Back to Warsaw and Berlin, and see you later Fallen Frontiers

I just arrived from South Africa on Saturday, and I am already thinking about leaving Madrid. I'm going to Warsaw again tomorrow!

I hope to be able to meet again with painters like Bohun and the rest of the Polish guys from Warsaw, and have some nice vodkas and perogis. Also, this time I'm going to make a stop in Berlin on my way back, since I have to stop there anyway to fly to Madrid, and spend the weekend with my good friends from Painting Buddha (Michael, Ben, Mati and Matt). Can't wait!

I'm going to use some space in this post about my travels to comment on the weird cancelling of the Fallen Frontiers crowdfunding campaign, which, as you already know, I was very keen to see ending successfully. Being as I was travelling back and forth, I suddenly found that they had decided to cancel the campaign, and apparently, from what I have read and people have told me, it seems like there have been doubts surrounding the capability of Scale Games of making the project happen, and also about the size/scale of the miniatures, some people even say that Scale lied on this matter. (Mi thoughts regarding this last part: ¿?¿?¿?)

If I remember correctly, before starting the campaign, this photo was published, where we can all very well see what the size/scale of the miniatures is. I have seen comments saying that Scale mentioned in the campaign that the size was 32mm and then people said that they were 35mm, and because of this some part of the audience started accusing them of liars. I am personally amazed by all of this. Talking in terms of "x mm" to refer to a scale is a commonly extended technical mistake in the miniature world. The scale is really indicated by, for example, 1/30, 1/40 o 1/50, and no one is correct when talking about scale when this is not mentioned in this way. GW for example says that their miniatures are 28mm, when if they were truly 28mm in size, they would be smaller than what they are, and on the other side, their miniatures do not maintain the proportions between them. As an example, think about a Space Marine and an Imperial Guard: the miniatures are basically the same height, when an Imperial Guard represents an average human 6 feet tall, while a Space Marine is supposed to be around 9 feet. Considering all this, I don't understand where the problem is. The photo is very clear! A whole different thing is that people want to use the miniatures to be proxies for other games. That is great, but I don't think that was the point of Fallen Frontiers. I personally think that the size that FF was proposing is great (slightly bigger than the typical 40k size for example), and proportions in this case are properly maintained, so are they relative sizes between miniatures. Therefore, I don't understand why the hate campaign against this project!

Apart from this, apparently there have been doubts whether Scale would be able to produce the miniatures complying with quality and time frames. I can't say much about that because I'm unaware of how that was going to be handled, but I know first hand that Fallen Frontiers has been developed for two years now, it hasn't just appeared out of nowehere, and its a very serious project with the support of a miniature company that has been producing not only miniatures of very high quality, but also paints, and they also have the possibility of producing the miniatures themselves (a possiblity which I believe not all companies have). I was a backer of the project because I firmly believed that they would make it happen without problems, and I do not really understand very well why all the negative comments I have been reading all around. Crowdfunding, like any investment, has its risks, it's all a question of trust, but trying to actively destroy a project? That's a whole different thing!

I don't know, sometimes I feel like there have been dark interests behind this hate campaign against Fallen Frontiers. In Dakka Dakka apparently there was people convincing others to take their money out of the Kickstarter, I have never seen such a thing, inexplicable for me. If you don't like the initiative, do not participate. But trying actively to go against it? It seems weird to me. Dark motives, hidden interests, other companies, personal vendettas...? Certainly a very interesting and weird story that makes me think about a lot of things! Who knows!

So, basically, this is a big loss for all in my opinion. I really wanted to get those miniatures! I'm pretty sure anyway that all the work done will not be discarded so easily (especially the artistic part, which I know first hand that is top-notch) and they will probably make it happen one way or another. This will only delay the release, so I'm sure we will be able to get them in the end.

All that's left is the wait. They will come sometime! I have Siklas Feen at home in the meantime! :P