Monday Miniatures: Wild Ride
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What a week, and I don’t just mean Kickstarter!
First the story of the weekend: Deadzone became the 6th Mini-centric project on our favorite crowdfunding website to cross the million dollar mark when Mantic raised more than $1.2 million for it’s skirmish game. Note the extremely parabolic funding curve; more than 1/3 of that money was raised in the final day.
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Originally I didn’t think much of this project. Mantic is churning out games in an assembly line fashion lately, and as regular readers know, I don’t see that as Kickstarters purpose. They also seem to be making clones of ole GW’s properties one at a time, and that annoys me too – Blizard already did that once. But I loved Necromunda, (and wish that Games Workshop was still actively supporting it,) so I lurked.
I liked what I saw, and long story short they now have a decent chunk of change from my products. I’ll let you know how that turns out later this year.
This week was jam packed when it comes to miniature projects – eight in all, the site officially has a new record. The first two aren’t much, but there are a couple that look pretty awesome.
Beginner Terrain – This might be the shortest project pitch I have ever seen.
Whisper and Venom – This one is funded, shockingly. I don’t know what to make of that.
Infernal Minions – This one is a mixed bag; there a couple nice (and large) sculpts of demons though if that is your thing.
Road Kill – Want some minis to go with your old school game of car wars? Here you go.
Dying Star: Oblivion – This one is all over the place. I can’t decide if the project is for a fantasy or sci-fi miniatures game to start. It has knights, machine gunners, power-armored-Atlantians, and armored bears. If that’s your thing, take a look.
Wargods – This project is to extend the world of a company that already makes games very much in this vein. Normally I turn my nose up at that sort of thing, but in this case I am torn. The sculpts of the demigods are gorgeous. I may have to pick a couple of these up.
Meridian Miniatures – Another set of steampunk minis, huh? Yeah, that is what I thought too, but if you dig a little deeper, this project is really striking. His blog (and I wish the creator had included more of the autobiographical information in his pitch) is the best part. A creator taking the first fledgling steps of doing what they love for a living? That is exactly what Kickstarter is for.
Eden – This is a boardgame, that though a little pricy has some really amazing sculpts. If you drool over one random project this week, this is the one.
Of course there is more to life then buying mini’s – you have to paint them too.
This week Jessica knocks another one out of the park with another Exarch to add to her collection. The only thing wrong with this mini is that she didn’t finish the OTHER one she is painting. I guess we’ll just have to wait till next week.
Clint brings us a slew of orks, increasing their numbers, y’know, like orks do. He also managed to get featured at the Games Workshop DeviantArt page again. Showoff.
Lastly, I got one more mini done. Another Rhulic melee warrior closer to finishing my Warmachine army. Even with the upcoming move, I am still hoping to finish this army by the end of the summer.
Caffeineforge 
Good to see that you’re painting again, David.
As for my OTHER mini, I did pretty much finish it last night, just not in time for photos. I wasted too much time attempting techniques I didn’t end up actually using.
Mayhap we will see a sword painted for next week? I can hardly wait!
Probably not a sword right away, though once I finish these reapers(4 more to go) I have a random mini I intend to paint that has some fire in her hand. If all goes well that will be done in 2-3 weeks.
Eden looks pretty nice. $69 for the base game doesn’t seem all that outrageous, and I like that the first three stretch goals are extra figures that get added to the base game. There are going to be some stretch rewards that only affect the $200 and up levels, but they will be made available as add-on purchases. So I may back this at the $69 level and see what happens.
I backed RoadKill, and then had an almost immediate case of buyer’s remorse and backed out. I like this, but when they said the cars were “Micro Machine” sized, I couldn’t quite get it out of my head that I could just play this with a rulebook and some actual Micro Machines.
Better late than never.
Nice! You outdid yourself Clint.
You went crazy, Clint! Awesome as always, how many left?
Thanks, Jessica. Six more orks, then a final figure-thingy. And I’ll be done with these figs that have been sitting on my shelf for over a decade.
They need a unit base when they’re done then.
What’s a unit base?