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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/succubuspublishing/middara



Cool new Co-op miniature heavy Kickstarter with some interesting figures and storyline oriented play.


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Close ups of the initial player characters:






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Close ups of a few of the creatures:

Beat me to it.

They got this one off to a great start, surpassing all the other similar games that seem to have popped up all at the same time too- Hunters, Blackout, Defenders of Last Stand, B-Sieged, Project ELITE... there's a lot of competition for mini game on Kickstarter right now.

The concept is interesting too- the campaign is a story in the vein of the old Choose Your Own Adventures where you can argue over what to do (or do it all yoruself solo), but the fact that there's a dungeon crawl mode is cool.

Minis aren't the usual elves, orcs, and undead, so that's a huge plus in my book. Hopefully all these digital sculpts of theirs will translate to some quality board game pieces.

They've also unlocked a few extra minis at this point.

Tempted by this, although since the early bird is only 5 dollars, I've left it too the end to pledge to see the extras

Interesting concepts for minis there, I will look into it in March 2016.

Another one of these? Feels like someone is just churning out the same game over and over with different renders. And none have delivered yet...?

You're going to have to point me in the direction of these other games Lord Blackfang.

Their other game they tried to get funded was similar (a lot of the concepts seem to be part of the other game as well), but I can't think of many other heavily anime- inspired choose your own adventure JRPG board games with dungeon crawling built into it that's turned up.

There have been quite a few crawlers up on KS as of late though...

This looks quite interesting especially having a one player option.

Here is the figure for the first unlocked stretch goal. The next two unlocked were additional weapon cards.

Wow, those miniatures look stunning, the animates in particular feel very "Blizzard" and this first unlocked gal is very good looking.

Digital renders always look awesome, I just worry that the actual minis won't match up..

I agree. Many of these models look like they have parts that are too thin for plastics. I'd really want to see some production casts prior to backing.

That's probably not going to happen though - and is this one PVC?

They've got artist involved that know what they are doing digital sculpting wise

eg Jon Troy Nickel who's done a bunch for Kingdom Death

so they should have the right input to get this working

of course you never know until it arrived though

Somewhere I know they've got 3d prints of the main character at least.

Can't remember where I saw them now.

They did some 3d prints for their previous kickstarter attempt as well. They also said they are supposed to be getting some resin casts in the next few weeks, so hopefully we can see something before this wraps.

Not sure how well those prints or casts translate into mass produced gaming figures though...

If there was a way to obtain some of the miniatures separately I might bite. Might anyway. Can't be worse than Wrath of Ashardalon from a game play perspective, and if it runs up high it will be a huge pile of figs. Anime figures are hit or miss with me though - huge weapons are always a miss and it is a shame when they can't be removed from otherwise interesting figs.


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I do like that shadow king.

In the last update the creator said they'd check into doing a short run of resins for those that are interested.

No guarantees, but at least they're listening.

Looks good and interesting. I would like to grab some anime style models if they can pull them off. I was a big fan of Relic Knights till I had the models in my hands, which leaves me worried about this KS before I can see actual production pieces.

Some shots of primed figures the creator posted. I believe these are all just 3d prints so far.



A closer view of Remi



Still worries me how thin some of those parts look. I worry we'll have some serious bendy syndrome going on with some of these guys.

If they are in the same class as Malifaux we could be ok, well apart from them then containing a ton of parts.

I really don't think we'll be seeing HIPs here though.

Yeah, for starters, pretty sure there'd be no need for physical prints if they were doing a HIPS sprue.

 spiralingcadaver wrote:
Yeah, for starters, pretty sure there'd be no need for physical prints if they were doing a HIPS sprue.

Nah, you'd still want to do a print to make sure everything is scaled correctly.


But its a boardgame, so PVC is pretty much guaranteed.

They have said in the comments that they are aiming for ABS (which I understand is what Malifaux uses). Good news! Bad news is that they haven't locked down the material yet, have lots of really ambitious models, and small gaps between stretch goals. Which sounds a lot like Shadows of Brimstone. Except that FFG is an established company, and has a money cushion to get them through mis-budgeted goals - this company has 0 finished products to their name.

Currently it's probably going to be an abs plastic that is injection molded. We are working on getting resin kits going right now. We wanted to spin cast the game in a resin but our manufacturer told us it was a bad idea.

They claim to have multiple funding sources if things go a bit tits up.

There is always a risk involved. However, we have secured multiple funding sources outside of kickstarter to cover a worst case scenario. We wouldn't want to pass our failures onto our backers.

Link to more extended discussion on BGG. https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1374267/give-me-one-good-reason

They aren't sure if the models will be entirely pre-assembled yet:

To keep the vast majority happy, we are trying to keep the required assembly to a minimum. This would preclude making bases separate pieces. However, I don't see why some simple modding couldn't be done to use them in other games. Currently the bases are 1inch x 1inch. So that will work well with most table top games

.

The project has been confirmed as EU-friendly (no VAT or import charges beyond the base shipping fee).

The creators seem to be quite active in the comments section, so it's quite easy to get an answer on something if you want one.

Personally? I just wish there was an anime game out there that didn't feature so many oiled thighs and buttocks. I already have a Conan game on the way!

Looks interesting but I'm out on Kickstarters now until some actually start delivering, unfortunately I have seen and backed too many where the creators interaction with the backers drops off the day after they get funding. Currently one of many trying to fet out of Conan, which in hindsight has train wreck all over it. Sure it's going to ship in October.... 2017 probably.

They can "aim" for HIPs but reality says they'll be "achieving" PVC.

Bioptic wrote:They have said in the comments that they are aiming for ABS (which I understand is what Malifaux uses). Good news! Bad news is that they haven't locked down the material yet, have lots of really ambitious models, and small gaps between stretch goals. Which sounds a lot like Shadows of Brimstone. Except that FFG is an established company, and has a money cushion to get them through mis-budgeted goals - this company has 0 finished products to their name.

Currently it's probably going to be an abs plastic that is injection molded. We are working on getting resin kits going right now. We wanted to spin cast the game in a resin but our manufacturer told us it was a bad idea.

They claim to have multiple funding sources if things go a bit tits up.

There is always a risk involved. However, we have secured multiple funding sources outside of kickstarter to cover a worst case scenario. We wouldn't want to pass our failures onto our backers.

Link to more extended discussion on BGG. https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1374267/give-me-one-good-reason

They aren't sure if the models will be entirely pre-assembled yet:

To keep the vast majority happy, we are trying to keep the required assembly to a minimum. This would preclude making bases separate pieces. However, I don't see why some simple modding couldn't be done to use them in other games. Currently the bases are 1inch x 1inch. So that will work well with most table top games

.

The project has been confirmed as EU-friendly (no VAT or import charges beyond the base shipping fee).

The creators seem to be quite active in the comments section, so it's quite easy to get an answer on something if you want one.

Personally? I just wish there was an anime game out there that didn't feature so many oiled thighs and buttocks. I already have a Conan game on the way!

Alpharius wrote:They can "aim" for HIPs but reality says they'll be "achieving" PVC.

I dunno, maybe its just me, but I think launching a kickstarter before knowing things like your material and molding costs is a bad idea.

Bioptic wrote:Personally? I just wish there was an anime game out there that didn't feature so many oiled thighs and buttocks. I already have a Conan game on the way!

*cough cough*

 Cyporiean wrote:

Alpharius wrote:They can "aim" for HIPs but reality says they'll be "achieving" PVC.

I dunno, maybe its just me, but I think launching a kickstarter before knowing things like your material and molding costs is a bad idea.

Yeah, it is an absolutely horrible idea - and I can't remember a time where that ended well at all.

There's already unenough 'uncertainly' baked into just about every Kickstarter, so there's no need to add any more.

In fact, the first Fallen Frontiers campaign had a similar 'material question' and that didn't end well - the reboot there had clearly defined materials and went OK.

We currently have the game quoted in PVC, ABS, and Polyurethane Resin. That include's mold fee's and cost changes to the final product. However, our manufacturer has recommended us to go with PVC since some of the CAD files can come out very delicate. Especially since your average board gamer will not want the figures to come un-assembled.

As this is a board game, I'm sure most of you are aware that the vast majority of our backers are board gamers. This puts us in a delicate situation where we must choose which material is best for both the product and our consumers.

As a miniature enthusiast I would love to have to assemble my own miniatures from a sweet Polyurethane Resin, but the reality is that the average consumer doesn't want to build the game before they play it. Seeing as how many of you here are miniature enthusiasts, I would love to get some recommendations on this.

Tomorrow I will be meeting with Trenchworx to discuss making kits for individuals miniatures that must be assembled, but are made out of something higher quality than PVC. This would allow us to provide a miniature only add-on. In addition, we could also produce them in a much lower quantity than we would otherwise have to. I'll let you all know how that goes.

Hopefully we can have our cake and eat it too.

Sounds good to me!

I agree that preassembled PVC (while not my preferred choice) is quite important to get traditional board gamers to pick up the game,

but it would be great to have a resin option for those of us who want the best possible minis to paint/display etc

Honestly, it's not fully a question of quality of material vs. expense & ease of assembly. It's also about matching the material to the sculpts.

The sort of PVC that CMON is using for latter-day Zombicide is actually really good for both durability and a reasonable amount of rigidity - weapons and other sticky-out bits are bendy but not floppy, and tend to be more or less straight right out of the box. It is not particularly suited for fine detail on realistic human-sized characters though - faces, hands, etc can come out looking rather mushy.

It works better when proportions are exaggerated, looking rather good on lines like Rum and Bones (which is on the cartoonier side) and amazing on things like Arcadia Quest, or Super Dungeon Explore.

This is where the stylised "Manhwa" aesthetic of this project is more in your favour, but the 3D sculpts may need revising to deepen the existing details, even beyond where they look "normal" on a close-up of a nice 3D sculpt on your monitor. This goes double for boardgaming pieces - most of them will never see paint, and will mostly be viewed at an arm's length, so you really need to make those details stand out.

Another method is to simply increase the size of the smaller (human-sized) characters, to allow for better detail and to make them stand out more, even at the risk of making your "big" monsters slightly less impressive. I think going from 32mm to 35mm still looks reasonable, and may actually be closer to what boardgamers expect from human models. Mantic's "28mm truescale" has actually disappointed several of my friends by looking so tiny!