"Mantic's Kings of War Kickstarter" Topic

Mantic Games

has just open a Kickstarter for their 2nd Edition of their Kings of War Fantasy rules.

link

Far cheaper and I consider better miniatures than GW.

Already over £125,000.00 GBP pledged

Pledged for the rulebooks. I love the KoW rules and they've done a great job developing the rules thus far, so I'm expecting good things from this edition.

I would beg to differ with the "better than GW" comment. Cheaper for sure (I can't afford GW anymore) and there some undeniably nice minis in the range. However, they've got a long way to go before they produce kits as nice and as versatile as GW does. Add to that the fact that so much of their lines are in the infuriating Restic/Sprueless-plastic/Plastic-Resin material, which is almost the only material I like less than Finecast.

Love Mantic, and they're getting better every day, but their minis are not on GW's level yet.

you've been Tango01'd!

TMP link

I would beg to differ with the "better than GW" comment.

Have you seen some of of GW latest miniatures?

They are horrible looking and take around 30-60 minutes to put just one model together.

Plus GW Dwarves have no knees, Mantic's do.

The knees are a good point, but the Mantic Dwarves are vastly less variable than their GW counterparts. As long as it's hard plastic, I'll take variety and customizability over quick assembly any day.

Not that GW has the corner on the market for good stuff, or is the best, but Mantic's fantasy units haven't all been exactly up to snuff. I don't think GW has had any stinkers recently on the order of the Baselian Men-At-Arms.

It's all kind of disappointing to me. I've bought a fair amount of Mantic product over the years and have wanted so much to like it. However, most of it just hasn't been as good as I was hoping and they keep missing the boat by pushing out some of their best looking product out in restic or restic-with-metal rather than good hard plastic.

I'm hoping that they re-do a few of the Abbysal dwarf units in hard plastic. I'd paint up a couple of units of those for sure.

W.A.T.Joker,
Whatever do you mean? It didn't show up on my front page…

Well Mantic's Dwarf in the middle one and GW is the one on the right.

Now the shield can always be changed out.

Of the three, I think I'd probably go for the one on the left. (red box?)

Good on Mantic for doing something different than GW, but it doesn't seem particularly "better".

I like the Mantic one above best – more active pose

GW dwarves may be missing their knees but Mantic ones have disproportionate lower halves. Problem with their humanoid models.
Bass, the dwarf on the left isnt Red Box but is Avatars of War.

Grimm

Mantic has their own artistic style and oddly enough they hold to that rather than outright imitating Games workshop as they do in their army lists. Still, bit by bit they're branching out. The Deadzone Orx are an unfortunate throwback though undoubtedly that's helped their sales. Nice models but they don't give me any new poses for my Warpath orx. I've even decided to convert a fantasy Orc general for Warpath as the Warpath one is simply too Warhammery. I'll also have to get some RAFM Cyborks for filling out other units.

Truth is that Mantic minis have never been what drew me to KoW. I just really like the rules. They're my ideal for a large scope fantasy game. I don't even have any Mantic figures in my 2000 point "Bad Guy" army. Even though I'm a cheapskate, I'll gladly pony up for whatever edition of KoW comes out. Not only because of the rules, but because I know it will be fairly priced, will contain the army lists and Mantic isn't going to try to keep me on the hook for more $ for army books and such.

Here's a post from Mantic about what tweaks are being made to the rules. From my limited experience playing the game, this all looks like some very good -and appropriately small- adjustments to an already excellent ruleset.
link

Now the shield can always be changed out.

That's good to know. Not a fan of the heater shield for Dwarves.

W.A.T.Joker,
Whatever do you mean? It didn't show up on my front page…

Perhaps you have the crowd sourcing forum turned off? Or you are ignoring Tango01?

I'll never tell…
Suffice it to say, this is the topic I'll be contributing to.

Actually the heater shield on that dwarf can't be changed out. It's cast on. Bloody annoying when building abyssal dwarves.

Dremel and other cutting tools.

It can be changed out.

Wish they had a $100 USD pledge level.

Brigadier General, although they don't state it outright on the front page, you can always just pledge $1 USD to the KS and select 'no reward', this gives you access to the pledge manager once the KS is over and you can then purchase 'add-ons' at will. So no official $100 USD pledge level but you can pledge $1 USD then when the KS is over spend the extra $100 USD as you like.

Mantic's minis are cheap and in the case of their undead great army fillers for GW but I'm with ordinarybass on the quality of the minis themselves in that GW are leagues ahead of mantic when it comes to quality; ruleswise as much as we try to like KoW (and we tried it at the club for quite a while) we just ended up coming back to the fluff and crunch of Warhammer and we haven't looked back since. I'll probably still pick up KoW though as I like the idea of a cheap alternative to GW; we just didn't really dig how the rules themselves played.

Oh, and I'll take finecast over restic any day of the week!

Brigadier General,
If you want rules and a starter army, you can click the $50 USD Pay $100 USD and add-on the army.

If you just want an army, I'm not sure if you can do that.

Yes you can, I asked mantic specifically. When you click on the 'pledge' button it asks you how much you want to pledge and beneath that are the rewards; you can pledge $1 USD and select 'no reward' then when the KS is over you can use the pledge manager to add extras to your pledge including the army deals.

When I saw all the cool goodies in the past Mantic KS's, I regreted not having joined. This time I am in and I allready regret having… Even considering dropping out.
Very scarce freebies not worth mentioning and restricted to certain few army megadeals. So you get one small mage for your elves or basileans, but nothing if you spend hundreds on orcs, goblins, abyssal dwarfs etc. Unfair and cheap.
Add ons as of now are nice if you never played any tabletop game, but dice, trays and basic colours are nothing special, you can get them everywhere, everytime, for a similar price.
I can only advice anyone backing to read some Reviews on the miniatures before buying them. Don't get fooled by pro-painted advertising pictures. I thought about getting a basilean mega-deal, but the Men-at-Arms alone kept me from it. Worst-figures-ever.
I so hope they catch up and turn this KS into a great action, but I fear they just release some this-and-thats for some few armies and "great" add-ons like rulers or meassuring tapes…

They've always said this was going to be a small kickstarter that's mainly aimed at getting the new edition of the rules printed. Still, I'd have liked more of a focus on filling in the missing and out of print units and less on the Abyssal list which will be largely available in Dwarf King's Quest anyhow.

I suspect there will be more freebies and goodies as they near the end of the project when they're trying to benefit from a last minute rush. By my count this kickstarter hasn't even surpassed the first one yet.

Well got in at the last moment and going for the Mega-Army deal.

Going to expand my Dwarven army.

So that is:

120 Infantry
10 Cavalry (which GW does not have but should)
3 War Machines
1 Dwarf War-Smith

Plus both rulebooks and other stuff and free shipping.

Try beating that GW.

Oh and the Infantry alone from GW would be over $600 USD and all total the cost would be around $850 USD-$900+.

Plus you get no cavalry at all from GW.

Hell even the Dwarves in the upcoming Hobbit movie has cavalry.

But GW, nope sorry we are to lazy to make any.