Monday Miniatures: Heavy Hitters
Week after week we continue to get large projects on new mega projects on Kickstarter. It appears like miniatures have become a major feature of the crowd funding landscape. Is this a symptom of new leaner manufacturing techniques and digital sculpting techniques? It’s hard too say, but it is certainly fascinating.
This week there are 5 new miniature projects worth taking a look at.
Psionic Miniatures – is the already funded sequel to the creators previous project, a pathfinder compatible source book. I love how small but ambitious the project is, though I think the sculpts leave something to be desired.
Freeblades Miniatures – This one is in the same vein as the previous project. Its sculpts look slightly better, though it is also asking for more money. In such a crowded field it will be interesting to see how it does.
Undead Apocalypse – This is a mini heavy board game that is doing as well as it is simply on the basis of its trope. Neither its minis nor its rules look inspiring.
Raging Heroes – This project might hold the record for fastest mini project to 6 figures, but it seems to have plateaued pretty quickly. It probably didn’t help that most of its stretch goals have been to create a bewildering degree of possible options. If you want tough women in power armor, this is the project for you. I will be picking up a couple models that might be useful as commissars, but mostly I’ll be wondering how much closer they can get to GW’s IP before they get sued. One of them has inquisition logos for chrisakes, how much further can they go.
Cthulhu Wars – This one is proof that miniatures and board games can make anything popular. Looking at the previous project of this creator, a video game by the same name, I notice two things: this new project certainly out funded the old one, and this second project was going to be the million dollar stretch goal of the first project. I am shocked they were able to make this game without their million – that must have been tough.
Seriously though, I love miniatures, board games and Cthulhu, but will not be backing this project. Why? There are several reasons, the most petty of which is that I hate it when authors (or in this case board game designers) pantheonize the old ones, but the biggest one is that they have currently added 6 of “13 planned expansions.” That’s right, for just an additional $250 you too can get poorly play tested, spur of the moment add ons that may or may not add value to the game you are buying. Now I know you are wondering, ‘how do you know they are poorly play tested David?’ That’s a good question – let’s refer again to their previous project. As of December you’ll recall that they needed a million dollars to make this happen – that means this game hadn’t been created yet – there’s no way they would plead poverty and already have this in an advanced stage of development, because that would be unethical. So in the six months since that last project ended they were able to whip this game up, do art design, fabrication, and extensive play testing (hopefully.) That doesn’t leave much time to test and design all these expansions.
Maybe it will be mind blowingly good, but if it is I can pick it up in the game store – this one smells strongly of hype.
So this week I got no painting done, again. I’m not sure I will get any more done till I move in, in July, to be honest. With the avalanche on miniatures I have headed my way eventually though, I really need to get on the ball there.
Jessica picked up my slack again though (as always,) painting not one but two lovely figures. I was especially blow away by Maugan-Ra. That is an amazing paint job.
Clint also didn’t disappoint. I think his alternative paint scheme for Menoth is really gorgeous in this shot.
Want to show your mad painting skills off to the world? Email me at caffeineforge@gmail.com
Caffeineforge 
I really like the look of the Raging Heroes miniatures. Had there been a game that utilized the miniatures, I would probably have backed at a fairly high level. And there WILL be a game, at some point. The project owners just made the bewildering choice to release the miniatures first, and worry about what to do with them some time later.
You mention them borrowing heavily from GW. I notice that they borrowed some images from the internet to base their sculpts on. The nurse is based on a Blink 182 album cover, and the crouching sniper is the first thing that comes up if you Google search “anime sniper”. Lazy. And with such apparent talent in the design work, you’d think they’d have made more of an effort to make them wholly original. If this survives GW and actually gets made, I may pick up a few of these.
Cthulhu Wars…man, I really want to support this game. I don’t have the problem you do of them grouping the Old Ones into factions. That’s just the nature of games. The figures, though, look amazing. And 110mm Old Ones? Wow. I put in for one of the many higher level early bird levels.
Then things started to sour for me. The vast array of early birds seems to have pissed some people off, but I don’t care about that. The stretch goals, though…most of the ones up to $300k are just the expansions that you have already talked about. After that, it’s just single figures added ONLY to $200+ backing levels. Which I had, but I think if you’re shelling out $150 for a single game, you should get all the damned stretch goals. I also saw on Reddit that some folks had read the rules posted, and said that the game play was a bit simplistic, and too reminiscent of “Chaos in the Old World”. So…yeah, I cancelled my pledge. There’s only one exclusive figure (which isn’t that great), and the thing is going to be massively funded. I think I’ll just wait until it’s available for retail, then buy it at a discount game retailer. If nothing else, they can be painted up and used when I play “Call of Cthulhu”. It’s kind of a shame the project isn’t better, but I can use the break on my wallet. (To buy other games, mostly.)
I have two words for Clint and Jessica: Holy Awesome!
Okay a few more words, two didn’t cover it.
You guys did some amazing work on these minis. The level of detail on such a small space is incredible! Keep up the greatness, guys! Thanks for making Mondays a little brighter! 🙂
The Raging Heroes sculpts look like they would at least be fun to paint. Compared to the Psionic Minis the RH sculpts are amazing, but I can see what Brian was talking about by originality. Ah well.
And, heck yeah, the paintings Jessica and Clint did this week are great! The lady with the bird (phoenix?) has some very nice shading. I’m also a fan of the blue Clint used on his guy. Lovely.
Thank you! It is a gold dragon(in my mind at least) and was my first attempt at osl.
Oh, right, dragon. For whatever reason my brain saw flames and inputted phoenix, so I couldn’t see around that thought. I see the dragon now. 🙂 Great first attempt.
Thanks!