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 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Can you provide me a link to where Prodos stated this, please? I would like to see this for myself.

Using a Kickstarter to fund a product that you never intend to sell at retail is all kinds of ...well, I think it will give me enough material for a dozen more posts easily. What a cunning plan.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/513277403/alien-vs-predator-the-miniatures-game

The AvP The Hunt Begins Deluxe Edition can be ordered here only on Kickstarter. It is a bespoked and Kickstarter Exclusive version of the game designed specifically for the model connoisseur and collector alike.

Seems pretty clear cut, eh? Right there on the front page.

 Yonan wrote:
Was it a smart decision to go with resin, or would multi-part hard plastic have been better? Theoretically, plastic is better when you can sell a lot of kits due to scale, and you'd imagine that the AvP license would very much help you get that kind of demand. Kickstarter is the perfect way to raise the high capital needed for the expensive plastic moulds too. Wargames Factory have proven they can make excellent, highly detailed plastics such as this plastic mercenary from WWX that was just released in the wild (not to mention all the Dreamforge stuff) so I don't think lack of detail is much of a concern anymore. A well done Kickstarter funding a line of multi-part hard plastic AvP minis for use with their own game or other games would have been a cash cow for years to come.

They looked into doing plastic (polystyrene) with their warzone campaign,

but what they found they could get made did not pass their quality threshold compared to their resin so they gave up on doing the plastic

 Duce wrote:

 BrookM wrote:
After giving it some more thought I'm deciding to pull out myself, in the end this just isn't for me.

I don't know who you are... or how you got access to Brook's account, but i warn you i have a unique set of skills, skills which will bore a person like you but not brookM. Give him back his colonial marines and I'll let you go free without talking about colonial marines.

I'm sorry, my erstwhile enthusiasm has been slowly killed off, but that shouldn't deter others from fighting the good fight. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to hide in the vents some more..

Irony one is considering the same thing and pull out.

You know, some of us aren't waiting until retail to be "smartguys", some of us just feel like we should support the local stores that we play most of our games at. I didn't support the Warzone KS for this reason and I'm currently still waiting to see if that ever hits shelves (did they even manage to secure a US distributor?).

Something I'm concerned about: supposedly they plan on releasing the retail version with plastics, but they tried plastics for Warzone and they didn't meet their quality expectations. So does that mean they found someone else to do plastics or that the quality was "good enough" for AVP but not their other game?

 Kroothawk wrote:
I am happy with the resin miniatures so far, boardgame is a nice bonus, I will up my pledge at the end to include the resin terrain. Currently 300k US$ is a lot of money for a 3 person company. And if 1200 people want to buy the more expensive Deluxe boardgame, I see no problem for the cheaper retail version with single piece plastic miniatures.
There I said it.

Agreed, Kroot.

Those pining for plastic? Wait for retail. It'll be a longer wait, and likely Zombicide like minis. These guys aren't GW and polystyrene is still a pipe dream for most company's not in WGF's huge queue.

Would be great to talk about the campaign and developments, if we could interject such discussion at some point here

 Sidstyler wrote:
You know, some of us aren't waiting until retail to be "smartguys", some of us just feel like we should support the local stores that we play most of our games at. I didn't support the Warzone KS for this reason and I'm currently still waiting to see if that ever hits shelves (did they even manage to secure a US distributor?).

Something I'm concerned about: supposedly they plan on releasing the retail version with plastics, but they tried plastics for Warzone and they didn't meet their quality expectations. So does that mean they found someone else to do plastics or that the quality was "good enough" for AVP but not their other game?

The retail game box is meant to sell to the boardgame audience with boardgame quality plastic (and no assembly)

so I'm sure it won't look as good as the resin and will be monopose.

It depends on what you're after from the game, (if you want the detailed, poseable stuff back the KS)

How poseable is the KS stuff? Until they show sprues/unassembled figures it is really hard to tell. Certain arms may be designed to only fit on a certain torso for example. If legs and torso are a single piece there is another limit. Depending on the way joints work arms may only fit into shoulders a certain way.

Multipart does not always mean multi pose.

I'd be interested to hear from any Warzone backer how brittle (or not) Prodos resin casts are. I recently had a resin mini from another company fall from a shelf and it fractured into several pieces. Granted, I don't ordinarily treat any miniature that way, but other plastics don't shatter so easily.

Is the Prodos resin more resilient? It's a major consideration for me in terms of the AVP campaign.

There is a Warzone thread in the Misc. Games subforum with some initial reviews (very positive) and pics. On a phone atm but will link to later.

 RiTides wrote:
There is a Warzone thread in the Misc. Games subforum with some initial reviews (very positive) and pics. On a phone atm but will link to later.

Got you covered. I also filtered the thread based upon Ronin_eX as he did a review of the goodies he had.

 Azazelx wrote:
Essentially, makers of licenced product need to contact the actors (for the older, original films) individually and work out deals.

It's funny you use Sonny Landham as an example, as he once tried to sue Galoob for using his likeness wothout permission (back when they did Aliens and Predator Micro Machines play sets) and the Sixth Circuit held:

In sum, Landham has not demonstrated—either through direct evidence or by virtue of Galoob's use of the "Billy" character—that his persona has "significant commercial value" or that the "Billy" toy invokes his own persona, as distinct from that of the fictional character.

Source

Bit of a blow to the old ego, eh? The Hot doll may be a different matter, considering the degree of likeness possible in that scale (the Dutch one is spot-on,for example). But a 28mm miniatures is probably far more like the Micro Machine figure than one of those dolls. Also, Fox has not shied away from using the likenesses of actors from these properties in other lines, as with the aforementioned Dutch doll and the newer NECA Dutch, Hudson, and Hicks figures.

@Manchu - nice post

I always look at Sunny Landham in a different light after the making of Predator featurette in which it's stated that thye had to have bodyguards around to protect the actors/cast from him. Was he that much of an aggressive liability?

 Kanluwen wrote:

 RiTides wrote:
There is a Warzone thread in the Misc. Games subforum with some initial reviews (very positive) and pics. On a phone atm but will link to later.

Got you covered. I also filtered the thread based upon Ronin_eX as he did a review of the goodies he had.

Thanks Kan . And Ronin is the one who has posted the best reviews so far, so that is a good way to sort it . His own pics (which I believe have some conversions to the base figures done) is at the bottom of that page you linked to.

 Medium of Death wrote:
I always look at Sunny Landham in a different light after the making of Predator featurette in which it's stated that thye had to have bodyguards around to protect the actors/cast from him. Was he that much of an aggressive liability?

It was a demand by the insurance, not by the co-actors.
http://www.nerdtopiacast.com/2012/07/15/top-5-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-predator-movie/
But then again, he made some questonable things, like acting in pron movies and later, as a political canidate, promoting genocide on arabs. So ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Landham

If anyone wants real info, btw, just scroll through Prodos' comments (as from their profile page you can see only theirs), they've provided a lot in there!

http://www.kickstarter.com/profile/513277403/comments

Google hangout is tonight which should give even more answers. Apparently they had to remove 75% of the video since they were still waiting for approval on much of it. Fox not responding quickly is part of the reason there seems to be a delay- where Prodos can address things quickly in the comments, but not make something "official" until it gets run up the chain. They are having an open gameplay at one of their stores and have said people are welcome to record it / etc, likely then it's not their fault the info gets out . So hopefully someone does that, as apparently the game is already playable and they will be doing so at the store... with 100 aliens!

People are currently discussing if the Queen is on a 120mm base as it seems might've been mentioned in the interview that was posted earlier in the thread from Youtube. Hopefully someone gets confirmation on that tonight... that would be massive

The 120mm base size for the queen was mentioned. but if their tunnel.size is 50mm wide, then it will be impossible for the queen to be used in the board game other than a mission objective in a room.

which isn't a bad thing, just limits its use in that format considerably.

Hope they have renders to show us. Surely somebody at Fox can approve renders as quickly as they did for the PredAlien...

Project seems to be stalling quite badly...

 Medium of Death wrote:
Project seems to be stalling quite badly...

My interest has certainly waned since watching the vid. But TBF weekends are always hard on KS projects, especially in the middle stretch. Let's see if things don't liven up by mid-week.

I think the PredAlien was approved before the project started?

And you're right MDS of course, but I've decided that, since they've shown willingness to lower stretch goals (Crusher only 5K beyond the previous stretch) all will likely be unlocked anyway, and I'd rather have the campaign be a bit smaller so they can actually deliver on it. Hand cast resin takes a while to make models with, so this is actually a good thing in a way, imo!

I've been a part of too many campaigns that have blown up and then been delayed by 6 months, a year, or more. Would love to avoid that here.

And I agree Hellfury, Queen sounds so big that it might not be as usable for the board game. Or maybe they've thought of that and have a workaround (non-egg-sack version?). But I'm pretty stoked for a gigantic, 120mm base Queen, personally

A detachable egg sack like the HorrorClix version would probably work. Make a custom base for the egg sack that the queen's XXmm base can hook/set into.

If they are smart and plan on doing an egg sac, that they follow wizkidsnlead and makenthe queen easily removable from her reproductive prison and usable as a freely running entity on her own, possibly smaller and more managable, base.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
bah. ninjaed by captjake.

Manchu wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
Essentially, makers of licenced product need to contact the actors (for the older, original films) individually and work out deals.

It's funny you use Sonny Landham as an example, as he once tried to sue Galoob for using his likeness wothout permission (back when they did Aliens and Predator Micro Machines play sets) and the Ninth Circuit held:

In sum, Landham has not demonstrated—either through direct evidence or by virtue of Galoob's use of the "Billy" character—that his persona has "significant commercial value" or that the "Billy" toy invokes his own persona, as distinct from that of the fictional character.

Source

Bit of a blow to the old ego, eh? The Hot doll may be a different matter, considering the degree of likeness possible in that scale (the Dutch one is spot-on,for example). But a 28mm miniatures is probably far more like the Micro Machine figure than one of those dolls. Also, Fox has not shied away from using the likenesses of actors from these properties in other lines, as with the aforementioned Dutch doll and the newer NECA Dutch, Hudson, and Hicks figures.

Yeah, I read up on all of the Landham stuff while the Hot Toys figure's release was ongoing. There's an (obscured) likeness under the extra face paint and blonde hair, and a likeness is still achievable via a strip and repaint (as google will show you), but their prototypes had a proper Sonny likeness, with accurate paint, and the production model had it obscured and changed - precisely because of Landham's litigative nature and lack of specific licence. Hot Toys have a solid history of working with Arnie, and so he's one of the actors they tracked down to licence his likeness (over several films/figures). The strong difference between the Galoob case and the Hot Toys case is that Landham tried to claim the rights to "Billy" as a character concept, even when "Billy" was a tiny, badly-detailed generic figure, while the Hot Toys figure looked like Sonny Landham as seen in predator. Hot Toys felt that Landham had much more of a case in this instance, since the 1:6 scale figure actually had a strong Sonny Landham licence, while the Galoob/Micro Machines figure.... well, see for yourself...

Compare the likeness:

(Billy is the one in the middle)



One is of a small blob, while the other is a good resemblance of a specific actor's head who did not sign away his likeness rights.


Given Landham's litigious nature, and the level of quality in Prodos' sculpts of 2013 compared to the Galoob sculpts of 1999/2000 - not to mention the can of worms it opens with others like Arnie and Ventura and Weaver and... well, Prodos is a small company. I doubt they'd be happy with a legal fight with Landham, let alone any of the others. And the additional costs of licencing likeness rights from Arnie, Ventura, Weathers, Weaver, Biehn, etc etc...

If you read the opinion, the issue isn't really how much it looks like him. It's more about the degree to which the character's persona and the actor's persona are tied together. Other than Schwarzenegger and Sigorney Weaver, I doubt any of the actors appearing in either series can claim (under the Ninth Circuit's standard) that their characters invoke their own personas.

I'm talking about likeness rights, not character rights. That and the fact that there is a history of litigation involved, and that Prodos being a 3-man company may not want to risk the stouch.

I'm not talking about character rights, either.

Live Q&A going on now:

Prodos wrote:Project Update #15: AVP Q&A Youtube Stream
Posted by Prodos Games Ltd

http://youtu.be/4DHtiHIHqos

Sneak peak of Warrior render at 14:00 minutes in . Here's a composite image I made of it:



And a nice single angle of it:



You're welcome

Edit: Warriors are also 37mm tall! While marines are 28mm (scale, so not sure if that is to the eyes or head, etc).

No egg sack for the Queen, Powerloader is in, they are looking to add another weapons sprue for the marines. No civilians during KS but will be done later, possible Lieutenant later. They are looking at adding some of the Heroes from the old AvP game they just need final permission. Clear resin Predators. The board sections should be comparible to Space Hulk when finished 4mm thick.

RiTides they didn't identify that as the warrior (just said guess what) the head crest looks more Praetorian to me.

 DaveC wrote:
No egg sack for the Queen, Powerloader is in, they are looking to add another weapons sprue for the marines. No civilians during KS but will be done later, possible Lieutenant later. They are looking at adding some of the Heroes from the old AvP game they just need final permission. Clear resin Predators. The board sections should be comparible to Space Hulk when finished 4mm thick.

RiTides they didn't identify that as the warrior (just said guess what) the head crest looks more Praetorian to me.

Wonder how my ripely from Sediton will scale.