Bones You'd Like to See, thread #5

[vpoirier000]

just for a better chance at these

some houndfolks
birdfolks
drakes
wurms
coatl
dire beasts
fairy swarm
fish swarm
wasp swarm
more warforged (including small ones)
ice, lightning, lava, mud elementals
nagas

[Chaoswolf]

13 minutes ago, vpoirier000 said:

mud elementals

They're doing mudmen in the current Kickstarter.

[vpoirier000]

29 minutes ago, Chaoswolf said:

They're doing mudmen in the current Kickstarter.

i know, i just want a big one

[MoonglowMinis]

On 4/1/2022 at 11:17 PM, YronimosW said:

+1 to what @tommyzolla said!

 

I think some of us that have seen multiple Kickstarters and/or have been collecting Reaper metal figures for a long time may be feeling a little jaded, as they've either seen some of the sculpts before in the case of some of the classic metal figures getting a Bones makeover, or have otherwise "seen it all before" in the case of things like adventurers, skeletons, orcs, zombies, goblins, ghosts, and other common monsters.  It's a bit easy to forget that for new gamers, painters, and collectors, these Kickstarters are a huge value, loaded with fantastic surprises that a lot of backers don't already have.

 

I've backed all the regular Bones Kickstarters since the first on, and probably have more adventurers than I can ever use, but I, for one, am still having fun seeing what gets revealed in this Kickstarter, even when it isn't my own cup of tea.  It does get a little difficult sometimes to keep up the good mood with some of the more negative comments.  it gets a little infectious, I guess, but I can understand that some of the backers have some fair enough gripes they need to get off their chests.  And I know I've made a few people mad in past Kickstarters by trying to keep things positive - they felt like nobody takes their complaints seriously or validates their opinions.  Maybe there should be a Kickstarter anti-enthusiasm thread somewhere to help exorcise a little of the dooming?

 

I guess I needed to doom and rant a little too, so sorry to hit the soapbox - I'm off it again.

 

I am glad to see so many fan requests getting covered in this Kickstarter - the fae expansion, stirges, and so many others.  The artists and sculptors are doing absolutely beautiful work.  The fae expansion in particular has some gorgeous content!

 

One of the comments on the Kickstarter page by "Kelly" sounded like a fantastic idea to me, and I expanded on the idea a bit:  "Would luv to see a mushroom sprue. A mushroom grove would be awesome."  I think this sort of thing would be bought in multiples by people who do scenic bases, create 3D dungeon tiles and terrain, dioramas, and so on:

• Mushrooms sprue
• Crystals sprue (translucent)
• Loose Skulls and Bones sprue
• Dungeon Vermin sprue ("small" snails, slugs, grubs, spiders on and off webs, crickets, and cockroaches, intended for decorative purposes - doesn't matter if they're freakishly big, as long as they're a good size to decorate a mini base with....)
• Litter Sprue (translucent - empty(?) bottles, jars, torn books, broken weapons, creepy dolls, and other debris that might be found littering the town sewers, dungeons, haunted ruins, and whatever....)

 

 

I was really hoping to see some basing bits in the Base Boss KS. I know Reaper doesn't really do much in the sprue game, but this kind of stuff would be really useful.  Would also like to see a beach sprue with crabs, driftwood, washed up loot.  And subaquatic with fish, lobsters, corals stingrays, etc.

 

Could do plenty of sprues like those.

 

Unrelated to that...

 

I was rereading the lore for the Mongrelfolk on Bones 6 and noticed they mentioned a circus.

 

Would love to see a dark fantasy carnival. Ring leader, carnival barker, sword swallower, fire breather, knife juggler, pierrot clowns, acrobats doing handstands, "lion" tamer, conjoined twins, human cannonball, contortionist, strongman, snake charmer, etc etc etc.

 

Ideally not all human but a variety of fantasy creatures. Goblin acrobats standing on each other's hands. Orc clown. Tiefling fire breather. Lion tamer with a manticore. That kind of stuff.

[YronimosW]

The Dark Carnival expansion concept has made it's rounds through the "Bones You'd Like to See" discussions more than a couple times by now.  I'd back it in a heartbeat - 'Something Wicked This Way Comes' was one of my favorite novels and movies as a kid.

[Chaoswolf]

11 hours ago, vpoirier000 said:

i know, i just want a big one

Ah,ok. I misunderstood. 

 

 

Add me to the dark carnival crowd!

[izzylobo]

So, let's see, what does the Izzy want (in Bones 6 or in general)

(Keeping in mind that I'm pretty focused on science-fiction of a space-opera-y variety right now)

 

Aliens!

Reaper has Bathalians and Kulathi and Greys and Andromedans and Sliggs and Illyrians (although we haven't seen much of any of those in a number of years - I think the only releases for any of them since Bones KS2 has been the remaster of the Andromedan Queen and Vizier in Bones Black - which is unfortunate, since the Kulathi in particular are stuck in early Bones classic moldings that honestly don't do them justice) - these are the alien species that all have more than one release. And of course we have the Space Goblins and the Space Bugbears (Roogtarki), who are fairly new. Then you have the one-offs - the Henchman, and the Argamite and Korkosan (who both look like explorers of the Frontiers of the Stars... 😄 ), and the Overlords (who need bubble helmets ack-ack-ack!) and maybe a couple of others.

 

So there *are* some good examples of aliens in the Reaper wheelhouse - but more is always better. I'd love some not-Thranx (no, really, please, give us some sapient bug-species who look pretty, not creepy and gross), and some squidoids (whether they're actually uplifted squid or octopi for transhumany goodness, or some alien species that just look a lot like squids - either is fine!) - basically, some non-humanoid, or semi-humanoid species in general (it's something not a lot of foundries do - the humaniform body structure predominates). How about some trilateral symmetry, like the rockmaw (only obviously intelligent and tool-using), or quadrilateral, or centauroid-but-not "creature body+humanesque torso". Let's explore outside the norm, get into the weird - especially with the new capabilities that siocast provides, I'm guessing the profitability margins on a sculpt is a lot lower for Bones USA than other methods (since you don't need steel molds to cast in siocast).

 

Uplifts!

On a thoughtline closer to home - yet maybe weirder - there's a massive deficit in minis for transhuman game lines like, well, Transhuman Space, or Eclipse Phase, or cyberpunk lines - there's a few out there, especially in the cyberpunk wheelhouse, but the farther you get into transhumanism, the harder it is to find anything useful. Reaper's exploring the cyberpunk genre with the minis from RVE, but that's mostly been hardtech - how about some biotech. Uplifted spider/bonobo monkeys with bullpup laser guns. gengineered gorillas toting repeating blasters/miniguns (we have one - Ape-X - but he looks more like a victim of Mad Science than a purposefully engineered uplift species). I already mentioned uplifted squids and octopi - but what about dolphins or orca in a walker-harness with optional weapon and tool hardpoints? Weird raccoon/red panda/skunk hybrids with tool pouches and a laser needlegun? So much room for exploration here.

 

Robots and Drones and Gynoids, oh My!

Reaper has dozens of robots (literally! - although about half of them are either steampunky, or magical constructs, rather than technological) but nearly all of them (there's a couple of exceptions, like the Death Marble, and Briony's little mouse drone) are humanoid. When it comes to non-humanoid robots, there's not that much on the market in 28-32mm - RAFM makes some ultramodern designs, you can adapt Battlemechs from Catalyst or Iron Wind (although those can be quite aggressive, since a lot of them don't even have hands - and are also instantly recognizable), or you can go exploring in the catalogs of 15mm sci-fi wargame manufacturers - most of which are cast in metal, many of which are over in the UK (and hence expensive to import right now, if available at all).

 

So, I'd love to see some robots that aren't humanoid - hoverbots and grav-lifters, 'tankbots' on treads or wheels, service bots on unispheres, snakebots, things like that. And an expansion of the types - a lot of robots end up being security or combat bots, death droids and assassin mechs and the like - how about some construction bots? a Medical droid (this would likely be humanoid, actually... but doesn't have to be) or two? A wheeled cargo/support bot, designed to accompany expeditions into wastelands and stuff, fitted with panniers full of equipment and support tool arms and the like? (and maybe a turreted blaster cannon, just because). Stuff that's kind of vague on scale, so you can use it as 28mm support... or as a 6mm mech.

 

TEALDEER - moar aliens and uplifts and robots and non-humanoids in all of dem things please!

Edited April 5, 2022 by izzylobo

[Chaoswolf]

There are some pretty cool ideas in that post.^^^^^

[Darcstaar]

Sorry if this has already appeared:

I would like to see giant flies, giant bees/wasps (not bee folk, murder hornet and not mount size), and some smaller vipers and constrictors.  Reaper has one good sized Bones snake, and a few obscenely massive ones.  A few things that I have run into during modules that I end up having to proxy.

[YronimosW]

Agreed on some of those generic random-encounter monsters that seem to have been routine in old-school adventures, but - as "common" as they were back then, seem to be weirdly had to find models for today!  I was just commenting about that after Reaper teased a wolf-pack - lots of great dire wolves, but the best ordinary-sized wolves are undead.   It's taken a few years, but Reaper is slowly but surely getting most of this sort of thing in place, but there's still room for more.  My thoughts at the time:

 

Spoiler

Absolutely agreed on the "boring" random animal encounters being surprisingly hard to come by, given how "common" they should be.  Wolves, snakes/vipers, hyenas, tigers, panthers, lions, spiders of all sizes, oozes and slimes, stirges, imps/quasits/mephites, crabs, ants, beetles, giant frogs, giant lizards, giant snails - other than Dire Wolves, it seems like rats have been the only random encounter monsters to really get covered very well:  Reaper has all sorts of dire rats, giant rats, rat swarms, and so on.  Bat swarms seem to come in second place.  reaper has more than a couple decent bears now, too, and we finally saw some imps/quasits/mephits in the fan favorite set, I believe, and we get a few "small" spiders, scorpions, beetles, prairie ticks, centipedes,and some beetle and spider swarms, and that's Great, as were the giant grubs and giant frogs that appeared a couple Kickstarters ago.  Reaper's got a better variety of spiders lately, too.

 

Took a while, but Reaper's finally looking like they're getting most (if not all) of these subjects covered!  Wouldn't mind a wider variety of sizes for some of those subjects, but anything at all has been nice to see.  After all, I can't think of too many old-school D&D modules and their imitators that didn't make use of giant lizards, vipers, wolves, spiders, and the like!

 

Anyway, those small, "boring" random-encounter animals and the like seem like the perfect "bonus" critters to pad out Core Sets, Encounters, and Expansions alike.

 

 

From that train of thought, I think we could use some basic, generic, 1" base-sized....

• giant lizards
• snakes and snake swarms
• spiders (something bigger than a gnome or halfling)
• slimes/jellies
• crabs
• big cats (panthers etc.)

 

 

I would love to see more space-opera and retro-scifi stuff, and would totally agree with Izzylobo's ideas for robots and aliens.  I've been trying to revive pulp sci-fi and adventure styled on Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and the like for quite a while:  capes and ray-guns, and rocket-ships and jet-packs, and mechanical men and bug-eyed-green-men and all that.  Some manufacturers are slowly getting on board with that aesthetic,  but with games like Stargrave and Starfinder and the like being fairly successful right now, while the post-modern updates of Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who, and Marvel Comics seem to be getting stale for audiences, it seems to me like retro space-opera, John Carter-style planetary romance, and H.G. Wells and Jules Verne inspired Victorian sci-fi all seem like subgenres whose times have almost come around again.

 

Reaper's Chronoscope aliens are great, but a few of them seem like they could use more poses, and the whole genre really needs some TLC to give them some context in the greater scope of the gaming hobby.  If Chronoscope encounters are what it takes to make that happen, then I'm all for it....

• Astral Reavers on their antigrav skiff
• starship away team and shuttlecraft
• alien Mastermind with henchmen and Doomsday Machine terrain
• archaeological dig and ancient alien artifact terrain
• medical bay with ship's doctor and patient on sickbay bed with scanner, and cryoctube with escaped specimen
• bridge crew set with control panels full of blinking lights and scanners that go PING....
• killer robots and laboratory terrain
• Bakarathi uprising and warbeast
• the Robot Auction with shifty space pirate traders
• Malvernis war-party and stolen cargo
• desert planet nomads and jet-speeder
• Novacorp Armored Car and NovaSWAT team
• IMEF heavy weapon team with sandbagged emplacement and ECM array

 

Or whatever....

 

 

 

Edited April 6, 2022 by YronimosW
At war with clarity.

[tommyzolla]

Turns out that another think I'd like to see is a goose hydra. 

 

I stumbled across one on a 3D printing site and instantly realised that that is what is missing from my life. 

 

A running gag in my current long campaign is that the Brinewind goose lady keeps popping up all over the world at every market trying to sell my players a 'valuable goose egg'. 

 

They keep turning her down, but if they eventually buy an egg I was planning on making them look after it for a while whilst trying not to break it, then to have it hatch into a Canadian goose. This goose would attack their enemies, but at other times would just cause the mayhem that every goose seems to feel is it's sworn duty to perform.  

 

I know realise my dreams were far too small - I would love for them instead to hatch a goose hydra, raise it lovingly into a huge beast, and then one heartbreaking day have to slay it when it outgrows them and begins terrorising a town. 

 

And so; Reaper minis, who have already produced so much in this kickstarter that I've wanted, I ask for just one more thing.... a giant, 5 headed goose hydra. 

 

EDIT: turns out that I also would love a Brendan Fraser mini from the 1999 The Mummy movie to go with the Tombs expansion - it would be awesome if Bobby Jackson could redo his Jake Ryan, Hero Explorer mini with a stronger The Mummy vibe. 

Edited April 15, 2022 by tommyzolla
Turns out I've still got more ideas for stuff I'd love.

[YronimosW]

Re:  Goose-Hydra:

 

I noticed that someone in the Bones 6 Enthusiasm discussion somehow brought up Canada Geese as a result of them appearing in the background of an old Dragon/Dungeon Magazine cover, with the conversation taking an odd side-trek into Canadian Wildlife territory, including someone mentioning a hybrid Goose-Moose-Beaver monster.

 

I was stuck thinking "Dire Goose!  DIRE GOOSE!" 

 

Or Dire Moose... you wouldn't wanna mess with either one. 

 

And I don't even wanna mention Dire Beaver... nobody wants to mention Dire Beaver.  (I did it, so nobody else has to - you're welcome 😄 )

 

Anyway, the more I think of it, the more I have to admit that a Dire Moose sculpture could look pretty darned awesome.

 

And, I don't think Jack Ryan was one of the old Bones Chronoscope guys to get updated in the Bones V Chronoscope expansion - Reaper doesn't seem very enthusiastic about a Chronoscope expansion moving forward, and also Jack Ryan would have been one of the later Bones Chronoscope guys (maybe even Bones Black-era?), but maybe there's still room for an updated sculpt for him somewhere, so +1 for him for me:  if an updated Jack Ryan were to appear in a Chronoscope Expansion, I'd definitely grab the expansion with no complaints.

 

 

[tommyzolla]

12 hours ago, YronimosW said:

if an updated Jack Ryan were to appear in a Chronoscope Expansion, I'd definitely grab the expansion with no complaints.

I'd like him a cheeky add-on to the Tombs expansion, perhaps without the pistols so he'd fit into the fantasy theme, however, if they did re do him and put him in a Chronoscope Expansion I'd grab that just as happily (I'd grab both happily without him - but you know, I'm always keen for more minis). 

[MoonglowMinis]

Stumbled on a drawing of a molten flaming giraffe elemental and I love it and need a miniature of it STAT!

 

Apparently it's inspired by similar pieces by Dali.

 

Can't remember what the rule was for photos on this thread, but

 

[haldir]

How about feral harefolk that are the size of ogres. (I'm thinkin in the style like Epic N Stuff, big chest, small arms & head). I ask cause I'm reading a Adventure League adventure series where it has these in there. They are corrupted descendants of the harengon that use to live on a Feywild plane before a night hag took over & corrupted the entire realm.