Mantic SciFi Games News and Rumours Roundup

[rodmillard]

So 40K players will have to use forgefathers as SM stand ins. Regular Corporation troopers are a guard equivalent, and the "Space Commandos" (or whatever they end up calling them) are an elite unit within the corporation list which are incredibly rare and only get deployed against the direst threats. I think this might be where we see humans in power armour.

I liked the design process with these guys as well: Allessio said that the corporation troopers are the "benchmark" for everything else - they have all the tactical options, but aren't great at anything. So a bit more like Earthforce from B5 than the Imperial Guard in 40K.

EDIT: I have to say I love BoW's choice of adverts: Wayland Games, Infinity ... and Lynx anti-perspirant!

[Ozorik]

EDIT: I have to say I love BoW's choice of adverts: Wayland Games, Infinity ... and Lynx anti-perspirant!

Lynx, the smell of teenage desperation. Quite a few wargamers would fit into this category

Any idea when the actual models will be previewed?

[Max Jet]

I really like the background discussed in the beasts of war videos. Themwise it has almost everything you might look for in an engaging Science Fiction Wargame, be it differently styled and themed aline cultures, a decent amount of mysteries to keep you entertained and of course enough warrant for conflicts.

Creating a universe that is less about "Kill them all!" but rather focusses on the varying reasons for conflicts and misunderstandings certainly was the right choice in order to protect those who want to field combined armies from Fluff Nazis going berserk on you.

Now onto the concept sketches of the corporation, I wanted to say something.

There is one thing I have a problem with and that is the derived theme. These are mere modern Combat Infantry troops just being enriched with technical looking gimmicks, however at the core these sketches resemble nothing more than a typical intervention force of our modern world, especially the U.S Marine Corps.
I was expecting a little bit creativity, it bugs me on the same level as the armour plates on the forgefathers which resemble beards.
Sometimes you need to step back from your parental theme in a bold way and not just reinvent styles and details without a second thought.

The Transport is a mere HMMWV with some randomly attached extra armour in order to protect the sides from ... I don't know what since I will always aim for the tires anyway if I want to stop this thing. Furthermore they have taken over the concept of attaching the tracks in order to make it drivable in heavy snowfall areas. What they have done wrong is flip the tracks upside down. I is important to keep the larger area in contact with the ground and not the other way around. They have just taken over the tracks of a tank and miniaturised it. The Tank tracks need two gripping wheels in order to move the track around, small tracks on the humvee don't need such a system, the tracks are there for a certain reason, so you need the larger area below. This is all of course if they want to keep the theme realistic and not laughable like for example the "Baneblade". (Judging from the style and theme this might be indeed the desired effect, keep it believable)

Alternatively I would suggest not to mess around with a cumbersome verhicle like the Humvee, I would rather implement some kind of rapid intervention force theme, so instead of large transport vehicles they could make use of small Aerotopters flying from various areas of the battlefield, dropping their troops wherever needed. If they want to keep a wheeled fitting vehicle they might want to go more into the buggy theme, give this thing a highly maneuverable construction. Protection is for naught anyway. Higher armoured vehicles could use the SpPz 2 as an example.
And by the way.. just randomly attaching weapons on the top was never ever a good idea. I am looking at you Terminus Pattern!

The troops look like the typical U.S. Marine Core Troops with random bits attached here and there. It was a good decision to give them visors, indicating a technologicaly advanced force being able to get infos via their visors. Additionaly this makes them look less emotional, something you would expect from the corporation theme.
As of now however the United states are heavily interested in the exo skelleton robotic developement, something you will see implemented as soon es the time is right. I would have liked Mantic to play a little bit with this theme, cover the robotic skelleton with a design of their own.

Some of their weapon have vent holes, however on very small parts of their weaponry. The areas are to small for a decent heat exchange and I guess they are just there because someone couldn't think of more details.
There are also no ammunition boxes, I take it these are energy weapons? Well even energy weapons will have to fire something, even if it is nothing more than gas, or AL bullets. The only possibility besides this might be a laser, but we all know how uncool it is for the troops to just point at the target and wait for the laser to eat trough it without any sound. I think we all want to see shells flying around, gun flashes and loud noises.

Type a has some serious business with it's "Schulterstütze" (don't know the correct english expression). The thing that is attached in order to press the rifle against your body. This looks terribly uncomfortable.

Besides.. why does the Trooper carry an ammunition bag when all of these rifles clearly don't carry any ammunition? The secound rifle also has an ejection port (don't know the english word either.. the thing that throws out the fired ammunition)
And one minor detail the two plates at the front of his boots are too close to each other. The Soldier will have problems crouching assuming these are metal plates.
And please get rid of the exterior crotch protection on Type B. Besides I really don't know what he is going to do with gloves like that and I would like to know why the carry handle is only attached on one side? Moreover it is to small for a hand to fit through.
Sorry there are just many details where I can see the designer in front of the desk, just asking how to put details on this and not knowing what to do.

Basically there are two possibilites. Either make the weapons sleek and futuristic in design, attach some kind of cooling system for the magnetic coils where the miniature fusion reactor sits and an additional laser barrel on the top of the gun barrel or make them look steampunkish. The heat from the laser will pave the way, creating a short mini vacuum where the plasma projectile will fire through without exchanging to much heat and material with the atmosphere. You can go crazy with the ammunition box as it will basically be nothing more than a gas container and you won't need much of it.
For further details you can use some sort of battery, it can even be an organic battery since no classic power cell will varant enough capacity for fusion reactor operation. Since no one knows how an organic battery is going to look like you can go all crazy with the design.

The armour should be an all connected exo skelleton based design. It can be as thin as sports protection or as bulky as a meatball. There hase to be however a connection. At the moment it looks like an marine with some randomly attached Football wear on it. Well these are my thoughts.

[emperorpenguin]

From the following blog http://jasksta.tumblr.com/post/74209...y-news-rumours


Warpath*

7 of the 8 Races have been announced*

Forgefarthers*

Marauders*

Zor’s – Bug Race

Plague – Zombie Race

Rebels – Mixed Race against the Corporation*

Corporation – Human Race*

Not Sure about Name – Basically Dark Eldar Models

8th Race – Nobody talks about the 8th race

Managed to get my hands on some Forgefarthers *mini’s and the look awesome.

Seen some of the concept sketches for the Forgefathers vehicles*

Warpath Party on 12 November 2011

[Max Jet]

OMFG BUG RACE!!!!!! Please tell me this is not a joke.. anyone??

Who by the way is writing the Warpath fluff? I want to congratulate the person. For a wargaming science fiction background it is pretty good.

[lord marcus]

Alessio does the IP, everything else is contracted to freelance writers ( ) and stuff in the journal is haley afaik.

[mattjgilbert]

Alessio planned the background as he wanted something to write the rules for because he thinks it feels more real that way.

Bug race.... this is true.

The forgefather models we saw (heavy weapons and squad leader) are indeed very very very nice. The vehicle sketches we saw (but not allowed to take pictures of!) are also really good.

Marauders will be out first, the Forgefathers and then the Corporation. There will be a starter set like Mhorgoth's Revenge featuring Forgefathers and Marauders (and the vehicles we can't show you or talk about!)

[scarletsquig]

Since I asked about the starter set I also made sure I remembered every word Ronnie said.

Here is the current plan for the Warpath box contents (subject to change, potentially):

- 40 Marauders
- 15 Forgefathers
- 2 Vehicles

As most of you will be pleased to hear, the forgefather models are best described as "absolutely, completely and utterly exactly the same as the concept art".

They look amazing. Absolutely fantastic models. We got to see the finalised 28mm plastics and the detail on them was incredibly sharp and the armour multi-layered with engraved detailing.

The background ties in with norse mythology... the forgefathers are an ancient race that trade their technology with humans. Not all of their tech however, to make sure they can defend themselves, they save the best of it for their own use.

[mrtn]

Happy to hear that the forgefathers follow the concept sketches, this sounds great. I'm interested in the Plague as well, could be a tie-in with my plague marines.

[Grimmeth]

The Bug race were quoted as being 'like Space Hornets", like to keep to themselves but the Corporation came along, poked and poked and poked and 'stirred up the hornets nest'.
They WILL have built technology though (vehicles etc) Alesio said,
The Plague, as described seemed to have a Resident Evil kind of vibe to them. Began as a bio-weapon created by the Corporation that shuts down most people's nervous system and turns them into zombies, however, some (un)lucky individuals keep their conscious and mutate (hence the Resident Evil theme.) Sounded right up my street!

[TheWarmaster]

Well then, when will we be seeing the minis? Will mantic post a newsletter about it or do I have to stalk this thread and/or BoW?

[mattjgilbert]

I thought Forgefathers we saw were resin copies, not the final plastics.

[Grimmeth]

They were resin, but I got the impression they were masters?

[scarletsquig]

^That's likely. Either way, they looked good. Kinda wondering if they are going to use resin plastic for their leaders and heavy weapons... if they were going to be plastic then surely there would have been a 3-up?

The vehicles will be resin plastic at least. Artillery pieces are tracked, basically they are mini-vehicles in their own right, with a main weapon that you can hot-swap.

Mantic do seem to have plans to really step up the number of resin plastic kits they make, the price of metal was mentioned a lot. Production for these is based in China, interestingly.

@The WarMaster - Seem to remember the end of either this month or next month being stated as the big reveal for these. There is a whole ton of stuff being shown off in a month's time, a lot of it might come at gencon.

[strewart]

So there were actual models shown, anyone take photos?

All sounds rather good, I am also interested if they showed 28mm resins instead of 3-ups or plastics. I hope it means the armies won't be resin, unless its a really good price. Its sounding awesome so far.

[lord marcus]

^That's likely. Either way, they looked good. Kinda wondering if they are going to use resin plastic for their leaders and heavy weapons... if they were going to be plastic then surely there would have been a 3-up?

The vehicles will be resin plastic at least. Artillery pieces are tracked, basically they are mini-vehicles in their own right, with a main weapon that you can hot-swap.

Mantic do seem to have plans to really step up the number of resin plastic kits they make, the price of metal was mentioned a lot. Production for these is based in China, interestingly.

@The WarMaster - Seem to remember the end of either this month or next month being stated as the big reveal for these. There is a whole ton of stuff being shown off in a month's time, a lot of it might come at gencon.

Ok stop, please. Did you just say Gencon?

This, the new KoW update, and the fact that the FF mini's look as good as the art makes me so darn excited it's hard to contain.

And the plague sounds like something i could work with to make sci-fi mummy armies a reality.

[Darsc Zacal]

So there were actual models shown, anyone take photos?

All sounds rather good, I am also interested if they showed 28mm resins instead of 3-ups or plastics. I hope it means the armies won't be resin, unless its a really good price. Its sounding awesome so far.

From what I've read of people who attended, photo's of the new models were not allowed. The models shown were also not 3ups. That leads me to suspect that what was shown may have been character models.

[strewart]

Yeah I've just read the other rumour thread and seen that photos weren't allowed of some of the stuff... Fair enough I guess, but if they are in model form I'm sure it won't be too long before we start to see them.

[mattjgilbert]

From what I've read of people who attended, photo's of the new models were not allowed. The models shown were also not 3ups. That leads me to suspect that what was shown may have been character models.

The models we saw as resin masters were 1 squad leader and 2 heavy weapon guys. You'll get 2 of each plus the leader in the box as a heavy weapon squad of 5 plus a 10 man (dwarf) squad, plus a vehicle (no resin master of this, just the picture that was on the wall).

[mattjgilbert]

I nearly forget this one.

The "8th race" might be the 4th to be released after the FF, Maruaders and the Corporation.