Crowdfunding Highlights

Clint and Jodi Black, whom I know from their work at Pinnacle Entertainment, are launching a line of gaming furniture on Kickstarter. Their Carolina Game Tables campaign funded in five hours with all their early bird pricing for luxurious 4′ by 6′ game tables nabbed on the first day. I hate KS campaigns with early bird level rewards because if you come to the campaign late and have just the “regular” levels left, it’s like paying a surcharge because the marketing didn’t reach you in time. Carolina Game Tables has a great solution for that — each Tuesday at 9PM EDT during the campaign, they’ll unlock another ten “early bird” slots, as long as those slots fill up by Wednesday at that same time. The tables look fantastic, the people behind the campaign are some of the nicest people in the hobby game biz. If you’re thinking of getting some gaming furniture, give them a look-see.

Just a half-hour drive away from my home, some madman was challenged to create a game that would fit in an Altoids Small tin. He came up with Mint Tin Mini Apocalypse, a worker-placement, resource-management, area-control dice game. You know Love Letter’s red bag? You can probably fit five copies of Mint Tin Mini Apocalypse in there. It’s the apocalypse and there’s a monster running around and everyone is trying to get to the fallout shelter (with a box of supplies). Get four of your guys inside, and you win! Not only does David Miller (no relation to Purple Pawn’s David Miller) provide a crazy little game about the apocalypse, you can play the game during the apocalypse: the rules are on a waterproof, tear-resistant paper! It’s already funded, so grab your copy for thirteen bucks!

I love pretty, pretty playing cards, and the Bellezza Bicycle Deck is so very pretty. Look at that King of Diamonds. Just look at it. $11 per deck. The design has already been approved by USPCC and they expect to have the decks ready for shipping in October. So. Pretty.

It’s no secret that most boardgame inserts are crap.* I’ve been replacing some with foamcore inserts (plans from The Esoteric Order of Gamers), but I’ve seen some laser-cut inserts for various games by various people and they look awesome. Thinker Tinker Maker recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to buy a laser cutter and bulk purchase materials for production and prototyping wooden inserts. If you help them achieve their goal, you’ll be able to pick up the awesome Elder Sign game insert (shown below), inserts for Surburbia, Imperial Settlers, Star Wars Imperial Assault, Dominant Species, and/or card boxes for card games (really for Magic: The Gathering, but I’m sure you can use them for really any CCG or LCG). These things look really good — they’ve got a bit to go to reach their goal, but they’ve got time to do it.

* Mission: Red Planet, Jamaica, Lascaux, and Lords of Waterdeep being my exceptions.

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