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| the Impact Miniatures Ice Hockey players. |
But first a little background.
I enjoy watching the ice hockey, and follow a team in the NHL, and there is even a Victorian state team here in Australia that I have gone to watch play.
Back around the turn of the Century I put up a figure request for Ice Hockey* players at Eureka Miniatures 100 Club.
This came close, but never stumbled over the line, so I was never able to see figures for the set of rules I wrote for an ice hockey game.
A few years ago the idea of Ice Hockey figures was raised again as part of a secret deal (which I won't go into), but that never eventuated.
Fast forward to the present day.
Impact Miniatures has started a Kickstarter project to have Ice Hockey figures made. Great!
But, I wont use Kickstarter due to it needing a CC to help back. As some of my readers might know, I refuse to use a CC online after loosing $10,000AUD to credit card fraud.
Fortunately the bank repaid the money otherwise I would be living on the streets and not ranting about kickstarter and Impact Miniatures.
The nice gentleman at Impact Miniatures offered for me to back the kickstarter project through him directly using Pay Pal. Awesome!
So I waited until the project was up and running so I could see the prices. Not so Awesome.
For those who don't follow Ice Hockey, each team has six players on the ice at any given time, short of players being in the sin bin.
This means you need twelve figures to play a game.
So this is what Impact Miniatures have on offer for their kickstarter project:
$10 (plus postage... all of these need postage added to backers outside of the U.S.) gets you one figure.
$25 gets you four figures.
$35 gets you one whole team. This works out at $5.83 per figure.
$60 gets you two hole teams, which works out at $5 a figure.
Plus you can add $8 to get a goal net, and you need two of them, so that is $16.
Plus postage.
I was going to take up the offer of using Pay Pal to back the project until I saw the cost of the minis.
To put this into context, I can buy the following for:
33 metal Bolt Action miniatures for $60
20 Eureka Miniatures Moderns for $60
35 Front Rank Napoleonic firgures for $60
and so on. And that doesn't include the cost of the two goal nets (which will be 3d sculpted plastic by the way).
The figures look good, but a bit out of my budget.
This kickstarter project was funded in the first day. It only needed $500 to be fully funded, and they have raised $2,600 with five days to go.
I can't help but wonder if they would have raised more if they had more reasonable donation levels and incentives.
But, looking at the Impact Miniatures web site, it appears they are always expensive. Who knows, they might even have more customers if they dropped their prices.
I just hope someone comes along and offers to make Ice Hockey players in plastic like the Warlord Games etc plastics that are out their on the market.
* I use the term Ice Hockey because where I come from, and in many other countries, Hockey is the name for Field Hockey played on grass.
3 comments:
I can understand the gripe about the price mate. But I can also understand from there point of view they have to factor how many miniatures people are going to buy if it was an army then they could make back there production/r & d costs etc but with only 6 per team that ain't going to cut the mustard unless people would buy loads todo different teams in a league game. Seems to me a bit of a niche product to invest in.
I agree with Simon. And ice hockey miniatures are really something untested. I saw paintball figures on ebob, and they come in the same basket. I do like the figures on your first picture, but I can't really see any real use for them. Then again, I am not a sports fan myself.
I might get one or two for zombie hunters though :P
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