"Defiance Games Plastic SF Marines Up for Order" Topic

They look good.

sweet! do you have other manufacturers for comparison? (pig iron, etc)

"sweet! do you have other manufacturers for comparison? (pig iron, etc)"

Yes!

This is from a while back, sizing up one of the 3D test prints with several other minis, including a Pig Iron trooper.

"They are NOT in stock. They are in production at the factory and need to have the 'sprue' snipped, be shipped/transported to Defiance, and put into packaging before they are in stock. They are close, but they are not 'In Stock' except on the web store, where they have been 'in stock' for months."

I guess, technically you're right. After all, they do have to drive them the whole HOUR from the factory to Defiance Games world headquarters (a.k.a. Tony's house), then box them, then drive them to the post office and ship them. So, at the time that video was shot, I guess you could say they were an hour from being in stock.

But then again that's pretty much harping on semantics, isn't it, and you'd NEVER do something like that, would you?

:)

Richard, let that one go.

dwartist has some, he says they have decent detail (barring the expected places, limits of the injection-mold technology).

It's really a shame that I'm just about out of mass-28mm gaming, but I will probably buy a set of these.

HEY TONY!

Good job finally getting these out, but please, for the love of all that's holy and the success of your business, do a better job managing customer expectations.

If the tool-maker is having troubles because there's too much detail on the models (or whatever the reason they're giving you for non-delivery is), tell us, your prospective customers. Don't leave us hanging.

If you have to change tool-makers because the one you were trying to use couldn't deliver, say so. Don't leave us hanging.

Don't give us a chance to start bringing up the memories of Wargames Factory. Show that you've learned from that experience and are doing your utmost to avoid repeating those mistakes.

If we have a warm-fuzzy feeling about your business planning and operations, we will share that with other potential customers.

It's not that I'm hung up on the thing; it just amuses me at this point to poke certain people people and watch them try to get me riled up. It's a little like bear-baiting, except that bears thank they're the ones doing the bating.

Technically, I think the problem here is that customers built their own expectations. I've been reading through the assorted news posts and forum threads lately and Defiance has been pretty much hands off. Aside from not announcing the delay in production earlier they've been pretty much open about the whole process -- shots of the WIP mold, renders, extra art, etc. Had everything gone according to plan, the minis would have been ready weeks in advance of Jan. 16, boxed and good to go.

Running through the history, it's "We have our product, we think it's going to be awesome, here's what's going on" (probably with a dash of "goddammit, I don't feel like dealing with this today" when another delay popped up. I mean, I ENJOY going around and around with this stuff, but even I get tired of it after a while.

Also, Cpt Jake, let the Lead Adventure people know I'll toss a box of Defiance Marines onto the pile for whoever wins the contest!

Utterly serious, by the way.

good lord, i just now read through most of this topic.

if you don't like the miniatures or the delays or the people or the company, you aren't being forced to buy them. it's a free market and you have free choice. if you haven't ordered anything, you aren't expecting anything. i feel bad for the people who preordered them months ago thinking they were right around the corner. but that's always the situation with preordering – buyer beware. i waited until very recently to place my preorder.

but here's the reality of the situation for those people that haven't preordered anything and therefore haven't gotten burned: no one… NO ONE… cares about how butthurt you are. you're wasting teh internets and the most precious resource of all: my time; needless wasted scrolling past pages and pages of whining and complaining and crying and arm-flailing rashy butthurtness.

at this point you guys are as fussy as a standard political discussion, so take it to that forum. i want to know about these new plastic multipose miniatures… not how you don't like some person that works for the company or how the color of the company's logo clashes with your panties or whatever else doesn't have anything to do with the miniatures. the topic of this thread is about the defiance games marine miniatures. let's talk about them.

here's the tl;dr version: people complaining for no reason need to because no one cares what you think.

if you believe you're not one of those people, no need to be offended.

now, on-topic, for the love of and all that is facetious.

thank you for the picture of the defiance marine next to the other figures, i'm glad to see they scale well next to the pig iron figures. i have a large force of pig iron troopers painted up as near-future russians in hard armor, and a force of urban war/metropolis viridians painted up as near-future germans in hard armor. it looks like i will be able to easily use the defiance marines as a lightly-armed and armored UN security force.

hmm… speaking of which, anyone know of a company that makes modern french vehicles that would scale next to the defiance marines? i have kitech's 1/48 leclerc, but what about french apc's or ifv's?

Richard Gaulding 04 Apr 2012 6:01 p.m. PST

I guess, technically you're right. After all, they do have to drive them the whole HOUR from the factory to Defiance Games world headquarters (a.k.a. Tony's house), then box them, then drive them to the post office and ship them. So, at the time that video was shot, I guess you could say they were an hour from being in stock.

How many hours will it take to update the DG webstore to say they are in stock?

Honestly, they're not "in stock" right now -- I'm not sure what the status on the boxes is, since, iirc, Tony was holding off on printing them until the mold was actually complete. No sense having a thousand of so boxes printing off if the final mold revision melts the damned thing, right?

So . . . it'll probably be more like a few days or a week until things actually start shipping. I could be wrong, though, since Tony has been pretty quiet lately and may have already gone ahead with the box printing. Plastic could be winging its way out right now for all I know.

Mainly, I'm just tugging Cpt Jake's chain since he's been harping about the "in stock" thing for months.

I'm not sure if this is such a good time for yanking chains. In fact, it almost never is. On some forums (including ones where your swear words won't get bleeped) you can even be reprimanted for doing that.

So I guess the big question for us Brits is …
Will they be imported in time for Salute?
And how long are we likely to have to wait for the bugs?

And of course, once they are actually available and in our hands this thread will die
which will be like losing an old friend :-)

you're wasting teh internets and the most precious resource of all: my time; needless wasted scrolling past pages and pages of whining and complaining and crying and arm-flailing rashy butthurtness.

1st: Some of us HAVE pre-ordered.

2nd: Who held a gun to your head and forced you to read anything, scroll past anything, or for that matter open any topic and post to it? Or are you actually admitting frustration at a lack of self control and an inability to face the fact that YOU are responsible for any of YOUR time wasted?

Talk about arm-flailing rashy butthurtness

I do believe I shall find use for the sentence "you're wasting teh internets and the most precious resource of all: my time" in my signature sometime d-:)

'What's Jen Doing with teh internets?"

Pat

'If the tool-maker is having troubles because there's too much detail on the models' – one thing that the moldmaker is least likely to have a problem with. crappy paintjob aside these dont look as bad now, comparable with the EM4 ones just nicer guns.

"1st: Some of us HAVE pre-ordered."

yup, me included. notice i said:

"but here's the reality of the situation for those people that haven't preordered anything and therefore haven't gotten burned: no one… NO ONE… cares about how butthurt you are."

, lemme .

dwartist, any shots of assembled or primed or anything? i'm getting all shaky from excitement. or maybe all the . or i need my morning coffee. or a terrible combination of all three, like a michael bay movie

Honestly, they're not "in stock" right now

But you claimed they were, and then got snarky when someone called you on it. Just like when you claimed the DG bugs were "in production" when they weren't. When you represent a company and make unsupporatable claims, that's lying to the customers.

Technically, I think the problem here is that customers built their own expectations

See, what happens when you claim something is "in stock" and "now available" and you take someone's money is that they expect product in return. I know you think it's off the wall, but that is the way people are.

you're wasting teh internets and the most precious resource of all: my time;

Nobody forced you to read this thread, nobody wasted your time but yourself. And think of all the time you wasted on writing that long post. Congratulations.

here's the tl;dr version: people complaining for no reason need to because no one cares what you think.

It's against the rules to tell people to shut up, here. Additionally, reasons for complaints have been stated. Reading comprehension is taught in elementary school.

, lemme .

------------------
Must be an American thing!

derek
Where did the pics come from btw – the straw on the base is something I'd advocate

it's against the rules to tell people to shut up, gotcha.

the people being told to shut up are "people complaining for no reason".

so, either there's no one complaining for no reason, in which case i told no one to shut up;

or there's a buncha people complaining for no reason, and those are the people i told to shut up.

TEAM EDWARD OR TEAM JACOB

while i'm glad "operation: give random internets people something new to fuss about" is an overwhelming success (my first butthurt- er, i mean, stifle, ever! thxgaisurdabest), i'm still hoping dwartist posts some nice pics of his prerelease marines. hint hint.

'TEAM EDWARD OR TEAM JACOB' – If you are referring to Jedward it's John and Edward ;-) AND – having spent a whole day with these two at a wedding last year, they are nice guys but barking mad – yet some posters on here make them look sane! :-)

I too want to see these figures with a decent paintjob on them, and Dwartist is one of the best around. (not digging the guy who painted the ones shown here as I know he can do good work having looked at his site – not sure if he was asked to paint them like this or had to due to the figures?)

Not that I'm doing anymore 28mm (he says hopefully sticking to it) but if the bugs are nice I'll use them for 15mm and conversions :-)

'If the tool-maker is having troubles because there's too much detail on the models' – one thing that the moldmaker is least likely to have a problem with. crappy paintjob aside these dont look as bad now, comparable with the EM4 ones just nicer guns.

I was thinking about details on the side of the piece as it sits in the sprue, where there cannot be any undercuts.

I think DWArtist is frantically trying to finish all the stuff for Antenociti's Salute releases, so all other minis are back in the queue a ways. But I will second the nudge for the Defiance USMC to move up in the queue!

lookin' good:

YouTube link

…as soon as the 21st has been and gone – promise!

We're going to hold you to that, DWArtist.

I have more hopes for the bugs now these have come out. Not as bad as expected or as previous shots had shown, they look better than those trenchcoat abominations that came out. I don't like any of the heads nor the helmet either – as has mentioned they'd look better with third party heads.

( not to mention the deformed face on one of the heads.)

I think if there had not been the constant hyping of these as if they were going to be incredibly amazing super detailed hyper figures, and some of the companies reaction/smoke n glass tactics and were just mentioned and released when ready things would have gone smoother.

Please do the bugs now – preferably without 3 bodies and 2 heads or something ;-) – and do not go down the route WF took – all sorts of releases, promises of X,Y and Z, over the top hyping and quietly continue to produce stuff, and continually improve.

Well done for getting there, just change the marketing 'strategy' now and I think all the alleged hatred will go – of course, people will still have an opinion and if they think it's crap will say so – normally with useful critiques mind you.

It's how you and people like Richard react that might make or break things. Take a long look at how things were handled, learn, move on and DO NOT REPEAT – then as long as the product is good Bob's your father's brother.

Of course, you could have waited on release until the date I had in the LAF pool :-( ;-p

"( not to mention the deformed face on one of the heads.)"
none of the heads/faces I have are deformed..I have to re-iterate -these aren't as bad as a lot of people suggest. They do have the same issues you get with a lot of figures cast in plastic (including larger scales)regarding the lack of undercuts and softness of detail but a little time spent with craft-knife and paintbrush will work wonders!

Alien Surfer,

If you'd like, I can send you a few sprues. I should have some spares :)

Thanks Dwartist – I am basing it on the sprue pics from earlier, more concerned that they get the bugs out now as I can use them in 15mm……

richard – thank you for the offer but I am selling off my 28mm stuff so they'd be wasted on me – but, I do know of a good cause helping kids that I am donating some figures too so if you do have some sprues going, I could put them to good use helping some kids.

PS – Richard – I hope you take my comment there about the reaction stuff in a good way – it's not a dig or anything, just I think the PR to date wasn't good, but hey, the stuff is ready with bugs to come (hint hint) so hopefully this will all get swept under the table/carpet/atomic powered mutant snail.

So I got two frames from DFG on Saturday, and I must say I am impressed. The sharpness of the detail is much better than the Wargames Factory Ancient Germans that I have (which were also sculpted by Tim). Even though I've been a DFG supporter, participating in their beta test group, I've also been a bit of a pessimist, too, taking a wait and see attitude – I pre-ordered one box from Warstore to show my support, and waited till I actually saw them to order more.

If you're in the Denver area, and you'ld like to see what they look like in person – head over to Atomic Games in Wheat Ridge (20th and Youngfield), as I gave the proprietor there one of my frames to show customers.

Alien – I think most of the hype from Tony for these figures and DFGs is that Tony's an upbeat, optimistic guy with a lot of enthusiasm for what he's doing. That's good for the industry and his products, but does lead to some problems when things don't quite go as planned. Which is ultimately a fact of any manufacturing business. Heck, I'm still waiting for my company to release a product that was announced 5 years ago – as the customer service rep, I take a lot of crap over that. But I digress. The good news is that Tony appears to be learning, and having a closed group of beta testers like Richard and I and others has helped him by giving him an a more tolerant outlet for his enthusiasm, allowing him to be more restrained out "in public". You'll notice that there haven't been any pre-orders for the Bugs and Germans yet – after this fiasco with the USMC delay, I don't think there will be – they'll be sold when they're actually ready to go.

staretd a WIP on the blog with a few suggestions for minor 'enhancements'…

ops – sorry, wrong link and repetition. Another senior moment!
link

"richard – thank you for the offer but I am selling off my 28mm stuff so they'd be wasted on me – but, I do know of a good cause helping kids that I am donating some figures too so if you do have some sprues going, I could put them to good use helping some kids.

PS – Richard – I hope you take my comment there about the reaction stuff in a good way – it's not a dig or anything, just I think the PR to date wasn't good, but hey, the stuff is ready with bugs to come (hint hint) so hopefully this will all get swept under the table/carpet/atomic powered mutant snail."

Send me the address and I'll send a couple of sprues when they arrive.

Also, I don't hold grudges so as far as I'm concerned all this stuff is already water under the bridge. Besides, I got my Marine samples yesterday and spent a few hours gluing and carving and taking comparison shots, so I'm a happy camper!

Mums the word on the Bugs, though . . .

Scale comparisons with every relevant mini I could dredge up:

With Cadians and Marines

Tyranids and a Sentinel

With a 2010 Chimera

Mantic Marauder and Forge Father

WGF Shock Trooper and a Reaper Ogre ("Bones" line)

WGF Zombies

WGF Persian and Mantic Skeleton

Tau Fire Warrior and Kroot

Stealth Suit and Crisis Suit

EM-4 Plastic Troopers

Here's a production Marine with a GW Cadian for scale/detail comparison:

Thanks to Ed at Troll Forged!

@Richard thanks for the comparison shots, although it was kinda scary seeing that I had at least 1 of each mini in each shot lol

Variety is the spice of life!

Just to clarify – is it true that the Troll Forged pics are the actual production run, but the Dwartist ones are a lower-quality precast?

And if so, why would such a precast ever be allowed under any circumstances to see the light of day, even on a non-controversial, or non-company defining release?

I did explain on the blog post that the sprues I had where 'testers' and have said several times on various forums that I believe the production 'run' would be much improved. Why would DG send me 'lower-quality precast' items? Perhaps in the belief that i could do a decent job with them while waiting for thr production run sprues but I'm beginning to wonder if it's a waste of time. The aura of negativity surrounding these minis appears self-generating!

Dwartist, I'm not attacking you, or your skills. It's a comment that it seems ill-advised for a company to present anything but its best efforts publicly.

sorry, Muerto – I was generalising and didn't read your comments as an attack upon myself. I might have been better advised to wait until I'd progressed a little more before posting the article on the blog.

Sorry I am late, I was busy on Monday the 9th –

So, have any paying customers received their figures? Close-up pictures? Reviews?

Pat

It looks a bit like DG needed to redo their boxes so we won't propably see anything of that sort this week yet.

Doubt that the close-up pix are going to be different from those already shown tho.

No, as I understand it the close-ups have all been of the test shots? The Finished production runs should be significantly better – the mould will have been hardened once approved and the detail sharper as a result, so I am told.

Pat

Perhaps depending on what you want to call a close-up…

Defiance Games 10 Apr 2012 5:21 p.m. PST:

Here's a production Marine with a GW Cadian for scale/detail comparison

For a rear-view:
TMP link

Umm… the new fluff has Mexico willingly merging with the US, and having their marines roll over to become part of the coast guard.

And the Gzg Universe has the USA falling back into England's influence. So, it's scifi. There are a LOT of much more important things to get worked up over.

Thanks,

John