ArcWorlde Kickstarter by Warploque Miniatures

I had sworn myself off of Kickstarters for a while after a few less than ideal (for painters at least) plastics being used by board games type affairs, but had to make an exception for this new one by Warploque Miniatures...

Its a fantasy skirmish game Kickstarter with some really interesting METAL* miniatures. They are almost caricature in style and have a hell of a lot of character - something very important which can be missing a lot of time. There are 4 factions on the Kickstarter at the moment Humans (Albionnicans), Halflings, Orcs (Bayourks) and Undead Pirates (with a 5th soon to be added... Feral Elves! Only £280 to go) 

*They also have a small number of resin pledges available

I saw a lot of the miniatures for this Kickstarter in green form at a recent event (Figureworld in Oundle) and I instantly fell in love with them. They will be a lot of fun to paint, and I have already pledged my cash to their cause! 

Alex at Warploque Miniatures is not only the creator of the whole ArcWorlde universe, but is the artistic talent behind the concepts, the graphical work and also all the sculpting (the swine!). This means that there is a lovely unified theme to everything which creates a really cohesive range of miniatures. 

We've actually managed to get hold of two of the Bayourks to paint for Alex- a Chieften and a really cool Brute with a hog-tied goat under his arm... These samples are cast in resin, and I don't know whether these are special resin masters (are used to create the moulds for metal casting), or have been pre-prepped by Alex, but if the resins from the kickstarter are anything close to the quality of these, they are going to be very good indeed. We will be getting on to painting these shortly! 

Here are a couple of quick mobile phone photos of the boys...

Chieftain:

Brute:

Are you still reading? Get on over to the kickstarter and get some new toys! ArcWorlde Kickstarter

An interesting Kickstarter - Beyond the Gates of Antares

As you may have noticed, every so often I post about a Kickstarter on the blog. There are so many of them these days that I try to be quite selective with what I post and this one appears to be something a bit different again. I've pledged on board games which are complete and just need an injection of cash for production, I've helped fund the retooling of miniatures in a new medium, and pledged on new miniature lines to add to existing companies.

However, this Kickstarter is for a wargame which has yet to be created - the backers will be part of the whole creation process. It is called 'Beyond the Gates of Antares'

This game has quite a high pedigree already with people like Rick Priestley involved in the rules and Kev White and Karol Rudyk involved from the miniatures side. There are a whole host of other people on board with this including 'friends of the bodgers' Golem Painting Studios - head over to the Beyond the Gates of Antares kickstarter and have a look for yourselves.

Imbrian Arts Kickstarter

Kickstarters seem to be all the rage at the moment and, for miniatures at least, there seems to be a couple of different ways they are used.

One is by larger companies as a convenient, hip and 'modern' way of taking pre-orders. This is a bit of a twisting of the idea behind crowd funding, as there is basically a product which is ready to go into production but the Kickstarter allows the company to produce a larger initial run or improve the quality of the product. I have supported a couple of these already - the board games Zombicide (Guillotine Games) and Sedition Wars - Battle for Alabaster (Studio McVey). I have Zombicide already and for me it was a great experience, apart from some very minor delays, I felt it went very smoothly. It looks like the Studio McVey offering will go off in a very similar way, and we should see that in the new year (VERY excited about that one!)

The other type of Kickstarter that I've had experience of is for smaller manufacturers/sculptors who need funding to bring their creations to market. I jumped on the Red Box Games Kickstarter when Tre Manor launched that earlier this year, and also Infamy Miniatures' Indiegogo campaign when they launched their first 3 miniatures. And it is one of these that I want to talk about today.

There is an Australian guy known on t'interwebs as Sprue who's sculpting I have been watching over on OzPainters for quite some time - Tracy bought some of his metal goblins a while back, and his sculpting has really gone from strength to strength. Today he has launched a Kickstarter to release 4 of his sculpts and put some funding towards his new skirmish game (which looks VERY interesting as you cast [resin] finger bones as part of the game mechanic).

His sculpting is superb - really full of character, just take a look at his Blacksands Orc, with a face only his mother could love...

I really like the style of everything he is producing - quirky enough to be interesting without trying too hard to be different. There are 3 other models initially on the kickstarter - a King of Ghouls, a Howling Ghoul and an Arabianesque human fighter - and there are also a couple of interesting stretch goals already announced... how about these:

I highly recommend getting over to the Kickstarter and pledging some of your hard earned cash. From what I've already seen of his sculpting and the plastic he will be using to cast his models, I really don't think you'll be disappointed.

Sedition Wars on KickStarter!

I'll admit now, this is pretty much the blogging equivalent of a re-tweet!

I've been following the Studio McVey Sedition Wars releases since the very beginning, and loved pretty much every one. I have a good handful in the limited edition resin, and you've all seen the diorama I put together for my Crystal Brush entry, so I can 100% endorse  the quality of the figures, and I trust the guys involved enough to support the game too.


Head over to Kickstarter to follow their progress, and hopefully you'll feel inclined to support them too!

What they've said on the Studio McVey Blog can be seen here: http://studiomcvey.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/kickstart-us.html

And of course the kickstarter page: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/coolminiornot/sedition-wars-battle-for-alabaster