As I said the other day, I’d try to snaffle a bag or two of MA figures while I was down at Mantic HQ. Mission accomplished!
I’ve not had a chance to scrape away at them yet, so this is an “as it comes” look. I’ve done no reposing, bending, cleaning or anything else.
First, the Tiger Corps.
This is a random selection of models from the bag. As you can see, they come pre-assembled, so you could play with them straight out of the box. Of course, many people will want to get some paint on them. The question I wanted to look at was how easy would they be to prep? As you can see from the picture above, at a normal viewing range they look fine.
Close up, you can see some mould lines, and no flash. I’ve done my best to make these look as bad as possible, using raking light and close ups. Even so, they don’t look terrible to me. Overall, judging with them in my hand, I’d say they were kind of average in terms of the amount of mould line you’d need to file off. Some bits have almost none, others have stuff you’d definitely want to remove. It’s the sort of thing you’d get in almost any range.¹
Having rummaged through the whole of both bags, I can say that this is fairly standard across the lot. There are a few better examples, with more subtle mould lines, but nothing dramatically worse.
Just so they don’t feel left out, here’s some of the Science Division models. The green wasn’t showing the mould lines as well in the pictures, so I’ve left the close ups out. It’s much the same as the Tiger Corps in real life. The clear helmets are just plonked on for the photo. They come separate.
I’ll have a go at cleaning some of these and let you now how I get on.
1: I say almost because there are a few ranges where mould lines are almost invisible – Statuesque Miniatures, for example. You can’t avoid them entirely though (not with 2-part moulds), and how bad they are is partly to do with the production process you choose.
Quirkworthy 
Will the DS minis be of same the material and quality?
That’s the plan.
Once I’ve cleaned up a couple I’ll spray them with primer so you can see the detail better.
Those look pretty reasonable. Generally I have found these types of models to be perfectly acceptable for their purpose to play games. Using the reaper bones as an example some can be painted up to an excellent level(by others not me) but you generally you are not going to want to go beyond tabletop level of effort.
http://victoriaminiatures.info/painting-my-first-reaper-bones-miniature/#more-272
I found that the Reaper Bones did too many PC type minis where some of the quality issues were more apparent and they should have concentrated more on monsters. If in an RPG you are using one PC over and over again it makes sense to spend the time and money to get the better metal ones but for the broad range of monsters or villians who only are used occasionally the less expensive bones are great.
I don’t have any Bones to compare this too. Not sure that it’s made of the same stuff.
Played my buddy’s copy of the base game yesterday and pumice gel-based all of them for him last night. Had DZ and DB minis all been this nicely done, I think Mantic’s QC rep would be much, much higher. Well done, Mantic.
They’re learning 🙂
Hopefully there will be rules for Tiger corps. In DZ…. Right Jake? 😉
Mantic answered in an email it was planned for every mini to have DZ rules.
Woohoo! 🙂
I would be shocked if everything didn’t get a stat card. There’s maybe 10-15 unique miniatures including the bugs and vehicles on each side. Depends on whether we’ll see Hero cards for DZ.
My Question to Mantic:
– about the Dreadzone cards, will there be for every martian or human a card? Even the Heroes of Greenville, Tiger Corps, Corvus Bounty Hunters, Sidney & Henry, Martian Dredd, Ambassador, Surgeon and Wrex Master of Science and so on?
Answer from Mantic:
– The ideas is that yes, there’s a Deadzone card for each different type of mars attacks model.
Yes, I’ve done DZ cards for everything that appears in MA.
What about the “Battle cards” for DZ (specific for the MA Faction decks in DZ) or will it use the MA deck as the “battle cards”?
Also what about the Mission Cards?
Both humans and Martians have a full DZ style deck with mission, battle, and stat cards.
Awesome. Will they be generic DZ styled Battle/Mission Cards or will they have they have unique cards? Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions.
I’m not sure what you mean. They have their own combination of cards. Like other factions there is a degree of overlap of both missions and battle cards. However, the exact combination is unique for each faction’s deck.
Are cards like in Mars Attacks available?
Head Ray, Freeze Ray,Brazen, Reinforcements Arrive…
Also Moo! or Mutent Bug?
No, the events don’t have a parallel in DZ.
How different are the stats for Mars Attacks characters between DZ and MA? I’ve been playing a lot of Mars Attacks and now I’m starting to wish there were cards for each character so I wouldn’t have to keep flipping through the rulebook constantly. Would the DZ stat cards work for MA?
I don’t think they will be compatible, but I could be wrong.
There is a Quick Reference Cheatsheet for the characteristics and abilities made by puggtimer:
Click to access MAQuickReference.pdf
If they did it would be a coincidence rather than a plan.
I’ve seen pics online of the MA mini’s, but only from a foot or so away. This is the first time I’ve seen them up so close to be scrutinized. I like them. They seem to hold good detail and these models have a number of flat surfaces too. The fantasy miniatures for Dungeon Saga will likely have less flat surfaces being more organic, like bulging Orc muscles and cloth material crinkles etc…so may look even more detailed than these.
I’m looking very much forward to hearing how those mould lines clean up and if course files work on that front or if a knife edge and fine file only should be used.
Thanks for sharing this, Jake 🙂
Personally I wouldn’t use a coarse file for anything this small. Well maybe for underneath a base or something like that. Not for mould lines.
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I like them pretty much. Cannot wait to see them in real – sure the’re plastic and against the resin stuff they’re not that detail quality, but I guess nice paintjob could do that.
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