Mantic Games - Warpath Universe News and Rumours

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**OrlandotheTechnicoloured**

lord_blackfang wrote:
Well, that was a wash. I'd have bought almost any modern KoW mega army and 2-3 ratmen Tunnelers, but if they ever came up, I didn't catch them.

the mega bundles are here, not on the hourly release page (unless you wanted even bigger ones?)

http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/black-friday.html

the tunnellers haven't hit general release by themselves (although one does show up in the big army for the veermyn)

either because not all KS backers have had theirs yet or maybe because they don't actual have very many in stock

I was hoping they might just show up but wasn't really expecting them

**Nostromodamus**

He said KoW mega army, not Warpath.

**lord_blackfang**

I meant these: http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/kings-of-war/trident-realm-of-neritica/product/trident-realm-of-neritica-mega-force.html

All Mantic is offering for KoW are 100-packs of gak sprues from 5+ years ago.

**OrlandotheTechnicoloured**

OOps misread that

all the tunneller talk must have distracted me

**ced1106**

Woo! Zombie terrain! For £19.99!

So what's good to reach free shipping? I guess I only need 5.01 of stuff! I guess I'm looking for zombie terrain, and fantasy stuff?

http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/black-friday/product/scenery-booster-bundle-1.html

**DaveC**

Open Day coverage has started

From Mantic's own update

Star Saga

Terror in the Deep - Nameless, So Hin and Ota Sora Mercenaries

Rebs

Retake the Blackstar Expansion - Kristoline,Thorn and new VeerMyn

And from Fisty Glue Mans twitter

**OrlandotheTechnicoloured**

Oooh Mules!

**NTRabbit**

That settles another argument, looks like it really could fit 10 corporation soldiers in the troop area

**Warhams-77**

Thanks for the pics

and I really like the Star Saga expansions stuff

**DaveC**

News From Ronnie's Seminar

Deadzone:

New book next year to go along with summer campaign probably Q3
- Like Clash of Kings
- New rules, Errata and new lists including updated Veermyn
- New Scenarios
- Rules for using Star Saga miniatures in Deadzone
- Nameless faction rules
- possible faction for the Lab Techs

No plans at this time for a Warpath Nameless army as they don't have the resources needed to turn them into a full army.

Dreadball

- Rerelease will focus on 6 teams only which will be balanced against each other.
- Retailers don't like having 24 teams
- other teams added when they can be balanced with new rules
- legacy rules for old teams in the interim

Sci-Fi Terraincrate

2nd KS next year (2 or 3 KS planned) will be contemporary and/or Sci-Fi
- scatter terrain for Sci-Fi
- easier to do as no rules are required

Terraincrate involved 27 tools and there is no way Mantic could do it without KS funding they can't afford to do it otherwise.

Matsudan and Cyborg Teams
Blaine's in front (looks like he's hit the gym) he wasn't part of the KS so this might a retail exclulsive version?

Yndij and Robots

**Tyr13**

Just 6 DB teams seems kind of awful, especially after theyve bloated the roster as much as they did with their previous kickstarters... Hope it wont end up too bad. :/

**NTRabbit**

It's the bitter pill they have to swallow for expanding the roster too quickly in the first place

**Tyr13**

Oh, definitely. Still, cutting 75% of the teams is going to leave a bitter taste in, well, probably around 75% of the playerbase... possibly more, when you consider some people are going to have multiple teams...

**Theophony**

My take away is 2-3 more kickstarters.....

I understand they need the $$$$ or ££££ to grow quickly, and tooling costs money, but so many other companies made it back then by putting out quality. Look at GW. They managed to build a company by creating good quality(innovative) sculpts for the time and a solid game. They had to watch their resources and make sure the built up armies that would sell and make a profit so they could afford to grow the range. They had writers who wrote the rules, did play testing, made scratch builds, painted, did shows and all while running the business. Mantic wants to jump into a position with GW without all the sweat and hard work by getting the money from Kickstarter and if they have flops.....well it was funded by the KS, so no loss (except to the customers). Now because we bloated the universe too much with the extra teams (and didn’t steal enough of the bloodbowl fan base), we are going to go to version 10.7 or whatever they are on now and streamline it to make it playable. Yes bloodbowl has had 4 versions plus all the side games like Bloodbowl7s, but it’s also been around for decades and has gone from cardboard standees to metal figs to plastic figs.

Mantic needs to get some focus instead of watching to see which other kickstarters do good and jump in (late) on that bandwagon. Zombicide did awesome....let’s make walking dead. Spanish company did great with Heroquest, we can make some money there.

**NTRabbit**

It's pointless to use GW as an example, because they're a 42 year old company and what they've done is no longer reproducible, as the world of 2017 is not the same as the world of 1980 - and they also weren't even close to the careful, considerate company you're describing across that period.

**Theophony**

NTRabbit wrote:
It's pointless to use GW as an example, because they're a 42 year old company and what they've done is no longer reproducible, as the world of 2017 is not the same as the world of 1980 - and they also weren't even close to the careful, considerate company you're describing across that period.

Other companies today are making headway just like GW or old in these new tangled times without Kickstarter. Infinity (yes modiphus did an infinity rpg Kickstarter, but not CB). Warlord games has multiple games out there including BTGOA, which failed on Kickstarter. Knight models, I’m not aware of them doing one. All of those head are companies which are growing their lines without constantly putting out kickstarters. Now warlord has put out some dogs, Terminator and projectZ, but GW also ran some games that have died ignoble deaths. I’m not saying GW was perfect but they didn’t have this extra safety net that Mantic must keep pulling out.

**Compel**

Batman, Infinity and a few of those others aren't trying to do plastic sprues, however. It's them and the tooling costs involved in them that is the problem and often the key reason for kickstarters.

They're huge, up front costs that kickstarters provide a great deal of security for.

If your kickstarter idea for plastic sprues doesn't float, you're not stuck finding out after you've already paid 10's of thousands of pounds for tooling.

**Theophony**

Compel wrote:
Batman, Infinity and a few of those others aren't trying to do plastic sprues, however. It's them and the tooling costs involved in them that is the problem and often the key reason for kickstarters.

They're huge, up front costs that kickstarters provide a great deal of security for.

If your kickstarter idea for plastic sprues doesn't float, you're not stuck finding out after you've already paid 10's of thousands of pounds for tooling.

Warlord has a lot of plastics, BTGOA is slowly putting out plastics replacing metals. Batman is going to plastic/resin for the board game and new stuff from knight models. The only one staying metal that I know of is infinity. This is Mantic a choice to go plastic instead of metal and then plastic once they have funds. They are trying to grow too quick and using KS to do that. It’s the backers paying for it and the bad sculpts and games. It’s Mantic a choice though.

**ced1106**

It's also a backer's choice. Nobody's forcing anyone to use KS.

I think Mantic is releasing too many "lifestyle" games, and their use of KS just encourages this. IIRC, Warlord Games took over the Wargames Factory plastics and raised the prices. GW products have always been expensive. So I'm not much of a buyer from any of these companies.

If Mantic's really making the wrong business decisions, the market's going to sort itself out. Mantic originated because of GW's decisions to have expensive plastics as well as dropping the Warhammer Fantasy line.

**Compel**

Knight models has *nothing* to do with the Batman board game. - That's a completely different company.

KM have started producing models in resin, sure but that's different from hard plastic sprue tooling, which is where the significant upfront costs come from.

As for "BTGOA" - the keyword there is "slowly" - I wonder why that is? Maybe it's the expensive up front costs of hard plastic sprue tooling...

**Voss**

ced1106 wrote:
It's also a backer's choice. Nobody's forcing anyone to use KS.

I think Mantic is releasing too many "lifestyle" games, and their use of KS just encourages this. IIRC, Warlord Games took over the Wargames Factory plastics and raised the prices. GW products have always been expensive. So I'm not much of a buyer from any of these companies.

If Mantic's really making the wrong business decisions, the market's going to sort itself out. Mantic originated because of GW's decisions to have expensive plastics as well as dropping the Warhammer Fantasy line.

Well before GW dropped fantasy. Mantic started exclusively as a bottom feeder on GW.

More than the 'lifestyle' games, Mantic just lets itself get distracted with new projects. More than anything else they remind me of Spartan. Start something new with great enthusiasm and middling quality, then abandon it for the next shiny thing.

**kodos**

Theophony wrote:

Warlord has a lot of plastics.

Warlord also needed a model company as partner do get plastic tanks done for Bolt Action

if Mantic would have a partner company for terrain, a KS won't be needed either

**.Mikes.**

Theophony wrote:
My take away is 2-3 more kickstarters.....

I understand they need the $$$$ or ££££ to grow quickly, and tooling costs money, but so many other companies made it back then by putting out quality. Look at GW. They managed to build a company by creating good quality(innovative) sculpts for the time and a solid game.

You missed out the central reason they were able to expand - they went public. A lot of GW's problems especially around customer satisfaction can be traced back to the time when the people they had to appease were shareholders and not players.

Kickstarter is fantastic because it takes that burden away.

**Baragash**

Theophony wrote:
Mantic wants to jump into a position with GW without all the sweat and hard work by getting the money from Kickstarter and if they have flops.....well it was funded by the KS, so no loss (except to the customers).

Mantic's problem is when it comes to rules they think they can throw rules together in "five minutes". then lob it at the wall and hope it sticks, and unfortunately KS has absolved them of the responsibility and the exposure to reality that would curb that

There's other key issues as well, but that's probably the biggest.

**DaveC**

Star Saga KS wave 1 unboxing video. The detail looks good on the miniatures. Some bending on the scenery hopefully hot water will sort that out.

Note the Aberration is board game plastic (PVC) not resin as is said in the video.

**OrlandotheTechnicoloured**

Shipping Update - November 30th

Posted by Mantic Games (Creator)

Hi everyone,

This is just a quick update to let you know what's happening with shipping. The games are now with us, as you can see in the picture below...

However, once the Kickstarter Editions arrived, we quickly realised there was a big problem - the factory producing the games had forgotten to include the character cards for the bosses and mercenaries, which meant we weren't able to ship them immediately. This was a problem that only came to light once the copies were in our warehouse, as the sample production copies all included the cards.

But we've ordered the cards from a supplier in the UK and they're due to arrive tomorrow (December 1st). We'll need to manually insert all the cards into the boxes, which means shipping will take slightly longer to process than planned. Shipping is due to start on Monday and we're still confident of completing it within a week, despite having to add the cards. Just so you're aware - this means your missing cards may be loose in the outer box, so please check carefully before throwing the brown cardboard box away.

However, it's not all bad news because everyone is getting an extra mercenary... woo-hoo! Originally the Koris mercenary, Inkurphos, was due to be included in the Expansions Mega Bundle, however due to a slight mix-up at the factory, they've included it in all the Kickstarter Editions. Again, this was something that came to light when we received the Kickstarter Editions.

The character card for Inkurphos will come as part of Wave Two - as that is when we were originally planning to ship him - but we'll try and get a PDF to backers before then so you can start using him in your games... we'll keep you updated.

Thanks again for your patience and apologies for this slight unexpected delay.

Ah Mantic and manufacturing, even when they do it right it bites them on the butt

**lord_blackfang**

Wouldn't be Mantic without some random snafu.

**krystalking**

According to the latest update Mantic is expecting to finish shipping Star Saga by Wednesday.
Meanwhile we still have no updates on the remaining Warpath vehicles, don't think we'll be getting those before 2018.

**DaveC**

krystalking wrote:

Meanwhile we still have no updates on the remaining Warpath vehicles, don't think we'll be getting those before 2018.

we won't be getting them until 2018 update #89 covered this

Today we have a brief update on the tooling progress of the remaining vehicles for you:

Mule: the moulds are completed and we will get our first test shots sent to us this week.
Asterian vehicle: The moulds are scheduled to complete next week, with test shots to follow shortly after.
Hornet: The moulds will complete in early December, again with first test shots after.
We are really excited to have all these nearing completion and to see the results, and we are sure you are all keen to get them into your armies! If we're happy with the test shots, production will begin in December and we'll start shipping as soon as possible in January. As soon as we receive the samples we will take pictures and show them in another update.

**judgedoug**

DaveC wrote:
Dreadball

- Rerelease will focus on 6 teams only which will be balanced against each other.
- Retailers don't like having 24 teams
- other teams added when they can be balanced with new rules
- legacy rules for old teams in the interim

Tyr13 wrote:Just 6 DB teams seems kind of awful, especially after theyve bloated the roster as much as they did with their previous kickstarters... Hope it wont end up too bad. :/

NTRabbit wrote:It's the bitter pill they have to swallow for expanding the roster too quickly in the first place

There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding. The main Dreadball rulebook has EVERY team included. 29 I believe.

Six teams will be available for retail trade packaging at release.

Other teams may get resculpted and re-released with updated rules after that.