Ronnie’s Mid-Year Mantic Update!

Hey,

Ronnie here with a quick look back on a fun (and busy) 6 months, and far more importantly a look forward to some seriously unbelievable months coming up!

Firstly – a couple of ‘save the date’ moments:

1) We are planning to have a big reveal at Gen Con – so watch out for that dropping in 😉 to your inbox...

2) We will have another big announcement during the week commencing 15th September – so again watch out that nothing clashes with that!

If you would to prefer to hear my dulcet tones (while doing something interesting like painting minis) then click over to the Paint All The Minis Podcast.

Or if you would prefer to see my beautiful happy face (!!) while soaking all this in with pictures, please check out this video from OnTabletop:

We visited them recently to film an upcoming Epic Warpath battle report, and we couldn’t stop ourselves having a catch up while we were there! If you’re still reading, I’ll assume that you are sitting comfortably, here for the duration, and so I’ll begin…

A New Way to Play in Pannithor

The first 6 months saw the release of Kings of War: Champions – and it has had a fantastic reception. It is both a game in its own right, and also a gateway into the full-size rank-and-flank battles of KoW.

I hope you have been more successful than me getting from box to tabletop – I am ‘nearly’ there with Jorden Talensen’s company – but painting anything but terrain or dwarfs has been a shock to the system!!

The great news is that every time we make new plastics for Kings of War we will be adding new companies to the range - and very cool new Champions – with their own back story too – and you never know – one day these champions might even feature in Kings of War proper!!

Halo: Flashpoint Gets Brutal

We also released the War Games Expansion, the web app and the first ‘baddies’ for Halo Flashpoint. The War Games Expansion introduced points and list selections, initially for the UNSC, but also to allow us to get on and release non-Spartans – such as these Brutes!!!

This now means that players have options other than Spartans – and it exponentially changes the gameplay experience as new factions, new weapons, new terrain and new scenarios all bring lots of variety to the game we love.

And let’s talk about that – because Halo has got more people playing their first Mantic Game than any game we have ever done – even those we Kickstarted!

And those of you who have been with us for a while will know Halo is based upon a certain other Mantic game system. Now, everyone that is playing Halo is LOVING IT – so hopefully over the coming months and years those gamers will try our other games, stores will be able to get them onto their shelves, and further build your local Mantic communities.

Deadzone and Firefight Rules Updates

One of the big stumbling blocks to more Deadzone content had been me. With Halo and Epic Warpath we have just be unable to find a way to get regular content out for Deadzone and Firefight, despite a big drop of new content during last year’s Summer of Sci-Fi.

However, with lots of people trying the Deadzone game mechanics via Halo, we have been keen to invest time in ways to keep supporting Deadzone and Firefight. Both of the RCs for those games have tons of content they want to share (as does the community) – but finding a launch slot for a physical book is just becoming impossible.

In order to remove that bottleneck we will be moving to a digital living rulebook – and the latest updates will be available in one of two ways – either as digital PDFs (because I am old and like everything in one place!) – and at a very reasonable price as we are not now printing and shipping books all around the world! The army builder is free, and that will be always up to date, so you can have a read, then build your army and get playing. Perfect for the casual player!

OR

With a Mantic Companion subscription – which for £3.99 monthly gets you up to date rules, infinite army lists, and other assorted wizardry – you will always have the latest, definitive and up to date rules. And if you play more than 1 Mantic game, for a few pounds more, you’ll get that for every own-IP game Mantic makes – such as Firefight (which is getting the same treatment as DZ), Armada, Kings of War and soon Epic Warpath.

Did Someone Say Epic Warpath?

So, apparently smaller minis doesn’t mean easier when you launch with 8 armies, all with a plastic core, plus super heavies, reinforcements, terrain, and a totally new ruleset...in fact Epic Warpath is one of the biggest game launches, supported with HIPS plastic, for an independent games company ever!

If you backed it you’ll be getting your Kickstarter in the next few weeks - and if you held off for retail, or want to get on board by printing your army, then that’ll be happening in August through September.

This campaign has also allowed us to invest in a print-on-demand option – so all the cool things we have been doing in the Vault (Undead fleet for Armada, anyone?) will become available from the Mantic store for you to order online – which we will print and send direct to your door. We hope to roll that out later in the year.

I won’t say too much more about Epic Warpath, because you'll hear lots about it in the coming weeks, but a HUGE thank you to everyone who has helped make it such an amazing addition to the Epic-Scale landscape. If you haven’t tried it – do! It is stunning and features some unique and original command and control mechanics, ideal for large scale battles.

And There's More

I am now heading off to Gen Con (come and see us on stand #723 from July 31st to August 3rd!) – and as I said watch out for a video drop very soon...

And if you love the Assassin's Creed video games, watch out for our next Kickstarter campaign. You can follow the pre-campaign page here to make sure you don't miss it!

It's a fantastic, proper board game for 2 – 4 players with all the most popular characters and eras from across the whole series:

Assassin's Creed Animus launches this August for delivery in 2026. Gerry from OnTabletop and I have a playthrough coming, but no spoilers on who wins that head-to-head!

Finally, watch out for a number of game-themed events at HQ and of course the Mantic Open Day will be coming on Saturday 8th November – so I hope to see you at one of the upcoming events.

Until then, best wishes, and keep rolling 8…or 6s!