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specially as 2nd Edition of DZC was not well received because of the focus shifting towards larger models

I think the main issue with 2E is that the rules stripped a lot of the flavor and fun out of the game, moreso than any concern about the size and scale of the models getting too big for peoples liking. 2E's been around for what 5 years now, but they only really started releasing "larger models" within the past year or two.

chaos0xomega wrote:
I bet suddenly TTCombat is starting to sweat realizing how much competition is popping up around them and realizing that they didn't capitalize on Dropzone Commander while they had an effective market monopoly on "epic scale" scifi games.

It's a shame too, as they had a framework of a really great game. If the "new" owners had given the rules an unbiased pass for revisions, clarifications, and balance, it could've been special.

Even at epic scale there’s still room for a tactical rock! Hopefully there is a 3rd variant for the bigger guys or they will look very samey repeated over and over.

of course, how you will know who is the leader without at rock

and as there are 5 different Enforcer but 4 per Base I guess we see a little more variation than just the minimum amount per Base

The problem with Mantic is that they are their own worst enemy. In the quest to push GW's nose in it, Ronny and Company have forgotten the basic rule of wargames. You have to sell it and people want to play it.

Great that they want to try to get into the 6mm range of games, but the real issue is that Mantic is poor at continued support of their products.
I have no less then 5 games from them. I bought in on their KS's, I was a big fan of Mars Attacks, KOW, Dwarven Quest, and I loved the Walking Dead game.

Mantic takes the piss and treats their properties so poorly that they have developed a reputation in my small neck of the woods as cash grabbers. At this point here- NO ONE wants a mantic product, because they do not support their ranges. They come up with a halfway decent product, rush it to market, or carry it's weight through KS pledges, and then forget about it 5 minutes after the game goes to the backers. I even got a heads up the other day that Mantic is getting back into The Walking Dead business. I should be happy. A new release and be able to fill my blanks with stuff a second time around, but instead I just don't care anymore.

Mantic is not a property that resells well, either, when no one plays the games. If they really want to help themselves, and their "Great Idea Fairy's", they need to sustain support of their product, and stop looking at GW with the grudge match thinking they have carried since they left..

The worst thing about it is that they have the solid talent, but they hamstring their own efforts by the "I don't give a damn" public face.

I'm certain that Walking Dead releases dragged on for years and years, I remember being frustrated that they took up so much of the schedule when I wasn't interested in it.

Mantic is a more successful version of Spartan Games IMO, at least from a business perspective (but IMO less successful in terms of developing valuable IP as their games are too married to the idea of being not-GW to really go out and try to be something unique or different enough to stand on its own merits). They have too many ideas and want to do to many things but lack the resources to properly support it all simultaneously. To some extent its the dynamics of the market at work and the need to chase the money by catering to the "cult of the new", but if they focused on just doing one thing really well and building that out, they would eventually find themselves in a stable enough position to try doing a second or a third thing really well too.

Well, they are doing licensed games because those sell
as soon as they stop selling the licence gets too expensive or is not renewed for other reasons and they stop making it

Walking Dead was really doing well until the TV show stopped being popular and with that the game was not popular any more so the licence was not renewed (from either side)


The other thing is, making something that can also be used for other games and not just you own IP is the save bet for a small company as even if your own game is not popular, people still buy the models

Doing something on their own means finding a niche not yet covered and try to get into that before someone else is doing it in addition to making an IP

Warpath is around for a long time now, the IP slowly developing and the only really successful game within that IP was Deadzone simply because it filled a gap

the big battle SciFi always struggled and 3rd Edition saw the problem that what worked for KoW (unit footprint and multibasing) was not popular in 28mm SciFi

it was suggested many times over the years to go a different scale for the big battles and for the SciFi IP it really looks like Mantic is just searching the big battle spot that works by trial and error

the same way they are searching for the fantasy skirmish niche

It's going to be funny to see Mantic make minis with significantly less flooded undercuts than LI

And tragic to see some of the same people who say it's an inevitable limitation of the tech when GW does it completely trashing on Mantic for it.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
It's going to be funny to see Mantic make minis with significantly less flooded undercuts than LI

And tragic to see some of the same people who say it's an inevitable limitation of the tech when GW does it completely trashing on Mantic for it.

While it was shocking to see some of the models that GW made, the Warpath are bigger, 12mm vs 8mm. So there should be less.

Edited due to stupid big thumbs typing the incorrect number.

Scale has absolutely no bearing on undercuts, apart from the filled area being harder to see the smaller you get.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
It's going to be funny to see Mantic make minis with significantly less flooded undercuts than LI

And tragic to see some of the same people who say it's an inevitable limitation of the tech when GW does it completely trashing on Mantic for it.

Considering who mantic uses for their plastics production, and the quality of the undercuts on the minis they've produced for another company in the same scale, I think you're expecting too much from Mantic.

Unfortunately, Mantic and GW took so long to get a new "Epic" scale game on the market, that the surprising renaissance success of Battletech pulled me in after 20+ years of flirting with it.

For some reason I never really got into Epic 40K when it was out, despite playing most of the other games of that era like Battlefleet Gothic, Necromunda, Gorkamorka, etc. So now pushing around 6mm scale mechs, helicopters and tanks in games of Alpha Strike are how I am working hard at recapturing a facet of my youth.

I also don't know why "Epic" Warpath isn't in 6mm scale. Even if I didn't play the game proper, I would end up buying a bunch of stuff for other 6mm games.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Considering who mantic uses for their plastics production, and the quality of the undercuts on the minis they've produced for another company in the same scale, I think you're expecting too much from Mantic.

Oh, this is news to me, which smallscale game is Archon casting minis for?

Err, mantic uses renedra for the majority of its tooling.

This was 10 years ago, after the not always successful expedition to China for their tooling Archon is now doing all of their plastics

And as they are making new sculpts for the new scale to work with Archons process the chance that it turns out badly is pretty low

chaos0xomega wrote:
Err, mantic uses renedra for the majority of its tooling.

I was about to say - that hasn't been true since...2013? The last Renedra plastic was Warpath (1st edition) Orx and Forge Fathers.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Err, mantic uses renedra for the majority of its tooling.

So it's Warlord's 12mm napoleonics that have bad undercuts?

Yea Mantic's latest sprues are made by Archon and are great. I'm not aware of them using Renedra since the very early sets 15+ years ago.

Mapoleonic is fine, their ECW line is underwhelming

Huh, weird I thought they still used Renedra for all their Kings of War stuff, guess I was mistaken. I personally have not been impressed by the quality any of Mantics more recent plastics, so if thats the best that Archon can do then I think you're all going to be pretty disappointed.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Huh, weird I thought they still used Renedra for all their Kings of War stuff, guess I was mistaken. I personally have not been impressed by the quality any of Mantics more recent plastics, so if thats the best that Archon can do then I think you're all going to be pretty disappointed.

Which recent plastics did you get? Archon makes the plastic Ogres and plastic Nightstalker Butchers and Reapers. They also make all the modern Conquest kits (Wadrhun and onwards) plus their own range of dozens of sprues that can match Warhammer Underworlds for detail and complexity of part cuts.

Mantic haven't used Renedra for about 12 years. Undead, Orcs, Dwarfs, Elves and some 1st edition warpath bits only IIRC. Nothing since then.

Archon can match GW on quality.

Looks like Warpath Epic will be using Troublemaker Games terrain but they've also confirmed there will be some new terrain as well.

https://vanguardminiatures.co.uk/product-category/troublemaker-games/troublemaker-games-terrain-sets/

To be fair it is fairly similar to Mantic's 28mm terrain.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
To be fair it is fairly similar to Mantic's 28mm terrain.

Probably because Ben sculpted that too

Well, the renders so far look good. Don't particularly care if the game has legs or not, as long as the minis end up great.

The "We're not using wounds, don't mind the superheavies having a suspiciously wound like mechanic" is annoying marketing bs, but that's just how the world works these days.

AegisGrimm wrote:Unfortunately, Mantic and GW took so long to get a new "Epic" scale game on the market, that the surprising renaissance success of Battletech pulled me in after 20+ years of flirting with it.

For some reason I never really got into Epic 40K when it was out, despite playing most of the other games of that era like Battlefleet Gothic, Necromunda, Gorkamorka, etc. So now pushing around 6mm scale mechs, helicopters and tanks in games of Alpha Strike are how I am working hard at recapturing a facet of my youth.

I also don't know why "Epic" Warpath isn't in 6mm scale. Even if I didn't play the game proper, I would end up buying a bunch of stuff for other 6mm games.

they talked about this on their FB page.. basically 6mm was too small to get good enough detail in plastic. so they played around with different scales to balance good looking minis with playability.

honestly even battletech has moved more towards an 8mm scale in part so they could do the battlearmor in the same scale as the mechs, without them being too tiny to do in plastic. (and if you look at some of the sacrifices GW had to do to get plastic space marines in Imperialis, you can see some of the issues CGL had to face in the effort)

kodos wrote:This was 10 years ago, after the not always successful expedition to China for their tooling Archon is now doing all of their plastics

And as they are making new sculpts for the new scale to work with Archons process the chance that it turns out badly is pretty low

yeah, their use of Archon for the plastic production is also why they can use those wolverine tanks from the Rampart KS and the Gates of Antares concord dronetanks in firefight now. Archon makes both, making it easier to work deals to get them.

Battletech is very much still scaled to 6mm - the minis are officially (per catalyst) 1/265 scale, which is the actual equivalent of what most hobbyists understand/believe 6mm to be.

The scale that everyone throws around as being the equivalent of 6mm (1/285th scale) is based on US/NATO standards which established 1mm to equal 1ft. The problem with this, of course, is that if the community defines mm sizing to mean height to "eye level", then your average mini at 1/285 is going to be about 6'6" tall instead of the US/NATO defined standard height of 5'7". In reality the US/NATO standard says that the average human in this scale should stand 5.7mm tall to the top of the head - which actually makes 1:285 a good bit smaller than what we all would consider 6mm to mean.

8mm is roughly equivalent to somewhere between 1:180 and 1:200, which is quite a bit larger still.

Thus Catalyst changing the scale was not really anything to do with "getting good enough detail in plastic" (which is very much possible at 1/285 and smaller scales), but to align with what the broader community assesses 6mm to indicate.

Shooting and Overwatch article

https://www.manticgames.com/news/epic-warpath-the-overwatch-phase/

Some new vehicles - Plague Artillery unit and the Panther Grav Tank



And some plague minis