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LAS VEGAS, NV – March 24, 2015 – The Pulposaurus Entertainment design team announced today that it will produce a Conan mass-combat, pre-painted miniatures game entitled Conan: Rise of Monsters, or CROM.

“We clued game retailers into the game at the GAMA Trade Show here in Las Vegas last week,” says project developer Timothy Brown. “Store owners were universally enthusiastic about a fun, pre-painted miniatures game with armies drawn from Robert E. Howard’s Hyboria.”

Conan: Rise of Monsters is a new mass-combat miniatures game featuring exquisite 28mm plastic pre-painted figures. Each starter box presents a complete tabletop miniatures game with rules, special dice, cards and markers as well as a complete starter army for either Conan and his Circle of Iron or Thoth-Amon and his Legion of Set. Starter army boxes will be supplemented with additional warbands, leaders, and monsters.

Pulposaurus Entertainment is a new game company created to bring Conan: Rise of Monsters to life, formed from an innovative team of industry veterans:

Jack Emmert (Cryptic Studios, Pinnacle Entertainment Group, WotC, Eden Studios)
Shane Hensley (Pinnacle, TSR, Cryptic Studios, Petroglyph)
George Vasilakos (Eden Studios, Zombie Planet)
Timothy Brown (GDW, TSR, Pinnacle Entertainment Group, Petroglyph)

“We’ve put together an exciting game worthy of the Conan stories,” adds Shane Hensley. “It’s fast and fun, and the concept art and miniatures are really terrific. It will be fun to share them with the fans.”

Pulposaurus Entertainment will run a Kickstarter campaign for Conan: Rise of Monsters in the third quarter of 2015 and release the game through retail in the first quarter of 2016.
To learn more about Conan: Rise of Monsters, follow the Facebook page at www.facebook.com/conanminiatures


CONAN ® and ©2015 Conan Properties International LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Rise of Monsters ®2015 and Sigil game system ® and ©2015 Pulposaurus Entertainment, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

And I was just looking at my Conan and blood rage pledges .

Over at figures.com they have a few more details and a test shot of a couple of minis -

http://www.figures.com/forums/showthread.php?t=72792

28mm scale so slightly smaller then Conan and Blood Rage. The plan Kickstarter looks to be two faction boxes (Conan’s Circle of Iron and Thoth-Amon’s Legion of Set) with 15-16 minis, dice, cards, and more for about $99. Very few exclusives (if any) will be available in the Kickstarter as they want to keep it retailer friendly.

Whilst it says Mass Combat, it looks to be much more of a Skirmish level game.

Sweet! A mass-combat skirmish game!

Wait...

WTF does that mean?

Reserving judgement until I see the minis, but not thrilled by pre-painted (which is usually garbage), $:content ratio or Pulposaurus not knowing how to label their own game.

We shall see...

 PulposaurusTim wrote:
...exquisite 28mm plastic pre-painted figures...

So, this part's clearly not true.

Pre-painted is an absolute non-starter for me. Besides, what will they be made of? PVC?

I'm curios what the draw is with few exclusives and retail pricing in a preorder basically?

'Please no photographs'

hahaha

The guy who took those supposedly had permission.

But yeah, signs aren't gonna stop it.

.....why would they not allow pictures of the minis??

 tre manor wrote:
.....why would they not allow pictures of the minis??

Partially because of the piece that says "Pending Licensor Approval" they don't have approval to technically be showing anything dealing with that IP at this time, at least that would be my guess. Also because they are listed as prototype and even with that, if the Licensor says something needs to change... there is going to be a group of people who say "These suck, they are awful" or if they change something "They falsely advertised because they changed X before release".

I hope that there's more terrain to come for this one too - I can always use more terrain...

Pre-painted? Don't bother getting up, I'll see myself to the door just fine on my own.

So i'm tired....and see this thread, which is the first info I've seen on the game, since i didn't attend gamma.

First thought was skeptical " Conan, really? Hope to hell they know their stuff, that can be a tricky universe to pull off right". And of course, a prepainted wargame is a very tough thing to get started. I've seen so many die quick.

Then i see the people involved....

Jack Emmert (Cryptic Studios, Pinnacle Entertainment Group, WotC, Eden Studios)
Shane Hensley (Pinnacle, TSR, Cryptic Studios, Petroglyph)
George Vasilakos (Eden Studios, Zombie Planet)
Timothy Brown (GDW, TSR, Pinnacle Entertainment Group, Petroglyph)

Jack I have huge respect for. He knows his stuff. I take great pride in seeing what he's done over the years, as he grew up in my area.

Shane i don't know personally, but love his work.

George is a fellow retailer i know through retail groups online. Smart, organized, and this isnt his first rodeo. In fact, all three have a huge amount of experience.

That's a pretty fine group of people at the helm of a new game.

15-16 figures a side is clearly not mass combat, but it definitely makes me more interested in it.

The pre-painted part well.......I can't say I'm really fond of that. All those D+D miniatures, Pathfinder miniatures, Mage Knight figures, etc, looked like absolute garbage. That said the X-wing stuff look pretty good, and the AT-43 stuff looked nice enough. If these minis are painted to the standard of AT-43 and the rules are fun I could see myself giving it a try.

Oh and that the minis don't have any terrible floppy weapons.

Is it 15-16 figures per side, or total? It isn't very clear.

I hope that there's more terrain to come for this one too - I can always use more terrain...

Don't get your hopes high... That hill is from Ziterdes and the obeliscs you can get from every decoration-shop that has some fantasy-stuff in its portfolio. They are just for decoration and will definitly not come with the game.

For such an anouncement they had surprisingly few to show.

Ultimately, our minis are "heroic" 28mm, so really 32mm. We've got the Conan minis game license, but those boxes and paint schemes were still pending approval as of the GAMA show, hence the 'no photographs' request - but photos happen. We're trying to raise the bar on pre-paint quality for CROM, and we'll post images as ready on the Facebook page.

Also, an unpainted option is still on the table, tell us what you think.

 PulposaurusTim wrote:
Also, an unpainted option is still on the table, tell us what you think.

It's ultimately the sculpt quality that makes or breaks a kit. Plenty of prepaints on the market don't look good enough without paint to be a sensible standalone product.

Just show us some unpainted production samples when you can.

Exactly. Pre-paints are usually loathed because the sculpt quality is poor to meet a price point, not necessarily due to the fact they are painted already.

Take X-Wing. Pre-painted but they have great sculpt quality, therefore sell like hot cakes. Do that and C:ROM will win big.

Regardless of how this turns out making sure the acronym of the game is CROM is a nice touch.

 PulposaurusTim wrote:
Ultimately, our minis are "heroic" 28mm, so really 32mm. We've got the Conan minis game license, but those boxes and paint schemes were still pending approval as of the GAMA show, hence the 'no photographs' request - but photos happen. We're trying to raise the bar on pre-paint quality for CROM, and we'll post images as ready on the Facebook page.

Also, an unpainted option is still on the table, tell us what you think.

Miniatures gamers will not, as a rule, give a feth about pre-paint quality or lack thereof. As pointed out by HMV, sculpt quality is where it's at. Having said that, don't skimp, even a little, on the sculptor(s).

Keep the unpainted option and you'll get backers you wouldn't have with just pre-paints.

So, given the above, what miniatures experience does your team have (aside from rule writing)? Also, who is doing the sculpting duties?

Cautiously optimistic,
Eric

^^ I am keenly interested in that as well.

Pre-paints wont be the selling point here.

As someone who doesn't have tiime or the skill to paint I would be up for the pre-painted versions. As others have said a lot of the previous pre-painted games have suffered from very poor quality and detailess sculpts which are never going to look good.

Pre paints can indeed be the selling point here! Not everyone has the time or patience to paint. As long as both the sculpts and paint jobs are good and the rules for the game are good I can see this doing really well, but ONLY if they get sample sculpts and paintjobs BEFORE the KS. If they can show these of to a good standard then this will do well and have my money!

 Alex C wrote:
Exactly. Pre-paints are usually loathed because the sculpt quality is poor to meet a price point, not necessarily due to the fact they are painted already.

Take X-Wing. Pre-painted but they have great sculpt quality, therefore sell like hot cakes. Do that and C:ROM will win big.

X-Wing is Star Wars. Its ability to sell is not necessarily tied to the quality of the figures. Star Wars fans aren't the most discerning customer base.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

 Alex C wrote:
Exactly. Pre-paints are usually loathed because the sculpt quality is poor to meet a price point, not necessarily due to the fact they are painted already.

Take X-Wing. Pre-painted but they have great sculpt quality, therefore sell like hot cakes. Do that and C:ROM will win big.

X-Wing is Star Wars. Its ability to sell is not necessarily tied to the quality of the figures. Star Wars fans aren't the most discerning customer base.

True, true...

 Alex C wrote:
Exactly. Pre-paints are usually loathed because the sculpt quality is poor to meet a price point, not necessarily due to the fact they are painted already.

Take X-Wing. Pre-painted but they have great sculpt quality, therefore sell like hot cakes. Do that and C:ROM will win big.

It's also far easier to paint a grungy spaceship than a person. You can do a grey base with a few panels picked out in a different tone and a dark wash pretty easily. Painting a humanoid with bare skin and a face is a much different story as errors are a whole lot more glaring. There are also going to naturally be more details to worry about.

Slop a little paint off of a belt or paint skin tone onto a piece of armor and it looks far more terrible than a slightly off centered piece of hull plating.

I absolutely hope for non painted versions because I have noticed a lot of miniatures that are prepainted I thought were horrid sculpts and then I saw the original sculpt on a sculpters page and they were beautiful. I will buy non prepainted as longs as all the swords are super bendy

Depending on the quality of the prepaints, it's certainly possible to use the "prepaint" as a base coat in some cases. Rackham's prepainted Wolfen are an excellent case in point.

I was pretty happy with the Confrontation prepaints, and I'd think that a prepaint option would be good for the boardgamers. Those who backed the Conan boardgame KS would pick up the prepaints to "bling" the heroes from the Conan boardgame. Besides the unpainted and prepainted sets, you could have a prepaint for the Conan figure, as the "foot in the door" pledge to get the Conan boardgamer backers interested. If you wanna be sneaky about it, have the figures in the sets match the heroes and other figures in the Conan base game. Heck, provide PnP rules so that anyone who picked up the Conan base game can try out CROM with their figures. You can even have a non-miniatures rulebook pledge that lets players play with just the Conan boardgame miniatures, so casual players don't have to drop a hundred dollars to play your game.