What KICKSTARTER(S) are you BACKING and WHY?

Yeah I have a lot of faith in Mydel, the Polish designer. Besides the 1st edition, he also did the 7 Ronin game Grey Fox put out which is a very nifty two player Seven Samurai thing.

Hey, at this moment, only 53 more hours to jump on this marvelous piece of globby plastic. Two hundred forty-six people have done it. You can too.

www.kickstarter.com/projects/petersengam...=cthulhu%20harbinger

Nothing like a panic sale to suggest the need for a cash infusion.

Ugh. I'm not loving that sculpt, not that I'd buy it even if I did. I do think the "tentacle beard" is an interesting artistic choice, though.

The sculpt itself is fairly mediocre. The wings reduce its impact a notch.

What is legit bad though, are the hands clasped in prayer as the terminus of the metatarsal phalange used by bats as a grasping claw.

The significance is confusing.

Is Cthulhu instructing you on the proper form of obeisance towards him?

Is he performing obeisance towards another Elder God?

The answer to both is no.

Cthulhu does not instruct. Cthulhu's presence itself as the harbinger of madness alone is all that needs to be conveyed. Cthulhu cares not for your limited, humanocentric ideas of worship. Or any worship at all.

Cthulhu does not prostrate before other deities either. As if any deity in the supposed mythos would prostrate before any other, is nonsense.

This is by Sandy Peterson? The guy who knows so much about Lovecraft that he makes Joshi appear uninformed?

It's fucking utter bologna is what it is.

That sign of obeisance is something I expect from, and would be at home in, a model in Kingdom Death.

So much respect lost on that thing! What a joke! It looks like one of those wax mold statues you get at the beach!

And having only one red one, WTF? Like it’ll ever be worth anything as a collector’s item...

Total fucking garbage. It reeks of a distress sale.

The sculpt comes from the Planet Apocalypse game, where the demons from Hell are inspired from historical religious imagery, hence probably where the praying hands come from (and yes, Cthulhu has no business there, but it's Sandy Petersen...who also got a version of the Doom Spider Mastermind thing into the game, as well). Yes, the sculpt does not look awesome in the pictures and the cost for what you get is silly. Kinda shocked it's doing as well as it is, but good on them if people will consume what they produce. It in no way takes anything away from me otehr than a couple of rules cards that I've personally decided aren't worth the cost. I'm already getting the "mini" via the PA Kickstarter, so I'll just proxy the rules if I ever feel the need to include it elsewhere.

Would you please stop being even-handed and reasonable about this very serious gaming issue?

Definitely a Home Shopping Network vibe to this one.

Yeah, I think Petersen Games has too many employees and I suspect the HyperSpace KS, while it didn't do bad, wasn't a big enough success to put them in comfortable financial territory. They really need another evergreen game besides Cthulhu Wars.

The funny thing is, even though my friend has a shit ton of Cthulhu Wars, I would strongly consider buying my own copy if Petersen put out a smaller, more reasonable version of it. Hell, leave the board the same way and just make it so that I can actually pile the appropriate forces into a goddamn space!

I like Cthulhu Wars just fine and think it's plenty well designed, but I have trouble believing we'd still be talking about it if it weren't for the spectacle. That sticks in people's heads more than any other quality it has. Making a cheaper version of it now that it represents the height of board game opulence is just something they aren't going to do when they can just sell more of it.

Yeah. I'm OK with it, too. I enjoy it. But do I think it's the be-all, end-all of that type of game? Not even close. The spellbook path is too predictable; the impact of the Great Old Ones is often too easily neutralized for what they are, thematically; and it's too damn difficult/expensive to pick up other factions for it to see if that variety would shake off those aforementioned issues. If they were selling other factions on PG's website for a decent price, I'd grab them. But until that happens, Wars is going to be several steps below other games that just seem to have more depth or at least less obvious strategies.

Really tempted to go for this one

Okay, so the KS for the new Root expansion is up. I'm ready to get on this bandwagon. I can pay full retail for the 4th printing of the base game with the KS. OR..... I can get it online or at a FLGS for about $13 less.

Do I need to concern myself with what printing I get?

If you don't mind waiting for the delivery, get the reprint. It has balance changes printed on it instead of needing the update kit they're putting out.