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Going thru the games and what else is around

Deadzone is pretty unique as it has real 3D instead of 2D on different levles, not something everyone likes as you need the table for it, and no one else offers something similar (a reason why I think they are using Deadzone as base for their Halo game) and the only real alternative being Infinity but that one is also much more detailed

Kings of War is the streamlined R&F games comparable to several historical rules with the only difference being no formation changes
there are better R&F games, but all of them are historicals and most of them Napoleonic (Lasalle or General d'Armee)
the medieval or ancient R&F games are not much different just having different levels on details for units

(compared to those, Warhammer Fantasy is a mass-skirmish game with formation rules and the single models being way to important to catch the R&F feeling, Mantic does not offer anything similar, and the games that come close are again Napoleonic, Sharp Practice for example)

FireFight is pretty much the standard SciFi alternate activation game, nothing special to see here but games in that genre come and go as everything that is not 40k or has models that are useable 1:1 for it are ignored anyway (no matter how unique the gameplay might be)

Armada, a fantasy version of a historical game and pretty much the only one out there and all credits or complains go to Warlord Games anyway

I haven't played DSO yet so cannot say something about it
Dreadball is a sports game, adds in with BB being Fantasy American Football, Guildball being Fantasy Football and Dreadball being SciFi Basketball, a niche within a niche

Vanguard being a good game and again alone out there in what it is doing (Mortheim is focused on campaigns and other fantasy skirmish games need more models), yet Mantic wanted it to be the entry to KoW which was a dead end as a Skirmish never translates well into R&F games (not even in historicals, you are better off with a dedicated force for Sharp Practice and General d'Armee than trying to get units working in both)

the Boardgames are Boardgames and depends if you like the setting they try to catch or not (Walking Dead is not for me as I am not intrested, neither the comics nor the TV show)

so for me the rules they have are good in doing their thing with not a lot of alternatives out there in the same genre

I'd agree with all the above, and add that Deadzone, when it came out, was one of the most novel, slick and inspired systems ever, even though it was a 2012 runaway success Kickstarter based mostly on sketches and low prices and could have been just phoned in after collecting the money. Probably the only reason it didn't become the "industry standard" for skirmish games is that it doesn't really work without a bespoke line of terrain. And some healthy dose of anti Mantic bias of course.

For me the fiction just didn't grab me, and I was turned off by the rules innovation. Maybe I should give it another look. I don't really love mantic's Sci Fi factions though tbh, I think they made some bad calls right at the bottom in terms of faction design and it unfortunately puts me off their Sci Fi games. I like a lot of the models (the vehicles in particular are great) and some of the factions, but Asterians have really ugly designs to me and I've never seen a Veermyn model I liked the look of, and I'm not a huge fan of the Marauder aesthetic. Enforcers are alright and plague is interesting, but again I don't love the aesthetic they landed on - a little less saturday morning cartoon and a little more body horror would have worked better for me. The only ones I really like are the Forgefathers, and even then it's only the ones with fully enclosed helmets I really enjoy.

A shame, because I was really ready to give mantic sci fi a good shake.

I have only ever heard good things about the rules though to be fair.

What I really appreciate about the fluff is that all the factions are immensely competent. The world didn't go to gak because their Elf equivalent fell asleep at the wheel while safeguarding the galaxy or because humans are cartoonishly greedy or intolerant or any other usual trope.

For example, Asterians are watching for Plague outbreaks kinda like Eldar were supposed to watch for Necrons. They try to keep other races away from infected systems, if someone opens a jar of Plague anyway they send robotic forces to assist, but if that doesn't work they have a cloaked planet killer in every system to wipe the planet before Plague can spread.

 Da Boss wrote:
For me the fiction just didn't grab me, and I was turned off by the rules innovation. Maybe I should give it another look. I don't really love mantic's Sci Fi factions though tbh, I think they made some bad calls right at the bottom in terms of faction design and it unfortunately puts me off their Sci Fi games. I like a lot of the models (the vehicles in particular are great) and some of the factions, but Asterians have really ugly designs to me and I've never seen a Veermyn model I liked the look of, and I'm not a huge fan of the Marauder aesthetic. Enforcers are alright and plague is interesting, but again I don't love the aesthetic they landed on - a little less saturday morning cartoon and a little more body horror would have worked better for me. The only ones I really like are the Forgefathers, and even then it's only the ones with fully enclosed helmets I really enjoy.

A shame, because I was really ready to give mantic sci fi a good shake.

I have only ever heard good things about the rules though to be fair.

Agreed with this. I want to like the Asterians, Veermyn, and Enforcers. Every so often I think to myself "these are cheap, maybe I'll pick them up", but then I go through the model range and see theres only one or two minis I kinda like while the rest are kinda gross.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
What I really appreciate about the fluff is that all the factions are immensely competent. The world didn't go to gak because their Elf equivalent fell asleep at the wheel while safeguarding the galaxy or because humans are cartoonishly greedy or intolerant or any other usual trope.

For example, Asterians are watching for Plague outbreaks kinda like Eldar were supposed to watch for Necrons. They try to keep other races away from infected systems, if someone opens a jar of Plague anyway they send robotic forces to assist, but if that doesn't work they have a cloaked planet killer in every system to wipe the planet before Plague can spread.

That's it though, that all just sound derivative and bland, which is a problem that affects the majority of the fluff. The entire body of the lore honestly sounds like it was written by a 14 year old who had just read his first 40k rulebook (not that 40k's lore is particularly compelling these days). All that combined with a miniature range that varies from boring to just plain bad and you have a game that, despite how much praise the main rules get, completely fails to inspire any real interest from me. Every time I think it might be worth checking out one of their games I just have to look at the factions and miniatures to cure me of my curiosity. It's a shame too, I really want to like Mantic, but they seem to go out of their way to make their products as unappealing as possible.

Hmm, I see it as "What would 40k be if it didn't look like a 14 year old was writing it"

But I'll concede this makes it less evocative.

I agree with Zethnar

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Hmm, I see it as "What would 40k be if it didn't look like a 14 year old was writing it"

But I'll concede this makes it less evocative.

I like the lore of the Warpath universe a bit more than 40K. It's more science fiction than 40K's Scifi/Fantasy. I like the lore behind why area's, continents, or planets being deemed "deadzones" by the GCPS and all communication to those zones are cut off. Plus all information about those places are redacted or wiped off the databases as it they don't exist. While in those "deadzones" all sorts of stuff is happening because it attracts shady people and it basically becomes lawless.

I do agree with all lores in Mantic games can be somewhat bland. But it has been steadily getting better. I remember when lore was written for Ratkin in Kings of War and it was kind of cringe. But reading it now, they made some revisions and added more lore.

 Zethnar wrote:

That's it though, that all just sound derivative and bland, which is a problem that affects the majority of the fluff. The entire body of the lore honestly sounds like it was written by a 14 year old who had just read his first 40k rulebook (not that 40k's lore is particularly compelling these days).

That makes it sound like you haven't read much of Mantic's lore. I don't get the shonen vibe of Warhammer from Mantic's lore.
A matter of taste, I suppose.
I like tha KoW lore keeps tropes recognizable for if you want to bring something with you, but with something extra to make things their own flavour.

All that combined with a miniature range that varies from boring to just plain bad and you have a game that, despite how much praise the main rules get, completely fails to inspire any real interest from me. Every time I think it might be worth checking out one of their games I just have to look at the factions and miniatures to cure me of my curiosity. It's a shame too, I really want to like Mantic, but they seem to go out of their way to make their products as unappealing as possible.

This boggels my mind.
You don't have to use Mantic models to play KoW.

Rules are just a context to get your models on the table and a vehicle for what you want to represent.
If a game has lore you like that's great, but KoW purposefully leaves the door open to bring your own.
Isn't there a fantasy trope, story or concept that you want to bring to a wargaming table?

I can't quite wrap my head around how many wargamers let their hobby get dictated to them. It's your hobby with your miniatures that you bought , built and painted or will buy, build and paint.
You can take ownership of your own hobby.

The Warpath/Deadzone background has a completely different flavor than 40k. The tone and world building remind me more of New Space Opera, as written by Peter Hamilton, Neal Asher and their peers, than of the grimdark pseudo-Catholicism of 40k.

KOW was still being fleshed out the last time I read it, but Ithought it felt more inspired by the Silmarillion and Warcraft than by TOW’s more historical inspiration.

they have a free sample for their latest KoW novel https://www.manticgames.com/kings-of-war-fiction/pride-of-a-king-free-sample/

so one can have a look if the background is for them or not

and I agree, the 2 settings are very different flavour and not liking them is ok
For me I prefer the SciFi of Warpath over the futuristic-fantasy of 40k, specially as the good of 40k is really valid any more and new things are not for me

 DarkBlack wrote:

 Zethnar wrote:

That's it though, that all just sound derivative and bland, which is a problem that affects the majority of the fluff. The entire body of the lore honestly sounds like it was written by a 14 year old who had just read his first 40k rulebook (not that 40k's lore is particularly compelling these days).

That makes it sound like you haven't read much of Mantic's lore. I don't get the shonen vibe of Warhammer from Mantic's lore.
A matter of taste, I suppose.
I like tha KoW lore keeps tropes recognizable for if you want to bring something with you, but with something extra to make things their own flavour.

Honestly, I haven't read much of it, a few bits and pieces of the Warpath setting back when it was supposed to be a 28mm mass battle game on kickstarter, and a few pages from various rulebooks I've seen just to reconfirm that I didn't like it. Nothing about it really grabbed me, I don't know why I would have spent a lot of time diving any further into it. All the talk of evil mega corporations and secret super soldier conspiracies really did not come across as particularly mature or compelling.

I don't know what a shonen vibe is.

 DarkBlack wrote:

All that combined with a miniature range that varies from boring to just plain bad and you have a game that, despite how much praise the main rules get, completely fails to inspire any real interest from me. Every time I think it might be worth checking out one of their games I just have to look at the factions and miniatures to cure me of my curiosity. It's a shame too, I really want to like Mantic, but they seem to go out of their way to make their products as unappealing as possible.

This boggels my mind.
You don't have to use Mantic models to play KoW.

Rules are just a context to get your models on the table and a vehicle for what you want to represent.
If a game has lore you like that's great, but KoW purposefully leaves the door open to bring your own.
Isn't there a fantasy trope, story or concept that you want to bring to a wargaming table?

I can't quite wrap my head around how many wargamers let their hobby get dictated to them. It's your hobby with your miniatures that you bought , built and painted or will buy, build and paint.
You can take ownership of your own hobby.

I get that you don't need to use particular model lines with particular rules books, for the most part I've been 3D printing stuff to play with for the past few years and getting into little indie games. That said if you want to support a company then buying product from them is a good way to do it. I want to support Mantic because I feel like there is space in the market for alternative sci-fi miniatures games (and honestly, I'm just over Star Wars as a property), but the fact is I don't like their Warpath setting, it feels boring and derivative. It's also a lot harder to proxy miniatures for their sci-fi universe than it is for fantasy (although even that has factions where you're going to be hard-pressed to find proxies) and since Firefight doesn't offer the option of playing custom factions, it kind of limits it to what's available. So while I hear that the rules are quite good, I really don't like the fluff or the models so I have no real incentive to buy in.

Like it or not, the setting really does play a factor in whether people are going to get excited about your stuff, and Mantic's effort is mediocre at best in that regard. Regardless of what you personally think about 40k (I personally think that anything coming after 7th edition has kind of jumped the shark a little) their setting really seems to hit a nerve with large portions of the wargaming community.

All that said, I do think Mantic's vault subscription service is fantastic and I've been following it in order to fill out my collection for Armada. I do wonder if the value is still going to be there after they run out of ships though.

I really like Mantic. For a while I literally bought every single thing they released because it was cheap enough and good.

I got out of the hobby for a few years between 2016 and 2019 and nowadays I am much more of a collector than a player.

Huge fan of Kings of War, I haven’t played in years and probably won’t play much in the future.

Every time they release a new game I always hope it’ll take off in my local area. I ran demos of Kings of War, was one of their earliest Pathfinders before the whole thing was really fleshed out but they did send me a huge box of Elf and Undead minis to give away.

Rank and flank died in my local area with Warhammer Fantasy 7th Edition and now the number of people playing the game in my area is so few, there’s not much of a scene for any of the Mantic Games.

(I’m sure Halo is having a moment right now somewhere. Sadly between Facebook groups and Discord it’s so hard to actually see what’s going on and Discord has so many issues of its own I find them impossible to use for anything other than very casual conversations amongst friends.)

In an ideal world, everyone would be playing Kings of War and people would be getting salty on forums about all the people who insist on running the latest Space Marines in games of Firefight.

I really wish Mantic had continued to make analogues of GW Specialist Games, especially if they’d continued to get Alessio to write them.

I could never find anyone else who was collecting Dreadball teams. I had one friend go-all in on Kings of War and later Deadzone, while another friend took his old O&G army from 7th Ed WHFB and played it as his Kings of War army. They both moved away and for a while so did I… Austin, TX has a great local Kings of War group, but I moved back to New England for work and since 2017 I’ve barely played any of the games I have collected. With a recent lay off from my stressful day job, I am reevaluating what I want from my hobby and I think I want one or two armies for every conceivable GW game in my area and any of the Mantic Games with hard plastic minis on frames/sprues.

I can walk into GW pretty much whenever and play something. There’s nowhere else I can reliably get to on public transit that’s close enough to a reasonable facsimile of food I’d be able to eat during a lunchtime and still care to keep hanging out. I have a mountain of GW kits to assemble too.

So GW stuff at the GW store and Kings of War and Firefight at home. I bought only two copies of Halo Flashpoint but I may still hold the record by buying 10 copies of Deadzone on the original Kickstarter.

Kings of War is an amazing game and I love that its so versatile that you can play it without buying anything but some dice by simply getting hold of cardboard for the unit footprints and I love the idea of building unique little dioramas on my bases and allowing those to shine over and above the miniatures as most of the miniatures I have are from their earlier ranges and while excellent there’s a lot of the same poses when ranked up too much. Instead I want my unit bases to be vignettes in a story with characters, not just a rectangle with 40 elves glued to it covered in static grass. (And no shade if that’s what you want to do: it’s your hobby)

Firefight looks like a great ruleset and their sci-fi miniatures suffer a little of the small range of models for each faction but I’m also a few days into assembling them and I already have most of my 200 model Ork army clipped up and glued together already. On Citadel bases too so I can mix in my Rogue Trader and 2nd Ed Orks and Grots. No cardboard dreadnaught yet though.

Epic Warpath will be here soon. I can’t wait, I have a huge order of Forgefathers coming. I’ve literally not unboxed my copy of Legions Imperialis today.

Deadzone was fun and I’m sure it’s even better now in the latest edition. I really wanted to play Necromunda back then, I was very excited for the game and bought 10 copies.

I like the board games and the PVC miniatures games too but I don’t feel they have the depth of the collecting side of the hobby for me.

So realizing I’ve written far too much on the topic I’d like to bounce a couple questions back to anyone reading this:

1. Does your FLGS sell Mantic stuff and do they have any local* groups meeting there?

2. Where in the world are you?

3. What Mantic games do you play?

4. What Mantic games would you like to play if there was a local event?

(* For example in New England I’d consider all the cities immediately bordering Boston to be local to Boston, but wouldn’t call Springfield local to Boston, more local to parts of NY.)

1. Nah, aside from an ancient bargain box they don't really sell Mantic stuff. Maybe the odd board game, but I get the impression the owner is leery of "Kickstarter games" perhaps. Or maybe it just didn't sell well. They used to have a load of Warpath starters and stuff, and definitely used to sell KoW rulebooks, but not any more.
2. I'm in Bavaria in southern Germany.
3. I played KoW and Dungeon Saga, and would have happily played Warpath if I had someone to play with. I have Forgefathers and Undead from Mantic, and some random stuff like a box of their Ogres and their Pheonix for RPGs.
4. I'd play KoW or Dungeon Saga pretty happily. I really like both games and Dungeon Saga is an under rated game. I went in big on the KS and I don't regret it. I know some people were annoyed that it didn't deliver on all the promises but I was pretty happy with what it did deliver on. KoW is a great rank and flank game and although it's a bit too tournamenty for my tastes these days, for an event where I play against strangers that's actually a good thing.

1. Yes. Kings of War on the shelf (not sure how well it moves though) and Halo.
We have a great group plying there, but I rarely go because real life.
2. Hamilton, Ontario. FLGS Back Knight Games.
3. Just KoW currently.
I have minis for Deadzone, but not time.
I have also been putting off getting the special dice. It's a testament to how much I like Mantic that I would even consider getting them, tbh.
4. If there was a Deadzone event I would like to give it a go.
I have a policy of not getting more of stuff until I have use what I have (i.e. putting my hobby time and money into what I actually play), so Firefight would come after I actually play a game with Sci-Fi minis.

1. No, they're understandably salty about Mantic continually undercutting stores with kickstarters

2. Slovenia

3. Kings of War once in a while. Used to do a lot of Deadzone when it was new, tried Dreadball and would like more. And in my town we skipped Legions Imperialis entirely and 20 people backed Epic Warpath, so that will be big!

4. As above, more or less.

1) don't have a store nearby but there are some around that stock Mantic, previously Kings of War, now more Halo Flashpoint

2) Southern Austria

3) KoW, Deadzone and soon Epic Warpath, KoW at events, rest at home

4) Deadzone Events would be fun, but maybe Halo is going to take that spot and we see something around here

1. Does your FLGS sell Mantic stuff and do they have any local* groups meeting there?

There are a couple of Stores around here that stock Mantic stuff. Notably, Games Plus out in the suburbs seems to have quite a bit.

I think they used to have a Mantic group, not sure about now.

2. Where in the world are you?

Chicago

3. What Mantic games do you play?

Kings of War

4. What Mantic games would you like to play if there was a local event?

I might consider attending a KOW event, but I've never heard of one locally. I run a game club from my home so we had our own KOW campaign in 2023.

Honestly though, my interest in Mantic is mostly just the KOW rules to play with my own armies, plus a few of their figures I've bought here and there.

 mattl wrote:
1. Does your FLGS sell Mantic stuff and do they have any local* groups meeting there?

2. Where in the world are you?

3. What Mantic games do you play?

4. What Mantic games would you like to play if there was a local event?

(* For example in New England I’d consider all the cities immediately bordering Boston to be local to Boston, but wouldn’t call Springfield local to Boston, more local to parts of NY.)

Okay, I'll bite:
1: One of my FLGSs (there are three in my town) stocks Kings of War and other Mantic products, but I'm not sure if there are any regular players, and I'm not sure how well any of that product is moving. There used to be a fairly decent Kings of War group, but I think the pandemic kind of shut that down and it never picked back up.

2: Columbia, Missouri, USA

3: I have a couple of armies for Kings of War but I've never played. I'm planning to get the Halo Flashpoint Spartan Edition set soonish, but I'm not sure if I actually will. There are a couple of other people who do play the game at least.

4: I would love to play Kings of War if interest picked up again and there were events or at least an organized play day; the rules seem solid and the models are pretty nice, and less expensive than GW's. Also the Halo Flashpoint game, because Halo.

 mattl wrote:

1. Does your FLGS sell Mantic stuff and do they have any local* groups meeting there?

2. Where in the world are you?

3. What Mantic games do you play?

4. What Mantic games would you like to play if there was a local event?

(* For example in New England I’d consider all the cities immediately bordering Boston to be local to Boston, but wouldn’t call Springfield local to Boston, more local to parts of NY.)

A lot of what you are saying there sounds familiar to me Matt. Especially around rank & file games, my local community (living in SW England at the time) really split up when WHFB was withdrawn from sale. Some switched to Sigmar, some to Kings of War, some Game of Thrones but the groups were all disparate and never on the same scale as before.

1. Yes they do sell - I am not sure about groups as I haven't looked recently but they seem to have groups for most games.

2. South Wales, UK

3. Currently nothing actively, but have collections for and in the past have played Deadzone, Dreadball, Armada. Actually I lie, my boardgaming group is playing the Hell Boy boardgame at the moment.

4. Most looking forward to Epic Warpath. I'm going to try and get some of my local Legions Imperialis group, who seem to have mostly drifted off into the ether, to give the new game a try. I am spoilt for a choice of gaming clubs and stores fairly local to me so hopefully will be able to find something.