Roll The Bones Redux

I want to take a minute to point out why exactly I’m so stoked about the Reaper Bones Kickstarter (see last post), which has just cleared its $1,790,000 stretch goal. My hunch is that it’ll easily surpass two million, but I question if it’ll pass Wasteland II’s $2.8 million mark. I’d like to hope it will, but I’m also getting the idea that most people who were going to pledge have already pledged, and increased that pledge multiple times. We’ll see—an amazing stretch goal or two would be great motivation.

Plus, in case you missed it, you can swap out your limited metal Sophie-on-a-bike figure for $25 worth of product. Dracolich, here I come. Unless I go for the hydra and two extra swamp things packs. Or the demons and the colossal skeleton. Or the… sigh.

This fella is a purple worm—if you’re not up on your D&D, it’s a large subterranean sandworm/graboid/etc. that pops up and swallows people whole. Basically, a hundred feet of intestine crossed with a lamprey. Reaper currently has three versions up for sale. I have a Casketworks catalog from when I was last buying metal miniatures—2007—showing the metal version sold for $19.99; now it goes for $27.99, thanks to the rising cost of tin. The pre-painted plastic one (sans tail) sells for $6.99, which is about on par with the Pathfinder Battles large blind packs and non-awesome DDM large figures on the secondhand market.

The bones version (again, sans tail) sells for $2.99. And the detail quality is around 95% of the metal versions, or in other words, negligible for table use. That’s a fucking steal.

At that point, it’s an impulse buy. Not into minis? It’s a great place to start; you’re not out that much capital if you hate it, or screw up the paintjob. Into minis? You can afford to throw 2-3 on to every gaming purchase you make, getting several great figures for roughly the same cost as buying one metal figure. It’s a win/win for everyone, and will get a lot more people into minis since it overcomes to price barrier. No longer do you have to be the middle-aged old grognard to afford an army worth of little fantasy soldiers.

You can do all sorts of stuff new painters do: paint them out of the bottle without requiring primer, drop them, use the heck out of them, throw them across the table, and you know what? Most stress tests show they’ll survive a lot of punishment. And worst case scenario, you spend another three bucks and buy another one.

Because tin—core component of pewter—has increased in price faster than gasoline, thus spiking the price of miniatures, I dropped out of buying and painting them altogether. Not really something you can afford on a high-school/college student budget. Particularly for the big figures, which I’ve ALWAYS wanted to paint; the biggest I’ve done are some Chronoscape gugs, and those cost around $12 for a slightly-bigger-than-normal figure.

Even with a steady (if underwhelming) paycheck, metal minis require a lot more disposable capital than I can throw at them. When the choice is between a $50 book that will see hours of use, or a $50 figure that I’ll spend a few hours painting and use for one or two sessions, it’s pretty clear what I’m going to pick. Slashing the price-point drops “character” size figures down into impulse buy territory, and means that the big figures are priced reasonably enough that I could justify picking one up for a change. And makes me less concerned about spillage/usage from tabletop play since they’re only cheap plastic.

Another example. When I was running Legacy of Fire a few years ago, I really wanted three to five fire giants for the City of Brass, but just couldn’t afford them. This awesome Reaper fire giant king sells for $49.99 ($35 if you buy the lead alloy version), and his minions go for $24.99 a pop. Just for the warriors alone, $100 for four is something I’ll never be able to justify (short of attaining my dream job, managing an orchard of money trees). I don’t see the point in buying one figure if I’m going to proxy three more—may as well proxy all of them at that point. Like I did, using marids and crocagators in lieu of fire giants. But man, did I want to pick those suckers up and drop some painted versions down on the map.

The Kickstarter has options to pick those giants at the cost of $10 a pair. It’s been implied that the Bones will have MSRP about twice their Kickstarter option price, and if that’s true, the fire giants will go for ~$10 a pop. I can justify $40 for four figs; at my painting speed, I can set back $10 a week and be able to afford them without breaking my bank. $10 is an expensive impulse buy, but it’s within striking distance for pretty much anyone who can afford to be a gamer; if you can’t save up $10 a month to pick up a game-related item, you’re in the wrong hobby, friend.

I could go on and on, about the $60-80 dragons, the $50 demon, the $48 hydra, the $35 elementals, frost wyrm, and skeletal colossus. Heck, even the newest bonuses offered in the Vampire pledge level, a griffon and an owlbear, retail for $20 in metal form. From that implied price point, the Bones versions should retail around $8 and $6 each, which is pretty damn affordable.

And that’s why I’m glad the Kickstarter is going gangbusters: it means that next year, everyone can walk into a store and pick up an awesome mini without worrying about the cost. Every “optional” big critter is another monster I could justify buying in the future, because it’ll cost somewhere between $10-35 and not twice (or triple) that.

Though right now I can’t afford half of those awesome big options I want, I’m (mostly) okay with that. It’s comforting to know that I could walk into a store and pick them up later next year without spending an arm and a leg, if I really want a clockwork dragon or an elemental. Besides, it’s not like I won’t have ~200+ figures from the Vampire pledge to paint.

Reaper Miniatures Bones

Despite all evidence to the contrary, I’ve never been huge on miniatures for tabletop gaming. I don’t mind a good skirmish battle, so long as it’s not taking the place of a roleplaying session. And I don’t mind using them as visual aids—sometimes it’s just better to know spatial relationships—so long as they’re not a necessary part of play, e.g., you can game without HAVING to know those spatial relationships. But I do love painting those suckers, despite my slow and lackadaisical progress at, well, painting miniatures. It’s relaxing, rewarding, and best of all, you can slap those suckers down on the table a few weeks later and go to town on your players.

But I feel I need to point out Reaper Miniatures’ new Kickstarter, because 1.) The rewards are awesome, and 2.) This is how you do a Kickstarter.

Reaper Miniatures is pretty much the king of tabletop miniatures, ever since Ral Partha and Grenadier evaporated in the ’90s. They’ve toyed with plastic miniatures in the past—I have some of their prepainted Legendary Encounters figs, which aren’t bad—but haven’t been successful at taking their winning metal fig sculpts and bringing them to the plastic field. Until they came up with their Bones line in March, which are white polymer figures—essentially pre-primed and ready for paintin’. Great combo: cheap (polymer, non-painted) and quality (based off Reaper’s metal sculpts).

Currently, a full third of their salse are Bones figs, even though there’s only twelve figures in the line—similar to Legendary Encounters, which only had about a dozen figs for years. The cost to start-up, design, mold, and ship a new line of figures is much slower than sticking with the established metal line. But with Indonesia playing tin baron, the costs to buy tabletop figs have been rising a tad high in recent years. Three metal Kobolds go for $5.99, while six polymer Bones Kobolds go for $3.49. See the difference?

So, Reaper went out asking for $30k on Kickstarter, whereupon they’d be able to get the Bones molds constructed and the miniatures flowing at a rapid rate. Like a proper Kickstarter, Reaper set up a series of “Stretch Goals” for when that bare minimum is hit; each Stretch Goal gives backers more rewards… in most cases, more free figures, or the ability to pre-order expensive figures at a deep discount. When that goal was hit out of the park by Reaper’s fans, casual fans saw the awesome stretch goals and joined in, which caused more backers to join in to get the awesome rewards, which caused… you get the picture. The more people who donate, the more everyone gets. It’s a brilliant idea for generating money, and Reaper managed to set up the right hurdles and rewards to cause the desired snowball effect.

Well, Reaper’s $30k goal was surpassed several times over, and the pledge will clear a million effing dollars sometime tomorrow if things keep up. And there’s another five days left before the Kickstarter ends. Currently, those stretch goals have showered down more bonuses on the heads of backers, so the $100 pledge reward has gone from thirty free Bones figures to nearly two hundred:

Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick. At my slow speed and non-professional paint level, the Vampire reward package is enough to set me back for a lifetime of painting. (Or at least a good number of decades.) There’s also the option to pre-order “big” Bones figures, mostly dragons, pairs of giants, a frost wyrm, a pair of demons, a trio of “spider centaurs,” and bunches of other cool stuff, at the cost of $10-15 per.  If you donated an extra hundred to buy most of the big figs, that’d still come out to around $1 a miniature—better, standard Bones usually retail for $1.99-2.99, so not only are you getting them at wholesale value, but you’re propagating the line so it’ll see more sculpts (both old and new) at a really decent price.

I’m a bit underwhelmed by the current “final” stretch goal, since it gives you free dungeon furniture (torch, caskets, treasure chest), but the rest of the rewards are pretty impressive. All the Vampire-level backers getting ~200 figures is pretty damn impressive, as is dropping $10 to get a 5-6″ dragon.

Considering Reaper’s getting a million bucks or more out of this, the cost to make the reward figs is a drop in the bucket; with all that gross, here’s hoping that means the Bones line will explode instead of flounder like the pre-painted Legendary Encounters line did. I actually like this idea more than the pre-painted ones, since it saves me the time and energy of priming metal figs (or painting over plastic ones), even though I’d probably prime them black so I can see what I was painting.

[Update 21 August 2012]

I was being conservative when I said they’d clear a million by “tomorrow,” when what I meant was “in the early-morning hours shortly after midnight tonight.” And lo, I was correct. The Vampire level has added five pirates, five bits of scenery, four townsfolk, and four amazing mummies to the set, and will probably also hit its next stretch goals (four “dark heroes” and four other Pathfinder iconics) unless donations dry up. Reaper’s Bones Kickstarter is currently in the top ten highest grossing Kickstarters (hence why the stretch goalposts are increasing, to pay for all the free minis that need to be made and shipped to backers). It’ll also end up being the highest grossing Kickstarter related to tabletop gaming. Godspeed, Reaper. Make it to the top five.

Personally, while I’m not enthralled by all of the figures, I do like knowing that by early next year, the line will cover a lot of ground within Reaper’s extensive catalog, and do so faster than normal (compared to the ~12 figures in the line so far, the Kickstarter will fund production equal to 6-8 years of normal production speed). Not everyone has use for zombie hunters or future soldiers or steampunk gorillas (or, in my case, dungeon IKEA), but someone else will. And they’ll be able to walk into the store and drop a few bucks to pick up a Bones version.

Acrylic Woes

Once upon a time, I really liked painting miniatures, with the hope that I’d use them for my RPGs. I bought one of those Learn to Paint kits from Reaper, and a bunch of cheap miniatures, and a huge selection of Reaper Pro Paints. And while I wouldn’t say I was great at it, I did consider my stuff pretty good for tabletop use. I’m good, as in good enough. Probably 6 out of 10 on average and topping out around 7.5. Plus, it was fun.

Flash forward through high school and college. I have… more free time than I know what to do with, so I figured to pick the hobby back up, re-teach myself the craft, and try to learn enough to get back to my A-game. And since I have three metric tons of Mage Knight figures, I should have enough of a base to screw up on before moving to all those Reaper figures, BattleMechs, and undersized fighting men I bought years ago, right?

My recent discovery is that acrylic paints sold by games companies—Reaper Pro Paints and Citadel’s stuff—have a habit of drying out and becoming hard lumps of unusable plastic after sitting around for the better half of a decade. (Heh.) Should have saw that coming, since I only painted about four minis in college. Also, the Reaper paints that dried out were ones that came with the Learn to Paint kit—it was the old-model one that came in a box, not a blister, with the Anhurian swordsman and dire rat, from like 2003—and to make me feel better, they were all mostly used up. (There was a small hunk of Firehawk, a bit of Truesilver, half a bottle of Walnut and Dragon Black, a little less Dragon White, etc.) For some reason, Emerald was spared this fate, though the Granite I’d picked up later had also turned into slag. And the Citadel paints I got around 2007 are getting pretty mucky: a central core of heavy pigment and vinyl surrounded by a skein of oil and usable paint.

Oh those glorious little Pro Paint pots. How I miss thee.

Sad to find, Reaper Pro Paints have been discontinued, early last year—d’oh. Since I’m no artist, and put tabletop usefulness over my lackluster hand at aesthetics, the Pro Paint line was my favorite: a what-you-see-is-what-you-get line of little plastic pots, perfect for painting right out of the jar and doing basecoats. Reaper’s Master Series is a lot thinner, requiring more layers, which is great for blending and layering and drybrushing, but a pain in the ass when I needed a half-dozen lizardfolk warriors by last Thursday.

Their big downside is that they came in pots, not dropper-bottles, so while I wasted less by painting out of the bottle, mixing my own colors was a nightmare—I needed some rust for a friend’s Deadlands harrowed minis, probably some of the best figs I did, and mixing Bright Gold and Fireball Orange ended up wasting a ton of metallic.

Anyways, what’s most irritating and odd is that I inherited a huge stack of cheapo acrylic bottles from craft stores—stuff like Folk Art, Liquitex, and craft store brands. If you look around on places like The Miniatures Page or any Warhammer community, or even the Reaper forums, quite a few people use and will recommend buying these since you get more paint than you’ll use in a few years (two ounces or more per), they’re cheap ($1-4 per bottle), and they work just as well as Reaper or Citadel or Vallejo if you can find the right colors. (Note that some need to be thinned, and it’s still a lot better to get unique colors and metallics from gaming companies, but blue paint is blue paint is blue paint.)

Now, the irritating part is that these hobbymart acrylics are all from the late ’80s-early ’90s, ancient stuff from when mom took some painting class. And unlike my eight-year-old Pro Paints, they’re still in perfect, usable condition. All of them. In other words: these shitty $1.19 per 2oz JoAnn Fabrics-brand paints have lasted about three times as long as those gaming-centric $2.50 per 3/4oz Pro Paints. Sigh. I’d love to trade Ivory and Grape to get back Firehawk and Dragon Blue, especially since those Reaper colors aren’t made any more, but them’s the breaks.

So my moral/learning lesson for today is “head to Micheal’s Crafts and Hobby Lobby to buy supplies, on the off chance I don’t paint anything for another decade, because their cheapo paint lasts for frakking ever.”

One further note.

Paint almost always comes with an agitator—this would be the ball bearing you hear rolling around in the can of paint/primer when you’re shaking it up, to smooth flow and get paint moving—and for years I’ve heard that Reaper uses tiny metal skulls as agitators in their paint pots. So here I am with a bunch of pots full of vinylized slag, and being curious, I decided it was time to experiment. Science!

Now, I know people on the internet have claimed to have found them, that they come in a variety of designs, and that they’ve been replaced with beads in recent years (gah). But I still want tangible proof: did Reaper really put in skull agitators, and were they also in the Pro Paint line, and did they—

Well that answers that question.

Clix: The Final Frontier

Some times, I think it’s best I cut my gaming-based impulse buy addictions back down to one set of plasticrack. (Which would be whatever kind of fantasy miniatures I can use for D&D/Pathfinder that I come across.) Of course, it helps that I don’t have any fellow addicts around; if I was still living on the west side of the state, I have to imagine Matt would be itching to break out the new Star Trek Clix every chance he gets. (Provided he saves his pennies and buys some.)

Promo Poster - click for high-res

I’ve looked long and hard—at least five minutes, totally—but these Star Trek Clix haven’t made very much of an impact (as-yet) in previews and reviews. Maybe because they released today, who knows. This site has a solid preview, including a ton of images, which was very helpful.

Pros: They look really damn good, which surprised me at first; lots of nice color and little details pop on those ship hulls, and unlike human figures, we don’t have to worry about the never-ending problem of googly-eyes. They use the HeroClix system, so if you’ve been a WizKids fan over the years, most like you can get into the action ten minutes after opening some packs. And since they’re prepainted plastic, they cost a helluva lot less than those old Starfleet Battles figs rusting in the back of the store.

Cons: They’re randomized, single-figure boosters, with the traditional rarity scheme, which are the same size as standard HeroClix—not to scale—that cover the full series’ spread for Federation and Klingon warships only. And they cost $5 per, at that; from what I’ve heard, it’s because getting the license from Paramount cost an arm and a leg. Reusing the HeroClix rules makes a certain kind of sense—the people most likely to buy these are familiar with the rules, and a unified system makes for a gateway drug into the other HeroClix games—but it’s an awkward-sounding fit. And despite its large and vocal fanbase, Trek has been off the air for years, and the next movie isn’t due until 2013—hence Paramount’s paranoia over licensed Trek products.

I’m kind of curious whether they’ll take off—they look well-done enough to please Trekkie gamers, and HeroClix is a venerable system, so that match sounds cool as hell. But I see a number of turn-offs from the acquisition angle that won’t send every gamer jumping up to pull out their wallet. Probably related to the expensive license, which is understandable. Then again, most serious WizKids gamers always buy it by the brick/case/pallet anyways.

I hope they sell well enough for WizKids to release more sets (e.g., more factions), and possibly even branch out into some pre-packaged battle fleets. (Maybe go properly stupid and have a full figure set for the original cast, so you can have Kirk take on Superman or Frodo.) While I don’t see them going the way of Star Wars Starship Battles—entry-set oblivion—I’m not sure they’re going to match HeroClix numbers. Trekkies, prove me wrong.

Pathfinder Prepainted Minis Expanding

The word is just out—Paizo and WizKids aren’t just doing non-randomized sets of the iconics; they’re moving on towards a full line of prepainted miniatures: monsters, characters, iconics, the whole works.  The new line will be called Pathfinder Battles.

While Pathfinder Battles doesn’t look to be dual-purpose for both roleplaying and a Clix game (curses!), it’ll be marketed as Clix games have been in the past: by randomized boosters. Those of us who remember the plasticrack days of Dungeons & Dragons Minis will be familiar with this method, only the pack contents will be a lot closer to the old Clix offerings.

Actually, less: each “pack” will contain a single medium fig, or two small figs, unless you’re buying a pack which will have a large figure. The print runs will be on the smaller and balanced size; each “brick” of 16 small/medium boosters and 3 large boosters will contain only a minimum of repeats.  Buy four bricks (a case) and you’ve got pretty much the entire run. If this sounds familiar to you… you’ve probably bought HeroClix or ActionClix. I’m hoping they keep the same rarity fix as HeroClix, too, where you got a 199-point Emperor Joker in the same common slot as a 50-point Bouncing Boy.

The first set, the 40-piece Heroes & Monsters, is coming December 2011; from the previews its looking like a lot of the iconic monsters and basic hero combinations. The second set will be Rise of the Runelords in June 2012. From that, I’m assuming each set will be tied to a specific adventure path or part of the setting. (I’m finished with Legacy of Fire, but sign me up right now. Same for Carrion Crown if it includes the Lovecraftian Bestiary monsters.) Runelords will also have 60 figures, which will sell in “encounter packs” of six figures—finally bringing Pathfinder Battles to the say format as HeroClix boosters.

While some people might complain about the six-month delay in sets, I’m going to refute that; my biggest problem with DDM was that some sets were released on top of each other, making them a pain in the ass to collect. (Archfiends/Giants of Legend was the worst combo, since they both had a bunch of rad figures.) Three sets a year was the big part of DDM that I didn’t like… that and the price increases, from $10 to $12 to $15. Stupid cost of oil-based plastics.

I do have to question the price, which isn’t listed on the press release. The HeroClix and ActionClix “boosters” usually had four or five minis, and the “packs” with less sold for $5 or less. Even if the paint quality is as high as the Beginner Box Heroes pack, I can’t see many players eager to drop full price on a pack netting them one or two figures. If they are kept cheap—in the $3-5 range—it means that buying by the brick, or even by the case, won’t be prohibitively expensive. I expect the “encounter pack” 6-figure boosters will be closer to the traditional Clix cost of $15 a pack, which is comparable to DDM and the Clix, but is still a fair chunk of money.

And like with all sets, I’m wondering about variety. Personally, I wouldn’t mind if the Runelords set had a half-dozen different goblins, provided they were in different poses with different weapons: goblin with horsechopper, goblin with dogslicer, goblin shaman, goblin firebug, goblin bomb-chucker, goblin on goblin dog, etc. And most people who want prepainted minis want non-random sets of similar figs, so getting a pair of goblins every few Runelords pack won’t bother them. Other players might not be as welcoming of this variety, especially for foes that aren’t used as often (either low-level like goblins, or high-level like outsiders). No matter what happens, everyone will never be pleased by the layout of a prepainted, randomized miniatures set. (Unless it’s Wolf Strike. Or Hammer of Thor, which apparently I should have bought before it vanished.)

Three things I don’t want to see. One: horses and mounts. DDM did these, and they were flipping useless, both in the miniatures game and for roleplaying. Two:  random size discrepancies between figures. (Why is the dwarven badonkadonk six times larger than other figures in the same set?) Three: a whole lot of figures I’ll never end up using. DDM had a poor variety of non-fighter PCs, and tended to do really weird stuff instead of sticking to heroes, summonable creatures, and basic adversaries. Yeah, some variety would be nice, and I’d like a good assortment of monsters I can use for higher-level adventures, but try to weed out are the really fringe stuff. Putting similiar things in the same set would help; I’d rather buy some The Great Beyond knowing I’d get a lot of outsiders than pick up a bajillion boxes of Second Darkness hoping to get the one succubi or barbed devil. Of course, that goes against the “good marketing” part of randomized minis: having the customers buy a ton of them to get the figures they think they need.

Depending on the quality of figures, price, and availability, I could see heading out to my FLGS or local Borders to pick up some of these as an impulse buy. At the very least, I can die happy knowing the growing void in my life (err, pocketbook)—prepainted d20 miniatures—is returning. “If only I could afford it” is becoming my worst complaint about Paizo products.

Paizo + WizKids = Pathfinder Pre-Painted Minis

Old news (dating from 25 May) but good news: Paizo and WizKids are teaming up to do a run of pre-painted Pathfinder miniatures. Reaper already does a fine line of unpainted metal Pathfinder figs, but a lot of GMs are bad at painting/lazy, and WizKids is the go-to company for good pre-painted figs.

The first set is four of the iconics, and the previews look pretty hot. (Those are 3d models, not greens/pre-production figs, by the way.) They’re a bit expensive at $12.99 for all four, but these have something like 6 paint steps, when most figs only have 3 to keep expenses down. In other words, these will be some of the highest-quality figures WizKids has done; reports say they’ll be on-par with the new Green Lantern set.

Paizo is hoping for a lot of pre-orders before WizKids sets the production run, and the more they sell, the more likely it is we’ll see the rest of the iconics. Hopefully others would have a better sculpt than Valeros, Human Fighter, but at least Kyra the Cleric looks awesome.

Note that the first set figures are the four archetypal classes: cleric, fighter, rogue, wizard. Nice move on Paizo’s part.

Since WizKids/NECA are returning the old ActionClix brand with more HALO and a Lord of the Rings HeroClix line, and the return of freaking MageKnight, it’d be friggin’ awesome to do a line of Pathfinder ActionClix. Think about it: dual-purpose for both RPGs and wargaming, with the established, time-tested WizKids clix rules for a clicky game. The Pathfinder Society factions could become clix-game factions, along with a half-dozen monstrous factions (Whispering Way for undead, Goblins of Golarion, etc.) to round things out.

I’m not sure how profitable it would be, but it’d solve a lot of peoples’ need for plasticrack, in an age without D&D Minis. And it would be pretty damn cool, even if the figures were on oversized clix bases. I have to imagine it’d sell better than a return to HALO ActionClix, several years after the last HALO clix set, which as I recall wasn’t as popular as either Hero or Horror. Still, I’ll break out my wallet when MechWarrior clix return.