Unboxing: Mantic Games Crazy Box (Sci fi/Fantasy 20014 edition)

Hi there, this video unboxing has been long overdue because of several things, mainly problems transferring the movie clips from my camera which is isn't working as it should right now.

But... even if this is kind of late, and you can't purchase the 2014 ed version anymore, it's still a hint on how this years Crazy Box could look. As I said, I did a video unboxing of this one. So hope you enjoy and over too.... myself!

If you also purchased one of these boxes, either this one or the sci fi only one, please share what you got in it. Always interesting too hear how random they are.

News: Dungeon Saga continues to grow

Mantic's newest Kickstarter featuring the dungeon crawler game called Dungeon Saga: The Dwarfs Kings Quest is breaking new pledge and is already having more backers than all other Mantic Kickstarters before accept Mars Attacks and Deadzone. There's a lot of time left and much more stuff do unlock, but as you can see below the main box is growing and is by now a really nice deal if you ask me.

In update 17 we also got some info on what's in store for future updates. Really looking forward seeing how they handle the add on expansion and what more we can unlock in this KS campaign. So far I really like what I see and especially now when you can also do solo play so you can play the game yourself if you want to and “Fully Co-op” which means every player plays as the heroes and the AI cards handles the Necromancer. If you haven't already go and check is KS out.

New Stretch Goal

$315,000 – BONUS HERO: Kapoka, Dryad Druid Shapeshifter

Dryads are a long-lived race. They have cared for the forests of the world since time immemorial, and it is rare indeed to see them outside of their wooded realm. Kapoka is one of these few exceptions, his home having been brutally vandalised by an Orc and Goblin army which passed through it. Furious, Kapoka took his leave of the forest to track down the Orc warlord responsible. His natural magical talents rival those of any human druid, and he is able to heal his allies and visit magical destruction on his foes with equal ease.


Kapoka marks a new phase of this Kickstarter campaign.

When the initial funding goal got hit we had a great dungeon crawler on our hands with loads of cool extras like the Adventurer’s Companion, Dungeon Journal and Keldan figure. Since then we’ve been piling stuff into the pledge level as the funding we’ve achieved has allowed us to tool new undead and hero models for the boxed game, as well as exciting new game modes like Solo Play and the A.I. cards, and new Kickstarter Exclusives.

Kapoka however is different: he is not going in the boxed game.

Instead, Kapoka heralds in the first expansion for the game, which has a working title of Dungeon Saga: The Warlord of Galahir. It will see new monsters, new Dungeon tiles, new scenarios, cards, counters and more, in a low-cost Optional Add-on that allows you to go beyond the Undead and play through an all-new adventure with your heroes!

However, we’re not done with The Dwarf King’s Quest boxed game yet and as the funding becomes available, there are some components that we would love to upgrade to plastic. There is also some new stuff that could become possible to add-in.

With that in mind, this second phase is looking very exciting indeed and could open up the doors for a world of new free goodies and more.

If we break this stretch goal, we will produce Kapoka and add him free to your pledge of Dungeon Master ($100 and Early Bird).

Kapoka is a shapeshifter and brings about the Druid class, meaning you’ll be turning nature against your enemies and transforming into nightmarish, animalistic alternate forms. A bear would be quite fun, no?
Kapoka can also be used to represent a male Dryad character in your own adventure.

Merry Christmas!

Just wanted to say Merry Christmas to all you wargaming fans out there, I did not get any minis this X-mas but I have plenty of miniatures to paint the coming year so that is perfectly okey :) Did get some nice video games though, Zelda: A Link Between Worlds for my 3DS, Assassins Creed 4 for PS4 and Super Mario 3D World for the Wii U. So a lot of gaming for me the coming days but I'm sure I will get something painted as well. Soon we have a new year and I don't know how I'm doing in the Painting Challenge?!

Have to sort out the last months soon so we all know how it went :)

So once again happy holidays from me and the Zombie Zanta.

News: New Mantic Ogre pic

Mantic Games is celebrating Thanksgiving by giving us a new picture of their upcoming Ogre army. And I must say this one looks much better and the legs don't look as small as on the first one (found here). Really like the look of this one and I'm hoping that the rest of the upcoming army will look equally good. What do you guys think? Anything for you Ogre Kingdoms players or does this look differ to much from GW? Tell me in the comments below. 

Tutorial: Speed painting 20 Mantic Zombies

I consider myself a pretty decent painter, but I don't paint stuff fast and I try all the time to speed up my painting using different techniques and one that is working pretty good for me is the Army Painter technique. So how do we need to paint these Zombies when using this technique? First of all the models, which can be from pretty much any company but the ones I have here is from Mantic Games who makes nice miniatures for a really good price. I assembled all of them which didn't take long, generally Mantic's stuff is easy to put together. Then you need some colours, a colour primer spray and Army Painters Quickshade Dark Tone.

First of all after assembling I sprayed all of them with Army Painters Colour Primer called Necrotic Flesh (can't find it any more so they have maybe stopped to produce it or something). Some of the minis stayed with this colour and some of them I washed with GW's washes like Thraka Green, Asurmen Blue, Ogryn Flesh and Baal Red. Just to get some more variate in the unit. Next step is to paint the blood, I did this with a 40/60 mix of Blood Red and Red Gore. And I painted this on all the exposed tissue, organs etc. It doesn't matter if the blood goes on places you didn't wanted because it will just look more real and the zombie will look more gory. I also painted this mix on the hands on most of them and around the mouth to represent that they recently eaten on an unlucky foe.

After this I painted the exposed bone areas (like the rib cages and knees on some of the models) with a mix of Dheneb Stone and Bleached Bone. I also painted the cloth they are wearing in browns, greys and whites using, Calthan Brown, Adeptus Battle Grey and Dheneb Stone. I also painted the hair in these colours. And finally I highlighted the bones with skull white and a mix of 60/40 mix of Blood red and Skull white as an highlight to the intestines and the muscle fibres. Then I painted the eyes and teeth with Skull White. Now on to the dipping part.

Here they are dipped in Quick Shade Dark Tone and when they have dried 24 hours I sprayed them with AP's Anti Shine Matt Varnish. Be careful with this though and don't spray to much, because otherwise you can destroy the result like I did here.

After this is was just the basing to be done, took a lot of time for me though and can be shortened quite a lot if you don't work with all the materials I used. I used, GW sand, painted it with a mix oif Vermin brown and Tausept Ochre which I then Highlighted with the same mix but with quite a lot of added Skull white. I then washed the whole bases with Devlan Mud and when dried added AP's Brown Battleground and Ash Grey flock. Then I added Green Static Grass and Citadels Dead Grass and on top of this some of the Mordheim Turfs and Middenland Tufts from Citadel. All in all this process with all twenty of them took maybe eight hours to get done, and three or maybe even four of them was the basing process. Really happy with the result though and I know there's some of you you which can make this faster but that's as fast I can get them done with this quality which is fine for me. Hope you like this tutorial and go and paint some Zombies, If you're an VC player you will need them ;)

Mantic Undead Wraiths

Another little update, and this time I wanna show you some Mantic stuff! Yeah it was some time ago I painted Mantic minis the last time. But I got really excited to paint my wraiths when I saw this awesome tutorial in nr 6 of The Invocation by SethDrallitoc (pages 13-17). Wasn't happy with my old one which I painted so I decided to try this method out and I think they look much better, quite fast to paint as well.

Been really busy IRL with the baby and all, so have been painting a little here and a little there this last couple of weeks. I currently paint my Night Goblins and building ten more Savage Orcs. I'm also in the slow ongoing process of painting the howda for the Arachnarok. As always much to do little time. Atleast I have some summer vaccation for two weeks now.

One thing I have forgotten to post is that I got my Avatars of War Berserkers last week. have built one and currently painting it, will give you a full review of the box in the coming week but I can give you a little hint, the box is awesome and there's some really nice bits.

Now pics with the wraiths:

 

Warpath Beta

 
Actually quite excited for the upcoming Sci-fi game from Mantic. Have just read the beta rules briefly and it seems like a nice game, and it gets a lot of feedback from people. But what I'm most excited about is for what they can do for a human faction, so far there have just been some concept sketches mainly from the two starter races: Marauders (Space Orcs like 40k's orks) and Forgefathers (Space Dwarfs like 40k's squats). They look from the looks of the concept arts like sci-fi versions of the Kings of War races, but as there isn't any human army from Mantic yet, it's exciting to see what it would look like. Myself I'm hoping for a Helghast looking theme, as I want this kind look on a Imperial Guard army.

For pictures and  more info and of course free beta rules for Warpath head over too Beasts of War and Mantic Games and sign up for their Newsletters.

So what's happening to my Kings of War Undead/Vampire Counts army? Not much at the moment I'm afraid. I paint mosty my O&G right now, and some WoC. But I'm starting to feel the urge to paint some more ghouls and zombies so if you like to see some more of these check out the blog in the future.

Mantic Zombies painted

Well, the first three zombies are done. Actually they have been done for a couple of days just haven't had the time to take pictures of them. But now there are! The models was easy enough to paint, and I could probably painted them faster than I did but the extra highlights and blood just add that much more flavour to the models. Anyway, will paint the converted zombie ghouls next and here's some pictures of the painted Zombies.

Mantic Zombies!!

The zombies are here! I finally got my hands on the zombies as well thirty more ghouls on Friday. Been quite busy last weekend and I won't do much updates until next week as I travel to Gran Canaria tomorrow. But atlest you will get a small update today and see what I have done to my zombies and ghouls the last couple of days.

As I have mentioned earlier I wanted to kitbash the zombie sprue with the Ghoul one to get more variation to the units. There are no problem combining the two sprues to make Zombies, but making Ghouls was a little bit trickier. The main problem of making Ghouls with the zombie parts is that they look to decayed which results with them looking like Zombies anyway, so I decided to do some Greenstuff work to make them look a little bit more alive and human. You can see the result below.

As you can see (hopefully) there isn't any major GS work. I made clothes for the torsos on two of them and I needed to fill up some places where the skin is missing with greenstuff. Particularly two of them around the knees and lower legs. The hardest bit was probably the one that got an nose job and the one to the left where I needed to sculpt the right portion of his face. Not anything really hard, but hard to tell if it will look good until they get some paint on.

And then there was the Zombies. I used almost only the Zombie sprue for these guys, and I didn't need to do any GS work on these as I want them to look decayed, they are Zombies after all. Just added some more intestines and some maggots.


So not much done yet I'm afraid but there will be more, well next week anyway. I will also make a decent review of the Zombie box and pretty much all of the undead from Mantic in the near future as I now have all of the undead range that has come out. So stay tuned for more!

Eleven ghouls sitting in a tree

Eleven ghouls finished, god knows how many more there will be. I've just finished three more ghouls and it actually starts to look like a unit which is always nice. The latest of the bunch have some minor greenstuff work done to them to make them look a little bit different from the rest. I am especially keen on the one with the long hair, just add a electric guitar and he would look like belonging in a Heavy Metal band. Cool to see how such small changes actually makes them really different from the rest of the bunch, which is needed as there only are three head options.

I won't convert everyone of them though, my order from Mantic with 60 Zombies and 30 Ghouls was dispatched yesterday, and when they arrive I will have plenty of options of kit bashing the two boxes and make more different looking ghouls as well as zombies, really looking forward for this.

I have also taken some pictures (although not very good ones) of the whole bunch of maniacs so far, and I must say I really like how the unit looks ranked up, really ragtag and crazy looking, decide for yourselves.

Ghouls and Flagellants

Okey not much updates lately, have been quite busy with renovation of the bathroom and stuff. But here is a little update of what I'm doing right now.

 

As you can see I wanted a little more variation on my ghouls so I added little bits of greenstuff on them, not any major stuff but it makes them a little bit different. I have also ordered new stuff from Mantic, I choose to buy 60 zombies and 20 more ghouls, as they are interchangeable I will kitbash these quite extensively.

 

I'm also in the process of painting more Empire Flagellants, the two Mordheim Zealots to the left and in the back just need some Quick Dip. The one in the front is in the converting stage and my intention is to make him into an Prophet of Doom, I will take more pictures of him when I finish him up.

On a other note I have finally bought a new camera as well, still need to learn a bit more how to use it properly but these two photos is taken by it and I think they look quite decent, down below are a picture of one of the old ghouls which I hadn't any good picture of, this one looks better and I even took it with flash turned on.

Thats all for today, will try to post more updates in the future. Until next time.

Undead Revenant Knights Review

As you may have seen I finally got my Revenant Knights last week, and now I want to give you a little review of my first impressions of the miniatures, how they are to put together and to paint etc.

So when I first opened the package I got in the mail there was two of the ordinary boxes that all the miniatures from Mantic comes with. There was no box art which is a shame because most of the other boxes have some cool box art, not a huge deal though and I think they will change this to the “real” release with the plastic versions of the knights.

Anyway inside the boxes there was the normal foam and a lot of parts for both horses and knights. The first thing that came to my mind was that the horses looks quite small, even smaller than the undead Pegasus for the Vampire Lord. I didn’t like this at all in the beginning, I am a Warhammer player/painter first and foremost and in comparison with GW’s heroic style horses they look like ponies and when you play with them in Warhammer games that may look a little strange. But with no one will notice if you just do a good paint job. Also when thinking a little more about it they don’t look strange when just looking at them and their riders. And they actually should look a bit smaller as they are rotting decaying corpses of horses. So now I don’t think this is a huge problem.

When it comes to details I think they look really nice, the decaying muscles, skin and bones have good details and really looks good when painted. The knights looks really nice as well, good details and cool armor and much better looking shields than the Revenants on foot.

But there are some problems with them as well. The lance are very thin, it doesn’t look strange but because of this they bend extremely easily which can be a problem if you aren’t careful, this problem gets solved automatically when they are in plastic though. The other thing is that they all look similar, there are just two different looks on the knights, which I think is quite bad. But as you get different arms you can make them quite diverse anyway, I’ve would have liked some more helmet options and hopefully they fix this with plastic release.

Pros

• Nice details
• Cool looking
• Fun to paint
• Decaying horses instead of just bones

Cons

• They are metal and some parts are really thin
• More different heads for the knights
• No extra bitz or pieces to choose from
• The horses are a little small in my opinion

So all in all they are nice boxes and the knights looks really cool when painted. I do have high hopes for the plastic version Mantic has promised to produce, and hopefully there will be more bitz and stuff when there is a plastic kit instead.

Revenant finished at last!

At last the first of my Revenant Knights is finished! He was really fun to paint and I'm really happy with how he turned out. Actually not that hard to paint either so I will paint more of these next along with some more Flagellants probably..I do think that these knights are some of the very the best looking undead knights I've seen. But enough text, there will be plenty of it in tomorrows post where I write a review of the knight boxes. So on to some pictures, hope you like how he turned out as much I do.

Knight on the way

I'm not done with my knight just yet, but I'm almost done with the painting and I just need to splash on some Quickshade on him. So not much of an update I'm afraid but I'm confident there will be pictures of the knight tomorrow.

One thing I can say though is that he was very fun to paint and I'm quite happy with the result so far. Also I'm considering what deal I will buy from Mantic next, I am considering the Undead Army Set, with a stunning 110 minatures for £45 including the rules for Kings of War, there I would get some more skeletons (40) and Revenants as well as the miniatures I want the most, more Ghouls and 30 Zombies!!! Yeah, I think it will be this deal, anyway see you tomorrow and you will see how the knight turned out.

At last Revenant Knights!

Today I finally got my Revenant Knights, they look really great in my opinion and it will be a lot of fun to paint them. I've just put together the first five of the ten to models I got. They take a little bit of time to assemble as they are in metal, but they actually fits really nice just needed a little bit of green stuff to fill some of the gaps. The only real negative thing I have to say against them is that the hordes are a little bit small for my taste, being a warhammer painter/player for many years makes me used to the larger heroic style horses.

But don't think that is a large problem. They fit in well with the riders and I think there is a reason why the horses looks smaller and thinner, they are decaying horse corpses after all. I will post a larger review of the knights and assemble the remaining five knights including command group asap, in the meantime you can look at the first five knights I've managed to get together.

Warhammer Skeletons

Just finished two new skeletons for my undead/vampire counts army. Just wanted to try out and paint some more of them, really excited over getting the new knights soon as well, they may even come tomorrow and I promise that I going to paint one up as fast as I can.

Anyway on to the normal skeletons. I've come up with an new design for the shields for them. They looks similar to some of the designs I've already painted for my Revenants. The design is supposed to be two serpents/wyrms trying to bite each others tails in an endless loop with an red eye in the middle. I'm in the process of coming up with the fluff for the army and I will try to write it down when I'm satisfied, I think I will have similar fluff in both Warhammer and Kings of War. Now on to some pictures.

These are the new ones I've painted, they are getting better and better paintingwise I think.


And a picture from the back showing the hair dudes shield with another design, don't wan't every shield to look exaclty the same.


And lastly, with the old dude as well now with the new shield design didn't like the old red one he had and I want the units shields to
have at least the same colours.

Kings of War Rules Closed Beta!

I got an mail today or was it yesterday? Anyway, it was the ordinary Mantic Newsletter but this time there was a little suprise, the Beta rules for the Kings of War! For who don't know it already, it's Alessio Cavatore who writes the rules and so far it looks to be fun to play.

I have just read it briefly as I have been quite busy today, but the first impression I got is that it looks pretty much as a simpler version of pre 8th edition warhammer. Don't hold me to this though as I haven't read it much yet even if it's only twelve pages. I also think that I need to playtest it before I give any deeper information about how I feel about it.

As it is a closed beta so far, but if you don't get the Mantic Newsletter you not totally screwed if you want to check out the rules, head over to Beasts of War where they have an new section dedicated to KoW. If you sign up there you can download the rules and army lists as well as participate in the discussions going on there.

No pictures today but for you who would like to see more painted Mantic undead will not be disappointed, well I hope you won't. It's not much but I currently paint two new skeleton warriors which are almost done just need a coat of Quickdip and basing. Also working on making a horde of Flagellants. Stay tuned for more about KoW and more picures.

Revenant Command Finished!

My command group for my Revenant's is finished at last, and now I have a total of six finished in my unit. At the moment I will take a little break from them and continue on adding more Flagellants to my existing unit, will show you pictures of the ones already done soon.

Now on to my Mantic miniatures, for the first time it actually start to look like and regiment of Undead Revenants. This really boosts me to paint more of them, but I would like to paint some other stuff first. I also have been converting some of my Ghouls to make some of them look a little more unique, but first some pictures of of the first rank of Revenants.

As always, click on the pictures to get larger versions and comments and criticism is always welcome.