Mantic’s TerrainCrate Kickstarter Begins!
April 26, 2017 by brennon
Mantic Games has now launched their Kickstarter for TerrainCrate which is looking to bring different sets of pre-coloured and pre-built terrain to the tabletop for your dungeon crawling, skirmish games and mass battle encounters.
Mantic has had lots of success with plastic terrain over the last year or so as they added loads of terrain pieces into Dungeon Saga and of course The Walking Dead: All Out War over the past few months. Now they are taking things to the next level to give you more terrain for different situations.
Here you can see some fully painted examples of what you'll be getting when you crack open a TerrainCrate. Each piece has been designed so that it will fit into a myriad of different Fantasy worlds right now but they are looking to expand upon this in the future too.
Additional pieces are hoped to be unlocked through the growing campaign and it will help add to your burgeoning collection. Terrain really can make the difference when it comes to building up a tabletop, especially for a role-playing game, and works with the narrative.
Which Crate To Choose?
So, how do these crates break down? Well, you can choose from one of three starting with the Dungeon Crate...
This includes all manner of things you'd find down in a dungeon including treasure and parts of an abandoned mine. Mix into that some focal points like the wizard's contraption and the ancient armour piles and you have some really characterful pieces to draw on.
You could also go for the Battlefield Crate...
Here you will get the pieces you need to build a ruined battlefield, destroyed and ransacked by marauding armies across the land. I particularly like the little camp site set you can pick up which might be useful when you're setting up some kind of ambush.
Of course, you don't need to use this for a battlefield as it could simply be the wild woods and lanes you're travelling through on a role-playing adventure.
Lastly (for now at least) we have the Town Crate which is for all those times when you need rest and relaxation (and a bit of skullduggery).
When mixed in with some other terrain pieces you could create a tavern, a barracks, a blacksmiths and more. I love the idea of using these in Conan to help build up a really interactive looking brawl on the tabletop.
One of these crates is $75 which seems reasonable for a massive pack of scenery to furnish your tabletops with. Considering we're now seeing gaming mats and tiles become more of a thing PLUS the advent of pre-coloured scenery and terrain pieces, it's pretty easy to set up a tabletop nowadays.
The narration for the trailer was actually by our very own community member @deaddave!
Which crate will you be going for?
"Mix into that some focal points like the wizard's contraption and the ancient armour piles and you have some really characterful pieces to draw on..."
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dammit all 3…
Just when I had promised myself no more kickstarters next month … they drag me back in.
So either no holidays this year or yet another kickstarter.
I love a bit of scatter terrain, so I’ll have one. I’ll decide which a bit later.
Ooooh… I can see these being perfect for Guild Ball as terrain & as the basis for goal markers… black smith stuff for Masons… crates & barrels for Brewers, Butchers, Union… maybe not techno-savy enough for Engineers and Alchemists =p… and I don’t see any Fish stuff … lol… and I guess the Wagon works for Farmers though… maybe the Wizards study stuff would work for Alchemists…
I backed of course 3 crates!
i am in – want to build a dwarfen mine (the called it a mine)
Almost cheaper to buy a 3D printer.
The pieces look good but the price is probably double what I was expecting. The mars attacks starter box is £45 and you get a fair bit of scatter terrain in that along with everything else
Mantic can’t survive without Kickstarters. This is how they pay the bills.
1. Take cheap plastic.
2. Charge much more than it’s worth.
3. Make pledge changes at the last minute because they can’t deliver.
4. Have troubles during fulfillment as usual.
5. Wait for you to forget what a lousy experience it was.
6. Then hit you up again.
Backed Dungeon Saga, Deadzone, Deadzone Infestation and Star Saga and never had any problems with the way the projects have been run (Star Saga hasn’t delivered yet but no reason to think it won’t) or what’s delivered at the end. I’ll most likely back this based on previous experiences and that they’re making a product I have use for.
Consider yourself lucky. I know many who have not.
There are people on every single Kickstarter by every single company who have a bad experience. That’s the same as for every single business in the entire world, on and off Kickstarter. Sometimes people just have a bad thing experience. The important thing really isn’t how many people you know had a bad experience, it’s the rate at which those bad experiences occur. Mantic kick typically attract quite large numbers of backers (typically between 2000 and 3000). If only 5% have a bad experience, that’s still 100-150 people making a noise about it and the Internet amplifies that by bringing… Read more »
Everyone knows that nothing is perfect. Someone will always have a complaint. The question is how many. There have been a number of Kickstarters where you haven’t heard much. But Mantic is not one of them. Neither is Prodos after the AVP issues. I would have trouble trusting anything from the DUST guys. The silence over at MYTH is bothering people. I could go on but the point is that on a greatest Kickstarters company list, Mantic is nowhere near the top. They could stand to try harder. We will see.
No, the question is the frequency. If two Kickstarters generate 100 complaints , but one Kickstarter has 1000 backers and the other has 10,000 backers then one Kickstarter has a 10% failure rate the other a 1% failure rate. Clearly one has performed better than the other. Mantic generally get between 2000 and 3000 backers, with some of their Kickstarters going almost up to 6000. That means that even if their failure rate is as low as 5% there will still be upto 150 people bitching about it on Facebook or Kickstarter or wherever. Let’s say that they get a… Read more »
You keep trying to hide behind numbers so let’s have a look. 1. You say Mantic average 2-3 thousand backers a Kickstarter. Compared to other mini games who have pulled in over 30,000 backers that’s sadly low. If the product and the quality of the Kickstarters were better those numbers might just go up. Hence, They could stand to do better. You mentioned the failure rate by saying ” – even if their failure rate is as low as 5% there will still be up to 150 people bitching about it on Facebook or Kickstarter or wherever. – ” 2.… Read more »
I’ve had great experience with their kickstarters and would back again.
Charge much more than it’s worth !!! jeh damn these godforsaken companies, back in my days I got a whole troop of space marines for 5 deutsche mark !!! JK obvious sarcasm
I know what you mean, why aren’t Mantic a registered charity giving out free stuff to needy gamers.
It’s fine if you don’t like it, because you’re not forced to preorder/back anything. But not this again … There’s no point in whining about something that happened in the past. One mistake does not make a company untrustworthy. They have made it pretty damned obvious that they’ve learned from their mistake. TWD wave one is done. TWD wave two is en-route (they had a ship tracker link in the recent update for backers) They even told us not to expect retail packaging. So from my point of view they’ve done all that can be expected from them. All the… Read more »
Just a quick clarification. 1. It wasn’t just one mistake. 2. Why do you think they are making an effort to get better in the first place? You don’t do that because everyone thinks you’re great and has no problem with your service. You do it because people call you out. You do it because people say you should treat customers better. You do it because you know people are watching. 3. So if people like you or @onlyonepinman had a great experience with Mantic because people like me get on them and a jab now and then to keep… Read more »
All companies strive to be better and improve, even those offering the world’s greatest products and services will adopt that attitude. That’s how business roll. Mantic were already honest, i am fairly sure that your criticism of them hasn’t had too much influence on their business practices. I suspect their feed back via the customer service team has done that. But Ronnie is a smart guy, he will know when stuff is going wrong and how customers will react, in most cases long before customers know that there is even a problem. And he will already have started figuring out… Read more »
1. The primary role of business is to make money. If everyone loves what you’re doing then you don’t spend the money on R&D as it would be a waste and cut into the operating capital thereby diminishing profits.
2. When you say that Mantic was already honest, do you mean when they changed pledge rewards at the last minute or the fact that they grew a business making cheap knockoffs of others IP?
Changing a pledge reward isn’t implicitly dishonest; making a mistakes isn’t implicitly dishonest. Mantic aren’t the only company to have done these things, and as a business they will change things if they think it makes more sense to do so. The key thing is that they are open with their communication about things and Mantic are very good at maintaining communication and keeping backers up to date and informed throughout the entire project. And it’s absolute nonsense to suggest that companies making a product that people love won’t spend money on R&D. Apple make products that billions of people… Read more »
Debris debris
I was warped as a child by the Hobbit and Smaug’s treasure vault therein. So for me has to be all those lovely, lovely preciouses of the treasure room.
Although with the Camp-site I could make an Awesome Roman Legionaires Contubernium Diorama
i was hoping for some sci-fi stuff but, still pretty nice, going for at least 1
I’ve backed one expecting sci-fi will be along at some point.
Mantic said that modern and sci-fi sets won’t make it into this project, but could be in later projects, probably depending on how well this one goes. There is a group of sci-fi scenery in the Star Saga project, but that won’t be out for a while.
Ah gotha. I’ll stick around anyway, see what’s what towards the end.
Down for 2 at the moment …..(still deciding which two) It seems to have been successful for them and they are doing a lot better than they expected, if the lack of ability of the kickstarter to keep up with stretch goals is anything to go by.
Probably only backing for 1 and it will be the battlefield or Town. I backed a prepainted Dungeon accessories Kickstarter recently and already own Dungeon Saga so there’s a lot of duplication in that crate with what I already have. Town and Battlefield both look useful.
I was originally just down for the dungeon or town stuff but then I saw all the outdoor scenery and thought …. I could use that
Was there not suppose to be a contest for the crate?
Despite being let down twice before by Mantic Kickstarters I would love to back this but its too damn expensive at the moment. Not enough stuff in each pledge. Obviously it will change as stretch goals are added as is standard for Mantic.
Still going to be an expensive one for us Brits though. Silly £ being so low is crippling when prices are in $. Nice work looking after your local customers Mantic.
Thanks Brexit.
Like @shinra said: 3D printing starts to get the superior option for terrain
I like scatter terrain very much and the pieces from Mantic offer a great variety. But since I own a 3D printer, my look at terrain changed completely. Especially for scatter terrain there are already a lot of models out there waiting to be printed. And that is for pennies.
Same starts to get true for buildings, while printing them takes some time of course.
It’s only ‘superior’ because you can print at will and create the designs yourself.
If you lack skill at the design stage then you’re going to depend on people doing that part for you, which won’t be cheap (if you want quality ,,,).
Cost effective it sure as heck isn’t for the beginning gamer who isn’t ready to invest time and resources in a part of the hobby he might not like.
I was hoping to see larger pieces, along the lines of the buildings that can be made with their 20th Century and Deadzone terrain. Still nice bundles though, just not terribly unique.
Some of the peices look nice, but no interest in any of the whole packs, not actually seeing these as particularly good value either compared to some stuff I have seen.
the discriminating gentleman would only smoke Fences & Hedges
Kickstarter needs to become a charity so I can at least save on taxes with all the stuff I buy.
I almost backed this, then I saw it wasn’t until May 2018. The long wait put me off and my wallet thanked me
I love so many of the items in this KS! Gotta go for all 3, even though I was hoping to save some money…*sigh* To chime in to the whole Mantic conversation, my husband and I were HUGE Mantic fans, getting in on all of their KS campaigns except Warpath, because we didn’t like the way things were leaning then. We love Mantic’s stuff, but we have been less and less impressed by their interactions with and care for their customer base. They used to bend over backwards to give customers great service and great value, and would go above… Read more »
I belong to those people who were dissatisfied with how Mantic handled the Dungeon Saga Kickstarter. But nevertheless, I’m thinking about backing this as they have opened up the possibility of getting not a whole crate (which would contain a lot of things I have no use for or interest in), but a single set (for example only the Wizard’s Study).
Here is hoping they release more individual sets as the Tavern is something I would use possibly the black Smithy other than that the Dungeon crate is all I would use. Will hold off on pledging until more stuff is in locked right now you could get easily get 5 of the Dungeon saga terrain sets for the same price as a crate so not worth it yet imo