Monday Miniatures: The Future
Pre-kickstarting is all the rage these days, so I thought I would take the time to share this news bulletin (courtesy of sometimes contributor James Yee.) about Hairbrained Scheme’s newest project, Golem Arcana. The idea is a miniature based board game with a technological edge courtesy of our ubiquitous touch screen toys.
The virtualization of tabletop hobbies is just one of the many headwinds for the miniatures industry we have mentioned here before, but if the idea is of interest to you, then by all means read on.
This isn’t the first project that tries to ties technology and painted plastic miniatures together, and it certainly wont be the last. Playing a game of any size using these figures takes hours and hours. Enlisting a computer to minimize the time spent rolling dice and crunching number seems a logical fit, though predictably such things take time to catch on.
This prelaunch isn’t even the only project to tackle the idea. Do take a look though – if nothing else their art direction is interesting.
Aces High – When I saw this one, I was excited (at least until I clicked on the link.) We haven’t seen much in the way of Vehicles on Kickstarter yet. A heroic scale tank or bomber would certainly get my money, but this isn’t quite that.
Amerika – This is a lesser Axis and Allies. It looks like it might even fund, but to be honest I cannot see why.
Virtual Tabletop – This ties back into the points I was making above. The future is coming for the miniature world, whether we like it or not. Clumsy efforts like this are just a precursor to true immersion.
This week Jessica shames my continuing lack of painting with not 1 but 2 beautiful bones. The magister definitely has a little crazy in his eyes, and the iridescence of the banshee’s garb is particularly haunting. She really pulled out all the stops this week, didn’t she.
Clint adds another warjack to his Menoth army, now rapidly approaching completion. He says he magnetized the arms, making it possible to reconfigure the warjack on the fly.
Want to show the world what you painted this week? Email me at caffeineforge@gmail.com
Caffeineforge 
Interesting idea behind Golem Arcana! Will be watching eagerly to see how that goes, but will probably be waiting for general store release before investing myself. Although, looks very clever!
I have to say, I kinda hate the combination of miniatures and technology. First, it’s assuming we have something that will work with the game. That’s probably not too big a stretch, but not everyone has a tablet or smart phone, and having a laptop on the table is going to be worse than dice rolling and number crunching, I think. Second, I play games like this (in some small part) to get away from technology. Still, maybe I’m behind the times.
I have to admit, I backed Amerika for the same reason I WANTED to back Aces High, which is the alternate history WW2 setting. I like that they’re doing a points-based army system, so you won’t necessarily be fighting with the same armies each time. That said, the people running the project need to be a bit more communicative.
(When someone gets around to relaunching Crimson Skies as a miniatures game on Kickstarter, I am ALL OVER THAT.)