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 Buzzsaw wrote:

The stuff Keith did for Reaper and his-own stuff at Bombshell are Mustang minis: fun, lacking a little in sophistication but can be exactly what you are looking for. The thing that is weird is that other small makers, including some that are arguably more sophisticated often have a generally lower price. Red Box Games runs a consistent $9 or so on human sized metal miniatures. I recently received my pledge from RBG's KS campaign, and... Tre is no Mustang. Tre is a Ferrari. Tre is, IMO, the fantasy equivalent of Infinity: exquisite non-heroic scale miniatures full of refinement.

Tre also I honestly think under prices a lot of his figures to his detriment. He could easily get more his figs, despite the crap he would get from the guys on Frothers.

Sculpting quality has little to do with it.

Reaper has all of their facilities in house, so it costs less for them to do any of their models.. and they'll also sell more of each model more easily/quickly since they've been in business for years and have a great distribution network already in place.

Patrick has to outsource his casting, has to build a distribution network, and has to deal with Kickstarter-stigma.

I know that if we were able to bring our metal casting inhouse we'd be able to lower the price on a number of kits.

Harwood actually makes some really fun figures, especially their multi-stage figures. I have had a soft spot for that general type of set since Ral Partha...though insane, normal and terrified are a far cry from the 3 stage figures.

But, yes - sculpt quality has a very small impact on final prices. The amount of metal used in a finely detailed 28mm miniature is the same as the crude one. Although you can often get a longer life out of the mold for the cruder figure, mold costs in real outlay are fairly minimal. When you compare rates of one of the dozen or two top tier sculptors ($1000-1500 per) to one of the middle to lower tier sculptors ($200-300 per) - even that isnt a huge factor when spread across the projected life of a master. For in house sculpting work it becomes even less (and more...but still less) of an issue.

It isnt so much that contract casting is so much more expensive than in house casting. Rather, when you contract it out you need to order a quantity that is sufficient to give you a working inventory. Even a small run of a hundred or so will tie up a relatively large portion of your capital. At the $5 level, you have to sell twice as many of the figures on hand before you even start to be able to make a bit of money on that run. That can be a huge factor when you have several dozen figures of a hundred or so, all of them costing you money until you pay off the contract caster's fees. Even paying cash up front, you still have to pay yourself back before you can really start to say it isnt a loosing propostion.

That is not to say that I find a prblem with companies like Bombshell who charge what they do, or think that companies like Zombiesmith, Victoryforce, Harwood, Hasslefree, Hinterlands or Reaper should charge more (or any of the dozens of companies in the $5or less range per figure). Price per figure in terms of real material costs are about the same for all the various companies. Even volume discounts on metal are minimalized once you get over the half ton price (which sounds like a lot, but really isnt as much as one might think). They each have their own model that they work under, and that is fine.

I received my stuff a couple of days ago. Unfortunately, my overall opinion of it all is a bit meh. Several of the figures that looked brilliant as concept illustrations are pretty uninspiring in hand. One of the multipart figures doesn't actually fit together properly (Nowada), and thanks to being cast in a very soft metal and the wonders of "throw everything into as few ziplocks as possible, then throw the lot into a cheap padded bag and send them off with no other protection", I've also got one broken figure that I noticed, one badly bent (may break when I unbend it?), some broken on-sprue weapons, and the front postcard with the rather nice artwork of Kaelee has had the gak gouged out of it, since they put it in face-towards-spiky models instead of outwards. (And without, say, a tiny bit of card to protect the postcards). I swapped out the t-shirt for 2 more tiny models, but still paid the regular int'l postage price, so it's not like they would have been heavily subsidising the shipping in my order, so some protection would have been appreciated.

Overall, most of the figures fail the "would I buy this if it were in front of me in a store?" test (compared to the great concept art), and I'm going to have to contact Patrick to get replacements for the broken stuff and a replacement postcard - which could have been prevented with a tiny bit of care in the packaging. Overall, I'm a bit disappointed in the results, and I somewhat regret going in on it. But them's the risks of KS.
I'm not even going to go in on the pricing debate, suffice to say that I wouldn't have bought most of these at Reaper prices.

Lessons: Be real careful buying stuff based on concept art. (also learned through Mantic - though Imbrian Arts stuff looks magnificent)


Proper review with photos and crap to come when I can be arsed. So, weeks not days.

I'll agree on the packaging, Azazelx, but I'll disagree on the sculpts.

I think more and more now campaigns are going to have to have a decent amount of models actually sculpted to get people to pledge big, rather than just concept art. Or a proven track record... or preferably, a bit of both!

I'll agree about the fantastic quality of Tre's sculpts (if only his project management could catch up...) and how fantastic the Imbrian Arts sculpts have been looking. However, it's still hard to know how a model will come out based only on art. The big risk I've taken in this regard is Trollforged's KS- but that was a calculated risk, AND now that I've seen the material from the RBG kickstarter in-person, I'm extremely optimistic about how that will turn out (as well as the sculpts he's done so far, the grub, wyrm and fiend, looking totally awesome).

 Dysartes wrote:
I'll agree on the packaging, Azazelx, but I'll disagree on the sculpts.

That's fine of course, aesthetics are a personal thing, after all. I should point out, I didn't say that they were bad sculpts per se, just that I was disappointed in a number of them.

 RiTides wrote:
I think more and more now campaigns are going to have to have a decent amount of models actually sculpted to get people to pledge big, rather than just concept art. Or a proven track record... or preferably, a bit of both!

I'll agree about the fantastic quality of Tre's sculpts (if only his project management could catch up...) and how fantastic the Imbrian Arts sculpts have been looking. However, it's still hard to know how a model will come out based only on art. The big risk I've taken in this regard is Trollforged's KS- but that was a calculated risk, AND now that I've seen the material from the RBG kickstarter in-person, I'm extremely optimistic about how that will turn out (as well as the sculpts he's done so far, the grub, wyrm and fiend, looking totally awesome).

Well, Patrick has a proven track record, and also had some fantastic concept art. That's the thing about KS being a gamble, and a big part why I'm cutting back dramatically (and of course, wanting to see more of my outlay fulfilled first). If I'd gone in for IA in the end, I'd probably be very happy. Tre's project(s) left me feeling rather ambivalent about the final product now that it's finally in hand (I just dumped the box in a pile of stuff after taking the t-shirts out and having a cursory look). The Trollforged one I felt was a pretty safe gamble, because to be rather blunt, making a bunch of gribbly tentacle-worms look decent-to-good is a hell of a lot easier than sculpting finely detailed, proportionate humans or humanoids.

I'm now wishing I could have gotten in on the Imbrian Arts, not that I have any real specific use for any/most of them, but simply because they're such beautiful models. I also know that with so many thousands of great models out there, I'm realistically not likely to actually chase them up at retail at any stage in the future.. c'est la vie.

When you back a Kickstarter you are backing a speculative project, not ordering retail products.

80% of projects "fail" on one or other of the key criteria -- speed, quality and cost. Unfortunately this means that KS projects will often disappoint in some way.

Most of the projects I have backed have disappointed in one or another way.

My only disappointment here is the type of material used, brittle as all hell and with the really thin parts, breaks waiting to happen.

That said, it's nowhere near as bad as BWG in my opinion.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
When you back a Kickstarter you are backing a speculative project, not ordering retail products.
80% of projects "fail" on one or other of the key criteria -- speed, quality and cost. Unfortunately this means that KS projects will often disappoint in some way.
Most of the projects I have backed have disappointed in one or another way.

Agreed. Hence my talk of it being a personal learning experience and the result being my backing of far fewer KS than last year when I first "got into" these things. Of course, half of the newspage is now KS-related, so I don't see it or disappointed people going away anytime soon.

 Azazelx wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
When you back a Kickstarter you are backing a speculative project, not ordering retail products.
80% of projects "fail" on one or other of the key criteria -- speed, quality and cost. Unfortunately this means that KS projects will often disappoint in some way.
Most of the projects I have backed have disappointed in one or another way.

Agreed. Hence my talk of it being a personal learning experience and the result being my backing of far fewer KS than last year when I first "got into" these things. Of course, half of the newspage is now KS-related, so I don't see it or disappointed people going away anytime soon.

I think that will stay that way till the first major miniature KS implodes and doesn't deliver anything. Would have to be along the lines of Poots taking the money from the Kingdom Death KS and running to Central America. Speaking of which, has anyone heard anything? It has been a month since the last update.


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 BrookM wrote:
My only disappointment here is the type of material used, brittle as all hell and with the really thin parts, breaks waiting to happen.

That said, it's nowhere near as bad as BWG in my opinion.

It is suppose to be the same metal that Reaper uses in their figs. That is what Keith was telling everyone at ReaperCon. He got it from the Reaper stock.

Adam pops up on the KD:M comments from time to time eg (talking about loosing 2 whole play testing groups in won day)

"First party wipe was to a lvl 3 White Lion, then another survivor died of starvation at the settlement, which brought our population down to 4 people. We nearly brought him down, but poor survival point management lead to 2 early deaths and tho it was close he got the rest of us. hehe

May. 04, 2013 on Kingdom Death : Monster"


The metal seems the same as my Reaper figs (and pretty much any other recent US made mini I've got)

It is a bit more harder (& I guess more brittle) than stuff from the UK, but I guess that will depend on what the 'go to' mix of metals is

Part of that is because the BSB figures are so fine and thin in their. Odors and
Any of their details - moreso than your typical Reaper model. The chunkier figures (unsurprisingly) turned out much better in many ways and their weapons/arms/legs are a lot more sturdy.

^ Auto-co-wrecked?

Um, yeah. Posting on a phone on the bus to/from work. I usually pick that sort of thing up.

I believe it was supposed to be:
"Fine and thin in their limbs and many of their details.."

Thought so. You make so much sense normally. To have you go so suddenly would have been sad!