Kickstarters: Current and Ongoing and Those I've passed

There are so many Kickstarters out there these days, that I'm pretty comfortable missing months at a time and not looking into the various things going on because I figure at any time, there will be more that are ongoing.


Another problem is lateness. The Tome of Horrors miniatures, officially licensed from +Frog God Games , is late and the communication has been bad. Others like Alien Assimilation are late but communication has been good and you get to see the work as it's coming.


Another problem is cash. With a new car, the funds have been tight. Anything that has too high a buy in is pretty much dead in the water to me. For example, Basius 2 looks awesome but man, the shipping and handling, and the fact that it's in British pounds? Nope.


I was fortunate in that a few of the Kickstarters I backed were awesome enough to give me a refund. Needed it too for things like down payment on the new car and various other assorted bills that tend to just pile up.


The last problem I'll mention, is stuff I know is coming. While who knows when Center Stage is going to be done, I'm pretty sure +Reaper Miniatures is going to be delivering Bones II real soon. I'm a backer of that and well, I haven't finished everything in the fist Kickstarter so I imagine I'll be buried in that strange Bones material soon.


On the other hand, I did put in  for a book on miniature painting that comes with a few figures from Figone, the Figopedia.The guy doing it is a fantastic painter and if he can get some of that information into my small brain? That would be awesome. Even if not though, a few miniatures and some awesomely painted miniatures to peruse? Win!


Red Box Games by has done several Kickstarters. I had a bad experience, as everyone did, with the first one, but the second one was great. Picked up a lot of monsters. I skipped the others as they're character driven and his scale is more 'realistic' which means they look fantastic, but generally don't fit even with his other work by Reaper. However, his latest one may get bandits and as I've mentioned before, I'm not impressed with the current crop of bandit miniatures out there.


Dungeonmorph Dice? Awesome. Not too bad price wise either. I've got my eye on it.


Ancient Ruins II is a series of bases but man, between CoolMiniOrNot's recent bases and my old Happy Seppuku bases, I don't know. Prices aren't bad and I do like helping the 'little guy' so I'm going to try to get some money together for him. I've ordered from him in the past so I'm pretty sure it's going to be another quick turn around.




Strangely enough, I haven't backed a lot of role playing products lately. Between Pathfinder and 5th edition, I'm pretty set in terms of campaign setting and adventurers.


Not only that, but for whatever reason, the RPG ones tend to be just as bad if not often worse then the miniature ones in terms of dropping communication or just failing to deliver. Not saying they're all like that but man, when I look over the list of stuff I haven't backed and check on it to see if it's available now because it sounded interesting?


Throne of Night is way behind on some of it's deliveries, but it's had some stuff out?


The Reliquary looked to be a book of magic items. Looked pretty cool. Looked like something I could pick up when it was done. Wow. Still not done. Ugly stuff.


The Grand Temple of Jin: It sounded awesome but I had enough of mega-dungeons at that time. Still ongoing. Argh!


Southlands, now this one I'm 99.9% sure it's going to be out relatively on time. It hit when the funds were at an ultra low point though so as much as I wanted to, it had to go to the wayside. Their only behind one of the stretch goals for the previous KS I backed from them.


Anyone else backing anything awesome that the world needs to know about?

Gen Con 2013: The Loot

Remember when I talked about resellers? Bam! That's what this pile is. From left top to bottom right.

First pile is some high elf lion axe men on top of some Freebooter assassins that were on massive discount from the Warstore. Remember when I was talking about resellers? Yup. They had a ton of Freebooter stuff, a lot of other small company stuff that wasn't moving, and some of the larger company stuff that wasn't moving. Guy was taking offers on lots of stuff because they didn't want to carry it back.  I wasn't going to buy them at all but I have a fondness for high elves from the Warhammer world. I probably have a thousand points or so of them and one day may actually play. The Freebooter assassins? The box was $20 bones and some of the individual figures can run that cost.

Second pile is paint. I'm always looking to expand my paint collection with stuff I don't have or in the Winter Weathering set, techniques I'd like to try. That pile of L5R stuff? Three for ten or one for five. I'll probably never use it but I've had an itch to rum some Samurai action and if nothing else, it may prove inspiration for something else.

Second row is a metal mule. While I love Privateer Press, I hate that new plastic mercenary model in and of itself, especially for the mule. I've been looking for a metal one for a while and this one was like $18. Speaking of the mule, I picked him up in the auction hall across from the dealer's room. Another pitfall to being a game publisher and creator of content coming to the con to sell, is having to pit your wares not only against the resellers, but against your former buyers who are selling your stuff at the auction. I went twice to the auction hall and it was rammed both days.

That pile of historical books? Got it from the same place I picked up the paints and it was buy one get three free. I've just started on the Samurai and the Sacred and it's pretty good, but at this point, I think anyone whose read any Osprey books on Samurai is expecting to see Stephen Turnbull's name on such a book. 

On the left is the new edition of Wyrd's Malifaux which sold out quickly. On top of that is the Nightmare Edition. I'm disappointed by how small it is. In theory, Wyrd moved to plastic because of the price of metal. They've made larger metal models than this sucker. I admit to 'suckertude' because I bought it due to the limited nature along with the book so I could get the last one on top, Miss Step, a female cyborg con exclusive that you had to spend $100 bones or more to get. I was thinking about getting some more stuff but to be honest, I'm not playing the game yet. One of my friends does though and I'm hoping to get into it in that way but as I've noted, other sellers had the other material Wyrd did, sometimes at rock bottom prices. I figure I'll try and finish some stuff this way and see where it goes.

In the center on top are three decks, all illustrated the same, with some dice. They're like zombie cards. I figure I'll keep a deck for Wyrd, as it uses normal cards, and give one to my g/f who is a fan of all things gothic. I picked it up because they were inexpensive and I don't want to say novelty, but I haven't seen them outside the con.

In the center under that is the limited edition adventure being sold by Gale Force Nine. Ugh. It looks like crap on the inside. By deliberate design, they've taken art and other elements from every edition and put little 'cute' yellow sticky notes all throughout the book with rules, by their own admission for DnDNext that are outdated. And they decided to make it a con exclusive that costs $30. You know, when most of the rule material is actually online for free eh? Yeah... I'm thinking they should have charged less, made it vastly widely available and put it online to download for free. When you're boasting in the interior how the new game has 140,000 people on it but you've noted in previous discussions that MILLIONS of people have played, well, I wouldn't be talking about those numbers and would be trying with much more effort to get the game out there. Here's an idea, go see what Paizo did with some of their playtesting and improve on that. Ugh. Ugly ass book.

The Grex is me being a sucker. I have a Patriot 105 that I've been using for base coating and three layer coating where you basecoat one dark color, spray from a slightly higher angle a lighter color, and then almost from the very top an even lighter color. Do that and a wash and some touch ups and you've got some good table top miniatures going. The guy running the Grex booth allowed us to actually use it. Not so the guy running the Badger booth. He also didn't have a credit card minimum.

Don't misunderstand me, the guy running the Badger booth was a wellspring of knowledge. He had a lot of information on how the different types of brushes work, he, unlike the Grex booth, had the new line of paint as well as cleaner and other bits Mind you I didn't see any air compressors but I could have just missed it,  Still, not having a sample of the tool available for people to use, and having a minimum to charge... those things struck me wrong. We'll see if I made the right decision as time goes on but hey, at least I'll be using some of that Badger paint in the machine eh?

 

 

And the last pile of loot starts with some Doctor Who goods from Cubicle 7. While I'm not a huge fan it's an easy system to run and the reading is easy. The books on top are Never Unprepared and Odyess, both by the guys who do Gnome Stew. I bought the former because of store credit and the later because they were relatively inexpensive impulse purchases.

Next to them are some miniatures for the Razor Coast by Center Stage miniatures. I enjoyed razzing the guy about the late 28mm Demons and Devils stuff but he took it in the spirit it was meant and tossed some right back at me. I enjoyed the banter and hope I didn't come off as too much of an ass.

I initially was going to buy some GCT studio's Bushiod but they only took cash so I returned to the OSR booth and got in an order for the giant frog demon. The other miniatures there are some Bombshell Babes. When the guys doing the Bombshell Babes initially did their Kickstarter, I thought it was too T&A. It's not that I've got anything against T&A but let's face it, for most female miniatures, that's ALL they've been. There are exceptions of course but the vast majority is T&A so I've been well covered for years on that front. I was glad to be wrong thought as there are several great figures here including one that would be a perfect female version of Solomon Kane. I bought these miniatures because I haven't seen them in the store and hey, I can save on shipping and handling.

Above them is a book that's like City State of the Sea Kings or something. A massive tome for the old City State of the Invincible Warlord setting. I'm a sucker for that setting. While I was introduced to it through the 'vile' version by Mayfair, I've since gone back and picked up a lot of the older Judge's Guild stuff. I haven't looked at it yet though.

That map and the little booklet under the Gale Force 9 miniatures is proof that Dwimmermount is still chugging along. While the book itself was supposed to be available at the convention, that fell through but at least something made it to the wilds eh?

Speaking of Gale Force 9, the miniatures I bought because I haven't been able to get them from Games Plus. All Games Plus, a normally fantastic hobby shop, has been able to get, was 'Wave One', the purple worm and mind flayer raiders. Now here's the 'funny' thing. They were supposed to have some other figures as well and even had a price sheet for them on the main sheet. These weren't large banners or anything so I'm puzzled as to why they didn't just take those price sheets down and remake them. They were standard sized sheets for Gumby's sake.

In addition, they also got hit by the 'shipping demon' as many of the figures didn't make it the first day. That worked out for me thought because the line to buy was around the booth. The next day it was pretty much a walk in and buy. A 'funny' store about my purchase. I told the guy that I was buying so much because my FLSG couldn't get the Wave 2 and later releases. He told me NONE of the material had actually been shipped. Uh... I may have mentioned above that I already have some of them and heck, even painted the purple worm. He actually argued the point with me. Why he would do that I have no clue. Heck, unless I'm misremembering, some on RPG.net swear they got Wave 2 stuff. Ah well.

I didn't even look at the Privateer Press limited release bit. While I've actually been painting up stuff and am prepping for actual play, the limited mini did nothing for me and it's going to have a more general, and to me, more useful release down the road.  I'm sure I missed some other opportunities like Coolminiornot had options to get some limited figs if you spent X but I'm not playing Hell Dorado, and despite having a good selection of Anima figures, not playing that so no need to buy those at full price to get something I'm not going to probably ever play.

While I spent more than enough money, I'm pretty happy with the fact that most of the stuff I bought falls into a few small categories. It's either stuff I could only find at Gen Con, or stuff that was so inexpensive that buying it at full price later would mean it's simply not going to be bought.

Anyone score any awesome swag? Anything you missed that you wanted to buy?

Tome of Horrors: What Monsters Would You Have Picked?

Center Stage Miniatures is closing in on their Tome of Horrors Kickstarter.  They have exceeded their initial funding goals and have unlocked a nice variety of bonus figures and add on figures.

The Tome of Horrors is a classic monster tome as it updated a ton of creatures from previous editions of Dungeons and Dragons to first the 3.0 rules, then 3.5 and eventually Pathfinder. Reaper Miniatures did some figures based off the initial art. Now Center Stage Miniatures is taking their shot at it.

I pulled the last version, the Tome of Horrors Complete, down from the shelf today just to page through it and see what monsters I would have went with for miniature purposes.

Amphisbaena: The old snake with a head at each end is very old school. It's also a relatively simple creature. Maybe too simple?

Cat Lord: This would have to be a two part figure. One in the nature version and one in humanoid version.

Bat, Doombat/Mobat: Maybe a slight twist on the figure since they are both large bats? The good thing about something of this nature, is it could work in many situations requiring a giant bat. Often vampire based games tend to have these types of monsters.

Bonesnapper: In some instances, this could work nicely as a raptor.

Cerberus: Depending on how it was made, especially since he's described as being 'Huge', this one could be an interesting 'bonus' style figure.

Cooshee: Come on man, it's an elf dog! A great companion for rangers and other forest walkers, it could also sub as a cool looking dog. It's been in multiple sources from it's credit section.

Daemons: It's possible that Center Stage will do a Kickstarter just for these bad boys as there are quite a few classic bits there.

Dark Stalker: I was kind of surprised this one didn't show up. They have the Dark Creeper but no Stalker? The Stalker is like the boss man!

Demon Shadow: I admit, this one might be kind of hard to capture in miniature form. At least it would be easy to paint.

Demonic Knight: Okay, not quite the Death Knight, but the illustration in the core book is a nice one with a black plate suited knight with a vicious looking two handed sword.

Dragonnel: It's dragon like, could probably be used as a wvyvern but is a HUGE creature so it's feasibility isn't really there.

Eye of the Deep: Not quite a beholder but...

Four Armed Gargoyle: Depending on the sculpt and the paint job, could probably be used for a few different types of creatures ranging from demons and devils to well, gargoyles.

Half-Ogre: The picture by rjt is a great one and would be fun to see cast up.

Khargra: I don't think this one would be popular at all but I don't recall ever seeing a miniature for it. It's also small sized so there could be a few of them.

Greater Medusa: While the whole medusa becomes half snake thing has been done a few times now, it's still a great concept and could be used for some of the various snake races out there.

Skeleton Warrior: Like the Death Knight, a classic from the old Fiend Follow. The illustration by rjt would look good in lead too.

Troll, Ice: The ice troll, like the two headed troll, is an old classic.

Personal favorites... the ones above are mainly real old school or could sub for other monsters. These are ones I just like the look of.

Brass Man: A large construct with a solid picture? Sold!

Golem, Mummy: A medium sized cloth bound creature that players might mistake for a mummy instead of an undead and waste precious undead killing resources against?

Obsidian Minotaur: I like the way the illustration looks. Might be another one that's boring to paint thought as it has no real areas to 'detail', just a huge minotaur shaped hunk of obsidian.

Reliquary Guardian: While it's large, with the 'weeping angels' being so popular from Doctor Who might make some people happy.

Ronus: A wolf with the head of a falcon? Score! I could use a pack of them.

Soul Reaper: A large undead with a scythe? Could also make a great Dread Wraith sub.

The N'gathau: Hellraiser meets D&D. Mind you, this might be better done as a separate Kickstarter to judge interest but it's something I would hopefully be able to back.

Mind you those aren't ALL the ones I'd like to see done up, just the ones I'd most like to see done up. The book is a huge bastich after all.