hepcat
5921
I was at Origins last weekend and Victory Point Games had a booth. They were selling all their Gold Banner games at a discount…and they had a 10 percent off coupon in the swag bag for convention attendees. On top of that, they gave me a chance to win an even deeper discount by shooting a rubber dart gun at a target…which I promptly (and quite surprisingly) bullseyed. I subsequently was able to pick up a copy of Darkest Night (a game I’ve been wanting for a while now) for 35 bucks. I went back later and debated over about 3 other games, but by that time I already had blown quite a bit. However, if they’re at Gencon with the same deals, I predict a massacre on my wallet.
Other than that, still playing the hell out of Pax Porfiriana. I simply cannot get enough of that game.
Tom_Mc
5922
Andean Abyss has been the one on my mind lately. Bringing up Pax; I have a special, probably masochistic, place in my heart for Phil Ecklund games. BIOS Megafuana I think is absolutely bonkers but I would love to play it more. High Frontier has fascinated me as well with its subject matter.
Tom M
We actually talked about it here a little while the KS was running. Not sure if it was in this thread or the KS thread- you should dig back a few pages in both if you want to see what we said. I backed it (for way, way too much money) and am looking forward to it, but I’m expecting it to exactly fill the Warhammer Quest void- I don’t expect the gameplay to be all that great, but it should be a tremendous experience.
The other co-op dungeoncrawl thing that recently ended was a game called Myth. You should look it up, too. Looks like a much better game, if not quite so cool miniatures (though you get a lot more). I backed it, too, though for probably only 1/3 the amount of the KD:M KS.
hepcat
5924
I also backed Myth. I saw the developers at Origins as well (they also include the popular Mercs miniatures game in their stable) and they told me that it looks like they actually might be shipping sooner than predicted based on how things are progressing.
Sweet! I’m glad I backed them both back then when I was flush with cash to spend on stupid things like that. Now I’m unemployed I have to be a bit more circumspect with my purchases. At the end of the year, I’ll be getting two sweet, already-paid-for packages, like a christmas gift to myself when I have no money. :)
Seppey
5926
I just wanted to say this is key. In college we played Diplomacy and afterwards one guy kept saying how we lied and he couldn’t trust us. I wish i could have said what you said instead of ‘it is just a game’.
As far as I was able to determine, most of the overfunding was due to the kinda misogynistic cosmetic “sexy lady” miniatures that made up many of the stretch goals/addons. The game itself promises some cool things and the monsters have a pretty strong aesthetic to them, but it’s anyone’s guess as to whether they’ll be able to deliver.
That certainly was part of it, sure. The ‘pinup’ minis were pricey, but served absolutely no game function- they have no use in the game at all. Really, I think a big part of the overfunding was that nearly all the stretch goals were for paid add-ons, both the pinup stuff and the actual game expansions cost non-insignificant amounts of money more. Contrast that with the Myth KS, who just piled more and more stuff in the basic box- by the end, the Myth KS had so much stuff at the basic level, the expansion content was really just ice cream on top of the fondant on top of the icing on the cake.
The same sort of situation is happening right now with the Cthulhu Wars KS- all the stretch goals are just ways to draw people in to pay an extra $48/each. I wonder how it’s working out for them- I went all the way with KD:M, but I saw early on what was happening with CW and decided to stay far, far away (even though I’ve seen the CW minis in person and they are awesome).
Yeah, I like the idea of Kingdom Death, but I didn’t kickstart since I wanted to see if the game was any good before I bought it. While I’m sure the mini’s would be great for painting, I was pretty shaky on the game itself being any good. I do like the quasi Monster Hunter concept though of fighting bosses and then using the rewards to upgrade your character, but I was unconvinced by the video that they would actually pull it off.
hepcat
5930
Sandy is an RPG game designer, not a board game designer. That’s what scared me off Cthulhu Wars. If the entry price was a bit lower, I might be able to justify taking a chance on it. But it’s well over 100 bucks to buy in now.
Jeezy Creezy that Kingdom Death kickstarter page is pretty much NSFW when you scroll down it a ways. Total red flag for me, but at $2m I guess people just eat it up.
Yeah. I said as much in the KS thread when I posted about KD:M. Completely NSFW, and that was before the pinup stuff got unlocked. I have no interest in the pinup figs, and the style of the regular character minis isn’t like that at all, so that’s good. On the other hand, the monsters have some NSFW stuff, too, and that’s a huge plus. Having grown up a huge fan of Giger/Cronenberg/Lovecraft freaky eldrich body horror that has underpinnings of sex, it’s right up my alley. And hey, the KS didn’t even include the really freaky stuff like the Wet Nurse from his original line of minis- that probably would have gotten him shut down. o_0
Yeah, but to be fair that guys sculpts are pretty amazing, regardless of the subject matter.
Not to be pedantic, just pointing out that I don’t actually think he does any of the sculpting himself. Apparently, like a lot of small minis companies out there, he does the design and concept work and then works with actual sculptors to get the stuff worked up from that. Kind of interesting, and something I didn’t know before I started following his KS.
Interesting, for some reason I thought he actually did a lot of the sculpting himself. Still, the models are very impressive from a sculpting standpoint, regardless of who is actually doing the sculpting. The amount of fine detail is just off the charts on those things.
Definitely more interested in Myth now than KD:M. I’m not quite sure I understand the pinup thing. Yeah, they’re ridiculous and probably inappropriate, but do they serve any game function? Are figures being modeled after them that will be sold individually later or what? I somehow get the impression they’re just for looks…which is dumb.
Also, anyone see that DUEL OF AGES II will be in stock on July 15!? It’s being sold in two parts (as opposed to 7 or 8), consisting of the base set for $34 and the master set $87. This PDF gives a great rundown of what has changed, including improved/streamlined rules and the contents of the two sets. I’m really excited!
So I just learned what NSFW means.
<<<<<<ioticus: Lost in time and space
Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Hah! What a way to learn!
And @Nephrinn- Yeah, the pinup minis have no game function whatsoever. They’re only there for collectors to paint. I don’t get it either, but I don’t condemn them- it’s just not my world. It isn’t really that strange though, when you consider that the whole line started several years ago without a game system to support it. Apparently he was just designing and selling the minis (including the pinup-style figs, some humanoids that ended up in the game, and some of the monsters) online-boutique-style, again, with no system to support them, and gained something of a following. So there’s a market out there for people who just want cool miniatures to build and paint. Who knew?
Still, even as excited for it as I am, I really do expect Myth to be a better game in the same vein. And way, way cheaper, too. I know they were taking pledges (with all KS rewards!) via Paypal for it for some time after the KS ended. They may still be. You might look into it if you’re looking to get into it. The basic game as it’ll be released at retail looked pretty anemic, but like I said before, the end product of the KS was pretty stuffed-to-the-gills amazing.
And I’m with you, merryprankster. The minis are frikken amazing, regardless of how they get made. Dude has a vision, and knows how to get that expressed. Hats off to him for that.
I got a chance to play a few games of the Fantasy Flight re-issue of Cosmic Encounters last night. After one truly horrible game due mostly to our friend teaching the game not knowing how to play, we tried again after working out the rules. What a gem! No wonder it’s a classic. Fast, short, crazily interactive, and sporting some truly awesome rules tweaks based on the races and cards so that no two games play the same. Fantasy Flight apparently is doing their usual add-on boondoggle, but it seems superfluous. The base set comes with about 20 races, and there’s even a technology variant in which each races gets a unique tech (?). This might be one of my favorite deceptively casual game designs since Small World.
-Tom
Based on one play I really hated Cosmic Encounter. It’s the most random game I’ve ever played, and just seemed so pointless to me. Lots of people love it, but I couldn’t get into it at all.
