jlblack

I wonder where that puts me, then... I bought them for gaming, but see nothing but unpainted minis (though I use them unpainted until I get around to them). I wouldn't try to parse what I said too finely. The point is that a lot of minis hobbyists take it as a given that Bones need to be painted, while gamers, even if they like the idea of painted minis, don't let that stand in the way of using them (as is the case with you). I'm guessing a lot of people who played Wrath of Ashardalon or even the Dungeon boardgame from years back didn't feel a need to paint the minis included with those games. I'm sure some did, of course. Maybe I should have used the classic green army men as an example; I view Bones as a higher-quality, more finely-detailed counterpart to those.

I mostly agree with you, except in one respect - to my eye, the detail on a Bones is often just a bit softer or even gone when compared to the metal original (if there was one). But for someone like me, who only wants them for gaming, the quality is far and away better than any other plastic mini alternatives - I'm thinking of the minis included in games like the Castle Ravenloft boardgame, Heroscape, and Dungeon.

Yes, exactly. I'm one of those average buyers who has no intention of painting them. In fact, seeing someone say they "have" to be painted made me go "huh?!?" Then I remembered that Bones are something of a new concept to both sides of the buyer equation - on one side are the minis hobbyists for whom figures are an end in themselves, and on the other side are buyers like me for whom Bones are a means to an end - gaming. The former sees an unpainted mini; the latter just sees a mini.

You don't use Daylight Savings Time? You might be late.

Seeing the first Familiars pack on the list of bestsellers might be at least partly due to people wanting regular animals for their game, as well as for familiar duty. I know it hit me immediately that I'd like to have a whole pack of the wolf figure, and all the rest could be useful in numbers.

Nice sneak peek. Chimera sounds reasonable to me, too. I'd like to see one Kaladrax-sized living dragon in the next KS. I like the dragons from the KS, and wouldn't mind seeing analogs for the rest of the classic D&D chromatic/metallic dragons (I know I can paint them how I like, but the classic D&D metallics have distinct physical features, too), but I'm OK if there aren't any in the next.

Bones are pretty much exactly the kind of mini I've been looking for. If I do paint them, it will be simple, one-color, and I'll use that Army Painter shading stuff. The detail is fine for my tastes. Storing them is easy, handling them doesn't risk damaging them, and straightening out bent parts is no problem. Plus, I don't care too much about something being bent unless it's way off. I went from no interest in minis to being a fan, all because of Reaper's Bones. The material is a big part of that.

I was thinking about that also. Woolly mammoths are cool, but mastodons and other prehistoric elephants would be great - ambelodon or deinotherium would be fantastic, as they look familiar, but have decidedly unfamiliar features. However, since I realize those would extremely unlikely to ever get made, I'd be satisfied with an african elephant, woolly mammoth, and a mastodon. Even those seem unlikely, unfortunately.

I'll second that... I'm guilty of this very thing in the last KS. While the KS was running I was pretty vocal about wanting to pledge for multiples of the "Free Vampire add-ons" like the Dungeon Attack. In the beginning, I wanted to really bulk up on my horde ranks. But as the KS developed, the funds that I had earmarked for extra DA or extra Fire It Up started to get moved over to other add-ons because of the cool factor and an educated guess that the bigger add-ons would be a better value. I'd like to cite 2 examples here of people in huge numbers saying they want (or Don't want) X but then buying in a different pattern. During the Kickstarter, we were told a zillion times that PC types were overplayed, and monsters was where it was "at"*. As a result, about 2/3 of the line is currently monster types, depending on how you count. PC types are still important, though, as they give us a rounded subject and a firm foundation. But what has sales indicated so far? Monsters as a category outsell PCs, but individually, a given PC *typically* outsells a given monster. And what sold out at PX first? 1 Monster, 2 PC types. So what do people say? Mosnters, please. What do they actually buy? Both, in near equal volumes. Example 2: When we launched Legendary Encounters in 2007 with Orcs and Skeletons, people told us by the score that pre-painted orcs and skeletons were already ridiculously common, and nobody wanted them. Likewise with the figures in Bones. But in LE, those 12 SKUs are all in the top 15. And in Bones, the 6 SKUs were all in the top 10. What's the lesson here? You are probably telling the truth when you say you, and the people in your group want/don't want or need/don't ever need X. But no one gamer's needs is "typical". *This is me, using the slang of the youth of America. Circa 1978. This is some outstanding information to know. I've been trying to build up a collection of monsters for use in RPGs. It's been slow going, since I've had to rely on buying D&D minis on eBay or Amazon. The prices are just too stiff on some of them, especially mainstays like giants or dragons. That's why the Bones line appeals to me. I'm glad to know that monsters sell at least as well as PC-types. I expected the disparity to be far more in favor of the PC-types. I hope some choice monsters are available in the next KS, if they can't make up the majority of the figures offered.

I'm also hoping that more Chronoscope-type figures are made for the next KS. I would also be somewhat less enthusiastic for an all-fantasy set of figures.

Man, I wish I'd known about this, those kits would have been PERFECT. Huzzah! --OneBoot :D Well, while you can't get the kinds of deals the KS gave, they do sell them on their website. Or they will, I imagine; I think they're still fulfilling rewards for those who pledged, so a lot of stuff isn't up for general sale yet.

Oddly enough, one of the first changes I noticed between a Bones figure and the picture of its original was the subject of this very thread. I have to admit I was ever-so-slightly disappointed she didn't have the wrench.

Too bad you missed out on this Kickstarter. Scroll down the entire page for all the add-ons. As an example, one of the add-ons was this one for $3: "A set of tableware suitable for serving adventurers in a tavern. Set Contains: 3 pitchers 3 tankards 3 Goblets 3 empty plates 3 plates with a roast chicken" They're unpainted, so you'd have to provide the picture of the chicken on the plates... Yeah. This is one of the reasons I'm not that huge on stuff like boxes and barrels and the like - you can already get cast terrain for pretty cheap anyways, plastic castings only have the advantage of being lighter-weight, and maybe a little durable. I don't know if I'd ever have need for stuff like that, but I was very, very tempted to support that KS when it was running. One of the primary reasons I didn't was in anticipation of a possible second Reaper Kickstarter later this year. If Reaper includes even more of its own dungeon dressing in the next KS, I'm definitely getting any such add-ons.

Too bad you missed out on this Kickstarter. Scroll down the entire page for all the add-ons. As an example, one of the add-ons was this one for $3: "A set of tableware suitable for serving adventurers in a tavern. Set Contains: 3 pitchers 3 tankards 3 Goblets 3 empty plates 3 plates with a roast chicken" They're unpainted, so you'd have to provide the picture of the chicken on the plates...

I'm gonna be That Guy and say I would've liked to have had a Giff or two in Bones Ah well, at least I know not to hold my breath waiting on it.

This was not the case with either my Hyrekia nor my Mr. bones. Same here.

This about sums up my position, too. I'd be using these for D&D-style gaming and little else. I'd buy quantities of a few varieties of the "common" types (guards, orcs, etc), but a dozen different sculpts of any give type? I don't know about that. I want to be a repeat customer for Reaper, but more for oddball types than troops, in the long run. Those oddballs are the ones the toughest to get in plastic, and are the ones I've written off specifically because they're so expensive in metal, and are usually more difficult to store. By the way, I haven't been here too long, but I have never gotten the impression of buglips being a "casual" gamer.

I'm not a minis hobbyist, and I think Reaper has said I'm the type of potential customer they're looking for with the Bones line - someone who will buy minis if they are cheap and low maintenance. I can't speak for all non-minis-hobbyists who are Bones fans, but I know that if the oddball monsters aren't available in Bones, I'm not buying them in metal. Otherwise, I'd have bought them years or decades ago.

As a non-minis hobbyist, I wouldn't mind Bones in any given color. Black would be cool. However, I'm fine with them being white. That might be one of the things that prompts me to slop some paint on 'em, to bring out detail.

I look at it as humanoid vs non-humanoid, and there seems to be a good selection of humanoid minis now, and a relative dearth of non-humanoid minis (except dragons; there are a plenty of dragons for the time being). Humanoid: the basic human configuration of four limbs and a head. I count lizardman-types, goblinoids, and critters like gnolls, minotaurs, and werewolves and the like. All could double as PC-types, depending on the campaign or world. Non-humanoid: animals, insects, plants, and anything that isn't covered by those categories: catoblepas, chimera, owlbears, displacer beasts, dinosaurs, megafauna mammals, dire animals, anything that might be considered Lovecraftian. I'm especially interested in non-humanoid monsters right now. I'd love to see analogs of catoblepas, displacer beasts, ropers, aboleths, ki-rin, shedu, lammasu, centaur, peryton, dinosaur-type critters, and robots (those Terminator-like minis Reaper has in metal would be very welcome, and yeah, I know they're human-configured, but also including non-human-configured robots would be great, too), to name a few off the top of my head. For humanoids, I'd like to see more mundane (and as others have said, "mook" types or cannon-fodder) townsfolk-types, bandits, city watch, peasant levies, troop types for every race, halflings like from the 1st edition AD&D Monster Manual, and futuristic starship crew types. All of these I would buy in multiples. And humanoid ducks. I'd absolutely buy humanoid ducks, much like Howard the Duck from the early issues of his comic, not the wretched movie.

This one.

I did that, too.

I'm in. Very much so. I just found this thread, though I saw the pic of the flyer a few days ago. I've been hoping to hear about a second Kickstarter since the last one ended. I'm a non-minis-hobbyist, and I only wanted these for RPG purposes. Back in the day, I never bought minis except in rare instances. I couldn't afford them and game books (my primary hobby expense), and I wasn't very interested in painting them. So Bones were perfect for me, and I got to make up for about 30 years of not buying minis in one fell swoop. Even after sifting through the wealth of Bones I received a while back, I was eager for more: more classic D&D-style monsters, more giants (and titans), at least one Kaladrax-sized "living" dragon (y'know that Colossal Red that WotC made for its DDM line? At least that big). I've already posted numerous times in the "Bones You'd Like to See" threads, but those I just mentioned are a good start. More Chronoscope - I NEED those Terminator-looking robots in Bones!

Could be. It could easily be used for Juiblex, depending on how it's painted.

I still just see 29? What am I missing here, did they already sell out of all the wondrous things I want? Reaper: I just want to give you my money....;) Read post #5.