Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Kickstarter link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blacklistgames/blacklist-miniatures-fantasy-series-1

Ends on May 5th.

I rather like this one, huge amount of generic RPG-focused fantasy minis at a very low price, reminds me somewhat of the original Reaper Bones Kickstarter, where there was a lot of stuff, but it was generic enough for lots of different gamers to find a use for it.

Personally, I've looked at this one and thought "Well, that's most of the frostgrave bestiary right there", but there's so many other uses it could have, basically a giant pool of fantasy creatures, including some large trolls, ogres, dragon etc. for a very low price. Only downside at the moment is lack of pose variation on the 5-packs but I messaged them about it and they hinted it might be a future stretch goal.

Here is the current list of minis that you get for $65, although loads more have been added via stretch goals in addition to the ones pictured below:

 scarletsquig wrote:
huge amount of generic

Mmmyup. That's some amount of it alright.

First impressions...

- Oh look, it's the DnD gender/race/class identikit style.

- Why does everyone after the female barbarian look so bored?

- What's the difference between a gnome and a halfling here?

- Five identical goblins, five identical kobolds, five identical... okay, I see where this is going. '160 minis' as in 'a handful of minis repeated several times'. Even for populating dungeons or filling out back ranks, it's kind of disappointing. Sure these aren't meeples for a board game?

- Y'know, a skull is supposed to be at least a bit smaller than the head it's inside.

- The dragon could go in with the oozes. It's looking kinda melty there.

Overall, okay, these are nicely sculpted, but for the most part, those characters that display a wee bit of dynamism in their pose have it beaten back down again by bland expressions. They could use a tad more theatricality for static gaming minis. Look at the faces of all the female characters barring the barbarian. Is ctrl-Z a thing in Zbrush?
For the monsters, it's sheer repetition that kills any hint of character. Any one type as a single mini would be interesting, at least. Displayed like this, it's a wet blanket.

So I guess I'm not the market for this. That said, I think I could find a use for those spiders down the line. (With a bit of chopping and gluing) Haven't clicked the link yet - is it one of those kickstarters where you have to lay a wedge of dosh down for everything, when you just want one or two things?

Yes. Yes it is.

Aack. This is dangerously close to twisting my arm to back!
What a nice assortment for rpg players. Should be at least as nice as bones if not better since they are purpose sculpted and not old pewter miniatures ported over to PVC.

Bones hasn't been old metal sculpts since probably the second KSer.

Yeah this absolutely looks like a board game with all the cardboard taken out.

You can also pick up the Altar Quest pledge, if you previously missed it. 211 miniatures for $109. FS1 miniatures tend towards generic fantasy. Altar Quest miniatures towards the Sadler Brother's universe and include traps and scenery. Anyone who's received miniatures from BL can let us know about the quality. I've included a link to their AQ photos.

I figure the limitations of boardgame plastic prevents more dynamic poses, but if I can get such at these prices, I'd purchase them as well. Comments in the KS look to be more interested covering hero sculpts for uncommon characters (eg. female half-orc rogue) than their poses.

AQ KS page : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blacklistgames/altar-quest/description
AQ photos: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blacklistgames/altar-quest/posts/2703214

Whoah, those final miniatures for Altar quest are waay better than I expected.

I think it's a fantastic pack of generic fantasy miniatures, would give somebody who doesn't own much a relatively full collection for games and RPGs. I'm not really put off by the same sculpt being re-used for mooks, I dunno, I guess it depends on your age and what games you've played. HeroQuest had the same sculpts, so did Warhammer Quest, Descent, Monolith's Conan and Mythic Battles Pantheon, etc. They're mooks, they don't need individual sculpts.

This campaign is chasing a whole different market than what a lot of us here are into.

I've noticed strictly RPG players are a little less discerning about model quality than some of us here, and are a lot more concerned with quantity than quality.

That said there's been steady progression with the quality of Blacklist's plastics. Street Masters was so- so, Aftershock looked better, and Altar Quest is looking quite nice is they hold to that level of detail.

Plus sometimes it's nice to have simple gaming pieces that don't need hours of detail lavished upon them.

For a younger crowd or people just getting into gaming? This is an awesome set. If you're 5 Kickstarters deep with Bones... you probably have your bases covered.

Good thing there's no Dragonborn in there to tempt me though!

I've gone for it, looks like it is heading for over 200 minis for £50/$65 and it has been a long time since I've seen a kickstarter have that kind of price per mini.

I've been meaning to get into frostgrave for a while, with 2nd edition out later this year that's good timing and this KS will nearly fill up the entire bestiary with the exception of ice toads and other very niche minis. The creators play frostgrave themselves and it definitely has had some influence on the mini selection here.

Slightly tempted to get a 4x pledge and get a Kings of War army or three out of it, even just the 4 hordes of elementals would make it worthwhile, definitely a full undead army there too with skeletons, zombies, ghouls, mummies, wights, ghosts+banshees.

Most of my minis as a kid were monopose GW plastics, there are certain benefits to the style, especially with ranked fantasy regiments, makes batch painting very mindlessly easy too.

Probably won't though, even with contrast paints, that's just not realistically happening and the 160 hero minis might be a little surplus to requirements, unless I could make small units out of them somehow...

Anyone know how reliably these guys have delivered their previous KS in terms of communication, delays, shipping ect? Seems like a very worthwhile and useful offering but with most of the minis being art only at this stage, that December 2020 shipping date seems somewhat optimistic to me (even if a lot of it is at least WIP behind the scenes).

Not that that necessarily puts me off as the value is frankly absurd, but still, would be nice to know if anyone's backed these folks in the past.

They've had problems with fulfillment, but are switching to Quarterman Logicistics. QL is Cool Stuff Inc's distribution arm.

If you're familiar with BGG, QL has testimonials from The Dice Tower and Tasty Minstrel Games.

Frank Gerken in the comments : "Their first KS for that Martial Arts was canceled because it did not fund, so of course it cannot be fullfilled. The 1st Street Masters is fullfilled, and the Brook City is also fullfilled without Brazil. The problem with Brook City is, that their goods got stolen in Brazil, and they are currently reprinting the needed stuff to fullfill that. Street Masters Aftershock has big problems with their fullfillment company BlackBox. BlackBox also screwed up other Kickstarters the last months. That is the reason that all future KS from Blacklist will not use BlackBox again. Altar Quest and Hour of Need are still in production, with Altar Quest being in printing process currently. They showed of all the proofs for AQ in a YouTube Video.

https://stonemaiergames.com/fulfilling-kickstarter-rewards-with-quartermaster-logistics/
https://www.qmlogistics.com/our-customers/

Pretty obviously, you'd rather have a creator a track record with no mistakes. For myself, $65 plus shipping is within my risk, but may not be so for others. I would say the Reaper Bones V KS is less risky?

Blacklist's fulfillment of Street Masters Aftershock has been bad.

Seven months after it began, countless backers are missing stretch goals which have not been sent (possibly lost and may need to be reprinted) and much of Asia has yet to receive anything at all.

Read the updates since October to get a feel for how it has been handled for yourself. But I won't back another Blacklist project until this one is fully and finally resolved.

I guess I really got lucky as my Aftershock stuff all arrived quite some time back.

I thought the details were a bit sharper on those compared to the base game.

Karma had the last laugh and is just now shipping out a bunch of other stuff that everyone else received months if not years ago in other news.

I'm gonna throw a dollar at it, decide when I see the final shipping costs in the PM.

It looks like they might have capped out at 201 minis total, with the final one being a Giantess.

33 cents per mini is really solid, and some are larger pieces. 10 large minis on 50mm bases, 2 huge minis on 75mm bases.

Hopefully once they update they're able to do some stretch goals to add pose variety to the groups of 5 minis, they strongly hinted that that would be the case when I messaged them a few days back.

Edit:
Looks like they're wrapping it up there, the last update confirms that it's 100% complete for everything they have planned, they will be making a co-operative miniatures wargame that makes use of the models and a series 2 set in future since this KS has been so successful.

I suppose the minis having zero flavor or identity means they can be used anywhere. Certainly not bad for Frostgrave. Might come back to bite them when they try doing their own IP.

Eh, for their own IP, they have Altar Quest. Which seems to have bitten them only slightly. Have fun scrubbing this image out of your head.



And he has his own deck of cards with that head.



No doubt a perfect match for this thing.

Super annoying, I want two specific minis from there!
Elf Wizard and Half-Orc Paladin
Would be perfect for my current RP.
I like a lot of the others but they wouldn’t get enough use, a few of the enemies maybe but not loads of it unless we did specific adventure paths where they come up.

Looks like half-orc paladins already exist on the market, as do elf wizards. MM has some, and offers customer holds and free shipping.
Less wait and less risk than backing a KS!

https://www.miniaturemarket.com/searchresults?q=half+orc+paladin
https://www.miniaturemarket.com/searchresults?q=elf+wizard


Mentioned in the 48-hour update:

Lasting Tales is a cooperative tabletop miniatures game for 1-4 players. It will be designed for players to utilize any fantasy miniatures in their collections, and owners of Fantasy: Series 1 will have plenty of miniatures specifically designed to use in the game. We don't have much more to say about it at this time, and everything is subject to change, but we will share more details on the Blacklist Games Facebook page and website when those details become available!

Physical SG's have been max'ed out.

I’m not sure they look as good.

The wizard for sure, and I want one who looks a bit less scholarly and more adventure like. Think less robes and more similar to townsfolk clothes or rangers etc..
(Also in particular it’s a half elf, but no difference in models there really)

Last day for this, looks like it'll break $1m comfortably.

Think I'll have to make a serious plan for painting these, the heroes are the only ones where I'll set them aside and paint them whenever they're needed for a game, the mooks will need a big batch paint effort, I can probably get 5 done in 2 hours with contrast paints and one highlight stage, should be doable in a month.

I've also figured out another use for the minis - replacing all the card standees in the 90s TSR Dragon Quest game, it's a lot like heroquest and the minis from this cover basically everything since it's D&D based. It's all just generally useful stuff to have.

Danny76 wrote:
Super annoying, I want two specific minis from there!
Elf Wizard and Half-Orc Paladin
Would be perfect for my current RP.
I like a lot of the others but they wouldn’t get enough use, a few of the enemies maybe but not loads of it unless we did specific adventure paths where they come up.

Someone made a Blacklist games Reddit. Mebbe start a trade thread! : https://www.reddit.com/r/BlacklistGames/

It appears that there are some issues with the final delivery of this Kickstarter and Blacklist doesn't have suffient funds to get the remaining product from the warehouse and to customers. To that end, they now started a GoFundMe to bring in the amount they need to pay $360k.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blacklistgames/blacklist-miniatures-fantasy-series-1/posts/3566481?ref=activity

and gofundme has pulled the project

(not clear if it actually violates their T&C or they've just had too many complaints)

Yet another Big Oof in the KS scene.

the really tricky thing sounds as if QML isn't open to partial payment to get 'some' stuff out of the door (burned too often?)

which would at least let them ask backers for money directly (it would work out at about $20 each) and while plenty would refuse a fair number would pay up clearing part of the balance, reducing storage fees and potentially allowing them to negotiate a smaller loan for the rest

They really should have asked for the $20 a long time ago. There would have been grumbling, but people would have paid and it would be sorted now rather than accumulating an extra years worth of warehouse storage fees (so it'll now be more like $40 per remaining backer, *sigh* ).

Or charged more in the initial campaign, $85 for 200 minis would still have been a bargain and it's telling that the add-on price went up to $100 in future campaigns.

I got mine months ago, so one of the lucky ones, but regretting making this thread to promote the campaign.

Ugh. This bodes poorly for Lasting Tales (Fantasy 2) then as well.

This feels like it's going to end poorly for all Kickstarters involved. It is a shame they didn't just ask for more money at the time of the problem and tried to get the product shipped out as fast as possible. People would have been much more understanding, it's not like we don't know there are some issues in the world.