I was a Bad Boy on the Reaper Forum

In my quest to get an answers about Reapers plan to make sure all of the model's in the new kickstarter will have noses, I started a new thread on their message board in the Bones section essentially asking the question.  I come back later that day and cannot find it.  I search under my profile and find that my little thread was merged into a massive thread for all discussion on the kickstarter.  It is now hidden in a thread with 175 pages of 20 posts so pretty much an unreadable collection of posts.  This seemed fishy to me as so I left a trolling comment to the moderating thanking them for relocating my post since before people might have been able to find it before.

New Warstrike/M42 Project Post

I wrote a new take on the Morale system for the M42 project the other day.  It is up now.  The basic idea is to integrate unit unreliability under fire better into the system without forcing fall backs for every failed leadership test.  The system involves limiting unit actions in degrees before a fallback is forced and I hope allows for more failed leadership tests without losing units as the morale system is vital to the proposed game play elements.  Take a look.

The Cost of Getting Started with Space Marines

So I was wondering what it would cost to get started in 40K as Space Marines now.  So I worked up a quick list of some basic units to see.  So we have 1 commander, 1 dreadnought, 2 tac squads 10 man, 2 rhinos, 1 scout squad 5 man, 1 Assault squad 5 man, 1 landspeeder, and 1 predator.  That will kit out to about 1000 points with some very limited options.  Add in the just the rules book and the new codex and you line up at almost exactly 400 dollars.  I am not including paints, tools, glue, etc.  Just a very basic playable force and the rules.  That is getting to be real money.  If you are playing with a friend can you really tell them that 400 dollars to get started is the way to go for gaming.

It Does not Appear Reaper Wants another 200+ Model for $100 Kickstarter

So I was looking at the Reaper Bones II Kickstarter progression.  Specifically at rate of increases for the rewards and how the awards are being distributed in the categories.  Currently the core $100 set is in the ~130 model range but there are many days left for more models to be added but after an incredible growth in the first 12 hours things have moved to a very healthy 125K a day or so.  This is about the space between rewards right now but each reward is spaced farther and farther apart at an increase rate of about 12%.  So to get to 200+ models again if they kept their about 6 models per reward all going into the core set they need to get up to 4.4M using the trends currently seen.

Blood Bowl Human Team

Here we have the newer Human Blood Bowl Team produced by GW. The copyright stamps on the bottoms say 2004 so they are about a decade old now. Most recently (until April) they were sold for 60 dollars and have 16 team members making them similar in price to the 12 man team for 40 with the 20 dollar 4 man booster that many of the teams were available as during the middle of the last decade.  The team looks pretty good if you like the GW spike motif.  I had not picked up the team before since I did not really play humans much and already had the 2nd ed monopose plastics, the 3rd ed starter plastics, and a 2nd ed partial metal team that I was filling in.  With the end of GW metal production I decided to pick them up since they are pretty interesting looking.

Michigan Grand Tournament Codex Breakdowns

This weekend was the first Michigan Grand Tournament for 40K.  Even though I am not an active player I wanted to swing by and check it out as it was only like 1 hour away but unfortunately I ended up spending most of the weekend at the Hospital.  So instead of a first person look I can only look at the results which will probably come as no surprise to current players.  First we will look at the parcipation level for the various main detachments:

Reaper Kickstarter another Up Yours to Retailers?

I reported yesterday that Reaper had launched their second bones kickstarter.  It has brought in over a million dollars in the first 24 hours but has currently cut the growth rate a ton as it was like 900K in the first 12 hours.  I expect pretty slow growth going forward until near the end again.  I do not expect it to double up and up every few hours but it will probably net about the same total, but I do note that the average pledge is 100 dollars currently when before it was closer to 200 but this might have to do with the available levels and not a ton of options.  They also might want to get people to add money later again as that did not unlock new rewards.

Plastic Legions has pretty Harsh Review of Reaper Kickstarter.

John over at Plastic Legions has a pretty harsh review of the new reaper kickstarter but it is worth a read.  He is a little more down on the Bones material than I am but he does have a bunch of the same models in metal so he can really speak to the detail loss in ways that I cannot.  He wonders who is putting down for this new one but I am not really surprised that it has reach its current nearly 900K in like 12 hours.  Last one had about 20K backers in the end so even if you get only half of them back it is still in the 1M just at the core.  I do not think it can hold this pace as it would be at like 48M by the end but I would not be surprised if they met or exceeded their haul from last time as people (like me) can be suckers for big piles of minis for 100 dollars.  Currently they are at like 122 minis in the core set for 100 dollars.  So you need to like about 40 or 33% for the buy to be worth it.  Not there yet but it is only the first day.  Not very many of the add ons are interesting me so that is good.

Reaper Bones Kickstarter II

Reaper launched their second bones kickstarter today.  As of my lunch time they were at about half a million in pledges.  They have admitted that shipping this time will be much later listing the shipping as 1 year out.  So you will be giving them your money about the end of october to get your minis next year in time for christmas.  I left them a question about how they were going to improve the quality of the minis and deliver 100% of the models with noses.  They did a nice job replacing models people complained about but many of those replacements had the exact same problem since it was something either in the plastic flow in the mold structure or the actual mold not having the details.

On the Road Game Store Review: Game Links Fowlerville MI

So recently my family and I went to a local outlet mall to get some clothes and shoes for the kids (pesky growing children).  The mall is reasonably close to our home but direct travel is limited to either country roads or we can out of the way to take the highway so we do not head over there very often.  I had remembered that a few years ago a gaming store opened in a town I had never heard of on the same highway somewhat farther down.  So I looked it up again and it turned out to be just one more exit down the road.  I decided that our trip to the outlets would be a good time to take a look.