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 RiTides wrote:
That was really excellent, thank you very much for sharing it!

Well gak, tides, if you thought that was excellent, just wait! It'll blow your mind when we start posting video tutorials on how to vent a mold.

Although we're quite sure many experienced mold makers will be shaking their heads at our technique. Nevertheless, y'all will be able to judge by the end results.

Incidentally, we are also looking into setting up a periscope in the workshop, so you can watch Benson spin out your miniatures in his jammie pants at 2 AM.

This is also what Reaper does for metals.
They use a mostly white metal mix, and that needs to be higher temp to melt.
I thought they had videos up showing the process

 skrulnik wrote:
This is also what Reaper does for metals.
They use a mostly white metal mix, and that needs to be higher temp to melt.
I thought they had videos up showing the process

Well, we're not metallurgists by any stretch. About 500 degrees F seems to work with most alloys we've used. Roto Metals, for example, recommends 500 degrees for their R98 alloy.

Tin has a melt point of 450 degrees, although Bismuth and Lead both have higher melt points, at 520 and 620 respectively. Nevertheless, you can get low melt alloys that are primarily composed of Tin, Bismuth, and Lead that melt at temps as low as 212 degrees.

From what we have seen and heard from others, you're talking about shades of grey when it comes to various pewter alloys. Those shades can be very important depending on application, but when it comes to table top gaming models, the differences are minor.

Pewter is always at least 90% Tin by statute, at least in the US. Plus 'other metals appropriate for pewter'. 'White metal' normally denotes lead free, which is really lead very, very minimal, because you're going to find lead traces in most alloys. It might also be used to denote 'not-legally-pewter' if there's less Tin content than required to be marked as "pewter." In any case, lead content in pewter is low anyway, because the vast bulk of pewter/white metal is Tin.

According to Conquest Industries, the "International Standard" for lead free pewter is 92% Tin, 7.75% Antimony, and 0.25% Copper. It doesn't have the toxic lead and cadmium of more traditional pewter alloys. The 98% Tin alloys tend to use Bismuth instead of Antimony.

So really you're talking about Lead vs Antimony vs Bismuth when it comes to making miniatures. The variations are rather subtle. Contenti, for example, includes 0.25% Copper and 0.25% Silver instead of 0.5% Copper in its 98% Tin 1.5% Bismuth alloy. But then we're also talking about alloys that are used for jewelry making as well as other applications, and not just for making miniatures. Some alloys are formulated to facilitate polishing, because obviously folks are not going to hand-paint their pewter necklace or cup.

So just what the feth is Wild West fantasy?

We mean exactly that. Exiles is a fantasy world. We made all this gak up. It never existed.

Exiles isn’t alternate history and it aint historical fiction. There was never an Abraham Lincoln, vampire hunter or not. You can’t cross the Rocky Mountains, steam down the mighty Mississippi, flee to Texas, or punch cattle on the Chisholm Trail. There’s no place for that bs in Exiles.



We love you, Ax Lincoln and Old Cowboy Ford, but ya aint Exiles!

What you will find is every damn thing you need for a proper Wild West game and then some!

The Exiles frontier is packed to the rafters with crooked politicians, evil cattle barons, nefarious outlaws, conniving whores, ruthless banditos, and martially skilled railroad laborers. There are cattle drives, gold rushes, bounty hunts, blood feuds, bank robberies, and bar fights around every corner.

In short, Exiles has every trope, cliché, and archetype that makes the Wild West the most awesome place you never wanted to live. All of it half-digested in our unique blend of It's on you to police your posts for swear words that slip past the filter, not ours. motyak and hacked up for you to enjoy. This makes Exiles a special brand of awesome for two reasons:



He's a Johnson, which means he's a giant dick!

First, we get to turn this gak up to 11. Exiles isn’t held back by bs drawn on any map or writ in any history book. This means we get to have all of the fun with none of the responsibility. In other words, Exiles is the Wild West genre’s Plan B.

Second, Exiles is always a new experience. The world of Exiles is at once instantly familiar, disarmingly bizarre, and terrifyingly mysterious. Like a Craigslist date.

When you immerse yourself in the world of Exiles, you will know exactly where you are but have no fething clue how you got there. And isn’t that the best way to start a Saturday night?



If Sean Penn was my brother, I'd shoot him too.

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I missed all of MindwormGames' posts over the last two weeks but finally caught up. With what has been shown so far I am super excited for Exiles and can't wait to be able to explore the setting.

Hurry up and release it already!

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

I missed all of MindwormGames' posts over the last two weeks but finally caught up. With what has been shown so far I am super excited for Exiles and can't wait to be able to explore the setting.

Hurry up and release it already!

We are extremely glad to hear that DarkTraveler777! Thanks so much for your support and encouragement.

We are hard at work right now getting a bunch of content ready for release, so keep a weather eye!

Benson took meticulous photos whilst prepping a mold last night, so we will have another tutorial up in a couple of days. We have also about wrestled down inking our models properly, so expect to see some more product info in due course.

Here's a little teaser of one of our 3D prints.

And why the heck not? Here's the whole model.

We figured it made sense to snap some photos before we crushed her in a mold.



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It's time for another Mindworm Games workshop tutorial!

Today we are going to tell you a little bit about how we prepare a mold. This tutorial will take us through the process until just before we pre-heat the mold and add the keys/lock nuts that will keep the mold aligned during casting.

We also want to thank Slow Death Games, most especially because we didn't ask permission to use their fine Wild in the Streets miniatures for this tutorial. Thanks CK!

Now, all of you should know that we here at Mindworm Games are relatively new at this whole spin casting business. There are doubtless folks in the biz who would shake their heads at the way do things, and we'll probably make a few (more) mistakes here and there. But these methods have worked pretty well so far.

And of course a good way to get the best information is to tell everyone what you know. If you see us doing something profoundly stupid, feel free to correct us!


It follows me no matter where I move...

Here we have a basic organic rubber mold blank. As you can see in the pic above, the top half has a pre-cut hole in it. The first thing to do when prepping a mold is tear out this plug!


A little foreplay is a vital part of the process

It can sometimes take a little elbow grease to rip out the plug, but afterwards you have a convenient hole in the dead center of your mold.


That's some smokin' hot ladies right there, and you made fun of goths...

Here we have the miniatures we are going to be making a mold of.

We have two sets each of the Slow Death Goth Gang Starter and Murder Cult Girls Starter. These lovely models were cast by Valiant Enterprises Ltd, a US company which provides top notch contract casting services, if you're looking.

Normally one wouldn't (A) make a production mold from production casts or (B) make a family mold of two different product codes, but this is just for the LOLs.


GET TO THE TUTORIAL ALREADY!

Okay, so the first step is to lay out your mold. The idea here is to figure out where the individual models are going to be located. You want the mold to be well balanced, have plenty of space for keys/locator nuts, and you want to leave room for your gates/vents, i.e. the way metal gets into a cavity and the way air gets out of its way.

In the center of mold blank is our plug/gate form. Normally these two things are separate pieces (see below), but we have created a time-saving agglomeration of the two.


Give my creation LIFE!

The center plug maintains that all too critical hole in the top half of your mold, and the gate form keeps you from having to hand cut a ton of gates. It can also improve the flow of metal. Reaper, for example, uses a gate form with a spiral shape to it. The one above is a crappy Tekcast product (that cracked after like two molds).

The next thing to do is decide how you want to orient each model in the mold. You not only want to be careful about where the part lines end up (where the two halves of the mold meet), but you need to watch out for undercuts too.

Undercuts shouldn't be a problem if the model has been designed well, but you want to keep part lines in easy to clean areas, or at least we like to!


It beats me where that blue color came from on her arms. Aliens, maybe...

The other thing you need to pay attention to is where the pressure is going to be applied when you cook the mold. Your mold will be nice and pliable if you pre-heat it properly, but you don't want to wind up cracking a fragile original or deforming a master.

With the miniature in the pic above, we decided to place her face down in the mold, and also remove material from the bottom half of the blank in order to take the pressure off of her arms. Otherwise, the highest point on the model would be that oh-so-bendy left arm, and it is liable to get bent out of shape.

Let's take a look at how we did this:

First, we marked an outline of the model by scratching the surface of the mold blank.


We only use the highest quality tools

Next, we pressed the model into the mold to create an impression.


You can't see it, but that is a HUSKY brand razor blade. Very fancy!

Finally, we cut into the surface of the mold with a razor blade and removed enough material to sit the model into the mold with all her parts more or less supported.

You can do this the quick and dirty way with any sort of prodding implement, like a screw driver. Here we have created some indentations to hold the model's toes and elbow so she will sit nice, flat, and well-supported in the mold.


Screw that!

All of this prep work is one area where we are likely going to get some disagreement with various professional mold makers.

There's many schools of thought and lots of strange proclivities out in the world when it comes to making molds, and as much habit, guestimation, and ritual as objective methodology.

Josh Qualtieri (ZombieSmith), for example, cuts all his gates and vents with a safety razor!

Forrest Harris (Knuckleduster) says we do 'too much work', and that all one really needs to do is pre-heat the mold and then allow it to 'find its center'. For his part, Josh will jab holes with a screw driver, but he doesn't cut into the mold, and neither he nor Forrest build up the surface of the mold, which is something other mold makers will often do.


Phew! Now it's ready for heating and lock nuts.

And that's it!

All of the miniatures are comfortably arranged, aligned, and supported to our satisfaction. Now it is time to stick this baby in our mold frame that has been pre-heating this whole time and get read to crush it under 2,000 pounds of pressure!

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Nice little tutorial! Really enjoying these, gives some nice insight into the process (and often the best teachers are those who only just figured out how to do stuff).

Dear Mindworm Games,

Will you make ass-kicking saloon whore models? I would really like to see those come to life. The ones Malufaux makes are okay, but they are holding birds and umbrellas.

Please provide me with a saloon girl holding a giant sledgehammer/shotgun or straddling a cannon or doing a karate move.

 Thunderfrog wrote:
Dear Mindworm Games,

Will you make ass-kicking saloon whore models? I would really like to see those come to life. The ones Malufaux makes are okay, but they are holding birds and umbrellas.

Please provide me with a saloon girl holding a giant sledgehammer/shotgun or straddling a cannon or doing a karate move.

Ass-kicking saloon whores?

Well...we have a 'Filthy Whores' Encounter Pack planned, but they aren't really ass-kicking. They mostly hang around and rob you when you're helpless, or stab you when you're not looking.

It seems like you want some armed and vengeful painted cats.

We shall give your request serious consideration. Please continue to bother us about it. That's the best way to get us to do it.

@Mods: "ass" is not getting caught by the profanity filter. Does that mean it's okay, or should we all be self-censoring?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Wehrkind wrote:
Nice little tutorial! Really enjoying these, gives some nice insight into the process (and often the best teachers are those who only just figured out how to do stuff).

You are very welcome, Wehrkind. We appreciate the support and encouragement.

It takes a deceptively significant amount of effort to do tutorials like this, and we are very glad to hear that folks are getting some value out of it.

Mold making is a strange art. It seems to be three parts craft, two parts science, and one part voodoo.

Obviously, we have consumed whatever materials we can on making molds, and we have gotten plenty of help from some awesome people in the biz (not the least of whom are ZombieSmith Studios and Knuckleduster Miniatures.

We have found that there are many strange and conflicting habits, proclivities, and methodologies at work.

We realize tis post is a bit otiose on a wargaming forum, but what the heck!

I don't play those games, so why the feth would I play Exiles?

Why wouldn’t you play Exiles?

Exiles has engaging characters, gripping stories, and a disturbingly addictive game world.

On top of this, Exiles offers a fast-paced, modular game system that makes it exceedingly simple to organize a campaign.



Games require minimal setup, only take about 45 minutes to play, and can be played comfortably with as little as three people. At the same time, the system is robust enough to handle a large number of players without slowing down or falling apart.

And the best part of all is that GMing is utterly fungible. Not only can you play a character and GM in the same campaign, but GMing also gives you the opportunity to get extra experience and acquire unique gear for your character.


You won't get stuck GMing this time, we promise!

Campaigns unfold along an ambiguous timescale, which gives you the flexibility to play what you want, when you want without screwing up the story. You can splice scenarios together, mix up published campaigns, and insert side treks whenever you please.

Exiles can also be played as trim on story or as deep into the narrative weeds as you want.


We don't need no stinking story!

Campaign scenarios give you the basic structure of a coherent story arc, with built-in decision points and opportunities to explore the narrative while the accompanying Dime Novels offer a wealth of rich, characterful details that can be used to truly bring your campaign to life!

In short, Exiles is robust enough to hold your attention as a full-on RPG, but it also makes a great side game.

Exiles is perfect for a quick gaming fix without all the hassle of organizing a full-on campaign.

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The terrain shown so far looks nice too - is that something you'll also be producing and selling or is it from somewhere else?

Love the tutorials, thank you for posting them

 Alpharius wrote:
The terrain shown so far looks nice too - is that something you'll also be producing and selling or is it from somewhere else?

Thanks Alph!

The buildings are almost all from the Dead Man's Hand range by 4Ground.

We love 4Ground buildings! We will be doing lots of 4Ground tutorials and product reviews down the line, and we would love to retail some 4Ground products eventually.

Those ones in the pics are 'just out of the box', i.e. glued together and otherwise untouched. We are going to be mucking them up for Exiles, but that's not high on the current to-do list.

The mat in some of our pics is a F.A.T. Mat by Frontline Gaming. Otherwise it's Benson's sectional desert table.

F.A.T. Mats are fantastic! There's little better when it comes to photos and videos. I was skeptical at first, but I have been converted. The only problem with F.A.T. Mats is that they need to have more Exiles-ish mats in 3'x3'. And the Western Waste 3'x3' is sold out. Dammit Frontline! Don't you know we have a game coming out in a few months!

At some point were are going to work on designing our own Exiles plywood terrain for production on our sic little CNC mill. Our goal will be to produce decrepit, sagging, frontier buildings of the type you can't really find around anywhere. But that's a whole other set of skills to learn. For now we'll stick to getting our tokens milled.

Still loving everything I am seeing here. As the guy who usually gets stuck being the GM I like that you can play and run the game without being confined to one role.

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:
Still loving everything I am seeing here. As the guy who usually gets stuck being the GM I like that you can play and run the game without being confined to one role.

Technically you can do that in any game, but most formats are not conducive to it.

We spent a good deal of time figuring out how to create a system that naturally encourages swapping out the GM role.

First, GMing has to be easy, so you don't need to acquire much, if any, specialized knowledge to run a game. If the game needs a GM, it's going to require some specialized knowledge, but we have kept this to a minimum in Exiles, and provided lots of convenient guideposts and frameworks to work with.

Second, GMing has to be fun. It can't be an onerous chore, or nobody will want to do it.

Lastly, you need an incentive, something to give you an excuse to run a game, something that makes you WANT to run a game, that is unrelated to the experience itself.

Apart from the simple structure of an Exiles game, and the trim rules, we get a lot of mileage out of our "Betterments" system.

Every game has a set of "Betterments," usually three, which are optional objectives for the GM to achieve. The GM normally chooses two of these objectives prior to the start of the game.

Now, these objectives are related to the STORY of the game, and are not just about steamrolling the players. In fact, some Betterments make the bad guys far less efficient than they might otherwise be. We also try to make Betterments funny whenever we can.

For example, in one of our scenarios the players are trying to capture a bad guy henchman, hogtie him, and drag him off the table. One of the Betterments is called "Inchworm," and the objective is to have the Henchman crawl as far as possible while tied up.

Every Betterment comes with a bonus, and the Inchworm betterment pays you a certain amount of money for every inch the henchman crawls during the game (Crawl moves you 1 inch, btw).

So as the GM, if you choose this betterment you WANT the players to capture and hogtie the henchman, but then you want the players to drop him, and to keep them away from the henchman for as long as possible while he slowly inches his way around the table.

So how the Hell does Exiles actually work?

Exiles uses movement, terrain, combat, and dice mechanics similar to a skirmish wargame, combined with a streamlined character creation system and robust equipment rules that will keep your characters evolving game after game after game.

The system is based on an innovative simultaneous play mechanic that keeps the game moving at a lighting quick pace and allows for large numbers of players without slowing down or falling apart.



YOU GOT 'EM CLEM! I'll...cover you from these here rocks.

Exiles is designed to minimize rules interaction and maximize player interaction.

Players declare actions in whatever order they please and everything happens at the same time. In other words, you get to resolve your own actions without waiting on somebody to pull their head out of their ass. This frees up players to worry about important things, like why Carl is still running in the wrong direction!


These guys are prototypes for play testing. The actual product cards will have a more refined layout...and prices!

Exiles uses ten-sided dice and a simple roll-under mechanic with minimal modifiers. Roll equal to or less than your target number and you succeed. Target numbers are on the cards right in front of you, so you don’t have to worry about looking things up in the middle of a game.


The two D10 icons are your target numbers, one for short range and one for long range.

All of this rulesy crap allows Exiles to compress hours of gameplay into a raucous 45-minute thrill ride. The rules are simple, you don't need to look anything up, and you don't even have to wait for the other players to get their gak together! Exiles handles multiple players like a champ too. Add a fifth, sixth, or even a seventh player to a game and Exiles will barely feel it.

Exiles is basically the Valeria Messalina of miniatures gaming


Our fellow history nerds know what we're talkin' 'bout!

Not only that, but the fast, frenetic, nature of the game creates an intense, immersive experience whether you are looking for a tactical challenge or a great story to tell.

Although honestly, the biggest the tactical challenge is figuring out how to get Carl to pay attention for the 20 seconds you have to coordinate actions. God. Dammit. Carl...

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That's a damn good question!

The Exiles product line is based on variations of three basic products: Personas, Campaigns, and Encounters.

Personas are the basic building blocks of an Exiles character. Every Persona represents a particular archetype, such as the Gunslinger, the Doctor, or the man-eating Wendigo. Choosing a Persona gives your character a set of starting attributes and a skill list that tells you what abilities your character can learn, and how much it costs to learn them.

A Persona Pack product gives you everything you need to play a character from a certain Persona.


This here is a prototype, for picturin' purposes. Lots of arts is still cookin'!

The product comes with:

Two pewter miniatures representing iconic characters from the Persona

Character and Sidekick cards for each

Skill cards with the rules for any unique special abilities

Item cards with which you can equip your characters

Wooden tokens that you can use to handle any bs during a game

All of it packed up nicely in a specially designed wooden box that you can use to carry around all your awesome stuff, with plenty of room for all the extra crap you pick up along the way!

A Campaign Set includes everything you need to play through a campaign featuring a bunch of new bad guys to kick the gak out of.


Marco is still sculpting Troy Hatcher and the Scarcely Gang, so just use your imagination. And imagine the proper tokens are in there...and that the Dime Novel is in there...Whatever, you'll get about this much STUFF, plus a few special trinkets.

The product comes with:

A set of pewter miniatures representing the various bad guys featured in the campaign

Stat cards for all of these SOBs

Scenario cards describing any special rules you need for the campaign

A set of badass new item cards

A Plethora of wooden tokens to handle any special crap that happens in the campaign

A printed dime novel with rules and nifty, world-building stories

All this stuff is packaged up in a beautiful wooden box that we will lovingly feth up to give it that real Exiles flavor.



You only get two kinds of boxes! Two. One for lots of stuff and one for not as much stuff.

Encounter Packs let you modify a Campaign.

Each encounter pack features a new Boss that will change up the rules for a particular type of bad guy, or just something super cool you can add to a campaign, like the Crusty Whores, the Occupied gak, or Ol’ Efrim, the legendary one-eyed grizzly! And of course you get a bunch of new scenario rules, sweet new items, a whole mess of tokens, and a nice wooden box to keep it all in.

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This is all starting to look really good guys, keep it up!

Simultaneous rounds? Sounds interesting. Is there an open beta version for playtesting?

Anything on pricing yet?

 smiler wrote:
This is all starting to look really good guys, keep it up!

Thanks Smiler! We absolutely appreciate the support and encouragement!



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hanskrampf wrote:
Simultaneous rounds? Sounds interesting. Is there an open beta version for playtesting?

Anything on pricing yet?

We are considering an open beta for the rules, but we would like to let our play test campaigns run for a bit more to see how they continue to play out.

With any game that has campaign play, you really need to watch multiple campaigns to unfold organically. Certain issues will only surface in an extended campaign, so we want to let it ride for a bit longer to see if anything pops up before opening up the system to a less structured, broad base style of community feedback.

We are told that we should keep pricing info under our hats until the products 'hit the streets', and there's lots of good reasons for that. Being a both brand new and small company, we need to work the kinks out of the production process. How much wastage is there in full scale production? Is there a cost we we forgot to factor in? How do our actual operating expenses match up with cost projections? And such boring nonsense like that.

That said, we have a price point in mind, and we think our products will provide a great deal of value for the price.

For example, with a Persona Pack product (see my post below) you will get everything you need to participate in an Exiles campaign for dozens and dozens of games. You will get a plethora of items that will have your character's billfold empty and your character reasonably equipped until you die a horridly bloody frontier death.

The Gunslinger Persona Pack will come with crappy, middling, and and high quality pistols at a variety of price points, for example, plus multiples of every type of firearm. You'll get cards for all of the ammo types, and at least one weapon of every type the Gunslinger can use. Plus some fun useful items like cartridge belts and holsters.

You might eventually want an even cooler gun or a better fightin' weapon, and that would be the time to pick up or engage with another product, or just print out the PDFs of the cards and use whatever you like!


Automatically Appended Next Post:


Choosing a Persona is the most important thing about making an Exiles character.

A Persona tells you what kind of character you’ve got, whether it’s a fancy Gentleman, swarthy Gunslinger, hardass Trapper, or even something fethed up and weird like a skeletal Scarecrow or disease-riddled Buzzard.


I like the look of your box...

Your Persona tells you what special abilities and whatnot you start with, and it also gives you a handy list of skills you can buy with your Learnin’. But that’s all the boring game gak. The Persona Pack product gives you so much more!

A Persona Pack gives you everything you need to create and play a character from a particular Persona.

First, you get two pewter miniatures representing iconic characters from the Persona.

Every miniature is hand-made by us in our snazzy workshop. Exiles models are single piece casts, so you don’t have to mess with assembly. Any and all bits are designed to be entirely optional, so you can jazz up your little dudes if you like, or take them as they come.



You get Character and Sidekick cards for both models which means you can not only play either model as a proper character, you can also hire them as a sidekick when gak gets hairy!

You also get a set of handy quick reference Skill cards so you can put all the special rules for your Persona right in front of you during a game.

Each Persona Pack comes with a set of wooden tokens to handle all of your bs during a game. You get tokens for all of the common actions, like Haul Ass, Reload, and Yee-Haw!, plus tokens for all of your cool Persona skills.


These are Benson's gakky prototypes. Adam Burnier is MUCH better at photoshop, don't worry.

More importantly, your Persona Pack comes with a set of Item cards you can use to equip your character. You’ll get plenty of cheap, gakky equipment suitable for a brand new character, some better gear that’ll come in handy when you’re flush with cash, and badass items for each character.

All of this awesome stuff comes packed in a genuine wooden box with a slide out tray and internal dividers to keep everything organized. You’ll find plenty of extra room in this here box for additional gear, game materials, or other bs you happen to pick up along the way.


Look at all that fun gak!

And that’s it! Everything you need to play your favorite Persona.

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Let’s take a quick look at the Exiles turn structure.

The game turn has a pretty basic structure. It goes like this:

Animals and Idiots
Movin’
Doin’
Roundup

The Movin’ and Doin’ phases have their own declare/resolve sub-phases.

Animals and Idiots



The Animals and Idiots phase is for doing whatever needs to be done with any animal or idiot models on the table. Some scenarios will have a few special rules for animals and/or idiots, but most of the time you can ignore them.

Animals and Idiots is also when the Governor puts new bad guys on the table, and that’s what you’ll use it for most of the time.

Movin’


NOOOOOOO! I'm not even holding my gun!

The most important thing about the Movin’ phase is that it’s timed.

The Governor should start every Movin’ phase by activating a timer, which should be about 20 seconds.

Once the timer starts, players have to do their Movin' before the timer runs out!

When time is up, STOP!

If you dithered too long, declared the wrong action, or didn’t finish moving a model, well that sucks for you. Leave your model where it is, don’t touch that token on the table, and deal with it.

After the players finish Movin' their gak, the Governor does all the bad guy stuff.

Finally, all declared actions get resolved before the Doin' phase.

Doin’


A little too much Doin' last night, eh? We've all been there.

The Doin’ phase is like the Movin’ phase, except it isn’t timed, and now you can kill somebody!

Just like Movin’ phase, players do their stuff first, then all the bad guys.

Effects apply as soon as they hit the table, but any mooks you shade normally get a change to hit you back before they leave the table.

Roundup


What, you don't have 100 cow models? Weirdo...

The Roundup phase is for resolving any lingering bs that happened in the game turn.

When everything is buttoned up, the Governor takes a few seconds to fiddle with models in the Animals and Idiots phase then starts a new Movin’ timer.

Rinse and repeat.

Game turns take about 90 to 180 seconds, which means you can normally play more than 20 game turns in a 45 minute game. Whoa doggie! That’s fast!

More game turns means you have plenty of time to make up for mistakes, so it doesn't much matter if you screw up. This is the secret sauce that makes Exiles so awesome.

There's so much playing going on that it does't matter if you make a stupid mistake!

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MMM... You a fine-lookin' man, Mr. Hiscock.

 Sinful Hero wrote:
Interesting you're avoiding Kickstarter.

Any particular reasons?

Fascinating. Kickstarter has become such a retail tool that customers are surprised when you don't use it.

I'm not totally against it, and may try it myself some day, but it seems like it allows manufacturers to deliver substandard final parts, deliver them incredibly late, or even not deliver them at all, and people love it. All because of the excitement of making it happen and stretch goals and all that? Really?

 khurasan_miniatures wrote:

 Sinful Hero wrote:
Interesting you're avoiding Kickstarter.

Any particular reasons?

Fascinating. Kickstarter has become such a retail tool that customers are surprised when you don't use it.

I'm not totally against it, and may try it myself some day, but it seems like it allows manufacturers to deliver substandard final parts, deliver them incredibly late, or even not deliver them at all, and people love it. All because of the excitement of making it happen and stretch goals and all that? Really?

YAY! Khurasan Miniatures! I love your models.

EVERYBODY! These guys are awesome, check out the Khurasan website.

I vehemently agree that many customers have come to expect a Kickstarter campaign. The number one question we get asked is 'When does your Kickstarter launch'.

A segment of the market has effectively migrated to Kickstarter, although it is also fair to say that Kickstarter is a marketplace where you get exposure to a broader audience, and Kickstarter has certainly helped to expand the market. So it's both good and bad.

In general, we are not terribly comfortable making promises or commitments until we are satisfied that we can meet our obligations, and I suspect that's where you are coming from as well.

For us, that means having products in hand, sitting on the shelf, ready to go before we offer them for sale. Ironically, that's how lots of Kickstarter campaigns from small minis companies do it these days.

I was talking to someone the other day who mentioned that with Kickstarter you can get six months of sales in three weeks, which is true. But the way I look at it is that I would then have to spend six months sorting everything out and getting the orders filled.

I would rather get six months of orders over six months, if only because our customers would get the satisfaction of having their products in hand in the time it takes a package to make it from my house to theirs.

Hoo-dogie! You can tie me up anytime Mr. Hiscock!

We figure it's appropriate to start introducing y'all to Mr. Hiscock since Valentine's Day is comin' on and all.

Mr. Hiscock features in a heartfelt tale of frontier love that we'll share with you on Sunday.

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HEY! Benson was on a podcast!

"This was my first podcasting experience. I was real nervous, you know. It's a big deal. You only get one 'first'. But Paul Murphy was great. He was gentle and supportive, and he made me feel so special."

You can check out the podcast here.

Shut yer pokehole Carla-Jean! A gal can dream cain’t she?

Don’t you pay that old slag no mind. Her damn prannie’s so dusty a feller wouldn’t drygulch her fer a nickel.


You handle Jackie right and that’s just how he’ll treat you, like a fine, clean woman who aint had her belly filled half a dozen times ‘fore breakfast. You hustle Jackie like trade and he aint never gonna give you so much as a sidelong glance again.



Carla-Jean’s got all that sand up her Not remotely appropriate. She hadn’t so much as tickled Jackie’s trousers ‘fore he grabbed her wrist so hard it marked her up good. Jackie up and left on the spot too, which put the rest of us in a lurch on account o’ how Jackie likes to make sure we’re all took care of. More’n a few of us girls had been countin’ on Jackie fer a warm meal, and a lil’ help makin’ ends meet.

Jackie aint so nice to Carla-Jean no more neither, but she aint gon’ cause anymore trouble. We got together that night and mixed a whole mess o’ pepper in her liniment; had that heifer’s Not remotely appropriate burnin’ like Hellfire fer a fornight!

Head thisaway if you'd like to hear the whole story



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