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It boils down to this: The minis are significantly larger than other well known games, aka 40K.
While many will bemoan how that means that you can't use these minis as part of their older games (again, namely 40K), the fact of the matter is that this is an entirely new, self contained, game.
The issue of terrain comes up, but in terms of terrain, all scifi terrain is so badly scaled nowadays that 40mm will not matter that much compared to GW's "heroic" scale.
I honestly think that if you want to play a game, get in on the kickstarter and ignore the people that are making too much of an issue out of scale.
If you want minis to use in other games, namely 40K, well there are plenty of other games and manufacturers out there. Heck, there's more miniature game companies active now than ever before.
Vertrucio wrote: It boils down to this: The minis are significantly larger than other well known games, aka 40K.
Just to clarify, that's not my issue at all. I have zero problem with them being larger scale, good for them if they wanted to try and create a new gaming scale. My issue is with the misinformation presented by the Kickstarter about the scale and various other things.
Honestly, I think that misinformation probably has more to due with the developers not being native English speakers or writers, as well as cultural differences where they refer to things of a certain size via different terminology.
But yes, a developer should openly state what scale their minis are.
Vertrucio wrote: Honestly, I think that misinformation probably has more to due with the developers not being native English speakers or writers, as well as cultural differences where they refer to things of a certain size via different terminology.
But yes, a developer should openly state what scale their minis are.
They should. And it's difficult to see how language problems lead to them using 75mm minis for advertising a game they claim is 35mm scale
To be honest it's also hard to see how '35mm to the eye' means 'all the minis we've shown so far, including the only humans, are multiple mm taller than that' in any language either.
There's a thin line between sales tactics and being dodgy.
I think this will definitely end up made in what the wide gaming world calls restic. My guess is the company have seen the restic backlash online and decided to make early promises it won't be, but are unwilling to commit to anything else*.
A year after the project ends, they will make an announcement that due to spiralling costs, they will have to make all the models in "a plastic resin formula that still definitely isn't restic". When the stuff does finally show up, at least 6 months later, there will be no appreciable difference between the models and those of Mantic et al.
*They may have hoped bandying about the magic words 'hard plastic' netted them an early £500k or so, which would have given them a bit of safety net to start talking up plastic sprues.
“Good people are quick to help others in need, without hesitation or requiring proof the need is genuine. The wicked will believe they are fighting for good, but when others are in need they’ll be reluctant to help, withholding compassion until they see proof of that need. And yet Evil is quick to condemn, vilify and attack. For Evil, proof isn’t needed to bring harm, only hatred and a belief in the cause.”
Sooooo, Artermis...will we be seeing you in the Hasslefree thread now that you have popped your lurk bubble?
But back on track, 35-40mm shenigans I am fine with, I am a bit concerned when they show off models of different scale and don't specify that they are not the finished product.
There is a big difference in proportion between the (other) Artemis, the Inquisitor scale Space Marine (54mm) and a regular (28mm) Space Marie so I definitely get that people could be quite upset.
Riquende wrote: I think this will definitely end up made in what the wide gaming world calls restic. My guess is the company have seen the restic backlash online and decided to make early promises it won't be, but are unwilling to commit to anything else*.
.
Why would you possibly think that?
They have a five year history of using a traditional resin to make miniatures. I have some of the 75mm ones, and its as good quality as McVey, Figone or anyone else.
If they dont make them in plastic, the logical outcome will be using the material they already use to produce an entire range of miniatures with.
Riquende wrote: I think this will definitely end up made in what the wide gaming world calls restic. My guess is the company have seen the restic backlash online and decided to make early promises it won't be, but are unwilling to commit to anything else*.
.
Why would you possibly think that?
They have a five year history of using a traditional resin to make miniatures. I have some of the 75mm ones, and its as good quality as McVey, Figone or anyone else.
If they dont make them in plastic, the logical outcome will be using the material they already use to produce an entire range of miniatures with.
I don't see that as the logical outcome at all. If they have to make X number of Y miniatures, and they've only got £Z to do it, who's to say that resin is going to be affordable? It's a boutique material after all. I'm not 100% on this as I wasn't a backer, but wasn't the McVey-made Sedition Wars done in a restic style material?
“Good people are quick to help others in need, without hesitation or requiring proof the need is genuine. The wicked will believe they are fighting for good, but when others are in need they’ll be reluctant to help, withholding compassion until they see proof of that need. And yet Evil is quick to condemn, vilify and attack. For Evil, proof isn’t needed to bring harm, only hatred and a belief in the cause.”
Riquende wrote: I think this will definitely end up made in what the wide gaming world calls restic. My guess is the company have seen the restic backlash online and decided to make early promises it won't be, but are unwilling to commit to anything else*.
.
Why would you possibly think that?
They have a five year history of using a traditional resin to make miniatures. I have some of the 75mm ones, and its as good quality as McVey, Figone or anyone else.
If they dont make them in plastic, the logical outcome will be using the material they already use to produce an entire range of miniatures with.
I don't see that as the logical outcome at all. If they have to make X number of Y miniatures, and they've only got £Z to do it, who's to say that resin is going to be affordable? It's a boutique material after all. I'm not 100% on this as I wasn't a backer, but wasn't the McVey-made Sedition Wars done in a restic style material?
What does the McVey kickstarter have to do with this. You seem jus hell bent on inserting 'restic' into this project for some reason, I have no idea why.
In terms of resin miniature production, I'd put Scale 75 in the top twenty in the world. I'd say McVey resin production was at the same level. Occam's razor suggests that when the company state the final material wont be a restic variant, and have no experience in plastic but an entire company built off resin production, the outcome should they not have the money to make the steel moulds for hard plastic production, is that they will be in a quality resin, just like every other miniature they make.And no, it isn't 'boutique'. Resin figures of comparable size usually cost less than a GW plastic character model.
There are lots of other non-PVC thermoplastics that they can use with a variety of different mould and tooling costs. Both Reaper Bones and Privateer/Mantic sprueless plastic is PVC based but they're quite different in the final form.
Does the kickstarter say what material the figures will be made of? If it just says plastic, then that could be anything and assuming it's harder grey PVC like mantic would be very, very premature.
I'd keep asking about it in the comments section until you get a straight answer.
Balance in pick up games? Two people, each with their own goals for the game, design half a board game on their own without knowing the layout of the board and hope it all works out. Good luck with that. The faster you can find like minded individuals who want the same things from the game as you, the better.
What does the McVey kickstarter have to do with this. You seem jus hell bent on inserting 'restic' into this project for some reason, I have no idea why.
I'm not hell bent on anything, the topic just keeps coming up on the N&R board and I was musing on a possibility. I would suggest that the backers are hellbent on shouting down any legitimate concerns over things like the material the project is being made in, but that's standard fare for KS backers these days so I'm not holding it against you. I bought up Sedition Wars as Studio McVey are (were) known for being primarily a boutique resin studio, then Kickstarted a 'great deal' of a board game that turned out to be a restic-style material.
I don't know this company, so if you're confident you're going to be getting however many resin pieces for whatever pledge level you picked, then good for you, hope it happens.
Not sure you have the first idea what Occam's Razor means though....
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/06/05 12:00:56
“Good people are quick to help others in need, without hesitation or requiring proof the need is genuine. The wicked will believe they are fighting for good, but when others are in need they’ll be reluctant to help, withholding compassion until they see proof of that need. And yet Evil is quick to condemn, vilify and attack. For Evil, proof isn’t needed to bring harm, only hatred and a belief in the cause.”
I'd be questioning whether they could produce this quantity of 'traditional' resin figures at the prices they are talking for the boxed sets. There are 38 figures in the boxed set for £65.
That's before VAT is accounted for - assuming that they declare their sales properly, any EU sales should have VAT deducted leaving £54.17
If we said the cost of the box, cards, scenery etc was £4.17, that leaves 38 figures for £50, or £1.32 per figure. I suspect that you cant produce traditional resin figures at that sort of price and you need a more industrialised process like spincast metal, spincast plastic (restic) or injection moulded plastic.
Slightly speculatively, but Scale 75's 75mm resin figures cost roughly £25. These will have about 8 times more resin in them than the figures here, so on material cost alone, I would expect these figures to be about £3 retail (£2.50 exc VAT), but I suspect the labour time, mould costs, sculpting fees etc aren't reducted by the same amount, so my ballpark guess would be that these figures *should* retail at about £5 (£4.17 exc VAT) - which would make this a 67% discount in the Kickstarter.
There's a *LOT* of guesswork and rough working above, but the numbers don't feel right to me for this project to be possible in traditional resin.
Edited to change "injection moulded resin" to "injection moulded plastic" D'Oh!
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/06/05 11:07:45
Yeah anyone who thinks that they are going to fulfill this kickstarter in high quality standard resin is nuts
Even if they can make all the moulds and do all the casting themselves for free it'd cost a fortune in materials alone and take 'forever'. If they don't do any of that in house then they have zero hope. Resin has never even been mentioned.
(And their 75mm figures cost about £40 + VAT)
Their realistic choices are pvc/restic/etc or proper hips injection moulding. Even in China, 90k is not going to cover all the moulds they'd need to make for the proper hard stuff imo. so either they're fund matching from somewhere or they're desperately hoping it's going to significantly overfund.
Everyone brings up a lot of good points in here - and the whole scale thing should absolutely be cleared up ASAP.
I'm less concerned about a 'new' scale than I am over potential material concerns.
I really don't want any part of 'restic'/'sprueless plastic'/'PVC' anymore - but as noted, if something in high volume and lower pricing isn't going to be 'hard plastic', it looks like it will unfortunately be in that crap material instead.
A quick and dirty calculations puts this kickstarter funded by limping over it's 90k goal at having to make over 30 thousand minis plus vehicles, scenery, box sets and peripherals like dice etc.
45mm chunky guys in armoured suits aren't going to fit a bundle to each sprue, that's going to be a 'lot' of tooling for proper hard plastic.
Alien vs Predator is doing "real urethane resin" (hand cast / from a silicone mold) for a large kickstarter, though, so it's not totally out of the realm of possibility. Not sure how the cost-per-model on these campaigns compares, though.
Artemis Black wrote: Apologies if someone has seen me say this elsewhere (It continues to bug me enough to warrant posting when I usually just lurk) but this is 'not' in any way a 35mm game.
It's a 40mm game, they have now admitted this. That unhelmeted human is 40mm tall at least and the humans are the shortest of the available races.
And Arty wrote a really good de-bunking of this KS HERE Text below - I'm too lazy to correct all the code to show the images - go and read it at source if you want them
Spoiler:
I've had a few discussions around the web the last week about a kickstarter that popped up. It started fairly innocent, Mcfonz posted up some images of minsi in the Shed and we oohed and ahhed etc. because the sculpting was pretty damn good. Of course at the time we thought they were standard 30odd mm figs. We later learned they were claiming '35mm scale', one might think that meant to the top of the head and would still make them pretty good and would match a lot of stuff. That's when certain arguments popped up. I wanted to put my thoughts on them all in one place...
"35mm scale".
Nothing in this Kickstarter is 35mm anything. After 3 days of being asked 'how tall are your minis' and repeatedly answering with '35mm scale' they finally posted an image of their minis next to others...
Image
That places that human at 40mm easy (the Terminator is 37mm and on a slightly deeper base). The other factions are even larger.
They then updated the front page of their Kickstarter to say "35mm to the eyes", also not true.
Their comments section is full of people saying that they'll match Dust minis and WWE minis etc and despite someone constantly replying to people nobody has corrected those mistaken assertations.
They only posted the scale image after receiving £50k in pledges and it's now buried as a tiny pic on page 2 of their updates, you actually have to go looking for it.
Larger Scale Minis Used for Advertising and Misleading Photoshopping
This image is being used for advertising what you get...
Image
The red 'Bitsie' is a 75mm miniature with her hair photoshopped a different colour - http://tinyurl.com/ocqdfg8
The Green Riffs seem to be renders, even though they have actual minis they could use instead. Notice that the renders of the Riffs and the Ares guys have photoshopped bases, they have photoshopped out the real 25mm bases from the Ares troopers and photoshopped in larger bases. Coincidentally this makes the minis look much smaller than they are. I can't see any other reason for doing this.
That's the 40mm mini from the earlier scale shot. Notice the rail on the gun looks considerably softer, less gap between the ridges. And the armour lining looks shallower and softer too. in my opinion (And this one is 'just' opinion until someone posts an image of the blue painted one next to anything) the blue one is an even larger scale printout than the green one, which as seen above is already a 40mm figure.
You might ask why I'm bothering with this. Honestly, it's just bugged me. Every time a Kickstarter comes along and grabs a lot of people into it, that's a large part of the customer base for future kickstarters in the sci-fi/modern/fantasy genres. And every time a Kickstarter disappoints those people it runs the risk of leaving them burned on kickstarters in general and thus lessens the customer base for anyone who wants to run a future kickstarter. I see people commenting on kickstarter threads all the time saying exactly that.
For me this kickstarter has numerous issues, some even bordering on mis-selling. Using images of larger scale minis, misleading photoshopping, outright stating the wrong scale, not being clear what material the finished products will even be in (repeatedly stating that they want hard plastic, but not stating what material they will be in if the project funs at 90k only), not answering straight questions with straight answers and so on.
I figured it'd be nice to stick this all in one thread somewhere in case someone asks me what my problem with them is.
That's a useful write up, thanks. I did note as soon as seeing the page the renders shown on bases, but if those base sizes are not standard that would be a bit misleading. Interesting nonetheless, but seems like one to wait till retail / till they deliver something to show what they can do in the miniature arena.
Yes it is, Artemis! We're all in this together... glad they finally clarified, hope they can do it! But that's going to be a lot of molds, and they seem to have no experience in this area of production. Like McVey and others :-/. Hmmm....
Well they've been saying repeatedly until just now that the material depended on the funding. As you get nothing unless fully funded then that could only have meant that basic funding meant lower quality material.
This clarification completely reverses that.
Technically they now only need the 90k to fully deliver the 30 thousand 40-50mm hard plastic figures, box sets, vehicles, scenery, dice, paint sets and so on. I'm heartily wishing them success in their 90k funding goal *beam*
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/06/05 13:21:38
This was interesting. I'm pretty sure they keep an eye on this forum.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Like I mentioned a couple of pages back, I am sure they are ready to back this up with their own funds as well. If it proves popular enough their best choice is HIPS and and that breaks even if the contents of every mold sells 5000 units.
PU resin for the figures is not a realistic choice. The only reason they would not do HIPS is if this does not look to get as popular as they hope. I thought metal was more likely, but given the sizes of the models that does not seem likely either anymore.
Investing in HIPS with injection molding means they intend to keep selling this after the KS. That means they need it to get good reviews. While there are some shenanigans going on with photoshopping and the like - if they don't do a good job with the end product - reviews are going to kill this project once it gets out and it will have been for naught. A huge timesink on the company and a net loss of money, besides bad publicity. While everyone might make an honest mistake (a certain studio springs to mind), I highly doubt they have set out to fail. It would be commercial suicide and affect the already existing business.
In essence I am saying I believe they intend to put out a high quality product that survives a KS as a quick money grab operation would be highly detrimental to them.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/06/05 13:42:29
"About the plastic material... it is a hard and difficult discussion.
You can check on FAQ section what we offer about the material.
Our target is to produce in high quality injected plastic, but the most important thing is the quality. "
*laugh* They're like a dead fish, flip flopping everywhere.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/06/05 18:29:48
That said, yeah, they're being suspiciously vague about it :-/. "Injected plastic" allows for PVC, too, and "high quality" really doesn't mean anything. They keep mentioning GW, but in that case, they should just confirm to be using HIPS.
Definitely a project I will wait until retail on, as there are just too many unknowns.
