So, how have you been? Keeping okay? Hope friends and family are all safe? As you can see I have been painting a kid with skateboard from Crooked Dice. I did a bit of internet research to try and get the skateboard design to match that of the actual design of the one in that movie where that kid travels in time and likes to skateboard. I thought it might be a nice touch. I was quite happy with the final result, although I couldn't quite get a photo I was 100% happy with. You'll just have to trust me when I say it looks so much nicer in real life.
So, what else has been going on in geekdom. Well I won't hark on about it too much (that's code for get ready for a rant) but I did have a bit of a damp squib of disappointment with the release of the new Heroquest board game. Yep, I waited in anticipation for the countdown to happen, I even set an alarm on my phone to go off when the launch time occured, then lo and behold Hasbro announce a crowdfunding Heroquest. Now I'm not a big fan of crowdfunders, each to their own, but personally so far I have preferred not to pay in advance for something that might not actually eventually appear. I'm not a big risk taker. I dont begrudge people using it as a way of releasing miniatures that might never see the light of day otherwise, that is their prerogative. I have no moral issue with it. I think it makes good business sense for smaller stable businesses to use kickstarter to ask for some funds in advance for products. I once looked into the startup physical costs of making plastic and metal models just out of idol curiosity. It's bloody expensive!
I would therefore be possibly inclined to invest in a kickstarter for a smaller company if I had done my research and trusted the company (they had good historical evidence of successful campaigns) and I felt this was really the best way for the company to afford to release this product. Some companies do this successfully. Kickstarter done, product out in a couple months. Happy customers.
But Hasbro, this isn't a kickstarter is it?, you can't call it kickstarter can you? You aren't kickstarting your company, are you? Or even kickstarting your board game division. According to Wikipedia (so take with a small pinch of salt) Hasbro is an American multinational conglomerate, wth toy, board game and media assets, and as of August 2020 over 80% of its shares were held by large financial institutions. I think they can afford to print a few copies of a board game in advance. No, they are just asking their customers for the money in advance because nobody at Hasbro wanted to take any kind of risk on a slightly non-mainstream boardgame. Come on, nobody asked for money in advance for that godawful thing that slaps shaving foam in your face! (True, it's retail price wasn't £100 but I'm going for the cheap joke, here people.)
Taking all this aside, as it is Hasbro and it is Heroquest, I wasn't going to cut off my nose to spite my face, so I was still thinking I still might be tempted to invest. After all, at first glance, the models looked nice, it was a sure thing, it's not like the product was going to fail to appear and the price was affordable. It wasn't some unknown company who were claiming to have some obscure regional licensing loophole to be able to publish the game in their own country then ship internationally (yep, that one is still ticking along somewhere on the internet) I was even going to forgive them the long lead of paying in advance for something I wouldn't actually get in my hands til next year.
Shipping to United States and Canada only.
Yep, with no plans to release to the rest of the world at any time soon.
Well, that answered that quandary then. Guess I saved myself £100.
So, I consoled myself by converting up a set of four adventurers for my original set. What if all four Heroes Questing were all halflings, still a miner, a ranger, a wizard and a warrior though:
I started with some Wargames Atlantic halflings and then threw some leftover bits on them from Frostgrave plastics and a rather dashing hat from a free sprue from Wargames Illustrated.
I've been pretty busy painting wise, I finally got round to finishing my Bad Squiddo mimics, something else to populate a dungeon with and maybe give the above halflings a bit of a challenge. I love the expressions on them, they look almost like they have jumped out of an episode of the Muppet show or Jim Henson's Labyrinth. (Well now I am going to have to have them start a conversation with the heroes as well, rather than just mindlessly attacking, maybe a riddle or two.)
Finally, this little fellow has been sat on my painting table for a while now. I think I grabbed him from Hasslefree miniatures at Salute last year (remember shows, those days out we used to have?) He is called Halvdan according to their website. I got him just because I loved the sculpt, I think I was reading Neil Gaiman's Norse mythology at the time and got excited by the hammer. I might have to find a use for him in my Barbarian army somewhere, but why is there a giant behind him that has finally been repaired and repainted following the house move last year?
