Kickstarter report

Hi gang!

Last year was a crazy year, crowdfunding-wise. I pledged on a bunch of kickstarters, both on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Well, stuff are starting to drop in. It began last year with Shadows of Brimstone, which I have covered in a previous post.

Cowboys, tentacles and strange glowing rocks, what's not to like?

I also funded the Oathsworn Miniatures' dwarf brewers kickstarter. I got all the minis already but I haven't been in the mood to paint them or review them on the blog yet. The sculpting is good and delivery was on time, so keep an eye out for future kickstarters from Oathsworn Miniatures. Oh, and you can order the brewers from their website if you missed the kickstarter. Hint, hint, Jocke.

"The beautiful, colourful, mathematical game" according to the box.

I also funded Prime Climb, an educational math game which I thought was going to make an excellent christmas gift for my kids, he he... Well, it just recently arrived much too late for Christmas but the kids like it, maybe they will learn something eventually too.

But what of the future?

Scantily clad women have always been part of the Conan lore. On the other hand Conan doesn't wear much clothes either!

I'm thinking of backing mostly board or card games and not so many miniature games in the future. Yet, the Conan board game looks especially scrumptuous. Three days left, so you better hurry if you want in. For me, it's too much like Shadows of Brimstone with all those monsters and heroes so I won't back it, even though it looks more tactical. It even has tentacles coming up from the ground!

What the hell?

Also it seems that the cat crazyness on Internet is also spreading to Kickstarters. At the moment there are two different card cames concerning cats, and erm... different ways of killing them. The first is Shrödinger's cats in which you take the roles of cat scientists doing experiments with boxes and other cats... and try to prove your own theories while disrupting the other scientists' experiments. It is funded and runs for another twelve days if you want in.

Kittens and explosions. Sounds like a plan!

And then there's Exploding kittens. With a whopping 139.000 backers it has hit the five million dollars mark! I don't know that it is with people and kittens, but the games' slogan is "For people who are into Kittens. And explosions. And laser beams. And sometimes goats". I think they sort of hit the whole internet with that demographic... Gameplay seems simpler than Shrödinger's cats, but the theme looks funnier... and there's a NSFW version as well. Twelve days to go if you want to get on the gravy train.

And lastly, one which I'm seriously thinking of backing is The Great War by Plastic Soldier Company. It's their first kickstarter, and yes, it has miniatures. Basically it's a First world war version of Richard Borg's Memoir 44. I love Memoir 44 but rarely play it as SWMBO is not into strategy games at all, and definitely not into WW2.

The prototype playtest version

For those who do not know the original, it's a strategic, quite abstract wargame, which nevertheless is great fun, very flexible and playable, and the system has been used in both ancient, napoleonic, samurai and fantasy versions -- there's even a Game of Thrones variant by Fantasy Flight Games. This version is tailored to WW1 and by the looks of it, trench warfare.

Looks lovely. And yes, there's miniatures.

I have put in an Early Bird pledge, but I'm not entirely sure and may cancel my pledge. It so far looks to be mostly an infantry game which might be a bit repetitive, I don't know. Memoir 44 had infantry, artillery and tanks. Looking at the infantry sprues The Great War has regular infantrymen, machine guns, mortars and "bombers" -- regular infantry tasked with lobbing grenades at the enemy. I don't know if it's enough to make the game shine. Stretch goals includes metal command models and plastic tanks (but so far seem to be only one per side) which may or may not add enough variation to the game.

The main reason I'm hesitating though is that I'm not playing Memoir 44 as often as I would like, and I feel The Great War would get as much -- or as little -- playtime as it's WW2 brother. But damn, it looks good. And it has 15mm miniatures, a scale I'm not familiar with, although being a boardgame I might not paint them... Well, it's still 29 days to go so I have much time to mull over this one.

So what do you think?