While hunting cheap 28mm sci fi for my homebrew horror rules, I've been really impressed by Mantic's price:content ratio. Their pricing (~$1.50AUD a mini) is excellent and you get a lot of bitz in the box.
The box was for 20 minis, but if I had more legs and torsos, I could make another 10-15 minis with all the extra arms and heads in the box.
I don't think I repeated a single pose, and I have two very different squads - 10x not-Starship Troopers/Imperial Guard "grunts", and 10x not-Halo/Kasrkin "marines" - thanks to the extra heads, backpacks and weapons.
While they have plenty of easy-painting chunky detail (i.e. without the fiddliness of Infinity) they are much nicer, better proportioned and posed models than my blocky, potato-head/banana-handed old IG Cadians and Tau. And these are $77AUD for 10 - $7.70ea vs the superior $1.50 Mantics.
New arms+weapons, heads and backpacks have transformed the models enough to be an opposing force or a complementary "special forces" team. I used extra grenades and sidearms to further differentiate from common grunts.
This box is extremely useful for generic sci fi forces; I'd go so far as to say it is the budget sci fi version of the versatile Perry plastics - I already have plans for the leftover bits (mixed with medieval armoured torsos, swords and legs) to make a crusader faction.
I found them reasonably easy to put together (each arm+gun set is labelled A, B, C etc) with only very occasionally trimming off bits of flash and they responded well to my el cheapo superglue. This is a better set than the Enforcers and I'd hazard a guess that they are a later release - they are a more polished sculpt.
Once these lads have been painted up, I should be ready to start seriously testing my homebrew rules in 28mm at "Necromunda" scale as I've moved away from the 15mm fireteam based version.
I will have to keep my eye out for these.
ReplyDeleteThe Enforcers and Plague I have for Mantic are solid for the price but not much leftover - I'd call these outstanding in terms of value for money as they have so many bits and are so versatile. They're more LOTR "truescale" minis and look MUCH nicer than GW's IG, and I don't think I repeated a single pose.
ReplyDeleteI've got my eye on the Eisenkern (North Atlantic) and Maelstrom as my next adventure in cheap sci fi plastics.
Wargames Atlantic carries a slew of great minis at great price points - comparable to the value of the GCPS minis. They carry the Iron Core line (Mark Mandragon's future of WW2 Germans), plus they have their Death Fields line, historical and fantasy mini lines to round things out.
ReplyDeleteThe updated Eisenkern boxes are a bit more streamlined - fewer bits, which makes me a little sad, but it's better for selling minis.
On a sidenote, I just discovered Delta Vector - great stuff here.
Good call - They're on my "to buy" list already! I have them earmarked for an occult special forces unit (Eisenkern, and the not-Fallschjirmjager)
DeleteThe other cheapish ones were from Maelstrom.
I wouldn't mind a side by side comparison if I can find them; I just have this feeling the Wargames Atlantic ones are smaller.