[Archive] Mantic Halfbreeds

AGPO:

These models are pretty poor tbh. I find Mantic incredibly frustrating because they do occasionally do some really nice stuff, but most of the stuff they do is just plain ugly.

Another thing that frustrates me is how they made such a song and dance about being original and having their own fluff and doing their own thing, but these are essentially ripping off GW Chaos Dwarfs. People knock AoW for producing Warhammer proxies, but pretty much everything they’ve produced has been generic fantasy archetypes - dwarfs, elves, chaos, daemons etc. Bull Centaurs are one of the few distinctly GW ideas which makes this move pretty cheeky.

Discoking:

I’ve been trying to explain to my friend that Mantic is, of course,

Jumping on GW’s back with regards to copying the armies…

He argues that they have their own fluff & game etc… But to me they are meaningless…

They are blatantly ripping off GW armies & selling them for less. (You get what you pay for).

Their new Human stuff will prove if they are or not.

There is a lot of Human history Mantic can choose from.

I wonder if it’ll be something like a Holy Roman Empire era… circa 1450-1600

or Medieval France/England circa 850-1200…

Golder Goldeater:

I've been trying to explain to my friend that Mantic is, of course,
Jumping on GW's back with regards to copying the armies...

He argues that they have their own fluff & game etc... But to me they are meaningless...
They are blatantly ripping off GW armies & selling them for less. (You get what you pay for).

Their new Human stuff will prove if they are or not.
There is a lot of Human history Mantic can choose from.

I wonder if it'll be something like a Holy Roman Empire era... circa 1450-1600
or Medieval France/England circa 850-1200...

Discoking
Aaaah! So...much...hatred!!! x.x
Anyway, almost every fantasy miniature manufacturer out there has an army corresonding to a GW army;
humans,dwarfs,elves,daemonic warriors (aka chaos)

Mantic Games is no exception. BUT! It's style is totally different to GW's.
Put a mantic dwarf next to a GW one and you will see that they don't really fit.
But if you put an AoW berserker next to a GW slayer... they are identical.

So I believe mantic has the right to brag about originality (whethere one likes their "original" take on the races or not ;))

Murdock129:

It’s like, Mantic does the same armies, and even the same models, but in a totally different way. Their one of the very few companies that has full army lists worth of stuff where the models are very different in style to GW’s stuff, so the entire Mantic Elves range looks very different to the entire GW Elves range, despite having similar model lists, same with Abyssal Dwarfs, Undead or anything else for that matter

cornixt:

The Abyssal Dwarf army is pretty much just the classic 4th ed CD army, they didn’t even try to hide it. Most of the other mantic armies are pretty similar too. They were quite cleary trading on the back of GW initially, not that there is anything wrong with that. Once they have enough customer buy-in, I’m sure they will more off in their own direction a bit more. I don’t think that any games company has ever created such a large game from scratch without a bit of blatent customer stealing, GW included.

Maybe Mantic will even produce a few nice models rather than the weird stuff that makes up most of the current line.

Rickie:

Kinda agree that much of mantics stuff aint that good looking. The few iteams they do have that I like are the elves (give em cloaks), undead and goblins. Some of their concept art for the future stuff also looks promising.

Seeing as they are stepping up and kinda chaleging the giant GW, I give em my regards. Might even buy some figs and try their rules sometime.

AoW is on track to do the same, and I really like what they have done sofar. Will keep a closer watch on them.

All in all the future looks bright for mini wargaming, competion will force GW to do better. And we as customers get a better selection of miniatures.

flashgordon:

the reason aow looks exactly like gw is because of who they got to sculpt the models.

as for mantic, evil dwarfs would have been fine, but blunderbusses was pushing it, then bull centaurs…a gw invention…they didnt even do them well

Rickie:

Not to be a wiseguy, but bull centaurs just like so many other gw things are based on old mytology.

Thommy H:

There are no Bull Centaurs in any real-world culture’s mythology. Greek mythology has centaurs (and the ‘taur’ bit of their name is a false friend which has nothing to do with bulls) and many (generally Mediterranean and Near-Eastern) ancient cultures have a history of worshipping bull-deities, which is where GW get the stuff about Hashut, but there’s no overlap. The closest thing is the shedu/lammasu, which is a divine creature with a human head and the body of a winged bull in Mesopotamian mythology, which was obviously the inspiration for GW’s Lammasu. Bull-hybrids are obviously also enshrined in the Greek Minotaur (“bull of Minos”) which probably derives from tales of the ancient Minoans of Crete and their own bull cult but, again, there’s no mythological overlap with centaurs.

GW can rightly claim to have invented the concept themselves, and Mantic are kind of ripping them off. Which is fine, but they should probably try to hide it a bit better.

Rickie:

Point taken, there are no bulls with torsos of men/dwarfs in mytology. But as Thommy said in his post it aint that hard to see where the concept came from. But I’ll be a nice boy and go hide in my corner :slight_smile:

AGPO:

As I said earlier, it’s the Chaos Dwarf range which really takes the mic. Anyone can produce elves, dwarfs, chaos etc. because that’s generic fantasy stuff which was about long before GW. Chaos Dwarfs are one of the few areas GW tackled in a genuinely original way, so ripping that off is just plain wrong.

Golder Goldeater:

Actually, most dwarfs in mythology were sinister, greedy and pretty much evil.

Tolkien (God rest his soul) was the one who changed it and made them the good hearted lads we know today.

I do agree that the centaurs are kinda suspicious, but theyare not “bull” centaurs.

The bodies are spiky with dragon-like tales. They don’t look so bull-ish to me.

Vardan Painkiller:

As I said earlier, it's the Chaos Dwarf range which really takes the mic. Anyone can produce elves, dwarfs, chaos etc. because that's generic fantasy stuff which was about long before GW. Chaos Dwarfs are one of the few areas GW tackled in a genuinely original way, so ripping that off is just plain wrong.

AGPO
I beg to differ, Sumerian style isn't original.
Nothing in warhammer is original, neither 40k or fantasy.

Thommy H:

No, it’s not original - applying it to a quasi-industrialised race of evil Dwarfs is quite original though. As original as anything in a fantasy setting with Dwarves and Elves anyway.

rpitts2004:



Golder Goldeater
Mantic Games is no exception. BUT! It's style is totally different to GW's.
Put a mantic dwarf next to a GW one and you will see that they don't really fit.
But if you put an AoW berserker next to a GW slayer... they are identical.

So I believe mantic has the right to brag about originality (whethere one likes their "original" take on the races or not ;))

Thommy H:

I’m not sure the physical size of the figures is that relevant to the design aspects…

cornixt:

Actually, most dwarfs in mythology were sinister, greedy and pretty much evil.
Tolkien (God rest his soul) was the one who changed it and made them the good hearted lads we know today.

Golder Goldeater
Tell that to Disney, I doubt they were influenced by Tolkien for Snow White.

Golder Goldeater:

Actually, most dwarfs in mythology were sinister, greedy and pretty much evil.
Tolkien (God rest his soul) was the one who changed it and made them the good hearted lads we know today.

Golder Goldeater
Tell that to Disney, I doubt they were influenced by Tolkien for Snow White.


cornixt
HA HA! ;P Yes, you have a point there, but the dwarfs of mythology and the dwarfs of fairy tales aren't really the same now are they?
The ones live in colossal underground cities and forged badass armor and weapons (like Thor's hammer IIRC), the others live in wooden huts in glades.

Thommy H:

The term “Dwarf” gets chucked around like it means something in mythological terms though. Kind of returning to my earlier point about overlapping mythologies - the Norse idea of “Dwarf” has very little in common with the modern fantasy version. It was used almost interchangeably with Elf and, for that matter, Troll. A lot of different Germanic traditions were cobbled together by later writers in the early Christian period and then, as you say, Tolkien came in and hammered it into the shape we recognise today. The Seven Dwarves and Durin’s Folk have the same root - the Norse idea of the magical, possibly (but not necessarily) diminutive beings who lived underground (maybe) and had (in some cases) an affinity for metallurgy or craft. It’s not even accurate to say “they were all evil” or “they were all good” because Norse mythology doesn’t put much stock in those concepts anyway. You can be heroic or a coward, and you can loyal or disloyal to your kin, but almost every creature or character is ethically pretty neutral by the standards of our own, Christian-influenced society. Even Loki did his share of helping out the human heroes, even though we tend to see him as the Norse cognate of Satan now.

The point is, the Mantic Abyssal Dwarfs are pretty much unit-for-unit the 4th Edition Chaos Dwarfs, even down to having greenskin slaves.

Golder Goldeater:

I didn’t say that all mythological dwarfs were bad, I just said that there were both “good” dwarfs and “evil” ones.

So, the concept of evil dwarfs isn’t a GW invention.