Ravendas

So mine was "Get my gaming/hobby area set up in my new house" and "Paint 1 mini". Just got the first part done finally... Counter height gaming table ~7.5ft long, where a pool table used to be so it's also surrounded by benches, with a nice light directly overhead. View down the rest of the gaming/hobby side of the basement. Board games, and my little Necromunda terrain that I need to get back to adding to. Books, magazines and figures on the left (Bones 1 and 2 stored in the containers in the bottom left, sans anything larger than an ogre). Hobby stuff on the right side. The storage is a bit haphazard right now. Feels good to get all of that done. Now I can get back to hobby stuff!

They reposted it (again?) and now have a $60 standees level. Same game, just standees instead of minis. So, I guess that's getting it more attention now that it's back to a more attainable level.

Just remember that most Asian* people working there would most likely really, really rather be somewhere else. CNY is basically Christmas and New Years combined into a week long family celebration, with lots of visiting all your relatives you haven't seen the rest of the year, lots of special foods, gifts, fireworks and other stuff. Being abroad and missing out on most of it sucks. I know. So yeah, happy Chinese New Year / Lunar Festival / Tet / ??? to all those celebrating it. *It's celebrated in China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Korea, (at least parts of) Indonesia and some other countries I'm less familiar with. Edit: So I guess, tip well, if that's customary wherever you are :)

$100 for 1/2 (4 of the 8 factions) of a mostly unreviewed game in a niche shared by my favorite game ever, Eclipse... I think I'll pass, even though I like their other games. I wouldn't mind trying it if a friend bought it, but $100 is a bit steep for me.

As an Overwatch fan, that's funny how close that is to the game's character. Looking up the site (it's actually Klukva), they also have a not-Reaper mini. Would be interesting to get a whole Overwatch set one day!

They will never be able to produce a kickstarter's amount of minis. Most of their manufacturing is in Texas, but for the massive volume needed for one of these projects, they have to outsource it to a factory that is better equipped for mass production. It's basically like this (making up numbers): They need 2 machines to do their daily business. A kickstarter's worth of minis, which occurs once every few years, needs 10 machines to make them in time. Why would they get 8 more (incredibly expensive and large) machines that remain idle 90% of the time, when they can outsource it to a factory that has the machines already at will print on demand? That's why China will always need to be used for these projects. It's not that they can't bring the production back, it's that it's economically unfeasible to massively expand operations that will rarely get used. At least, that's how my understanding of it works.

I think people tack on a month because it's two(ish) weeks off, with work piling up during that period that takes another two weeks to get through. Doesn't mean it's really like that, but I think that's how people see it. And yes, it's very Chinese to never report on any problems until the very last moment at which they absolutely have to. Ex: They promised something will arrive on the 10th, they have known for awhile that it will actually arrive the 20th, so up until the 9th they will report "Yes, everything is on track!" right up until the 10th, when they drop the bad news. (I lived in Taiwan for the better part of a decade, and had friends working in many different sectors that often times dealt with China)

I forgot, what are the time estimates for each step beyond shipping? Like X weeks to get here, X days to get to the customs center, X-Y weeks in customs, X days to get to Reaper HQ, X days to unpack and sort things, etc. Something like a combined two-three months once the last piece hits the water? If so, we're looking at April at the earliest if the final shipments get sent in the first half of February. Edit: PinkyMadigan posted a link to the update with Reaper's estimates, which are here: Which seems to be: Shipping to US: 20 days. Shipping to Customs: 3-5 days Customs: 1-6 weeks Getting it from customs: 1 day Unpacking: 1 day per container, assuming they've already been doing the work on the other containers, we'll say that's just another three days maybe. Minimum: 33 days Max: 71 days Then shipping by waves starts, add another few days per wave, plus a few more for shipping time. So, if they get the last bit on the water by Feb10th (a few days after CNY ends), then we have late-March at the earliest, and late April to early May at the worst.

A couple pieces of unfinished wood and a few hinges. Something even a beginner could do. Plus, the point of the screen is so people can't see your notes/maps/rolls, and from that demo shot, it fails to do that. Quick, someone make a kickstarter for a screen made of one-way mirrors!

$50 per panel for the cheapest wood $_$ That's a minimum of $150 for essentially three square frames with magnets on the edges. That's a bit spicy.

So the update is basically going to be 'They shipped more stuff, we cant confirm whether its the entirety of it or not. It might be, but without the packing slip we can't tell' Just note that there will be an extra update when you get that info in a few days? You can update more than once every two weeks, I don't think we'd mind, as long as the news is "Last one is on the water!" Edit: I'm not being critical here, just re-phrasing it for understanding's sake. Thanks for the update.

It's 3am Saturday over there, do they usually send out emails this late anyway?

It's part of my D&D software app I wrote. It has some specific components aimed at 2e, but a few pieces are generic enough for use in whatever. I haven't worked on it in quite some time. I have a topic on the Dragonsfoot forums (oldschool D&D) about it, with the latest post having a link to it here: http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=87&t=55244&p=1748894#p1748894

I wrote a 'Noble House Generator' to help me fill in a sandbox world for D&D awhile back. It makes family trees like this, with D&D stat blocks (With stats semi-inherited), with possibilities of levels in various classes, magic items, and deaths. Even mad-libs the house name. Just fill in the start date, and how many years you want it to run. Default is 0 and 50 years to get a two to three tier family tree, though if you know the world's 'current' date is X, then just set the start date to X-50 to get the dates to line up right. Ex: (each dash is another level of the family tree, kind of hard to show it in a text file. The Brave Thrones -♂ Briah, born in:0, age: 50 Crude and Extravagant [16,10,5,15,14,6] - Married to Gel in 28. - 16 Fighter, Axe +2, -♀ Gel, born in:9, took a poorly measured medicine in: 50 [11,14,15,12,14,12] - Married to Briah in 28. - 2 Thief --♂ Dreli, born in:28, crushed by falling masonry in: 44 [9,12,8,14,9,13] -- Mother is Gel, father is Briah. --♀ Swordeeste, born in:30, killed in a bar fight in: 32 [13,13,7,11,16,11] -- Mother is Gel, father is Briah. --♀ Drawelo, born in:33, went to war and never returned in: 48 [13,10,15,11,10,11] -- Mother is Gel, father is Briah. Married to Tic in 48. --♂ Tic, born in:25, age: 26 Happy and Miserly [7,13,14,12,15,11] -- Married to Drawelo in 48. -- 1 Priest --♀ Iser, born in:37, took a poorly measured medicine in: 42 [14,13,10,10,11,6] -- Mother is Gel, father is Briah. --♀ Brooshu, born in:44, age: 7 Nervous and Driven [12,12,9,11,13,10] -- Mother is Gel, father is Briah. --♀ Chem, born in:45, died from a wasting disease in: 48 [12,10,11,16,18,12] -- Mother is Gel, father is Briah.

Yeah, for non-plaster tiles, it's not exactly a necessary purchase. For anyone that does any amount of work with plaster though I recommend it. It's cheap, and the plaster just drinks it up, making it go from a scratchy, chalky surface to a more plastic-y surface that resists scratches and scratching. Dwarvenite doesn't really benefit from it like plaster does.