I can't believe I'm saying this, but it finally actually arrived!
Originally slated to reach us way back in Apr 2022, I had written this reward off as a failure over a year ago. I had backed it originally in Sept of 2021, and by the end of 2022 there had been enough issues with the Kickstarter that when it hadn't arrived by about April of 2023, I basically put it out of my mind and chocked that up as my first Kickstarter loss.
So, imagine my surprise when I get an email yesterday saying a package had been delivered. I hadn't ordered anything. My wife hadn't ordered anything. What the heck could be waiting for me?
I was absolutely floored. I hadn't been paying attention to any of the Kickstarter emails about this as I'd gotten tired of reading 'some other problem is setting us back please be patient' - which is on me, I probably should have kept a closer eye on this but hey. It did end up giving me a great surprise!
Also, I have to say - now that I've got it in my hands the quality IS quite good. I'm several years past when I would have run a campaign setting whole-cloth like this, but after leafing through the books I'm quite sure there's a lot of loot in these pages that I can plunder for my own setting.
If nothing else, the art is phenomenal... and I did get a free massive dragon mini, which I'll have to see if one of my buddies can paint for me.
Tanares is also a mini-war game or... something? They've got a product called Arena as well, and one of the reward stretch goals was a free set of miniatures for that game - but they'll work just fine for any grid-based system so I'm sure I'll end up using these for D&D or one of my other games.
So, despite the character cards and move cards being kind of irrelevant to me... these are pretty cool minis! Everyone else that I run D&D for currently are painters - only my wife and I haven't dabbled in 3d printing and painting - and they've said several times that we should set up a paint night... so while they're all basic plastic right now, I hope by the end of summer we can get a splash of colour on these chaps!
The collection also includes a bifold DM's Screen, a gigantic map (which I haven't laid out yet to take a photo of, sorry!) and of course the three books for the campaign setting, an adventure, and... another campaign setting book disguised as a Players Guide to Tanares. The Player's Guide is basically a book of worldbuilding - which you know is entirely my jam.
The DM screen does have some of the more useful content on it - the quick glance info for lodging/food prices, travel pace, typical difficulty classes, and object hit points is useful. Half the time with a WotC official screen you get a random spattering of nonsense, so it's nice to have things on this that will come up in any average game, and definitely would be useful for new DMs or as reference when a new player asks a question you haven't had to think about in a long time!
I haven't had more than a quick thumb-through of the books here, but what little I did read seemed like it'll be something I can pull from and use. The worldbuilding is neat, and the cosmic-horror vibe of 'Adventures in the Realms of Madness' is super cool. I may comment on these more as I actually dig into them deeper, but we'll see.
Overall, this does look like a pretty good product, and I'm very glad it finally managed to arrive!
As always, until next time my friends: Happy Gaming!
To be fair, the quality looks good, and the DM Screen looks like it might actually be useful. I wonder if the dragon was made for them by Reaper, it looks like their kind of style.
A cheat for painting might be to slap on a primer & basecoat, then just put a wash over it to pick out the details. It's enough to get the figures onto the table without people going "ewww, plastic !" Then you can come back and use that as a basis for doing a proper job at a later stage.
It is definitely good quality. I forgot to mention when referencing my notes, but like... those books are WAY more dense than they first appear from the outside. Part of that means that the paper is thinner than you'd get from a WotC product, but it's still beefy enough that I think it'll have good long term durability, and the books are absolutely jam-packed.
I'm really excited to read the Players Guide To Tanares as it appears to be entirely worldbuilding about the setting, and is 330 pages or so long. There are a few new 5e compatible races and subclasses, but a lot of the content looked like it was mostly worldbuilding when I was thumbing through it last night. I'm hoping to sit down during my lunch hour at work and read with a bit more focus!
And yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if it's Reaper produced - it has the 'not resin' feel to it that makes me think it's whatever the hell they use that is nearly indestructible. Good tips, I'll look into trying that!
lol, I'll have to write a post about the various material Reaper uses..... it's a surprisingly complex subject !
But I've been thinking for a while of setting up a separate Hive account for my business (to keep it separate from me the human's account, both for privacy and for accounting purposes), so I might save it as a post for that 😁
I will try to keep my eyes peeled and see if I can't spot it when you do!
It's been a while since I dabbled in Kickstarter, but I remember a couple campaigns that felt like they would never be fulfilled. I know from general manufacturing that the back-and-forth with Chinese manufacturers is rife with unexpected delays.
Yeah hey, and the cost to print in NA vs China is insane. It makes way more sense to print in China, ship it to EU/NA and then go from there... So of course that has a lot of moving parts and points of failure.
looks so cool!
It reminds me of the 'thief' board game i played before.. i always like to be the thug and just mug everyone. :P