Motivation Monday – Community Spotlight – Tyler Schulz
31st Jan 2022
Jonny Mann
Hello and welcome to Motivation Monday!
This series of blogs will delve into the wonderful Mantic fanbase to find stories and interviews with some of the most well-known and loved members of our community, with the hope and intention of inspiring the rest of us to dust of those sprues, pick up that brush or take the leap into a new game.
Today we speak to … Tyler Schulz.
Hello there! My name is Tyler Schulz you may or may not know me, but I guess that’s what this blog post is for. I am a huge fan of Mantic Games and have been asked to answer some questions to elaborate a bit more on myself and why I like these games and miniatures so much. So let’s go into my gamer origin story for a second, and hopefully this won’t take too long.
I am from Colorado and back in middle school (around 7th grade) my friends and I were assigned a diorama project in school to create an American Colony. One of my friends said this reminded him of how he and his dad used to play table top games. Once he explained what tabletop games were, my friends and I were absolutely hooked. Soon I found myself collecting armies and painting miniatures and I guess I just never stopped. Back when I was playing one of the… ahem… other games, I was looking for cool proxies because I never liked the look of the Marines from Space if you catch my drift.
That is when I saw the OG Forge Father Steel Warriors and I loved everything about them (and still do!). From there I got disenfranchised with the way the other game was performing and Deadzone V1 Kickstarter came into my gaming life at the perfect time. I was enthralled by the look of all the factions, I can remember scrolling through the Kickstarter hundreds of times looking at the art and renders for the Plague, Enforcers, Rebs, etc.
But what really kept me invested was the gameplay of Deadzone. It was fast, fun, I never had my nose in the rulebook instead of the table, and I didn’t have to worry about getting cheesed off the table with a book I never read or a faction I had no idea what kind of gimmicks it could pull. It was a breath of fresh air and the truly 3D environments were (and still are) addicting to create and play games on. From there, I branched out into just about every Mantic sci-fi game including Warpath, Firefight, DreadBall, Star Saga, etc.
Seeing such a lack of YouTube Channels and media coverage for all these awesome games is what inspired me to start my own channel, DreadPathZone. Through the channel and events I have attended, I’ve been able to make some incredible memories and amazing friendships that I am extremely grateful for. As cheesy as it may sound, that’s really what it’s all about.
Around 2017 I finally made the plunge into fantasy games as well and fell head over heels for Kings of War and now I have several armies with more planned and no signs of letting up. The community, the tournaments, the modelling opportunities, the shear epic-ness of it all, and the friends I’ve made have made my dive into fantasy games as well completely worth it.
What’s your favourite Mantic game and why?
I am definitely going to cheat here because I can’t decide between Deadzone and Kings of War. While both being miniatures games, they scratch completely different itches for me.
I love Kings of War because it is so tactical. You truly are the general of your army and the decisions you make will make or break your battle line. Good decisions are rewarded and bad decisions are punished. The game never gets in the way of itself or gets too complicated, but the tactical depth, army choices, and list building are an infinite bag of experiments that result in a clean, fun game that never gets old. And that’s just the game design. The Hobby potential for Kings of War is also just about infinite and if you can dream it, you can do it. Multibasing is extremely satisfying and being able to tell a story with each and every army project is so much fun!
As far as Deadzone goes, I could talk forever about how much I love it. If only I had a video that explains why Deadzone is so awesome….It is fast, fun, reactionary, and you get so many great moments with exploding 8’s.
Honestly it just depends on the day whether my favourite game of all time is Kings of War or Deadzone.
What is your favourite faction/army and why?
So I am way to indecisive to claim a favourite Deadzone faction so I am going to say my favourite army is Ogres in Kings of War. I have collected nearly 6,000 points and counting for my Ogres over the years.
The look of the Mantic Ogres hits just right for me, I love how much character each model has and I love the look of the whole army when it is assembled. On the table, I am a big fan of the way the Ogre faction plays and it has sort of become “ol’ reliable” for me. I experiment with lots of army lists but Ogres just feels like an old friend that never lets me down. Lore wise, I also like the neutral outlook Ogres have on Pannithor politics in that they only care who is paying them the most or invading their homeland.
Ogres have a certain charm about punching your opponent in the face real good, you know?
Do you have a favourite mini?
This is another tough question but I think if I had to pick one single Mantic miniature as my favourite, I think it is the Greater Water Elemental. The model has so much character and fun details. Since my Order of the Green Lady Army is forest and river themed, I modified my GWE without the big octopus tentacles and painted up all the fish as Colorado rainbow trout. The GWE made it in almost every list I made just based on the model, but now with CoK22 it is even better (regen 4+ and radiance of life is crazy good)!
What’s on your hobby desk at the moment?
I am currently trying to go through all of my sci-fi stuff and get it up to a standard I am happy with. I have completed my Plague, Veer-Myn, Nameless, Marauders (until the new stuff), Rebs, Enforcers, and recently Asterians. However I still have a ton of Forge Fathers that need some love so I am starting to go through them. I’ve also got a Krastavor and a team of cyborgs from Dreadball that are on the painting table to boost my Mazon Labs for Deadzone.
What’s next in your hobby plans?
Guess I’m just in a Dwarfy mood because my next big army big army project for Kings of War is going to Dwarfs. I’m slowly collecting the models I like for them and that’s the next big project.
Like I said in the previous section, I am trying to get all my Warpath universe stuff ready for Deadzone and Firefight as well!
Do you want to add anything else? Perhaps you’ve got an event or club you’d like to promote, well this is the place!
In addition to all the actual modelling and playing, I am editing up some videos! Fairly recently I released what I consider to be my best video. It is an in depth but quick look at Deadzone. Essentially it is everything I love about Deadzone and how to get into Deadzone all in one video. It took a lot of time and effort to make so I would be honored if everyone checked it out in the video above! In addition to that video I’m working hard to bring cool content to the Warpath Universe on my channel and it would be awesome if you checked it out! Take a look at the battle report below.
