kristof65

If you're going to go that far, you might as well get a set for Valentines Day, St Patricks Day, Easter, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving.

If you examine them from a foot or so away, you can easily tell the difference between my Bones and Metal NOVA Corp troopers, even without picking them up - the bones detail is definitely softer. But at a table top distance of 3-4 ft, the only way you can tell is by the bases I have them on. Agreed. Just can Reaper please, please, please apply the same idea to Chronoscope? It doesn't have to make sense for it to be a reality that can affect sales and profitability, though. I personally wouldn't mind translucent, even though I don't want translucent, so I would prefer that Reaper release it in whatever material is going to increase their overall retail sales. My personal preference order would be brown opaque, standard Bones grey opaque, clear translucent, then green translucent, but I'll probably get one no matter what color it's done in.

I take it that you don't find the 74064 160mm base close enough to 6"?

My cat has gone after my B4 Roc several times. Finally had to put it where she can't get to it.

I always presumed that was because he was abducted from early 80s Earth with his Walkman and the one tape. Plus wouldn't Guardians of the Galaxy be more of an alternate near future, rather than just sci-fi? For the Gem Dragon, I got the impression their idea was that each core set gets a random color, but that they'll rethink that based on us backers. The twitch chat was pretty clear we wanted clear, but we may have to keep the pressure on them between now and fulfillment to nail them down on that.

Agreed. If they have to get grouped with something else, let it be the Dark Elves or the Grave Kings - something else usable as a group by wargamers.

I figure a good point is 4-6 variants. Enough variety for unique models in skirmish games like Frostgrave & ASoBaH, and even enough for people who don't mind duplicates in larger units, but not so many that they have to sell them in all or nothing unit packs to make any money with them.

Call of Cthulhu is NOT my thing, but I think that expansion was very well done. There are enough popular sci-fi tropes out there that could be compiled into a themed sci-fi expansion like that - take the tramp starship crew idea, for example. Dark Matter, The Expanse, Firefly - heck, even the Millennium Falcon to some extent. Have a set that is a crew, some equipment from their starship, some law enforcement/authority like figures, some aliens and a small group of adversaries. Probably wouldn't be as popular as the CoC expansion, but I bet it would do better than the B4 Chronoscope Expansion. Or just down size that idea to encounters.

I'm not a huge fan of the SciFi dinos, but I would probably pick up enough for a small skirmish unit if they were all of one type - regardless of which one was chosen. I'm building a regular minis gaming group again, and I'm the only one with minis at this point. Not everyone in the group has the same tastes as me - but I do know that when they pick minis to play with, they always go for the ones that look more like cohesive units, such as my NOVA Corp. I'm willing to take that chance if it means more variety of sci-fi skirmish units that aren't tied to a major property. I was thinking about it some more, and to a lesser extent, Reaper has done the same thing with their fantasy catalog and Bones. A lot of the horde monsters such as Goblins, Kobolds and Orcs are available in lots of variety in Bones, but not so much with the "PC classes". For example, the Anhurians - there are several variant sculpts for the Anhurians that are still metal only. Likewise with a lot of the Warlord unit sculpts that are in Bones. They are, at least starting to recognize this - the Elven Rangers set from the B5 Core is something I've been very excited about, and now that I think about it, maybe that gave me false hopes that Reaper would recognize the need to do the same thing with some Chronoscope sculpts.

You're not wrong. But miniatures can sit outside this. A tentacled alien holding a gun can be generic enough that it's useful in today's popular games, and in different popular games 20 years from now. Especially the anthromorphic ones - a lot of sci fi properties across the years have Lizardmen, catfolk, dogfolk, etc.

There are actually a ton of good sci-fi RPGs out there. They've never been as popular as fantasy, though. Not sure why that is, though - I played more Traveller in High School than I did D&D, but that was well before my mini days. The big problem with sci-fi is that unlike fantasy, it isn't generic - the most popular stuff is tied to big properties like 40k, Star Wars, Star Trek, etc. There are TONS of independent Sci-Fi mini skirmish games available out there that don't have their own lines of minis. What they need to thrive is generic enough mins that people can use. And there are some - NOVA Corp, IMEF are two, and then smaller companies like RBJ and their STAR and HEAT Troopers, for example. Reaper is known for good generic minis with their DHL line, and I don't think there is any reason that they couldn't do the same with the Chronoscope line, if they'd only give it some more focus.

They don't, and that's one of the problems with their Chronoscope line. So many cool sculpts that only have one or two figures, which makes them hard to use anywhere outside of RPGs or just painting. A unit of IMEF going up against some 40k Space Marines doesn't look off. Blackstar Corsairs can easily proxy as a unit of 40k Terminators for those who are so inclined. A unit of NOVA Corp troopers fits in pretty well in several games as well. Even the Alien Greys could be used as a cohesive unit (complete with flying saucer) in several games. But what do you do with a single Sligg? Or Andromedon? Or Malvernis?

They do, in metal: https://www.reapermini.com/search/weapons chronoscope The problem is that if you want to outfit a squad of 5-10 with one particular gun type, you can spend $40-$90 just getting enough of the gun you want.

I should note - a lot of those minis did make it into Bones in the B4 Chronoscope Expansion. But like their metal counterparts, there is only the one of them. Likewise with the Sci-Fi dinomen from that expansion - I'd happily field a unit of 3-5 different T-rex guys, or triceratops guys, but I have no interest in fielding the five of them of mixed species.

I actually emailed Ron & Ed my thoughts - I really hope they take the time to read it and consider it while there is still time for this KS. Here was my list of sci-fi models I felt they could expand into units: The Illyrians (50129,51241) Andromedan Hunters (50136 - yes, the three Andromedan's were done in Bones 4, but only 50136 is really useful for skirmish tabletop games) Nine Suns Henchman (50161) Grace, Holy Assassin (50233) Sligg Soldier (50017) Willy Brassbender (50013) Delta Force Commando (50276) Rach Soldier (50278) Malvernis Soldier (50279) Blood Nebula Mercenary (50300) Sky Pirate Simon (50310) Tess McFadden, Mercenary (50330) Space Goblins (50342 & 50343) Admiral Gnoph (50345) Argamite Explorer (50346) Korkosan Explorer (50347) Maybe if all the other sci-fi fans here reached out to them more directly with their top 5 favorites from this list, we could get an add on or two?