Pictures and Impressions from Mantic Open Day 2013

Having missed every gaming event this year so far, and still holding a Mantic Ticket from the DreadBall Kickstarter, I headed to Nottingham for Mantic’s Open Day and DreadBall tournament.

The DreadBall tournament was a blast, though I’ll keep my DreadBall thoughts for another post.

However, even though I spend most of the day focused on my next rush, I did manage to take a few pics, even though I there were clearly more things happening that I completely missed (e.g. the Seminars by Ronnie Renton and Golem Painting, the Zombie-Maze they made, etc..).

Here are some of my snaps!

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#1 – Loka and Alessio Cavatore

Obviously there were miniatures from all of Mantic’s Games on display. I was slightly surprised at the size of the Loka minis shown. It appears they scaled with the rooks to be roughly 28mm figures (+ base), which makes the larger miniatures, such as the Ice Queen above, nearly twice as tall as a Space Marine! A fully painted Loka set is an impressive sight.

Alessio Cavatore – the master-mind behind Loka – was at the event all day challenging people to Loka try-out games.

I could’ve played against Mr. Cavatore himself! Alas, I was enrolled in the DreadBall tournament (where I was taking enough of a beating), so I had to pass on that.

I was able to have a short chat with Alessio during lunch however (if interrupted by the odd zombie and sudden rain-showers) . The interview I did with Alessio during the Loka Kickstarter was done through a technically challenged Skype call, so it was nice to finally meet him in person!

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#2 – Deadzone

Mantic Games latest game of Deadzone was on display, obviously. There were also a number of Deadzone “Alpha Rules” Test-Games going on.

The Deadzone display table was the same table Mantic showed at Salute 2013. Deadzone was sitting in a shadowy side-room, very fitting for a game of stalking Space-Zombies in a deserted colonial outpost, but it was an absolute killer for my humble little camera.

Once again, I didn’t have the time to test-play Deadzone. However, unlike miniature displays at other (larger) events, Mantic was fine with people picking up their Deadzone stuff and having a personal close-up look: They are definitely awesome figures.

• The Enforcer Captain (a much maligned model, which looks excellent up close) is huge!
• The Plaque 1st Generation Monster-guy is massively huge!

I have (had?) a tendency to associate Mantic with smaller miniatures, mainly because my DreadBall stuff is dwarfed by the “heroic-scale” stuff from Games Workshop I am most accustomed to. The basic Deadzone grunts are still about as large as the DreadBall player. Nevertheless, Mantic is certainly using Deadzone to bring more larger miniatures to their range.

Now I am doubly excited to see how the DreadBall mechs and other 3-hex minis will turn out.

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#3 – Kings of War and Warpath: Siege

There weren’t any games of  (non-Deadzone) Warpath going on (I think), with the exception of a huge “Apocalypse-style” multi-player set-up titled “Warpath: Siege”. As the name implies, it had a huge fortress-style terrain-piece in the middle and some 4 to 8 (?) players around it battling it out.

Far more popular was (again to my surprise) the Kings of War tournament.

I am always somewhat sci-fi biased, and it’s easy to dismiss Kings of War (or Warhammer Fantasy for that matter) as the “smaller game”.  At this Mantic Day, however, there was some a lot of awesome hobby-stuff to marvel at on the Kings of War tournament tables.

Everyone there was taking the “fully-painted-army” requirement dead serious, which made for truly awesome tables of fantasy beasts and regiments slamming into each other.

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#4 – Loot!

Not only was the entry into the tournament free for Kickstarter’s (I believe Mantic normally charges £7.49 for the privilege), but there were also loads of prizes and free miniatures.

I didn’t place in the DreadBall tournament, nor did I win any of the raffles going on all day. I didn’t buy any new miniatures either. And yet, I still walked home with a free bag of stuff, which Mantic handed out to every single person at the event: A few Kings of War Orcs with a Command Sprue, and a Warpath Forgefather thing, which I believe must be a Heavy Hailstorm Cannon.

Free entry, free minis, a great time!

That was definitely a great hobby-event by Mantic Games. Good times!

Z.