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Lol, if anyone can polish a turd, it's Duncan Rhodes so he may not be the best judge of what is possible for a decidedly average painter like me!

That said.. these definitely don't look like turds! There is a little bit of softness to the details and I'd put them on par with the best possible from a modern fully tuned resin 3d printer which is a compliment for a mass market preassembled game and not meant as damning praise. I've so far only looked at a few factions of minis (mainly free folk and Stark and Nights Watch factions) and have been impressed. I've mainly focused on minis that I can use for my RPG characters rather than for the actual game itself.

 warboss wrote:
What type of plastic are the minis made of? I remember the KS but didn't really follow it nor have I seen the minis used in person (admittedly in large part due to the pandemic) so just recently took my first look at the line. I was really surprised at the quality of the sculpts as frankly I was expecting lower detail more similar to previous CMON board game minis even though this is a dedicated minis game. I was also expecting sprues when I watched my first unboxing video but was surprised to see fully assembled minis. How good is the typical assembly? For those who paint minis, do you frequently need to do gap filling/fixing or are the joints pretty well done?

The minis are made out of the slightly stiffer pvc than their boardgame minis are made out of, but the weapons are hard abs plastic.

I find the assembly to generally be very well done, but it can depend by box. I'd say something like one out of every 24 miniatures would require gap filling. Cavalry is definitely the rougher of the miniatures in my experience with the worst mold lines and horse body joins, but I may have just got a bad Targaryen box. In general, since cavalry are cast in more pieces there are more points for failure. I consider myself picky when it comes to gaps.

I find the FreeFolk raiders and early Starks to have some of the softest details, but they still paint up very nicely.

If you want pictures of specific miniatures just send me a message. I have purchased an embarrassing amount of the miniatures...

 Gallahad wrote:
I find the FreeFolk raiders and early Starks to have some of the softest details, but they still paint up very nicely.

If you want pictures of specific miniatures just send me a message. I have purchased an embarrassing amount of the miniatures...

Thanks for the details and I appreciate the offer. Your post (specifically the part quoted above) does bring up the next point that I was planning on asking about. I had heard over the last few days watching youtube videos folks referencing softness of details on the earliest kickstarter releases. Was that pretty much everything in the kickstarter or just some items? I'm not sure if it came out in waves or one single lot. Luckily for my roleplaying needs, I'm looking for a druid and the free folk skinchanger box is a good fit and doesn't need too many sharp edges but I was curious if that was one of the examples folks cite.

 warboss wrote:

 Gallahad wrote:
I find the FreeFolk raiders and early Starks to have some of the softest details, but they still paint up very nicely.

If you want pictures of specific miniatures just send me a message. I have purchased an embarrassing amount of the miniatures...

Thanks for the details and I appreciate the offer. Your post (specifically the part quoted above) does bring up the next point that I was planning on asking about. I had heard over the last few days watching youtube videos folks referencing softness of details on the earliest kickstarter releases. Was that pretty much everything in the kickstarter or just some items? I'm not sure if it came out in waves or one single lot. Luckily for my roleplaying needs, I'm looking for a druid and the free folk skinchanger box is a good fit and doesn't need too many sharp edges but I was curious if that was one of the examples folks cite.

Stark bowmen and Sworn swords are the two that come to mind. Umber berserkers are fine. Some of the special characters like Brynden Tully are a little small. Crannogman are great. One pose of the Lannisters halberdiers face didn't come out well.

Other things that came out of the Kickstarter are fantastic, like the Bolton Cutthroats that look like resins (especially the dreadfort captain)

The Skinchangers kit is just a little on the softer side imo, but still paints up very nicely.

 Gallahad wrote:

Stark bowmen and Sworn swords are the two that come to mind. Umber berserkers are fine. Some of the special characters like Brynden Tully are a little small. Crannogman are great. One pose of the Lannisters halberdiers face didn't come out well.

Other things that came out of the Kickstarter are fantastic, like the Bolton Cutthroats that look like resins (especially the dreadfort captain)

The Skinchangers kit is just a little on the softer side imo, but still paints up very nicely.

Thanks again. The Umber berserkers were actually the other kit I was specifically looking at (for the champion as I'm doing a druid/bear-barian build, lol). Yeah, I had some questions about the detail on the fur on back of the skinchanger models as it looked a bit soft but ultimately I was ok with it given the detail on the rest. Do you have pics of your skinchangers kit that you can post?

Hopefully these help. My Skinchangers are painted, but the fur texture is fine. The faces are a touch soft on both sculpts. You can also see an Umber Berserker along with a few old empire models and a Perry for scale.





I think the images are higher quality in my gallery:


https://www.dakkadakka.com/core/gallery-search.jsp?u=77209

Thanks! The skinchangers look quite nice and the detail looks crisper than I initially thought watching the unboxings. Perhaps it was the material color mixed with the lighting that made it look worse than it actually was.

Models are PVC and the quality is pretty good for PVC. They're not particularly outstanding; I can't say a single one of them ranks among my favorites, but they're accomplish a large scale battle very efficiently.

A few things completely worth praising though; from what I've seen, weapons are very straight. No droopy spears or bendy blades. The sculpt quality also creates a good variety of faces and poses. Sometimes things like finer bears get lost in the jawline but on the whole the faces give a lot of personality to what would often be faceless goons. I've also not cleaned a mold line or filled a gap in my collection. I've noticed a couple minor assembly problems across a hundred or so figures, but nothing I thought needed to be fixed outside of horse who wasn't properly glued into the base.

All that said, its still PVC, so if you're in it for the fine details you're likely to be a bit disappointed. You see a lot of the usual PVC problems; stuff like quivers kind of turn into these blobs of plastic against the side of a figure and stuff like the fletching on arrows can be pretty sloppy. Relatively simple figures are fine, but when you get to stuff like Daenerys, its really easy to see how PVC just can't capture things like ornate tribal jewelry. Horse bridal gets simplified into this weird hunk of plastic that fills the entire space between the mouth and neck of a horse as well.

So like... I wouldn't call these things showcase models, but for what they are and the scale of the game they're a great value. They have some of the best straight out of the box and onto the table playability this side of X-Wing and there's absolutely nothing really wrong with them; they're just not as ornate as what you can get from other companies, but... you definitely get what you pay for.

 LunarSol wrote:
Models are PVC and the quality is pretty good for PVC. They're not particularly outstanding; I can't say a single one of them ranks among my favorites, but they're accomplish a large scale battle very efficiently.

A few things completely worth praising though; from what I've seen, weapons are very straight. No droopy spears or bendy blades. The sculpt quality also creates a good variety of faces and poses. Sometimes things like finer bears get lost in the jawline but on the whole the faces give a lot of personality to what would often be faceless goons. I've also not cleaned a mold line or filled a gap in my collection. I've noticed a couple minor assembly problems across a hundred or so figures, but nothing I thought needed to be fixed outside of horse who wasn't properly glued into the base.

All that said, its still PVC, so if you're in it for the fine details you're likely to be a bit disappointed. You see a lot of the usual PVC problems; stuff like quivers kind of turn into these blobs of plastic against the side of a figure and stuff like the fletching on arrows can be pretty sloppy. Relatively simple figures are fine, but when you get to stuff like Daenerys, its really easy to see how PVC just can't capture things like ornate tribal jewelry. Horse bridal gets simplified into this weird hunk of plastic that fills the entire space between the mouth and neck of a horse as well.

So like... I wouldn't call these things showcase models, but for what they are and the scale of the game they're a great value. They have some of the best straight out of the box and onto the table playability this side of X-Wing and there's absolutely nothing really wrong with them; they're just not as ornate as what you can get from other companies, but... you definitely get what you pay for.

Yeah, I agree with that. They don't have the same crispness as GW kits for sure, but they are also easy to convert, and I find that I really prefer the single piece casting for heads and cloaks and furs. GW still suffer from cloaks heads and hair that are always hovering around the model and never really lay right

I do find then easier to paint than smaller scale plastic kits like Frostgrave and Perry just because of the scale.I also find them if a higher quality than the boardgame pvc from CMON. For example, they are much better than say Zombicide Invader models.

 warboss wrote:
How good is the typical assembly? For those who paint minis, do you frequently need to do gap filling/fixing or are the joints pretty well done?

I have a *big* FF army (2 starters and lot of boxes) and I think I've found 3 problems. One was a miscast and the supplier got me a replacement, the other two were arms that I re-glued.

 LunarSol wrote:

A few things completely worth praising though; from what I've seen, weapons are very straight. No droopy spears or bendy blades.

Thanks for the detailed rundown. I agree that the part above deserves special mention. Obviously I don't have personal experience with the models but one of the YouTube unboxing video demonstrated the above. The spears were very straight and the unboxer was basically twanging the end like he was playing a tune in a coffee stirred held over a table edge. While I reflexively cringed at the danger of doing that to a model, it neither broke nor deformed.

Man, and a game where the designers talk openly about their design goals and aren't trying to jerk the playerbase around:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez2SD5BNlTI

Hecaton wrote:
Man, and a game where the designers talk openly about their design goals and aren't trying to jerk the playerbase around:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez2SD5BNlTI

On the Table Gaming is a great channel for this game.

Lots of solid content and he's got a good thing going with the Designer/Developer.

If there's any lurkers in this thread, definitely check out Chase's channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfmdCCJ9Usa686sLnlnVN6Q

Another good one, which has a lot of beginner content is 3 Sails Gaming: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI1uIGVRnREC5mhS4AzAC2g

I'm still going through the various lines and saw the mummer zebra light cavalry. I really like the guy with a spear and shield in the upper right but I have to admit that I literally LOLed when I noticed the poor zebra on the lower left. And, in case someone gets their panties in a bunch, that's been my body type for most of the last 20 years (just add copious body hair!).

 warboss wrote:
I'm still going through the various lines and saw the mummer zebra light cavalry. I really like the guy with a spear and shield in the upper right but I have to admit that I literally LOLed when I noticed the poor zebra on the lower left. And, in case someone gets their panties in a bunch, that's been my body type for most of the last 20 years (just add copious body hair!).

Lol. I have those models. Gotta figure out a way to make the lower left zebra look like he is really sweating and just praying there isn't a hedge to jump or something.

Fwiw, my box of mummer cavalry had a number of assembly problems. I don't know if I just got a bumb box or if is the models on the whole.

Also, Troll Hoard games sells a bunch of the miniatures as singles and they have good photos up of most of them.

Hecaton wrote:
Man, and a game where the designers talk openly about their design goals and aren't trying to jerk the playerbase around:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez2SD5BNlTI

Most games start that way. Developers get burned when their attempts to talk to the public get thrown back in their face by a minority of players that get upset that someone moved their cheese.

 LunarSol wrote:


Most games start that way. Developers get burned when their attempts to talk to the public get thrown back in their face by a minority of players that get upset that someone moved their cheese.

I really disagree. GW, for example, isolated itself from the community so that any flak for making exploitative decisions is directed amongst the community rather than at them.

 LunarSol wrote:


Most games start that way. Developers get burned when their attempts to talk to the public get thrown back in their face by a minority of players that get upset that someone moved their cheese.

Game has been out for a couple of years now. Not sure if it still counts as starting out.

They are doing an open Q&A tomorrow at 1 pm EST

Big update for the Baratheons.
https://cmon.com/news/visions-in-the-flames-baratheons-in-2021

Baratheon players seem pretty happy with the tactics card changes, which while less powerful have less overlapping triggers so you can actually get more off.

Stannis now leans heavily into being the token dispensing faction. Several abilities around putting down, switching around, and sacrificing tokens for in game abilities.

I can definitely say that I'll be trying to grab the crown when facing Baratheons.

My baratheon pal is happy.

Every game we played would start with him drawing his hand and saying "this is garbage"

It's not that the cards were bad, it's just that he wouldn't be able to use them. While I play Starks and always get to use my cards.

So far, I really like the direction the changes are going

King's Men leaked out.



Stag Knights are only a point more, but it's raw offence versus utility. Be interesting to see which wins out in the meta.

Yeah it's tough to say, especially how they are stressing they want attachments to be worth it more often... that extra point difference could be big.

I feel that those guys would be pretty darn useful, Stag Knights are more dependable, but the versatility of these guys lets you add buffs to other units, where as the Stag Knights can only kill what ever is in front of their face.

I'm having a hard time caring much about individual unit previews. It feels like so much is changing that individual updates don't mean a whole lot without being able to see the big picture.

 LunarSol wrote:
I'm having a hard time caring much about individual unit previews. It feels like so much is changing that individual updates don't mean a whole lot without being able to see the big picture.

Yeah, I wish they had just dropped 1.7 like a bomb rather than the slow trickle. It puts everything on pause.

I try to paint my units based on how likely they are to see play, so it the updates definitely have me questioning what to paint next.

I guess I should be painting Bloody Mummer Zhorses?

 warboss wrote:
I'm still going through the various lines and saw the mummer zebra light cavalry. I really like the guy with a spear and shield in the upper right but I have to admit that I literally LOLed when I noticed the poor zebra on the lower left. And, in case someone gets their panties in a bunch, that's been my body type for most of the last 20 years (just add copious body hair!).

I think the "poor zebra on the lower left" is meant to be a reference to a minor character from the books, so that's cool.

 Gallahad wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
I'm having a hard time caring much about individual unit previews. It feels like so much is changing that individual updates don't mean a whole lot without being able to see the big picture.

Yeah, I wish they had just dropped 1.7 like a bomb rather than the slow trickle. It puts everything on pause.

I try to paint my units based on how likely they are to see play, so it the updates definitely have me questioning what to paint next.

I guess I should be painting Bloody Mummer Zhorses?

Even some of the bigger voices in the community were doomsaying that CMON had left ASoIaF to rot and that MoD would be the final death knell before the game dies completely. November/December was a pretty dreary time and one of the biggest complaints - if not the biggest - was the radio silence from CMON.

It might be that 1.7 was originally meant to drop like a bomb (although the Card Packs would've been leaked by retailers eventually) but all of the negative surrounding the game probably spurred them to play their hand early and trickle the information out.

Yeah. I have some... issues... with the way those voices work, but I understand the issue. Certainly good to get information about the changes out and I'm really interested in the large scope changes planned. It's just the discussions about "how good" changes to a specific unit are that I try to avoid. The scale of the change is just too much for me to be able to gauge whether or not a specific model's new rules are positive or not.

Big changes to Dothraki/Targaryens

https://asoiaf.cmon.com/news/visions-in-the-flames-house-targaryen-in-2021



Dothraki players seem generally positive about the changes. Some are a little mixed, but that is probably a good sign.

 Mangod wrote:


I think the "poor zebra on the lower left" is meant to be a reference to a minor character from the books, so that's cool.

Indeed it is! I'm glad they did that as a nod to those who know.