The Look.
Its surprising that the GW zombies have stood the test of time as well as they have done (and to be honest, thats not that well!). However the zombies from mantic are in another league. Yeah, there may be more than a decade between the two but the mantic zombies have a finer detail and ooze character (no pun intended!). You can see from the pictures that they have nice skinny arms and are overall generally very well proportioned!
The Quality.
The first thing I noticed when unboxing the critters were the sheer quantity of sprues. This is mostly because mantic only do 3 zombies to a sprue! However, looking closer I was surprised to realise the casting quality... barely a mould line in sight! To add to that they managed to get fine and detailed fingers to a much better quality than the GW zombies!
The Build.
The mantic zombies come in small sprues with simple components. This does mean that you won't find lots of extras like you do with the GW kit, but you do get quick to build models that have a surprising array of flexibility & poseability. Don't get me wrong, they are a little more restrictive than the GW zombies, but a little bit of forethought can gain you some of this back. I built all 30 in about an hour and you can see that they can all look unique. This means that you can build a big horde of zombies in very little time! More to the point, somehow they all seem to rank up quite easily and in lots of combinations!?!?
I even had pieces to make these body part markers... Not sure what they are yet, but they could be used as pain tokens... although I don't have a Dakr Eldar army... but still!
The Cost.
Finally this is where mantic have the big win. Mantic are prepared to give you more models for less money than GW. Not just that, they are great looking, top quality and easy to build models for les money, and that's just the basic kit. Mantic cater for the larger army by offering a "zombie horde" set with 60 zombies in which will save you about £25 if you'd bought that number from GW!! (that is enough to buy another 30 from mantic and still have spare change... and for only a few pounds more mantic will give you another 60 zombies!!)
The Verdict.
Mantic 1 vs 0 GW
The downsides of the mantic zombies are the general lack of extra bits and the fact they are not quite as flexible as the GW ones which are built using more components.
Other than that, Mantic offer top notch quality and great looking models for an unbeatable price. Its not just great value... it's a real bargain. I would not hesitate to recommend mantic zombies (especially over GW ones) to anyone.
Once these guys are painted, I'll share the pics. If you want to commission me then you can head over to ipaintmodels.blogspot.co.uk
Be sure to comment if you agree (or disagree) with the Review and tell me your experiences with zombies.
A really useful review. They certainly look much better than GW zombies, especially en masse where they're all leaning forward. I was planning a WFB Vampire Counts army, where there was just a cadre of elite vampires then literally 2000pts of zombies. I soon gave this up when I saw the ridiculous cost, but I may look again now. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteAs mentioned above, mantic offer 30 zombies for £20, or 60 for £35!! That's amazing value! and that's before you've ordered them from somewhere like Maelstrom or Wayland which will save you another 15-20% on top of that!!!
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