Goblins & Trolls Infest the Kings of War World of Mantica
June 2, 2012 by brennon
Some new developments from the land of Mantica today with them showing off some Work-in-Progress images of their new Goblins and a piece of concept art for the Trolls in Kings of War...
First up are the Mawbeasts with their rather confident looking handler. I wonder how much it would take for one of those feral nasties to turn round and start eating him? I really like the look of the Mantic Goblins at the moment actually, very old school in their appearance.
Now that's an original looking piece of kit. What you see above is the Goblin War Trombone. You also see a pair of Goblins paying very close attention to it and looking like they really hope it works properly!
As well as Goblins Mantic have also shown off, through their Kickstarter Campaign, a concept for the Trolls in their world. Check him out...
Certainly got a little bit of the Trollblood about him? I really love the image so far and can't wait to see more of them as the process moves along.
Looking forwards to starting your Goblin army?
Supported by (Turn Off)
Supported by (Turn Off)
Supported by (Turn Off)
That concept looks interesting.
So long as Mantic take care and refrain from rushing, which I’m sure they’ll do. No more Smaller-than elf Gore-riders please!
This time next year they’ll have a LOT of stuff, exciting!
Mantics new minis are really great. The Undead is still my favs but the greenskins are really coming along. Shame I dont play mass battle fantasy at the mo
My Mantic fix is DKH based and if I can find a copy Pandora
Gave you a like just to get you off the dreaded 666.
$65,000 goal is less than $9000 away and they’ll add Trolls and Kings of Legend (a new supplement of hero characters) to Werewolves, Ogres, Shooting Ogres and Orc chariots/war wagons. Once that’s reached I’m guessing the next goal will be Mummies + more kings of legend. Get over to their Kickstarter page and pledge—>
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1744629938/kings-of-war/comments
The weird thing about Mantic’s fantasy game is you don’t even need miniatures to play it.
True, but the battlefield does look better with them.
It would have indeed been awesome, if Mantic did those trolls compatible with the Trollbloods.
I love how well mantic is doing, and how they really do a great job with what they produce. The thing that kills me most is that this company is doing kickstarters to get a new product out. Honestly, its not costing them a dime to produce these things at the get-go. They don’t get enough money from me buying their products to support furthering their range? It just seems strange that instead of investing their own profit, they hold their hand out for more money. Or maybe I’m looking at it all wrong.
As I see it Mantic are using the Kickstarter to get things out *fast* and insulate themselves from a certain amount of the risk entailed in dropping a lot of new products on the hobby scene – they’re effectively guaranteeing pre-orders and performing some very direct market research. Sort of – “you want X? Put up the money and we’ll give you X.” One of the things following BoW has impressed upon me is the sheer start-up cost of those handy plastic kits we all like, not to mention Mantic are about to start trying to sell a prestige hardback… Read more »
I see where your coming from, I guess it just took a decent look from another perspective. “You want X?” is a good explanation, and I see exactly what you mean, I suppose its not the beast I made it out to be.
An average plastic sprue costs about £15-20,000 to make. A really good one (GW quality) is double that. Mantic sell their miniatures for peanuts. Do you *really* think they’re making that much money? It’s a long term game they’re playing. Their current speed is probably what they’re profit is allowing them to produce.Why on earth would you think they aren’t investing their own profit / personal capital. A kickstarter means they can speed up their production. GW kick out 3/4 £50,000+ plastic sprues a month (£200,000 investment) not to mention the Finecast stuff (I assume costs less to make than… Read more »
“Building a plastic kit is an incredibly difficult process.”
If you want to go injection moulded, yeah. It is cheaper to do other sorts of plastic such as PVC (which Kingdom death and Privateer press use). And then theres Troll Forged’s new spincasting plastic on the horizon, a real game changer. I think things will be changing in the next few years when it comes to plastic! quite exciting times for wargaming IMO!
Which is why above I said its not the beast I made it out to be. I realize It costs a pretty heavy amount to produce. Albeit I don’t know if it truly costs THAT much, but I’m sure those numbers are ballpark accurate. I’m merely Implying that there’s no risk involved on their part. As for profits, if they didn’t make very much, they wouldn’t be in the business. They are not losing money selling to retailer’s, they are making exactly what they expected. But as I said before, my ignorance got in the way, and I now agree… Read more »
There is risk 🙂 If they make shite products then no one will come back for more :p
And Mantic have only been around for 2/3 years. For all you know their profits could only be allowing them to “break even” whilst Ronnie’s own money / loans could be keeping everything growing. You just don’t know, but from the Mantic videos you can clearly see everything is carefully planned out.
That’s true, who knows whats keeping them afloat. Good thing they always make good products for some of the lowest prices on the market.
I dig Mantic’s style but I’ve been a little underwhelmed by some of their fantasy lines before now – I very much like all the the goblin stuff however. Like everyone says, they’re really hitting their stride now.
I think the problem with mantic is the gamers themselves. Mantic came onto the seen from pretty much no where, with two plastic sprue armies, then they released the dwarves, brought a ruleset out written by Alessio. This is all stuff you just don’t expect from a brand new company. People almost expect too much from mantic, because they’ve managed to achieve so much in such a short time. Yeah, some of their releases haven’t been great in terms of quality, and other releases have been disappointing (the re-use in the warpath sprues) but they’ve gone a long way to… Read more »
I think that’s a very good point. While they went after the disgruntled GW customer, they’ve been compared to that company, often on unfair parallels. Granted they started with experienced staff, but unlike certain experienced staff, they’re not cocky, overconfident and arrogant. I have no illusions about them as a company seeking profit, but they make me, as a customer, feel much more engaged in their future growth and that might well be a very important quality in a hobby where people are as emotionally involved as they are. Do you imagine GW stating “thanks guys, the half-year figures were… Read more »
The re-use in the warpath sprues is the result of lack of money rather more than anything else. They must have made a calculation to put more money into the Corporation. It’s hard for them. Not saying it was a good decision, I don’t know, but that is probably why they did it. Oddly enough I did read what an ex-GW person claimed, he said GW do sometimes listen to gamers, and – as I could have warned – that comes back to bite them. Sometimes you mistake LOUD gamers for the majority or target audience etc. The example was… Read more »
I love that War Trombone – it takes the already lethal blunderbuss and seems to scale it up. I can easily see that blowing away units. The little touches like the single ramshackle wheel to move it rather than a heavy (but more stable) cart and the open ammo feed on the top really give a sense of gobbo engineering – purposeful but not perfect. Interestingly the ‘master engineer’ figure looks like a modified Mawbeast Handler, wonder why a new one wasn’t made from scratch? The Mawbeast Pack looks good too – not as finely done as the original big… Read more »