Arena Rex: Gladiator Combat in a Mythic Age

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**Alpharius**

Good luck with that - I haven't seen anyone be even close to disappointed with Arena Rex yet!

**plastictrees**

Would have been all over this, but my youngest son was arriving and establishing his initial tyrannical rule of our household at the time.

Anything delivered from this yet?

**spiralingcadaver**

Nope, not for a while. The pledge manager just recently closed. You can see the beta rules and art on their forum, though.

**OrlandotheTechnicoloured**

Early WIPs of Nero (the Bull ridden by Septimius) who has grow larger than the original art

and Caho-Ta (the horse ridden by Hroka) who has shrunk to a more realistic size

more angles on the wips can be seen here

http://artmikh.blogspot.co.uk/

**RiTides**

I checked it out to see where you were getting the scale from, I'm guessing it's this:

... You might be interested to know that the outside circle in blue's got a diameter of 6 cm.

If they keep the bull separate from the rider, I will be very interested in picking this up

**Gomez**

RiTides wrote:

If they keep the bull separate from the rider, I will be very interested in picking this up

RRG has already said that riders will be separate pieces from their mounts to allow for riders getting knocked off and dismounting in game.

**jonolikespie**

Spoiler for NSFW I guess..

Spoiler:

I haven't seen this posted yet, and holy

it's beautiful

I've pledged for 1 but now I am wishing I got 2 or even 3.

**DaveC**

The update had Iason as well

And more Nero

I had Euryale on my list until I decided to cut the titans now I know they are titans but she looks a little to big to me and tail looks too long if you actually uncoil it - it's a good sculpt but I don't regret not getting it - Nero on the other hand I may well have to get later.

**RiTides**

Iason looks fantastic! This campaign is showing what you can get when you hire top quality sculptors.

**Piston Honda**

Spoiler:

**cincydooley**

Not a huge fan of Infelix (his face looks weird) but damned it everything else isn't gorgeous. I Looooooooove that Marcus Furious so very much.

**spiralingcadaver**

Anyone getting Marcus Furious who isn't going to be using the optional shield? Would be interested...

**Piston Honda**

Something a bit off with Infelix's upper lip

**cincydooley**

Yeah. His musculature is very angular too. He's literally the only sculpt I don't like in the line so far.

**Piston Honda**

his muscles are pretty much like every other other model, abs that even the Spartans from 300 would be jealous of

if you look at the model from various angles the shadow being cast on infelix gives him and all other models angular muscles.

**OrlandotheTechnicoloured**

Nothing new yet, but hints that we may get more images soon

Creator Red Republic Games about 1 hour ago

Lupa's sculpt is now complete! The next update will have a link to many many photos of the finished piece. MIKH was very thorough in his photography.
-
I'm working on shooting the 360 views of Euryale and Viatrix. They, among others will be included in the next update as well.

**RiTides**

I wish I'd gone in on this one instead of Crocodile Games' "WarGods of Olympus" campaign. The models here are pretty mind-blowingly good, in my opinion. My only concern is if the exposed flesh means that some skilled modelling would be needed to hide joints, but they certainly look fantastic.

**OrlandotheTechnicoloured**

We should be good on that as they are using excellent sculptors who tend to know what they're doing when cutting the greens for mold making

**silent25**

RiTides wrote:
I wish I'd gone in on this one instead of Crocodile Games' "WarGods of Olympus" campaign. The models here are pretty mind-blowingly good, in my opinion. My only concern is if the exposed flesh means that some skilled modelling would be needed to hide joints, but they certainly look fantastic.

What makes you regret the CG one? Went in on both and have been happy with the sculpting and feedback on both. Wargods might be moving a bit slow, but given CG's past history, that was expected.

**RiTides**

Regarding the WarGods campaign: I wasn't aware of CG's past history, so I didn't realize I should expect it to be slow. I'm getting pretty exhausted with sculptors who do awesome work, but don't know how to manage a campaign, getting 6 figures all at once and then struggling to deliver :-/

So far I've really been wow'ed by Arena Rex, and Mierce Miniatures, for example... the common denominator seems to be that while they raise a huge chunk of cash, they are not actually the sculptors- they are paying out much smaller chunks of cash for deliverables, and thus seem to have better oversight of their projects. Kingdom Death would be another example of that.

By contrast, "first party" Kickstarter campaigns where the actual sculptor is both managing and fulfilling the campaign, as well as sculpting, seem to really not be managed as well from my experience so far (Imbrian Arts, Red Box Games, WarGods of Olympus, are all campaigns I've recently experienced this on). And yes, I know two of those were originally involved in trollcast- but both have continued to have new and longer delays in their new sculpts (having switched to metal and launched a new campaign in metal, respectively).

This is just something I've observed and I've started to think that for campaigns making large amounts ($50K+) it is better to be basically paying someone to oversee the work, rather than to have the sculptor try to handle managing the campaign, fulfillment (emails, shipping, the whole nine yards), AND sculpting all on their own. Results are still coming in, of course, but I think it's pretty fair to say it's a trend that campaigns with an "overseer" handling the funds are being handled more smoothly in a lot of cases.

**spiralingcadaver**

Good analysis, there. Definitely agreed, though I hadn't seen it before.

**silent25**

RiTides wrote:
Regarding the WarGods campaign: I wasn't aware of CG's past history, so I didn't realize I should expect it to be slow. I'm getting pretty exhausted with sculptors who do awesome work, but don't know how to manage a campaign, getting 6 figures all at once and then struggling to deliver :-/

So far I've really been wow'ed by Arena Rex, and Mierce Miniatures, for example... the common denominator seems to be that while they raise a huge chunk of cash, they are not actually the sculptors- they are paying out much smaller chunks of cash for deliverables, and thus seem to have better oversight of their projects. Kingdom Death would be another example of that.

By contrast, "first party" Kickstarter campaigns where the actual sculptor is both managing and fulfilling the campaign, as well as sculpting, seem to really not be managed as well from my experience so far (Imbrian Arts, Red Box Games, WarGods of Olympus, are all campaigns I've recently experienced this on). And yes, I know two of those were originally involved in trollcast- but both have continued to have new and longer delays in their new sculpts (having switched to metal and launched a new campaign in metal, respectively).

This is just something I've observed and I've started to think that for campaigns making large amounts ($50K+) it is better to be basically paying someone to oversee the work, rather than to have the sculptor try to handle managing the campaign, fulfillment (emails, shipping, the whole nine yards), AND sculpting all on their own. Results are still coming in, of course, but I think it's pretty fair to say it's a trend that campaigns with an "overseer" handling the funds are being handled more smoothly in a lot of cases.

I guess I'm not see the level of failure that you are seeing with Wargods. Fitz has been very accessible through the CG Forum and posts here as well. While the figures have been slow coming out, they are shipping. I wouldn't be holding up Arena Rex as a success yet, given they too have slipped into next year for delivery. I wouldn't say the whole managed model is a sure bet, Raging Heroes, Sedition Wars, Relic Knights all follow that profile and we see how those projects finished or are doing.

Just out of curiosity, what did you end up pledging in the Wargods?

**Piston Honda**

RiTides wrote:
I wish I'd gone in on this one instead of Crocodile Games' "WarGods of Olympus" campaign. The models here are pretty mind-blowingly good, in my opinion. My only concern is if the exposed flesh means that some skilled modelling would be needed to hide joints, but they certainly look fantastic.

There is a guy, possibly 2 who want to sell their pledges.

Don't know why they even contributed in the first place, I have seen them in multiple kickstarters and have yet to hear anything pleasant come out of their mouths.

You may hear some people exaggerate about others say things they will always find something to complain about.

These people, especially one of them are living legends.

Majority of KS are delayed, about 84 percent, the second one is delayed he goes on a rampage asking for his money back.

I think we all know he is, I know Orlando has encountered him more than once.

**RiTides**

Silent- I don't think any of your examples are analagous to mine. Raging Heroes does indeed do a lot of sculpting in-house, so they don't qualify as "managers". And CMON is more of a distributor / manufacturing middle man than anything else- the sculpting as again being done in-house by Studio McVey and Ninja Division for both of those examples (Sedition Wars and Relic Knights).

I think I'll take this to a Buzzsaw-esque "Kickstarter meta post" and make a separate thread for it, no need to derail here further. I'll take my comments about WarGods over to the WarGods thread in this section, as well

**Alpharius**

Update time!

Update #56

Dec 24, 2013
Io Saturnalia!
Comment

Hello hello all, the RRG team is preparing to spend some quality holiday time with our families this week. But first, we wanted to be sure our backers got a nice holiday update Let's begin with some new minis.
Pre-Production Samples V:

Viatrix, Ban-Luca, Aemilia, and Euryale are on display in 1080P video. The Euryale shot was particularly difficult to get as she is 120mm tall, 4x the size of our typical man-sized model. We had to completely tear down our photo-booth and setup the lights much higher than usual to accommodate this serpentine sculpt.
Lupa

Lupa has been completed! We are going to produce over 1000 copies of this exclusive mini. Good thing it turned out so spectacularly. We'll be sharing many more photos of her on our Facebook page in the days to come. For now, enjoy the turntable GIF below:

Lupa - Exclusive mini sculpted by MIKH

There are so many details to appreciate on this piece: earrings, hair, the hammer's medallions, sandals, the list goes on. MIKH has 5 more sculpts from this Kickstarter to complete. We hope they come out as well as Lupa, and in good time too. We are eager to ship this Kickstarter's rewards and expand Arena Rex... more on that later.
New 'Arena Rex' Logo

Amber Blade Jones has taken a break from character development to give some love to our logo. This new execution has a bit more panache.

New Arena Rex logo (character placement not final)

Although there are several duplicated letters in "ARENA REX" this mark's characters are all uniquely weathered and rendered in Amber's characteristic style.

Character detail
Dice

Our first batch of favor die arrived recently, while faction dice are currently in production. I'm told each logo is hand inked. Crazy. This campaign will produce over 23,000 dice.

International shipping

We know that import duty can be a pain. Some backers have suggested we investigate fulfillment services from Amazon to avoid shipping directly from the US. Unfortunately Amazon will not work for pledge fulfillment. And though our shipments will originate from within the US, we want our international backers to know we are looking into ways to minimize the import tax on their pledge rewards.
What's left to sculpt?

As I mentioned before, MIKH is currently working on 5 minis: Septimus, Septimus and Nero, Hroka, Hroka and Caho-Ta, and Leo... Now that I look at it - it's actually 7 minis when you consider the riders separate. Lately, MIKH has been in contact with us a few times a week with updates on these projects. Whenever major progress is made we will share.

Stephane Nguyen Van Gioi is working on Zahra and Sereqet (as well as the dismounted Zarha) and will move on to Bjarrhvit when the scorpion and rider are complete.

Roberto Chaudon is currently finishing up Mago.

On my desk I have original sculpts of Marcus Furius, Ur-Kek, Thoth, and Iason (waiting for the Christmas holiday to end before shipping them to the caster). These are the next minis you'll see in 360 video.

Gael Goumon has finished Hermes, the sculpt is in the mail and on the way to Austin, TX. When we get the first pre-production casts of Hermes we'll shoot some photos and include them in an update.
What's next?

Getting our kickstarter rewards produced and ready to ship is our highest priority, most of our time is spent working towards that goal. But every now and again we find the time to discuss new characters. Recently we've been working with Yasmine Putri on some additions to the world of Arena Rex. We'd like to close out this update with a preview Legio XIII's Sulla

Thank you everyone,

Happy New Year

-RRG

**Gomez**

I love everything about that update...

All the pre-production samples look great (no shock, as we've seen three of them already), but I'm pleasantly surprised by Ban Luca - I had absolutely NO interest in her based on the concept art, but her sculpt looks excellent.

Lupa is also awesome. What we've seen thus far of MIKH's body of work for this game is approaching legendary status... If his work on the riders and mounts is anywhere near Lupa and Otho, I think he'll get there (just need him to pick up the pace a little bit

).

(Plus, Hermes is on the way - which means we might get another update sooner rather than later).

DICE!

And finally, a hint of the future of the game. No idea who Sulla is, but he sure looks like a BAMF.

**Piston Honda**

I'm under the impression some people back kickstarters just to complain, bitch and moan.

Miserable C-word, the lot of them.

**RiTides**

Agreed Gomez, that's a fantastic update.

**sing your life**

These look fantastic, I'm going to try and introduce my club to this.

**jonolikespie**

Well damn, I did get 2 Lupa's so that my mate who missed out on the KS could get his hands on one but now I am tempted to tell him his got lost in the mail :/

Also that Ban Luca does look much more interesting than the concept art. Suddenly she has gone from 14 years old to Brienne of Tarth. I am ok with this.