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

Atlanta Survivors

Horses. Horses. And even more horses. It's quickly becoming very clear that I'm not going to have any free time anymore in the summer months because of... yup, you guessed it, horses. So that is why the blog has been quiet, and why I haven't commented on any other blogs recently - apologies to all! But I finally did manage to base a few of the main survivors for Mantic's The Walking Dead All Out War game.

Carl Grimes.

I'm not familiar with the comics - which the game is based off of - and I've heard the character is completely different from his television counterpart., but this looks like a neat character to add to your group for the game. His hat has a special rule that looks a bit fun :)

Rick Grimes.

I went back and rewatched the very first episode of the television series while working on these guys, and I think I like season 1 Rick the best. He'll probably be a figure I use often - which is also why I wanted him done first.

Shane Walsh.

He was always kind of the good bad guy or bad good guy depending on how you look at it in the show. And the actor who plays him, Jon Bernthal, was absolutely brilliant.

As you can see I've got them all based with the new and improved clear bases - walkers still need converted. Shane's pose made using a 20mm base impossible so he's on a larger 25mm base. But the most important thing is now I actually have a few survivors to where I may be able to play a game of TWD using the solo rules. So fingers crossed that can actually happen.

I've got two Kickstarters that arrived this month so I want to do a post on them, and a week ago was the annual D-Day Conneaut reenactment that I've participated in for the last six year, so I want to do a photo dump on that as well. Next year will be the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings so planning has already started on that - though the event is so big already I can't imagine how much more they can actually do to make it better.

Until next time (which I hope isn't that long!), 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

More Pirates Too? Sure, Why Not

I've somehow managed to get more pirates finished and newly based with the next and final iteration of the quest to find the perfect clear base - more on than later.

Here is the group of 20, mostly from Northstar - though honestly, I have the hardest time trying to remember manufacturers anymore, mostly because stuff was bought ages ago.

I particularly like this group because it has Captain Jack Sparrow and Smee from Peter Pan.

Figures like the one looking through the spyglass are ones I absolutely love - I really like a pose that tells a bit of a story. What's he looking at? A ship in pursuit, or perhaps one he's after. Maybe it's some kind of sea monster on the horizon or perhaps the island with buried treasure on it :)

Someone needs to get Ms. Boney an undershirt.

The figure on the left really stands out as he has some manacles on his ankles - again, telling a bit of a story of a recent escape, and that necklace is just boss!

And the final four. The lady on the far right has a bit of a resemblance to Eleanor Guthrie from Black Sails, which is quite neat.

As mentioned above, I'm sure you've noticed the bases on this group is completely different from what I'd been doing clear base wise for the last year and a half. The new bases were created with a circle punch and the plastic is from the packaging from model railroad buildings.

I've now gone to an ultra thin clear base and I think I've finally found the look I've been after since trying the clear base - these new bases equate out to 20mm or 3/4 of an inch. The figure on the left has the 25mm Litko 1.5mm thick base and as you can see the difference is just huge. I initially had hesitations about going to 20mm as I thought they would be too small to handle the figures - I couldn't have been more wrong!

I've read on different forums and threads in the past that those who use clear bases are "lazy" and that's why they use them. The photo above is why I use them and will always use them going forward for skirmish game figures. Traditional basing in this instance would just look odd. With a clear base, no matter where that figure is (on a road, in a building, in a dungeon, on a boat, in the desert, etc. etc. etc.) on the table it's never going to look out of place, like here.

And just as another quick comparison shot, you can see how much better the new base looks compared to the old Litko one.

Here is the entire group on my sloop (yet to be finished - apologies lol!) from Blood and Plunder. I could easily get another 8 figures on the boat even with all the cannons added - that's almost 30 figures!!?? And all because of the type of base I'm using.

Penny pinching time - I managed to score a whole bunch of clearance hobby stuff. If you have a Hobby Lobby anywhere close to you I highly recommend getting out there as quickly as you can to see what you can pick up.  This lot in the photo I found between two stores - I hit one other one but they were cleaned out. This is a total of 23 items retailing at $269.77 that I got for only $67.77!!?? Madness.

I'd wanted to get this out before Wednesday but wasn't able to so I could wish all those going to Historicon a great time and all the best to those running games as well (Miles, David, Kalissa, Joe). I really wish I could have been there - especially when I found out that 4Ground were going to be at the event for the first time ever!?!? That one was really crushing for me, I would have loved for the guys to have seen the conversions I've done with there kits in person :(

I've got a Kickstarter post coming up as I've had three backings come in over the last several weeks - the Fog Monster from Real Game FX is one of the coolest things ever gotten my hands on for sure!

Until next time, thanks for looking!
Ivor