More Stuff on the Way

So things have been pretty exciting on the miniature gaming front for me recently. First off the DreadBall campaign recently finished and the survey was sent out by Mantic shortly afterward. I had already pledged for all the extras I thought I'd need and filled my survey out quickly. I did end up adding a few more things but missed two of the MVP figures because I didn't realize they weren't included in the Striker package. I'm sure I can pick them up at a later time easily enough should I desperately decide I need them.

There have been some preliminary conversations between myself and the folks of my gaming shop of choice (Trilogy Gaming Club) about DreadBall as well. We've made some plans for demoing the game at an upcoming Blood Bowl tournament; to be followed up by two different league nights. Originally I had thought there would just be one event weekly. After talking about it however, it looks like we'll try doing two events per week. The one I'll be running will be aimed at new and casual players who want to play in a fun league. The other event will be store-run, and intended for those looking for more competitive league play. I'll post more details about that later on.

During the final week of that campaign I had also been watching Mongoose Publishing's Judge Dredd Miniature Game campaign on Kickstarter. Although it was labelled as a supportive effort for the upcoming Block War expansion, the main focus of the project seemed to be expanding the Judge Dredd figure range. Mongoose's campaign was definitely not as slick as Mantic's but they refined it as things went along and I think they did a good job of being accommodating to most requests.

The one thing that impressed me most about the game is that the rules and expansion book are free to download, so one could use old Games Workshop figures, converted Heroclix, or whatever other figures they had available to play without ever giving Mongoose a dime. Of course the Mongoose-produced figure looked pretty good so I decided to support their efforts with a Council of Judges level pledge. The basic pledge cost was essentially retail price for 10 of their box sets. However, by the time the campaign finished there were somewhere around 18 or 19 sets included at that pledge level, plus some other goodies. I think that'll end up being 115 or 120 figures from the world of Mega-City One!

I opted to swap out the Fatty Stampede box set for a second Zombie Horde set (everyone loves zombies right!?), and the Pat Wagon for two Judges on Lawmaster bikes. Hopefully Mongoose is able to fulfill their initial promise and get most of the stuff people pledged for sent out by end of November. A huge pile of Judge Dredd Miniature Game figures arriving on my doorstep in time for Christmas would be awesome!

IndieGoGo is a similar concept to Kickstarter, but one I've not looked at too much. In all honesty, Kickstarter has gotten a lot of my money, far more than I had intended. However, when I heard Vesper-On, that the guys who make Carnevale, were doing a campaign I had to go check it out. Initially I wasn't really interested, because it was focused very specifically on making a very big beastie for their Rashaar faction. While the Rashaar are very cool, essentially fishmen and Dagon cultists (ala Lovecraft), it wasn't enough to make me want to add my money. But things do change...

Based on feedback they received, Vesper-On added other perk levels to let people who wanted to support them get some starter boxes and models for other factions as well. They also added a sort of everything-and-the-kitchen-sink level perk which included their full Carnevale catalogue AND the big beastie AND a rule book. I've been drooling over the figures for this game for a while now, but had avoided getting in on it because the figures were quite expensive, and I'd have to pay shipping from Spain on top of that. Now however, I can get the whole line at a discount, and not have to pay any shipping fees. Consider me in!

With all this new plastic and lead winging its way to my doorstep, I know that I will soon have an exponentially larger mountain to climb, er...paint. While more than a little bit daunting I'm still very excited about all of the new stuff coming, and that's helped keep me moving along with my painting and terrain building.

I'll have some stuff from my paint station to show off in short order, so do stop by again very soon.