Mantic Northern Alliance

 

A few years ago, I won a sprue of ten Mantic "Northern Alliance" Tribesfolk at a club raffle. I'd assembled them up and then not gotten around to paint them. I found them while going through a case and resolved to have them painted.

I asked Squiggle's Studio to paint them for me to a simple tabletop standard. Squiggles Studio has painted both my Deathwatch and Stormcast armies, but these days is taking smaller commissions. He's done an excellent job on them, and they'll make excellent opponents in roleplaying games - I'm particularly thinking of using them as residents of the Land of the Linnorm Kings in Pathfinder.

Brushchewer Inc: Mantic Terrain Crate Dwarven Mine

 

The delightful Brushchewer Inc has finished the last of the Mantic Terrain Crates I bought ages ago in some sale or other. This is the Dwarven Mine set, which I left until last as I'm not sure how much use I'm actually going to get out of it in practice.

Still, there's some useful small scatter terrain, strange crystals and so on, which will definitely be of use.

Part of it is that I generally think of mine rails as being much "later period" than D&D, but a lot of the newer settings are moving to a much later historical period, so they'll probably see use...

Terrain Crate Battlefield Objectives - Brushchewer Inc

 

Brushchewer painted up another Terrain Crate set for me - this time the "Battlefield Objectives". Some of these will be used less regularly than things like the Dungeon Debris or Essentials, but I felt that there was enough to justify getting the set in the sale I picked it up in.

A partially hatched dragon egg or a pile of cannonballs and powder aren't going to be used very often, and neither is this large bonfire / beacon.

As a nice touch, it comes with the fire piece separately, so you can have it starting un-lit and then add the fire when they're lit. There's some fun little fights and objectives that will work nicely with.

I didn't specify anything for the captive or the dead messenger, so Brushchewer decided it would be fun to give a nod to Mario with a captive Peach, and a Mario who didn't make it to the next castle...

Terrain Crate Dungeon Essentials - Brushchewer Inc

 

I got another box of Terrain Crate painted by Brushchewer Inc. This set includes a whole bunch of really useful generic scatter that will see a lot of use. Barrels, chests, tables and doors are always going to be needed for set dressing dungeons!

Terrain Crate Wizard's Library - Brushchewer Inc

 

I decided to commission out the rest of the Mantic Terrain Crate boxes I have to get them all done. I decide to use Brushchewer Inc to get this Wizard's Study set done, and am really pleased with how they've turned out.

The book cases are a nice bulk of terrain, with some more specific pieces that will still see plenty of use making up the rest of the set. Seeing them all painted up, I'm a big fan.

Look on my works ye mighty and despair

 

I'm working through a whole bunch of Dungeon Debris from the Mantic Terrain Crate. I haven't got the box done yet, but that's not for a lacky of hobby this week - I've just been light on the painting. I've got half a dozen bits finished, and there's a whole bundle still to go.

This batch has been a simple base coat, Agrax Earthshade wash, then a Karak Stone drybrush to bring stop it being too dark while tying it all together.

I'm continuing to work through the Terrain Crate bits. The TT Combat spray was still tacky days after it was sprayed, and when I tried to use some contrast with it, I found the contrast wasn't staying where I put it and really big patches were forming where you could see the base coat as the contrast pulled away from the undercoat. I'm now brush base coating everything, even where I want to use contrast over the top of it, and that seem to be clearing the issue.

The reason for the lack of painting was not, for once, my spending time listing stuff on my eBay account or binge watching some nonsense TV show (the latest guilty pleasure has been Outback Truckers, of all things). I've been playing games! During the week I made it down to Dark Sphere to play my first game of 9th edition, while I headed over to HATE on Sunday to get in a practice game of Infinity for St Albans Smackdown.

Next week is likely to be relatively slow on the painting front, too. I've got a couple of bits of real life stuff, and my online D&D game is having an in person finale at the weekend, which will take a bunch more time than it usually would. I'll plug through some bits and see how I go. This is probably a bit busier than I'd like to be, so I need to keep an eye on what my commitments are in the next few weeks and try and slow down a bit.

A secret agent, some junk and a repair

 

I had a couple of days off work at home this week and I was convinced I'd have a bunch of productive time for painting. In the end, I only really got to the painting on Sunday afternoon, as it turned out backlogged housework and tidying took up most of my free time. Definitely something to keep on top of in future, as it adds up!

Still, I managed to finish off the Krystyna Skarbek SOE agent model from Bad Squiddo Games, and I'm pretty pleased with how she's turned out. Contrast and a few bits of highlighting is a huge step up from just Contrast paint, while not taking much more time.

I also added some tufts and snow to help put the skis in context. The GW Valhallan Blizzard is still my go to for this as it seems to be pretty much idiot proof.

The newly painted Corax Hasht managed to take a tumble to the floor last weekend at Wayland, and got chipped in several places, despite the varnish layers. So the repair work has already begun.

First up, I've re-based the affected areas in Grey Seer, and done by best to blend from there into the rest of the model so it doesn't hugely stand out. I'll then re-contrast those areas followed by a varnish, then put them away a little more carefully this time.

I'm going to be trying to enter the Mayacast "Masterglass" painting competition this season, which does mean I'll be painting an Infinity model that I won't be able to show off until April under the rules of the competition. I've not started yet, but I've got a couple of months.

I thought I'd "blitz through" the Mantic Terrain Crate Dungeon Debris on Sunday, but it turned out to be a longer process than I thought. The TT Combat undercoat was still weirdly tacky after over a week, and had missed some recesses, so I decided to basecoat over everything rather than do a simple contrast job. I reckon for terrain you might want to do that anyway, as the larger surfaces are much more fiddly to do with Contrast.

I'd have liked to have finished a bit more, but feeling like I'm back on the horse and got some good progress, so it's not a disappointment. Everything is pretty good, all told.

Salute 2021: Mantic Deadzone

 

One of the bigger companies at Salute was Mantic Games, who were showing off their new edition of Deadzone.

Deadzone is Mantic's sci fi skirmish game. It uses large squares as part of the mechanics. It looks quite fun, but I'm trying not to start any new games right now . . .

Stay on Targe . . . Oooh, squirrel!

You know how the plan was to finish stuff up this month and not start new things? Yeah, that's not gone well. In fact, it's gotten worse. It's Stress Awareness Month, so my work kindly organised a "Crafternoon" to encourage people to think about using crafts and hobbies to keep their stress down. I thought that scraping mould lines or plugging through some weird alien models no-one knew wouldn't be that interesting so I grabbed a couple of D&D models and blitzed them with contrast over the hour of the online event. They just need a few minutes each to tidy up and finish them off, but I've not found the time since.

Warlord Games then mentioned they had a sale on, and I spotted that they had a whole bunch of Mantic "Terrain Crate" boxes at half price. I probably went a little overboard with these, and my numbers have suffered as a result.

To try and "fix" the problem, I started trying to assemble them all - although most are single piece models that just need a little clean up. Then I started running out of space...

When I started using the lids of storage boxes as well, I realised it had gone a bit far so put the work in progress away until I have a little more space.

I also picked up an assortment of large bases from Fenris Games. The idea here is that I'm going to paint these up to use to mark areas of special terrain on Infinity tables.

I also got an assortment of widgets for scatter terrain.

And finally, I picked up this "bee fairy", because I really liked the sculpt and thought I'd use her for a D&D fae NPC. A little pamphlet included in the box indicates that she's a bit of a preview of an upcoming Kickstarter, so keep an eye out for that...

Painted Foxes from Mantic

Just a quick bit of painting from last week finished here. I painted up the two foxes that came with the Mantic Northman sprue I won at the HATE 2019 Christmas raffle. The sculpts are a bit shallow and lacking in detail, so I kept it tabletop quality.

Work in Progress Wednesday - Mantic Northmen

 

Last year I won a couple of sprues of Mantic Northmen in the club Christmas raffle. In an effort to try and avoid having left them unused for over a year, I dug them out and assembled them.

There's enough variety to get by with ten models, but you would start getting some repetition in units of 20 or more. Which is fine for mass battle games like Kings of War, but less useful if you want loads of variants for roleplay purposes, for example. There's minimal merit in getting a second box for some variant assembly, for example.

Easy of assembly was pretty good. Single piece bodies, weapon and shield arms, and heads all go together OK. A couple of the head - body joins look a bit . . . odd? But broadly, they're fine. Mantic had some absolute horror shows of assembly in the early days, but they seem to be past it now. They're intended for ranking up, though, and I have no idea how some of these would . . . 

The lack of variation means that there's very little waste plastic. You can assemble them with spears or hand weapons (I went with a mix, because skirmish), but that's all that's left over when you're done. I get the impression this will help a bit in keeping waste, and therefore costs down. These Mantic sprues are efficient - they do exactly what Mantic needs them to do, and no more.

There are quite a lot of mould lines - you can see on these foxes where I utterly missed them and need to do a little doctoring. As well a not quite as flush as they could be joins for some of the legs. That said, getting two cute foxes in with the infantry box is a nice touch. I seem to remember Mantic have a tendency for adding a couple of critters in with an infantry sprue, and I like that. It uses the space to give you something, and it's something you can use, not alternative arms that will end up having no body.

All in all, I quite like this kit. There's a definite time investment in mould line clean up, but that's not exactly uncommon with older Games Workshop kits either.

My painting review of 2014

It looks like I've been a bit more productive this year!

Finished models

Wicked Dolls for Malifaux

Adeptus Arbites Kitbash

20 Guardsmen

Collodi for Malifaux

MkI Thunder Armour

Commissar Lord

Imperial Priest

Leman Russ Tank

Bloodletter

An angry Squat

Codename: Oberon by Mantic

A mildly tipsy Squat

Anvil Industry Werewolf

Bonus: Stuff other people painted for me!

Imperial Beastmen, painted by Simlauren

Imperial Guard Bombard, painted by Golem Painting Studio

How did I do?

Well, that's certainly better than I managed last year. But if you scroll down that post, you'll see I set myself some goals. How well did I do with those?

Not include models I'm selling in my tracking systems next year
Well, that was an easy one.

Take part in the Independent Characters Hobby Progress Challenge
Well, I took part - but I sort of intended to complete it! I didn't complete the challenge, but I certainly got a lot more models painted as a result.

Finish the blasted Collodi crew
Oh dear. I got halfway there, but there's still four Marionettes to finish basing.

500 point Warriors of Chaos Army
Not started.

All of Salute 2012's purchases painted
Nope. The Storm Troopers were done last year, but there's still a female Commissar, the show Mayan and all the Sarissa Precision stuff that's not finished yet.

No new systems (Infinity, this means you) until I've fully painted one of my other skirmish games up
Abject failure. You'll notice my posts about lovely Infinity stuff, and you will notice above no skirmish games completed...

Future Plans

I think that trying to plan a full year is a mistake. I have projects I want to progress, but I may get distracted by a different project. Y'all understand that, right? So, I'll separate out "what I'm interested in at the moment" and "what I'm committing to".

I've taken to listing my projects on a project page of the blog. It's not fully written out yet - I do it as and when, as I get inspired by different projects. The eternal project of the Imperial Guard is written up, as is the Cypher project.

My big drive at the moment is Infinity - I've found deadlines are good for me getting things done, so being booked onto two Infinity events (one in January, one in February) will help me get my Infinity stuff sorted.

Otherwise, I'd like to get some Guard stuff done, enough Inquisition done to field a small allied contingent, and get some Malifaux in.

Commitments

So, important things with commitments is to be realistic, so lets start by setting some realistic ground rules. Any Kickstarter projects, either arriving or backing, don't count to the wider restrictions, because, well, I just get sad otherwise. Presents (Christmas, Birthday, etc) don't count. Salute most definitely doesn't count.

I have just over 16 years of painting mountain if I keep painting and modelling at the rate I did last year. It'd be probably be better if I got it down to around a decade.

That really means that as a base minimum, I should be finishing two projects a month - 24 a year. That's going to be the basic rule. There's some "stretch goals" to work for too.

- Finish more than two projects in a month, and limit purchases the following month to however much I beat the target by

- Finish "Operation: Complete Other People's Stuff". (only 3 items left!)

- Clear the Hall of Shame of anything started before 2014. (5 items)

- Finish anything I started before the start of 2015. (20 items)

These ones are all aspirational - which means that unlike "finish 2 things in a month", I can aim for them if I'm doing well, but don't feel so bad if I miss them. I'm also very keen to focus a lot of effort on things I've been given as presents, because, you know, it's not cool to have things people gave you sitting in boxes. I don't just want to be resting on my mint plastic/resin/metal treasure like a geek Smaug. It's not comfy, for starters.

Are Mantic figures all completely terrible?

Nothing like a low starting point with a product review! I know a lot of people really enjoy Mantic products, but I have been put off by being near someone trying to put together one of the first Orx Marauder Raptors. They are so bad that I would not accept a free one, and not only would you have to pay me to assemble one, I would be charging you around the cost of the model purely for assembly. Probably more. And then I'd be seriously thinking about it.

One of the Mantic demo chaps was tolerant enough to hear my . . . 'reservations' about Mantic's product quality back in May when I had a demo game of Deadzone. He kindly gave me one of the limited edition Kickstarter minis "Codename: Oberon" to try out and see if things have improved.

First, I used a scalpel to clean off the mould lines. This wasn't too bad - there weren't too many of them (apart from the super obvious one on the base), and they came off pretty easily.

I'm not convinced by the Mantic bases, though. Look at these awkward gaps! As you'll soon see, they're pretty easily fixable, but the clever design on this figure needed a little more precision to pull off well.

I then decided it was time to experiment with basing, because my current bases are pretty dull and samey. So, I glued a few of the most expensive rocks on the planet (I have tons left over from GW basing kits) onto the base to break it up a bit.

I then covered the base with Vallejo Sandy Paste. This was a bit of a pig, so I'd highly recommend doing this before painting. The paste neatly covers up the gaps in the base from the smaller circle fitting into the weird doughnut base, so I'll probably continue this method if I ever pick up some more Mantic figures.

Thoughts

From my limited experience, I'd say that Mantic figures aren't an automatic "avoid". You need to be picky. I'd certainly be cautious around their old Warpath Orx, for example, but some of the newer stuff seems to be OK.

I've heard mixed reviews about their newer stuff. I suspect some of it is about taste and preference - some people don't like their material or casting method. Other people I know who've bought the newer Mantic stuff have said that they've found the quality variable - some tending towards the level of the older figures, others much improved, like our friend Oberon here. All in all, this worries me more than consistent known flaws - will it always be a gamble to buy a Mantic figure?

Mantic tag themselves as being about "Building Big Armies" and talk about "Affordable Fantasy and sci-fi tabletop miniatures and wargames scenery". If you are looking for cheap - sure, look at Mantic. They are unashamedly pitching to that point in the market, and that's fine.

From my point of view, if I buy Mantic, it won't be to substitute their figures into other games - it will be because of their games. From that point of view, Deadzone and Mars Attacks are the only two that really hold any interest for me.

Mantic have had some issues with being seen as rather derivative. Kings of War and Warpath obviously get compared to Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000. Dreadball isn't just sci-fi Blood Bowl, but the similarities have left a lot of people cynical. The first factions for Deadzone left me somewhat indignant on behalf of Studio McVey due to the similarities to Sedition Wars. Eventually, I've just grown to accept that some concepts have been in sci-fi for a while, and similarities sometimes happen. The other factions, in particular the Rebs, have helped build on that feeling, too.

And really, that's where I'm at with Mantic. It's their games which will carry their success or failure - whether through licensed lines, like Mars Attacks, or their own creations, like the growing Warpath / Deadzone universe.

Beyond that, what will gain and maintain my custom is ironing out their remaining quality issues and becoming consistent and reliable in their quality. Mediocre or downright terrible models (especially around assembly) will mean I decide its not worth the hassle, and I'll put my time and money elsewhere. It doesn't have to be excellent, given their pitch to the affordable market - but it needs to be "OK". That's pretty much where I'd place Oberon. I had a niggle about his feet and the base, but I'd not be upset about assembling a box of miniatures like him.

Has anyone else had experience with Mantic miniatures, either good or bad? Is anyone tempted to use some of their figures for other systems? I'm curious how my somewhat limited readership feels on this one...

Trying out Deadzone

So, I was watching Beasts of War the other day, and they were talking about Deadzone. Now, I saw Deadzone when it was on Kickstarter, and I didn't back it. Why not? Well, a bit of me felt that it was a little too close to Sedition Wars for my liking, and I already a massive Studio McVey fan. I'd also seen some early Marauder Orx figures and vehicles from the preview packs - and the preparation and assembly was an absolute pain - horrible material, horrible mould lines, and assembly that just, well, didn't fit.

What made me change my mind? Well, the Beasts of War videos explained just enough of the background and mechanics to get me curious. The mechanics were nice and simple, and the darling wife's attention span is . . . limited, so a nice quick game is a good choice for something we can do of an evening. So when my local store arranged a demo day over the Easter weekend, I pottered on down.

This is a limited version of the gaming board for demo purposes. The demo is heavily weighted towards the Plague due to the smaller space, but it gives a good idea of the game. The basic mechanics are nice and simple - your stats tell you what number you're trying to roll on your D8, you roll 3 as a standard thing, and modifiers add or take away dice.

I quickly found out that the system was simple to get the hang of. I was already making moves without having to ask questions by the second turn.This was the point, with four of my five models down, I thought I was done for!

I shouldn't have worried! It turns out that once Plague get into combat and start swarming people, they start pulling Enforcers down. One on one, over a normal gaming distance, the Enforcers will definitely have the edge.

My problem right now is that I am still a bit of a cynic about Mantic's quality. I'm not hugely interested in their figures, and the only way of getting the stat cards for Deadzone are in the miniature boxes. You can buy the rulebook and the mat separately - and I already want the terrain... But that's close to the box cost anyway. That means I'm probably adding the Deadzone core box to my 'to buy' list, to be fair. But really, rather than getting, say, the Marauder starter set, I'd far rather be looking at making some out of MaxMini and Kromlech parts without having to buy Deadzone figure expansion sets and selling the figures!

So, I leave you on that little dilemma, and wonder if anyone has any ideas or suggestions...