2012 - the Best Bits (part 2)

In the last post I looked at some of the less well known companies (and a blog) that had caught my eye in the past year. In this post I am looking at two more kickstarter projects that have really taken off, raising considerable sums of money, the first almost reaching the million dollar mark, while the second became the most successful campaign of the year. Each project caught my eye for a different reason and had me reaching for my poor, battered wallet.

Studio McVey is a small company with a massive pedigree. Most older gamers will recognise the name of Mike McVey, for all the painting work he completed at Games Workshop in the 1990's. For the past two or three years, Studio McVey have been producing high quality resin boutique miniatures, so are familiar to painters but perhaps not to gamers. That all changed in May when the kickstarter for Sedition Wars was launched. High quality plastic figures, great artwork and top production values in a boxed miniatures game.

I was one of the many thousands who pledged to the project. The biggest attraction to me was the sheer quality of the sculpts included. As the kickstarter progressed and these were increased in quantity, it just got better and better. The other components seem to be high quality too, but the game is a mere add-on in my eyes.The minis will be useful in a whole range of other games. It's the hard-sci-fi look that I like and I have already started to look around at rulesets that might be fitting for the minis. There was a slight disappointment recently when shipping was delayed from China, but it's admirable that the McVeys have sorted out the problems and the box should be here early in the new year. Something to chase away the post holiday blues.

The biggest success (in purely monetary terms) was the Reaper Bones project. I sat on the fence for a good while on this one, but as the number of minis grew and grew, I eventually caved in. While the sculpts are not up to the standard of some other ranges, in my eyes at any rate, there is something to be said for the sheer range and size of the goodies involved. Given my new-found desire to explore more gaming systems of differing genres, I figured having a couple of hundred extra figures to choose from would not do me any harm.

Some of the minis will almost certainly be used in my fantasy armies, while others may well be useable in the Sedition Wars setting. There are also dozens of classic dungeon adventuring style minis, I just need to find a ruleset I can use. For any that lie redundant after all these options are explored, there's always ebay - well, I will probably need more funds for the kickstarters of 2013!

That's it for the wallet-draining section of the review of the year. In the next post I will be looking at the oh-so-tempting minis that I have not bought, but which have teased and tempted me throughout the year.