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I don’t see Patreon as worth it. There’s a lot of free content if you will invest some effort to find it.

 Primark G wrote:
I don’t see Patreon as worth it. There’s a lot of free content if you will invest some effort to find it.

This has been an argument for years "What you mean you subscribe to National Geographic? the books are free at the library"

For some people its more about helping the hpbby and keeping more and better content coming out. For others its not worth it, its completely up to the person and their income. If i had 6k a month i would put my money into one i like just to help out the community.

The issue with Spikey Bits is that their website is full of ads, and tends to just have rehashed BS articles. It's basically like BOLS, there is sometimes some good stuff but a lot of it is clickbait "NEW MODELS - REVEALED!" stuff and passing off anything they get passed as rumors.

I listen to their podcast (The Long War) and that's about it, and even that seems to get obnoxious because of how they talk.

I would not pay for their Patreon. I did the free trial of their membership page, and it was not only very hard to navigate but didn't have a lot of worthwhile content so I cancelled it because I could get better content for free just by looking. Plus, the way they run their site is a little scummy and their battle reports tend to be trashy meta lists.

I find a lot of it is a basic rehash and there is lots of misleading info.

I know the guy from next level painting appears on “the long war” pod cast and I believe that network is also linked to spikes bits. I don’t really watch the guy that runs spikey bits but I do really enjoy next level painting as I feel he gives the best step by step guides and really knows how to use an airbrush.

Me and my group also ordered a bunch of models from dicehead which I believe is affiliated as well and everything came in well packaged and on time for Christmas. Some other companies I ordered from are just getting my Black Friday purchases to me now.

The actual spikey bits website doesn’t interest me though as they push what often comes off as tabloid level click bait. I’ve also never been into the whole monthly box thing as I’d rather pick out exactly what my money is purchasing

I also love Next Level Painting, but I think he is only affiliated with Spikey Bits through the Long War stuff. Spikey Bits itself is as bait-filled and insubstantial as everyone makes it out to be.

Anyone who is tempted to do the Spikeybits patreon because of Kenny Boucher of Next Level Painting should just support his instead:

https://www.patreon.com/nextlevelpainting

Is it worth it ? Well it all depends on what you want.
If you want to support spiky bits then yeah sure giving them money supports them that's cool : )

If you couldn't care less about them and just want to have a subscription model that send models to you every month then it depends, on what you are expecting from it. Are you really into random stuff ? Like would you pay me 30$ to each month to walk into a GW store and just spend ~25$ at random stuff and ship it to you ?

I mean forreal............i wouldnt even pay for miniwargaming. They are top dogs but when i got the free membership i was really unimpressed. You think there are all these batreps you couldnt see but every video plays off of theyre site which is totally not mobile friendly, theyre forums look dead (why wouldnt you just use dakka?) Im sure the painting tutorials are good but i can find anything on youtube free. Everything looks good on youtube because.........its on youtube.

I like those guys and am glad others have the money to support them but i need that money for models and books.

As far as im concerned if they cant get a monthly out of me its a shot in the dark for anyone else

 Cephalobeard wrote:
Most recently, Fenrypa Forge (SP?) requested SpikeyBits not use their art they made in their articles, because 1.) they did not give them permission and 2.) they did not agree with the context of the message they were putting out.

Big boy robby b and his infinite ad machine sent him back a message basically telling him to lawyer up or they'll use his art how they please.

That's pretty damning, and basically tells me everything I need to know about what kind of person he is. Screenshots seem to back it up, too.

No respect for people who feth over artists and use their work without permission, or try to threaten them into silence/submission with legal action (which is even more galling when THEY'RE the ones who are in the wrong; like those idiots who always try to fall back on "fair use" even when it doesn't apply). I'm glad they eventually respected his wishes but the fact that it took him extra time and pressure from the community to make it happen is inexcusable. If an artist contacts you and politely asks you not to use their work then that's the end of it, basically. I hate when people act like they're "entitled" to someone else's art or have this "feth you I can do whatever I want" attitude.

As for the Patreon I personally don't think it sounds like its worth it. I'd much rather spend my money on kits I know I actually want or need rather than spend a decent chunk of money on random gak I might not even be able to use every month. And as it was said earlier if you're only thinking about it to support a certain artist I'd look at supporting the artist's Patreon instead. But obviously if people think it's worth it then go for it, it's your money and I don't want to tell anyone what to do with it.

Squigs wrote:
If you couldn't care less about them and just want to have a subscription model that send models to you every month then it depends, on what you are expecting from it. Are you really into random stuff ? Like would you pay me 30$ to each month to walk into a GW store and just spend ~25$ at random stuff and ship it to you ?

It already sounded like a weird idea, but when it's put like this I really want to know who thinks it's worthwhile? Every gamer I know has cupboards full of random crap they're never going to paint, or that seemed like a good idea at the time, and that's stuff they willingly bought or traded for! Why would you pay someone else to send you random crap? That's not rhetorical, BTW, I really want to know, because, having thought about it, it just makes zero sense.

Slipspace wrote:

Squigs wrote:
If you couldn't care less about them and just want to have a subscription model that send models to you every month then it depends, on what you are expecting from it. Are you really into random stuff ? Like would you pay me 30$ to each month to walk into a GW store and just spend ~25$ at random stuff and ship it to you ?

It already sounded like a weird idea, but when it's put like this I really want to know who thinks it's worthwhile? Every gamer I know has cupboards full of random crap they're never going to paint, or that seemed like a good idea at the time, and that's stuff they willingly bought or traded for! Why would you pay someone else to send you random crap? That's not rhetorical, BTW, I really want to know, because, having thought about it, it just makes zero sense.

So the spikey bits is also lying when they claim if you spend 30$ you get that amount of stuff + bits etc? (which sounds dubious enough I wouldn't even consider it even if I lived in US).

Well not that it matters. Don't like random bags anyway. Odds of actually being useful is so small even if they sent me 90$ worth of models for 30$ would be too much hassle trying to sell them away.

If you could at least specify race/army it might be worth it.

A patreon shouldn't be worth anything asides from the content you get out of it.

that's the whole point of it.

you arent paying some one for a product you are donating to artists so that they can keep doing what they do and occasionally get a callout or personallized something for those who donate more.

anything else is a scam.

I heard they pretty much copy other blogs content and post it giving no credit.

 Primark G wrote:
I heard they pretty much copy other blogs content and post it giving no credit.

BoLS, Faeit and Spikey Bits all kind of do that. Once a juicy rumor breaks out somewhere you can expect all of them to screenshot the forum or twitter post it came from and run an article on it titled: "REVEALED: GW CHAIRMAN INVOLVED IN SLAANESHI SEX CULT!"

But TBH just seems like SB does it the most.

Sometimes it's honestly hard to tell because they all run nearly the same thing at the same time. Although there is one big example of Spikey Bits using someone's pictures without his permission and telling him to feth himself when he requested that they take them down, so that's not cool.