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 Polonius wrote:

grumpy_newenglander wrote:
Signed up as a $1.00 backer for now. Dakka posts and my general unfamiliarity with Mantic are leading me to air on the side of caution. I usually go for GW models, how does Mantic stack up detail/quality wise? I've never done a KS before, so I'm a little leery.

Well, the thing with a kickstarter is that you aren't making a purchase. You are making a pledge, and they almost certainly will provide you the "rewards" associated with that pledge, but don't think that any consumer protections apply. If they fail to deliver, or deliver late, or deliver something very different... you are stuck with it. Mantic has always delivered, and has a good track record for timely delivery. Individual packages can often be short (or plus!) items, and it can take a while to get it corrected. One of the biggest frustrations with Mantic is that every kickstarter has a huge error rate, and then they say "we have so many complaints it will take us too long to fix them all." In short, Mantic is reliable, but not strictly professional when compared to other major companies.

Mantic's models are a mixed bag. The technical quality isn't bad, and generally runs roughly at the level of early 2000's GW sprues. Compared to modern GW, Malifuax, or Warlord sprues, they are a bit underdetailed and lack posability. The aesthetic quality is a matter of taste, some like their stuff, some don't.

However, they look good painted up, and are generally cheap enough to make up for some of their downsides. here are some painted corporation troopers (the older, restic models), that I think look quite nice in a very simple color scheme.

Spoiler:

If you have the cash, and don't mind waiting a year for your toys, it's not a bad thing to take a flier on.

Non-delivers are now being investigated by various law enforcement agencies (there have been numerous articles about it). I agree with delivery of substandard items though. What can you actually do if what's delivered ends up sucking???


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 judgedoug wrote:

 MLaw wrote:
I have Enforcers and Forgefathers and yes, for the most part those HIPS are very very sharp. I also have zombies though and there's some unwanted softness there.

The zombies (and ghouls, and skeletons, and elves, and dwarves) are done by Renedra, which, amusingly, is the former head of GW's plastics division (and whose company GW bought to start their plastics)

If they have the Mantic logo on them and it's what you get when you buy Mantic, then it doesn't matter who is doing the tooling.

 scarletsquig wrote:
Mantic's hard plastic sci-fi models are excellent, details, extra parts and overall quality are just as good as GW.

I respectfully disagree. Comparing two of both companies' best kits, GW's Dark Eldar Kabalites and Mantic's Enforcers (Mantic's most varied soldier kit so far with two sprues of parts), it's clear that GW's products have more sharpness, and at least in their best kits, more variety.

HOWEVER, that said, Mantic is getting a lot closer, and I'm a big, big fan of that Enforcer sprue. True, it's not up to the level of the Kabalites, but it's still very good. I have plenty of hard plastic enforcers and will be buying more without regret or hesitation. I'd field them against my Dark Eldar with no comparative embarrassment, and both forces would look excellent on the table. Furthermore, Dark Eldar notwithstanding (one of GW's strongest lines in terms of sculpt quality, IMHO), I often prefer Mantic's designs to GW's. Again, compare the Enforcers to GW's Space Marines. The Enforcers aren't without flaws - their helmets are smaller than they should be to have heads proportional to their bodies inside them - but GW's Space Marines still look frankly cartoonish and childish next to them. (If you consider the Enforcers robots / androids and the helmet IS their head, or if you replace the heads with larger ones from another line, you're good to go. Or you can do what I do and just go with the aesthetic. It doesn't bother me anymore, and I love the Enforcer line. And truthfully, GW's Kabalites don't have believable head to body proportions either.)

The guff you sometimes hear about bad Mantic hard plastic is entirely rooted in a couple of old fantasy kits - Men-at-Arms and Goblins - that they made years ago. The new sci-fi stuff has been consistently good. Personally I'm buying all of the new hard plastic trooper kits, because you won't find better deals on them anywhere else ($1 per figure at 20 for $20), and Mantic has won my trust on hard plastic figures.

I'm not quite as sure about their hard plastic vehicles, as they've done less in that area up to now. But the signs are good enough that I plan to bite; their hard plastic terrain is great.

 Vermonter wrote:
The Enforcers aren't without flaws - their helmets are smaller than they should be to have heads proportional to their bodies inside them -

Is it fair to say Mantic ALMOST got them right?

 MLaw wrote:
What can you actually do if what's delivered ends up sucking???

Nothing. That's the catch with Kickstarter in general. You may get a great deal on something awesome, or you may get junk. The project could implode, and then you get nothing. It's a real gamble.

Has there really been a huge problem with rewards not being delivered? If so, that's deeply troubling and one more reason to steer clear of buying anything Mantic before it hits retail.

 CptJake wrote:

 Vermonter wrote:
The Enforcers aren't without flaws - their helmets are smaller than they should be to have heads proportional to their bodies inside them -

Is it fair to say Mantic ALMOST got them right?

I guess so, but by the same token, I'd say GW ALMOST got the Dark Eldar Kabalites right.

I find both the Enforcers and Kabalites excellent, with Kabalites having a noticeable but not damning edge in quality of production and variety on the sprue. But I'm not sure any company makes perfect kits aesthetically / proportionally. At some juncture you always have to choose to "suspend your disbelief" and go with the aesthetic of the product, or not.

But then, that's all a matter of taste.

 Vermonter wrote:
The Enforcers aren't without flaws - their helmets are smaller than they should be to have heads proportional to their bodies inside them - but GW's Space Marines still look frankly cartoonish and childish next to them.

This is kind of a matter of opinion. I'm a huge fan of truescale - Hasslefree Modern/PostApoc, Fife & Drum, Perry, etc, and the Mantic Enforcers look dead on to me. I frankly can't stand the 90's hamfist/melonhead aesthetic anymore that GW has a death grip on (though the Stormcast Eternals are basically truescale 1/35 models, which I love)
For example I have several units of Hasslefree's sci-fi infantry, which are truescale, and look pretty much perfect next to the Enforcers - though the Enforcers have thicker abdomens, which I attribute to the hard armor and integral jetpacks.

But I also recognize that some people like larger heads on their plastic soldiers, so I understand the complaint (for those that are looking for a nice alternative, Pig Iron Productions makes great sci fi head sprues)

 Guildsman wrote:

 MLaw wrote:
What can you actually do if what's delivered ends up sucking???

Nothing. That's the catch with Kickstarter in general. You may get a great deal on something awesome, or you may get junk. The project could implode, and then you get nothing. It's a real gamble.

Has there really been a huge problem with rewards not being delivered? If so, that's deeply troubling and one more reason to steer clear of buying anything Mantic before it hits retail.

OK, two issues here:

STUFF MISSING:

Speaking for myself, I've always considered Mantic one of the safer Kickstarter bets in terms of actually delivering. They're an existing company, for one thing. They have capital and a product line to fall back on, so a kickstarter campaign won't bankrupt them, or see them tootling off to the Bahamas with other people's money. And kickstarter funding is ultimately too important to them to allow them to just screw people over and never deliver product at all. Too much of that would damn their reputation and their future campaigns.

That said, I'm still waiting to get some items from Dreadball Xtreme that were never delivered. In my case, they shipped one team I didn't want for one that I did, and two individual figures just weren't sent at all.

Things like that have happened to me in the past with Mantic, and I've always followed up, let them know, and gotten my stuff in the end. The DBX wait has been the longest yet, and I'm not sure why. I guess the person in charge is swamped for some reason or another, and frankly they need to work on improving their response time. But I'm not concerned that I'll never get my missing items. I'm just annoyed that it has taken as long as it has this time.

STUFF SUCKING:

I'd say Mantic's hit to miss ratio, and faithfulness to concept art, has dramatically improved, to the point where I often pledge for things based on concept art and am rarely disappointed. But anytime you pledge based on concept art particularly, there is a bit of a gamble that the product won't measure up or even resemble it. On kickstarters, the safest bets are always the sculpts that are already made and shown, although even then production can let you down by not producing them to the same quality as the master resins. Here too, I don't have an issue with Mantic anymore. They've come a long way.

The larger head quibble sometimes is more about the fact that helmets are freakin big. Otherwise I agree about the clownish proportions sentiment. I wouldn't say Mantic is spot on in proportions and anatomy but they certainly have reeled in the "heroic" scale thing to a level that doesn't feel absurd.

It's a shame that GW has taught people to expect such odd anatomy.. they're like the Rob Leifeld of wargames. I am very happy that Mantic is taking noticeable efforts to step out of the GW knockoff shadow.

 judgedoug wrote:

 Vermonter wrote:
The Enforcers aren't without flaws - their helmets are smaller than they should be to have heads proportional to their bodies inside them - but GW's Space Marines still look frankly cartoonish and childish next to them.

This is kind of a matter of opinion. I'm a huge fan of truescale - Hasslefree Modern/PostApoc, Fife & Drum, Perry, etc, and the Mantic Enforcers look dead on to me. I frankly can't stand the 90's hamfist/melonhead aesthetic anymore that GW has a death grip on (though the Stormcast Eternals are basically truescale 1/35 models, which I love)
For example I have several units of Hasslefree's sci-fi infantry, which are truescale, and look pretty much perfect next to the Enforcers - though the Enforcers have thicker abdomens, which I attribute to the hard armor and integral jetpacks.

But I also recognize that some people like larger heads on their plastic soldiers, so I understand the complaint (for those that are looking for a nice alternative, Pig Iron Productions makes great sci fi head sprues)

I was trying to be honest about what many have regarded as the Enforcer's most significant flaw. Personally, I see what they're saying, but it doesn't bother me. I definitely didn't mean to imply that GW's unrealistic take on large heads was better. If I had my druthers, I'd make the Enforcer heads slightly larger, but nowhere near as big as GW's. But that's a pretty minor quibble for me.

Actually, Judgedoug, maybe we can reach a consensus after the Deadzone Infestation plastics arrive. If the Peacekeeper heads are proportional to their bodies and not over-sized, but those heads turn out to be the same size as a standard Enforcer helmet head (and therefore couldn't fit inside one), would we then agree that the helmet head proportions aren't spot-on?

If I'm just speaking for myself, my biggest issue with the HIPS Enforcer heads is that they aren't quite as crisply detailed as Mantic's PVC Enforcer heads were. But they get so very close that, again, even that's not a big issue for me.

Bottom line, we both love the kit. Personally I find the heads require some suspension of disbelief, which I'm happy to provide, but nowhere near the level of disbelief required for a GW space marine, which I just can't swallow anymore.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MLaw wrote:
It's a shame that GW has taught people to expect such odd anatomy.. they're like the Rob Leifeld of wargames. I am very happy that Mantic is taking noticeable efforts to step out of the GW knockoff shadow.

That's a brilliantly apt and very sad analogy. I'd exhalt it if it didn't depress me.

I love it when Mantic steps away from GW's aesthetic. I'm disappointed when they decide not to, as with their Orx Marauder Commandos, but I do understand that it probably makes financial sense in some cases.

I must have gotten a bad casting (on both bags) on my DZ PVC enforcers. Sharp isn't even close to being what I would use to describe those Enforcers. I am happy I hadn't built half of them because I can put the HIPS parts on there to shore up some of the softness.

Well the pvc era is slowly ending as both Mantic and Privateer Press transition away, so thankfully in a few years it'll be a sad fading memory

I haven't been following em lately... is privateer moving to HIPS or whatever now?

 Vermonter wrote:

 Guildsman wrote:

 MLaw wrote:
What can you actually do if what's delivered ends up sucking???

Nothing. That's the catch with Kickstarter in general. You may get a great deal on something awesome, or you may get junk. The project could implode, and then you get nothing. It's a real gamble.

Has there really been a huge problem with rewards not being delivered? If so, that's deeply troubling and one more reason to steer clear of buying anything Mantic before it hits retail.

OK, two issues here:

STUFF MISSING:

Speaking for myself, I've always considered Mantic one of the safer Kickstarter bets in terms of actually delivering. They're an existing company, for one thing. They have capital and a product line to fall back on, so a kickstarter campaign won't bankrupt them, or see them tootling off to the Bahamas with other people's money. And kickstarter funding is ultimately too important to them to allow them to just screw people over and never deliver product at all. Too much of that would damn their reputation and their future campaigns.

That said, I'm still waiting to get some items from Dreadball Xtreme that were never delivered. In my case, they shipped one team I didn't want for one that I did, and two individual figures just weren't sent at all.

Things like that have happened to me in the past with Mantic, and I've always followed up, let them know, and gotten my stuff in the end. The DBX wait has been the longest yet, and I'm not sure why. I guess the person in charge is swamped for some reason or another, and frankly they need to work on improving their response time. But I'm not concerned that I'll never get my missing items. I'm just annoyed that it has taken as long as it has this time.

STUFF SUCKING:

I'd say Mantic's hit to miss ratio, and faithfulness to concept art, has dramatically improved, to the point where I often pledge for things based on concept art and am rarely disappointed. But anytime you pledge based on concept art particularly, there is a bit of a gamble that the product won't measure up or even resemble it. On kickstarters, the safest bets are always the sculpts that are already made and shown, although even then production can let you down by not producing them to the same quality as the master resins. Here too, I don't have an issue with Mantic anymore. They've come a long way.

I really should have clarified better. The first part was more of a general comment/critique on Kickstarter, not Mantic. While most miniature kickstarters work out fine, there aren't any real codified protections for backers if things go pear-shaped. For better or worse, backers are taking a risk when they pledge. As for Mantic, this is the first I've heard about people not getting rewards, to the point of involving law enforcement. As a potential customer, this is a hugely important issue to me.

As for stuff sucking, that's a subjective issue. For me, some new kits are very nice. Some, however, stand out as obvious failures. Personally, I don't feel confident enough to pledge money for models that currently only exist as concept art.

 Necros wrote:
I haven't been following em lately... is privateer moving to HIPS or whatever now?

They're dipping their toes. At least one of the new multi-jack kits is in HIPs, and at least one colossal is in Hips.

They've also expanded the use of true resin from Battle Engines and Colossals to also include Jacks and even Warcasters.

New Blaine mini at 2808 Backers - added free to Ultimate Tyrant and Total Warfare - $8 otherwise Ks exclusive. Speaking of Total Warfare they added another 150 at the $235 price.



New Asterian Chira renders




Coming soon veer-Myn Tunnel Runners

Hmm Blaine is awesome, tunnel runners look interesting. I wonder how many they will bundle and at what value.

The smaller expansion bundles are $40 so I'd say another $40 bundle for 3

EDIT scratch that they said they are better priced than 3 for $40

Blaine looks neat. That looks like some kind of Plague infected weapon. How does that work? Tunnel Runners are neat as well. Remind me of the Cobra Buzz Boar. I would've preferred to see the GCPS Hornet though first since they don't have a HIPS vehicle.

The flyer is looking better in the new renders. Still, i prefer the corp though.. it's the guardsman in me I guess.

Why 2808 for Blaine? Does that number mean something in Manticese?

2808 is the number of backers (per Kicktraq) for Deadzone Infestation (KS actually shows 2810)

Yeah, I'll catch this stuff on clearance. Mantic holding Blaine hostage for TW and up is that little thing that tipped me over into ambivalence. The TW tax had already put me at the edge. Everyone else enjoy.

If they go with the third design, I suppose some Skaven players will be very happy not needing to buy $35 Doomwheels.

 MLaw wrote:
Yeah, I'll catch this stuff on clearance. Mantic holding Blaine hostage for TW and up is that little thing that tipped me over into ambivalence. The TW tax had already put me at the edge. Everyone else enjoy.

What are you talking about? I'm just adding $8 onto my normal $115 pledge to get him
Like you're upset he's not free at pledges lower than TW?

 timetowaste85 wrote:
If they go with the third design, I suppose some Skaven players will be very happy not needing to buy $35 Doomwheels.

looking at the size of that rat in there I'd suspect they're rather a bit small for a doomwheel.

 pretre wrote:

That would be awesome and make them a bunch of cash. Hard plastic not-SOB.

Hey! They can't do that until AFTER I get my Toughest Girls in the Galaxy sisters!

I dropped to the rulebook pledge and will reconsider when the pledge manager appears. Not too fussed about an army deal, but a lot of bits and pieces appeal, and we may have a better idea what the Pathfinders, Steel Warriors, jetbikes and Nightcrawler plastics look like.

Might even have got my KoW 2 rulebooks by then!

 Barzam wrote:
Tunnel Runners are neat as well. Remind me of the Cobra Buzz Boar.

An asymmetrical design like the Buzz Boar would be a good idea. Sticking the cockpit in the middle of the wheel has obvious problems with regard to visibility, so having the driver in a sponson makes more sense.

Tunnel Runners look closest in equivalent to the Enforcer jetbike than anything

Disappointed Blaine is just in peacekeeper armour, a let down after the dinosaur and the jetbike.

 NTRabbit wrote:
Disappointed Blaine is just in peacekeeper armour, a let down after the dinosaur and the jetbike.

I'm just glad we didn't get Blaine shrunken to tiny size so he'd fit inside a Strider. I am not a fan of those things when they have open cockpits to display their mini-me drivers.

 Vermonter wrote:

 NTRabbit wrote:
Disappointed Blaine is just in peacekeeper armour, a let down after the dinosaur and the jetbike.

I'm just glad we didn't get Blaine shrunken to tiny size so he'd fit inside a Strider. I am not a fan of those things when they have open cockpits to display their mini-me drivers.

Strider my arse, he'd have been in a complete custom job, just like his bike