Kickstarter Rewards: Cats of Crumptown

I received my kickstarter rewards from Northumbrian Tin Soldier over the weekend. My wife liked this one and she is rarely interested in miniatures so I decided to jump in on it. It arrived safe and sound from the UK on Monday and I am very pleased with the contents on this one.

The box with the characters is heavy weight with a sleeve cover so it will serve as a case. Inside the box are the 12 character cats plus the kickstarter extra Luna, a kitten in a dinosaur costume. All nicely done and should be a lot of fun to paint. I really like the Kittenguard, 12 different guards in two blisters, as well maybe even more than the character box. The Cawlock and Crows I'm not to fond of but will probably offer a bit of a challenge to paint. The lamplighter and Gnomes back could be a lot of fun. The resin pieces are also nicely done although I probably won't have a use for those.

The castings are nice and clean so prep should be minimal. Round plastic slotta bases are provided. I'm not sure that there are enough but finding more bases shouldn't be a problem. I would love to dive into these right now, but I want to stay focused on Normandy for the moment, so these will go back in the box and hopefully will see that light of day in the near future as opposed to the far future.

This is basically the all in option with no add-ons. There were some add-ons that I was interested in but not interested enough to put down the extra money.

I do like the packaging a lot. This is a heavy duty cardboard box and the main cover is a sleeve just slides over to hold the whole thing together.

Kickstarter Rewards - War & Empire III - Forged in Battle

I received the kickstarter rewards from Forged in Battle (Westwind productions) yesterday. I have been eagerly anticipating this one for sometime. Since the production of the rulebook had fallen behind they opted to go ahead and send out the miniatures and would follow up with the book later.

I had opted for two starter armies rather than trying to mix and match packages with an unknown rule system and hope the Forged in Battle know what they are doing with the starters. I received the Norman army and the "Viking" army. Viking is in quotes here because I suspect that what I actually received is the Saxon starter army as all of the packs are marked either SG or SX. Since my four extra Viking packs are marked VK I figured something was off.

So that email is on the way, so far I'm not doing well with orders from the UK lately! However, everything else looks great. The miniatures are clean and fresh and just crying out to be painted. Of course we know how that goes in my house, they might be crying for sometime. I have vowed no miniature painting until Chester is finished, he remains my top priority.

Along with the Viking army I had to get a a couple of Viking longships to transport them. Both castings are quite clean and the metal miniatures (oars and upper torsos) look great. My only beef is that the ship hulls were cast with the shields mounted on the side which looks good but near as I can tell from the historical record is not how the shields would have been carried on board, its more for show and would have probably only been done in quiet waters for parades and funerals, not for going into battle. They still look great, some tiny casting flaws which are not unexpected in something like this. Certainly one of the better Viking longships out there right now, especially in 15mm.

Now that's a box full of stuff!

Shield transfers because I just couldn't bear the thought of painting all those shield designs by hand.

The extra Viking packs which provided the first clue that something might be amiss,

The Norman starter army with an extra NR3

The "Viking" Starter Army, all those SX notations make me think that this is more likely the Saxon Starter Army.

A beautiful Viking Longship, one of two.

Kickstarter - Gunfighter's Ball, Knuckleduster Miniatures

A very large, very damaged box arrived full of stuff from Knuckleduster's kickstarter. I have been eagerly awaiting its arrival!

While this kickstarter delivered late, I don't let that upset me anymore. There are so many factors that contribute to not meeting the date listed in the kickstarter it should really only be considered a guideline. I did not immediately jump in on this one even though it features my favorite western gaming theme. I thought the primary package was a bit weak for the price so I waited to see how many of the stretch goals they were going to hit. I do believe they hit all of them, and I jumped in as soon as the game mat was included. To say that the box was full is an understatement. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves and while I did receive a pdf copy of the rules time has just not been on my side to read them now with the actual rulebook in my hand that is likely to change.

A very full box, notice the completely shredded box corner in the upper right of the picture.

The basics; poker chips (who doesn't love poker chips), dice, cards and the character cards (I believe there is a card in there for all the western miniatures currently in the Gunfighter's Ball line).

A look at the front of the character cards

And the back. These are laminated so you can mark right on the cards with a grease or china pencil.

Three card decks. The Black Deck, I believe, can be used to replace the wound table. A Card deck, this is a standard card deck with some very nice artwork on the royal cards. The Pistoleer Deck, which looks like it has special character abilities. Everything is pretty much pure speculation on my part.  

Artwork on the royal cards, although I think they missed an opportunity of doing something fancy with the ace.

Three bags of stuff for the Saloon

That's a lot of MDF parts. I must admit that I'm intrigued enough to want to put this together right away. I have looked at the instructions posted for it and I think I'm going to only use them as a guide. It feels like its not quite in the right order.

Something a little different here with pewter doors, windows and matching interior pieces.

The resin bar along with a compliment of pewter pieces. I'm a bit disappointed that this is not a little fancier, again I think an opportunity was missed. I'm already considering some extra stuff to fancy it up a bit.

The Iconic faction, this is a new faction introduced for the kickstarter

A large pile of add-on miniatures.

The dismounted miniatures, very clean castings. I'm not sure how useful the bathtub guy is but its almost iconic if you watch western movies. 

A close up, and not a very good closeup, can you say Blazing Saddles? I already have a number of miniatures from the Gunfighter's Ball line and they have all been great. Some of the poses are a bit stiff but that's about the only bad thing I can say about them.

The mounted miniatures

A really nice horse, I'm excited about working on it. There were also some riderless horses available, since they were an additional buy in I decided to wait till later on those. They are already available on the Knuckleduster website.

The 3'x4' game mat, very nice, it feels likes it made from the same material as mouse pads

And the hard cover version of the rulebook

A random selection of pages

Overall, I'm very pleased with the results of this Kickstarter, well run, well communicated and great products at the end.

Kickstarter Rewards - Girl Genius; The City of Lightning

This is volume 16 in the Girl Genius series and it is the same high quality as the rest! I do love the work of Kaja and Phil Foglio in this series. I haven't been able to keep up with the series but I'm certainly looking forward to catching up with this book! I have reduced myself to just getting the basic package anymore though, I just don't need all the extra little knick knacks that always makes their Kickstarters run late.

Kickstarter Rewards - Tiny Epic Galaxies; Beyond the Black Expansion

Gamelyn Games comes through again with another well done Kickstarter. Beyond the Black is an expansion for the Tiny Epic Galaxies game that I picked through one of their earlier Kickstarter projects.

Again this is not a stand alone game, it is an expansion but like everything from GG this box comes backed to the gills with components and new stuff to expand the game play. I haven't had a chance to really dig into this expansion yet so I'm not quite sure how the current game play is going to change. It doesn't help that I haven't played Tiny Epic Galaxies in over a year now either (although I do consider it to be a great little game).

Like every GG Kickstarter I have been involved with, it pretty much smashed through every goal that was listed. The box is extra thick cardboard so it should take a real beating if necessary. Extra tokens, custom tokens, extra ships and even more pilots were just some of the goals that are packed into this tiny box. And in order to take advantage of every inch of space the Rogue Pilot solo rules are printed on the inside of the box bottom.