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Project Update #100: Merry Christmas - Here's something extra for your stocking
Posted by CoolMiniOrNot ♥ Like

Merry Christmas

The Soda Pop team wants to wish you all a very Merry Christmas, and wanted to share a special gift with all our backers. So, wherever you are, we want to thank you for your continued support, as we continue to finalize production on Relic Knights.

http://sodapopminiatures.com/media/downloads/relic-knights-art-of-calamity-web.pdf

All our best,
- The Soda Pop Team

Soda Pop Deke from their forum Q&A this afternoon

"Production is underway just got the e-mail confirming it. More updates as we get them."

which since European New Year does not matter in China means they should have a fair chance of getting everything finished before Chinese New Year shuts the whole country down for a month

I'd be reasonably hopeful the USA stuff can be sorted in time, but for us in Europe there's the time consuming picking and boxing up of our pledges by CMON staff (or under CMON staff supervision) and I hope than can be sorted by 31st Jan otherwise we could end up with a hideous release gap of sereral months rather than several weeks

The most recent full update:

Update #101

Dec 31, 2013
Happy New Year!
8 comments
7 likes

The New Year is upon us and with we have the pdf copy of the Relic Knights manga.



Download your copy now.

We also have one final piece of news to help ring in the New Year—Production has started on the Battle Boxes and Super Dungeon Explore figures! We will keep you up-to-date on production progress and shipping plans as we receive them.

Now what are you waiting for? Go celebrate the start of a new year!

–Soda Pop Miniatures

By my (very) rough calculations it will take three weeks at most to produce everything for all of the backers. That leaves one week to pack things up and ship things out of China before everything shuts down. They might cut it close but I think it is possible.

 Alpharius wrote:

The only coherent thing in this is fan service......

The action is impossible to follow, characters show up just to show up...

well that fists will oh so many Manga titles

No, at least when you refer to decent or good manga titles.

they condensed the malya story in too few pages and the whole thing makes no sense whatsoever.

If they take pride in their work, this is a thing that should really reconsider.

That comic has a lot of boob, crotch and butt closeups.

Just about every page or every other.

I think that the bigger issue, as previously noted, is that it just doesn't make any sense...

So what exactly was so confusing about it? Princess is being cooped up for being too unlady-like. She busts out and goes to the race she qualified for. Cue Leopold Magnus(evil doer) who wants Mr. Tomn, she becomes a Relic Knight, takes out bad guys hired to kill her, wins race. Rin was assigned to watch out for her(but did nothing but watch), Betty and Lug were working for another racer that got trashed, and it was a Black Diamond heavy weapons team that tried to nuke the Princess. Seemed pretty straight forward, if a little choppy.

I disagree its not straightforward at all choppy quite a lot.

Rin is not assigned to watch for her, at least not in the story it is supposed to convey, there is no explanation why she must undress to time it perfectly, doesn't show if she is hit or by whom, we can assume its the black diamond team, doesn't explain why she is out of her body and why or how she transforms her vehicle to a relic, or why it is transformed and not blown out, why she passes the circuit walls without exploding to atoms, why it is automatically repaired after her out of body form and real form connect (I guess?) and so on.

Its not straightforward, it is chopped to an enjoyable, unreadable mess misses many details it has on the text version and leaves many things unexplained.

 Alpharius wrote:
I think that the bigger issue, as previously noted, is that it just doesn't make any sense...

Let's all withdraw our pledges in protest.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
I disagree its not straightforward at all choppy quite a lot.

Rin is not assigned to watch for her, at least not in the story it is supposed to convey, there is no explanation why she must undress to time it perfectly, doesn't show if she is hit or by whom, we can assume its the black diamond team, doesn't explain why she is out of her body and why or how she transforms her vehicle to a relic, or why it is transformed and not blown out, why she passes the circuit walls without exploding to atoms, why it is automatically repaired after her out of body form and real form connect (I guess?) and so on.

Its not straightforward, it is chopped to an enjoyable, unreadable mess misses many details it has on the text version and leaves many things unexplained.

I interpreted Rin is assigned to watch her, as in she mentions some female hasn't shown up yet, then later in the comic mentions how well Princess Malya did. You know, I have no idea why she had to unzip her suit either. Top of page 22 has the Black Diamond Team with the missile launcher pointing at her, and later she smokes them on page 24. We can assume her vehicle changes because her Relic was activated for some reason(probably a near-death experience would be my bet). I don't know what you mean about the circuit walls and exploding into atoms. How many pages do you have? Mine totals out to 34. I'm starting to wonder if they may have messed up some pages/sent out didn't versions.

The manga is the story of Malya they posted on the kickstarter (unfortunately only two parts, it is probably 4) the Manga is so horribly chopped that the story is not conveyed and since the last part(s?) of the text version are missing we cannot figure out what the story really is.

in any case in the text it describes that the energy walls are designed to turn vehicles and drivers to dust to prevent collateral damage to residential areas bellow, something the manga shows at some point but does not explain, among other things.

Got my email back from cmon regarding a refund just not sure what to do.
I really want these minis to be as good as the metals/resins/concept art but the little we have seen is less than inspiring.

Deke posted this last night

I was told today that battle boxes and RK SDE is almost done and that I will get a finish date soon. I've also requested production updates on non-battle boxmodels, shipping plan updates from CMoN, and some pictures of the finish production contents, because I know we all want to see them!

Battle boxes are the starter sets, the non box models are the extra add on models it sounds like they haven't started them yet with 12 working days (AFAIK) until Chinese new year I don't think they are going to make it on time.

I'll give you a hint, they're not.

So that pushes it all out to...what then?

April?

sometime in the near future, I think that covers it.

Depends on ones definition of "near". >.>

"sometime in the future" might be more accurate. :-P

... but as someone waiting on the Robotech minis campaign, which haven't even begun production, I feel that pain/frustration.

I'm wondering if that little burst of communication we briefly was only to offset any soda pop/ ninja division reputation damage effect on Megaman.

 Forar wrote:
Depends on ones definition of "near". >.>

"sometime in the future" might be more accurate. :-P

... but as someone waiting on the Robotech minis campaign, which haven't even begun production, I feel that pain/frustration.

Awwww, I was trying to be gentle and not write "in the not that much distant future".

Well we will probably have them sometime this year, maybe in the middle.

Joyboozer wrote:
I'm wondering if that little burst of communication we briefly was only to offset any soda pop/ ninja division reputation damage effect on Megaman.

Surely not coolmini never does that at all.

A new potential hiccup (for EU backers) has surfaced via the Rivit Wars fulfilment

The EU pledged were to be delivered from Germany (I think after being packed in China in the same way Relic Knights is due to be)

however Dave C has just posted this on the Rivit Wars thread

"Looks like us European backers won't be getting our copies anytime soon - tied up in Germany apparently even though the game is marked 14+ the parts look like childs toys so they are insisting that they apply for and get a CE mark if they can't convince the authorities otherwise they will have to go throught the CE application process and can't distribute the game until it meets the CE standards which could involve a redesign of some parts worst case.

Creator CoolMiniOrNot about 1 hour ago

The German customs is demanding a CE marking when Rivet Wars is clearly marked as 14 and above. This is an error on their part, and we are correcting them.
-David

more info here

http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/sectors/toys/files/004_greyzone_rev2_en.pdf

EDIT:

further info apparently they have a CE cert for a 14+ game they now have to convince the German authorities that this is not a childs toy despite the design and packaging

Creator CoolMiniOrNot 2 minutes ago
...
Rivet Wars looks very toy like. But let me clarify, we did CE testing, and there is currently a CE 14+ on the box with the proper documentation. What they are asking for is documentation for kids toys which obviously is not necessary. But we are working on it and we are confident that we will get it resolved.



Hopefully it's just the 'cute' factor that's making Rivit Wars look like a young kids toy (in which case Relic Knights) should be safe (too sexy for young kids) from hitting the same problem,

but if it's just 'big box of plastic minis = childrens toy' then there could be issues for us too

Can we have educated custom officials? I knew my country was bad on that part, but Germany too?

Sigh.

I think Relic Knights will be fine in this regard the theme and miniatures are far more adult in nature and SDE already has a CE 13+ marking on it so it has a precedent where as Rivet Wars is a new game and the pieces are far more child's toy llke.

I think this game will be fine in that regard, too- but intended or not, rivet wars does look very much like something a child would want to play with, so I can see the issue there.

Wouldn't it be nice if this campaign were at the point where folks could worry about customs

My fear is less that it's something that we should (legitimately) be worried about

and more that if CMON 'upsets' the German customs system (even if they are in the right) they may find their future stuff will get looked at more closely (and slowly) just because some of those involved may want to prove a point

government agencies never like being proved wrong

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
My fear is less that it's something that we should (legitimately) be worried about

and more that if CMON 'upsets' the German customs system (even if they are in the right) they may find their future stuff will get looked at more closely (and slowly) just because some of those involved may want to prove a point

government agencies never like being proved wrong

I've received my Rivet Wars stuff and looking at the models (which are very nicely made) I can see where a customs agent that isn't well versed in boardgames would see a problem with them. They remind me alot of a toy called a weeble.



Relic Knights is a completly different beast given it's art direction and style. It has a much more mature them and they are mostly multi part kits.

UNCLEBADTOUCH wrote:
I'll give you a hint, they're not.

Are you a wizard?