Two More Kickstarter Arrivals

The Kickstarter's are arriving fast and furious lately. Two more arrived over the last few weeks.

The first was from Cigar Box Battle Mats. I have a couple of their older mats (and actually sold about four I think as well) and I do like them for throwing something down quickly.

I decided to back this project because they have improved their mats by leaps and bounds in my opinion. This is the new Grasslands mat.

And an up close photo. It's amazing how good it looks, the photos don't do any of the mats justice.

The Barren Lands mat. Perfect for a desert like setting.

This new version just blows away the older Open Desert version.

The third mat I decided on was the Tundra mat. I've got a couple ideas swirling around inside the 'ol bean about some adventures in the snow and cold weather.

Unfortunately this photo is pretty bad in attempting to show the detail of the mat, but again, I'm incredibly impresses by it.

The last one I picked up was the Caribbean Waters mat. This one I really liked because of the lighter blue and white tones. This will be perfect for Blood & Plunder, Age of Sail, or any other water based game.

Again, detail wise this one is top notch.

This KS funded on July 16th and had an estimated delivery of September. So an A+ to Cigar Box Battle Mats, delivery was as promised and the quality is beyond what I had hoped for. Highly recommended if you are looking for something to throw down on the table quickly and still give yourself a great looking table. One other really nice selling point is these things literally fold right up to about the size of a folded towel, so storage and transport is really easy. They measure in at approximately 60"x80", so plenty of overlay for a 6x4 table.

The other KS that arrived was from Sally 4th. This was the Classic Movie Miniature Episode 2. Episode 1 featured figures from some of my favorite movies of all time - The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca! There were a total of  36 figures in my pledge and below are some of my favorites.

I missed the first KS and what was great about Episode 2 was that there was a pledge level that you were able to go all in on - catching up on the first one, as well as getting everything from the new one. Here are a few of the Casablanca figures from the first KS.

Episode 1 also had figures from an old television show called 'Tales of the Gold Monkey'. It was really piggybacking the popularity of Indiana Jones at the time, but it did have some fun aspects to it - for me it the awesome airplane, a white and red Grumman Goose (if I can find one of those in 28mm Ivor would be one happy boy!), and Jack the dog, who wore an eye patch. Jack had a fake eye which was an opal, and why he wore the eyepatch. Jake lost the eye in a poker game and a running joke through the series was how Jack never lets Jake forget that. Anyway, good pulpy fun, and someplace to find some gaming ideas, despite the show really not holding up to time all that well lol.

The Maltese Falcon set. Just brilliant! And even better is that I now have multiple figures of Humphrey Bogart, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre. That's just the coolest thing ever for a classic movie guy like myself.

One of the new sets from Episode 2 is a take on the old Miss Marple film Murder at the Gallop. I absolutely love this series of old Marple movies as well. I think a lot of it is because Margaret Rutherford reminds me a bit of my grandmother with that white hair.

But here is the piece de resistance of the set - the Howling Commandos from the first Captain America movie. What was crazy about this set is that it was made at my suggestion. Madness really lol! Chris Abbey, who owns Sally 4th, has all the backers of the Kickstarter vote on what the next set of figures will be. It occurred to me that no one to date has done a Howling Commandos set - and it was the one major thing I was missing from last year's Agent Carter game that I took down to Historicon.

It was super frustrating because I was changing the narrative of my story because I didn't have the right figures for what I wanted to do. Well, I suggested the commandos and they won the vote by a landslide! So now I have a Dum Dum Dugan figure and I couldn't be more chuffed!!!

As well as the first version of Captain America, with the original badge shield. I can't wait to get some paint on these guys. But more importantly, I'm hoping that now having these figures in hand that this can be the push I need to get our favorite SSR agent back onto the tabletop and fighting the evil forces of Hydra :)

I was already paying for shipping across the pond so I figured I may as pick a bunch of the really neat Sally 4th accessory pieces. I've had my eye on these for quite a while now and jumped at the chance to grab them at a KS discounted price. This is the museum set, with all kinds of great bits and bobs to throw around inside a building.

And the market place set. I can't wait to get these painted up.

The Museum of Antiquities set has a bunch of these awesome glass cases that should really look the business when built up. I got several other little accessories as well that should make the table a whole lot more interesting to look at too.

This KS funded on July 30th, with an estimated delivery date of December of this year. Well, Chris and everyone at Sally 4th absolutely knocked this Kickstarter out of the park!! I had my full pledge in my hands at the end of September - and what makes that even more amazing is that the entire Howling Commandos set was sculpted from scratch after it won the vote on July 30th!?!? Mark Fuller - Tin Shed Gamer on the LAF - did an absolutely amazing job on these figures, and he deserves a huge shout out for the effort. I've heard on LAF that he's already started work on four more Howling Commandos (I'm sure Bucky will make it in that set) for Chris' next movie KS :)

But because of this Kickstarter, now the wheels are turning in Ivor's little head - I'll be jumping in on the next one and 100% putting up Jonny Quest as the vote in set of figures! The hurdle will be that the Quest gang just isn't known in England, which is an absolute shame because it's a cartoon that easily hold up almost 60 years later - giving you everything you could ever want in a spy-fi pulpy globe trotting adventure series. Quest is easily my favorite cartoon of all time, and if you've never heard of Jonny Quest I can't recommend looking it up enough. I absolutely guarantee that you will not be disappointed if you like the kind of stuff I described above - just make sure to watch the original from the 1960's. And if this does actually happen by some miracle, it will mean I can get rid of my proxy Quest team. Please oh please oh please let this happen!!! And then after that I can suggest a Goonies set of figures lol!!

I'll leave you with what could be the most important photo I've ever put up on the blog. This is work being done across the street to FINALLY get Internet access to the farm. It's just mad to think we've been without Internet/wifi access since moving out to the farm five years ago. Everything I do on the blog is either on my phone (which is easily the most frustrating thing ever) or piggybacking off my wife's portable Jetpack from Verizon, which is supposed to be used for work, so it's worthless. It has absolutely sucked to say the least. So here's to Ivor getting back into the 21st Century :)

I also want to send a quick shout out and thanks to Michal K. and Phil C. for following along with the blog, cheers guys!

Until next time, thanks for looking!

Ivor

More Kickstarters Arriving

I had two more Kickstarters show up this month from last years crazy number of pledges I made.

The first was Spies and Patriots 28mm Wargaming Miniatures from Brigade Games, based out of New Jersey here in the states.

Honestly I'm not sure why I backed this one, especially when I backed at the highest level possible with the most figures. I have more spi-fi miniatures than I know what to do with lol! And now I have 28 more??!! Every backer also got a free copy of the pulp rules "Where Heroes Dare" - in the first photo above.

There are a couple neat poses of figures, like the ones above, that should get themselves onto the table sooner than later. Lon and the gang at Brigade Games get an A+ on the fulfillment - the project funded on May 30th and had a July shipping estimate, and I had my box on July 30th.

Next to show up was the new expansion to Blood and Plunder by Firelock Games, No Peace Beyond the Line.

It was at last years Historicon that I went crazy stupid back at the hotel room, doubling my initial pledge amount after seeing some preview items and the game being played in the main exhibition hall.

I got three new factions, The Dutch, Pirates and Privateers, and European Colonial Militia.

Inside each box contains individual blisters for all the units, along with some doubloons used in the game.

I'm sure when normal retail blisters ship everything will have inserts with descriptions of what each blister is.

I was hoping that the template package was going to be acrylic but unfortunately it's MDF - not sure if I missed the description on the KS or if it wasn't revealed then. I guess we'll see how it looks when it's put together.

I got a boat load of casualty figures as add-ons, as they are some of my favorite types of miniatures. I'd much rather be able to throw down a casualty figure as opposed to simply tipping a figure over on its side to indicate that it's out of play. One of my bags only has 3 figures in it though - not sure if it's even worth contacting Firelock about since it's just one miniature.

And finally the piece de resistance! The Fluyt! This thing is an absolute monster, and it was seeing the prototype last year that had me all excited and frantically upping my initial pledge.

I don't know exactly what kind of resin Firelock uses for their ships but they are absolutely flawless. Resin ships of this size you'd think that there would be all kinds of issues regarding clean-up but there isn't a thing to do except wash it and start the painting process.

Just to give you a bit of scale I threw some of the newly based pirates on the ship. Once built and painted this thing will definitely something to see.

And again, just another scale shot with a figure on the outside. This Kickstarter funded on July 19th 2017, with an estimated delivery of March 2018. So about five months late, not too bad in the world of Kickstarters honestly so I'll give them a grade of a B.

And finally, while I ended up missing Historicon, which was a huge disappointment, I did get to make up a bit of that disappointment by getting to see my beloved Liverpool Football Club during their tour of the US for the International Champions Cup. They absolutely smashed Manchester United 4-1 and did it in front of over 100,000 people at Michigan Stadium. It was just mad. We were right behind the goal in what was deemed the Kop End, so my wife and son finally got to experience seeing Liverpool in person for the first time with Liverpool fans all around them in full voice. She was quite amused by the "Who The F@*k Are Man United" song and was singing along by the third time it was sung, bless her little heart lol!

More Walking Dead survivors on the table currently and also deciding on which building kit to work on next. I can't even remember the last time I actually built an MDF kit and I'm itching to finally start building stuff again.

As always, thanks for looking!
Ivor

Classic Movies Miniatures Episode Two Kickstarter

Just wanted to give a quick shout out to a current Kickstarter  from Sally 4th that has about two days left.

This one is pretty neat because I backed this initially to get some Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon figures.

Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, and Sydney Greenstreet figures, YES PLEASE!! But by backing you also get to suggest what the next set of figures should be.

Last year when I ran my Agent Carter game, the initial narrative had Carter and members of the Howling Commandos fighting Red Skull. Well, no Howling Commandos figures exist and I tried to find proxies and didn't have much luck. So the narrative of the game ended up changing.

Fast forward to today and my suggestion for the Howling Commandos won the vote for the next set of figures! Absolutely chuffed that I'll finally get a Dum Dum Dugan figure!! Maybe this will be the thing that will push me back into finishing up the Carter game :) Still up in the air for the other three figures, but again it looks like a majority vote will decide.

Anyway, still time to jump in on this one if it at all interests you. Sally 4th also have a really neat Tales of the Gold Monkey (a television show from the 80's that was clearly trying to coattail the success of Indiana Jones. But it did have a awesome airplane - a Grumman Goose named Cutter's Goose - and great sidekick Jack Russell terrier named Jack who wore an eye patch and would bark once for "no" and twice for "yes" lol!) that is perfect for pulpy island adventures too.

Until next time, thanks for looking!
Ivor

A Few Kickstarter Fulfillments

About two weeks ago I had 3 Kickstarters I backed arrive in the mail, and it felt a bit like it was Christmas in the summertime :)

The first one was the Fog Monster by Real Game FX. This one had no special packaging, just came in several boxes. This project funded on August 31, 2017, almost doubling its initial goal with 778 backers. The estimated delivery for the machine was December 2017, so about six months late - not horrible in the world of Kickstarters. In addition to the fog machine I also got some LED lights with a remote where you can change the color of the lights. I also got a fan to increase the output of fog, and an adaptor for machine where I can hook up six small tubes to get fog to spread throughout the table more efficiently.

I will say, and you can see it on the comments of the project, that Real Game FX really mucked up the shipping to a level that almost ruined the whole project. It's a bit too complicated to go into here, but hopefully they will have learned a valuable lesson on free shipping for anything planned for the future. 

So what do I think of this little machine? It's absolutely brilliant!! It worked straight away, though it would have been nice to have an instruction sheet in the box instead of a link to the YouTube channel. Regardless, I was both smiling ear to ear and laughing a bit at how boss it was as it was cranking out the fog! The photo above doesn't do it justice, so I think I'm going to have to reactivate my YouTube channel so you can really see the effect lol! Look for this to be used in a game in the future for sure.

About a day later my Viral Outbreak figures showed up. This project funded on October 6th 2017, going over 10k over its goal. Planned delivery was for February 2018, so only 4 months late, which is really good.

The packaging on this is top notch. What initially drew me to this KS was the fact that every figure didn't have a weapon. I like to be able to have just regular figures on the table not armed to the teeth, and these looked like they would fill that void.

But for whatever reason, as the project was in production I just wasn't "feeling" the excitement for these figures - and I even mentioned that in my Kickstarter post earlier this year that outlined everything I backed in 2017.

And now that they have arrived, unfortunately I still am not excited by the figures.

I thought they could work for The Walking Dead, but no way.

Pretty close to Warlord's Bolt Action figures in size.

And next to some Walkers. Unfortunately this box of figures is going into the sell pile.

And finally the last KS to show up was the Everlasting Wet Palette by Redgrass Games. This project was created in Paris, France and funded on October 17th - crushing their goal by 280k with almost 8,000 backers. Estimated delivery was March 2018, so again about four months past that estimate which is really on time in my eyes.

This is definitely a project I was looking forward to, as I really hope it will help improve my painting. The packing on this one is top notch as well.

This is what everyone got who backed the project, the only difference would have been the amount of extra hydration paper and hydration foam packets you ordered. The cost on everything in the above photo was $30.00 usd.

I got two packets of the foam pads.

And two packets of the hydration sheets. 

Super happy with the Fog Machine and the Wet Palette, and hopefully I can get the Outbreak figures into someone's hands who can use them :)

Until next time, thanks for looking!

Cheers!
Ivor