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@Sculptin' Zombie - Found your blog. Excellent stuff! I'll be following your work, best of luck to you.

 NTRabbit wrote:

 angelofvengeance wrote:
I confess I'm not particularly fond of any of the aircraft. Not much character to them at all IMO. That or I've been severely spoiled by GW's excellent kits. Probably the latter...

Do you mean FW? I think all of the FW flyers are great, but most of the GW-proper flyers look like rancid ass.

I meant GW as a whole. With notable exceptions to the plastic vanilla marines and Space Wolves aircraft.

 angelofvengeance wrote:

 NTRabbit wrote:

 angelofvengeance wrote:
I confess I'm not particularly fond of any of the aircraft. Not much character to them at all IMO. That or I've been severely spoiled by GW's excellent kits. Probably the latter...

Do you mean FW? I think all of the FW flyers are great, but most of the GW-proper flyers look like rancid ass.

I meant GW as a whole. With notable exceptions to the plastic vanilla marines and Space Wolves aircraft.

The Doghead Barge, the Flying Cathedral, the Space Guppy, the VTOL Space Guppy, the death croissant, the Tau thing I don't even know how to make fun of are all terrible, and the Eldar and Deldar GW flyers are average at best, while the Ork flyers look cool, but can be beaten by any Ork player worth his or her salt with a 1/48 WW2 plane kit and liberal use of the bitz box and Morkspiration. Or Gorkspiration. Only the Nephilim and Valkyrie are good, and the Valkyrie is hardly the torch bearer for unique character.

e: I guess the Heldrake is technically fine? Just the mechanical dragon aesthetic never really grabbed me, but then again I don't like Chaos stuff much on the whole anyway.

Looking forward to seeing a lot of this stuff at retail. Glad the Kickstarter has done so well.

 NTRabbit wrote:


The Doghead Barge, the Flying Cathedral, the Space Guppy, the VTOL Space Guppy, the death croissant, the Tau thing I don't even know how to make fun of are all terrible, and the Eldar and Deldar GW flyers are average at best, while the Ork flyers look cool, but can be beaten by any Ork player worth his or her salt with a 1/48 WW2 plane kit and liberal use of the bitz box and Morkspiration. Or Gorkspiration. Only the Nephilim and Valkyrie are good, and the Valkyrie is hardly the torch bearer for unique character.

I think the Eldar/Deldar flyers are pretty awesome, while I really dislike all the human vehicles with severe intensity. Tau/Nid stuff is ok, Necron/Ork stuff is pretty goofy... for the most part, though, I'd agree their flyers just look silly.

One man's art is another man's garbage. and all that.

For the Imperial GW flyers it's more than just aesthetics, apart from the Nephilim/Cathedral and Valkyrie they're all technically bad as well, with flawed designs that do things like block pilot vision, have weapons blocked by parts of the fuselage, rocket exhausts pointing into engine intakes, wildly disobey aerodynamics well beyond suspension of disbelief, etc

It's only concept art, but the Hornet seems to be in front of them from the start, hopefully it stays that way from paper to CAD to production.

I definitely like the Corp flyer better than any of GW's SM flyers.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I definitely like the Corp flyer better than any of GW's SM flyers.

Ditto. And I won't even be collecting Corp or Enforcer.... though I might get a couple of those flyers to paint up as terrain for Infinity.

I see they just posted a drawing of some sort of... half-tracked... trike... thing? If THAT is the kind of 'trike' that people were talking about... I could probably get behind it- if it pans out to renders/real life as nicely as the drawing.

e;fb

Yeah ok, that's a bit different.

Oh dear. That looks like one of the sillier toy creations from the '80s He-Man cartoon.

It does look a bit Saturday morning cartoon.

I'll take 12.

 Azazelx wrote:

sculptin'zombie wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:

The size of that vast untapped market is immense, and Mantic need to continue to improve and be willing to take on board criticism/feedback of their models instead of ignoring them at the behest of those most emotionally invested in them. There's been plenty of valid critiques brought up in this thread over the last however-many pages that makes me wonder how certain things got through to the KS. Then again, I work in a large enough organisation to know that often the people who make certain decisions aren't always the best people to make those particular decisions. I've spent the last 7 months at work cleaning up someone else's mess and making improvements to the way certain things are run. No reason to think it's any different at Mantic or anywhere else.

nope, no one at Mantic was doing this job (same person in charge for 3 years), at least regarding miniature improvement. As I said before all efforts have been in other departements.

as for listening to "The vocal folks", if you have something to say you should say it in the KS comments, they won't read comments here, at my time in Mantic when I (or someone else) would read the forum or bring some comments to the management's attention I was just told I shouldn't read it or pay attention because people here (or another forum) are "mean". At least it was 1 year ago, comments sounds more positive now, maybe they should start reading again!

The KS comments are too vast, and anything of value gets lost unless picked up by the general hive-mind. They're also a toilet. We did have one of the Mantic staffers mention that they were following this thread earlier on, so I'm satisfied with that. I don't expect them to spend hours replying.

I feed anything I think is useful from forums back in a non-mean manner either through e-mail to Stew or in the RC forums

Ah so it was a half track trike hopefully the front face armour is toned down in look in the final sculpt like the tank/APC was but I'd probably take the 3 for $40.

The Plague always struck as more Firefly Reavers - the good thing about the Hornet being a dual kit is that if you don't like the added plague gubbins you can just build the GCPS version with one or 2 gubbins on it.

 insaniak wrote:
Oh dear. That looks like one of the sillier toy creations from the '80s He-Man cartoon.

It does, but the artwork for the tank did as well, and looked quite different by the time it was done and much better for it.

100 more Utimate Tyrant pledges just opened up.

I've been trying to place how I'm getting a sense of familiarity about it... it feels kind of like a cross between a Kettenkrad and a 6 Rad, like someone made a Kettenkrad the size of a 6 Rad, and then put the 6 Rad armour and turret over the top.

Shipping Estimates are updated

We will ship your pledges from the UK.

Warfare

As a rough estimate, the Advanced Warfare pledge level will cost about $10 to ship in the UK, $15 in the EU, $20 in the USA and Canada, and around $25 to Australia and the rest of the world. This may increase or decrease based on the quantity of stretch goals we might unlock and your carrier choices.

Advanced Warfare

As a rough estimate, the Advanced Warfare pledge level will cost about $15 to ship in the UK, $20 in the EU, $25 in the USA and Canada, and around $50 to Australia and the rest of the world. This may increase or decrease based on the quantity of stretch goals we might unlock and your carrier choices.

Total Warfare

As a rough estimate, the Total Warfare pledge level will cost about $15 to ship in the UK, $25 in the EU, $60 in the USA and Canada, and around $70 to Australia and the rest of the world. The USA Value may decrease if we can secure a shipper in the US to dispatch US kickstarter pledges. This may increase or decrease based on the quantity of stretch goals we might unlock and your carrier choices.

Ultimate Tyrant

As a rough estimate, the Total Warfare pledge level will cost about $15 to ship in the UK, $25 in the EU, $90 in the USA and Canada, and around $125 to Australia and the rest of the world. The USA Value may decrease if we can secure a shipper in the US to dispatch US kickstarter pledges. This may increase or decrease based on the quantity of stretch goals we might unlock and your carrier choices.

Dat shipping

Hmmmmmm.... Those vermen weapons platforms might make excellent, cheaper mek guns for my orks...

 NTRabbit wrote:
I've been trying to place how I'm getting a sense of familiarity about it... it feels kind of like a cross between a Kettenkrad and a 6 Rad, like someone made a Kettenkrad the size of a 6 Rad, and then put the 6 Rad armour and turret over the top.

It reminded me a bit like a half track crossed with a SdKfz 222 armoured car.

Sure, maybe tone it down a little, but yeah, seems good. In saying that, I'm happy with my main choices of Plague, Corporation and Interceptors, with probably the hornets as the free ships?

Ouch with the shipping. I had been idly considering upping to an Ultimate Tyrant pledge, but tacking on an extra $65 for shipping is probably going to keep me down at Advanced Warfare level and buying what I know I like rather than padding it with maybes like I would be with UT. It's not Mantic's fault that international shipping sucks, but given Mantic's historic packing accuracy rate I'm not interested in rolling the dice that much a year in advance.

I realize there's no much sympathy in the international community for that, but it is a strong incentive to wait for retail on the things that have not yet been seen.

Harsh shipping costs. But they do show how much of the bill Mantic has been footing so far with $10 flat rate shipping across the board on most previous KS.

Well, the Ultimate Tyrant box will be massive..

Over 1000 backers at the $1 mark. That's unusually high.

 Mort wrote:

So you're pissed off at your ex-employer. You feel you have good reason to be. That's great!

But... what is the point of your rants here so far? To warn us that some of Mantic's future minis will be hit or miss? We knew that already - hell, some of GW's figs are 'hit or miss'.

So what's your agenda, other than to bash your ex-employer? What 'news and rumors' can you offer?

The news that with Mantic burning through sculptors at a quick rate, future Mantic minis might be more miss than hit? There have been plenty of misses in this KS already, whether you agree or not, and the message that the concepts and quality will not be stabilising and improving in the foreseeable future is a pertinent one, I feel.

There's also the news, or rumour if you prefer, that Mantic cares about quality and customers almost to the same degree as GW. I've said earlier that I suspected that much, given the dreck that Mantic hasn't been shy about putting out. Nice to have it confirmed.

And then there's the hint about what Mantic are like to work with. Now, it'd take a long while, a lot of sculptor turnover, and an awful lot of desperation for Mantic to come knocking at the doors of the likes of me! Also, I've been wondering about the 'professionalism' of, as you say, bashing an ex-employer like this, the dirty laundry in public, the reputation you might accrue, etc. To be honest I've come to the conclusion that it's good to know what Mantic are like to work for, and better to know in this way than not at all. There's too much vague, subjective, contradictory, and plain nonexistant info in this tiny industry as it is, even when you have the brains of a handful of pro sculptors to pick, every so often, and I like having one more concrete nugget to squirrel away.
What's more, like Vermonter I now know who Sculptin'zombie is, the degree of his established reputation and - from what little I've seen - his cool-headedness in this business. I can't easily imagine that these little exposés are just kneejerk tantrums, let alone from a notorious and unreliable individual; and to be honest, the bit about emigrating on the promise of a full time job, to have the rug pulled out from under you, by itself goes a fair bit towards explaining them in my eyes.

Holy gak 90 dollars? What the what? When I could order this crap free from the mantic website or miniature market at retail? I'm gonna have to do some thinking....

 scarletsquig wrote:
Over 1000 backers at the $1 mark. That's unusually high.

Just around a 50% increase from DZ:I. Shipping for the top level pledge is a 500% increase. THAT's unusually high.

 GrimDork wrote:
Holy gak 90 dollars? What the what? When I could order this crap free from the mantic website or miniature market at retail? I'm gonna have to do some thinking....

I'm trying to talk my friend out of ultimate tyrant. We were going to split shipping, but I only wanted one battle group... So that's a lot to pay.

I'd rather wait for retail.

 Vermis wrote:

The news that with Mantic burning through sculptors at a quick rate, future Mantic minis might be more miss than hit? There have been plenty of misses in this KS already, whether you agree or not.

I don't agree so no, your subjective assessment does not stand on its own merits

Looks like Marauders are going to be added at the last minute!