Next Level Miniatures is on Kickstarter (Rappan Athuk, a giant dragon, fantasy minis galore)

[JoeGKushner]

https://gamefound.com/projects/next-level-miniatures/next-level-miniatures-dragons-hoard-miniatures-vol-1?ref=creator#/section/miniature-add-ons-3221

 

Oh one other thing.

On the KS I told them to fix the miniatures on your various ad spots. For example, on Gamefound for this campaign, you have the ogre clearly on a 40mm and some of the other models look like they're on a 20mm instead of the 25mm. This will give a bad indication of the model's actual size to anyone looking at them NOW as opposed to the people who've gotten them and see they don't match how they're displayed. Not sure if those are computer graphics or physical products where the models have been placed on smaller bases but that should be fixed so it's clear what size the models are in relation to the 50mm/25mm bases.

 

[BlazingTornado]

5 hours ago, JoeGKushner said:

Not sure if those are computer graphics or physical products where the models have been placed on smaller bases

Every picture I see on the Gamefound is still just CGI renders.

[BlazingTornado]

Their second KS has gone live, which is really soon considering the 24-day period of the campaign while a lot of backers, especially overseas ones, still haven't received theirs.

 

At least they're addressing the scale.

[ksbsnowowl]

Only 3 days left in their Vol. 2 campaign, and I still haven’t gotten a shipping notification for the first campaign’s rewards. There’s only two or three models I really want from Vol. 2 (to my knowledge, this is the first time a Gibberling miniature has ever been made), and NLM refuses to confirm whether or not mini's will be able to be purchased ala carte. If they’d acknowledge that, I’d back for $10 to access the PM…

[GoldenPiggy]

18 hours ago, ksbsnowowl said:

(to my knowledge, this is the first time a Gibberling miniature has ever been made)

I know it's not a particularly important point, but I knew I had seen gibberling miniatures before, so I looked them up.  Ral Partha made some, way back in the day (http://www.miniatures-workshop.com/lostminiswiki/index.php?title=Image:Rp-11-534.jpg).  Certainly a very uncommon creature for a miniature, though.

[JoeGKushner]

I was a little disappointed they went with the Wiz Kids scale.  I suspect they did it because it's one of the smallest scales they could use and still be compatible with the modern ranges.  I recall several of the early Wizkids miniatures received flak because they were too small when they first came out.  Shame they didn't go Reaper/Games Workshop size.

 

Might back when the pledge manager/late pledges open up as they discussed redoing some of the models from the first campaign in the new scale.

[R2ED]

I'm still waiting on my tracking.  If they're as small as they sound, I'm not looking forward to trying to paint the detail on Itty bitty faces.  Hoping these look better than what I'm hearing. 

 

And where the heck is my tracking already? 

[Grumpy Gnome]

We received ours yesterday.
 

Mrs. GG is not as disappointed as I am but we both feel the Human miniatures in general will be too small for us to be happy mixing with our other figures.

 

We are alright with diversity and so use a broad range of figures but there are limits. On first glance many of the Human miniatures look like 25mm scaled figures. And when I measured a dip sample, this proved to be the case. Not 25mm tall, 25mm scaled, ie 25mm from sole of the foot to eye on Human miniatures. 28mm tall from sole to top of the head and that is where the problem is. For us, this may in some cases work for female or juvenile characters to mix with 28mm scale figures. However we were also surprised by the inconsistency of the line. The Goblins, Kobolds and a Dwarf character in particular are surprisingly large compared to the humans. And yet what should be larger creatures, like the troll, ogre, dragon we expected to be bigger. We will need to go through them and decide which we are ok with.

 

I understand I can not complain about the KS as it says “28mm tall” and the confusion was I, like many others it would seem , thought they meant 28mm scale not 28mm tall.

 

And I am well aware of all the debates of true scale versus heroic, whether historical such as Perry versus Warlord Games (I prefer Warlord but concede Perry miniatures are more realistic in proportion and better scale with 1/56 vehicles…. I just like the slightly cartoonish Warlord sculpts and how they scale next to the more easily available 1/50, 1/48 and 1/43 vehicles), Fantasy such as the Games Workshop Middle Earth Line of miniatures not being consistent, the differences in scale of figures within the Wargames Atlantic product line (try kit bashing sci-fi Grognards and their historical WW1/2 French figures), complaints about Archon Studio miniatures and their subsequent decision to make figures larger for their next D&L KS. 
 

I get it, making consistent scale is tough and it is subjective. I prefer the size of Oathmark Dwarves to Games Workshop Middle Earth Dwarves, although Mrs. GG initially disagreed. 

 

The sculpting and material seems fine, with nice crisp detailing at first glance, even though I felt that they often did not look as good as the original artwork for the KS. And annoyingly, on closer inspection while prepping the Dwarf model today I could see faint print lines which I suppose came from the original model the mold was made with.

 

At this stage we will not be backing the second Next Level miniatures KS and we still feel they have rushed their second KS out too soon without properly benefiting from feedback from backers of the first KS. 

Edited March 31 by Grumpy Gnome

[JoeGKushner]

and I don't think they mentioned how they're going to handle the print lines moving forward on the new KS.

 

If they have a late backer option I'll review.  I'm in for the new Talislanta TRPG and adepticon was last week so tapped out. 

[BlazingTornado]

I got my stuff. For the most part I'm okay with things as they appear.

 

No minis arrived broken.

Stuff is undersized but aside from the ghouls, nothing that feels so small it wouldn't even work with my vintage 25mm models.

 

Orcus is the big disappointment, I was hoping he'd be on the smaller size of Huge proper but no. He's Large, barely a smidge taller than my custom Pit Fiend miniature.

Guess this one's becoming an altar statue for terrain and I need to find another source for a good Orcus mini.

 

 

Vol2 has ended and I kept my pledge up. Looks like there was a late unlock of a cool wight in bone armor.

Bonus points for actually listening to feedback early enough this time, and switching out the bugbear grunts and nagas' sizes to better match what pretty much every tabletop RPG uses.

[BlazingTornado]

This is the part where the undersizing of minis worked out IN their favor, with the supposedly Large bugbear ending up wonderfully in scale with official bugbear minis.

[BlazingTornado]

Some more size comparisons with larger models, alongside whatever I had of the same creature type both old and new.

[R2ED]

The bases are attached or just used for scale?

[BlazingTornado]

20 minutes ago, R2ED said:

The bases are attached or just used for scale?

Like on all the minis or just the NLM ones?
NLM doesn't come with attached bases (hence why my Bugbear is on a 25mm base), I just placed the minis on it for scaling and stability purposes.

[R2ED]

@BlazingTornadothat's the answer I was hoping for, that these were not attached.