Mantic Games

[fatolaf]

A few bugs in the system Dave and Dan are slowing down the invoicing, on their way chaps soon...

[Dave]

No worries at all chief.

[Veldemere]

Those dwarves do keep tempting me with their stunty dwarfy cheapness (comparatively).

[Dave]

Once I get some built and painted up I'll let you know how they stack up.  I had my hands on the sprue at the 6 nations and they were decent quality.  Not the tonnes of options like the GW ones but a decent finish and if you like the look of them then I see no reason not to use them.

It really comes down to styling, some people just don't like the way they look.  One concern is how they'll paint up, because the heads are so built into the body it might not look quite as good as the GW ones and the beards may not be as nicely detailled but I like the fact they have proper legs unlike the GW ones!

[Veldemere]

Yes, whilst I love the look of some of the GW dwarves (some of the best sculpts IMHO) anotomically they are questionable at best, I could possibly get used to the lack of neck. Having now seen the sprues I am a little closer to being swayed.

[Dave]

Receipt of 100 mantic dwarfs taken, many thanks OG Games.  Pics of 50 GW weilding dwarfs to follow!

Now I've got my hands on them I am still rather pleased.  Initial views of the models and I'm thinking I like the posing and the style of the figure, plenty of leg on show and really top heavy looking which makes them seem a bit taller than GW ones, but I suspect they are the same height when side by side.

Style
The detail of the figures is good but not amazing.  They have a decent balance between armour and cloth to enable showing off of clan colours which is important.  The faces aren't spectacular, I suspect the eyes will look kak unless a great deal of care is taken in painting them, so might just make do with a wash in the recesses so will in fact be quicker to paint!  Not gone overkill on pouches and detail but they do have some, which is good, I hate spending ages picking out crap which people will then never look at.  Beards are a bit meh, suspect they won't look as good as the GW ones but they're not as dominant on the model so it's not such an issue.

Contents
Box comes with 3 of troop sprue and 1 of command. 
Troop sprue has -
2 Body, head,left arm all in 1 piece
1 body, left arm in 1 piece (no head) and
2 body, with seperate upper torso which has both arms attached, one holding axe and shield, other has shield and an empty hand to fit GW into.
2 heads (so one spare in the box)
4 right arms- 3 of which are holding single hand weapons, 1 open for GW (so 1 spare)
2GWs
3shields
Extras
1 'churchill' dog, 1 orc head, 1 dead/wounded dwarf, 1 tankard


Not quite sure on why they split the two body/upper torso figures as ok the sculpt of the legs is a bit different with opposite leg forward but doubt people will really notice when as a unit.

Command sprue has-
2 Body, head,left arm all in 1 piece
1 body, left arm in 1 piece (no head) and
2 body, with seperate upper torso which have no arms attached
4 Heads (so 1 spare)
4 GWs
4 right arms with no weapons
2 right arms with HWs (so 1 spare right arm between the options)
2 left arms (none spare)
One horn, one banner pole (very minimalist, will be using the banner flags from the GW dwarf box set here).
Extras
3 runic thingys to add as decoration, looks like they're designed to go on the standard pole.
4 shields

Quality
By this it is basically mould lines I'm looking at.  Round the body there is a single mould line which runs the entire of the single piece dwarfs from side to side, pretty standard stuff, doesn't seem too big and not on the boundary of too much detail.  It does run across the chainmail on their legs which might be a bit of a hassle to clean up but otherwise it's all pretty flat surfaces so well thought out.

The arms and heads seem to be pretty minimal on the mould lines which is a bonus, minimal issues of cleaning them out between fingers as they are well defined and no obvious misalignment going on which can sometimes occur.

[fatolaf]

I saw Ritchie building his last night and I think the biggest problem you will have Dave is ranking them up, build whilst ranking is the key..

Nice review mate, enjoy building them all

[Veldemere]

Dave, a very good assessment of the models, as Ol mentioned ranking is giving me a little headache but I will be getting more.