And Ronnie has joined the Fanatics facebook group to answer some questions for us. Should be interesting.

My tower says made in China as well, however, remember Aus prices are extortion so I ordered it from the UK anyway, not Australia.

Interesting, just had a look at some of my Lizardmen kits since I bought a few pieces of them in Australia, and they don't seem to say where they are made anywhere.

Its a bit of a grey area really, since the final product is made in Australia I think they can state it, but they can and do label who sculpted the models, and that is obviously in the UK. I think technically they should be saying packed in Australia. We actually have a triangle shaped 'brand' that goes on some products that says Made in Australia with the Aus flag and some other stuff, only products that are truely 100% Australian can have it. We generally accept that if it just says made in Aus without that, at least some part of it was made elsewhere and shipped here.

The 'made in' label can be very misleading. All of GW products sold in Australia say 'made in Australia', however, the reality is they are made in England, shipped to Australia as sprues, and 'special' workers in NSW pack them into the boxes to be sold, which apparently classes them as made in Aus.

To be honest, I wouldn't think the raw material would come from China. Its a possibility, but usually things go the other way. Other countries send them the raw material, and their cheap labor turns it into products of varying quality, then they send it back to other countries.

Exposing chemicals to Chinese workers does sound pretty stupid.. Even IF they are made in China, I am pretty sure it would be outsourced rather than Mantic owning an operation in China, so safety is a third party concern of whoever owns the manufacturing in China. I'd suspect they were still made in the UK though, but I don't know for sure.

Interesting. The fact that Mantic cannot go all resin suggests that the cost and time for the resin casting is indeed significant, despite cheaper shipping and cheaper material. If Mantic has been able to justify and afford converting some kits to resin and doubling the amount of models, I wonder what the biggest barrier is? A fact of number of sales per sculpt maybe?

Thats actually what killed Da Vinci; he finished all his painting and that was it. So always leave a couple grey at least.


Welcome to the Fanatics, Avenger! As you can see already, the locals here treat this place as more of an asylum than anything, but most of us are restrained so we can't bite.
.... Or paint in a few cases. <_<

Pretty good for Dwarfs. Looks like a very well designed unit/sprue. AoW really do make some very nice stuff.

Fair enough if it gets the point across I guess, who the hell would want to buy a GW orc?!?

Haha thats a pretty cool video! It didn't show up in the space in the newsletter for me... Was there a second one as well?

A couple of comments.. That orc is married?!? I saw the ring. I wonder what the lovely orcet is like.
Secondly, I have preordered the orc army deal, can I have the sprues that the orc licked in the video please?

Darsc will be pleased to see the Orc 3-up is now available to order! I have now put in my order for the big army deal of Orcs, the 3-up, and the 3-up undead dog finally. Really looking forward to this lot, everything is looking great so far!

I have screenshots of them for you all who can't watch it or don't want to find it.






Interesting... I agree, more vehicle heavy than I thought. The little guy is a Space Dwarf, I thought it looked a bit like an orc to start.

Edit: Details in the video; they say they know nothing about these images and got them by mistake, they don't even know if they are being converted into models or not. Sounds like a tease though, looks like it could well be the first shots of Mantic sci-fi stuff, and perfect timing too!

I think its because the photos of Abyssal Dwarfs aren't particularly good. I had to look at a lot closely before I started to like them, the photo and/or paintjob doesn't really highlight the details in the correct way unfortunately.

You can't please everyone, but really I think harsh comments like that are just uncalled for. On the internet people seem to forget that it is human beings that have spent hours working on these models. If it was an amatuer job in a thread on warseer I bet there would be hardly any negative comments on the same models, and certainly none as harsh as that. You need a pretty hard shell to display any personal work in the public domain..

Anyone know what is happening with the Mantic blog? It hasn't loaded since yesterday morning.

Welcome to the board, Matt! I think a lot of people are in your situation, and Mantic is a really good system and company so you should be very pleased with it.

That does happen a lot... However, I did notice in the Chaos Dwarf Forgeworld thread a lot of people were saying that the Mantic ones were much better than what Forgeworld had come up with, which was a great sign. Of course there were still those who disliked Mantic ones, but you can't please everybody.

I'm looking forward to seeing more of Orc week this week, Nightsword! It must be almost time for Tuesday's post, right?

In other news, I am seeing a lot of people asking about or talking about the rumoured Mantic sci-fi range. I wonder if it is getting anywhere near close to an announcement? Now would almost be a perfect time to strike and add it to a market full of people desperate to jump off GW onto something better. It will be very difficult to live up to the heights of 40k though to be honest.

Yeah I have also been unhappily following all the news. What irks me most of all is nowhere have I found any kind of legitimate justification for all of this. Do GW honestly expect us to just say 'ok, no more UK online store... I'll just pay double the price in Aus, no worries'?!?!? How stupid do they think we are? Additionally, people keep saying the vast majority of Aus sales are actually in store anyway, so why bother cutting off a small section of their own sales just for the hell of it?

Move to resin is nice, it is a cheaper material, it is also lighter so cheaper to ship. Mantic switched some units to resin and prices went down, cool. GW does it and not only do prices not go down, but they increase them?!?! And we aren't talking small amounts, its 10-20% increases. Where the hell is the logic there?

Annual price rise on everything else, well it is still annoying and way above what inflation should be, but at least it is in line with what GW has been doing for years.

Fantastic news for the competition though. I certainly won't be buying any more GW products again, and while my wargaming budget is certainly not what it used to be, I can safely say that Spartan Games, Scibor Miniatures, and of course (probably mostly) Mantic will be getting any money that I do put towards the hobby from now on. In fact, it may even start with me preordering Garlak's Monstrous Horde on Thursday when I get paid, though I was hoping to put an orc 3-up in the same order I have no idea when they will be available though.