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| My Skirmish dungeon as it currently stands, there are several cavern pieces awaiting paint. I dont plan on making this larger than 4X4 so the end is in sight..although I'll painting little details for years to come, I am sure. |
Its been just about a month since my Reaper bones arrived. I've spend a good bit of time messing around with them. I'm sure if you're interested you have already read various reviews on other blogs so mine comes a bit late, but honestly and I am all over the place on my feelings for them.
Rich who also got the Vampire set brought some figures over tuesday and we decided finally play a Skirmish game using
Songs and Blades and Heroes Rules by Ganesha Games.
"Songs"(SoBH) is a popular rule set for Skirmish and its alot more random (and dare I say bloodier!) than what I'm used to with GW based skirmish rules. We played a basic retrieval type mission where each team started at an opposite end, had to get to center to retrieve the artifact and exit the opposing teams end. Of course the Dungeon was populated with various critters and creatures random appearing (or not) at the end of each turn. Turn sequence went Player A/ Monster turn/ Player B/ monster turn. whomever the opposing player was controlled the monsters after your turn.
The whole thing played out quite well, except my team got slaughtered.
If you've played SoBH , we used standard 300 point warbands without the personality restrictions as we wanted to try a bunch of different rules. I ran 6 classic fantasy "archtypes" Knight, Cleric, Wizard, Thief, Barbarian, and Witch Hunter who were all Q3/ C3 expect the Wizard and Thief being C1 and C2. Rich ran a Elven Team with Token Dwarf and an Earth Elemental, he less but more expensive figures points wise most of his units being Q2.
We got to try out a bunch of the rules, except "magic" because my wizard got killed immediately on the first monster turn we were engaged, and we never rolled to get the NPC enemy wizard on the board. In the end I ended up with carving my way through too many monsters, slowly losing team members encounter by encounter. Rich had better luck, although when our teams finally met (and I was down to Two figures versus his Five)..I managed to kill two of his before I was wiped out. we scored by total point gathered in kills + your teams surviving points..so Rich won by an easy 3 to 1 margin.We both like the rules but has some nitpicks, this is easy game to teach your kids and as both our daughters (7 and 8) are interested and will be/ are playing.
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| Torture is Reaper too, but only the Rats are Bones. |
Not sure if will play more of this on the club level or not, I am interested in trying out my adapted "Hobbit" rules for generic fantasy that tactically have the familiarity of the classic GW Lord of the Rings rule set with a few tweaks and see how it compares.
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| Spider Swarm, Scorpions are Bones. | |
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As for Reaper Bones, I find the figures are all over place in detail and presentation while the new material great is for some features. I read, and hear people are having trouble with just slapping paint on them as advertised. ( In my opinion, basecoating with standard paint using an airbrush works great) I dont love having to hotwater bend this many figures and for many of the weapons the hot water method is still useless. The result is if you care about theses unsightly bent ones, many characters will need weapon swaps. Lastly the details on some figures are very muddy, in contrast however to the detail on some figures being clearly excellent. The result is a mix bag so depending on what figures your most interested in will be the deciding factor on this packages overall value.
I've painted up a dozen rats, 4 swarms, 2 scorpions, the rust monster, several terrain pieces and am working on the Pathfinder Red Dragon. I certainly had no interest in paying $20 for metal bug swarms so I wouldn't have things like this or the ($100+) in Townsfolk if not for Bones, plus my kids who are learning how to paint have hordes of characters to pick from and paint themselves without me worrying about a $10 pewter figure having to be stripped of pink paint one day.
The current retail on the Bones package of $400 USD is clearly aimed people who need a ton of figures on the cheap. From my corner of the hobby that price would never appeal to me in the slightest, and is clearly aimed at Roleplaying Gamers that need masses of figures for gaming. At the Kickstarter price of $100..this was an absolute steal and win/win for whatever your use of the figures. For me, Reaper Bones are simply not even close to a replacement for quality metal figures or centerpiece monsters but meet cheap solution. alternative needs where they apply. Its highly doubtful I will ever buy any more Bones figures, but I am happy I have the ones I do.
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| Skeletons are Otherworld, Critter in the back is Bones figure. | | | | |
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I will be painting up alot more of these and when I paint ones, that I have already painted in metal, like the Nova Marines, I'll be sure to post comparison shots.
In other news, Bilbos Birthday Bash is coming up, and while I am working on my armies and display for that I have NOT yet officially signed up for it yet, more on that later., News on Adepticon 2014, Bolt Action gaming reports, and hordes of Fantasy figures coming this way soon.
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| Bugs are all Bones figures. |
