Wednesday, July 31, 2013

X-Wing Mini Game: My First Impressions

So as I noted earlier, I picked up the X-wing game on Friday.  I went through the rules and even got a quick play version of the game played after the kids family birthday party on Saturday with my brother in law.  There is a lot to like with the game.

I enjoy the movement mechanics.  The little wheel is a good why to fix the movements to make it like simultaneous movement with the actions to allow some reactive play and more depth to the tactics.  I would have loved the game to really take the 3D nature of space into account but that is pretty hard on a board game.

The facing and basic shooting both work well.  The list building is going to be baised for people who have more ships since certain upgrade cards can be used over a range of ships and might not come in all those ship's packages.  Not total sure about how that works.

I got two starter boxes and will look at add a ship or two a month to fill out the forces.

GW Financials Reveals Reason for Supply Problems and Disappearence of Metal Products

While reading the GW financial report is not for everyone, I did notice hidden on page 31 that they said that the Production and Supply costs were for operating production in the UK and the US (Until March 2013).  Hence they closed the US production facility back in March.  So now they have less production capacity which explains the supply problems and they must have during the consolidation removed most of the metal production equipment and supplies to make room for the unified plastic and finecast factory.  This explains why when a bunch of specialist games stuff sold out in like 3 days of getting the rumors of the discontinuing of the product lines they could do nothing about it.

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Finally Broke Down

I finally broke down and bought a copy of the X-Wing Mini game.  I am a big Star Wars fan and remember tons of PC gaming in the X-wing series so when I saw the starter on sale a target for 20 dollars I had to finally pick it up.  I got 2 copies one for me and one to use maybe as a gift.  Now I have the basic rules and can think more about playing the game with my minifigure scale lego ships in a very large room.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Where did those Reaper Bones Details Go?

So I have gone through my Bones a couple of times and notice some strange stuff.  First off I expect some lose of detail but I guess I expected it to different from what I see in the models.  Mike over at Constantly Risking Obscurity has a great comparison of two different Bones models with their metal counterparts.  He sees definate loss of detail but very uneven like the Bones could handle the detail but it is not in the model anymore.

I have found in my studies very consistent deficiencies in all the casts of some models.

For example here is the Cowgirl Model.  Mine does not have a nose.  Almost looks like you could paint her light green and make her a human alien hybrid cowgirl.


As far as I can tell all the Cow Girls are like this.  Other models have noses so what happen to this one.  Similarly I found several other models without noses and other strange issues:

Cowgirl Missing Nose
Townsfolk Mom with Kids Kids Missing Nose
Pathfinder Kyra the Cleric Nose Almost Indented
Juliette Female Sorceress No finger details on hand
Almaran the Paladin Back Face seriously distorted
Autumn Bronzeleaf Staff Side Face bumpy
Sharess Nashenneth Rough Face
Female Warrior Missing 50% of Axe Blade Edge

I think we are pretty sensitive to the missing face details compared to others since we might not notice if that buckle is a little weak but you expect a face to have a nose.  These are also many human type models.  Again I think that the errors are easier to spot since we know what a human face should look like compared to an orc or bugbear.

I think that many of these issues are mold based as they are repeated over multiples of the same models so it got me thinking about how they create the molds.  Now Bones does not hold the details as well as metal or resin so if you machine the molds up to the detail level of the masters than you will have random chance of catching some the details and get say a blade that part of the length has an edge then not than an edge again.  So you have to make you molds at the detail level you expect the material to hold.

So how do you generate these lower resolution sculpts.  The best way would be to scan the master models at high resolution and then go in digitally and trim the edges either with a program or digital sculptor.  That is going to be time consuming and you have 250 models to get done as fast as possible so if you just lower the scanner resolution then you get it without going in editing each file.  Problem here is that when the scanner has a little plip or something, significant detail will be lost since you have set the thresholds to capture less detail.  Essentially some of the details that could be captured were lost in the rounding error of the mold production process.

This is just a theory.  It is also possible that the mold machiners did a crappy job to either be cheap or fast or both.  Unfortanutely either way it leaves a few models that are just not going to look right unless you go in and resculpt them or Reaper gets a new mold made.

Where does this leave the Bones catalog?  Obviously the Kickstarter was still a good deal at like 75 cents for a human sized model but at 2-3 dollars some of the models do not stand up.  The Bones are great for monsters or models that you do not expect to be using all the time but for your PCs and such you are better off with the metal ones since they will be used over and over agian.  Unfortanutely they made a lot of PC type models in the set, less Elves and more monsters would have been better.

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Reaper Bones Griffin


Here are so pictures of the Reaper Bones Kickstarter Griffin.  I think it looks pretty good.  Reaper has the retail for this listed at 8 dollars down from 30 in metal.  GW finecast would probably be higher.

 Well defined features.
 for both sides of the face.


And pretty good detail on the wings.

Would one put 60 hours of painting into for a golden brush type competition probably not but a fair paint job and I think it will look pretty good.

Here are the bones dumped out on my couch after the box contents check.

Thursday, July 4, 2013

Reaper Bones In Hand


My Bones arrived yesterday so I went through sorting them last night.  I did not open many of them since my daughter is going to help me with that and she is visiting my mom for a couple of days.  I got the vampire set and like 11 add ons.  The Bones material can hold some very good detail as I see in my Mind your Manors and Demons add on but the I think that many of the sculpts are not what they could be.  Kaladrax is huge and for only 10 bucks a good buy but it certainly has very soft details on many parts.  Ofcourse dragon bones are smooth but it just does seem like a 75 dollar kit that they have it priced at now.  Pics to come after the holiday.