Reaper Kickstarter

[smokingwreckage]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/151 ... gaming-min

Cheap plastics in 28mm; enough to keep you dungeon crawlin' well into the next decade.

[tnjrp]

Cheap plastics in 28mm; enough to keep you dungeon crawlin' well into the next decade.

That cheap plastic looks to have gotten Reaper enough filthy lucre to keep them "dungeon crawlin'" well into if not the next decade then surely at least the next fiscal year

[smokingwreckage]

They reckon it's set up to offset the cost of the mould only, which costs about $30,000 per figure.

Prior to the Kickstarter Reaper were cutting about 4 new moulds a year, because even though Bones were accounting for 30% of their figures sold, they weren't able to cover new moulds from cash any faster than that. Now they'll be cutting something like 200+ new moulds in a few months.

If you want in, you can still buy in for a extra $50. The Vampire pledge package at $100, $125 for overseas customers (now $150/ $175) had 220 models! The quality looks to be marginally softer than Reaper metals, so substantially better than cheap metals on the market now.

Also for sale: clockwork dragon, zombie dragon, skeletal dragon. And C'thullhu.

[tnjrp]

They reckon it's set up to offset the cost of the mould only, which costs about $30,000 per figure.

Not possible. Operations like Defiance Games (which BTW I still think MJ12 should sue ) wouldn't work if it was that high.

[smokingwreckage]

Yeah I could have gotten that wrong. I think $30 000 was to mould the first handful of Bones figures. However, Reaper has said repeatedly that the kickstarter only offsets the cost of the mould.

And yes, MJ12 should sue the pants off them. Alternatively, re-release Defiance with yet another new name!

[tnjrp]

It might concievably be that high for an injection plastic sprue but a sprue isn't (usually) for a single miniature. I doubt it's that much for a spin-cast plastic sprue such as DG is using (reportedly, and with the caveat that I have a habit of getting information concerning them wrong).

Perhaps MJ12 should do a KickStarter to fund a new round of name replacement for Defiance

[smokingwreckage]

I expect they are using 1 mould for one sprue, and they'd be casting like-with-like, so that one cast = one package (blister, sprue, whatever). So, the $30,000 figure was for 30 models, admittedly all low-complexity so you'd get several per mould. Looking at the KS layout and guessing it's optimised, roughly 5-6 heroic figures per mould. However several of the starting Bones figures were more economical than that, the 3 rats are one sprue and I think 4 kobolds are one sprue, 4 goblins too. So that's 11 different models off 3 sprues.

If we assume $30,000 makes 30/6 sprues, that's $6,000 per sprue for the low-but-not-lowest complexity stuff. Figures from other sources have put sprues anywhere from $10,000 to $17,000 but of course those things are likely getting cheaper every year, and Reaper already has a factory/ies and casting machine/s and probably is getting a pretty good deal from well-established business relationships.