How's Mantic faring at the moment?

I was just wondering how the company was doing considering the current situation. There will have been less games played with miniatures and games stores have been closed (Edit). On the other hand, some will have increased the amount of money & time spent on the hobby.

I’m assuming the current new releases were already in the pipeline. Will there be a reduction in future releases as a result of current leaner times?

There can’t have been many people getting into the hobby right now either - fewer demo games, noticing Mantic board games at clubs etc.

Hopefully, they are flexible enough to ride this rough patch out. I’d be interested if anyone has any insight on this.

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Personally I bought, built and painted more stuff in lockdown than I ever would have done if life was normal!

Looks like the company knows what it is doing - has community input on games, a variety of themes & settings, no single kicker project. Nothing requires lots of promo or in store stuff (as that wasn’t the vibe before - although obviously nice if possible)

The obvious staffing/back-office stuff is another matter, but the people behind it look like they have a head screwed on.

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Mantic has focused on the Hobby part and released Solo Play rules
they also launched a new game that sold way better than expected

what we have seen is that the changed a lot more to in-house resin production to overcome problems
this might have affected the decision for Salamanders to add more resin upgrades for the exiting plastic models and make the Halflings a combined sprue of infantry and cavalry instead of 2

a different point is, Mantics main games are games you can easily play at home with the family and are more suited for the current situation than GW’s big games that are more of a club/store game
start playing Walking Dead at home with your other half if both are fans of the comics or show is more likely than getting the other one into 40k if you don’t have 2 armies, a big table and terrain at hand

Dreadball can be played out of the box and Deadzone with the 2x2 map has always been more of the kitchen-table game than other SciFi games

it is more or less only Kings of War that is too big for most people to be played without dedicated hobby room or who have a large dining table

overall, at least from the public interview Ronnie has given at the start of the year, they sold way more of everything than expected and things are running well

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@Sceleris Likewise, plus I think I found the hobby a bit of a retreat from what was going on.

@kodos Interesting on the move to in-house resin and Ronnie’s comments. I’m a little sceptical on the number of solo games and how significantly family games contribute. But good that they’re a possibility.

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Mantic didn’t close. The warehouse hasn’t stopped.

Armada was released during COVID

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this is hard to tell anyway, yet the Mantic starter boxes were mentioned on most of the “what to do during pandemic” boardgame/tabletop channels for playing at home, among games like X-Wing or Underworlds

that the Deadzone core box is usually sold out as soon as it is back in stock speaks for good sales

Miss remembered some updates about the closure of the HQ store and possible delays to orders with being closed - I’ll amend the opening post.

Yes, I didn’t miss this. Though I assume that it was already in the pipeline.

Covid will certainly have brought ups and downs for Mantic. Hopefully that will ease soon.

Brexit is probably bringing a whole other set of more longterm problems.

I was actually pleasantly surprised how smoothly and quickly my post Brexit Mantic orders were delivered @Niall78.

So at least from the customers perspective in Germany I have no reservations at all about ordering from Mantic directly post Brexit.

Expected it to be much worse, but it s turned out to be all fine. Well maybe i got lucky, but then it’s been 3 orders already that arrived all just fine.

I can agree. At least Mantic and DHL (in Germany) have quickly adopted to Brexit. I had other orders from the UK which were quite heavily delayed because of customs.

I believe Mantic benefitted from EU grants (at least early on), I assume they have now moved beyond that in any case?

Has the price changed in EU countries?

I heard that they were having trouble getting their cards in place (vanguard equipment cards were unavailable for an age) and that was due to shipping from France being disrupted by Brexit. Hopefully they have solved these issues now, I just hope it’s also not costing too much more!

Prices stayed the same as far as I know. I think shipping even got cheaper, but I might be wrong. Most of the time I order from a very cheap german tabletop shop anyway.
Boris fucked up my early arrival of League of Infamy though!

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It did receive support from the fund. From their website:

I think this will have been money to initially expand, in an attempt to stimulate industry in the region.

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Good to hear. I put a big order in before Christmas and haven’t ordered since. This gives me confidence to place something soon.

On a sided note Warlord Games had to change postage into the EU and I don’t find the new costs and hoops attractive at all.

A recent check of Perry for a load of plastics for a KoM force didn’t make an old customer like me want to press buy due to postage costs.

GW and Mantic seem to be weathering the storm somewhat. This must be murdering small and boutique sellers into the EU from the UK.