KD:M models, but just as in life there's room in miniatures for easy, cheap and fun.

Still lots of room for improvement, but I'd be remiss to ignore the improvements already made and on display here from a model standpoint.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Bolognesus wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Which sculp are you talking about, Bolognesus? The only plague monster I recall was the bald Image Comics monster, and there's no way I'd put that in the same room as the G1 plague guy, let alone on the same shelf.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Right now, Mantic seems to returned to it's strength of producing nice, simple, good-not-great minis which would sell well at decent prices. The Abyssals are great fantasy plastics. The Enforcers have great designs. Forgefathers are simple, but fun. This seems like mantic's niche. I hope they remember that and work to strengthen their brand here rather than attempting to aim for premium anything.

It's the 60mm based gorilla thing. Not a fan then?

Honestly though NTRabbit, you're being a bit hyperbolic here, don't you think? paying slightly more for an actually good model, one you'll only be taking one of anyway? Little overblown response there.

No, not a fan of it. It lacks a lot of the confidence and balance that make the G1 so compelling. It's not bad, but just not in the same grade as Remy's classic.

Also, I have never bought any Mierce items and probably never will. For me, the slight increase in quality is just not enough to justify the higher prices. For my hobby purposes resin is an inferior medium, which means I am unwilling to pay the prices some companies demand. I would much prefer to convert and kitbash with a number of decent quality plastic kits than pay top dollar for a single assemble-and-done mini with no options. I feel like I have a better chance finding what I want with Mantic than you do. Mantic is no Mierce, Kingdom Death or Wyrd, and they compete on their competitors' turf at tremendous disadvantage.


GW and Bandai both create excellent plastics aimed at different markets. I don't see a direct comparison solving anything.

Huh. Fair enough. It is a fairly peculiar model to look at, but it has the same menacing weirdness, I guess, that the S1 has for me.
As for different materials I'll certainly agree resin has some disadvantages (good grief, the menace of storing these things safely...) so yeah, if a plastic kit works for me I'll happily take the compromise in pure sculpt quality as often as not.
I don't quite see how I seem to have gone to not having much of a chance of finding what I'm looking for with Mantic? I ***love*** affordable plastics for units I need multiples of. I love restic for monsters I'll be using units of (as long as the price is right). It's just centrepiece models (that you'd actually spend the time and effort on when painting) that I really prefer quality over a few bucks' savings. And keep in mind it's resin they promised, initially. It's really amazing how certain people (not you, to be clear) seem to consider me unreasonable for being bloody miffed about a bait-and-switch tactic, that, let's face it, yielded inferior model detail at 100% certainly a substantial cost savings to Mantic. Eh.

I interpreted your statement to mean you were always looking for quality over 'value'. I still don't see very many centerpiece models coming out of Mantic. I'm genuinely surprised that you say you are willing to spend a few dollars more for better quality and yet are still looking at Mantic's range for that top notch display piece. Is the Plague Abomination that much more impressive in the flesh?

As for the bait and switch, we're on the same page even if not the same sentence.

 judgedoug wrote:
Haha, alright.

It's fairly easy to see that none of you guys have touched any recent GW kits like the Magmadroth. The plastics engineering blows away anything I have ever seen from Bandai, who to this day relies on thin frame tooling that they pioneered in the late 90's when their kits were actually innovative.

You know, until those "demonstrably superior" GW kits can do the same stuff that the inferior Bandai high-end stuff does (no glue in anything, fully poseable, fully removeable parts to see the internal structure... you know, basically everything), or hell, what their bargain bin stuff does, I'll still think that the plastics GW does are alright and can be very pretty, but nowhere near the value they're asking for.

For the record, I've just assembled the Deathwatch box and a Ghostkeel. Also, a Real Grade RX-78-2 Gundam. The Gundam blows the other stuff right out of the water by miles.

Most of GW kits are organics and it's not possible to make HIPs poseable organic figures without ugly ball joints and no one is going to want a ball joint to show

Also, "fully poseable" isn't necessarily a good thing, it's more fiddly and harder to assemble. Gundam models are display models so it makes sense to make them poseable. GW models are gaming pieces and having mechanical models fully poseable would be overkill. Glue-less assembling isn't a plus either because again, you want sturdy models for gaming. Completely different beasts, I don't know why the comparison comes up so much.

Just got my Deadzone shipping notice They're using FedEx to get them to Australia, and estimating only 4 days to get it here, fancy

 NTRabbit wrote:
Just got my Deadzone shipping notice They're using FedEx to get them to Australia, and estimating only 4 days to get it here, fancy

Ditto. By 5pm Tuesday. One 4.7kg box. Come to daddy!

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I interpreted your statement to mean you were always looking for quality over 'value'. I still don't see very many centerpiece models coming out of Mantic. I'm genuinely surprised that you say you are willing to spend a few dollars more for better quality and yet are still looking at Mantic's range for that top notch display piece. Is the Plague Abomination that much more impressive in the flesh?

As for the bait and switch, we're on the same page even if not the same sentence.

It really is quite impressive in the flesh. I was plenty impressed with the renders already but it really shines once you can look at it from a couple more angles.
Honestly, I'd be a little surprised if you didn't change your mind at least somewhat once (properly) painted pictures start popping up.

Basically they commissioned a very, very good sculpt like this, promised to produce it in a material that wouldn't make any compromises regarding quality (certainly for a chunky thing like this, even if resin isn't your 'thing' you wouldn't have too many issues with this sort of brick in resin!), and now instead I'm looking at something that looks very good, but, could have been amazing if they'd just not compromised on quality after the end of a KS.
...Again. And I'm fairly sure that's colouring my opinion more than a little.

Well I hope I see my 80 Forge Fathers here soon. I got enough so that I could make a solid marine army out of them. I'm excited for my squats that will go with my tau

Sining wrote:
Most of GW kits are organics and it's not possible to make HIPs poseable organic figures without ugly ball joints and no one is going to want a ball joint to show

You must not be familiar with Bandai's Pokemon models, then. Or their Keroro ones. Or their Evangelion ones. Or there's Majin Bone and their MG Figurize lines. None of those lines use exposed ball joints and have well hidden articulation while having very organic sculpts.

As for snap together kits being sturdier than glu together ones, that's just bunk. I've built plenty of robot models in my time, and the old glue-together types were way less sturdy than current sbap-together ones. I don't know how many times I had to repair my old Dorvack models back in the day while some of the earliest snap-together ones I had managed to stand up to some pretty rough play.

What are HIPs? I am unfamiliar with this term.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
What are HIPs? I am unfamiliar with this term.

Since the thread has devolved to being an off-topic fest lacking any merit, I'll answer this useful question.

Hips is an acronym for high impact polystyrene. Most traditional model kits - usually any plastic models that come on sprues are hips. Hips molds are very very expensive to tool (as they are traditionally made from steel), but the plastic itself is cheap. Models with low run counts will be more expensive to pay for the tooling costs; models with high run counts will be less expensive. It is most bondable with methyl ethyl ketone (mek), which melts the polystyrene (to another piece, usually) and forms a permanent bond.

Ugly exposed ball joints? You're going to see joints one way or another if you have an articulated figure. It's just a matter of how well the joints are integrated.

But not being able to do organic snap together kits? Uh uh.

Master Grade Luffy says "Hi!"


Goku as well.



A variety of Kamen Riders have been made.



And the Pokemon line has been chugging along... (both of them are articulated at most major joints, but these are simpler kits aimed for kids)


The Goku is quite impressive the way Bandai designed his muscles- they actually flex and adjust based on the arm position, allowing him to get into very flexible poses and not look super awkward. Organics can be done as plastic kits, and look good in the process!

Any Lockdown pledgers able to tell me how many FF Steel Warriors you got? Pledge picture on KS says 10 but my Lockdown bundle bag says 5.

The Wrath of Kings style restic or whatever it is is actually very good, definitely on a par with the actual Wrath of Kings stuff I bought at Salute. Metals are poor- not awful, but close (my two metal druids I got with my Kings of War kickstarter were comparably bad) and I have requested replacements in the ticket I raised. Mantic, IMHO, need to replace their metals with the WoK style plastic, or at least find a better producer, and ramp up their HiPS usage as the hard plastic they are producing now is great for their possibly outdated 'building big armies' aim.