Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 kodos wrote:
Matt talking about he general ideas behind and why they do it
also there are already much more responses than expected and it is very close between full plastic and full digital which let them consider both

Matt also mentions why they struggle with Rebs currently because staying true to the background makes it hard for a plastic release and not easy to port them from Deadzone to Firefight
He also mentions that there will be 1-2 new factions next year

Now that licensing sprues from other manufacturers is a thing it would be great to see the Maelstrom's Edge Broken as the Rebs sprue, perfect fit.

That set is a good example of what Matt said already during 2nd Edition Deadzone they want to avoid, the humanoid with different heads aliens
and simply just having a frame with bodies and legs/arms you can apply randomly might be a solution but not be considered a good set for beginners

and 1 of each on a frame will end up with people not having enough of what they want but too much of everything else

but I still hope they figure something out for them that gets the variety of aliens they want and is usable for the players

Ronnie talks about the Warpath poll in the latest Black Jack Legacy video.

Thousands of responses, 80% in favour 25% STLs, 55% plastics so they will be going ahead but they haven’t decided in what way yet.

Erfgh. I would not be making any business decisions based on survey results alone. I've seen a number of smaller publishers in the tabletop games arena run these surveys about what they should do next and what people are interested in, they get tons of response, overwhelming support indicating that theres demand behind a certain product or whatever, so they go ahead and make it, and then crickets - nobody buys it. Its very easy for someone to say "I want this thing to exist", but that doesn't mean that once it does exist they will rush out to open their wallet and buy it.

Jamey Stegmaier had a pretty good blog entry about this:

https://stonemaiergames.com/if-you-want-it-well-make-it-but-will-you-buy-it/

Long story short, he received a lot of feedback that there was a need for improved accessibility (the playing cards were not vision friendly) for his hit board game, wingspan (if you haven't heard of it, it was one of those games that came out and was selling out before stores could even get it on the shelves, one of those rare board game successes where theres millions (1.7 million copies to be exact) of copies printed and sold, etc.). He ran a survey, received overwhelming responses that people did want them, printed 2500 sets of these vision-friendly cards as a trial run... and then in a month after launching them only managed to sell 175 copies.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Erfgh. I would not be making any business decisions based on survey results alone.

Agreed. GMT Games has a P500 system which they've been using for *years*.

Buyers of a game *approve* of a charge, and when they have 500 such buyers, their cards *are* charged. While GMT customers are still paying much like a webstore, I think there's more commitment involved per buyer, even if perhaps there are fewer actual buyers than those who are "just interested". https://www.gmtgames.com/t-GMTP500Details.aspx

Also, of course, there's KS for crowdfunding and mebbe Patron. Whatever works.

I suppose they could do a limited release, perhaps a couple of sprues in a starter set and see what the response is like?

But the difficulty then is that perhaps the starter set does get some momentum, which is then lost when there is the delay of tooling new sets or planning future releases and that initial group of early adopters get bored playing with just a couple of factions with a limited range.

I don't envy them making the decision, but I am glad that Mantic is still trying to stay in the wargaming industry and planning things like this, and not just doing the one-off licensed board games and the like, which are doubtless more profitable. Ultimately it's better for us as consumers that there are at least a few alternatives to GW games.

Guys. Guys! I have a breakthrough idea for Mantic. They could just... do a KS

Doing a KS if this is a plastic release was said in the very beginning

And by now Mantic is one of the few who managed to turn a KS into a successful retail game

My Terrain Crate 3 items arrived today.
I pledged for the 'alien forest' set, with some of the forest/alien forest neoprene forest shapes and added on the craters.

1. The main item I pledged for, the alien forest items are fantastic. Good solid heavy plastic with magnet holes to allow some modularity. I'm really glad I got these, I just need to figure out some paint schemes for them.
2. The neoprene cutout forest are exactly what I expected and will be useful in games.
3. The craters are disappointing. Very thin - feels like they're made of the stuff board game inserts are made of. They also have a 1cm flat edge around them.

Also, the forest pieces were all bagged and numbered, I'm not sure if there were supposed to be a fixed amount of specific plants or not.
I received: #1 (x3), #2 (x3), #3 (x3), #4 (x4), #5 (x2), #6 (x2)

did not pledge the craters as I expected them to be some kind of vacuum formed plastic (and those kind of craters were already disappointing from GW)
best way to handle those will be to glue them on a base and fill them with some kind of resin foam

but good to know that the forest items are good as those were the main thing anyway

Did you get a shipping notification from Mantic?

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
My Terrain Crate 3 items arrived today.
I pledged for the 'alien forest' set, with some of the forest/alien forest neoprene forest shapes and added on the craters.

1. The main item I pledged for, the alien forest items are fantastic. Good solid heavy plastic with magnet holes to allow some modularity. I'm really glad I got these, I just need to figure out some paint schemes for them.
2. The neoprene cutout forest are exactly what I expected and will be useful in games.
3. The craters are disappointing. Very thin - feels like they're made of the stuff board game inserts are made of. They also have a 1cm flat edge around them.

Also, the forest pieces were all bagged and numbered, I'm not sure if there were supposed to be a fixed amount of specific plants or not.
I received: #1 (x3), #2 (x3), #3 (x3), #4 (x4), #5 (x2), #6 (x2)

Good to know! Also have the forest in my pledge with a few other stuff (think I have the "debris" one too), so if they are good, that's gonna be fun! Craters seems to be vac-formed stuff by your description, a bit disappointing really. I was expecting them to be the same material as the trees and stuff. If they are vac-formed, we might be able to use them as mould and make more at least (did that before with another vac-forced scenery with some success).

 mattl wrote:
Did you get a shipping notification from Mantic?

No. Just some emails from UPS. First to say they'd received the package. Then a couple with the delivery date.

I got the 6' x 4' mat, the forest crate, and the scatter terrain crate. Likewise just a UPS notification.

Quality of the mat ('Grim Battlefield') is good - I'd say as good as the DeepCut ones in terms of print quality. Certainly not as blurred as previous efforts from DeadZone, and not so thick that it weighs a ton when rolled up. Some fold marks from the box it originally came in, but these feel minor. It also comes with a handy (albeit extremely cheap-feeling) carry bag for when it is rolled up!

The detail on the pieces does feel like what was advertised from the renders and painted examples. I feel the main weakness of the PVC material is on thin elements that can be bendy, but this has all been sculpted as very chunky and with as few discrete pieces as possible. It very much does feel like you could paint, varnish, and toss loosely in a box without fear of damage. The trees are also alien enough that I think they could work at any scale, which is a bonus!

New faction sounds like it’ll be what dreams are made of.

Got my terrain box today! I had forgotten the exact content of my pledge so that was a fun unboxing!

I got the forest crate and the battlefield scatter terrain crate, along most mat template set for forests/ruins.

Each crate have so many pieces in there, that's a lot of terrain in each one! Gonna be really fun to get these all out and check them in more details later! Looks really good for a first impression too

The mats template sets are also pretty cool, print is nice and good quality!

Though I had the craters but after checking my pledge, I skipped those apparently

my terrain crate box arrived (same day as the 5x2mm magnets from amazon....)

small unboxing:

That looks crisp!

More new releases on preorder for Firefight and Deadzone next week. Looks like Enforcer stuff - weapons platform, mech/exo suit?

I wanto to know more!

M.

you can see the full models shortly here (0:58):

Warpath epic scale KS sign up link
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/manticgames/warpath-the-game-of-epic-scale-sci-fi-warfare?ref=6nivst

Q12024
HIPs plastic for 4 races Plague, Enforcers, Asterians, Forgefathers
Terrain
Some stl support

Sci-Fi vid (don’t have time to watch right now)



Some FF/DZ stuff previewed

pipped me to it - I'm just catching up on the open day videos!

Nightstalkers in Warpath courtesy of Mazon Labs effing around and finding out.

https://www.manticgames.com/news/warpath-kickstarter-announcement/

First in a series of weekly updates on Warpath.

When you launch with 4+ factions on a budget that is less than what GW HQ spends on coffee stirrers...

I'm sure Mantic will make $3-400k on the Kickstarter, if not much, much more.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
When you launch with 4+ factions on a budget that is less than what GW HQ spends on coffee stirrers...

Poor shaming a company. Great look.

I dont think hes poor shaming, I think hes pointing out that Mantic is launching a larger and more complete game than Legions Imperialis despite being a fraction of the size of GW.

Oh, right. My bad, apologies. First thing in the morning and I wasn't processing as I should.