I’ve backed a few Mantic kickstarters and while some experiences have been good, some have been very poor. Dreadball, which I think was their first, was alright, but they were still learning the game then. It was incredible value, even at the base game level, let alone after they had unlocked stretch goals. The rulebooks looked like they were laid out by an intern and the cards were cheap, nasty things, again designed by an amateur. Dreadball Xtreme was a bit of a letdown in those same areas, but also the campaign could have been handled better. There were some concerns about materials and some other aspects which were simply ignored, but in the end it turned out ok (even if the crappy miniatures are a bitch to work with).

Then shit hit the fan with Dungeon Saga. It wasn’t just that some people got their game late, that happens with every kickstarter ever, it’s that everything beyond the core box felt completely rushed and unplaytested. Things were poorly packaged and they skimped on the storage, meaning we literally didn’t have enough space to pack away everything we’d paid for in the tiny box that came with the kickstarter (but its okay, they later charged $20 a pop for extra boxes). Items were missing from the kickstarter, and I don’t mean lost in the mail, there is a large list somewhere of things that were promised that were never produced. There were a LOT of packaging and mailing errors, not just ‘the small minority’ people love to quote Mantic on (and this is a consistent problem across multiple kickstarters), but enough that there is still a large and vocal group of people who are missing their items (from a kickstarter supposedly fulfilled in october/november).

But still, their most egregious mistakes are twofold, the first is that everything beyond the core game is woefully unplaytested. Sure, the Adventurers Companion is full of errors, and they’ve fixed that (at the backers expense of course, and after both denying the existence of issues and then telling backers that it was too bad, no second print run would be done, only caving after overwhelming pressure) but that’s not the real issue (but it does show the total lack of regard they have for their backers, something in that state should not have been sent out). The biggest real issue with the AC is that the rules are inconsistent and incomplete. There are multiple issues that even a cursory playtest would have revealed (things people were able to identify even by only reading the book), things like skills being named incorrectly, inconsistent rules with the random dungeon rules, poor formatting leading to confusion with the AI rules, the fact that certain dungeons are literally unfinishable unless you have a wizard with a very specific spell (detracting from the supposed character customization).

In addition to that that they basically treated their customers like idiots for the better part of a couple of months until it became clear that people weren’t going to simply roll over and accept their sloppy fulfillment of the game. While they have categorically stated they will not be fixing the rules issues in the AC, they have at least tried to move forward the fulfillment of some missing pledges, when we were originally told these wouldn’t be fulfilled until april, and that it was OUR fault we got missed (meanwhile stores were receiving stock to put on shelves). But at the same time they have been screwing over customers in the Deadzone: Infestation kickstarter by changing materials to cheaper (and worse) kinds on miniatures backers had spent extra money to purchase.

That’s basically the big picture. As you can tell I’m pretty annoyed with Mantic, enough so that I won’t ever be giving them any more of my money (and will write huge walls of text to warn people off). Their issues go well beyond “just a few people who didn’t receive their pledges”. And for the record, I was one of those lucky enough to have received my pledge in full (besides one expansion they apparently didn’t print enough of), I was just utterly disgusted by their treatment of those who did not.

TL;DR: Mantic’s issues go well beyond just a few missing pledges and include things like poor quality components, lying, lack of playtesting, and a complete lack of regard for their customers.