 Hello! Hopefully you can all hear and see me. Oh, let's see if that's all working properly. Welcome to the second virtual Mantic open day. So obviously normally this time of year, we would have been having our open day here. So everyone would have been coming in, playing games, quizzing Ronnie, trying to steal his hat. But obviously due to Covid we can't do that. So instead you've got the pleasure of all of us, and that's me, there'll be Ronnie, there'll be Matt Gilbert, all coming straight into your homes, which is a terrifying thought, particularly with Ronnie. So any mess that he makes, I'm very sorry about that. So let me take you through what will be happening today. Hopefully, assuming this all works properly. So we've got our schedule. So this is what we'll be doing all the way through the day. And what we will be doing is we'll be live on this stream, fingers crossed, all day. So if you want to leave this running in the background, you can keep that going, and then hopefully, hopefully I won't disappear. We won't have to keep restarting it like we did last time. So this is the welcome. Hello, welcome. And we're also going to have a sci-fi update. So that'll be looking at what's kind of what we've been doing this year, what's coming up next year, mainly for Dreadball and for Deadzone. So if you like those two games, you probably need to stick around for that. At 11 a.m., we've got our sculpting extraordinaire Luigi. And he will be live sculpting a miniature. So this is really good just to see what the process is, to see how it all works. It's obviously digital sculpting. And also ask any questions. If you're interested in live sculpting, then this is a good one for you. And you can ask him any questions. And now I've got a little bit of a break. I probably will need a sandwich at some point. So we're going to be back at 1 p.m. for Kings of War and Vanguard. So that will be Matt Gilbert will be doing that one. And that'll be a good chance to ask what's coming up for Kings of War, what's going on with Vanguard, anything really. So come on for that one. Then at 2 p.m., we've got Vince from Winged Hussar. Chris says, what are you having in your sandwich? Do you know what I said? A really boring ham sandwich. That's all we had in the house this morning. So it'll be very, very sad for me. That'll be the low point of the day for me. But 2 p.m., we've got Winged Hussar. So Vince will be showing. And there's loads and loads of books coming out from Winged Hussar. So for Kings of War, for Dreadball, for Warpath, you name it. There's loads of stuff coming up. So that'll be a really good one. And also if you're interested in talking to Vince as well about how to get into publishing, if you've got any tips, that kind of stuff. Then we've got another big one at 3 p.m., which is Armada in 2021. So as you know Armada is currently shipping around the globe. Start arriving kind of possibly this weekend, next week as well. And that's going to be really good to see what's coming up for Armada. And there may even be some sneak peeks of stuff for next year. And then finally of course, we end on a high with Ronnie's traditional Q&A. Now this is assuming Ronnie remembers A that we are doing this today. How to use the technology. And C isn't, well, what's that? Possibly drunk by then. So he'll be running through kind of doing a general round up. Talking a little bit about walking dead, maybe some Hellboy as well. And that will all be later on. And that's a good chance for you to all ask Ronnie about anything you want really. Because normally he is much better at leaking than I am. Leaking information, not leaking bodily fluids. Okay, so that is all that is coming up. And as you can see me again unfortunately. So I guess we'll do a little bit of a round up of the sci-fi. So we'll have a look at what's coming up next year. So sci-fi this year, obviously this year has been a bit crazy with what's been going on. But we did manage to release the Matsuda. Which was the sub-faction for the Asterians. And also the amazing Spectre. So they came out this year. We were planning to do a campaign alongside those obviously. Because no one can really meet up and actually play. That didn't happen but hopefully we'll be doing that next year. So let's have a look now at what is coming up next year. If I can do it properly. Here we go. Let's do this. Let's get rid of me. You don't want to see me anymore, I'm boring. Look at that. Yes, it's working. Okay, so what we'll be doing for this next kind of hour or so. Well, not an hour. You'll be bored of me by then. But for the next kind of let's say 45 minutes is just running through. What is coming up for Dreadball and Deadzone? Do I could do? I could put me on very small in the corner just so you can see me there. It didn't work. Never mind. Hang on that. I've broken something now. I've broken something. Okay, good. So what we'll do is we'll talk a little bit about Dreadball. About what's happening with Dreadball in 2021. And then what's happening with Deadzone in 2021 as well. So Dreadball realized it's been a while since we did anything with that one. So obviously we released the second edition. What was that two years ago I think? And then since then it's been a little bit quiet in that one. But what we are going to do in 2021 is release a brand new supplement. Which is really exciting actually. So myself and the rules committee have been working on that for the past year. And the idea of that is it's a bit like if you remember the challenge cup. So the challenge cup had a load of different arenas in to play him some different characters and that sort of stuff. So the idea for this is hopefully it will become a regular kind of thing. So the current name for that one is I think the working title is the Galactic Tour Magnetar Circuit. So what we will do is we'll have Galactic Tour something else tournament. Hopefully after that one, depending on how well this one does obviously. But the idea is it will be a supplement that will also come with cards as well some tokens and that sort of stuff. And also a bit like we do with dead zone with the command protocols and kings of war with Clash of Kings. It will also have any updated team stats in. So we've gone through with a fine tooth comb, the finest of cones to look at teams that we thought were a bit above the curve and teams that are a bit below. And we've kind of looked at those and given them a bit of a boost as well. So that will be in that one. I won't be able to reveal all the teams that are getting a bit of a boost. But then also alongside that you've got four different arenas. And the idea with the arenas is that they are all on different planets, each with their own unique kind of special rules as well. And ideally what would be really cool is if you went to an event and you played through all four. So there is an arena that takes place in like a swamp. So like a quite a dangerous swamp where no one really wants to play. So you've got the struggle of some of your players might not even come onto the pitch to begin with as you try and convince them. And then you've got things like vines that grow across the pitch and get in the way. So that's one of the ones that's like a swamp one. You've got another arena which is set upon a flying like cruise ship which sounds great. Unfortunately the problem with that is you may fall off the edge of the pitch to your deck. So that's an interesting one that you've got to be a bit careful about where you are on the pitch because you might fall off. We've got another one which is underwater. So that's really kind of obviously there you've got the struggle of the currents and that kind of stuff. And then finally the fourth one is set in like a like in a bit like Las Vegas. The Las Vegas of the Warpath universe where you can actually gamble on the outcome of what's going on. So all of them are their own unique rules and they all play very very differently actually. So if you've been playing a lot of Dreadball and want to kind of spice up your games this will be the way to do it. So I've got a few questions about neoprene pitchers actually in the comments. Yeah I mean actually neoprene pitchers would be a good idea. We have run out so yeah we can look at that and certainly do those. Chris Lowry says with rule changes etc should be avoided buying the second edition box at the moment and wait if we want to get into Dreadball. No I'd say not because you the second edition box still has the teams the rule book the most the core rules won't change at all. The only thing you will find is some of the team stats might change slightly and some of them will get better. And yeah so don't worry about that if you're interested in getting into the game then definitely get that one. And the other big thing that is happening is we are having some new miniatures. Now we're not doing teams because that would be totally insane because there are a million teams in Dreadball. So instead we kind of looked and discussed with the rules committee guys about what we thought might boost the game and what we thought also might be useful for all different players. So what we are going to be doing is some new support assistants a bit like coaches so a bit like the Medibot we're going to be kind of doing those kind of things. So we'll have a look at those Matt James says so is it going to be like the clash of kings updates for kings of war as well as the tournament with arenas. Yeah so basically this is the clash of kings for Dreadball I guess. Okay so here we go so now now you do not need to see me so let me get rid of me goodbye. Here we go. So let's have a look at the support assistants first. Now this is mildly ridiculous but this is Fleurple the hydrator now if you know Snorkel you'll know that he claims to be the only kind of remaining member of his race but actually that's not true. So what the support assistants do is they all boost certain different elements so Fleurple is a hydrator and what Fleurple will do is help you to pass dash tests. So what we've done is we've kind of thought okay well obviously the Medibot helps you with get people at the Simbin so Fleurple will be the one who helps you if you're struggling to pass your dash tests then you've got Fleurple the hydrator and as you can see there he is suitably awesome. Sponsored by Dreadmax I think if I remember. So the things that he's bottom of like is suckers I guess I don't like legs suckers I don't know what they are but yeah so that is Fleurple and he will be good for helping you pass your dash tests. And the current idea what we've got is a bit like the galactic tour was one big box with your booking your kind of miniatures will be doing the same things here. So you will get like the galactic tour magnetize circuit in a box and it will include all these. So that is Fleurple so now let's have a look at the next one. This is Bracer like a kind of mechanic or engineer that can help with your armor tests so if you're struggling to pass your armor tests then this is who you need to bring into your team. So Bracer actually if you want a bit of fluff here she is the sister of Tracer so Tracer was the she was the coach that we had in the Kickstarter. So Bracer is her sister but rather than kind of going into the she was a singer wasn't she Tracer so rather than being singing she's become like a mechanic. So this is Bracer and she will help you when you want to do your armor tests basically so this will be very very good for someone like the Khaleesi I guess who have weak armor. So yeah and a few people say Bracer will fit everywhere dead zone etc. Yeah I mean some of these we have been talking with the dead zone rules committee as well about potentially could you know Bracer particularly come over to dead zone. Not sure about Fleurple she's a bit of a strange one. So Matt Jane says anyone who's already good at dashing and uses it to generate coaching dice. Yeah so it's a good point actually so yeah if you're if you're good at dashing then Fleurple is going to be great for earning you those fan checks as well. So yeah Bracer is a mechanic so pretty cool that one and then now I will preempt this by saying that if you thought that Fleurple was ridiculous. Then our next coach also Pantera says will you say anything about how these guys actually work elaborate on how they help. So what they will do is they will add additional successes to your role. So if you roll one success but you needed three then for example the army for the armor test then these guys will help with that. Now I don't want to say exactly how they help because then you could start doing that immediately. But yeah so basically these are going to add additional successes to your role. If you'd be able to say will we have crossover rules to use any of these in Star Saga. Well I mean we do try and look at crossover rules as much as possible because we do understand that once you've got your miniature you've painted it. You do really want to kind of make the most of it. So possibly things we look at I mean like I say we are looking at doing dead zone rules for them particularly Bracer. But yeah it's always on the cards we'll never say no. So now so I've already preempted this one by saying it's even more ridiculous than Fleurple. So here we go. Say hello to head coach. So head coach is a mysterious character that his appearance on the dread ball circuit just happens to coincide with a couple of Z's that got banned from the pitch. So no one knows who head coach actually is. But they have appeared and now they are making a name for them on the sidelines. So head coach is a manipulator which sounds slightly more ominous than it actually is. So you've got Fleurple who helps with dash tests. Bracer who helps with armour tests. And head coach as you might expect from some Z's helps with foul spotting fouls. So if you're trying to get away with a particularly nasty foul then head coach is the one that you want on the sidelines. And again this will add additional successes to your foul test. So if you're the spot foul test basically so as a if you're the fouling team you add the manipulator to your role. So yeah so these are all coming out next year and these are the three support assistants basically. And the idea is that you will get these in a box along with the book and along with the tokens so it's quite easy to pick them all up. But I definitely think head coach is possibly one of my favourite dread ball miniatures ever. I really really like this one. When we were talking about the ideas of what to come up with this seemed ridiculous and Luigi's done an amazing job of sculpting it into something that met my ridiculous expectations. So this is absolutely fantastic. But also just while we're doing it so one comment is are there any specials on the web store for open day this year? There aren't any specials. The reason being is that we're super super busy shipping our martyr and what we didn't want to do is kind of mess that up by doing a load of stuff this weekend. So what we will be doing is we'll be doing some probably next year something like that. But yeah we there are no specials this year on the open on the web store just to let you know. So Jarrett says will there be support coaches added each year? It depends. It depends on what we want to do. I mean the idea certainly of this set is to make it appeal to all kind of dread ball players rather than a new team or something like that or a new captain. So yeah we do want to make sure that the stuff that everyone can use. So obviously support systems are great because everyone can use them. But that is not all because we have got one more miniature to reveal. And so this is Thoth. I hope I've got that right. And the idea for Thoth is that this is a mysterious again a mysterious character. No one quite knows what is below the armor. And when playing in the Las Vegas style gambling arena, Thoth is actually your ref bot, your referee. And what he is able to do is move twice as far as a typical ref. Justin says are these models one piece? No they won't be one piece. They will be you have to glue them together. So yes it's a ref and the idea is that one is that Thoth wants to keep an eye on exactly what is going on. And then if you're not playing in the arena you can also use him or her, no one knows, as an MVP. Which is really exciting. And unusually Thoth is a very very quick guard. So this is really interesting actually because we kind of looked through and thought ok well what could we do that something a bit different. Exploding Aces is a goblin. I mean 100% I'll probably insist that he is it. I think he might be a bit too big actually for a goblin unfortunately. But yeah so this is a really cool character and one of the ideas we've kind of talked about actually with the rules committee is that through future kind of supplements we might see the progression of Thoth's character. So at the minute we don't know who it is. Next one we might find out a bit more about them. So I think we really want to a story arc. So we've got a question here which says any rules changes to team captains. These weren't used in competitive play. No there won't be any rules changes. So sorry spoilers says Andrew Wajanski. There are no rules changes in this one. What we wanted to concentrate on this one was games of the teams were nice and balanced looking at those. We wanted to also look at the support assistants and also introduce the new arenas. I think the idea is that for future supplements we would look at a particular topic. So it might be something like giants for example and say ok let's do something with giants this one. So I think we'll look and see what we can do with each one and see what the topic is I guess of each one. So that is Thoth. I hope I'm saying it the right way. So that's all the miniatures that we've got. Well yeah that is all the stuff we've got coming up for Dreadball. Now hopefully Covid obviously unrelenting. This is all coming out in March. So not long to wait actually for this one. It will be quite soon. And the idea is that what we might do is if we get the four... Oh and also actually I did forget is each of the arenas has their own historical match. So I don't know if you remember we released the historical match between the Indige and the Neobots earlier this year. It seems so long. So in the book you'll find an historical match with a little bit of fluff about what happened in the match. And then some team stats for you to try and recreate that match at home and see what the outcome is for you. So that was really fun actually and writing those was really cool. Because we all took a different arena and we all then came up with the historical match and the story for them and things like that. So with that can someone in the chat recap the different arenas? I came in a little late and missed them. So I'll quickly go through those. So you've got four different arenas. You've got a swamp themed one, an underwater one. One that takes place on a pitch floating in the sky. And then finally like a Las Vegas style gambling one. So for very very different arenas and with the RC we all kind of took on one each and then kind of came up with them, which was really good. And like I said they've all got their own cards so there's slightly unique elements that you can do in each one. So really really fun. I absolutely love Dreadball. So getting some new stuff coming out for that is very exciting. So there we go. So that's what we've got for Dreadball. So we're going to move on to Deadzone now. So if I just put me back for a minute. So Deadzone we've got quite a lot planned for Deadzone next year. Now I know one of the things is the two player starter set has been out of stock quite a lot this year. Which is brilliant because it shows that people are playing it which is fantastic and people want to get into it. So I realise the two player starter set is out of stock at the minute. But what we will be doing is we're working on getting that back in stock relatively soon. So if you are waiting to get into it it won't be that long to wait. I mean obviously the rules are free so if you want to try it out. Now one of the problems has been that we've had no mats, neoprene mats which has been a bit of a bummer. Because obviously you need something with the cubes on. But I am pleased to give you a sneak peek of the new neoprene mat. So hopefully you can see this. So we've kind of taken the original one and given it a bit of a makeover. So you can see it's a bit more detailed, more blood on it basically. And to make it a bit more textured. So this, we've got those in stock. We should have those in stock pretty soon actually. Maybe hopefully this year. So they'll be on the website. But yeah that is a really nice mat. So that's the first thing that's coming out. And that will be hopefully out fairly soon. And then with that we'll be able to look at what we do with the two player starter set as well. So if you are waiting for a new starter set don't worry it won't be too long. And like I said now with the mat at least you can buy that. And then get some command dice and get the rules from the website as well. I mean all you really need at the minute is you need a copy of escalation and the free rules. So if you want to do that you can do it. So just in Gregory says will you expand on the solo side of the game? An exercise was great but need solo rules for all factions. Yeah I think that's something particularly obviously at the minute. That's been a problem getting out and playing with people because obviously of Covid. So I think solo rules is something we definitely want to look at and see what we can do. There was a miniature war games solo mode actually which we might be able to put out now. So that included some slightly stronger zombies. So we could do that. Also Brad P says restocking faction starters. Yeah I mean I think we were out of stock with quite a few of them. And we're just looking at what we can do to restock them. Any more funky resin tokens coming out again. I'd love to upgrade my car but once there's something more tactile and delicious. Yeah so we've been looking at the best way to do the tokens. And which ones to include because obviously now you've got things like tag. Treclinic shard the nameless guy got my mouth on that one. So yeah I think we'll probably look at what we can do with those as well. So it won't all be immediate but hopefully we'll look at doing those in the future. So now let's get on to some miniatures. One of the things we've done at the minute is we've been looking at this idea of sub factions. So we started that with the Vault Chasers and the Alpha Stripe team for the Rebs. And the idea with these is that they and then we went on with the Mazzadan for the Asterians. So what we did with those is we kind of looked at what we thought would be essentially a cool faction to run of their own. Mazzadan just with those. But we also wanted to look at ones that could be combined with everything else. And with next year's releases we decided that maybe the Forge Fathers should get their own sub faction. So let's have a look at me. So get rid of me. Goodbye. And here we go. So the sub faction that we are doing for the Forge Fathers are the Artipuses. So if you've played Star Saga, you'll know that you've got Ogan Hellcare who is an Artipusa. So they're like the engineers. And what we want to do with these is the Artipuses are kind of the guys that accompany the Brockers onto the planet to help them when they're smashing stuff up. So we will be doing a brand new kind of sub faction starter for these in the new year. And the idea is with these ones is obviously two weapons isn't enough so now they've got a kind of backpack with an additional arm on just like you saw with Ogan Hellcare. So that's one of the Artipuses. They will be in resin too. And the backpack on the back you'll be able to do the different arms on them as well. So you can customise the arms. So that's one of the Artipuses. Artipuses, I've got to get my teeth in. Here's another one. And we're currently doing the stats for these at the moment. But yeah, these are really cool. And I think one of the things we really wanted to do with these is steel warriors are super duper cool. But I think sometimes you can't actually tell there is a dwarf inside there. So we wanted to make sure these ones you've got the face, you've got the beard. And you can really, really tell that these are space dwarfs basically. And also I think the current plan is we will be doing some additional heads. So if you wanted to put some different heads on your steel warriors to make them fit in with these guys, then you can do that as well. So I think these, I'm really, really excited about the Artipuses actually. I think they'll add a lot of character to the Forge Fathers as well. So there we go. I think if I remember rightly there are three different bodies and then a range of different heads and obviously the arms as well. So you can customise them in different ways. Table top transformers says we'll be selling the mining robots separately. It's certainly something we can maybe look at for the website. We can sometimes do that. It does depend sometimes what they're bagged with because we might not be able to, if we bag them out then we might not be able to, we might be able to split them up. So Deimos says Marauder says space orcs redesign new facts in the future. So nothing to announce yet for that one. I mean come on, you're getting the cool Artipuses. I mean we're always looking at what we want to do and which things we want to look at. So that is what we're concentrating on the minute is the Artipuses. But that's not all for these ones as well. Let's have a look at what else is coming up. So this is currently the unnamed mech, the Artipus mech. But this is roughly slightly smaller than a standard iron ancestor. And it will come with weapon options as well. So again the idea is these are like mining weapons, engineering weapons. So there is obviously one of the Artipuses driving it. You have a bit of a closer look there. But a bit like we did with the Stump Bop, there will be different weapon options so you can put it together. Chris says, will it be much of a bear as a strider to put together? No, so this will be in resin as well. And normally these are fairly simple to put together. You probably would be able to magnetise the arms as well. One interesting thing is that, if I go back to the other picture. So where you can see the weapons like the hammer and I think that's a mining laser on the left. What you can do is actually it's the head of the weapons that is interchangeable. So it doesn't matter if it's left or right. You can basically do whatever combination of weapons as you want. Which is quite cool because it gives you that freedom. Paulie says, will there be a canopy so he doesn't get shot in the face? Yep, there is an alternate version with a kind of front tongue if you wanted to do that. But in my opinion I think this one loads cooler because you can actually see that the forge father is driving it. So yeah, I think this is going to be really really cool. And this will be coming out alongside a new kind of sub faction starter for the forge fathers. And then finally just one little thing as if I haven't spoiled you all enough is this. So if you've been following Kings of War. You'll know that a lot of the vehement models have ended up going into Kings of War. Well, if you tune in later to the Kings of War and the Vanguard chat, you'll find out that there's plenty more coming up for the Rackin. So what we will be doing is for the first time things will be coming the other way. So new Rackin models, if they fit, will be getting their own entry in the vehement lists. So we're currently looking through to see which ones we think would make sense. But then you've got this one here. So this is the Master Scouria in the Rackin list, but this looks perfect for dead zone. The tech is kind of very much in line with the existing vehement tech. And it'd be nice that, you know, dead zone gets some of the love. I've got a question here. Any plan to make the metal upgrades items or metal units in the new resin? Yes. So I think the one of the ideas is that some of the heavy weapons that are currently in metal will kind of move into resin. Tabletop Transformers, so possibly a new update book. I think we're looking what we want to do next year with dead zone. Escalation puts the game in a really good place, actually. I think it's pretty well balanced. I think the problem we've had this year is keeping the two player starter set in stock. Just because it's been super popular, which is great, but obviously it causes a slight headache in that sense. But yeah, I think what we want to do is add lots of things. Ideally, it would be great to add something to each faction eventually. I don't think they'll all get sub factions. I think a lot of them have got enough now. Mark Willis says updated rule book for dead zone. Yeah, I think that is, you know, I think we're looking at all the options for what we do with dead zone, particularly now the two player sets out of stock. But it will be coming back into stock soon. We've got new scenery ideas for the future. I mean, I don't know if anyone would want to reincrease sci-fi, but who knows. We'll have to see what happens with that one. Play sub factions. Possibly. I mean, we're looking at what we do with things like the maze on labs, what direction we take those into as well. But I think there's, you know, there's loads of stuff we really want to do with dead zone. I think, you know, escalation and outbreak have proved super popular and shows that a lot of people are still playing the game. And I think also things like the new sub factions is a nice way to add, you know, a bunch of miniatures to the game without necessarily adding a new faction. Andrew Wajanski says, how about an Arda Lorana faction? I don't know, they'd have to go with the Rebs, I would think. I mean, what, I guess what resin murder birds says Steve. Yeah, I think murder birds are a murder to make in metal, which is why we haven't been able to keep them in stock. But I think we will look at kind of ones that are difficult in metal to look at those, maybe in resin, something like the plague bursters possibly. So, yeah, we could, we could look at those and do those in the future as well. Yeah, resin bursters, yep. So as you says, any Hellboy stuff at any time today. So that might be covered in Ronnie's one later on. So Ronnie is kind of doing a general Q&A at four later today. So, yes, we have a look, I tell you what, before I go or before I start this one, let's go and have a look back through with some of those, some of the ones we've done. So let's get rid of me. Then we'll have a look at, so we'll go back through and just in case anyone's missed the streams or is only tuning in. So we've got, these are the new support assistants for dread ball. So we've got Flurple here, which is a hydrator. We've got Bracer, the mechanic. So as we've kind of talked about is looking at maybe putting some of these in dead zone. I think Bracer would certainly fit possibly the Rebs, maybe even with the GCPS. Flurple, I don't know who it would fit with. I mean, it would be amusing to put in with the GCPS that you kind of accompanies them on the sidelines. Hopefully Andy Sharp from the RC is listening to this and is putting his head in his hand. So Bracer, mechanic, we've got head coach. I have no idea where head coach would fit into anything apart from dread ball. I guess you could be a bizarre mercenary. So Andy Sharp is way to fire. He's shouting never, never thought of putting these in the game. Yeah, maybe head coach would be a bit of an odd one. Thoth, obviously that's a new ref bot, an alternate ref bot when you're playing in the Las Vegas gambling arena. But you can also use Thoth as an MVP guard, which will be, I think that would be really interesting one actually. I'm not sure how much MVPs really get used at the moment in dread ball. So like I was saying earlier, when we look at a theme of a different book, whether MVPs could be looked at, whether we can use you like an all-star MVP team, something like that. So we could look at doing some of those in the future. So that's all the dread ball releases. So just in case you missed it earlier on, these miniatures will come along with a rule book and some tokens, like a supplement rather. As part of the new, I think the current working progress name is Galactic Tour Magnetar Circuit. So that would be really interesting. Tabletop Transformers is an MVP wrestling game. I think that would be too crazy. I think none of them want to get damaged. Justin says, is there going to be anything Star Saga? So not at the minute. I mean, what we could do is looking at, we talked about maybe doing like digital missions, that sort of thing. Maybe we can, you could do something like buy a faction starter for Deadzone. So you might be able to buy, say like the Marauder faction starter. And then you could use that as like a kind of a mission or something. So yeah, maybe something like that. Chris says, so he was put off by dread ball previously because he thought it was going to get discontinued. Well, it's definitely not. I mean, dread ball continues to be very popular. We've had like an online tournament this year. There are kind of obviously people are using Tabletop Simulator and Vassal to play. And there's a lot of players of dread ball out there. There's maybe not as many tournaments. We were actually we had a tournament here at the HQ, which unfortunately got canceled, which was a shame. But that was that 30 players signed up and we had a waiting list. So that would have been great. I was really looking forward to that one and that kind of unfortunately had to be binned. But I think it shows that there's plenty of people out there playing. And hopefully next year if we can get together and actually play again, then I'd like to do another UK national tournament over here. So Nicholas says, any news on the firefight replacement? So no news at the moment. I think Ronnie's previously said we are looking at doing that. But I think what we want to make sure we do is that if we come out with anything new for firefight, that it hits the ground running basically, that it's as balanced and as cool as possible. Nate's miniature says, did I miss out on any dead zone news? No, I will just go through those again as well. So here's the dead zone stuff. So these are the artificers. So this will be the new sub faction for the forge fathers. So you'll get these in like a new faction starter. So you get some resin miniatures and then probably some rockers as well. And that's the current plan for these ones. So the artificers, you've got different heads you can use on these. And then you've also see they've got that kind of extra arm on their back and they will be used. They'll be customizable so you can put different arms with different combinations as well. We've obviously gone third arm crazy because Bracers got one as well for dread ball. There's another one there. Simon Warrener says, any news on Rev's ape minis from Dread Ball's betrayal? Yeah, I think we're looking at the best way what we do with those ones. Possibly whether we even put them in resin, something like that. So yeah, we're kind of reviewing some of the models at the minute and seeing what we can do. Obviously resin is a bit crazy at the minute with all the armada stuff. So we're just looking at when we can fit things into the schedule and what we do with those. But hopefully we'll have kind of more news in the new year on when all that's coming out. So that's the second artificer. Then we've got the currently unnamed artificer, Mech. I think Dave currently thinking here is, it might be called something like the Jotnar to fit in with the Jotun and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, this is really cool. And on that one, again, the weapons are all totally interchangeable. And you can use whatever, you can use all the different combinations on that one. A bit of a closer look here. But yeah, I think this is going to be really, really awesome. So that being resin, so all the artificers are in resin as well. And then finally, I kind of talked about this one earlier on. We've seen that some of the Virmin models have gone across to Kings of War. So things like the Nightmares and some of the other, the Night Terror. And then now we're going to start seeing them move back. So when we do new racking for Kings of War, which we'll be talking a lot more about later on, they will move back into Deto, which is cool. So make sure if you want to see more of the racking, because there is one particularly disgusting one, tune in later on 1pm for that one. So there we go. That is everything that's coming up for, well, not everything. I'm sure there'll be some surprises. There is more stuff coming up. As you can see, Dread Ball really exciting. I think that will be really cool. And hopefully that will inspire some more tournaments here. And Dead Zone, lots of cool stuff. I mean, it's great. I mean, the Matzadan and the Spectra were super popular, which obviously then gives us the confidence to do more. So we'll be hopefully seeing plenty more Dead Zone stuff in the future. Now, I'm going to make myself a cup of tea. And I will be back in about 10 minutes with a live sculpting session with Luigi. So remember, this stream will stay on all the time. So if you want to stay in the comments, I got direct... Timothy and Andrew are saying, did I shave just for you? And Timothy says, I think I've showered. I got dressed. Well, top half, I got dressed just for this occasion. Yeah, so we'll be back in 10 minutes on this feed stream, live stream, with what's going with Luigi doing some live sculpting. So I will see you shortly. Bye-bye. Now I've got to switch it off. So you'd like to bear with me while I look at my computer. Hello, everyone. And we're back. Hopefully... I hope we're back. Let me know in the comments if we are all live and you can see us and you can hear us. So Luigi, do you want to say hello? Hi, everybody. So let me make sure you can hear Luigi as well. I've got my sexy big headphones on now as well. So I can just hear Luigi and heavily you can hear him too. You can see mine. I've got bigger earphones than you. OK, it's not our headphone off. OK, so what we are doing in this bit is Luigi is going to be live sculpting a head. Just so you can see the process of kind of what goes into when we sculpt all the different miniatures. So what are you planning to sculpt here then, Luigi? The plan is being a tyrant head. That is a leisure thing. I usually don't start from a sphere, but it's just to show how sometimes I work for defining more of the concepts. Because not every line has very defined concepts. Some of them are quite rough. So allow me to have more freedom in sculpting. And so before going to the finals I start sketching some base volume to share with the design team just to check if we're in track. I suppose what will normally happen is the studio will come up with an idea of what we want to do. And then Dave and the studio sometimes if it's goblins I'll get involved. We'll put together a rough idea like a description of what we want that miniature to look like. Sometimes it'll include the fluff and that kind of thing. And then we'll put together a fairly comprehensive word document maybe with any references and we'll send that to a conceptor, so an illustrator who will come up with a piece of artwork that looks like it. And then we give that to Luigi and then Luigi works his magic and starts to do all this sort of thing. So you said you're doing a salamander tyrant here. Yeah, yeah, true. And one thing that I really like is being allowed to put something of my own design in every new line because not everything is designed in two dimensions works well in three. So one thing that really changes in the quality of a miniature and it's something we've been talking about with Matt and Dave lately is having a background. So just a couple of lines that really tell the story about the miniature or the line of warriors I'm working on because that is something I can really illustrate in what I'm sculpting. So the background is very, very important. So that could be something like maybe what pose it should be in. I guess if it's like a heroic model you want that to be in a heroic pose whereas if it's someone quite sneaky then you want them to be obviously hunched over and hiding, that sort of thing. Exactly. Or for example, about these big lizards. I was talking about this yesterday night with Dave about the armour because I did a previous version of this one with... You've seen it yesterday. I've seen it. No one else has seen it yet, Luigi. The armour I did had a bunch of holes and scratches and Dave told me that that wasn't right because that kind of phrase was a bit more fancy, some more refined armour so I had to change the design to show a more evolved society despite these are all hyper-violent lizards and break their enemies' limbs off. We've got one question here, Luigi. Have you got any kind of reference on another screen or are you just doing this from your imagination, I guess? I always work with references. I have two main kinds of references, basically. One is about real-life lizards, basically. Oh, I like him with the big googly eyes like that. You should leave those on. That was amazing. A bit more method-style. So, for example, for the skin or teeth, stuff like that because they obviously need to resemble real-life lizards somehow. On another window, I have the concert because I need a concert every time. This really shortens the working times because there is all a part of design that needs to be nailed with concert first. And I have to say that we have some really, really talented concert artists that managed to represent the essence of the miniature and so they make my work really, really easier. So, when you're doing things like the ratkin, which obviously we'll be showing off a bit later on, were you looking at lots of pictures of real rats and saying, well, this is what their nose looks like, this is kind of what their bodies sort of look like, I guess? Yes, exactly. For example, the tails or the fur. They really pink, small clothes and every time I do that, my wife or my daughter pass through the screen and say, oh, that's horrible. Because it's always... I've seen a full documentary on History Channel about snakes lately just to understand something about their anatomy and skins and stuff like that. So I'm making myself a culture in reptiles. I know, it's interesting with the research thing because I am terrified of frogs and when we were doing research for some of the vanguards, like the Dambelster, I was looking at information about frogs and it was bringing up loads of pictures. Now, I actually felt physically sick so you haven't had anything that's made you obviously feel sick, I guess, at the minute. It's the same for me with spiders. We better not do a spider faction then. No, please. I'll make a note. Jerry asks, are you told what material the final miniatures are going to be in and does that affect how the piece is sculpted? Yes, and that is something I've been learning through the years because it's something you have to check on the final piece. When we go for plastic, for example, the design of the miniature needs to follow some very strict rules about how pieces will be cast. And so what I have to do is try from the very early stages of design to bear in mind all the time that that's going to be plastic. So, for example, if you have a look every time there is a weapon held in a hand, it needs to be in a very particular angle because otherwise it will encutter, it will be another piece to be cut, another tool. So yes, materials are very, very important in this part of the very early brief knowing which material the stuff will be casting. Also because of the thickness of weapons or ropes or sticks or whatever, maybe sticking out of the model. So yes, and I have every time to try to use the restrictions I have in a creative way to make them work on the final piece. So we've got another question. Someone says, what free software would be ideal to use, Blender or Sculptress? So what are you using here then? You're using ZBrush, ZBrush? Yeah, I'm using ZBrush and Sculptress is the free version of ZBrush and I always found it very, very easy to learn so I'd say Sculptress. I know that Blender, I use Blender basically for scale checks and sometimes for doing some hard surface modeling and I know that Blender has been developing a lot of very cool and useful tools on the Sculptress site too, but I never had a chance to actually try them. I know for sure that Blender has a huge community and that is really important when you start because if you don't want to pay for an online course or stuff like that, what you have to do is go on YouTube or on the forums and see people that share the knowledge. And Blender in that is one of the most popular software also because of its support community that helps you a lot to learn new stuff and it's the same with ZBrush too. So I'd say Sculptress, but because when you move to a more professional thing or you have spare enough money to buy a license, if you pass from Sculptress to ZBrush, it's easier because it's basically the same language. You get the same strength of command and so it's easier. So obviously you've been kind of busy this year doing all the boats obviously for Armada. How have you found that compared to sculpting not people, but obviously animals and humans have you enjoyed it more or do you prefer doing the people the kind of stuff like this? Well I love sculpting or doing stuff. Sculpting Armada has been great because sometimes it's always good to change and challenge your skills in something different. The most complicated thing about sculpting all the ships has been the engineering because when it comes to cutting all the parts and having them, you need to have them they have all of it together and in another and in a way that they must be easy to build. And as you may know this has been quite challenging because we had to do some try and error first for having everything working properly. So that's been a real challenge. It's been great fun because sculpting things that are not organic is fun anyway. But I have to say that I prefer humans or at least sometimes getting back to organic stuff. So I think one thing that the process is when Luigi, particularly for resin and things when Luigi sculpts it this is what happened with Armada it will be sent back here and then Ricky who kind of heads up our resin department he will then look at it and kind of work out where it needs to be cut so it can all then fit in the moulds and then Luigi will go back cut it and cut the actual big boat up into the right bits and then send it back so we can start making the moulds. So as we've got a question here from Greyprimer they say do you struggle with over-tweaking a design are you good with stopping when it's good enough to kind of come back to us? It's all about experience I guess. You have to learn when it's time to say stop enough and then you switch to something else. In that process it's really helpful working with the design team because they also may tell you when a product is good to go. Usually when you work on a sculpture I experience that every time I'm working on something of my own I'm never really 100% happy so I keep on tweaking it a thousand times. But when you work for production it's something more... it's a different pipeline so you agree with the rest of the design team when it's good to go and also practice because you know exactly when to stop adding details for example because under a certain amount of details or tiny details you can go because they won't cast or won't be printed so you have to find the good balance between details and the quality you want to give to your final piece and it's just about practice. Did it seem that when you started you maybe were adding too much detail and you had to learn to knock it back and again that probably goes back to the material as well? And also for example when you start sculpting me for miniatures you have to keep in mind the final scale that is really, really important because of course if working on a big screen means you can go to this kind of detail soon but actually the head would be like this. Yeah of course, yeah. So you have to understand what works and what doesn't and it's about training your eye and your skills in that and in time for example at the very beginning I did everything to theme because I was a lot into illustration and concept art before and I tried to represent in my sculptures what I used to do in my drawings but they were off our scale so I had to train my eyes to think that too many tiny details are wrong but for example when doing rivets there's something that I do like but it's just me. You are quite rivet mad I think. Yeah definitely, rivet and straps but there are two things that people don't love to paint. Rivets, straps and whips are your kind of go-to bits. Definitely, you know me. And so I have to compromise with what I like to do and what people love to paint and to work on it. So you also have to adapt your style to what people love to do and what people would like to see and paint because another thing you always have to keep in mind is that what you do will be printed, casted and then people will buy it for playing it with it and maybe not even painting it or we'll have to spend a bunch of hours with brushing their hands. So that is something you always have to keep the customer in mind when you sculpt for miniatures. That is something that for example you don't have to think about if you're doing stuff for video games you have different restrictions. So we've got a question from Maggaz42. They say when sculpting heads etc. is there a standard dimension that you work to sample out other limbs and things to make things interchangeable? Yes, I have a library of organs and of bodies I used to start with. Real ones? No, not real. I'd love to but we're not in... during the Renaissance for example sculptures used to sneak in cemeteries to steal body parts for studying them but luckily we're not in that historical period anymore so it's a crime now doing that but we have internet that helps a lot. Or you can attend life classes where you design and sculpt from watching real models but now I have a bank of organs virtual organs I've been building through the years so I have... every time I start with a new race I have reference depots I can start from and this is also used for consistency because even though starting from scratch would be great fun every time because there's something I really like about starting from a sphere and then watching things to evolve from that we need to make things interchangeable and they need to be consistent within different races and it's been quite difficult at the beginning because Mantik had a range a few ranges that were sculpted in a traditional way and so we had to transform them into digital and making parts that would have been interchangeable with those bits and that's been a bit more complicated but now that we've been switching almost everything to digital is everything a lot easier. I guess it helps as well to make everything consistent because I think if you look at some of the older Mantik models I'm going to talk about goblins obviously but some of the goblins look quite different in their aesthetic to other ones and the orcs are the same as well the god speaker looks quite different to some of the other orcs and I guess that's because they were traditionally sculpted whereas if you're doing the digital things you can share these files with people just in case they need to look at stuff so it becomes a lot easier to make things look the same I guess in some ways. Yes and also digital allows you to change things even when everything is ready for production because you just can open the file back and change what you need to change with traditional sculpting once things were production really changing something and basically adding many weeks of work because you have to chop things and also there were a few let me say sign issues or not better the aesthetics of miniatures has changed through the years and so part of my work has been trying to find a good balance between what was recognized as Montexile and trying to bring that into some new aesthetics that is more in line with what people like now because one thing that digital sculpting really changed is for example the amount of detail you can put in the miniature or proportions to have changed so we had to work a lot to find a way to have some kind of design that was still completely Montiq but something maybe a bit new or late less old style, old school looking. I've got one question here so do you feel like you're pushing the kind of development of the way the material like resin or metal and plastic or do you feel a bit constrained by them sometimes are you seeing that now we've moved particularly to resin for some stuff has that given you a bit more freedom to do some more detail and some cooler stuff I'm so happy you switched to everything to resin or at least the main stuff the heroes and things like that because I do have more freedom and resin allows you to add a bunch more details one of the yes moving to resin really changed the game for me in terms of being allowed to be more I wouldn't even say more creative adding more special effects to the final model and on the other side of course it's not just about resin but about the guy who cast the resin I'd say miracles with casting because he is able to translate in resin a bunch of details that other resin castors would just say no and that is sculpting is I'd say no more than 40% of all the process because casting is fundamental such as design too is really important because a weak design means that the final sculpture may be technically perfect but there will be something that just says no and even taking pictures I've seen having stuff painted properly and then having some very very cool picture to show that really changes the way in which customers are involved in buying and building armies from our ranges so material is for sure one of the most important things on my side because you see all this all the wrinkles I can add to this air if I know that it's resin I can go deeper and deeper in detail sculpting all adding a lot of tiny skin details that I know that will cost but again it will be useless under a certain level of detail so actually talking in detail with the crazy detail you can get on your digital sculpting do you ever paint the models you sculpt to understand how practical the models are to a gamer? I've been painting models for many many years so sometimes I do some tests but digital is really really not the same because I don't know keeping the miniature in your hands and having a brush is something that you cannot recreate digitally so it's more from the digital side I think what they mean is do you ever paint the stuff that you've made physically paint the physical models I spend all the time I come at the air quarters just staring at painted stuff and painted stuff because I have to understand and one of the great things of the open day is that you talk to people that are actually allowed to tell you a bunch of backwards if you sculpted too many straps or stuff like that so the best feedback I have is from people who actually paint them because of course when I see them in the flash I'm so happy but I have to try to paint my own stuff just to see how does that work in real life that should be that should change the game a bit so I've got a question from Amir here they say when sculpting digital would you recommend a drawing pad or is a mouse good enough? no definitely you need a pad some very very cool digital stuff that you can buy and it's not that expensive I've bought recently a Chinese tablet that's called Huion and it's at 20 inch and it's really really cheap and it works perfectly I mean there are actually the market is producing more affordable stuff that allows you to get very very great results without investing a bunch of money but the mouse is really really not enough it's great for working with more traditional softwares like you know friendly studio maps because it's a really different way of sculpting and modeling but when comes to digital sculpting with softwares like sea brush you need a pen and you need to be more I don't know if it's right to say fluent you have to do something that is more like drawing actually and if you try to draw with a mouse it's just it's instrument so question from grey primer do you have designs of your own that you love so I suppose would you love to design something but there's no mantic game or faction that they fit into yet if we said to you Luigi come up with a brand new faction for kings of war or dead zone what would you really like to do apart from spiders I think we were talking about yesterday was a cat faction that would be fun I guess I mean I am so much into mantic design I never thought that there is something missing but actually a filling faction would be fun I guess would you do them sci-fi or fantasy sci-fi definitely wow sci-fi cat faction would be really fun maybe a bit cartoony they could fit into the revs that would be a cat faction so we have a lot of comments saying it's pretty amazing that in 30 minutes you have gone from basically a ball to now a fairly detailed lizard how long have you been using digital sculpting and doing stuff like this should be like 10 years now also I sculpt something like 10 hours a day because I really like it I've seen people doing great stuff and learning the tool in really few times so I really can say I'd say you need maybe a couple of years to really understand how the software works and to be confident enough to be able to live sculpt something but because it's about exercise you need to exercise a lot to understand if I start sculpting it's because I'm Italian and I move my hands while I talk you have to understand your working flow because at the very beginning you do something and you don't actually know what is going to happen so all the time you go for try an error after a while you know exactly what's going to happen when you give that comment or when you start sculpting hire something so it's just about I think training your eyes to your eyes and your internal pipeline to be fast enough because at the very beginning you spend your time you're slower of course and you do a bit of a bunch of undoes because you try it and say no I don't like it then you get back a few times when you become more and more confident with the instrument when you understand what you think between what you have in your head and what comes to the screen or to the paper and the exercise allows you to have the idea translated in something physical in a faster way but at the beginning you just don't have to be frustrated too much that you think to do one thing imagine you want to do a female then you end up doing a laser because the female is not just coming out from your hands do you ever look back at some of the older models you designed and think I wish I could go back and redo those or add certain bits to them every time with every model but I think that is something that deals with my artistic growth every time I do a project I learn something and it's something that I want to apply to the next project so every time I see lately for example for the lizards I had to open back the Gekuta lizard 18 that one, that was three years old I guess and at that time I was so happy about that I've been opening it now I wasn't happy anymore so I'm happy when I deliver and then after a while I know that I can do better but that is something you can even see in the in the growth of the range because every time you see something new you spot something different and something that maybe you like more as a customer I think that works So Jerry says when you're sculpting a new range unit, race or whatever do you make one and then use that as kind of like a dolly or as for the rest or do you sculpt each one from scratch? No, no, no I prepare the first one usually I start from a base that is something that is going to help me if I want to make new variants or maybe just starting fresh from some new design and then I once I have the naked depots done I build from scratch all the armor or all the details and so in that way I manage to make stuff that is actually the same and consistent so for example from building a whole race of warriors that means having say 5 or 6 different characters you put on the table changing the armor means that you add some variety and so they don't look the same even for the hats I have a base one and then I change it to have all the different variants but for me it's crucial to have a standard depots to start from and it's something that say that 20% of the job is naming the first depots actually so I'm going to put posing I don't understand this question but hopefully you will Luigi someone says do you use the transpose tool to pose your models or a Z-Sphere rig I have no idea what any of that means they are Z brush tools that are quite powerful actually and I've been spending time ages trying to have them working but it's something that deals with the mesh you're working with and the machine you have if you're working with a laptop or with a workstation that changes a lot because actually those tools how can I say they adapt the depots to a pose so you can do the pose with the dummy and then adapt the super detailed depots you've done to that dummy actually it's really complicated and I can say you spend a lot of time trying to match them and then there's something a sudden bias between what is expected and what actually the tool does so I do something quite different once I've done the depots I split it in the main parts so say the torso I split the legs between upper and lower legs and the arms between forearms and hands and once I have the depots split I pose it in the same way you pose the action figures basically and then I weld everything down and sculpt sculpt back all the details that have been lost during the pose this is because when you pose something you lose a part of detail specifically where the limbs are attached to the torso so you have to plan that a few of the details in specific areas would need to be sculpted by posing but there's also a chance to add some variety to the final poses so they won't be the same of the depots would it be possible to animate the sculpts so we could use them in promotional videos how easy would that be would you be able to do that would that be something how would that work I guess you need a rig for doing that you need to build a skeleton that is bind it to the mesh in a certain way but you have to completely change the topology because when you're sculpting for stuff that goes in STL is the file that goes print you have this kind of mesh that is a very thick stance when you have to animate something you need to completely change the topology that means you have to do something like this let me show you you have to flat everything down you need to dynamic it to have a single mesh and you have to translate this in now if everything crashes I help you this is my fault for asking sorry so I blame him you need to rebuild your topology based on quads that is a special kind of topology that is needed for animating stuff so there is a new pipeline you have to put in the field to be able to do the animation everything starts from okay so I got the result you see how the topology changes so you can go with a smaller one too and have it even see then with this topology there is a command tool that you can give to translate all the details from the high resolution mesh that I have here to this one and then when you have this kind of mesh you can actually move see make a talk I can try but you need a different kind of mesh for making animations if I need to open a smile for example hello Luigi that's it so have you done I think you mentioned video games before have you done sculpting for video games in the past or not as it just models you've done not just for advertising I've been studying the pipeline for video games because Zbrush is part of that pipeline you have to decide at a certain point what you want to do when you grow up and so since starting from this from what you see that is a high resolution model then you take two paths basically you can go to obtain stuff like this so that means doing all the process you need to do for having what have you done in high resolution for being taken into the animation pipeline or you start doing all the cuts and check for all the cuts and then doing all the pipeline that you need to do for going to 3D print and so you have to specialize in something and so I've gone for sculpting for miniatures because it's something that I do really love seeing what I've sculpted in real life and painted is something that really brings me back when I was 12 years old and I started painting some games workshop stuff and I thought at that time that that was the most beautiful job in the world and not driving times like Brad Pitt said in Fury he's not driving times he's sculpting the best job in the world and so I have chosen to do that I've got a couple of questions here so when you're kind of sculpting do you ever temporarily introduce colours to this to see how it might look in the real world or do you just kind of keep on sculpting in grey? Oh I sculpt in grey because all the stuff I do is produced and painted so I love sculpting in grey because in that way also I can check how the light works you see I do test renders sometimes just to see how the light works and how the shadows help me to understand the relief but I sculpt in grey sometimes for example I do a digitally painted version of a couple of characters of Umbrella Academy that I have in my mind because I love them so much that I will do a painted version but it's just for me I mean colour schemes are something that usually the painters do in the physical world Now this is a heavy question this one Luigi so get ready for this one What's your reply to people who say that digital sculpts lack soul and that digital sculpting has nothing to do with art? I mean bear in mind the children might be listening No I don't know I've been living the same concern with painting because as a student during the 90s I have experienced the same thing with when Photoshop started to become a standard for illustration there were a bunch of people that say no but digital stuff has no soul because the freshness you see in painted stuff is nothing you can get in digital and how can I say artists subjective or yeah? Artists manage to translate a media in art so it's not about the media itself it's about an artist uses it to produce stuff and I've said actually I'm not a nobody anymore doing traditional painting in the industry and if you have a look at for example to ArtStation and you see what artists can manage to produce now with Photoshop or with digital tools in terms of illustration is amazing and it's something that was even I don't know artists find the way to express their creativity using new medias in a way that you can't even imagine when you have the software released and I think that is the same with doing digital stuff I mean I love stuff done traditionally because it's something that I know that there is something you see in that that you still struggle to see in digital sculpting but as far as new generation of artists grow fully digital and start thinking sculpture in a digital way they find a way to build new aesthetic paradigms that you see that change the game so if you hear somebody saying that probably is a traditional sculptor that doesn't want to switch to digital but I've experienced that with a few fellow sculptors that are both digital and traditional they use digital to help them with traditional stuff going digital is not making things easier it may be more practical on the production side but if you're not able to sculpt or if you don't have the eye for potions that is not going to help you anyway Did you start off doing traditional sculpting Luigi or did you always just go straight into digital? I tried to with green stuff and I always wanted to grow as a traditional sculptor too but I've always been living in small flats with a bunch of cuts and now I have a 10 years old daughter that steals all my stuff so I really never had the chance to grow traditional but I really love that I must learn from different medias not just say that's not good enough you close doors in that way If you look back at the miniatures you've sculpted have you got a particular favourite that you are particularly proud of Is this like me asking the guy who created his favourite turtle? Are they all your babies? Yeah, they are Well the one I've loved more is Elboy but because of my love for Elboy so when I finished to sculpt red that's been a very very great day in my life because I've been breathing help during the 90s so that has been something I really loved sculpting and there's another one that is I don't know if you still produce it in The Walking Dead one of my very first jobs as a sculptor has been making some sculpting some side characters and I had to do a very old woman on a wheelchair with panty sleepers Oh was that for Mazotax? Yeah Mazotax, that was for Mazotax and that has been my very first contribution to some design stuff in Mantic so I love her for that way So like obviously now you're working on this Tyrant, how long would it roughly take you to complete I mean I guess it depends on the model but how long does it take you roughly to complete a model? I'd say a couple of days Imagine that excluding the thing that it might happen the design changes somehow because of course the design team may realise that something needs to be changed on the way because it's a creative process so it's not linear you have to do some back and forth sometimes to nail it specifically for the pose because the pose is everything really what changes the life of miniature because you can be as more perfect as you can get in sculpting details and everything but if the pose is weak the whole miniature is weak because it doesn't tell the story So posing is something that takes me up to the whole day just from nailing it in a proper way also because I've learned that you have to split the miniature pose it and then build it back is the only way I've found for example the very old school sculptures usually start from a very base dummy then they pose it and sculpt everything so the robes and all the tiny details directly on the pose dummy I work with deposes instead and do 80% of the details working with symmetry that is really helpful because as you can see I just can ask out the details just once and then the symmetry brings the details on the other side then when I'm happy with what I've done while I sculpt the final pose with that symmetry I change something in the final details to a kind of random look that nature gives to real stuff So I think one thing we've tried to do certainly over the past year or two is try to make the poses a bit more dynamic for you Yes and no I mean yes because it's not about the pose itself but it's more about how you the bunch of stuff you have to study because having a more dynamic pose means you have to enrich a lot your visual vocabulary to be able to fulfill what the design team is asking you so in that sense you have to work more because you have to be prepared to do stuff more dynamic but at the end of the day it's totally worth it because it's something that really changes the story you're telling with the miniature and it's all in the details for example having the ropes flowing or having some detail that needs to follow all the stuff you've struck to a miniature needs to follow the movement and it's something that you learn for try and error basically so for example the goblin, the wizard goblin I just can't say that you've shown recently you know the one that is doing the coming coming up, the street fighter goblin yeah yeah that one so in that for example we've been working a lot together because there was something that wasn't really flowing with that one because at the very beginning if you remember the input was it was shooting this ball of energy so hard he was flying backwards and all these ropes and stuff were following that movement but it wasn't really working so we decided to do the opposite so having him contrasting the energy and that produced the energy moving backwards and that has changed the movement and that was saying the story yeah I think originally it was that she was surprised that the thing was working so as she did it it knocked her backwards but actually it just looked I think it looked like originally she was dancing and then we kind of had to kind of change it we've got a question here actually Luigi what subject would you recommend for novice digital sculptors to try for their first sculpts so I mean humans or I guess there's lots of image references for humans I guess what would you kind of think is a good place to start or just start with something like an apple well you have to start with something you really want to sculpt I mean I have started with human anatomy and particularly with human heads but because I wanted to it's something I really love so also ZBrush has some great base anatomies to start from and I'd recommend instead of starting from scratch that it's something that really is really time consuming I'd rather say try using a base anatomy and sculpting on it trying to take some detail off and maybe changing the proportions to train your eye to what your brain says is good for you I'm done I was going to say is it obviously a lot harder when you have to do things like the Kings of War regiments like the hard plastic ones because obviously with something like an individual vanguard miniature or a hero you can be quite dynamic with the pose but is there a lot more that goes into making the regiments like the hard plastic ones Making the regiments is something that really really really hates that is ranking because putting all the meanings when you've sculpted everything in a rank means that you have to change something because it never works at first shot never so that is complicated because you need to have the pose to be dynamic and they have to work well as a rank so they need that enough variation between the different poses to be they have to be aesthetically pleasing when you have them on the table so that means that you can pose them in the same way all of them in the same way and also you cannot do them in the same way and there is another variable that you have to keep in mind but you can actually test it until everything is printed that is with multiples of stuff you can actually change the position of the miniature on the base and the arms position for example and the hats so that means that you have to gamble a bit hoping that everything will work but I remember clearly that for example for the goblins posing them has been quite complicated but even for the dwarfs that has been a nightmare because they are quite chunked and they are stuffed with spikes and everything so it is always really complicated and the single miniature is easier but on the other side when you see a ranked army it is something you can really be proud of because it is a spectacle I guess isn't it really I love it I can say that building a sprue for example needs more technical experience while building a single miniature is easier but you have different aspects to work with because a single miniature since it is just that and will be standing on a table it is something that really needs a personality and really needs detail everything needs to be just perfect you can you cannot take shortcuts in anything so we've got another question from Grave Primer they say when you were learning your craft did you struggle with certain anatomy parts such as hands yes and I have built through the years a tool that is quite useful that is a hand that has all the fingers separated so I can pause the hands because pausing the hands every time is a pain at the beginning is something that you are happy to do because you are learning but on the long term it is just you waste time so having one thing you can do when you scot stuff is trying to build some base tool that will help you with the next miniature so you can really concentrate on the important stuff that is the very specific detail of design and you stop struggling with hands because every time pausing a hand takes time and it is complicated to do it in a proper way I remember with the GCPS troops I did ages ago that at 7 points I had to change the fingers of all the hands that were holding the rifle because they were at the wrong angle it is something that came out after the first test print so it has been something that I had to do in a bit of rush so hands and face expressions too they are crucial again for telling the story of your miniature and it is something you really have to study a bunch of preferences for understanding how the face changes when you add some particular face expression dynamic poses request starting a lot of references because you have to learn how the anatomy flows and it is something that changes on every anatomy for example the lizards that have reverse joints on the legs will be quite challenging Luigi I originally had you finishing at 12 o'clock you seem to be in your flow are you alright to carry on for a bit longer if you have more questions I can go ahead I did have a question do you prefer fantasy or sci-fi this is like asking me if I prefer mum or dad I have been sci-fi sci-fi for a long time and working with kings of war basically brought me really back into fantasy because there is something about what I studied because I have been studying archeology at the university so finally I can apply what I studied it is something that helps me to pay my bills and it is great although fantasy has been my very first love so I don't know I can say that I love fantasy I love mantic fantasy specifically because it is always trying to be a bit different but also fun fantasy is cool it is more thinking fantasy during the 80s it is more fun it is more about telling epic tales sci-fi is a good break sci-fi is a good break I love doing them both anyway we showed the artifaces the forge fathers earlier on they made them look quite tough that has been great fun it has been one of my latest projects I love them because after doing a lot of fantasy stuff doing some cool armor for example the dwarfs at the very beginning I have been struggling with the dwarfs because they were sculpted by another artist I didn't take that specific aesthetics that wasn't really mine and tried to make it mine and then trying to add something more to make them more appealing for the market as I said in the recent years I have been struggling a bit then the epistle dwarfs came in and then the artifaces have been putting everything together the original mantic style with what we developed in the past two years so they have been fun and for example I don't know if you have shown the machine if you have shown it yes we have and that has been great fun especially for the pose because there has been a lot of work and a lot of back and forth between me and you guys and the design team for adapting the original aesthetic of the map that had been produced a few years ago with the new one it meant changing something in the design but how the whole thing works and having the possibility to add additional stuff in front of it and the pose the torso that is tilted but the dwarf is looking straight to the enemy I have been loving that do you prefer the smaller heroes? it depends on what I have done before it is cutting two giants when I did the giant and the frost giant after it it means you spend a lot of time on the same project you need to keep the style and the strength and the enthusiasm while it is cutting maybe a hero means it is faster and you put a lot of effort in a small project and that is cool too but sometimes you need time to think very well of what you are doing so a giant allows you to be more reflexive you have to think on how to put the arrows because they did not have to break but other times you just need to do a hero in a couple of days and then throw them for approval something else more some of the night stalkers it is pretty disgusting I dread to think what goes on in your head how do you come up with night stalker bits I have been throwing monsters since I was six it is something that is really a part of me I love scouting monsters and villains making a villain interesting is more complicated than making a cool hero because the hero is good by its own definition trying to take a personality out of a villain is more and more complicated and monsters are tricky because they need to be cool and they need to be scary but they don't have to be gross or at least they have to be maybe they are gross but there is something that you are happy to look at anyway so it is something it is more complicated than it seems doing a monster that works well I love it is a good challenge what is your favourite Kings of War faction and why is it goblins well I have to say that brain skins are something I really felt under my skin but on the other side I have to say that I am starting to like warves too I am slightly changing my mind but the finer head sculpting the goblins you can check it if you buy it they have really been fun to sculpt especially stealing the helmets and the shields and all the stuff from the other factions and putting them on their heads that has been really fun there is a few of the older hard plastics dwarfs, elves some of the undead is there any of those you would like to go back and have a look at redoing I may say elves for sure they were cool but I think that we should do something more we cannot do something to the story and also the undead because loving monsters and other kind of stuff for the undeads we should do something more interesting and more gross the night stalker is fairly gross let me have a look let me see if we have any more questions if not you might be allowed to go I am not containing my dots I am trying to throw a pizza I think we will let Luigi go for his lunch thank you very much Luigi it is always great to see the master at work thanks guys last question we share the paint jobs is that amazing when you see what people do with the work you have sculpted do you feel proud? I do this job because I love to see people enjoying their time sculpting them, putting them together I spend a lot of time reading the feedbacks that people give about our product because what I do every time when I sculpt something is trying to deliver a product that everybody can enjoy I try to have mad skills to paint because I have always been in my life when I was a painter I was really an average painter hobby is something that must make you happy it doesn't require mad skills I am so happy and I am very proud when I see people sharing that stuff if it is not professional stuff or it is just I am ready to go and play with it that makes me even more proud and seeing that the community is growing and there are more and more people that get involved in building mantic armies and playing with them and being happy with the product they have and they are happy to paint them that is the real reason I am doing this job that is great thank you very much and the money helps thanks so much Luigi I am going to have a break to have my boring ham sandwich we will be back at one o'clock and that is with Matt talking about Vanguard and Kings of War we will see you later I will leave it on and I will talk to you in a minute don't just run off thanks everybody hello everyone you are going to wave as well Matt thank you for joining us again my boring ham sandwich now that has been an ongoing topic in the chat so hopefully everyone else is well rested after their lunch and now I am joined by Matt Gilbert studio manager, Kings of War expert Vanguard creator, anything else you want to add to that? Armada registered another top secret thing we shouldn't talk about so we are going to be talking now about what is coming up Kings of War and also Vanguard and there will be a chance for you to ask questions with Matt as well so hopefully you can hear me Matt do you want to make sure everyone can hear you? can you hear me? so Dave Simmons, aka the Badger who works here has just joined us he has just woken up he can answer all the questions that I can't even when he is at work he actually wakes up about now that is all the questions that I can't answer that is perfect looks like we are all ready to go we will start off by having a little bit of a review of everything we have done this year for Kings of War because we were just talking about this before we came on we have almost forgotten everything we have done but we have actually done quite a lot this year yeah I think so obviously plans got disrupted and there was a big pause in the middle of the year but we kicked off with Abyssal Dwarves way back what seems a long time ago what do you think? January was the vanguard release and then over the next two months we did the Kings of War army in a couple of waves what we typically do is do the Meda army and perhaps one of the units month one and then the rest of it month two so I think we followed that pattern Abyssal Dwarves brought around the end of the world it was kind of fitting I suppose yeah I suppose obviously the plan was we were going to do Halpy's Rift it was a summer release and that was going to be a big global campaign as well but obviously that got put on hold yeah but I think we didn't stop doing that we had to adjust our plan slightly so there was going to be the Halpy's Rift book and then we would have done probably a more in depth Clash of Kings book like we normally do at the end of the year but obviously with everything that happened and the lack of games and the lack of feedback comprehensive we merged again and just did the one but I think it's been really popular but actually not being able to do that the campaign when we wanted it it was giving us a chance to try the that new tabletop platform which looks really good and looks like it would be really really good for future campaigns so in this case you haven't seen Elliot Morris playing games, worked with tabletop conflicts on like a universal battles version of Into the Rift based on the Halpy's Rift book and that was an online tournament I think it's just, well it's not really a tournament is it it's more like a kind of group together to play to play games a tournament but then within that there's everyone splitting to kind of factions aren't they or organisations so overall even if you're not individually winning so I think the Tables of Conflict stuff is a kind of a good experiment so that if that works then it might be something we look at using for future tournaments as well because it can be re-skinned I guess for sci-fi as well so that'll be one to keep an eye on so we did Halpy's Rift and just in case people haven't seen Halpy's Rift or know what it is, do you want to give a brief explanation if you can remember what that actually is there's a fair chunk of background in there about the Rift itself having kicked the free dwarfs out of the Halpy region kind of took over and there's basically assets stripped the place and they mined a bit too deep and they found a couple of things there's some war going on between the Rackin and the Goblins so the Goblins kind of moving in once the free dwarfs had gone which won't claim as much as they could but the Rackin coming from the east north as they sweep through underground and undetected so there's a massive war raging there which is the war in the holds and then they accidentally tapped into one of these what looks like one of the kind of power lines or lay lines lying under the world kind of holding the fabric of magic together and they forced that to leak into the world so it causes all sorts of magical mayhem so the RC certainly led by Matt James we said to them do something quite narrative so not necessarily 100% balanced with tournament play but for fun you know that word and they come up with a great way of representing that so there's a lot of background in there especially about the Rackin and things like that as well plus new ways of playing with magic and across five different kind of planes with new magic items and spells and all sorts of stuff like that and then it wraps up with a little bit of a Clash of Kings update things we knew that were a bit out of whack or from the games that had been played what needed alignment, what needed becoming irregular, regular all that sort of stuff those kind of tweaks so not as comprehensive as we'd normally do but it is in that book I suppose one thing about the background and the lore I think the idea is we've always kind of said Kings of War is like a living world and I thought it was a living breathing world so we aren't trying to move the story along so roughly how far is this after Edge of the Abyss would you say? Well there is an official timeline somewhere I can't remember off the top of my head where it all sits so this is after the events that are detailed in the Kings of War V3 which itself is after it's kind of 10 years 10-12 years after the Edge of the Abyss so this is probably another two maybe even three years on from that so it's detailing what's happened in that time in the Helpy region and it's also right at the beginning of when the Free Dwarfs are beginning to strike back and take their home back again so they've been kicked out they've spent a few years but living in some of the holds that the Imperial Dwarfs don't particularly want anymore and they've kind of moved into the Estacar region and are settling there but at the same time led by Hernias who's kind of stayed on in the Helpy region to fight a guerrilla war and Spheriae Galax who's kind of leading the fight back and the strike back so there's a naval attack so they create landings for armies down the east coast of Helpy and Spheriae's also brought land forces up and around across the top as well so the book is the start of that fight back too so yeah every book we do we want to flesh existing things out maybe look at some history as well but also move the timeline on I think it's also quite fun in that book to go back to some of the characters that were quite popular from Edge of the Abyss and see what they've been doing so you've got like Bannock and Kragoth and Dravak Dalke and that was kind of fun as well to kind of show that I think having the living kind of breathing characters is quite a big part of the future hopefully yeah and we're talking to or have been talking to Winters are about bringing some of those characters now into the books so saying this is where we want the story up to go and these are the things you need to tell and then authors are being assigned to that and then working with us to flesh those stories out so some of those bigger characters will be appearing in books too so actually despite all the kind of disruptions that we've had over the last year, we've had a lot of interact yeah really yeah I think so and of course we've culminated at the end of this year with the War in the Holds 2 player set which so saw the release of the new plastic goblins alongside the relaunched goblin army and that was the first opportunity as well to see the new ratkin plastic so it was in there as well ahead of that army too we've had a lot of work on particularly with their fluff and their background to try and make them a bit more original than other let's say rat people out there so that's been quite fun to kind of take them more in that direction of the abyss rather than necessarily like kind of plague and all that kind of obviously there was plague pots and stuff but that was quite fun and that's affected their design I guess as well yeah and you know there's elements that we've taken from the warpath range as well which have kind of informed some of the some of the technology that they've got but I don't think it's it doesn't look out of place in any way I don't think there's quite an interesting race in that you can actually take models in both directions and they still look like they fit interesting so yeah I mean and what we've done with the ratkin has gone with a kind of world war one type feel in terms of their level of technology with magic so I guess it's a little bit more steampunky maybe and other stuff but I think it fits them quite well I think and I think that's probably what helps it go back and forth between the sci-fi range yeah I think it's in the dead zone chat earlier we kind of showed one of the master scurrier in fact that will make the move back into because obviously Kings of Wars benefited from all these lovely veerman models and now it's time that the love was paid back I guess to dead zone in some ways yeah but what we didn't want to do I know very early on with when warpath very first came out you know there was some of the fantasy ranges moved across into warpath as a way of bridging that gap but it didn't really work that well what we didn't want to do is just take the whole warpath range and say well that's the kings of war army we've taken a few key units a few really interesting ones things like the tango and things like that which were obviously could fit in a fantasy one but the rest of the army we wanted to say no this is we're going to make models for this and then we looked at all of that and said rather than pick one or two and say okay we'll start with them I think we've looked at it and said we'll just do it all yeah okay cool so what we will do now is we'll have a look at some stuff that's coming up so hopefully Matt will be able to see this as well with the wonders of technology otherwise you won't know what I'm talking about when I tell you to talk about it I'll just get to see your face instead well I mean yeah people will be sick of that so we're going to go through and just have a look because actually despite the fact we've already had quite a packed year there's still even more stuff to come up would you believe it and even better it's goblins hooray you need some more keen than that try again it's goblins hooray so these are December yeah so they'll be going on pre-order very shortly actually on the website yeah so yeah this is one of the things that we've looked at and thought you know they're actually we don't have many mounted versions of heroes so it's only we wanted to look up with the goblins and wanted to address so which is why we've got the as well as the characters on foot we've got them on their mounts as well yeah and these more because the actual goblins are separate you'll see a few more more beasts in it but they are totally separate from the more beasts so I think at some point when you know the resin department isn't just constantly casting boats maybe sell them separately so if people wanted a more beast pack they could use these because they are a bit chunkier obviously they're resin rather than metal I guess yes so this is the goblin whiz on more beast looking very cool holding onto their hat there as well yeah obviously going as fast as you can so this is the big it big it on more beast as well so I think we were talking to Luigi actually about posing all the different goblins and this one we tried to get him so that he's almost toppling off the more beast because of the weight of his axe it's so ridiculous so that's that one and that's something we're pushing for more and more is a bit more dynamism and fluidity and a little bit more character so each thing is telling a story or it's obvious what it's in the middle of doing you know there's some stuff I think we've had in the past which has all been the same pose copy pasted or a little bit static so we're pushing more and more on more movement in the models and more story I guess you can particularly do it with the heroes because this is exactly what we're talking about Luigi while he was doing this sculpting is that when you've got to rank them up it does restrict you in exactly what you can do but obviously with things like this you're kind of free to pose them a bit more and do some crazy stuff overhang over the base and things like that doesn't matter quite so much you're not clashing into things either side of you when we do do a plastic kit like we've done the goblins and things like that Luigi will then put as well as sculpting everything and then obviously splitting it all up into arms and heads and stuff like that he will assemble it digitally and assemble units so we can make sure that they all do actually rank up yeah and I guess it's the intention to do more mounted heroes eventually yeah I mean with for each army we'll look at them as they come out obviously we go back through the army and look at what options are there what's practical to do the goblins felt right to do it for these guys well because they're the best army exactly and because we already had the versions of these on foot so you know it wasn't so we could use that that sculpting time and resource to do the mounted versions you know I think I suspect if we had a choice between the two and we didn't have anything to start with we'd have probably done the foot versions but because they already existed it gave us a chance to do the mounted ones are the foot versions moving into resin or have I made that up yes they are and that's December as well yeah okay so that's the weirs, the flag it and the big git so that's the big git and then finally we've got the flag git as well so actually I think with these morbees you can put the heroes on whichever one you want actually I think yeah you should be able to they should be the same it's sliding all the way back it can hardly hold on well it's that big basalayan flag excited and then I think there's one more release for December and I think these might be popular it's the lugits yeah this is something we try we first did in vanguard the lugits you know the lugging these massive ridiculous oversized weapons around they're so big that they're kind of toppling over backwards again like you said before but yeah as a we then in version 3 we then made them as a unit but you know it's one of those things that you know we can create a unit for something but we need the models for it so we decided this obviously with the goblin army and the plastics in the re-launch and the fact that we already had them sculpted it makes some tweaks and we do them in resin as a unit gives people the ability to now field proper mantic models for them yeah and is the intention in the future that you know if new units are created then pretty soon after we'll have a model for them rather than kind of gaps I guess in the units in the army list yes I mean I think from now on we don't think we'll ever create anything that we're not intending to make a unit for either immediately or within you know with a short space of time obviously to get kings of war off the ground you have to have a lot of armies and a lot within those armies and it's going to take a while to catch up and fill all that in but certainly anything we invent new will be invented new because there's a model coming for it yeah so I guess that moves us quite nicely on to obviously we've done the hard plastic racking in war of the holds so what's the plan for the racking going forward mirrors what we did with the Bissell Dwarfs in terms of kind of the release model so first of all you'll get the racking vanguard warband so that'll come out first and then the two months after that will be the release of the racking army for kings of war split over a couple of months it'll be the army the mega army and a couple of units first and then the rest of the army the month after so I think that's a it's probably the most typical release pattern we do yeah so okay so now we've talked a little bit about racking should we have a look at some of them you can say no if you want and I can just stop the presentation but that's so here we go so this is for this is actually one of the vanguard leaders isn't it this is the racking birthing daughter yes and this is this is actually one out from your brain I think isn't it as you were writing the racking stuff for the helpies rift book and you came up with the idea of this this character these birthing daughters that kind of almost like the messengers and I guess the sergeants are they yeah I think the birthing daughters I mentioned briefly in charted empires and then it was kind of this idea that actually these are almost second in command to the brood mothers that these are the ones that run around actually spreading part of the disinformation and part of the chaos of the racking nests comes from these fake news yeah basically so they will they will be running around saying oh oh by the way you need to do this when in fact it's totally in their own interest what you can't quite see here is actually on her back she's actually carrying all the baby rats with her into battle just one poking over her shoulder yeah one poke so we did have the painted ones here but I didn't have a chance to grab them but yeah so the idea is she will be leading the kind of vanguard faction and the vanguard faction has been a lot of fun to work on actually kind of give them something a bit different so I mean we'll have previews next year but they have these kind of racking nests that you can dot around the board and then that is actually where they can spawn some of their unit spot which is quite interesting yeah the birthing daughters I guess they take less of a battle outside of vanguard they take a little bit less of a battlefield role they're kind of the second in command within the lair and the nest itself aren't they yeah and second to the the brood mother yeah and she's armed with basically a big gun so she doesn't really have to get stuck in and part of the way the vanguard faction works is it's pretty much run through fear that all the kind of lower ones are scared of the birthing daughter because she's kind of like the voice of the brood mother and if they don't do what she says then she might go back and tell the brood mother you need to sort these ones out so it's quite interesting if you keep them all close together they're a lot stronger because they're all scared and then as soon as you start to move them apart then they basically fall to bits so that's the birthing daughter so that is for vanguard no I guess no rules for that in no back into war at the minute I mean it might be if it's a popular model it might be one of those ones that gets added in the next clatter of kings update isn't just an opportunity to address balance issues and things like that it's a chance to introduce new units as well new units, new formations, new spells all sorts and this is and like we said earlier this is one of the ones we looked at maybe bringing it back into dead zone although we don't know if the armor is a bit too fantasy for that one but some of them work really well so okay let's have a look see what's next it's a surprise for me because I can't remember what order I put them in okay so this is the master scurrier these are like the assassins I guess of the rakan aren't they yeah and this is where you look at the way that that face gas mask looks this is where what I was saying about the more taking some elements from kind of world war one technology and aesthetic and adding it to the to the rakan so that's you can see that here yeah so he's a kind of I guess an elite elite scurrier so yeah expert in stealth missions and things like that yeah I think actually in the fluff actually for these ones the master scurriers are kind of are pretty high up in the nest because obviously there tends to be the scouts so they often get the first pick of everything that they've brought back to the nest so sometimes the master scurriers might also be birthing daughters as well who kind of want to kind of get a bit more power so that's quite interesting to see them how they're going to shape up as well and see what happens to those yeah so the master scurrier is one that I think we probably will put into dead zone as well just to you know obviously not on a square base so that's the master scurrier so what will come next who knows oh wow this has got a big thing so what is this madness this is a death engine so this is on a chariot base it just fits on the chariot base but inside is you can just about see it here you can't really see it it's a night terror just there are you touching my mouth rather pleasantly amputated to the point that it can then kind of plug in to and run the it's basically the engine of the of the death engine so it's almost like a living engine by this horribly tortured night terror creature that fuels this thing but there's two variants this is one of them but again you can see that it's the world war one type aesthetic we were going for but actually this in the help is a riff book anyone who's got that there's a racking attack picture where they're coming at you from through a tunnel all of the models in there are actually the STLs and all of the sculpted models were taken in use for the arts the artist was digital sculpting as well and he took all the STLs that we'd done that Luigi had sculpted and used them so they matched the models exactly so none of that that's kind of almost painted over STLs or coloured in STLs which I thought was a really interesting approach and that death engine there is kind of coming at you from the top so you might not realise it but you have seen it before and I think the fun thing is about this one is that I think when Dave was coming up with a concept he was like well they've got the racking of looked at things like the steel behemoth and some of the other kind of really high texture from the dwarfs and going oh yeah okay well we'll do it but then when it actually comes to it they're not actually very good and they have to figure out how to make it move yeah so Matt James says is there an alternative weapon version for a cannon or similar yes you just said that I think so you can run them both so that is and when's currently obviously Covid reliant, when's all this due out I think we are currently scheduling it March and April the two months for the racking okay the hard plastic oh sorry Dave Simmons actually it was Duncan, Duncan Aldis came up with this one so Duncan is our designer so this is from his twisted mind yes or Duncan's so you've got him to thank for this one so let's carry on having a look oh you can say the name for this one bless you at the time I would have put something into Google Translate and picked a random foreign language something non-English it would have been something like hairy rat fiend or something like that and then I'll just change a couple of vowels put an apostrophe and that's the name I can't remember what language or what this one was called so if someone can try and reverse engineer it they'll find out what its actual name is I think that was what we do I don't know when it comes up with names so it's like Ecter the the placoderm because obviously originally the joke was they were like pike men pike men or something like that so Ecter I think is pike men in something like oh not Russian or something so anyway his name is Pike something ridiculous so there we go so yeah so this is the kind of demon spawn it's a unique character I think if I remember right yes it was an experiment by Mother Kreiser I think it was the infamous brood mother so it's one of her creations but yeah created once but it's it's a racking demon prince basically is born of the abyss and you know and can go back there and lives in one of the circles and I think that's the idea and the fluff as well isn't it that there is this kind of much closer link between the abyss and the racking now as well since they escaped from the clutches of the abyssal dwarfs yeah it escaped but never really escaped because it's tired now I guess they're kind of almost their levels of the layer I always kind of replicate the levels of the abyss whether that's they've done that consciously or subconsciously who knows yeah I think that was the idea that they kind of saw that they thought oh great this is the way to run a society which is a bit twisted but so this guy's big he's on a that's a 75mm square base yeah so someone assets the grey primer says is it about 70mm high I don't know Dave Simmons if he's in the comments might know how high this is so you might just keep an eye out for that one so I think that's the last of the renders I think now we actually come to some of the painted stuff actually because obviously it's not that far off so let's have a look at this so these are for well these are a couple of things obviously some of them will be they'll be used in vanguard and kings of war I guess yes yeah that's the war chief on the left and that looks like a warlock on the right yeah so we only just had we only just had these back from from Matt Kennedy also every metal guy who's paints quite a fair bit for us at the moment yeah so he's just sent these back and I think so we had he painted six models for me and three turned up at the office and three turned up straight to Ben our photographer's house so they all go to the same place yeah so I think the other three are here so we've got a I think a Bruton Forster is here the birthing daughter is here and I think the the big fat one I can't remember which one it is the swarm crier the swarm crier that's right yeah so maybe we'll try and get some pictures of those up shortly as well so these will be obviously part of the vanguard faction as well and I think the warlock again shows that kind of link between the abyss so those I can't remember if those actual like horns are growing out of its back whether they're part of the costume I guess you can decide which one it is really yeah so and then I think we've got one more particularly disgusting paint job to look at as well now it's not disgusting in terms of it's not a very good paint job it's just a very disgusting model so let's have a look at this one yes and actually what you can just about see it here he's got all the way down his back he's just rat tails two dozen rat tails all down his back and this is the mutant rat fiend so what what is that basically it's kind of what it is literally a stitched together mutation of experimentation so all the kind of the racking labs where they just experiment on things this is one of the things that stumbles through the door and gets pointed in a direction and said you know off you go so you see it's got on its back there it's got some kind of steroids or something being pumped into it to keep it going but yeah they are just lumps and lumps of flashing body parts and stuff that are kind of stitched together and we created in some kind of Frankenstein hideous mess this is a big model so this is a 75mm square base again yeah but some people are asking there's no alternate poses or anything like that for this one this is kind of and this is another one because although it's big we're just seeing if it will just roughly fit in a dead zone cube as well well I mean it should fit that base is the size of a cube exactly yeah so his sword might pop out a bit and this was painted by Angel Jeraldes as well this one so yeah he's currently in the middle of painting the rat demon for me so we'll have that hopefully not too far off as well so yeah so these are, so that's all the ratkin and they're coming out as kings of war army and a vanguard faction and then I think next matte a little sneak peek of another vanguard faction and if you tuned in to Luigi's sculpting session earlier he was doing a salamander tyrant and there's a good reason for that one because salamanders are the next vanguard faction they are indeed so this is a yeah this major priest it's actually an arkasaur rather than a salamander there are different types of races within the salamanders as a whole so yeah and we'd already done the necromancer necromancer that was kind of a turned arkasaur so yeah so we went over the same again and I think again a bit like how we tried to do the ratkin a bit different like say with the world war one kind of thing the salamanders too have had a bit of they're not the kind of traditional people might expect like the aztec sort of thing but instead we were looking at roman centurions and stuff like that for these yeah I've done a lot of that and tried to get a lot of flame motifs into the armour and the flame swirls and things like that but yeah so we took a look to roman's a fair bit which you'll probably see I can't remember what pictures you've got well I think you'll see a bit more on the other ones but and the idea is the vanguard faction will be a mix of salamanders arkasaur and gekatar I think yeah so it's an interesting faction that one and I can't remember it's been so long since we started looking at the rules I think it was more like looking at them doing group actions and that kind of stuff so they are run a bit more like roman centurions I think if I remember right it might have all changed well we need to go back and they need to go through their last kind of rounds of play testing and then they'll get to start to lay out the cards and things like that yeah so what I'm trying to think when these are due out this must be early summer I think yeah that rings a bell yeah so that's the mage priest and let's have a look at what we've got next this is the clan lord so again you can kind of really see that intricate armour and that one is a that one is an actual salamander isn't it that one I think yes he is quite a big lad as well quite a big lad as well he's got a lot of muscle on there and because these are all 25mm bases rather than a lot of the kind of vanguard ones which are 20mm I think the vanguard the standard infantry is 20mm but the salamanders are on 25mm and the clan lord again that's a miniature that's obviously in kings of war as well the clan lord same as the mage priest so you can obviously put these in your if you're planning a salamander army and is there plans for an actual army as well later this year or later next year yes so probably the same pattern so that the vanguard will come out followed by the salamander army for kings of war okay cool and then finally for the salamanders we've got this one I think this one might be my favourite of the three we're showing today actually another good kind of dynamic pose like he's ready to whack you with that big axe so what are those that are in your garden I don't know it might have taken Luigi quite a while I know he doesn't like sculpting rivets he probably takes doing swirls now as well Luigi loves rivets he loves rivets he loves straps he'd have all the boats moving rivets again when we say no that's too many so yeah the salamanders and there will be geckatar as well and then I think there's tyrants if I remember rightly yeah and scorch wings we're doing and a couple of other bits as well so and the because we've already got the hard plastic kit and actually there's a two or three other units that are all based off the plastic kits and there will be heads and arms swaps for the different weapons for different unit types is that for the corsairs a good smattering across the army I think the bulk of the army will be done I'll just be a couple of units short to do later I guess it's that the tricky element when it comes to doing a new army it's making sure you've got the hard plastics to do the core of everything because that way it becomes the expensive bit yes it's the expensive bit obviously we'd love to do everything in plastic but that's just not practical for us but you want at least the core you're going to want multiples of to be in plastic because it's the most economic for purchasing and now we've got one it's not a salamander this is one final one I think this we showed concept art for these it must have been two or three years ago and got everyone excited and then it went totally quiet and we didn't have anything about them for ages but now we finally can show what the models look like and that is dracon riders what are these mounts for those people who may not have been following the progress of the the original kind of like chicken riders almost yeah well yes I mean dracons have been in the alphalest well since version one really the original ones didn't quite hit the mark so they were metal so they were heavy things and they were just to say that they looked like they'd come off of a carousel I think so they weren't they weren't the best models so we you know when the moles run out we didn't redo them with the intention of always doing something doing them justice but yeah it was never the right time to release them but since we did a league of infamy and that's got the dracon lord in it it was a good time to release these guys at the same time so the lord will be the plastic league of infamy version and then these guys will be as a regiment like that in resin so how big roughly are these ones these are large infantry so these are 50 mil square bases but again as you can see we've you know we've made sure that they rank up and Luigi did a second rank as well to make sure that the hoard worked as well you know so we mixed them up I got on the bank in a different back in a different order and they fitted as well yeah so and so we've got actually while I go about seeing some questions will the salamander upgrade part to be available separately from the salamander kits I imagine we would do that on the website yes probably I'll do those on the web yeah there's another question I saw which I can't remember oh any news about Twilight kin I guess people are asking about that we've heard a few questions about that Twilight kin I know what I know what I want to do with them mostly but they're not in there certainly not in the short term but we will do them but I want to do them in a specific way alongside other specific things which I can't say at the moment top secret and I mean is a plan in terms of Kings of War releases how many how many months of the year do you want to see Kings of War stuff you know will it be every couple of months every quarter what's the plan obviously if things go to plan we need to cover you know we've done the last couple of years we probably focused certainly last year we focused a lot 2019 and even this year a lot on fantasy we're not stopping that next year but obviously we want to move back to give the sci-fi a fair go as well but you know we're not slowing down I mean Vanguard and Armada both cover the Kings of War universe now but you know I've got there's more than the two armies we've talked about coming out in terms of armies for next year for Kings of War so don't worry that there's a lack of content I won't ask you to reveal more I'm sure Ronnie will probably be spilling beans later on that one but they're kind of obviously the plan and next year will it go back to like a campaign book in the summer and then Clash of Kings at the end of the year do you think or is that the plan at the moment so yeah so I think it's late August or September there's a campaign book with some new interesting things in it alongside some new models which should be exciting for everyone and then yes the plan is the writers are lined up for that I've got two different writers lined up for background and stuff for all of that and the RC have been tasked with writing the new units and lists for that book and the new scenarios and things I want in there and then when they've done that they'll start or focus start focusing on the Clash of Kings book for the end of the year okay well I think so I'll stop presenting there hopefully that will go back to them hopefully face back big on the screen so Ivan says any plans for renewed orcs possibly okay that's very cryptic you as bad as Ronnie now so anything else you want to add about Kings of War while you're here Matt anything else exciting to reveal I think you and I have had some really good conversations with Winters Art in terms of lore and world building and the things we've got coming out there and I think the video up recently the books that are coming out and we've got Winters Art next on there Vince and Winters Art is going to go through everything that's coming out for all of that which is really good the more we can build the world the more it attracts people in the world gets bigger and there's more places for adventure and battles and all that good stuff I think in the next years there's more than two armies coming out you know alongside Vanguard alongside Armada so you know there's lots coming around that as we're focusing back on sci-fi and stuff as well so we've got tons going on yeah yeah quite a lot and obviously with Armada that will start to tie more into the background and the fluff too I guess yeah absolutely so you know Mark Latham who wrote the Helpy stuff wrote all the background stuff in Armada I've lined him up for the next Armada book as well and the next the book next summer or late next summer as he's writing part of that as well so you know there's continuity between between those two yeah and yeah and the new the Pius the book that tied in with the Armada launch obviously set you know so Bacillans versus Orcs that's set in the infancy so yeah it all ties in and we'll start to see crossovers one of the things we probably do we'll look at certainly for free download you know we're looking at the Armada I'll see looking at building a kind of a free to download kind of two player small campaign that crosses all three games to download and play long term as I said on a couple of podcasts I'd love to do a proper system that spans all the games so you can run off a full campaign across land battles, skirmishes naval battles could you even start with something like Dungeonsarga potentially like go all the way cause we kind of did that in Vanguard so you can all on a table in between games and you know your party to score your Vanguard warband discovers a dragon in a cave but actually you could go and play that as a Dungeonsarga rather than just the result on the table and roll a dice to see how much treasure you get you could break out and do it that way okay that'd be cool so well I think I've got to get ready for my next interview and you've got to prepare now for the Armada one in an hour so Matt will be back at three to talk about Armada so you'll have to get all kings of war out of your head and just think about boats and so next in about ten minutes we'll be talking to Vince from Wingtasar so thanks for everyone that joined in to see Matt and you'll see him again shortly say bye Matt bye Matt okay don't say bye to me cause I will continue to talk to you so right I'm going to switch off the microphones switch off this and then I'll be back shortly with Vince from Wingtasar hello welcome back viewers on the interwebs I am now joined by the best moustache in wargaming known as Vince from Wingtasar hello Vince how are you good how are you doing today good I'm not flagging yet we've been live streaming for several hours four hours I think this morning but I think I'm just about lucid now you've got me at the best point probably excellent well a lot of coffee and tea we'll help you with that yeah I've been having plenty of tea so I'm all the way through so just in case you don't know who Wingtasar which is a disgrace if you don't Vince can you just give a little bit of background about who you are and what you do at Wingtasar I guess sure so Wingtasar is my company myself and Brandon run it we do science fiction fantasy working with great great game companies like Mantic to create background material and we also create we also publish historical books historical reference historical information I do a lot of stuff on Eastern Europe because that's my specialty but we're running all sorts of other stuff including adventure books and we're going to be coming out with some kids books soon as well so we publish print books ebooks audio books we're trying to round out the whole thing and we're carried around the world so no matter where you are you can find us or you can go to our website which right now the best place we just revamped it is WHPSupplyRoom.com which will get you not only books but war game materials and rule books and everything else oh cool so and you've kind of been we've been working with Wingtasar for a couple of years now so we've done we did tell some of the abyss you've dropped out on me a little bit oh can you hear me now Vince I could hear you oh Vince has disappeared let's see while Vince gets his microphone working properly we can hear you Vince can you hear me now looking confused oh no I'm just going to talk tell us what's coming up Vince I'll chat to him so anyway let's remember the background of what we've been doing and where we're going so we just came out with Pius which ties into the Armada game it's by Mark Barber fiscal copies we'll be ready the 24th of this month and the ebook is available now if you go to Amazon it's available or Waterstones any place else that sells ebooks you can get it now there or our site and then as I said physical books will be out by the 24th it ties right into Armada Mark Barber worked very closely with Matt Gilbert to put the novel together it deals with Basilians and Orcs and in writing this I managed to make sure that Mark Barber put the term scurvy dog in there at some point just so we could have a real piratey type thing it is an excellent book well written I think if you haven't had a chance to look at it do it it takes all the boxes for naval warfare and pirates before we go on to what's coming out I just want to review some of the things in case you didn't know anything about us or haven't seen it there were several mantic novels prior to this the first one was Edge of the Abyss which was an anthology of all different areas of the mantic world in Panathor and then the aforementioned Mark Barber put out Steps to Deliverance earlier this year and we also did a Trident Realm novel Drowned Kingdoms by Ben Stoddard Drowned Secrets all those are on ebooks and but Steps to Deliverance is also an audio book so if you get a chance go look for that also during the lockdown we worked with the folks to create a free anthology called Kings of War COVID Anthology Pestilence and Poison that's available on our website for free and it was people submitted short stories and we picked the best of them and put them together and put them on there so if nothing else check it out, it's free can't be so bad also coming out this month is the first of the Dreadbolt novels Last Herob by Robert Waters Robert did a lot of work with this worked with a lot of the community and mantic to make sure we got this pretty much the way everyone would want a Dreadbolt novel to be and I think he did a great job it's it's basically tries to give it as good as if you were there extreme Dreadbolt game that you would want a lot of podcasts if you want to check them out like Dead Zone Family of Gamers and WPPU we've talked to Robert and Brandon about this and you can get a little bit background if you want to find out more about it so upcoming because we've got a bunch of stuff coming out and the list keeps growing actually so it's exciting for us and hopefully exciting for you the next one that should be out in January is Nature's Night this has been we delayed this a couple of times as we reworked it initially it was going to be a single point of view multiple point of view novel by several authors but all telling the same story and they're taking it from different points of view I think it's going to be a very interesting one but very exciting dealing with the forces of Nature Basilians and Night Stalkers so we've got a bunch of different characters in there we also coming up some of the things we've got sci-fi novels with the first strike by Christopher Verspeake we're going to have that out sometime in the spring of 2021 very excited about that this was out initially some time ago we're re-editing it going to put it out again and he's got a sequel hopefully coming out in 2022 so that's exciting the next Kings of War novel we have is going to be Claws on a Plane by James Dunbar this is featuring Orcs and working against a mercenary company to protect our dvarkian planes from a massive Orc invasion James says we're close with Mark Languary so there's going to be some crossover with the RPG and we're excited about that and we're looking at that sometime around late March then Tom Hopi is coming out with the Battle of Dawn's Keep this is the first novel we're going to have that features the elf as the main character this is also scheduled for the spring of 2021 there's going to be some crossover with the the previous novel from Claws on a Plane so again we're trying to mix some of these things will be little chestnuts in there that play off of each other then sometime in the spring is the first of the Rise of the Celestians our first novel on the God of War series by Seal Werner again, Clint is working very closely with Mantik to get the lore down and tell the story if you don't know about Clint shame on you each of you go out and get one of his novels he's a great fantasy writer he's done a lot of work with Black Library he's doing some work with Akinite books and of course with us and I know Clint Clint very well, Clint's a great guy he writes great novels and this is going to be a great background book coming out sometime after that is going to be the second novel for Steps of Deliverance in that series by Mark Barber called Faith Align this is the first of hope several that's going to follow Ryan's journeys and working alongside the Brother Mark forces again we're going to have some original we have some original artwork for this that we commissioned I think which is going to be exciting for everyone it's very dynamic, it was also by Michelle Georgie who did the work for Edge of the Abyss and Ground Secrets and then of course sometime in there next year we have The Rise of the Goblin King by Rob an amazing book Jamie you can't hear me Vince can't hear you Rob can't hear you still doing it so no matter how much he's trying to get out of it he's still going to do it and we're very excited about that which is going to be taking a character from the series that you've known and making it a bit more exciting a bit more to life which is really what we want to do we want to bring the world of Mantic to life and get people excited we are also doing some trying to get some choose your own adventure books or adventure books out we'll keep you updated on that we're still working on working on that and seeing what we can do we're also working very closely with the RPG folks to create a series of novels that tie in there excited about that Ben Stoddard has a this is some stuff coming up excuse me Ben Stoddard has a new book we hope called Wake of the Leviathan which is going to be a sequel to his first novel and flesh out the world that he's dealing with the Trident Kingdoms a gentleman named Mike Ross he's going to be writing a dwarf novel called Honest Price this is a be a dwarf versus a Bissell dwarf in a territorial battle I'm excited about that Scott Washburn is going to be doing a book on halflings which is going to be coming out hopefully in September they're about Scott's a very very talented writer of fantasy he's done some books for us this is a selfless plug books for us on the the great Martian War which worked out very well and he's done short stories about halflings in the anthology which was very well received we likes Scott a lot too and look forward to that one and then for those of you who are interested we're also if you go to the website again which is WHPSupplyroom.com we have a code in there stay at home 2020 which if you put that in you'll get 25% off your order opportunity to pick up stuff cheap we're at a discount and that not only is for the books but any of the gaming material and supplies that we carry on there so that's sort of the overview of what we've got coming out it's a lot of things Rob and I were trying to see if we could get covers up but technology being what it is not quite working I don't think let me just try one more time see if that's going to work so anyway that is our presentation in a nutshell but I'd love to take calls let me see if I can log out and log in what we're going to do is we're going to see if Vince logs out and then logs back in whether we can get the sound working again so then you can ask questions it's going so well you know I was saying to Vince that we had no problems with the audio and then literally as soon as I said that everything went wrong so as you can see there's loads of stuff coming up from Vince and the gang at Winged Hussar if you haven't read Pius yet I can 100% recommend that it's absolutely brilliant Matt Gilbert worked really close on that one to make sure it kind of nailed the kind of feel of Armada so what I might do is I might just log off for a minute I'll put you on the back shortly screen just while I see if I'm going to sort it out with Vince and then if you ever get any questions we can come back then so I'm going to put the back shortly on, mute myself and then hopefully I'll be back soon with some questions for Vince so thanks to my expert technology we should have Vince back and you should be able to hear me now Vince don't do that it is working for the moment Vince it sounds like you've got loads and loads of stuff coming up have you enjoyed particularly Brandon as well choosing all the ones that you want to do do you get a lot of submissions from people we do get submissions like anything else a lot of these people have sent us stuff we try to read through or look at and if we can work with it great if not we'll try and help them if we can it's not as easy these days especially since we're kind of swamped with stuff but we do try a lot of things we've been coming through friends of friends and people as we've been putting more and more out with Mantic we've had some inquiries from writers with some experience that's helped but we're always looking for new people that's the thing I think the one exciting thing is we actually have a lot of stuff in the pipeline and we're trying to get through as quickly as we can and make sure we can keep things out on a more regular basis and that's the exciting part there's a lot of attention to this now I think we're working with you all have been able to really flesh out a lot of areas or we'll be fleshing out a lot of areas and a lot of worlds to be explored a lot of dark corners we're going to shed some light on and scare people with what are you looking for when someone kind of sends in a submission are you looking for something that stands out well I mean you want something that's well thought out and is plausible within the realm of what you're doing you don't want someone who's going to suddenly create characters that haven't been created before talking about things that necessarily don't need to be talked about or exploring areas that again they've never been mentioned before and you said well there's a blank area on the map I'm going to create something there don't do that there's a lot to be explored there's a map that's already there I think it's just taking a compelling story and then fleshing it out and in order to do that you have to really think through what it is the setting is what the steps are what would work what wouldn't work it's like if you're sitting around a campfire telling people a story you want to keep them engaged so they don't wander and use the area you've got to create a compelling story that's going to be engaging the people so they'll be leaning into you as you're telling it so at the right moment you can go boo and make them jump a little bit but it'll be all in good fun what do you find if people are kind of just starting out they've got a great idea and then they think really I'm going to turn this into a novel now what part of the process do you find they most struggle with or is it different depending on the author well I mean you know everyone's different there are for every story there is about J.K. Rowling just never written before or Stephanie Myers never written before and suddenly created a whole world and everything else there's a lot of people who haven't done that let me put it like that my advice and frankly doing a novel you can get lost in it you can start plotted out and as you're writing if you let the characters in the story get away from you you'll go in the areas you didn't want to and you'd meander around almost like a stroll down the countryside and you're not looking where you're going you can get lost but I think the best thing is if you want to do that to start with short stories and then create a short story that links to that short story and if you do enough of those then you've got a novel that all comes together but you want to be that's a good way to start and then go from there try to link those or find a way to make them all more cohesive I think what was exciting from my point of view is that originally when we started out with you guys it was like okay well people can take stories that kind of happen over here and don't necessarily affect the main plot but I think from the quality of the products that we're seeing Matt Gilbert now has said well actually you can take these characters and we've been working closely with yourself and Brandon to choose out characters from the background at the minute and say okay write something about these and I think that's exciting from our point of view to see what these characters like but I guess it's good for your point of view that we are happy now for you to do that in some ways yeah I mean it's great to gain the trust of you guys to say okay they know what they're doing or reasonably know what they're doing or we're all fooled at this point I think it's C yeah probably but that's what we want to do we want to not only gain your trust but gain the trust of the readers and the fans to say we're going to consistently try to put out great stories for you and they may go places you've never been before they may go familiar places but it's going to be a sudden twist and suddenly you're going to find out more about these characters and places than you thought you knew and I think that's how we build worlds that's how we build excitement for the games you know eventually people may build forces that tie into some of these books we would love that I think you would love that too from the standpoint of collecting more models and I think it's fun for the fans because you create a story you know one of the great things about Mantic games is that you're creating a story while you're playing in a sense so this is in a sense taking that the next step we're just taking the story and creating the story using those characters yeah I would say mate from reading First Strike by Christopher Verstbeek I finished that book and immediately wanted to do a vehement army for Warpath because I just read it and I was so I really really enjoyed it First Strike was one of the first kind of Mantic novels I read so I'm really glad that Christopher's continuing that story because I think I know he's kind of got a trilogy in his head so to see that coming out is really really good and I think a lot of people will be excited about that one yeah we're really excited too like anything else it's just taking us a little while to get everything going and scheduling it in because even though it's been you know it was out before we're just going to give it a little cleaning and dusting and you know we'll get it out relatively quickly I think in 2021 so when say someone comes to you with an idea what's the kind of typical timeline I guess of that finally being you know finally coming out so you kind of give someone comes to you with an idea it gets the green light how long are you talking until it actually comes out you're talking about a year nine months to a year before it comes out just for a simple fact of having to write that many unless you're a full time writer and you spend all your time writing it can be challenging to put out a novel in less than a year yeah the only person consistently I know that Dan Amnett does that but he's got clones to help him so that really I'd probably dissuade that one but I mean it is you know it's challenging you want to get it you know write it have go through edits make sure it's you go usually we'll go through two or three rounds of edits just sometimes it's it's just fight over words you know pens and that sort of thing and how many commas you're going to put in there but other times it's just making sure it's a good story but that's just part of it I mean the other part of it is because we distribute a lot of our stuff in the high street for you all or the retail big retailers back in the states they require six to nine months lead time on things so that you know that in itself is a little bit from the time we announce it to the time it actually and so there's a long lead time in all this and then of course it's things can come up that can delay a book as well like a major disease comes to you and you're locked down in your room that'll never happen Vince, that'll never happen so we we were delayed a lot in the springtime because a lot of bookstores were closed here in the states as in the UK we had problems in that some of the printers were delayed for a lot of things so overall publishing closed down between like March and July and we've had to re-jig schedules and everyone's had to re-jig their lives a little bit in order to get that work so that's been a problem and then I guess now are you all in full lockdown now? It's kind of a bit of a half way lockdown, schools are still open some shops are shut although bizarrely garden centres are still open but it's not quite everyone's forced to be at home like it was the first time but generally it's not quite the same as it is normally and that's going to have an impact for instance on booksellers their clothes for example even the first time around Amazon wasn't selling or sending out books on a regular basis, they were concentrating on supplies now we've at least got that down where you can buy mail order from Bards of Normal I think there's an independent thing called Book Org which is like independent booksellers you can order online and they'll get you books but also e-books obviously and then of course the ever popular audiobook that we have out and we are planning on doing more of them we work with the gentleman Ray Greenlee who I like very much I think he does a good job on it but again one-man operation and we all take time to do things that must take a long time to do an audiobook I would think to get it to not trip over the words especially with something with fantasy when a lot of the names have particular apostrophes in it must be quite hard to make sure they're pronouncing it correctly because the audiobook narrator if they do it right will actually make sure they almost create like a pronunciation guide as they do it and then it can take a while and then you don't do it over one shot you'll do it over multiple times and you want to make sure you get the right cadence in your speech so it flows through and even in that there's a lot of post production work to make sure it flows properly so it does take time but you know I think the end product is pretty good it all starts if we do a good novel that helps a lot so we're trying to make sure that happens the question from the comments actually and I guess you have kind of covered this a little bit earlier on but Chris Lowry says any tips for budding authors he's interested in potentially writing some dead zone fiction again I think the best thing to do is just write it scope it out so you have an outline and then you know start filling it in and you can send it to us we'll look at it it's not like we don't have a slush pile per se that it goes there and I have all these minions my grandson doesn't sit there and read them and point it's like this one but we'll try and do it and it doesn't mean if we decide not to do anything but it doesn't mean it's bad it just means that we need work and as I said we'll try to work with you if it has potential or we'll give you some pointers on what you may need to do I think the thing is for any writer is to stay focused on the story and as I said be engaging so that people lean in when they're reading it yeah I think well let's say what I have been impressed with working with you guys is that you are happy to work an author might come to you with an idea and it might not be quite right but then you take the time to work with them on making sure that they tweak it and kind of get it back on track which I think is really good it's not a kind of outright no we're not going to do this it's then you spend the time to work with them and give them some ideas about what they could do with it which I think is great but no look like anything else I think writing a novel or anything in this any sort of shared universe is just that you have to work together to make sure that both you and the author and the people that are going to be reading it enjoy what they're doing and we want to steer people to the right path if you're passionate about something we will always explore that because it's you may be something to it and if we can make it work out and we'll send it to you all to look at and you'll say no no no that will never happen that's one thing but if it's like okay maybe then we can work with it whoever is writing it has a passion about it is excited to do the written word as well and the story Ben Stoddard has popped in to say it's the best submission process he's experienced which is a good compliment unless it's the only submission process he's experienced at that point you just dropped the mic and walked away from doing the goblin book it's great to take these characters and they almost take on a character of their own in some ways and they realise that as you're writing you're like okay well this is how I think they'll behave and then the story doesn't necessarily write itself but you definitely start to think okay well I think they would do this in this situation which I think has been really fun do you find that authors kind of get in that they start to live and breathe these characters as they're creating them I would say that yes most I think when you're into what you are writing then you live and breathe that character there's a couple of short stories I know where one author wrote about a character who was writing about actually his characters started stalking him after a while they came to life so much but I think you have to in order to tell it you have to tell a story almost like you are there and you can tell that from a distance as viewing something but I think also to really get into a story you have to tell it from this is what I'm feeling this is what the character is feeling if the character is feeling that you have to know what it is to really convey that to the reader so we've got a question in the comments Jerry says Matt has said that he has a timeline planned for Panathor for years to come does Vince have access to that to help with plans or is it independent as far as I know Matt has shared that with Brandon so he knows and then we can use that to go this is where we think this story because at the minute quite a lot of the stories have happened in the past but I think the plan is with things like Pius or other stuff is that they are actually happening their current events within the world of Panathor and that's really exciting and I think that shows the working relationship that we've got with you guys is that we're happy for you to do that now it's not kind of like okay take this obscure character and tell what happened to that character 50 years ago it's not okay you can actually look at modern events and what's going on well Pius is a case of where we did that in a sense because we basically crashed that book on very short time but it was our ability to sit down with y'all and say okay this is coming out what can we do for that we worked that out and then we're working out a few other things as well to try to capitalize on your plans and what's going on in Panathor and evil worlds we're going to create together to really build out the background and the world itself I think that works really well I think like I said anything else that we need to work on is just the timing of it making sure that we've built in enough time to hit the match up with what you all have got coming out question is are you planning any translations of the books into different languages I would love to do that we've been reaching out I have reached out to foreign publishers to do translations generally what ends up happening is you would license those out to another publisher and they would do a translation because we don't necessarily have the route to market if we were to do a Spanish version I don't necessarily have the route to market in Spain sell those but and again there's only so many things we can do within our little world if you can get a Spanish publisher or a German publisher or Italian publisher to say let's do this we tried doing that Frankfurt book fair was recently virtual they didn't have it I tried reaching out to some foreign publishers there but it's not as easy as it would in the past if you can actually grab them and shake them and say look at this it is wonderful but again if you are in another country interested in getting in that just reach out to a publisher and say why aren't you doing this and then we'll be happy to work with them I think one thing obviously when you're talking about all the books that are coming up obviously previously you've kind of focused more on the fantasy stuff I think it's really exciting now that you're moving more into the warpath universe as well are you kind of hoping to do more of the sci-fi things you've obviously mentioned Christopher Ver speak is there kind of more potentially planned is there a lot of area to grow there I would love to I mean sci-fi is a core for readers and the game allows itself warpath has a lot of room to again a lot of room to grow there a lot of interesting things we will put out books our intention is to expand that line as well now how many we do is basically what kind of reception we get if we put the books out and we get a good reception we'll just keep putting them out try to expand it more if we put them out and people don't buy them well then we've got to look at what we're doing but it's like that it's whatever your universe is that you can work with we'll try and deal with I'm excited I really enjoy as well as fantasy and I cut my teeth on a lot of sci-fi work so I think it's something that we'll be looking to expand our work I think the short story collections are quite a good way to experiment to see what ones people respond to and then which ones they want to see more of so maybe if there's a chance to do a sci-fi short story collection or something like that it's particularly good because you have a lot of these small strike teams all going out and doing, they're a bit like all of them are a bit like the A team so those kind of stories might be quite interesting potentially in the future as well so something to consider yeah I mean again that's something I think is on our plate that's not going to just because of what our workload is probably not going to happen until the tail end of 2021 or 2022 but that's why we plan we'll plan to do something like that and even if that so even if we were to do a short story and I have to talk to Bran to see what his schedule is like for undertaking that with everything else but we'd start planning that probably after the new year and the springtime because we have to get people to submit it then we have to go through them then we have to pick the ones then we have to edit those and then get it on the schedule if we were to do something like that it probably wouldn't be until the end of next year beginning of 2022 so how far in advance are you working now I'm pretty much into 2022 I mean we've got books planned out that far ahead yeah and you know as we as we go through this some things move around which we're trying not to do that but obviously depending on when people get us books we can review them and edit and get back give and take some of those things are going to slip we're trying to do a better job of not having them do that but it is it is one of the things we deal with as a smaller company and I guess particularly if it's some first time authors the realisation of just how long it takes I think might catch some I mean it certainly caught me a bit by surprise when I'd spent an entire day a fantastic day I've written all this and I looked and it was something like 3,000 words and I was like oh my god at this rate it's going to take me you know 10 years or something ridiculous to finish this book and I think maybe that's one of the things that people maybe need to plan their time I guess that's a tip for a new author is plan your time properly and work out how long it will actually take well yeah I mean look you really have to find time to sit down and write that's the main thing you can write in an environment that's conducive to your writing most authors will plan on X number of words a day be it a thousand words or 5,000 words it's a lot, 5,000 is a lot of words if you've ever tried to write 5,000 words in what setting and have it make sense not just keep all work in no play make Jack a dull boy oh so I can't just bash the keyboard and hope for the best you could try hey it's in goblin my book's done in that case we'll translate it into English but yeah so it is one of those things to discipline of every day sitting down and writing X number of words that you want to do now if you're talking a typical book is between somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 words it takes a while to do that between and as you're writing unless you can have a fortress of solitude that no one's going to disturb you you can be writing and tell people I'm writing don't bother me and the kids can come in and there's a problem or your wife needs help or your husband needs help or the dog needs help or that coffee didn't sit right and I've got to run out for a second anything can come up and interrupt you so that's why you need to be able to focus and that time to actually sit there and do it and the best thing again anyone's ever said if you want to learn how to write is to just write just keep doing it and get feedback on it and find holes in what you're writing and rewrite it so you feel that it's good enough for someone else to rip holes in it and that's basically it you just got to keep doing it it's like anything else you just got to keep practicing and practicing and practicing and I guess then you'd learn what bits work for you and kind of what environments work for you and kind of how long it will take you so it is a whole learning process when you're just starting out I guess and then when you re-read it and find that you keep using the words and at the beginning of every other sentence or therefore a lot there's a lot of words you write and you don't have to use them you don't have to literally use them all because that would be very confusing but you got to again when you're reading one of the things that first time writers do is they're very repetitive and phraseology and word patterns and you have to look at that and when you go back and re-read it and rewrite it you want to mix up things a little bit and then not use the passive tense when you write as well so those are I think those are just fundamental things that you want to do not that I get any money off of this but if you really want one of the best things I think aids for if you want to write is a book by Stephen King called On Writing which is it's very useful for style and how people approach writing and what you should look for cool so Pius when's Pius hitting the physical copy when's that hitting shelves is it already out or is it out soon so right now we're looking for I think probably next week okay wow okay cool it should be in the warehouse should be in the warehouse next week because Last Hurrah just hit the warehouse and it's shipping out now right okay so we're going to start stocking more of the physical books on the Mantic website as well so if you're in the UK and kind of want to get them over here or Europe then we're going to start having them as well which is great I think we're going to set up a proper kind of library section on the website which will be cool just to keep pushing those I would say look at it look at our website when you want when you can look or on our as I said WHP supply room and we'll announce when they're in I make a point of as soon as I get them I take a picture of it to show everyone but so I expect to have physical copies in our hands next week but they are shipping out now from to stores if you pre-order it cool well and then you'll be getting yours shortly thereafter fantastic so I think we've got no more questions in the comments we managed to tackle our technical difficulties earlier on Vince so thank you very much for joining us that was really useful and I think there's so much coming out I mean Steve Hildrew's video on Death by Dragons the other day really caught me by surprise because I was like blimey I can't believe how many books there are coming out and he didn't do any of the sci-fi ones either so it's amazing so thanks very much Vince so I will don't hang up straight away I will talk to you on the other screen but so we'll be back in about 15 minutes with some Armada chat with Matt and Ronnie if he's remembered so I'm going to go quiet now you'll go to the the black the back shortly screen and I will just say goodbye to Vince so say bye to everyone at home Vince there we go thanks everyone at home and I look forward to talking to you soon hello hello we are back hopefully so we are now we've managed until 3pm without too many technical difficulties now I'm not saying it's because Ronnie is here but suddenly we've started to experience technical problems so hopefully you can see Matt and Ronnie do we want to just see if we can actually hear Matt and Ronnie hello can you hear me oh yes I've already done that joke yeah I know what you do with Vince earlier it's just I can't remember what down rules so I've got my mask on because we're not socially distanced I think you should be ok over the internet hopefully so I think there we go that's better as you guys can see your face so the questions might be a little bit behind in the chat from what we're talking about yeah I know you can see most of my desktop unfortunately I can't I can't hide that they're quite small there we go that's better there we go wow there we go we should be fine so hopefully you can see Matt and Ronnie a bit better now oh he's disappeared goodness knows what he's doing so we are going to be talking about our Mada for the next 45 minutes or so and once Ronnie comes back we'll see what's going on here we go unless you've got my thing soon if you came you went live you'd box as you see knocked it flying I'm going to get in trouble for anyway I mean it's no coincidence that the most chaotic start to a presentation we've had so far is the one that Impeach is running there we go it's been so professional so far we've been watching it all day sat there painting, organised and structured and now it's just taking mess so I think we're going to be talking about our Mada for the next kind of 45 minutes onwards so I mean just in case people haven't heard about our Mada which I really don't believe at this point who wants to explain exactly what our Mada is and why it's so amazing I can do that if you like so our Mada is our new naval fantasy combat game there it is, expertly modelled by Ronnie it's our two player set so it's set in the it's part of the kings of war family it's got a nice little badge down the bottom corner which we'll tell you that kings of war panathor I think it says so it's set in our world of panathor set in the kings of war world and it's based on warlord games Black Seas rule set so we took that fantasy part of it launching with four fleets to start with so orcs bacillans dwarves and envara dust and then we continue to explore more so it's a lovely scale we've got good size ships great for painting they're dead easy to paint they're not too small we couldn't grab detail they're not too big that they they take up too much room on the board and because of the scale we're at in terms of the number of models you need to get started it's dead easy to get into the barrier very high at all Ronny's obviously showing up all the various products that are coming out it's like QPC still on a fleet there why is all my writing coming out backwards I keep changing this bloody camera to not it's fine okay it's just me that's showing the backwards okay and then you just add on your booster so very very simple and straightforward that would be your armada your Bacillian fleet the whole thing there you go and lots of different boats you're going to get there beautifully painted if you buy the two player set Matt might be opening up unboxing on this so people can see what it is and if you wanted to upgrade that to a full Bacillian starter fleet you can add on the what was the best in the Smasher yeah yeah add on the Bacillian Smasher on if you want the old fleet but all your cards are in here so you can get there and then you can just add the booster set if you still want to start a set you need lots of those boats anyway so you just double up there if you need to so jolly straightforward way of collecting starter and booster and then I think a lot of people have got excited by the starter set which we can unbox that one is honestly stolen from the warehouse just yesterday we started making them on Wednesday I think and shipping them on Thursday I mean that's worth quite that Ronnie do you want to give an idea of the kind of scale of the operation to get this into people's hands not this big oh my goodness you see what we have to put it with yeah I mean Colossal we bought a new resin machine in the summer having been assured by the people that sold it to us that it was dead easy to just you know and it's a gun thing instead of mixing the resin this machine mixed the resin for us and would speed things up and after two months 15 engineer visits it still wasn't working and all of a sudden the Armada release was looming and everyone that was seeing it was getting more and more excited by it so you know that started with Matt and I a year ago discussing what it was going to be and we were super excited and everyone else was a bit lukewarm you know even Dave the sculptor and Dave the studio sculpt manager salesman we're all a bit near whatever so first thing after lockdown Matt and I decided well look let's order six months worth of print that's going to come in from China get that in and then we can start making the resin and no problem we'll release it in November and chunk away and it'll chunk on from there every week that went by people more and more people from the play testers from the studio guys from the people in the office were liking what they saw and getting more excited about six weeks ago when the machine still wasn't working we pressed the big red button that said emergency emergency and at that point I pulled everybody together and I said look even if we just weren't quite excited about this but we might be doing 1,500 games right out the block so we might need 60,000 resin pieces and we went to two shifts so we're running from six in the morning till ten at night with two separate teams we're obviously doing this all in Covid safe environment we managed to get the machine working we've got some extra space that we've been using to run it in we put it up for sale and we sold out in about 24 hours everybody that had an allocation took their full allocation instantly so we didn't need 60,000 resin pieces we need 190,000 resin pieces and we needed it in four weeks so we've made about 130,000 resin pieces and we're making about 6,000 a day and we don't need all 190,000 because some of the proportions like our online store hasn't sold exactly in the same proportions as it's full allocation but we've got almost all the pieces we need for this so when we unpack this you'll have a look at just how much resin there is just how beautiful it is my hands are covered in paint today because I've been doing my fleet all day while I've been listening to the thingy so a truly colossal amount of work has come on to us in the last six or eight weeks right on the back of lockdown the ports coming out of China and coming into the UK an absolute disaster at the moment I know you sent an article Rob yesterday saying book jobs have no books it's just chaos and the team have just been absolutely fantastic we've been doing double shifts for the last six or eight weeks we've had anybody who can pack or help has been working we've had some overtime at Mason and Clyde Parsson our logistics manager his nephew's been in there running out to catch resin my daughter's been working bagging up resin her friend's been coming in so we've just had lots of extra stuff to help out every week and a half everybody in the sales team has been in there working there's nothing else to sell because we've sold all the armada we've got so getting it out was the most important thing so literally everybody I think Matt and his wife and daughters have been bagging resin at home and Clyde's been doing the template sets at home we've been driving around moving stuff around so just a huge colossal effort from everybody to get into where it is and we started shipping on Thursday which is just fantastic there was moments in the last month where I was thinking well if this machine breaks or we can't put it together it can be January but great work by everybody to be even close to being able to deliver it and people are going to have it under there under their Christmas trees Thanksgiving turkeys over the next couple of weeks so we're really really excited America has started shipping Australia has started shipping from everybody saying they've been getting there notifications down under so huge effort, very exciting great fun, slightly shattering everybody ready for Christmas but a lot of hard work by the team to get us here I guess it's easily comparable to delivering a kickstarter I guess really Yeah it really is and I think that was we were caught out just I think by the response of everybody who wanted to play it I think it's as Matt said a lovely easy starting point you're not having to build a huge army you've got your fleet picking up Black Seas as always with a new game we've done it with Dead Zone version 1 Dead Zone version 2 Kings of War 1, 2, 3 each time it gets a bit more slick you find things so being able to pick up Black Seas and you know Gaby is going to accept it but then we've got the chance to refine it because it's already here we can just take it on and A we've got a chance to fantasy it up but you're also looking at it that could just do with a tweak and that can do with a tweak so it's kind of a second edition the first edition of Armada is the second edition game set which is all inevitably slicker so I don't know what it is everyone being locked at home and wanting something new the size of the boats which are beautiful and just wanting to play something different I think there's lots of skirmish games there's lots of miniature games out there but boats haven't been done certainly for a while and I think it just feels really fresh so we've got a question you say love hearing the all hands on deck approach to get this shipped how did you keep crew morale buoyant that's something I would write yeah exactly we have been punning you like yeah fantastic around a romantic at the moment so yep it's certainly full steam ahead so at launch we've got the two-play starter set the Orc and the Bacillian fleet I mean what's kind of on the horizon for early next year once this is out every time so we'll do a review of these 20 minutes half an hour we'll talk some more about those we've got some accessories and we'll talk with those as well that make your game play a little more in the future I've got two dwarf boats here I've just got some gold on them so the dwarfs are coming out in January I think they are on the map yes January here yep and then we've got the Empire of Dust in March which is really exciting because that's giving us a chance well that's a chance to dive into one of the kind of lesser known factions in Kings of War one that's converted it's a metal conversion from the plastic sprues and really this is the first chance like we did with Vanguard with Northern Alliance and Night Stool we've got a chance to dive into something new and start putting some flesh on the bones very good that race so not just boat puns there today Matt do you want to talk a little bit about the Empire of Dust an opportunity to they do have some background obviously originally they were done in the first flutters we did on Chartered Empires in second edition and then we expanded that more and brought them into the main rule book in Kings of War version 3 and fleshed it out a bit more but yeah this gave us an opportunity to look at the aesthetic a bit more where we wanted them to go and to look at and well like with all the other races explore another side of their warfare and their ancient civilization I suppose these boats are ones that they've used for centuries and centuries probably millennia they're old they're crewed by the same crew that probably crewed them thousands of years ago and keep coming back for more but yeah I think of the four I think they're certainly my favourite in terms of how they look and I think I've painted up brilliantly they look and play very very differently to the others I was going to ask actually when it comes to when it comes to you talk about they play differently obviously we can see all the factions going to look differently as well so how does it come to when they play I guess how have you measured that each of the factions plays differently from the rules point of view well I've tried to look at what the not just how they play in vanguard or in kings of war but look at their the background that's been written about them as well because every new game system allows you to explore a particular faction in a different way there's obviously some themes you want to carry on through but there's others that you might not be able to easily put into something that's as abstracted as kings of war for example but you can do a more detail game like vanguard so we wanted to obviously take some of the existing elements and carry them through so whenever you're designing a new fleet in this case you'll look at the background what they how they play in other games carry the themes through that you want and then add around that filling gaps in between or even add a new layer of a different way of playing that people might not expect either your opponent or you yourself so when I answered you what were you going to say I was going to say I think one of the things that's great about the first wave is you've not only got four very different visual fleets you've also got four very different play styles you know you've got the basillames which are your all-rounders a bit of everything human, sail powered then you've got your orcs which are very much close combat getting in there and you know boarding actions your dwarfs which are steam powered, heavily armoured slow and then most different of all of you you've got your empire of dust so all four of them really have very different visual aesthetics and all four of them have very different play styles but you know by the middle of next year and I think the current plan is we're going to be releasing something for our martyr every two months next year so January, March, May and the May releases will be the Double XL, Triple XL ships yeah we've got some pictures of those in a minute actually great so we can talk about those and that's the kind of end of wave one and wave one in those four fleets and then the big stuff for those you know plans for a kind of book in the summer and taking it on even more and more fleets and while he thinks he knows what we're sculpting next year I've definitely got some plans to hijack his plans to make it a bit more exciting because I just think you know we really want to delve deep into what we're doing and yeah I think everyone's very excited about it so keep it cool you've just mentioned those XL ships do you want to have a look at what they look like because we've got some painted ones now let's have a look so I can share my screen there we go hopefully you can see that now everyone at home can see that and you can see that can you see that guys on the you and me? I can't either okay well that's good if you tell us what it is so we're going to start off with the Orc Ripper Hulk so do you want to talk a bit about this one Matt I mean it looks like it's got a ridiculous amount of cannons as all the XL ships do yeah I mean these are the top of the line battleships for each faction so they've got the most fire power they've got the biggest cruise trinks not necessarily the fastest of things the Ripper Hulk from memory's got like a claw at the back of it which you can use to grab it that's better at grappling things because the Orcs love to grab hold of other ships pull them close and just fight rather than shoot they'll shoot where they have to but they much prefer to get stuck in so this is just it's bigger and more orky I think and how big are you know I mean how big are the XL ships compared to the standard ships how much bigger are they 12.5cm long bases so 12.5cm bases ok so massive what this one is what this one is and that's the 12.5cm which compares with the this one we can't see you unfortunately Ronnie but maybe we'll come back in a minute so how big is a large ship the Abes and the Smasher at the minute from memory they are 10cm bases I think they're already pretty big 25cm longer so that's ok so we've seen the Orc Ripper Hulk now I'm going to show the Bacillian Dictator so again this has got even more canon on it and then it's also got what's it got on the back is it got a cathedral or something Matt yes there's different flavours of it so some of them have got each fleet has got one named Vessel if you want to do this one carry on I can do it when we get to the dwarf one I've got all the cards in front of me so I can kind of talk you through the points and how this is going up ok fine yeah dwarf's nameship they get in their starter or their booster I think so they actually get it early before the others because it's actually a medium ship but the other three get named versions of their XL ships so there's an alternate part where you have a nameship and you get both cards so you get the normal flavour of the ship plus the named one which part to do so the the dictator has got a different back depending on which way you build it and which ship you're building so you can do one or the other who painted the boats Matt because they're amazing to look at Ben McIntyre right yeah they're fantastic probably probably probably about 60% of our painting force you say you can swap the backs out I think the one we're looking at has got a cathedral on the back what's the other option for that one I think it's similar, I think it's the sides because I can't see what you're looking at one of them's got different types of wings slightly different at the back I think he's painted both flavours for us it might be magnetised I'm not sure so we can swap it Dwarf Dreadnought Ronnie do you want to talk about the cards for this one well I was just going to say just so people get some idea of how these XL ships are in terms of size but the gameplay so each fleet has these little two ships on a small base in Dwarf that's called the Hunter it's a 10 point model it's got a couple of light guns each side and you then got your thunderers which are 20 points that's got a couple of heavy guns one heavy gun each side and a little bit of something at the front and then you kind of ships of the line medium size larger ships your fury is 28 points Dwarfs, I can show you one of those when we come back there you are back now just so you can get some idea there's your that's the fury and that's the base it would sit on you go up to the Abyss Abyss, you never get this name right people think it's like code that you're saying like it's the one that's been hijacked by the Abyss so you've got what we'd call small not super small medium that's the large isn't it there's the large to get some idea of the super large that was the Abyss that's the extra large base so it's just a lot longer and a lot bigger so there's a fury and then you step up to the runax which is this fella here runax which would be 40 points as Matt was saying the Orcs Bane is the named Dwarf version of that which comes with some upgrade options and that's 45 points and then certainly the Dreadnought is 95 points so these Excel ships are double your you know your top of the line ships they really are just massive colossal things so it's going to be great everyone's going to be getting used to it getting used to your fleets getting it kind of working which is what I never seem to do end up hitting the sandbank every time I play and then just when you've kind of got balance we're going to throw in these four big Excel ships which will just take the game on again to a whole other level because it'll add something to your fleet common faith for something pose new challenges both how you use your ship and how you get how you take care of the other fleet's ship so it's just a nice progression and a kind of great finishing for the wave to come back and do something for all four fleets so actually we can have a look at the the other one we didn't look at the final one which was the Empire of Dust one I know I've managed to work it out so that's the Dwarf Dreadnought yeah and then this is the final one this is the Monolith so what's going on with that one Matt because it looks like there's all sorts of kind of Empire of Dust relics on there and all sorts yeah it's a one we've got the statutes it's a bit hard to see, the statue is short I think on the and I think the main version of that is the middle piece which swaps out from memory you can see a lot of these guys have got walls as well which obviously has an effect on the game and they've got different flavours of all some of their boats have got light walls which operate in a slightly different way so what is the difference in these ones with the walls wind obviously doesn't play as much it's obviously mainly used for initiative so how does it affect these guys for moving around if they've got walls if you're not playing with the four wind rules then it affects when they can turn so once per activation normally you turn at the end of each move step these guys can turn at the start of one of their move steps if they've got light or they can actually normally in a move step you have to move your full speed they can move up to 2 inches less so they can control their speed a bit more using their rules okay so that's actually weirdly quite manoeuvrable that's something you'd necessarily associate with on dead I guess some ways it's what we were saying you take common themes through they can they can take damage off of other boats or they can assign damage from their boats onto some of the smaller boats so they can manage things like that so something similar to life leech and things like that from kings of war but then if you add another layer on top so make them play in an unexpected way that's what makes them interesting so will we see a bit more obviously in the previews we've done so far for the orcs and basillians we haven't seen that much magic is that going to come in more with the empire of dust a little bit, yeah I mean we've got a cross so in the initial book we kept magic down to some special rules and magical upgrades and things like that magic is something that we'll explore in more detail later okay so talking of things that are coming later we have got some unless you want to interject now Ronny we have got some concept art for stuff that's coming up maybe later in the year or would you like to talk a bit more about the two player set yeah let's show off some of the fun things that Matt's got planned and then we'll dive into the two player set there's lots of people waiting for their notifications so this is all concept art for things we're looking at doing so this is one of the elf what size is this one Matt that might be the XL I think there's three holes there's one on the other side of the sails which you can't quite can't quite see and so what obviously we're talking about play styles what's the kind of idea for how the elves will play well the elves are obviously kind of one of the and have been in the background one of the masters of the sea so you know taking that so quite quite renewable quite quick quite light boats they do have some cannon on there but a lot of their guns will be more magical bolt throwers and things like that so these are these new fleets are in play testing at the moment so they'll get refined and you know we might tweak some rules if we as with everything you say you have an idea of how you want something to play and if something's not quite right you might might adjust it but you know we've taken obviously looked at them being kind of a superior kind of seafaring race and tried to try to make that the theme but obviously then you have to still point it and make it balanced against the others yeah so how do you know I guess obviously not many people have been able to kind of meet up this year how have you been handling the play testing for these new ones well Kieran Morris built us a whole vessel mod so we were using that and we could have used I suppose tabletop simulator or something like that but we used vessel as he knew that and he was way around it so he built that I gave him all of the I mean I had a lot of the component parts like in the CMAT and things and the cards all done quite early on so he used all of those and used all that art as the components in the online mod and then all the play testers have been using that which is which meant that they could play people from you know around the world as well which was good to hook up from different countries playing each other and agree at time and play which was good because sometimes in play testing you end up with lots of feedback from one group of two or three people whereas you know we got a much better mix I think doing it doing it this way so that's the elves so now we'll move on to something else and so this is a big dragon because hopefully you can see this maths this is the big dragon one for potentially the varenger potentially so they're sharing the ships yeah so the idea we're here because obviously they share kind of the shatter clans and the northern clans they have a quite a shared history in the past they've gone their separate ways now but yeah so the idea here is that the ships will will be shared but the cards that you get will play either as the varenger or the northern alliance so they'll have different fleet rules different upgrades different ways that they'll play and the the excel ship will have two different variants one for the northern alliance, one for the varenger this is I think this is a serpent from memory those are like outrigger sails you've got on the sides there they'll be that that kind of bone rib cage across the back might take that over the buildings a bit and I think this is either this was a medium or a large ship might be a medium actually and what's the plan for how the northern alliance will they be able to freeze the water to stop everyone else sailing or what else have they got up their sleeve at the minute things in there like icebreaker they've got one of their upgrades I think is the ice queen so you know I think one of her currently one of her spell she can cast as iceberg so yeah that sort of thing but then obviously the varenger got slightly different flavours on there so they'll get their own flavours are slightly darker darker magic and things like that and darker upgrades like the orcs have got more acts the varenger will have the sons of Corwin as an upgrade that they can take and then finally we've got one more and it's a mystery one I don't know what it is so I might just show it and then people can try and work out it's got lots of question marks on it so you know yeah I don't know someone sent that to me and didn't tell me what it was so it is mysteries yeah that's what's coming up so let's go back there we go we're back to Ronnie and Matt now that's what we want to see so what have you been doing yeah I've actually I'm going to say the whole shrinkwrap experience so we've got a little town but we can go in here so we've got the full shrinkwrap coming off there's a break mark in Philwell's heart because he's been spending all week actually making them up and now we've taken them apart again so you can get your mantis points up on the top there very nice they're nice and on the inside lovely and very full box it's all going to drop out I'm going to give an apologetic hobby but there is one two three four five six seven bags of resin I think we were mad when we decided to expect this idea how much pain it was Matt's just come out and approached to all that PTSD because he probably panned half of these themselves and that really looked like an RSI and Matt just talked us through I'll hold it up just talk us through what votes people get in their two player set so you get orcs versus basalains you've got on the orcs side you've got two hammer fists and one blood run out so that gives you three medium ships and the the bomb boat which is one of their smalls and you've got a comparable force of the basalains so two Eloy one Garpanther and one Gumbrigg so both sides have got a kind of a mortar indirect firing ship plus three mediums this two player set on the website has sold out we are reprinting and bringing more back in but there might be some available from your local FLGS local gaming store I think even there a lot of those have sold out now on the website Rob you can get some of this can't you what can you get so if you want to start out you can get the book with the tokens like a basalain fleet and the dice where you can get the book, the tokens, the dice and an orc fleet as well so you can kind of create your own starter set and then that's something we'll be doing in the future when the dwarfs come out and when the empire does to come out so that's your starting point that's the way to do it so you're getting everything to get playing you're basically getting that and some dice there is a way to still get in there we've got a few of those left but if you're waiting for the two player set then that's probably going to be January before we get the reprints and the resin made so obviously the robot mat so yeah so that's we've gone with our larger size matching what Kings of War that's 96 pages I believe so it goes through all of the rules we've got ten scenarios in there we've got a whole load of background and a brief breakdown the four fleets that are out at launch and lots of new art and some great photos in there as well lots of very colourful there it's nice nice and colourful, lovely laid out these are some of the scenarios here I'm treaty and treachery and it tells you how to lay your mat out with all the sandbanks and terrain upon it it really is beautifully laid out book well there's a little bit about each fleet of course the lovely thing is you keep your stats and all the information on your cards we could go to next that should be in the box somewhere indeed it is, here we go so just talk what's the purpose of these cards and how does it interact with the game do you just arm in this mat or do you just book tells you how to build a fleet and the rules are very simple there's nothing very complicated there but it's enough just a couple of rules that shouldn't make it that you can't build something completely disgusting and you do a nice balance list but those cards it's one to one with the ships you can use that to track your damage and any counters and stuff to try and keep stuff off the table so you can keep it up to three and each I'm supposed to just take quite a bit of damage to the mat before they die already I can do that it obviously depends on the size of the ship and some have got better armour or repair abilities like the Baselands defensive in that regard you get fleet reference cards as well so it tells you your fleet's specific rules and your ship's special rules and your particular special upgrades, captains, things like that so it's all a little reference cards you can keep the side of your side with your ship cards it's all in one place in front of you look at the ship of the line this side is the ship in the Baselands fleet that's its card obviously these are the guns in the direction it can fire so just tell us two things we'll talk about, this is its base size why are the bases important? well the bases so the bases define your broadsides across the lengthways so from straight up either side, left and right or port and stuff if you're trying this ship it's very clear now that was one of the things where that wasn't quite clear it's somewhere from around the hub but actually it's totally in line with your base that's where you're firing from that's your front arc that's your side arc it helps with fire arcs it just helps generally when you're colliding with things or needing to avoid things there's no ambiguity once you put a base on something there's no ambiguity with or someone's modeled something in a slightly different way if you're proud of a ship sticks out it doesn't matter, you're using the base rather than the ship there's a couple of things there's two options we basically it's either using these baggers or MDF bases we've already seen people modelling those up and looking beautiful using that water effect that you can buy from suppliers or then we've got a little upgrade which are these fellas most of us like me are actually an extract from the paper mat so you see what I did I can't just release the way we segway and then they're there and then we'll look at the paper mat in a second but I'm still looking at the carbs what does this red arrow here mean and that suggests that that's either red or yellow that's your turning angle which is you use on that gauge so the red one is the wider one so it's 45 degrees is that a good thing? does that mean it can turn more? yes, it can turn all the way up to there and you don't have to turn that amount but that's the maximum you can do put this back in my base and then I can turn it up to there so you can see one of the big limiting factors in the game is planning ahead a few turns about where you want your broadside to make sure that it's going to be where you think your ship's going to be so yeah, you've got your turn you've got your speed to consider how many steps you're going to move plus how far you can turn at the end of each one as well that's just going to happen with the measuring stick as per usual I guess yeah, slightly distance along there super, so what else do we have in here? what are these guys that are funny shaped guys that are D6, what's wrong with you man? no, we added four more sides we gave you two normal ones in there as well so use those first so the D6's are for skill tests mainly the D10's are for all your shooting and your combat and things like that, there's different colour for each type of weapon so that when you roll them all together you know which one's firing whether it's heavy cannon, light cannon indirect weapon etc so you can take that out what else do we have in here? I've got actually I've got an eighth bag of resin and that's especially for Luigi that one what are these little MDF things here? so in the in the rule book there are standard upgrades for any fleet to take so things like grappling hooks boarding nets, stuff like that and they're all on the card that you get, so all the standard upgrades each fleet has some unique upgrades captains magical upgrades that you need to do that fleet and that's what those MDF ones are for so you get the orc one in the Vaseline set the two players set and then each starter box will also contain that fleet's upgrades as well I'll give you an example here the orc one, more axe more guns you can see it again with this, more guns more war drum of spite and yin grey thunder I'm using more axe means you can attack a bit more when you get close yes much better better boarding actions better shooting, you've got two captains and then you've got the war drum as well beautiful and very large and play mat in here so you can get up and get playing I'm going to unpack it all the way that's lovely one of these is this just for prettiness or is the purpose for those both so it looks pretty and there's one in each corner plus down the side so that's your compass locations as the wind moves as you move your wind roads you can know exactly where to put it right and you know what, as soon as it is an opening we will actually unwrap and we can look at the four card counter sheets and we've probably been through everything you've got in here one question we have had Ronnie and I don't know if you've got any of these here are we doing official MDF card holders, have you got any of that there? I don't and I think what you're planning at the moment Rob is that we I think the idea there is that we'll actually tie in lovely with this so what's on this sheet, what's on this card sheet Matt? that one if I can see it, you've got your turning template your fire arc template for the front you've got your wind rows and tell me about that fire arc template what do you do with the front of your base front or back, yep for your rear or front they can wiggle about a bit if it's in that front arc you can not be shot at someone yeah, wind rows which is what you move around as the wind moves, you just show its location that's I think you've got the harbour that you're showing there which is used I mean you can use it for whatever you like but that's certainly used in the mission 10 um so you actually get if you get the scenery, you take your maths out you put this down and suddenly you've got things to most people avoid and I seem to sail into every single bloody time but that's the kind of yep, okay, sheet 2 lots of counters and things uh I think that's a lot of damage counters so as you accumulate damage you put those onto your card there's um so things can take 25 damage, can they? 20 and 25 yeah, maybe up to 80, 90 damage, yep so you can just see the funding amounts of stuff coming into you there yeah, you've got various speed markers on identification markers so if you've got your force contains 2 or 3 LOE you can either paint them differently or you can identify them so you've got pairs of identification markers so you've got one on your card and one next to your boat I could put this red one here on my card and I'll put that one next to my boat and I know that one's that one yep now I think there's a couple of sandbanks here which is to talk about terrain for your markers are these the generic kind of applicable to everybody's upgrades extended upgrades, generic magical upgrades, yep what you do there I'm guessing is that if I've got a boat that's been upgraded obviously I've got my marker so I can show it and I've got my card wherever my cards have gone and then I just put one of these upgrades next to it so I know that that boat has more axe or has grappling hooks or is lucky or fire oil so everything's just there and I think that ties in, what I think we've planned is an MDF a little hold away you've got the card in the middle and you put around it all your upgrades now you don't necessarily need that for your loops you're probably not going to upgrade your tiny boats so you just have a card for those but for those bigger ships or you've got a bit of ACD we'll have them for all of them and paint it in our own colours but then you can have all your counters and all your wounds and everything and if the table gets knocked they don't go flying anywhere and Rob what are you thinking of putting those up? so we are obviously the only one you mentioned about two players that's been back in stock for January so we're going to hopefully put some pre-orders up again for that in December and we'll probably include the MDF holders for that as well so it'll be a genuine release and then the genuine dwarf fleet as well so you can come back and get a top of everything you want correct lots more terrain on this one lovely looking terrains and big islands some small islands and some rocky things just to get yourself in trouble and that is all four sheets of your that's all four of your card sheets so I'm quite unspectacular to pack it all back in and that's on everything in your two-player set which looks truly exciting so you're very lucky you've got those on the way to you I think the only other things I've got here is we've shown you that there's these beautiful upgrade templates upgrades don't need them but they're just a little bit pritcher and a bit sturdier they're going to be playing a lot they're good I've talked about these are the bases now I think unless you're really fancy doing some MDF modelling these will be terribly popular I know I'm going to use them for my fleet because it's just a lot easier the MDF wasn't beautiful but you'll need some hobby skills to get on those and last but not least we have a very beautiful deluxe rubberback near pre-match I've seen quite a few of those going out so there is that it? I think you've covered pretty much everything I think those maps the knife we've seen the print quality on those is brilliant absolutely gorgeous isn't it and so I think you know literally gaming in not a lot of time at all I think I was chatting the other day a week of painting and modelling and painting and about a weekend you'll be playing if all you want is to lock down you'll be able to do it no but yes certainly about lockdown ahead second of December you can have your fleet ready and ready for battle okay so theoretically this is the end of our our Marder chat unless there's any more questions that we've got in the comments and then Ronnie because I knew that once I'd got you I might as well keep you we've now got your general kind of Ronnie chat now which is the general Q&A if anyone wants to ask any general questions so do you want a little bit of a break Ronnie and then come back or are you alright to carry on no I'm good to go if you want to keep going if you're good with it I'm good with it but one question quickly which is are there any plans to bring Nightstalkers into our Marder I guess that's the question for you Matt really probably via the Twilight King because the Nightstalkers themselves quite unlikely that they would have a fleet that doesn't fit their background at all so if they come in it will be via the Twilight King okay we've had a lot of questions about flyers oh yeah watch this space that's something that you're playing with aren't you Matthew in the summer book possibly yeah thinking about who knows I think like we said in the first way it's all about getting everybody familiar with the game, comfy with it getting four fleets out making sure they're really balanced and have worked and obviously this game was designed during lockdown you know it was play tested during lockdown and we just haven't had as many physical games as we'd like to play so we just need to have a month or two of doing that to make sure that when that book comes out anything that needs ironing out is ironed out I don't think there is anything but you know you gotta believe there is and then we can add more and more layers to it more fleets, flyers more magic whatever whichever direction Matt wants to take it okay we've already got some questions coming in would you like Matt to stay in case you say anything you're not meant to Ronnie easy whatever maths these plans are my wife's plans were that we need to go shopping oh okay sorry you might need to go that's great because then I can start talking about the Trident Realms in Armada when you're not here so by the time you get back there'll be thousands of people online begging for blood and begging for turtles giant turtles with howlers filled with Neureticans on their backs bye enjoy shopping yep bye thanks Matt bye okay let's hope as soon as he's told me to go will he work in the really schedule for next year wow there we go so okay cool see what I might do Ronnie so we might just have a quick pause and I'll try and call you back on something else with the qualities a bit better so we'll be back shortly so just bear with us and then we'll start quizzing Ronnie there we go so we're back now with Ronnie for his Q&A and I've managed to move him into a slightly better place so it's not just he doesn't look so pixelated you'd gone 8 bit I think 8 bit Ronnie so what we're doing now is we'll have some questions from people watching and I guess we'll give a quick update on kind of how the year has gone for Mantix obviously it's been a bit of an odd year I think yeah and kind of what the plans are generally for next year and things like that so I mean how has it been this year well I mean just but just mad I mean obviously the year started as you'd expect we we're on the back of the Kings of War launch at the end of last year so we got over there was a fantastic tournament scene kicking off we managed to get down to the Kings in Australia and we saw our Australian distributors and that was kind of very normal and then there's the kind of Nuremberg Toy Fair which was regular and it's quite a busy time for us in our sales and tournament capacity we ended up at the Masters and the New York Toy Fair so kind of everything normal and while Nuremberg and the New York Toy Fair's were going on there was this strange thing that was happening in China calling coronavirus and we said oh China's closed down that's going to have some supply issues for us later in the year we think because you know they never opened up after Chinese New Year which is at the end of January February and I'm sure as everybody we were watching it happen and then we came back from those trips and all of a sudden it was in the UK and 23rd of March that was it UK lockdown US was in lockdown and so we managed to very quickly small business and we've got this big warehouse we managed to keep our online store going while all of our trade customers were shut and obviously everyone else was shut and I think you and I spent a lot of time talking and giving away lots of free rules and I do think I certainly feel now we're back in lockdown there's only so much Netflix and Amazon Prime you can watch so having a hobby and having hobby chats and starting new projects finishing off some of that lead under the bed was a terrific way to keep yourself occupied although we were working 9-5 you don't have the commute time you can't go out and play badminton or play football or do anything or go gaming in the evening so having those distractions I think were really important and terrific effort by everybody in the warehouse and everybody that was working from home and some of our teams that were furloughed you know but that just put everything on pause both what was coming in from China what we were making ourselves we just kind of lived hand to mouth we didn't know how long it was going on and trundled along and then all of a sudden we opened back up again the store started to open back up kind of things went back to normal but it's not normal the fallout of that was we'd lost three months of releases so we had to redo the release schedule on light of that things were finished we released The Walking Dead just before lockdown and the terrain crate relaunch well we made a bigger thing of that bum that up the Kings of War went from two books in the year to one because we hadn't had a tournament scene so we didn't know what was broken you know we didn't know what you have your book but until it's been really played through 10, 20, 30, 50 tournaments you don't know what the right solution is the rules committee were firing blind so we didn't want to go and break anything that we were pretty pleased with we wanted a year of gaming so we've done The Help Is Rift which is a very popular book it's got some rules in it but it's more of a campaign play it's more of a narrative and because that's what we knew we had certainty about and then kind of before we knew it I don't know if people listened in but through that Q&A session the Armada session sorry all of a sudden Armada was on us just as we were starting to get stable that's bumped up it's done huge we've done well we're shipping it but it's Thanksgiving in a week's time and it's Christmas in five weeks time so we're kind of everybody's shattered everybody's worked really hard I think everybody's deserving a Christmas break and because pretty much we've been open all the way through and it's been a seven day a week job for myself and myself and the people that are furloughed we weren't furloughed for very long and from the second they came back they've been 110% but I think there's been a lot of wonderful hobby being done I think people have really enjoyed chatting with us and you know we've been open and we've just been putting a brave face on it and getting on with it I think the best we're able in bonkers times it's been a funny year yeah and so obviously we started planning next year assuming that things will go kind of back to normal relatively now we've already kind of covered Armada Kings of War, Dead Zone, Dread Ball in our previous sessions one thing we didn't cover which a lot of people have asked us what's happening possibly with The Walking Dead next year well we love obviously it's one of my favourites today I've got my hobbies painting out I've not been having the moment to do it since lockdown since our big battle game where I think I gave the gobbins a good thrashing I mean that's fake news I think there that's I think I'm the trump in that scenario dwarf propaganda at its finest don't call it I'm not conceding at this point anyway I've not done any hobbies I've just been literally round the clock on trying to get Armada made and just trying to get the business back on an even keel boom I've been thinking fast now but yeah with The Walking Dead it got that compendium book what do we call it the anthology everything brought together in one place which was very popular with people and it just cleaned it all up and I'm thinking I quite like the not the all out war the other one but yeah the call to arms there is a lot of fans and there's more fans of the all out war way of playing but the great thing is the model is working both and now all the sets come with cards for both I would love to see The Kingdom I think they might be good fun because suddenly you've got this cavalry a lot of speed a lot of different ways to play and they could do both there's a lot of scenarios there because there was a lot of big stories in that story art and also the Lee and Lee Lee and Clementine we've done the Lee and Clementine story I'm not going to have any spoilers there but Clementine goes on to become all powerful and all ass kicking so I think we could definitely have some fun with Clementine and her gang I'm half way through playing the last sections played very well on my PC for some reason so I'm going to have to get it on my tablet but I think we could do more with that and so yeah I think we're going to keep keep supporting it there's a lot of love, there's a lot of big fan base for it so it keeps rolling around and keeps trending on Walking Dead obviously I think you've talked about most of the other things Armada Deadzone that is one of the things we do less other things because we have more games to support now and I think if you go back five years our trade releases were you know kind of re-warmed up Kickstarter lines as they're not now I think this year almost everything was launched Director retail I think everything was, I think this year yeah maybe some other Hellboy expansion box sets early in the year the Terrain crate stuff we ship the Terrain crate second Terrain crate the modern that's come out but by and large we've done a lot of Director retail that's kind of the future, that's where we're at and that's what we want to be doing and next year's going to be lots more of that lots more for Armada, Vanguard Kings of War, Deadzone Walking Dead we've had a few people asking what's happening with League of Infamy and we've given an update before I say obviously Covid here is a bit with that one we've got an update to the back it's just come out I think we just got caught with what I was talking about earlier in the year if you think back we were due to ship our Terrain crate 2 I think March, April it shipped in July and I think everything in China has just been pushed back three months because they were closed for six or eight weeks on the end of Chinese New Year and therefore everything just got pushed back and delayed and so on and so forth it is, I think it's on the sea I think it's very close to landing you know it's, no so it's made and it's in China but both the China China and certainly the UK ports are having a horrendous time at the moment we were supposed to have the GM's crate back in stock two weeks ago the boat landed it was choppy they couldn't get it unloaded in time it had to cut and run I've just found out another nautical turn cut your ropes and out you go back out to sea you cut your ropes and run and they've literally been having to rotate these containers around the around there bringing back into dock again so things that normally take us four days to get from Harbour to the warehouse have been taking two, three weeks boats that should have been landing, haven't been landing that said it's made we're trying to get it on the water as we speak we booked it and then it literally got bumped people with iPhones are paying an awful lot of money for containers at the moment and we just can't afford to pay the kind of just to give you some idea four times the normal shipping rates is the norm at the moment we would pay £3,000 for a boat a container is £12,000 we are hoping that once people realise they won't get it here for Christmas those prices drop down and we've been told there's 81,000 new containers going on in January as well but as soon as we have it I suspect if nothing else goes wrong we'll have it very early 2021 if it's slightly longer it'll get picked up in January and be March but we're just waiting for the ships to become available we'll get it on the boat as soon as we have it we'll be putting out your following the ship sailing round and it'll be here and we'll get excited for it it's a lovely, lovely game, it's great fun and it's the point we didn't get into this year but just one of the consequences one of the casualties of coronavirus I'm afraid so a few people have been asking obviously we had Hellboy, the RPG early this year which did really well and I think the good news is about that one is that Dark Horse has pretty much approved the core book now so that's almost ready to start going into production which is great but what's happening with the board game, what's any plans for that? It's just rumbling on at the moment I think we've got the expansions are all pretty much released, we did the ones that came out of the Kickstarter and we also did the Wild Hunt and I definitely think if you look at that story art there's that last book which is called Storm and the Fury Storm and the Fury and it would probably be remiss of us not to complete this story art wouldn't it I think it'd be very slovenly for that laxie Daisy Globbers so I think we may well try and get that out and pop it out we've also been really having some great fun with the Resins for the Hellboy and I've been badgering you and to get us the with Skeletons which is something I'd love to see I don't make a great diorama and a drunk Hellboy on your board game would also be great fun to drop them into your games so throughout the year we're definitely going to keep supporting the Hellboy story and with all of those walking down in the Hellboy more of the same, let's just keep supporting them and keep building the fan base for them similar question actually about obviously we've teased Umbrella Academy another great Dark Horse license and I guess the news for that one is no news at the minute we're doing relatively short leish maybe I think the great news is that's a license under the Dark Horse license we've got with them we were able to talk to them and get the comic rights the game to do the Umbrella Academy so we put it out there we now are working on making sure the game is great fun it's a slightly different game in as much as it doesn't lend itself to be a quasi-dungeon crawler traditional board game so we're working with I think Alessia is going to work with us on that one to create something really fun and dynamic that reflects the slightly mad captain chaotic license and the inner workings of the madman general way that's written and very much a family game as well I think that's an important thing to say we can do and obviously the Netflix series has definitely helped raise the profile of that from being pretty niche to being much more well known and probably we'll try and tie in with some other kind of PR that might be coming in the middle of the year whatever it is I think the third series has been commissioned so that's great news in terms of more people finding out about it it is a relatively well it's been around a while it's only recently come on people's radar but yeah I think we've got we've got some great ideas I know you and I have been playing some early versions of it online so with a game we have built on tabletop simulator not stimulator and yeah watch this space but definitely I think that could be something that you'll see in 2021 I think that would be a good thing with delivery year after that yeah okay cool so we've had FaZeStar one of the commenters asked this numerous times and he specifically wants an answer from you in general why do dwarfs get all kinds of steam punk stuff engineering themed stuff but no gyrocopters for kings of war vanguard and armada after all the goblins got the wing it I mean goblins were obviously better engineers so that's why they got it I think partly as a dwarf I'm not flying up there and I think with the dwarf rock riders for example dwarfs don't do cavalry well they do actually and that became something very mantic and I think the steel behemoth became very mantic-y and I think I want to do flyers but dwarf and you never know you might see them in a boat game near you but I'd like to do something that's more mantic-y where we go yeah okay we get the engineering but how would they deploy that engineering and what would be the way they go so as always I think you were talking earlier in the war chat vanguard chat is if we put something out and I would put the model to go with it yeah yeah and so the dwarfs are definitely due a revisit obviously every week they should have one and so Armada like with the empire of dust is an opportunity to look again but just you know kind of taking with the troopers there and tweaking it I'd rather look at it more carefully and think what could we do that's even more mantic-y than that and putting our own stamp on it so yeah, watch this space talking to Kings of War actually any news on the German version of Kings of War that was the end just so we normally and I've worked for a few years with a few publishers in France and Spain and never got one in Germany and that's not just for Kings of War but for the walking dead and so on and so forth and what we normally do is that we write the book in English we then lay it out in English that's what Duncan does he takes the words puts them next to the pictures and lays it all out and that's a really complicated job because the words underneath any given chart need to relate to that chart and if you're talking about movement it's probably important that the pictures next to it are about the movement and not about shooting that takes an intelligent man and hardworking man like Duncan to make sure that the whole each chapter and each page works and then he puts his art in to make it look pretty and nice and readable we then send that in a certain format to the translation team which can actually just write in the text where the English text is and they don't need to change any of the layout and with the Germans the words are a little bit longer but you can just shrink the type, face a little bit or make the page a bit bigger and it's a relatively easy job with the German company that we work with they've never done it before so they took our translation and then wrote a word and put it in Word so they just stripped out the text and just translated it basically nobody's not laid out suddenly that is now a very hard job because you need someone who can read German who understands hard games that can put every single title back on every single picture and put the words next to the replay so basically it has to be a whole layout job all over again and you can't retro engineer it because Duncan can't speak German so he can't go in and do it his own way so unfortunately it made a bugger's muddle of the whole thing that's the few people we know but they're busy and they've got projects on and we've therefore had to work with this with the company to try and find them someone that can do it so it's underway but it's just one of those just a combination of COVID plus everything else meaning it didn't quite get sorted out and it's just dragged on for ages but we have a German translation it's just in a Word document right now but it will be being done and it's something we hope to see sooner rather than later and then we can come over and support it at the RPG shows and get the tournament scene going because it's a shocker that it's not happening in Germany and we've got some great fans there they're good Jared asks and he said pretty pleased so I better ask this one can we get an update on Warpath and Firefight now we did talk a little bit about that in Deadzone and said that we've kind of obviously been working on stuff in the background but I think he maybe missed that one wants to hear it from the big man himself I guess yeah well I can only tell you that if I show you around my room I've got my Armada stuff just over there on the painting table today next to it's my walking dead but here is a large sci-fi obviously as you can guess Warf's and there's lots of terrain in my Deadzone terrain do you know how to terrain fetish so we've got some sci-fi plans I think it's fair to say isn't it Rob we've got a walk scheduled we love a bit of sci-fi we've got Winged Hussar writing some books I think Deadzone is one of the best skirmish games if not yeah one of the best skirmish games in the world at the moment I think it's just fantastic the way that terrain interacts with the play everybody that's played it loves it we're going to do a Pepsi challenge with it one of these years and I think we're going to get that out in April no point not time enough to do it properly so let's get out later in the year and do it properly with some new terrain new factions, new minis but all of that has just got our sci-fi juices flowing so what is this space but Jared's been sending me emails from the US he's built this fantastic using the battlezone tiles he's built a fantastic complex, it peels away lined up he's going to be running a kind of weekly update on that over the new year so you're building to show it off, some of the things that people are now able to do with the terrain is just awesome so keep watching this space but we have not forgotten about it, it does need some TLC and we need to get it picked up and get it going again I think this has been asked a few times are we going to have any crazy boxes this year I think we've we're so busy with Armada that it would I think Zach in the warehouse probably would kill crazy Bobby we just can't we don't have the bandwidth at the moment to do anything other than make what we've got and we've had to shut down shipping anything but Armada for the last few weeks so last week and next week we're not shipping anything but Armada we literally have had to switch the trade sales, put their orders in they managed to order at the end of October and November and then we'll come back to them at the end of November but we are 300% staffing on some days our resin capacity compared to let's say pre lockdown in February we are producing 700% more per day than we were in February when we were going at full speed pre coronavirus so it just gives you some idea of the task we've got ahead of us so no we're not doing anything there you may have a little digital sale I think Rob because crazy crazy Bobby might come out for a Black Friday digital but at the moment we're just going to focus on the making sure everyone gets there the toys they've ordered under their bed under their Christmas tree actually talking to covid one says if covid measures continue into late next year would you consider doing leagues competitions on table top simulator we actually already have been doing quite a few this year working with the community so Matt James did into the rift that's currently going on and also we did a dread ball tournament as well in the summer Kieran Morris did that which was really good actually you know I got to play people in Israel Spain even as far as we're Scotland oh my gosh oh my gosh and that was great it has forced us to look at that and now the digital today's virtual open day it's one of those things that outside of either someone getting on a plane over here coming to our open day or me getting on a plane and going out to the masters or to you or you going over to Gen Con you know the world's a big place and we don't get out and about to all of the far flung corners of the world but all of a sudden these virtual open days and the online tournaments means you're playing people that you know you may have been chatting in the romantic fanatics but you never have to play well it's forced us to do that so in some ways when life goes back to whatever the new normal is there's other things that we're not going to stop doing earlier today we said before we started the Armada chat we will always be either running the virtual open day and the open day in parallel or we will have virtual open days and open days because it's an opportunity for us to really talk to just such a big wide group of people all around the world and you know it runs from 10 in the morning till 6 in the night so you know those down under can get a few hours before they go to bed and we can get them the Americans get a few hours in the afternoon well some people are up at 4am this morning to watch the Deadzone one so that's commitment I know it is and it's brilliant isn't it so there is definitely things that we've got to make sure we keep doing afterwards another important question for you when were you restored dwarf honour through a victory in another mega battle yeah I mean we enjoyed that didn't we I think it was I'm ignoring Matt James' comment before that's not relevant so I just want to emphasise I just want to talk about your defeat not Matt James' defeat I see no defeat I left but when I left we were in a very strong tactical position stop the camp stop the game I left it today for two turns and what happened I think it was really good I think the thing that was fun is I got to scratch that terrain itch building that huge big battle the terrain that was in the warehouse in the gaming room for the photography and it's something I really wanted to do and I think we'll set it up that once the stores back open people can come and play on it but also it acted as a focus to just get a few more units painted I know you did a lot of goblins for it well I remember some people are doing I don't know if they're actually doing it but drinking games every time I say goblins they have a shot goblins goblins goblins goblins goblins goblins goblins goblins goblins I think everyone would be spectacularly drunk if they've actually been having a shot for every time they've been doing that because every time I've come on to them but I would love I think both me and you need to know the rules a bit better if we're going to play a battle of that size you say me and you one of us definitely does plenty all you did was move forward three turns at least I could move yeah well you might have to work on your maths next time as well because I'm pretty sure that we agreed on 9000 points and you had 12,000 I think we had 9000 just of dwarves we didn't make any difference Martin and Duncan got into a huge rock and actually batted each other to death which was fantastic and I kind of sat the side and watched and it kind of dwarfed them things moved slowly kind of way we'd love to do it again Christmas maybe early in the new year and lockdown permitting we kind of sneaked in as soon as the lockdown came off and I think people love just seeing guys chatting and having some banter as well you know and that's what we do miss about the tournaments a couple weeks ago we'd have been at the Clash of Kings we'd have had a depth of combat in March you drink some beers you talk for me it's great I see how people are running their armies I get some real feedback from people and we've just all missed that so I think we will I'd love to have another battle and this time probably less troops on that size battle feel and we had too many troops obviously I had less of a view but let's not dwell yeah watch this space we'd love to do it again and it did feel like it was a job half done because I think it was like the end of Rocky 2 wasn't it where they kind of just started to clash we were just about to get stuck in and then I think you would have needed about 10 more turns to actually move so yeah Berman what was it by the Alpes Rift book there is a fantastic battle report there with some photography of it I didn't check if you threatened you were going to change the ending of that and check it through I need to go back absolutely paranoid and we want history is written by the victors so yeah we'll be doing that now just talking about open days and fun events I have to give a shout out here to a young gentleman called Jake it's his birthday on Monday he's only 13 years old he's been coming to open days since he was 9 Jake Flood he's demoed Walking Dead on his first one well the press ganked him into teaching if people had played Walking Dead so I'm not the only one that does that his favourite character is Abraham usually having a large gun who doesn't like Abraham very dodgy mustache as well I think and he's actually made rules for the giant samurai robot for the Walking Dead which was great fun but probably isn't going to get past the last to get approval on that unfortunately and I think he's enjoyed it sharing Deadpool Deadpool the Hellboy game at Comic-Con so there you are Jake happy birthday thanks for being a Mantic fan somewhere I have a Ronnie not the Mantic Open Day 2020 hat which I brought home from work bought on the mantle piece yesterday especially to give away today and unfortunately I'm not wearing it but I'll send you a picture of me with it and I'll be posting it down to you with your birthday card for Monday so happy birthday Jake thanks for being a Mantic fan thanks Neil for bringing him along and see you all soon so there we are that's that's done I hope you liked your birthday wishes let's keep going to the questions so one question was obviously in dreadball fanatics we had a post about looking for play testers for a new sports game someone asked for an update on that I guess that's probably more top secret really yeah I mean I think at the moment it's your brain child but yeah if you're interested and you love fast action furious I was going to say fisting was probably not the right thing to say Jesus Christ fisty cuffs fisty cuffs there we go action if you're playing testing yeah so pick an email in hopefully we might be able to play testing eventually at HQ when we can reopen so stay tuned for that we might be able to call out a day we can bring it in maybe we'll have it if a Deptchicon goes ahead then we might have it open an evening of doing that down there as well great fun it's going to be a good fun little game I don't think it's going to be the tail on it's not huge it's not massive but a great way of using what you've got proper board game board game fun so yeah watch the space let's have a look see what other people are asking let me see if I've got any rattling in I mean they're just saying that basically a lot of the comments are saying how brilliant I was in that big game now how much I hammered the dwarfs it's weird though like obviously we work with Red Scar on the Kings of War RPG maybe something like a sci-fi RPG with those guys Warpath has actually got a very rich kind of background with the source book that idea of sci-fi RPG well I think there could be some great fun there and if we're clever we could do something that's not been done in an RPG for a while because it's such a rich universe I think you could really we could carve something out there that could be an absolute hoot it's just kind of getting the time to give it some brain space and which angle would you take it on yeah I mean Red Scar has done amazing work on particularly on the Hellboy role-playing game to catch the atmosphere of Hellboy and take fifth edition and turn it into something totally different really actually when you play it it's been fantastic so yeah I want to get that Kings of War one out to get it shipped to backers that's something their priority now is to make sure that the backers get their toys and then we'll see where we go from there yep oh what happened to the Hellboy Distro card game that was rumoured well it was rumoured and it's somewhere on my shelf a great little game we were going to take Prince of Thousand and take him to Gen Con Gen Con exclusive and then do something then just put it in the release schedule it was one of the casualties of Covid I'm afraid it lost its release slot so we sat there it will go on next year's release schedule I think and yeah fun little drinking game goblins and yeah maybe Gen Con next year happens then we can probably take it on to that and see there yeah hopefully events do get back on next year it would be it has been an odd year this year not to see anyone really out if we knocked our martyr out then we've got nothing for the whole of next year so that had to happen you know the Terrade great we originally got all that made in China we're now making that in the UK in terms of we bring the bags in from China and then we box it in the UK that needed redoing so there were certain things that had to be done King's of War had to be supported we had the Walking Dead come out we had the rest of the Hellboy releases so once you put all of those in there was just no room to get there so I knew there were a few other things King's of War smashed two books into one but there was just some casualties but you know that's kind of the funny year that we've had I think we've covered pretty much most of the questions and the comments did you have anything else you wanted to cover Ronnie have you exhausted we're super excited aren't we a nice hobby year lined up next year yeah yeah and the Armada is great fun so we're going to support that and try and get back on even keel just with a small business like this and the headwinds and everything else that's been going on it's just very disruptive to the plans of what we plan to do and what we can do because you know when you're in lockdown and you've just got to respond and this one feels like a short one but again you know if this drags on for three months the stores aren't open at the moment you know it's a good example with Armada we have to phone up every single UK customer and say hi what do you want us to do should we push the UK release back to the beginning of December when you're open again are you happy to have it delivered to your house can you go to your store and get it are you doing click and collect and you know so Clive had to phone up every single UK customer as it happened most of them said no just ship it and we'll either release it on the second ourselves and my locals will come down or we'll do a local click and collect and we can dispatch but you know it's that stuff that's just usually disruptive because a lot of our you know places where our products go out so we're closed or closing you know the US some's in lockdown some's not Spain's back in if it is back out so every time you build a momentum an event stops an event goes and you know people are going to get gaming again because there's only so many armies you can pay before you get a bit bored of it you want to get some gaming done get down to your gaming club it's your picks you up again doesn't it when you've painted your second army you know if you're paying your martyr fleet you want to use it or at least go and show it off and talk talk boats particularly the UK one we just maybe kind of got things in a good swing here with the gaming hall and we were starting to open late on a Friday all that kind of stuff and then it just people are coming over to visit you know ww down the road we're all popping up and seeing us and you know we just all of a sudden that's been closed for six months you know no one's travelling so you know I think I'm hoping the vaccine works we get our martyr out and this the first six months is a nice stable fingers crossed fingers crossed I think if these vaccines start rolling out there is the spring summer and the flu season's over we might get lucky similarly you could see them just everything before may be cancelled again so all of a sudden that changes what we can do and what we can support and show off and respond so okay well I think I think we're about done I think really now unless you've got anything else you want to say Ronnie obviously thank you to everyone for tuning in and what have you throughout the day yeah absolutely thanks for everybody thanks for people that have got their M-order we're working hard to get it out to you thanks you for leaving for me thank you for being patient we're working hard on that the RPG Hellboy RPG is in good shape probably printing in Europe as well for that one goodness knows what's going to happen on the 1st of January because we've got Brexit to play with just on top of the global pandemic and everything else so we'll keep that on the radar but you know and a big thank you to everybody at Team Mantik at the moment who is just doing a colossal effort from the accounts team through the warehouse team through the dispatch team, particularly the resin team yourself and our online team you know the videos that are coming out we've had loads of great videos all of this is hard of the sales team the studio guys of course have never didn't take a day furlough between them they've just worked non-stop Ben Duncan you know Paul Duncan took his computer home on the 23rd of March I think he's symbiotically bonded with it I don't know if he's left the house yeah so just colossal efforts at difficult difficult times and everyone's just been really fantastic at making making it feel as normal as it has and keeping things going on so thanks for our fans and thanks very much to Team Mantik for keeping rolling in trying times okay so I think on that note I think we'll call it a day I'll have a beer I'm going to do the same I'm also going to take my Mantik hat off and shitty hats on you can't have offensive material on these live streams you can't have offensive material like that on these live streams the YouTube or banners so thank you very much everyone for tuning in and he's gone I thought he'd gone I thought he'd actually banned you from being on and yeah so hopefully we'll do another like everyone says we'll either do one of these the same day as an open day next year or differently or whatever really but I think they've been really good I'm only slightly dead on my feet but that's that's fine and yeah it's been well done Rob you're messing with the technology in a how long have we been going we've been going for almost seven hours that's fine I'll do a sponsored live stream next time I'm sure we'll keep an account of how many shots Martin's taking for every time you mention the G word yeah I'll have to see I'll see from his text so yeah on that note I'm going to say bye to everyone I'm going to close the stream feels weird actually but 24 hours no no before you do that bye everyone