Tools of the Trade

Happy Seppuku delivered their Kickstarter on time. This is a solid thing in my opinion. There are other Kickstarters I've backed that have not only failed to provide the material on time, but have been completely wrong in terms of when their product would deliver. In some instances this has been almost insulting because the people doing it  are either stupid, which I don't believe, or they simply have no idea that their ability to communicate through text is only well, through text. There is no visual cue, there is no method of seeing the physical expression or other methods that make up the majority of communication, so they come across as crass or stupid.

But in the meanwhile, the Happy Seppuku material is here. I haven't given the molds a go through yet. I'm looking for some new figures to base prior to that and it shouldn't be too hard to do so.

In another corner of the hobby, Games Workshop has come out with some new technical paints. There are numerous reviews on them. A lot of them boil down to "it's good stuff" which essentially means that if you, like me, are lazy and want a quick solution to what the technical paints do, they are perfect, if expensive, for what they do.

All in all, it's a good time to have miniatures to paint and bases to work on.

Kickstarter Tempations and Idle Musings

As of this writing, Bones 2, a Reaper Kickstarter to make more miniatures in their special plastic, is on it's last day. It's doing fantastic. It remains to be seen if it does better than the previous one, but by almost any measure outside of that, it's doing great.

I myself am not THAT impressed with Reaper though. Mind you, it's not that they didn't deliver, but they had a lot of the same problems other companies did with their KS.

1. Poor communication when things weren't going perfectly. At one point they told the backers outside US that they didn't have to ship them their products. WTF Reaper.

2. Metal miniatures have died. In my gut, I knew this was going to happen. I paid for the Metal for a Year after specifically asking, "So with all the Bones Plastic stuff coming out, are you going to be able to handle making metal miniatures still? "Oh yeah, no problem. 12-15 a month per normal." Nada for many months. I'm hopeful that metal miniatures will make a comeback during the "China is working on this part of it" phase but now that Reaper has at least one machine in their own factory, someone's got to man that sucker too right?

3. Bones are not for everyone. Reaper oversold a few of the points of Bones like the detail. Several figures were pulled for Q&A issues. Many more simply don't have the details in them that the metal versions do. There is also the bendy weapon or part issue. There is also the "hey, my paint isn't adhering to the miniature" or "my primer is wet and sticky three days later." Minor issues but when you're selling something that's supposed to be paint and play right outside the box with no primer and with the same detail as metal for a fraction of the cost? Yeah, potential problems.

4. The cases had problems. I didn't have the glue issue that a lot of people had, but they were way too damn small. It's like Reaper said, "Hey, miniatures are still true 25mm right?" Thankfully I have a lot of miniatures that are either old or small, like bugs, goblins, and giant rats, so they went into those boxes.

5. Miscellaneous. People may not be happy with the selection, people may not think they're getting as good a deal as last year, people may still have figures from last KS that they haven't even looked at, etc... etc... etc...

Now, having said all of that, I'm down with it. The figures are very affordable and provide you a chance to dabble in genres you might not normally do so. In addition, there are a lot of NEW figures and until Reaper picks up their metal again, if they ever do, well, this is a quick way to get them.

Now supporting this KS? That in and of itself is a problem.

You see, there are other Kickstarters I'd like to be down with as well. And honestly, a lot of people told the companies, "Hey, Reaper is doing Bones 2 about now. You should wait." and for the most part, the response was something like, "Well, there's always going to be another Kickstarter around the corner."

And to be fair, there is a certain amount of truth in that statement. For example, Darklands by Mierce Miniatures just finished up. That took in over $100K, more like $150K with conversion in there. Mars Attacks is another one out there right now. 

Another one, Jounrey:Wrath of Demons, is a board game with some awesome looking figures. It's doing fantastic.

But having said that, NONE of them are sucking the air out of the room like Reaper is. If you're a smaller fringe company whose figures are going to be competing with Reaper for say, Fantasy stylings, you wait. End of discussion. Well, end of discussion if you're really on the fringe and haven't blown past your previous Kickstarters with huge strides eh?

For those I'd like to support...I'd love to support ShadowSea. It's based on the Song of Blades and Heroes engine and I've had previous editions and a lot of the miniatures. I've supported previous Kickstarters and unlike some companies, the guys here are pretty clear in the communications and get things done in a fairly timely manner. But... ah, the dreaded but... It's no huge bargain at the base prices. It's not that the prices are terrible. This is especially true considering the great detail and high quality of the sculpts. It's that well, it's expensive. This is where doing it later would have benefited them. I can't say that the totals have been directly effected by Reaper's KS but I'd be willing to bet money on it.

Another one, Elven Adventurers, is by a company that did two previous KickStarters and did a fantastic job with them. I'd like to support them but... well, I'm not 'feeling' it. The elves are a little goofy and they've throw in all sorts of weird mini-stretch goals that are popular, but aren't necessarily my cup of tea. They're funded too so I don't feel too bad about it.

The other problem in terms of money, is well, the real world sometimes has stuff on sale!  For example, Fantization is one of my "to go to" shops when I need something. They are carrying Scale 75 paint. I like the paint line. They are having a 20% sale. Well, bam, there goes some money. Money that could have went to another Kickstarter.

It's why I'm amused when people talk about not budgeting for Kickstarters. Yeah, you can not budget to pay the rent either. See how far that gets you. I'm not saying you have to spend X amount or Y amount, but if you don't know how much you're spending and aren't keeping track of things, it's an easy way to get into trouble.


Me? It looks like Reaper is allowing you to add to your pledge up to December 20th so I may go with just the Vampire level and try to support Shadowsea, but even so, it's going to be a close one.

Not Quite a Battlereport

I finally managed to drag my sorry ass out of the apartment to play a game of Warmachine at the dreaded Dice Dojo. Public parking wasn’t bad but I did forget to add money to the meter. I think Chicago is at the point where you have to keep feeding those bastards till midnight or something in exchange for them not slapping your face on Sunday. That may not have went through yet either though. The good news is that I didn’t get a ticket. That would have stunk.

I watched a game at first between a Cygnar force with a lot of mercenaries and a Retribution force. It was interesting to sit back and watch because I’ve played so few games. It’s also interesting to note that sometimes even a game between experienced people can become a grind.

Another thing I enjoy about watching games, is that you get to see how other people paint up their miniatures. I’m a lazy SOB when it comes to picking out the colors and will almost always go with the ‘standard’ colors. In the Retribution case that meant a lot of white. The guy I was watching? He went with a dark red kind of purple color with black. Worked fantastic. I thought he might have used an airbrush on it but nope, just a lot of glazes. Another reason it’s important to see these things so you can know what’s going on in terms of what people are doing.

Lastly, I noticed that the people playing were using cards with clear backs. That should be a no-brainer but alas, I am senile and didn’t think about that. Mind you that’s not really that important for me as I not only have the cards, but have the program for Android that keeps all the cards for me.

I then went into the actual store itself. I like to try and buy something when I’m doing some gaming in the store. I picked up a heavy warjack for my Retribution forces that I'll turn into a Hydra. I should be like some of the others and just do the whole magnet thing but in this case, the power progression list (from No Quarter 34, back in the day!) has two different models so it would be hard to swap out with a magnet regardless if I need them both on the table.

After going back into the room, John offered to play a game with me. I brought enough figures to hit 15, 25 or 35 points. Mind you my actual game experience is minimal so I’m always hoping to do some low point games just to get the feel of it. Not only that, but those low point games tend to run quicker as well. John wanted a 35 point game though so that he could practice. I figure what the heck, I brought it, might as well use it.

There's John during the set up calmly mocking my own quick set up of Retribution forces.

 

Taking out the mage hunter commander, a unit attachment for the mage hunters, I notice that while in storage, his crossbow arm has popped out. I have yet to fix him. Felix, a far greater master of these games than I, mentioned to me his dislike of that particular figure due to its wide stance. Takes up too much room and the connection point isn’t that deep. I’m going to agree with young man on that one.

The game was a good learning experience. John was running Circle and stomped me into the group. Part of that was my fault, but ironically enough, John messed up a few bits himself so the beating could have been much worse.

Let’s see if I can remember bits that I could have done better.

Well, first off, having a ‘standard’ list with Mage Hunters on it playing against someone using Hordes isn’t that greatest. You lose on of their special features, the extra die on damage against War Jacks. That taught me I should have an alternative prepared if I’m going to be playing people who have Hordes list.

Second off, I didn’t use the Mage Hunters enough. I had them essentially hiding in the mountains. It worked well in terms of providing some cover and what not, but since John had a unit attachment that allowed his forces to regroup after attacking, that was pretty useless overall.

Another aspect was not getting my War Caster in there enough. I was moving along the other side of the board from my two units and thought I could get John in a pincer type move. That failed horribly. Well, not horribly really. It just wasn’t effective.

My war Caster has stealth and I was camped on some serious focus when doing part of the crawl and managed to survive many an attack that way. But I just couldn’t get in range of the enemy enough to do them any serious harm.

Which gets to the other thing I learned. I had a Manticore up against Megalith or whatever that big Stone Walden is called. Massive defensive on that guy. My Manticore actually had a spell on it that would allow it to get to make another attack if it missed. I had three focus on it at the time and instead of say, boosting damage, I boosted my number of attacks. All three hit but all three bounced off of that big boy. Next time, spending focus on damage boost to get some potential damage going on there.

John won by War Caster kill, which was the ‘scenario’ we were going at. He wiped out my mage hunters and my Invictors but I still had all three war jacks as well as a House Shyeel Magister. If I had kept the group a little more together it may have been a slightly different game. I might have taken out a few more of his units . As it was I think I got most of one of his Tharn units. That whole stealth thing is a nice two way street where if the enemy and you have it, it becomes a bit of a hunt and hide.

I’ll be putting that other heavy jack together soon and thinking about some heavy hitters in terms of damage for the poor Retribution.

The good news though, is even though John stomped me into yesteryear, he didn’t it in a gloating fashion. After the game he provided a few bits of advice, such as when I should have popped my caster’s feat. His army was quite heavily into the magic. He also encouraged me to move things around if he thought it was going to be a complete catastrophe for me such as when he thought my War Caster was going to get snipped crossing the field.

Fiend From The Pit by Center Stage Miniatures

I had the pleasure of busting the chops of the main man responsible for Center Stage Miniatures at Gen Con this year. In exchange for my ribbing on the late 28mm Demons and Devils KS, and the fact that I used to actually do a lot of reviews back in 'da day', he provided me with an advance copy of Fiend from the Pit. Seeing that puppy's price on the Center Stage Miniature website reminds me of what a fantastic deal everyone got in terms of metal miniatures.

So what do you get when you buy, or receive this sucker?

First off, from what I understand, we'll receive our Kickstarter miniatures similar to this. Much like Bones, we're not getting full packaging. That's okay as extra packaging just means more stuff to throw out at the end of it all.

Breaking it out of the packaging, we have a main body with a tab. A tail. A head. Three wings. At first I thought that it was a mispack. I mean three wings? Especially if you look at the painted image at the Center Stage Miniature website.

Nope. Two of those wings glue together.

Ugh.

Let me repeat myself, ugh.

I would place this model at an intermediate to advance modeler pick. The head pops on with no problem. The wings do have studs that join to the back. The problem is that there isn't a lot of space molded to the wing outside of that stud. I'll probably add green stuff to support it.

The hand with the mace is a flat surface. You should probably pin that SOB or you're going to suffer.

The tail on the bottom? Another flat surface. Again, you should probably pin that.

In terms of putting the wings together? Man, there was a ton of bending on both wings to get it lined up fairly decently. I would love to see a tutorial on this. I am however, now terrified that other miniatures with wings will have the wings split like this and to be honest, I don't see a good reason for it. The other wing looks great. There's the join problem, but hey, this multi-piece wing has the same problem. To me it's just plain old bad design.

 

 

I snagged a few different shots of the miniature. I threw him on a resin base. It's not that the round lipped base it came with didn't fit but since I already had it out as I was considering putting it on one of them but didn't want to cut all that base work out... it wound up here.

In terms of sculpting... I'd have a hard time justifying paying the full price knowing what a PIA it is to assemble. Don't get me wrong, it's not impossible. I used some Kick Zap or Zap a Gap or whatever it's called because I hate assembling in the first place. But after playing with the Reaper Bones, which are all slotted? Oh yeah, this became an exercise in F*&*! you!

I've gone in to edit the post. I realized that I was a bit too down on it because of my anger at the assembly process. In doing so, I failed to note some of the other bits that are important to people.

Mold lines were invisible. This must be a very fresh miniature from the mold. I didn't have any clean up in that aspect. In terms of flack and excess from the vents? Minimal. Some on the wings and on the inside of the arm with the fire ball but very minor, very easy to clean and very quick to fix. If the other models in the series come this clean and ready to go, it'll make up for a lot of the short comings of the design.

Malifaux: Plastic Versus Metal Round 2

First off, another big thanks to Miniature Market. With the recent introduction of Malifaux 2e, and all of the new sculpts of old figures, done up in plastic, Miniature Market saw the writing on the wall and put an immediate 50% off sale. I picked up quite a bit of stuff, mainly in bases and some larger figures that I wanted to use as monsters. The order was quickly delivered and came at 100% fill rate. So again, thanks to the employees of Miniature Market. Good job again.

Speaking of monsters, some of those I picked up included Ama No Zako, a large plastic piece and the Avatar of Vengeance, a large metal piece.

I put them on some of the 'fancy' bases I picked up in the sale as well.

Now in terms of pieces, the plastic one has something like fourteen separate pieces. The metal one? The main body is like four. Add in the figure it's rising out of and the hand and we're at like six? In terms of ease of assembly, not bad on either of them but I find that super glue tends to have a melting effect on the plastic. On the official forums I've seen it suggested that Gorilla Glue is the answer. I'll have to check that out soon.

Ama No Zako, the big oni looking thing, is regularly priced at $16. Kirai, the avatar of vengeance, is $30. This is a plus of the plastic. The last time I compared plastic and metal, the metal was actually less expensive. Might be a result of the metal figure here being newer and having a more 'realistic' price.

Height wise, Ama No Zako also towers over the Avatar by at least a head.

But in terms of detail?

Let's take the hair for example.

We can easily see numerous different strands of hair. Different lengths. Different flow. Different depths.

Here not so much. There are a few individual strands that poke out.

How about cloth?

Again, lots of difference here. Lots of raised areas. Lots of uneven curves like cloth might have.

And the plastic? Again, very smooth with a few folds in the material.

Mind you, I'm not saying it's impossible to paint smooth surfaces or anything of that nature. I am saying that I find it visually boring. I find it a step back in progress. That this multi-pieced plastic figure could have a lot more potential if it actually had some more character as opposed to the smoothness of the plastic.

I'll be looking to try out some more plastic as time goes on but the metal buyout on my part from Miniature Market insures that I'll have plenty of metal to come for a long time.

Red Box Zombies Finished

Sixteen zombies done! These are Trollcast material by Troll Forged Miniatures. They have a lot of detail to them. Lots of folds and clear distinction for fingers, eyes, and noses. Something that the Reaper Bones material sometimes failed to have. They are also light and easy to cut although I didn't try any modifications.

The only problem is that they are small.

Here we have two zombies. I picked one in a bent position and one standing straight up. The cleric is an old Grenadier figure from the 80's. The one next to it a Games Workshop Lord of the Ring Figure. The next three are all Red Box figures. I included them because Tre mentioned that his zombies were in keeping with his own sizing. I didn't think so based on my previous painting of Red Box figures and well, maybe the height is there but they fail, in my opinion, in terms of viability due to the sheer thinness.

I know that they're zombies. I know that they should be emaciated and narrow but as miniatures, even with other figures against the same company, they appear off. I wonder if they 'shrank' in the process of being cast in Troll Cast. Anyone have any metal ones they can do a comparison with? It could also just be the in close stance that most of them have. No arms wide open here. No zombies with weapons. No zombies with lots of clothes. Just lots of bare chested, arms at the side, slouching zombies.

Not a problem for me as I'll probably wind up using them as minions or something along those ranks whenever I get around to doing some role playing again as Red Box, at least at this time, doesn't have it's own skirmish game.

Anyone finish their Red Box stuff? I'm waiting on stuff from the second successful Kickstarter so hopefully I'll be painting up some weird monsters soon!

Reaper Bones Kickstarter: Reflections

Before the Kickstarter, I had painted some Repaer Bones and posted the work at the old 52 Miniatures 52 Weeks. I found it to be relatively inexpensive and fair detail. Took to the paint well. The larger figures seemed better off while the smaller figures lost some detail.

During the pledge, I saw an opportunity, like many, to get many figures for a good value. Being someone whose already painted them, I spoke up about my experiences with the material where I could and what primers and paint I'd used on them.

I was a backer of Reaper at the very high levels. I went with the get the metal for a year deal. I did this because I specifically asked, "Hey, with the whole Bones thing coming along, what's up with metal?" and was informed that "No dude, we're awesome and it's going to be like metal Nirvana for the next year. So much awesome." Not quite but it was assured that the regular release schedule would be kept up in metal.

So let's look over what actually happened?

First off, there was some bit where the shipments were supposed to be broken out and there were some problems with that. I didn't pay attention to that because it didn't really effect me.

Then the metal figures were initially late, but Reaper made good on that by sending all the back log of stuff that had come out. Thumbs up!

Then the metal figures stopped and Reaper was like, "Dude, we are not as awesome as we thought but we will be awesome again real soon or... you can take what's behind door #2!" I like metal miniatures so I stuck with the year of metal that will hopefully one day continue. It's not like Reaper has stopped making metal miniatures as they have rereleased the old Doom miniatures and even done some stuff for Monte for his Numera game. I've always appreciated the fact that Monte usually tries to get some miniatures done for his RPGs.

My initial shipment arrived, late as usual for a Kickstarter and I didn't even go through it until Reaper had finished. I knew that they would be bombed with a ton of issues from doing this whole scale thing.

When I finally did go through it, I was amused and angry and baffled. All of my add ons were present but my actual Vampire level pledge was not. When I asked about it, it was immediately correctly. Apparently some people at my level got passed over on the actual Vampire pledge. I wondered why, since there were only a handful of us, Reaper didn't get in direct contact with us and go, "Hey man, is everything all right? We know that you're at a particular pledge level that has some potential difficulties and just wanted to check in on you." But whatever.

In terms of the actual miniatures themselves?

Quality is all over the place. I guess there were enough of them with complaints that some figures have been pulled entirely. The biggest problem seems to be the noses. Some of the figures just don't plain have their noses at all. Flat and smooth features. At the same time, there are still people jumping into the air screaming that there are no quality issues. Look dudes and dudettes, you're not doing Reaper any favors by spreading false information out there. There is a loss of detail. In some cases a significant loss of detail.

There is also the wacky factor or pieces bent backwards. This is relatively easy to handle for the most part though as long as you have access to very hot and very cold water you can bend them back. Sometimes its more tricky with the larger figures as you have to figure out where you want it to be when its done.

The material takes well to glue though. It's also easy to cut or modify. I know this as I've cut a few off of their bases and glued them onto other bases. The glue actually seems stronger than the material at that point as when I cut too high on a foot and then had to go back in and cut the rest of the food off and misplaced where the foot and ankle should met and was like... nope, it's stuck and this is a hell of a bond so freak ankle it is.

Another nice thing is that a lot of these are one piece figures. Even where before it might have been multiple pieces, it's now, or at least arriving as, one piece. Makes assembly a much easier thing. My frustration level with Malifaux and their terrible plastic is very high so taking a few minutes out to play with some single piece figures makes my painting day.

Satisfaction level overall? High. There are so many figures with so much potential in there that I'm going to be spoiled for options for a long time. The price and affordability are what really sells it. I'll be curious to see how they do in the retail level if the quality control issues are there in the same level.

At the same time, Reaper has pulled their P65 line. I believe it's P65? Their old 'formula' so to speak that wasn't as costly to Reaper in terms of what their figures were made out of. Bones will probably replace that for sure in the future. Good material for that as there are a ton of large figures that will not lose a lot of detail due to scale and will hopefully be more affordable.

I can't see this stuff becoming a 'painter's' choice of figure medium though. It's just not crisp enough. Now that may change in the future, but for example Trollcast? There is some fantastic detail in that material even though the guy doing it is having issues getting it onto painter's hands. Resin will probably be the medium of choice for 'high end' stuff for a while though. This doesn't mean that there aren't uses and fun stuff with metal still.

I myself may go back and buy some of the figures I have in Bones in metal after it's all said and done. Like I said, the loss of detail on some of them is high.

I think that in the future, if there are going to be 'exclusive' Bones figures, that they will need to be designed more 'old school'. Minimize the buttons, the buckles, the straps, the pouches, the elaborate hilts, the numerous pieces of clothing that go no where. The old '80's' look of Citadel for example might be perfect for these as they were often one piece figures with exaggerated poses and stances.

At Gen Con 2013, I heard that Reaper is doing Bones 2 very soon. I'm actually kind of surprised. I thought that they may go a few months normal mode to catch up on everything. I've heard complaints for a few online retailers about the customer service levels but I personally haven't had any issues with them so take it with the internet grain of salt.

I haven't backed a few miniature projects that I was very interested in to see what Reaper will be offering. If the value is similar, not even as good mind you, but similar, to what they did with the initial Bones Kickstarter, I'll be in. Mind you I won't back any 'metal' pledges because I've still got many moons left on my metal pledge but anything else is fair game.

How about other people? I know that the off shore backers aren't happy and I'm wondering if they'll be back for a second round? Any other metal for a year people that stuck with the actual metal for a year? What's your experience been with the material? Buy more or forget it?