Mantic Games

Mantic Games
Year Established	2008
Notable Employees	Ronnie Renton, Matt Gilbert
Notable Games	Kings of War, Warpath, Deadzone, Dreadball, The Walking Dead: All Out War
Website	http://www.manticgames.com/

Mantic Games is a (relatively) new games and miniatures publisher. They primarily produce 28mm scale wargames (like Games Workshop), although there are also some spin-off games based on their two main settings, Kings of War (fantasy) and Warpath (sci-fi). Their main shtick is that they're much, much cheaper than Games Workshop.

History

Mantic Games was founded by former GeeDubs executive and all round cool guy Ronnie Rention, and along the way picked up several ex-GW people, quite possibly disgruntled folks who want to shank their former employers in the stomach and twist really hard (and good luck to them!). Their first planned games were Kings of War and Warpath, the former of which HEAVILY ripped right from Warhammer's Tolkien's aesthetic, (Mantic models actually look slightly different if you bother to compare them to GW models because A: they're truescale, B: the Dwarfs have giant heads, and C: if they got too close they'd be sued) almost looking to completely undercut the more expensive Citadel Miniatures. This allowed people to play Warhammer with cheap non-GW models, which let Mantic sell more stuff, and start funding their own developments. Just as planned.

On top of everything else they had the balls to make a futuristic sports game called DreadBall.

During 2013 Mantic's work on Warpath and Kings of War slowed, more so on the Warpath front. The big push for Dreadball, thanks to Kickstarter, greatly changed the company's internal schedule, and as a result it became an important part of the company's product market.

Eventually, they decided to make a licensed Mars Attacks kickstarter, which was successfully funded. Later in 2015 Warpath's brand was touched upon once more via DreadBall Xtreme and Deadzone: Infestation. Eventually these successfully funded Kickstarter initiatives lead to an official Warpath kickstarter itself, and not surprisingly it was a success as well. Due to these successes Mantic has said that there could possibly be an encore Kickstarter at a later date, to flesh out the factions who weren't yet ready during the initial Warpath kickstarter. When the Mars Attacks license eventually expired, Mantic moved on to making The Walking Dead: All Out War, licensed from the comics rather than the TV show.

If GW is the Imperium of Man in its current state then Mantic are the Tau, new & full of optimism.

With now 9 years in the buisness, Mantic Games seems to be improving constantly and becoming more audacious each year. Even though back when they were founded they looked like just a "poors man GW" now some of their models have no direct GW equivalent, and Mantic is instead trying to support their own ideas and creations with some plastic kits, that while still a little below GWs quality, are much more affordable and brimming with options. There is also great overlap of minis between games, so you don't need to buy a whole new miniatures gang just to play the skirmish game set alongside the bigger game for which you already have an army. Their IPs have become much more fleshed out, and while nowhere near the 30 years of novels and back story of the other place, are still serious enough to keep people engaged, and more up to date in their focus and themes.

Also Mantic are quite notorious for their tendency of using kickstarters in order to fund (expensive) moulds for hard plastic minis for many of their games, which nowadays has become quite a common practice, but in Mantics case these kickstarters are more of a "pre order" thing than a "help us develop a game". But on the other hand they are also one of the most open companies with regards to their fanbases, with many of their dramatic personae dropping by at forums and facebook pages, and all of their rules put out for wide public beta testing to make sure there's as much balance, and as little broken, as possible (though they generally don't get a game just right until the 2nd edition)

Games

As of 2018, Mantic is sticking to a tiered system with shared minis, stories, and campaigns within their two universes, plus independent licensed games:

• Warpath SciFi universe: Warpath (big Army) and Warpath: Firefight (medium Army), Deadzone (Skirmish), Star Saga (boardgame), Dreadball (sportsballgame and no shared minis)
• Mantica fantasy universe: Kings of War (Army), Kings of War: Vanguard (Skirmish), Dungeon Saga (boardgame)
• Licensed: The Walking Dead: All Out War, Mars Attacks (OOP)

The basic rules for Kings of War, Warpath, and Deadzone are free from their website. Some people reckon they're too simplistic and lack the depth of Games Workshop games, others like the fact they're easy to pick up and don't require a Bible-sized rulebook. Either way, there seems to be no shortage of players signing up to the annual Kings of War tournament, though it should be noted that a good chunk of them (including Mantic employers) were using GW models in said tournament, hilariously. It can be theorized that Mantic will expand their game once they reach some level of popularity, and like GW in the past renege on the liberal use of their products. Time will tell...

Why do we like them?

Mantic's list of modelling wish fulfillment has been growing and growing, with them as a company having delivered us some of wargaming most desired miniature concepts (even if not everybody will agree on whether or not the execution of said modelling lines was cool). Overall mantic has delivered:

• Squats, in the form of Forge Fathers, and they are AMAZING, with their bearded tanks and tendency to have big fucking guns and tommyguns everywhere

• Chaos Dwarfs, and this ones actually look quite menacing while being affordable too(plus they have golems)

• Fish Men, a whole army of them called Triden Realms of Neiritica, composed of tritons, crab people, squid people, tritons mounted on sea drakes and frog people.

• Meaningfull worldwide campaigns with actual progression that obey the fans desires, this year they made the edge of the abyss campaign, which can be followed here https://edgeoftheabyss.warconsole.com/ where the world was significantaly changed and no amount of faggotry by a creators saving roll has turned its results meaningless yet.

So overall, Mantic tends to see those gaps in the market and scratch those itches that a wargammer needs. Do they always do a good job? Well nope, not always, but most of the time, and their effort is always commendable.