Quirkworthy

Following on from yesterday, here’s another KS project I’ve pledged for: Spectre Miniatures. It’s still live so you can join in too if you like 🙂

These are 28mm modern special forces and the African rebels to fight them. On show are a variety of shadowy western types from the British and American special forces, CIA, and private contractors. They’ve even brought their dog, Shep. As the Kickstarter rolls along, more and more sets of these are available to pick from. You see, each pledge gets you a certain number of 4 model sets, and it’s the options to pick from that we’re seeing expanded. Mind you, the latest promise is some more KS exclusives once the last of the currently listed stretch goals tumbles. Less than 1k to go now.

On the flip side we have a selection of militia in the usual rag-tag mix of equipment and somewhat ostentatious (and entirely credible) fighting stances. Having recently spent some time doing photo research on Africa’s small wars, I was rather pleased to see this lot on Kickstarter. Not all are so obviously civilian in origin with a few looking fairly regimented. At least, they were before they went looting. They’ve also got witchdoctors and “bullet-proof” militia.

Leading the militia are a selection of “big men”and warlords, in various flavours from military to sartorial.

We already have a few manufacturers doing similar types of ultra modern troopers, Empress being one example. It’s telling that Spectre have included a comparison shot with Empress (below). Looks like they’ll get along just fine 🙂

There aren’t as many militia options about, though even with some similar things on the market, there are some unique pieces here, and some nice variations to mix in and add to the variety in those modern skirmishes.

There are also some promised rules to go along with these guys, though to be honest I’m more interested in the figures, myself. I expect to use these for Eternal Battle, and though I’ll read them, I doubt their rules will change my mind. You never know though.

All told there’s not really much to say about these guys that you can’t see from the pictures. I think they let themselves down slightly with the paint jobs, but that’s being picky. You can see the quality from the greens. Speaking of which, they’ve sculpted loads already and I’m looking forward to getting my Kickstarted toys without the traditional year’s wait 😉

Normally, I think I have more sense than money, but every now and again I feel the urge to buy something. I’ve mentioned before that I’m getting increasingly picky about what I buy, partly because I already have so much and my time is limited, but also because the quality of what we have on offer seems to just keep going up. In fact, there are so many enticing goodies on offer that I have to be picky…

These days, that urge often leads to a trawl through the games section of Kickstarter. It’s something I can do while I have a break from writing stuff. Probably not quite what the Display Screen Health & Safety lot recommend, but at least it’s looking differently.

Luckily for my wallet, and less so for theirs, a great many of the interesting projects add so much for shipping from the US that they become impractical. Several that I costed out doubled the pledge cost when I added shipping and import taxes. Almost invariably this means that I cross them off my list as a KS, and put them in the mental “when they come out” pile. Of course, by then I’ll probably have forgotten all about them, so it’s a sale lost to the project owners. Need to sort your European distribution, guys.

Anyway, I thought I’d write a post of two to share a small selection of things I found interesting. Today, one project that I’m not pledging for and one that I am.

Leviathan 3000

Leviathan 3000 is an old school hex and counter space game. Warp over and have a look – you’ll need to be quick as it ends in a few hours!

I suspect that this is mostly interesting to me for the same reason I’m not pledging, namely that I designed something very similar an equally long time ago. In fact, mine was even more pernickety about the physics. I retained momentum indefinitely (he only tracks for a turn – much simpler), mine was in 3D (points for nerding, but largely unnecessary), and also logged rotational momentum as well as vector (told you it was pernickety). The last was actually quite interesting in play. I will admit that as I never intended mine as something other folk would see beyond my own play group, it’s not an entirely practical game.

As I already had much this game gathering dust on my shelf already I didn’t feel the need for another verison. It did make me have a rummage though, and when I find all the counters I’ll give it another go. I used to play it quite a lot and had several whole fleets of multi-hex counters in different colours. Somewhere.

Of course, you probably don’t have a stack of old game designs cluttering up your shelves, so you might find Leviathan 3000 of interest. It’s a classic design problem and he looks to have a simple way round the bulk of a tricky problem.

Custom Game Dice

Gamers like dice. Game designers often want very specific components, like dice. Most of the time the cunning scheme you have come up with will use either normal spot dice, or something that nobody makes (yet). Custom Game Dice might prove useful.

Rather than show you a picture of a dice (I’m guessing you’ve seen those), here are the reward levels.

What is especially useful for any budding designers out there is that:

1. You can design all six sides of your dice (if you want to).
2. All the dice in your pledge can be completely different (sounds like a headache for the producer).
3.  You don’t have to decide on all of your dice immediately.

I’ve pledged for a hundred dice. I don’t know what they’ll be yet, but then I don’t need to decide for a month or two. It’s nicely timed as I’m working on a new game that might be able to use some custom dice, at least as a “would be nice” option. I know I can get custom dice made anyway, but this seems like a reasonable price and insanely flexible. The flexibility is particularly tempting as I can make up several speculative designs and have them all made, or simply save some of my pledge for later. If you’re in the US the postage makes it an even better deal. However, even outside the You Nice States it doesn’t add a lot as dice are conveniently light.

Whether it’s custom dice for a shiny prototype game you’ve designed, or simply bespoke dice for your favourite game, club or faction, this seems like a project that might be worth a look.