Mantic Games Studio 2018

As mentioned earlier, we combined Salute in London with a day trip to Nottingham. First stop on friday morning was Mantic Studio. As with the Warhammer World, this wasn't the first time visiting Mantic. It was quite impressive to see, how Mantic has grown over the years.

My first visit at Mantics was 2010, back then Ronnie and his crew was located at "Mantic Towers" with roughly the space that the new front area covers. 2013, for the first Warlord Games Day, I was the second time at Mantics. They already moved to the outskirds of Nottingham then, and moved from an apartment to an independend office building with enclosed warehouse. Now Mantic has moved again, into an even larger office building, roughly twice the old building, covering a front desk with visitors area, multiple studio offices, production facilities and a warehouse.

In the front is a gaming area, with couple of tables and a front desk. Several games from the Mantic range were displayed, including the board games. On the front desk was a loose assembly of the new and upcoming terrain crates, along with announcements to the new Hellboy Kickstarter.

The shelves and cabins around the table cover terrain and part of the studio armies and miniatures. Those new vehicle kits look quite amazing, especially the Hornet Dropship and Asterian Chira Transporter.

To the left of the gaming area is the entrance to the Studio area, a meeting room and couple of offices, for the sales department, the customer service, the creatives and so on. We were allowed to take a peak into the creatives department, where they prepared the product pictures and layouts, as well as a corner for studio painting and preparing the masters.

We talked briefly about the Here's Negan board game, which will be an stand alone expansion to The Walking Dead. In addition there will be a tournament kit coming out for the Walking Dead All Out War, along with some rumours about the Whisperers.

Among the working projects, you could see some 3d printed masters, that were prepared for the moulds. Meaning checking the masterprint, cleaning it up, fixing up spots that could cause problems in the casting (you can see the liquid green stuff touch up on the 3d print), adding air vents and preparing a few tests casts. The transluscent 3d prints were shown on social media and / or the salute the next day, and are part of the pledges of the Hellboy Kickstarter.

And it is amazing to see, where the range is going. The studio models, for example this warrior of the new Northern Alliance for Kings of War Vanguard, and the painted master of Hellboy (the final delivered model will be larger and was scaled up). And I'm looking to the release of the Plague Busters.

Mantic Games produces many of their ranges inhouse. They have a casting room for the resin products. You can see the casted individual parts along with the vacuum pump pot, that is used while resin casting to reduce / remove air bubbles.

Next to the packaging area is the metal casting area. You can see the round rubber moulds and spin cast machines. Along with a freshly casted set of miniatures. They inspect the casted product after each spin, to see if the mold was worn down and needs replacement. The advantage of metal casts is, that miscasts and such can be molten down and used for another spin.

In the packaging area are all kinds of products, including the localised and translated variants, the mail order products and such. Here are the end customer packages prepared, as well as the whole trader and reseller orders.

There is a photo studio setup as well, where the pictures for the publications, social media and advertisement are made. The backdrop is assembled by using all kinds of different pieces. They are currently preparing a few freshly painted Vanguard miniatures. Those miniatures are from the Nightstalkers Warband, showing a mind screech, a banshee and a shade.

After the tour to the studio, we had time for a introduction round of Dreadball. It was an interesting and quick game. I assumed it was Mantics try on Fantasy Football, but Dreadball is more like a sci-fi basketball. You should give it a try.

Thanks to Ronnie for taking the time to show us around. It is always a good thing to see companies grow, and with Mantic it is really amazing to see the whole journey, back from the first Kings of War plastic kits, to the gaming company with the broad selection it has become today. Kickstarter surely has been a part of that success, along with a good choice of IPs, as I really like what they did with the Walking Dead miniatures game. A solid level of quality of design and product with a well done rule set. This is a door opener for customers and upcoming busines partners as well.

I'm excited to see the novelties for Vanguard as the new, upgraded design of the fantasy range is very appealing and with Warpath, there is a market for sci-fi vehicles fitting 28mm. You can get infantry miniatures by almost everyone, but larger kits are still scarce.

Link: Mantic Games