Ronnie shares his journey from working at Games Workshop to starting his own company, his thoughts on the state of the hobby, and how Mantic has carved its own niche with games like Kings of War, Dungeon Saga, and their latest licensed projects, including Halo.
We discuss the challenges of creating accessible wargames, the importance of growing the hobby, and how Mantic is embracing new technologies like 3D printing. Plus, Ronnie teases some exciting upcoming releases!
He also took a moment to deny a claim made in White Dwarf 122:
“A man famous for winning a GW fancy dress competition by entering as a twelve-sided dice.”
Fake news, apparently!
Topics Covered:
Ronnie’s background in wargaming and his early days at Games Workshop
The founding of Mantic Games and its vision for accessible, fun wargames
The balance between hobby-focused and casual-friendly games
The role of licensed games like The Walking Dead, Hellboy, and Halo
How Mantic’s approach to miniatures and game design has evolved over the years
The rise of 3D printing and its impact on the industry
Upcoming releases, including Kings of War: Champions, new Halo content, and more!
Seemed like a good excuse to flex and show my fully painted Dungeon Saga set…
A massive thanks to Ronnie for taking time out of his busy schedule for a chat!
When I started collecting in 15mm I told myself I’d be happy with two armies (good guys and bad guys), but there’s a real temptation to build out a Nurgle-Chaos force now.
My two almost completed armies are humans/dwarfs and orcs and goblins. The greenskins have some Chaos Warrior allies, and I now have a unit of 15mm plaguebearers in my collection.
I bought these on Etsy shortly after a member of our Discord community (thanks Dave!) very kindly offered to sell me a classic Great Unclean One miniature at a very generous price. I’d mentioned on the podcast that this was my all-time sought-after miniature, and after getting him through the post, it became apparent he’d work really well in 15mm scale.
So back to the 15mm plaguebearers, and these are fantastic little models printed to a very good quality. I’m no expert on 3D printing, but they don’t feel very fragile or breakable, either.
I had a rogue movement tray from Warbases because, in my infinite wisdom, I’d given them the wrong measurements on a past custom order. I also had some MDF hex bases I’d been using to playtest a little pen-and-paper game.
Glueing the plaguebearers to the hex bases worked well, enabling me to get 11 of them in a unit, and giving them more of a “mob” aesthetic, rather than being ranked up.
Continuing on the “no uniformity” theme, I used as many different contrast paints as I could on them.
Then, I used my ground texture to fill in the edges of the movement tray.
So there you are, my petite plaguebearers. I’m pretty chuffed with how they turned out, given that I didn’t really do that much to them. I suppose that’s a benefit of choosing Nurgle miniatures, and maybe a big reason why I might be in the market for more in this scale!
I’ve been looking to up my collection of plastic sci-fi miniatures for games of Star Squabble. As much as plastic isn’t my favourite medium for miniatures, I certainly feel a lot more relaxed when playing with them. Paint on plastic is virtually unchippable.
My first purchase was a squad of classic Space Rangers, sold by eM4 Miniatures for the incredible price of £4.99.
My pal had a few of these when we were younger, and I remember they integrated into our games of Space Hulk and 2nd ed 40k seamlessly. They’re a little soft on details compared to what’s out there nowadays, but for less than a fiver, who’s going to complain?
As I said, I’m not usually a big fan of plastics, and clipping sprues isn’t an aspect of the hobby that ranks high on my list, but this was a great kit to work with. There was just enough variety without it becoming fiddly and annoying.
At £22, these models aren’t too far off a pound a piece either – you can build 20 of them with the contents of the box.
So these guys, combined with my Aliens xenomorphs, give me lots of options for fully plastic games, and my precious metal guys can watch on from the safety of the display cabinet.
By the way, if you’d like to try the aforementioned Star Squabble, I’ve made a fledgling rules sheet available. I appreciate all and any feedback on your playing experience, as well as any tips and suggestions for streamlining and improving the game!
We bought a Frameo digital photo frame recently for family photo purposes, and it’s doing a grand job on that front. However, I couldn’t help but think how something like this could become a nice hobby showcase – maybe even an alternative to a display cabinet if space is at a premium.
This model costs about £50/$70 at the time of writing. It has 32GB memory, which means, depending on the resolution and compression of your images, you can store between 5000 and 30,000 photos.
It has a pixel resolution of 1280 x 800 and a screen size of 8.5″ x 5.5″. You can customise the length of time each photo displays and the order they appear (newest vs shuffle). It plays video, too, for what it’s worth.
Anyway, I just wanted to throw that out there as an option. As for mine, I doubt I’ll get away with photos of goblins and plaguebearers popping up amongst baby and holiday snaps, but maybe I’ll pick up a dedicated hobby version in the future…
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A mighty warband has assembled to celebrate a centenary of Tabletop Miniature Hobby Podcast episodes.
Unfortunately, this warband is not tournament-legal because it’s exclusively made up of heroes.
Those heroes are Jervis Johnson, Andy Chambers, Trish Carden, Gav Thorpe, Joe McCullough, Tuomas Pirinen, Mike Hutchinson, Alessio Cavatore, and Rick Priestley.
Can you think of a better way to spend the next 30 minutes than listening to these folks? No, me either.
The clips from Andy Chambers, Gav Thorpe, Tuomas Pirinen, and Alessio Cavatore were taken from episodes they appeared on in 2023, whilst the clips from Jervis, Trish, Joe, Mike, and Rick are brand new material. These tackle the subject of our September question of the month: Which person (dead or alive) would you love to play a miniatures game with, and why? Also, what game would you play?
A massive thank you to this group of brilliant people for giving up their time to get involved in this humble podcast. To the best of my knowledge, here’s where you can check out what they’ve been making, recently:
