Hey everyone, Ryan Warner here from the Facebook page...

If you all have not heard, I am working with someone else to make a fan made set for Mage Knight. It is unoffical, but it has been REALLY well done and it is 1.0 only.

This is the exciting news, I am working with ex-Ral Partha and Mage Knight sculptor, David Summers. And we are going to produce a limited edition Mage Knight inspired Draconum for 1.0. The name is "Mountain Isle Draconum". This is not offically a Mage Knight figure and when we crowdfund it, we will not label it as a Draconum... but you get the point. This will be your chance at something that is so close to a new 1.0 unique draconum.

Please follow the Facebook page for more, I know some shenanigans went down, but that has since cooled off and the group is much more kind now.

I see this has had 7 views and no responses! I will be posting the GoFundMe page for the custom draconum sculpt today....

I need you to help make this a reality for our small community! This is excited!

I know many of you left due to the issues with a few specific people. I (Ryan Warner) was one of them.

I sincerely apologize and hope you will come back, even under psuedonyms. The group has had zero drama for 6 months and while there is a lot of buying and selling, it has gotten a lot better in that regard.

Also, with the new set coming out with a MKD expansion on the way (Unofficial set), you would be remiss to not be apart of that. I plan to share the links here anyways, but I really loved having you apart of the group so I hope you come back.

WE NEED YOUR HELP! THE PAGE IS LIVE.

We will be doing 100 limited edition sculpts for the Draconum. Check out the video. $25 each, you can order multiples by donating $50, $75, $100.

High Level Details
- Ships mid April depending on fund date
- Fully metal
- Will supply dials locally here
- We need $1800 minimum to even make this viable

https://www.gofundme.com/f/mage-knight-draconum-sculpt

Ibson, I know you have seen this. What is your take on this?

I am excited and backed it. I know you are putting alot of work into this. Thanks!

Ryan,

While I wish you luck with it, I don't think its for me... as to why, I have several concerns which I'll discuss below.

First off, $25 for a one-off, unofficial figure is a little steep to me. Why go metal? With today's 3D printing services, you could be doing these in high end plastic or resin much more cheaply... and get just as much detail. Heck, the figure could be permanently attached to the base (as in one-piece) and it would solve other problems. Heck, get David to create originals (compensating him for them of course), scan them and print. Much cheaper than having a mold created. Now I don't know David but he could possibly create the whole figure in a 3D program to begin with and you would skip a lot of steps. In fact, virtual figures could even be given different poses before printing... imagine the different star levels having different poses in addition to different color schemes.

Secondly, I am very, very shy of playing with or against any of the custom figures that have been published, even some of my own. There is usually very little background thought given to the power combinations and you generally see only power figures being produced. That's part of the lure of creating them. The figure point calculators that we have do a very poor job at 'costing' figures. I generally have to boost my customs' costs by 20-30% when they're done to make them feel right, provided I have not just copied another figures costed abilities onto a 'new' sculpt. As pitifully as some of WK's ideas were play-tested, they were still play-tested and I could almost guarantee most figures had their initial costs bumped up.

Third, I'm generally just a MK Dungeons fan... I want heroes and Mage Spawn for my games. Now, as most of the heroes are just bumped up regular figures, they are still a whole host of figures available to us (me) to convert to heroes. For Mage Spawn, there are another whole host of faction figures are certainly more suited as Mage Spawn as they are to their original faction and so we have those as well.

Now, I have tons and tons of Draconum figs (and love them dearly)... one day they will be their own race in a role-playing campaign. So that at least tempts me. My friend Deadlast will probably be all over this. When he orders several, maybe I'll pry one out of his hands later on.

However, given my reasons above, I'm just not going to hop on board. Again, I wish you luck... I'm just not sure we're a big enough community to pull it off at those costs. And yes, these are just my 2 cents... but you did ask and I gave it lots of thought before replying.

Cheers!

Hey Ibson! Those are great points. I want to help address them.


1. We did not do 3D sculpting becasue the cost is actually really high. If you want someone to scan the figure it is pretty pricey

2. The majority of the cost is having someone acutally sculpt the figure. David Summers helped bring the Draconum to life for the release of Mage Knight. I think having an original sculptor is huge for this. Ultimately, price isn't the goal here, enjoying the game is. And this in my opinion, is a great way to continue to enjoy the game.

3. We are possibly considering releasing a Hero version of this figure - dial and all - for our MKD Expansion that is coming out soon. MKD Frost Cavern. I know you are hesitant that these figures are OP, which is my 4th point.

4. Yes, fan made figures tend to be OP. But we went nuts with this. Let me explain.

We had ex-Mage Knight pros review every figure in the set and give us feedback on the points. Not every figure is good, and we evne made *, **, and *** versions of the nons. We literally edited every figure over 3 times.

We did not use the point calculator, instead we used Battleplanner and the filters and search functions to compare every new figure to existing figures. So we leveraged the existing database of figures to make the most balanced set possible.

Does that mean we did not push the power creep a little? No, we definitely pushed the agenda a little bit. But actually creating this set made me realize something... Some figures made by WizKids MADE NO SENSE lol. Order of Uhlrik point wise should be 100+.. but he is 88. Which made me realize that this is not as formulaic as people have thought.

I'm sure there are glaring issues with the set, but what set by WizKids did not have issues? Some figures are good and some are bad, but is that not the nature of everything?

The price point is the lowest I could go without hemorrhaging cash.

But, $25 is not a lot to ask for custom metal piece for our favorite miniature game.

Did I convince you? Is so, I implore you to sign up https://www.gofundme.com/manage/mage...raconum-sculpt

I will be sharing sculpt updates soon.

Hi, Ryan,

Noticed that you posted five times in two days to implore MK Realms members to join the gofundme for this project. Just a thought, but these Realms have not been super active over the past several years, so you may be shouting into the wind. I wouldn't assume that no response in 24 hours means that the community is ignoring or frowning on your project. It more than likely just means people haven't seen it yet. I still drop in on the Realms to see my friends here, but I only do this a few times a year (usually around holidays and vacations). I would just recommend exercising some patience. I realize your gofund me is time-sensitive, but maybe the lesson to be learned here is to build up interest within this Realms community prior to opening the gofundme page so that people have time to see and digest your post.

FWIW, I'm on board and am looking forward to playing with the new Drac.

Hey DeadLast, I mainly posted multiple times to break up my ideas. I probably should have put them all into one main message thread. As you can see, they are only a couple of minutes apart. That is my bad.

I know the realms is slow now, but it does not hurt to inform as many as possible about this as the game community is so small now :/

I just posted in the group... check out the sculpt...

https://share.getcloudapp.com/5zudQb5x