Its Party Time - Reaper Talk Radio with Bryan and Matt

Down to 8 hours, 2 hours to the start of the party. Matt and Bryan are setup in the plant to play music and monitor the kickstarter as the countdown continues and Dragon's Don't Share has just been revealed. Looks like a good time today! If you are in the area (Denton TX) come on day and have some BBQ with us!

Bryan Stiltz on the left

Matt Clark on the Right

Hopefully there should be food and people soon.

BONES II; The Return of MIster Bones - Heading into the last day

Bones within Bones

Its late, I'm at Reaper and its been a long day. The picture is already a bit dated because we are under 24 hours to go. Saw some amazing stretch goals today, and I have seen what the big stretch goal for tomorrow will be. Pretty stoked about that. Anyway I'm off to bed, hopefully the numbers will keep climbing. If you haven't been keeping up then head over and check the kickstarter and go through the updates. If you can't make a big pledge then pledge a $1 and you will have access to buy stuff after the kickstarter is over at kickstarter prices. Tomorrow should rock.

BONES II; The Return of Mister Bones - Sophie makes an appearance!

I know, I know, to much BONES this month, but this little announcement was pretty exciting. Sophie, Reaper's mascot, has been added to the core set. This will be a 28mm version, so suitable for a gaming piece, sculpted by Bobby Jackson. The concept artwork looks fantastic and Bobby will be working on the sculpt this week while he is at Reaper. This is Bobby's first Sophie sculpt so I'm looking forward to seeing what he can do. Remember BONES II ends at 6pm (Central time) on Saturday!

BONES II

BONES II, The Return of Mr Bones. Reaper Miniatures Kickstarter entering its final days

This kickstarter is moving right along and I'm still firmly in the camp of it breaking the 4 million dollar mark by the end. And with that in mind I would recommend jumping in now before the servers crash. For those of you running really tight budgets right now (darn that broken windshield) there is an option for you. You can pledge for $1 that gets you in and locks in your spot. The $1 pledge will allow you access to everything, so if you just want that box of mouslings, you are in for $11, if you want just one of the components of the core set you can get it that way. What really makes this a good way in is that you can increase your pledge later through the pledge manager. That doesn't help us unlock additional stretch goals but if you only have $20 bucks today but will have more when that paycheck arrives you can still pledge and get what you want at the kickstarter prices.

If you are a backer outside of the US then you will be paying for shipping. Reaper has set up a pledge calculator that will let you determine what the postage is going to be right now. This locks in that as your postage amount which you can either include as part of your pledge or pay it later through Paypal. There is no calculator thought for taxes (unless you live in TX), import duties, fees, VAT etc. You are on your own there. But if shipping rates go up before the delivery next year then Reaper is picking up the difference. They have made this one really easy to get into so just dive in!

Here's a pic of the latest goal that was just tripped this morning. This is an optional add-on and could be used in a lot of games from fantasy to horror to Sci/Fi. That's a lot mini for $12.

BONES II

Reaper BONES paint job by Victoria Lamb

If you have had any doubts that a Reaper BONES miniature can be used for a competition piece this bit of paintwork by Victoria Lamb should dispel those doubts.

Here is the link to the appropriate post on her website. If you have never seen her work spend some time looking through her gallery and then buy some miniatures. 

http://victoriaminiatures.info/painting-my-first-reaper-bones-miniature/

Kickstarter: Reaper Bones II, The Return of Mister Bones. End of Day One

I promise that I will try not to post to much more about this kickstarter but the results at the end of day 1 (9am Central Time this morning) were interesting enough to comment on.

First a "motivational" poster created by a gentleman in the Reaper Forums

This is from an interesting twist to the add-on options. You can add the Expansion set as an add-on to the core set at $50. As the kickstarter progresses the Expansion set will increase with new miniatures as well. There as been some debate about this little twist primarily in the Kickstarter comments, but I think its a neat idea.

Bones II crossed the 1,000,000 mark at 1:32am Central Time. There wasn't as much activity from the international folks, primarily based on concerns over shipping costs. Reaper is going to charge actual shipping costs to ROW backers. I understand their concern but this is becoming pretty normal for just about any kickstarter project. Shipping overseas has become frighteningly expensive.

Here is the current location of Mr Bones, subject to change without notice (click on the image to make it bigger)

Here is what the core set contains right now, subject to change without notice (click on the image to make it bigger)

 Here are the current Add-on Options, again subject to change without notice (click on the image for a bigger version):

Right now, they are at 9372 backers and $1,068,631 pledged and we still have 24 days to go.

Holy Cow Batman! Bones II The Return of Mister Bones

Reaper Miniatures kicked off their new Kickstarter this morning at 9am Central time. Funded in 3 minutes, and broke the $150,000 level in the first 20. The options are very streamlined this time. Core Option either as an early bird (no discount on price just first wave shipping) and wave 2. Price at $100 and figures are rapidly being added. I have seen at least one dragon add on and if you are into the mouslings they are available as an add on as well (set of 10). The insanity has begun! Right now there is a limit of 4500 spots but I suspect they have broken the shipping up into waves, so as the Wave 2 Shipping slots fill a Wave 3 shipping will open up. They may also have a limit to the total number of pledges and this is an interesting way to manage it.

Here is the map although its probably already out of date in the 5 or 6 minutes it took me to right write this.

30 minutes in $200,000+

3 hours in $500,000+, things slowed down a little bit!

Kickstarter - Reaper Miniatures BONES - The ships are in.

For those of you who haven't already heard about it:

Good news!

Update #93 · Jun 10, 2013 · 64 comments

 

First, a quick note about Origins. We had been looking forward to seeing you there, but unfortunately we won't be there this year in a booth. Our brother Tim Peaslee will be running demos, so be sure to say hi to him when you're there. We can't do a proper booth this time around because we simply can't spare the labor right now.

Why can't we spare the labor?

Friday, June 7th, we received two 40ft containers full of Bones! For those of you keeping track at home, those containers were filled with over 470,000 models. We're still looking for the last container to be delivered next week, but we have enough to start shipping now.

What's next?

We've unloaded the containers (we have the bruises to prove it). We're getting those models organized into our system and firing up our fulfillment line this week.

We know we're behind our estimated ship date of March, so we've added a second shift for fulfillment so we can process the packages very nearly 'round the clock. We're doing everything we can to blast through these pledges so you can receive your Bones as quickly as we can manage it.

Thanks for your continued patience and support.

Cue the Lost Ark theme...

Do you see what I see?

Reaper's Kickstarter Cases

Reaper is getting closer and closer to their shipping date for their Bones Kickstarter. From our perspective things are looking pretty good. They released this little video today about the cases that you could order as part of the Kickstarter. I think all the boxes on those pallets contain cases.

Mini Cases

Okay, I'll update this a little bit. Reaper has received 9 shipping containers of stuff so far, that's all the cases and a good chunk of the Bones. They are waiting on a few more containers to arrive so they can start putting stuff together.

Kickstarters – How are they affecting the gaming industry?

I have to admit for me the whole idea behind kickstarter is awesome. The ability to put your project out there and attract investors has, up to this point, been way beyond what the small business owner has ever been able to do before. Venture capitalists are just not interested in the small fry, they want the big return. I have seen a lot of griping about regular publishers using kickstarter to essentially act as a pre-order system. I just don’t see the issue here. Yes, its going to cut down on the initial sales through the retail market but it also allows the publisher to produce a lot more product up front and still have it available to the retailer after that initial wave of product goes out. In fact I think it is to the benefit of the retailer because now you can actually get an idea of the enthusiasm level of the gaming community about a product and order accordingly.

A good example right now is the Zombicide kickstarter. The actual product started to hit about mid August and the enthusiasm, at least in my area, is huge. For every Zombicide sale missed by a retailer because of the kickstarter there are probably 3-4 people looking to buy it right now. I’m not sure if CMoN is really going out to the retail stores with this but I’m sure they are now having trouble keeping up with the demand created after the first packages were delivered. It is the first really big one to get delivered (I think Ogre was the first game kickstarter to raise a ton of money, but it hasn’t hit yet). Sedition Wars, also from CMoN blew both Zombicide and Ogre out of the water as far as dollars raised and it ended up being a huge deal, miniature wise, for all of those backers that supported it. Then there was the Reaper BONES kickstarter, which really shows what a properly thought out kickstarter should be and it raised just over 3.4 million dollars and they will be shipping out something on the order of 4 million plastic BONES miniatures in March. Reaper is definitely an established company but by using the kickstarter they were able to ramp up the number of miniatures in the BONES lines to about 200 miniatures in six months instead of six years, a solid win for Reaper and the miniatures community. Reaper is now number 3 on the list for top fund raising kickstarters.

As huge as all of those kickstarters are its some of the smaller ones that really tell the tale and it is these that deserve more attention than they are getting. The one I’m looking forward to the most simply wanted to raise enough money to be able to cast the 28mm cannon for the ships they produce. It seems that no company really produces the cannons necessary for wooden ship actions, so Laser Dream Works decided to use kickstarter to raise funds to get the masters produced and purchase the casting equipment for the ship’s cannon that they needed for their War of 1812 project. It was a near run thing at the end but they cleared the $7,000 goal they set and are now off to the races. I have always been fascinated with wooden ships although I don’t really play any games that feature them. I jumped on this one though so I could finally play some pirate games and maybe get motivated to get my cool Black Scorpion Pirate miniatures painted. I signed up for the “Sloop Slaughter” which gets me the USS Wasp, and the HMS Frolic, and a small gunboat. Afterwards, I found out that the Wasp is like 38” long and the Frolic is pretty close to that as well. I guess I will need a bigger table to play on now. The reality is that we managed to help one of the small guys get what he needed to become a bigger force in the market place and maybe position himself as the place to go for anyone that needs ships’ guns for their wooden ship fleet. And that’s what I think Kickstarter is all about, getting the small business what they need when they need it, without having to try and secure a loan from a bank for it.

Now let me leave this with a note of caution. There are no guarantees. Kickstarter is an investment vehicle. Like any investment vehicle there is an element of risk, there is no guarantee that you will get what is promised when you put your money down. I hope that everyone has crunched the numbers before they leap headlong into the fray but it is inevitable that some of these projects are going to get their money and fail. You have no recourse if this happens, so be sure you have read and understand what Kickstarter is and take a good look at what the company is promising and whether you think they can actually deliver or not.

Check out the cool stuff from Laser Dream Works available here: Laser Dream Works

And a few pictures of the cool stuff I hope to be receiving from Laser Dream Works sometime in the near future.