Mantic have announced they are going to (finally) revamp their Empire of Dust range, and so far they have teased new plastic Skeletons: Plastic Revenant Cavalry (They've confirmed that the barding is optional for the steeds, so Tomb Kings Skeleton Horsemen can be built from the set): And improved resin Enslaved Guardians (Ushabti in Tomb King parlance): I've always liked the more ornate look of the Empire of Dust range (compared to GW's 6th Edition Skeletons that had very little to tell they were Egyptian other than their shields), and these models certainly bring that to the fore, not to mention that they look a lot better than the current metal ones (which are still decent in my eye but certainly needed improvement). I'd like to think that this is just the tip of the iceberg as well - given these chaps won't be arriving until the second quarter of the year, I imagine Mantic won't spill all the beans until around March/April, so I'll be kept in suspense until then! Affordable Tomb King models are back!
They seem a little bit too blocky for my tastes. The Ushabti are a far cry from GW's sculpts in my opinion. Of course, tastes vary, but these are definitely not for me.
The proportions feel completely off to me. The worst offender has to be the spear being held by the skeleton. The arrows are pretty bad too. I'm surprised to see just how far Mantic is behind GW or even smaller companies like Lost Kingdoms Miniatures. I might not like the current crop of GW games, but they really do make the very best models in the entire industry (in my humble opinion).
To be honest I agree the spears and arrows look a little thick, but I imagine that can be fixed by trimming them down or even cutting off the spear heads and replacing them with spears of a more realistic thickness. In addition, let us not forget that GW's 6th Edition Skeletons suffered from a similar problem, plus their bones were as thick as the arms of living models, and the archers couldn't be posed sideways very well. At least these have nailed the proportions of the skeletons themselves and the sideways stance of their archers. The Ushabti are different to the GW ones and wouldn't be compatible in the same unit as them, but to be honest I think their chunkier look makes them look literally rock hard, which is what stone statues should be . I think these are a lot better than the Txarlifactory ones, for example, which had tiny heads with strangely massive eye sockets and spindly limbs and weapons. Lost Kingdom I personally find to be overrated. I find they try and put too much action or grandeur into the models to give them a 'wow' factor to rival GW's 'god models', which ultimately just makes them appear too brittle to use for gaming, not to mention to store and transport, and to be honest they look better off as display pieces for painters. Also their Tomb Kings range has a lot of stuff that either looks too big to represent its equivalent unit in an 8th Edition Tomb King army or isn't usable in any way other than through fan-made rules. Of course the Mantic range may prove to suffer from this as well when it is fully revealed, but I'm hoping it will have enough to represent everything in the 8th army book. If you're a big fan of Lost Kingdom's stuff, then that's great, the fact they sell the STL files for affordable prices means once you've shelled out on a 3d Printer and enough resin you can build an army pretty affordably, and their new Tomb Guard look pretty good (except their swords are a bit bulky funnily enough like the Mantic spears), but personally I'm sticking with these unless Mantic does something particularly daft or otherwise wrong with them. I can understand that, as owners of existing GW Tomb King armies, the Mantic aesthetics will likely clash, and of course won't be of any use to you, but from the perspective of someone who would certainly like to get into Tomb Kings at some point in the distant future, this range really has potential and it's likely I will choose it to build my future army out of (when I eventually finish off my other projects ). The only way GW could ever tempt me back to them for such a project would be to make an entirely plastic Tomb King range for TOW with Egyptian clothing and better proportions on the basic Skeletons, and perhaps re-releasing the 8th Edition Tomb Guard, Sphinx and Necropolis Knights kits to save money (given they probably are still kept in an archive somewhere, it'd be a no-brainer to bring them back), which is unlikely at best given they've handed TOW over to Forge World (even if by some miracle Forge World turn over a new leaf and start making plastic regiment boxed sets, I find it very unlikely they would avoid making anything in their beloved hyper-expensive resin and thus denying access to it except for the richest and biggest spenders in the community). GW showed an inexcusable lack of respect toward the Tomb King fanbase and ignorance toward a fantastic concept when they deleted the army's entire range back in 2016, and if Mantic are going to capitalise on their dumb mistake with an affordable range of their own that they give more support and respect to, then good for them, I hope it sells particularly well so that GW realise just how stupid they were.
The problem is that not only is the spear head massively oversized, but also the shaft and consequently the hand pose holding the shaft. Sure, anything can be converted, but it will be a lot of work and trouble. The GW ones are too chunky as well, although from the pictures, these may be worse in that regard. That said, I'm not defending those old 6th edition sculpts, they may have been okay for their time, but they are dated today. That is my problem with Mantic, they feel decades behind GW. We're comparing them to decades old GW skeleton sculpts. Modern day Mantic (IMHO) looks amateurish when compared to GW. Their sculpts are often too thick and very undynamic. Perhaps... unmoving statues. The GW ones look like they could actually walk across the battlefield and fight. The old GW Ushabti sculpts (unlike the old skeletons) hold up extremely well. In my opinion its... GW > Lost Kingdom > Mantic Lost Kingdom has some really nice sculpts but agree with many of the points you raised. They are still a far cry from GW. With all that said, at the end of the day it comes down to personal preference. I've never really liked the way that Mantic looks on the whole, a few exceptions here or there, but that's it. However, others may like them and prefer them. If you like the models, by all means pick them up... on the plus side Mantic is FAR cheaper than GW. It should come as no surprise that we have exact opposite tastes.
I was talking about the spear shaft in the first place with regards to 'trimming them down' - I'm sure it would be possible to do, and even it it doesn't turn out well, I've had a thought of replacing the shafts with spare Saurus spear shafts to maintain enough of a thickness to fit into the hands well while looking more realistic. Upon my travels round the Internet I've also just found that Norba are also making some more Tomb Kings, with their own Skeleton models: Certainly much closer to the GW style, with more accurate weapon proportions, particularly nice shield designs, Egyptian Headdress heads and hopefully more accurate body proportions than the GW originals too, though of course Norba have a bit of a reputation regarding their delivery times - @Lizards of Renown how did you get on in receiving their Heirotitan?
Or plastic print, definitely in the case of Mantic, probably in the case of Norba as well given they were planning to transfer all model production to a new plastic material. Certainly I would say it's better to have too thick weapons than too thin, because I certainly know what 'too thin' feels like from getting a box of Zvezda 1:72 Persian Infantry and having to experience torture in watching the strangely-thin spears snapping as I tried to clip them off the sprue. That's the first set of 1:72 models (Zvezda or otherwise) that has done that consistently on pretty much all the figures, and I still wonder whether it was a fault of that particular box or the model designs themselves. Regardless it was a great shame, because the figures themselves are great, and now they have to wield mini sword-length spears into battle...