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 RiTides wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:

Glenmorray wrote:
I dont think the miniatures look very nice at all. That obviously must just be me then as they're doing so well.

Yeah, they really suck.

That's a bit melodramatic, Azazel . People are allowed to not like the figures! I looked at the Bugbear from KS1 in Bones material in a blister in the store... then went and ordered 2 metal ones online. It's not for everybody, but I agree that the purple wurm in particular that you posted a pic of is a good fit for it, as well as some other large / organic figures.

Not really. It's a melodramatic blanket statement that I don't think holds a lot of water regardless of whether you're talking about the sculpts - which are from a variety of sculptors over many years - or the material - which again comes up pretty close, or just as well, or in some cases - not very well at all.

I just showed a couple of examples that I think do look nice. I can show some more if you like?
BTW, I'd be happy to defend almost any range of figures in the same manner.


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 Sinful Hero wrote:
70% of the shipping from a quarter of the backers?! That's insane! No wonder they're putting the cost of shipping on the international backers.

The huge USPS price hike of '13 unfortunately would have blown out their projected costs there significantly.


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 Alpharius wrote:

 ironicsilence wrote:
So it seems like someone really needs to post a comment to Reaper asking if the price of US shipping is built into the pledge or if they are eating the shipping. Till then its really all just talking in circles around ROW shipping

That sounds like a really good idea.
Maybe some non-USA based user could do that, so we don't have to run in too many circles in here?
Thanks!

I'm trying not to be drawn into the shipping argument at this point. But of course US shipping is built into the base pledge. It's got to come from somewhere, after all.


The interesting part of this for me is wondering when they'll be making their estimates of what actual shipping costs, and asking for the cash. Shortly before it's about to ship seems the only fully-viable option, since they won't actually have the items in hand until then (to weigh and package them).

The Vampire sets don't weigh that much. As pointed out above, the heavy stuff was in the huge dragon add-ons. It'll effectively be a Kraken surcharge, this time around.


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 Breotan wrote:
That bad? I'm stunned that mediocre sculptors and substandard plastics can hit the one mil mark. What are people seeing that I'm not?

Are you trolling? Reaper's sculptors include people like Tre' Manor, Werner Klocke, Julie Guthrie, Pat Keith, Jason Weibe...

Shipping is gonna completely wreck my wallet from Texas to Australia.

They should set up mailing centres in Europe and have someone mailing from china for all the customers in the asian area


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 Forar wrote:

decker_cky wrote:
It would save 5% on the shipping, since presumably there would be a 5% charge for paypal or whatever is used to add on shipping.

Paypal's fees are a hell of a lot less than 5%. A cursory Googling indicates it's more like 1.9 to 2.9% with an essentially negligable fee (30 cents). Less than 3% seems pretty awesome compared to ~10%.

Like, that could be tens of thousands of dollars over the course of a campaign of this size. That's not chump change when the 'profit' (above and beyond the vast expansion of their business) was only 50k or so with the first round.

A kickstarter is not a store. It is not intended to make money, it is intended to achieve a goal. The goal for reaper was the creation of new molds for their plastic bones line and the purchase/installation of the machines that make plastic minis.

Hello. Long time lurker here. Felt compelled to post about Bones 2 though.

I was late on the kickstarter bandwagon so I missed Bones 1 to my chagrin. In hindsight, it was crazy good value and amongst the piles of 'ok' sculpts (let's be fair, if GW had put out some of those sculpts, dakka would be crying bloody murder), there were some amazing sculpts like Nethyrmaul and Kaladrax. I feel that it was this mix of crazy value and one or two superb centrepieces that made Bones 1 so legendary.

Now with Bones 2, I jumped on right away. But I am getting more and more wary.

Firstly, there arent, in my eyes anyway, any amazing sculpts. The dragons are ok... But nothing to write home about. In short, there's no Nethyrmaul in there that makes me go 'wow'.

Secondly the value equation is less appealing, particularly as an Aussie. The shipping will probably add 60% to the cost and they definitely seem less generous than last time. Granted, the core pack is still pretty good value, but the number of great sculpts Ill actually paint up amounts to a dozen or so.

Not sure if anyone else feels like I do. I am sure they will beat Bones 1 in funding, and they will not give a damn about a single backer like me, but I am a tad disappointed after missing Bones 1, that Bones 2 seems less spectacular...

It is early though, so please prove me wrong Reaper!

 RiTides wrote:

 ironicsilence wrote:
thats a result of the US postal service being in HUGE amounts of debt. USPS shipping to just about anywhere outside the US went up A LOT last year. I have zero doubt that its prolly 2 to 3 times cheaper to ship something from the UK to the US then it is to go US to UK

I keep seeing people say this, but if you mail things first-class it's actually still reasonable to ship to the UK.

But there are problems with international first class:
No insurance available
No tracking available
Small maximum package size

These problems make first class useless for Reaper's Kickstarter needs.

T

coolmandool wrote:
Hello. Long time lurker here. Felt compelled to post about Bones 2 though.

I was late on the kickstarter bandwagon so I missed Bones 1 to my chagrin. In hindsight, it was crazy good value and amongst the piles of 'ok' sculpts (let's be fair, if GW had put out some of those sculpts, dakka would be crying bloody murder), there were some amazing sculpts like Nethyrmaul and Kaladrax. I feel that it was this mix of crazy value and one or two superb centrepieces that made Bones 1 so legendary.

Now with Bones 2, I jumped on right away. But I am getting more and more wary.

Firstly, there arent, in my eyes anyway, any amazing sculpts. The dragons are ok... But nothing to write home about. In short, there's no Nethyrmaul in there that makes me go 'wow'.

Secondly the value equation is less appealing, particularly as an Aussie. The shipping will probably add 60% to the cost and they definitely seem less generous than last time. Granted, the core pack is still pretty good value, but the number of great sculpts Ill actually paint up amounts to a dozen or so.

Not sure if anyone else feels like I do. I am sure they will beat Bones 1 in funding, and they will not give a damn about a single backer like me, but I am a tad disappointed after missing Bones 1, that Bones 2 seems less spectacular...

It is early though, so please prove me wrong Reaper!

It's the second day. I doubt Bones1 had that much value on Day2

I guess I am comparing this kickstarter to the previous one. At a similar $1m funding level, bones 1 core had more minis, Nethyrmaul and negligible shipping.

Wait and see is the best approach, but I am hoping for an amazing sculpt to land soon.

I just have to keep reminding myself we're only on day 2.

Doesn't make sense for Reaper to bring out all the big guns just yet.

coolmandool wrote:
I guess I am comparing this kickstarter to the previous one. At a similar $1m funding level, bones 1 core had more minis, Nethyrmaul and negligible shipping.

Wait and see is the best approach, but I am hoping for an amazing sculpt to land soon.

Looks can be decieving.

The final count on the $100 level was 241 miniatures with a big hunk being tiny (familiars, rats, kobolds, vermin) making up nearly 40 figures. Right now (day 2) we have 142 minis in the base package with almost all of them being man sized (or at least dwarf sized) and larger.

At roughly the same time in the campaign, funding wise, ($1.2 million) KS1 had 179 miniatures in the Vampire package. More, yes, but to my eye, the more was less significant in many ways. Granted, because of the way Reaper has been choosing figures, the ones in the first KS would largely be more attractive. They used their best selling figures in metal as a guage of what to convert to Bones.
_________

In other news, we are less than $8K away from the next goal. If every backer increased their pledge by $1 we could see the next goal and ReaperBryan could go to bed.

coolmandool wrote:
Hello. Long time lurker here. Felt compelled to post about Bones 2 though.
Firstly, there arent, in my eyes anyway, any amazing sculpts. The dragons are ok... But nothing to write home about. In short, there's no Nethyrmaul in there that makes me go 'wow'.
Secondly the value equation is less appealing, particularly as an Aussie. The shipping will probably add 60% to the cost and they definitely seem less generous than last time. Granted, the core pack is still pretty good value, but the number of great sculpts Ill actually paint up amounts to a dozen or so.
Not sure if anyone else feels like I do. I am sure they will beat Bones 1 in funding, and they will not give a damn about a single backer like me, but I am a tad disappointed after missing Bones 1, that Bones 2 seems less spectacular...
It is early though, so please prove me wrong Reaper!

Bear in mind that the big guns like Nethyrmaul and Kalidrax weren't on show during Day 2 of the Bones 1 campaign, which is where we are right now. Same deal with the "value" in Vampire vs "Core" in terms of generosity. I don't expect the $100 level to necessarily be as good a deal in the end as Vampire, but then again it's still a definite possibility, simply with the stretches farther apart. Shipping is going to be a bear, but again, for the core level it won't be horrific. It'll start doing that when you add on a bunch of the large extras, like the Kraken. Then again, Kalidrax in Bones at RRP is now US$83, and so if you're hoping to get stuff like that, it'll still be worth picking them up here. On the other hand, it won't be worth getting 4 Krakens "just because", as was the case with Kali last time.


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timd wrote:

But there are problems with international first class:
No insurance available
No tracking available
Small maximum package size

These problems make first class useless for Reaper's Kickstarter needs.

T

It might be worthwhile looking into UPS/FedEx type solutions, as well as the kinds of discounts Reaper can look at for getting 2k or so packages shipped internationally.

coolmandool wrote:
Hello. Long time lurker here. Felt compelled to post about Bones 2 though.

I was late on the kickstarter bandwagon so I missed Bones 1 to my chagrin. In hindsight, it was crazy good value and amongst the piles of 'ok' sculpts (let's be fair, if GW had put out some of those sculpts, dakka would be crying bloody murder), there were some amazing sculpts like Nethyrmaul and Kaladrax. I feel that it was this mix of crazy value and one or two superb centrepieces that made Bones 1 so legendary.

Now with Bones 2, I jumped on right away. But I am getting more and more wary.

Firstly, there arent, in my eyes anyway, any amazing sculpts. The dragons are ok... But nothing to write home about. In short, there's no Nethyrmaul in there that makes me go 'wow'.

Secondly the value equation is less appealing, particularly as an Aussie. The shipping will probably add 60% to the cost and they definitely seem less generous than last time. Granted, the core pack is still pretty good value, but the number of great sculpts Ill actually paint up amounts to a dozen or so.

Not sure if anyone else feels like I do. I am sure they will beat Bones 1 in funding, and they will not give a damn about a single backer like me, but I am a tad disappointed after missing Bones 1, that Bones 2 seems less spectacular...

It is early though, so please prove me wrong Reaper!

Keep in mind that there are 24 more days for the deal to get better. Bones 1 didn't look so hot on its first day, either.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:

Anti-Paladin, Whispering Tyrant, Two Hellknights and something else?


For some reason, I thought some of those were already done. Either way, more free stuff isn't bad.

I would like to see some more Egyptian/ Desert styled stuff though. I really liked those ones that we have seen so far.

I think part of the Pathfinder releases might be contract fullfillment. Pathfinder has become THE fantasy RPG, so it is a valuable license to have.

I would also love to see more Egyptian stuff, especially some Anubis warriors and some living, human Nefsokar soldiers. Some Sci Fi stuff couldn't hurt, either.

I expect the next expansion to be for Sci Fi wargamers...or maybe I just hope it will be.

I have heard that Expansion 2 will be more wargamer centric, with a possible focus on mounted stuff.

We will also be seeing terrain Soon™...though, that is apparently going to be as options.

Just got this from Reaper, so we should see soon enough:

Reaper Miniatures says:
Soon we will be posting an on-line tool to manage add-ons, supply your contact information [mailing address] and calculate shipping charges that you can use to know how much your total pledge should be. It's coming very soon.

For now just add up everything you want and pledge that amount.

 AntomanElven wrote:

 Forar wrote:

decker_cky wrote:
It would save 5% on the shipping, since presumably there would be a 5% charge for paypal or whatever is used to add on shipping.

Paypal's fees are a hell of a lot less than 5%. A cursory Googling indicates it's more like 1.9 to 2.9% with an essentially negligable fee (30 cents). Less than 3% seems pretty awesome compared to ~10%.

Like, that could be tens of thousands of dollars over the course of a campaign of this size. That's not chump change when the 'profit' (above and beyond the vast expansion of their business) was only 50k or so with the first round.

A kickstarter is not a store. It is not intended to make money, it is intended to achieve a goal. The goal for reaper was the creation of new molds for their plastic bones line and the purchase/installation of the machines that make plastic minis.

I fail to see how any of this relates to what I have said. I said nothing about it being treated as a store or what the money was used for.

I merely mused aloud about the apparent change to their manner of handling S&H fees. Which IS different, and working under the assumption that these are intelligent professionals at the helm, it's surely for a reason.

I doubt potentially saving ~7% was something they missed, considering the raw costs involved. If it works out well, it wouldn't surprise me for "S&H to be determined more specifically at a later date" to become more common for super massive (read: multi million dollar) projects, the same way pledge managers have.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
Looks can be decieving.

The final count on the $100 level was 241 miniatures with a big hunk being tiny (familiars, rats, kobolds, vermin) making up nearly 40 figures. Right now (day 2) we have 142 minis in the base package with almost all of them being man sized (or at least dwarf sized) and larger.

At roughly the same time in the campaign, funding wise, ($1.2 million) KS1 had 179 miniatures in the Vampire package. More, yes, but to my eye, the more was less significant in many ways. Granted, because of the way Reaper has been choosing figures, the ones in the first KS would largely be more attractive. They used their best selling figures in metal as a guage of what to convert to Bones.

There was a whole bunch of already created Bones filling out the previous kickstarter too. I know that at least the skeletons, one of the zombies and the kobolds were ready before the kickstarter.

Huntsman and lich look neat. Will not complain about more free figures.

Maybe we'll see the big evil hooded dude from the Pathfinder line end up in Bones? I don't feel like paying so much for him, and he looks like he'd make a great generic bad guy.

Any word on whether they're still going to be rolling out the sculptor- centric options?

They better get Weibe and Elliot back on sculpting up some new Reptus stuff- I've just about cleared Reaper out of every reptile they've made. I think I'm missing the Brood Dragon and a couple Nagendra units.

Maybe more Nefoskar stuff will end up in option two for the expansion. They forgot all about the Ammat!

As somebody that missed the first one, I'd love to see some of the last KS bones make a reappearance as paid addons for old-KS prices.

Also, the figure choice for this one is far weaker than the original. It's not just about the most-popular already becoming bones last time, these all seam a lot more specialised. Feels like it's less of a "here's the next most popular kits" and more of a "here's the niche stuff we probably wouldn't have ever done as bones if not for a KS", like Reaper went from the absolute best and 2nd-best seling figs the first time around and then skipped over 3rd and 4th stringers. Still a fantastic deal, and totally worth what I'm getting, but there's way less that wow me this time around and way more that make me go "huh? Erm, well, huh. Ok I guess. The price is right at least".

i rather hope this one goes just as large as the first, but, while i initially pledged, i dropped it a wee bit ago
i may check it again in a few weeks and see what the individual add-ons are, but i had to admit to myself that i have no use for a lot of the stuff in the $100 pledge

 Kalamadea wrote:
As somebody that missed the first one, I'd love to see some of the last KS bones make a reappearance as paid addons for old-KS prices.

Won't happen as they're currently selling those minis on their online store to customers AND to retailers, who would be pissed off to see them being sold more cheaply direct. Plus I'm pretty sure it's against the KS rules anyway.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
I have heard that Expansion 2 will be more wargamer centric, with a possible focus on mounted stuff.

Al I want is my 24 very nicely sculpted reaper trolls. Every time I see a reaper troll I think "amazing! I want 3 different poses in the same style and 24 of them!".

That cave troll in the expansion is awesome, want it. Same goes for the swamp troll. I'm hoping that eventually enough of these will be released in a similar style for me to cobble them together into proper units.

Mounted stuff could be interesting, it'll have to work pretty hard to beat mantic's price point on that though.

I'll probably end up buying at retail and converting, I've just done the maths and have worked out that while, yes, $10 for a dragon in this KS is a good deal, that will likely be $20 once ship/handling/taxes is factored in and I can just buy it in the UK for a similar (25% higher) price from one of the places that gets bulk retail shipping from Reaper (largely eliminating the insanely high USPS fees) and from there it's a matter of affordable domestic shipping to get it to my door. Deathsleet was $10, very nice mini, an £16.80 to buy in the UK.. kickstarter still offered a better deal even with shipping and duty.. but not massively less, either. And that's a relatively expensive one, a lot of the $10 bones i minis ended up retailing for £10-£12 over here. The kickstarter economics don't quite work out on this one for me personally, I've looked at what £100-£120 (the eventual cost of $100 spent on this KS) will get me buying stuff from the bones I range at retail pricing, choosing only the minis I want, and it's much more appealing.

About 60% of the current package I would throw in a cupboard or not use which is also a bit of a problem since I'm very waste-averse, both in environmental terms and in "I don't want stuff junking up the joint" terms.. I dunno, it feels like this could have used some more structure. Undead/ evil things booster, heroes booster, Nature things/ elements booster, Trolls and other beasties booster, large dragons booster, sci-fi booster etc.

I've seen some relatively massive KS's from CMoN that have offered really good cherry-pick choices, seems a bit odd that there isn't more thought put into this other than the expansions (which again, seem to be a completely random selection of entirely unrelated miniatures).

I'm starting to feel unsure about the sculpt quality, too.. for example:



The lich and the guy with the antlers look amazing, guy in the top right is ok, the other two look like crap, though, as if they were mid-90's sculpts that would be better off with a resculpt.

The quantity of good stuff might swing it for me in the end so there's no harm in clutching an early bird for now.

It's looking likely that I'll need around 300 minis in the core set just to get 100 minis that I actually want, though... and then hope to sell off the rest of the stuff to try and break even on the shipping and taxes.

Reaper could learn a lot from CMoN.. they've very carefully refined their KS processes and structures over the years and while I often don't like their products, their range of choice and organization is generally very good.

 Kalamadea wrote:
As somebody that missed the first one, I'd love to see some of the last KS bones make a reappearance as paid addons for old-KS prices.

Also, the figure choice for this one is far weaker than the original. It's not just about the most-popular already becoming bones last time, these all seam a lot more specialised. Feels like it's less of a "here's the next most popular kits" and more of a "here's the niche stuff we probably wouldn't have ever done as bones if not for a KS", like Reaper went from the absolute best and 2nd-best seling figs the first time around and then skipped over 3rd and 4th stringers. Still a fantastic deal, and totally worth what I'm getting, but there's way less that wow me this time around and way more that make me go "huh? Erm, well, huh. Ok I guess. The price is right at least".

Really? I felt there were quite a lot of left-field figures in the first lot that weren't "most popular". IMEF Marines? Townsfolk?

Reaper could learn a lot from CMoN.. they've very carefully refined their KS processes and structures over the years and while I often don't like their products, their range of choice and organization is generally very good.

It is helpful to remember though, that while CMoN appears to have there stuff together, Reapers 1 and 1/12th campaigns have been more successful in total backers, total dollars and by a huge margin...total line items.

There isnt too much which can be learned when comparing smaller to larger or single retail package (with 20 or so one time stretch goals) with 200 or so production items which you intend to continue selling for the next 10 years or more.

On the sculpts themselves, Reaper has always had a broad range of sculptors with some better than others. The Pathfinder specific figures tend to be done by more skilled sculptors, so while they might not be your cup of tea...I think the appearance is more to do with the artwork from the Pathfinder book that they are using to sculpt from and less about any actual short comings on the sculpting. I am an old school US fantasy guy, so most those dont appeal to me in the same way that the UKs take on fantasy doesnt appeal to me (with all your pointed hats). That said, they are faithful representations of the art they are supposed to be.


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 Azazelx wrote:

 Kalamadea wrote:
As somebody that missed the first one, I'd love to see some of the last KS bones make a reappearance as paid addons for old-KS prices.

Also, the figure choice for this one is far weaker than the original. It's not just about the most-popular already becoming bones last time, these all seam a lot more specialised. Feels like it's less of a "here's the next most popular kits" and more of a "here's the niche stuff we probably wouldn't have ever done as bones if not for a KS", like Reaper went from the absolute best and 2nd-best seling figs the first time around and then skipped over 3rd and 4th stringers. Still a fantastic deal, and totally worth what I'm getting, but there's way less that wow me this time around and way more that make me go "huh? Erm, well, huh. Ok I guess. The price is right at least".

Really? I felt there were quite a lot of left-field figures in the first lot that weren't "most popular". IMEF Marines? Townsfolk?

On the first he is largely right. If you look at the Top 50 and Top 100 lists from Reaper, those have almost all been turned into Bones.

http://www.reapermini.com/RetailSupport/RackDeals

I wouldnt say they skipped over the next best sellers though. The solo miniature market has always been rather scattered, so it can often seem like left field items (or skipping 3rd and 4th most popular levels). They have adjusted to include more big stuff, things which due to cost in metal wont show up on the above lists...but they would not be well served to ignore their sales data entirely.

I think the value or quality of a lot of the choices are going to boil down to individual tastes. I'm quite happy with some of the choices, as I was planning on getting them in the near future! The big troll, the turtle men, the lizard guy in the core 30, the dragon turtle, the horned huntsman looking guy, the pathfinder cavalier and samurai- all things on my radar to get (and had been in various shopping carts on previous shopping binges).

Purchasing them all individually would probably end up close to the price of a core pledge anyways. Might as well get them in Bones and let the whole family mess with them rather than have all the metals coveted by myself, and myself alone.

I am having difficult with seeing what all the issues are. Day 2 or 3 and 150+ minis for approx $160 with more to come. Are we just searching for issues here?

As for the comparison with CMON - one, Reaper did extremely well with their first Bones offerring. The communication was excellent and considering how big the damn thing exploded to I thought the delays were acceptable. I bet Reaper were more surprised than anyone that they suddenly had 17k backers expecting minis!

I can seem me being in this for approx $200 ish and being quite happy with the results. Sure there will be total dogs in this - Reaper is infamous for some awesome sculpts and then at the same time famous for so so so many WTF is that hideousness!!

But I do think we need to dial down the anxiousness just a little in this thread.

A interesting response to why is this KS being run differently than the first on goal levels.. I believe they are going to run a better KS this time opposed to the last..

Creator Reaper Miniatures less than a minute ago
We learned from mistakes and miscalculations last time. Comparing the two is not as simple as all that. For one, we did a LOT more double levels last time, too, and we aren't doing that again.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but to expect this to be an exact repeat will set you up for disappointment. We are not doing things the same, from levels, to goals, to reward tiers, and a billion other small changes. The question at the end of the day is "is this a good deal, and do I want these items at this price?" if yes, here you are. If not, there are other very worthy projects out there that may have what you seek.

Well said, Reaper. I think people are expecting free puppies and BJs. I'm just expecting a lot of good minis at a good price. Also, it has been said previously but bears emphasis, DAY 2!

 pretre wrote:
Well said, Reaper. I think people are expecting free puppies and BJs. I'm just expecting a lot of good minis at a good price. Also, it has been said previously but bears emphasis, DAY 2!

Totally agree,