Well, I know that any sculpts we commission with out Clark's input might not be official but ...
Yeah, sadly, Clark is key to anything. I only say sadly because we haven't heard from him here in so long. I have another piece of contact info for him, and I'm going to try that over the weekend.
Depending on what we want to do with them, I would consider putting up some of the money to have them done.
Not a lot or all of it, not that right right now with my medical bills and no working at this time, but I do not see that being a permament issue.
As I said earlier, I'm potentially willing to go in on something like this, too. My preference at the moment is the old official miniatures if I can get access to the ones I still want, followed by new official miniatures, followed by anything we do outside of that. I've still got my fingers crossed that we can get an official ball rolling.
A big question is, if there's an attempt to revive the game, should there be any effort made to get the original figures back into production? I know you have another thread around some of this stuff elsewhere, Dave, and I'll respond there, too. But I think this is a complicated question.
After a lot of thought, I've come to the conclusion that it may be worth doing in the interim before a Kickstarter. There are still people out there with interest in the game (as I write this there are 3 new members here that I'm currently talking to about selling them Black Boxes and miniatures), as well as "old-timers" that want to expand their collections; I was in that boat a few years ago. Having at least basic miniatures people can buy generates interest, and, particularly if we have access to the old masters, would probably sell enough to cover the costs of the moulds. I'm thinking primarily of the Commando, Commando with Plasma Projector,
G1 Nightmare and Mk I
Assault Fiend. Moreover, miniature gamers are not binary. Buying the old minis doesn't preclude them buying new, "improved" miniatures at some point in the future. I'd say more likely the opposite, with it being a good indiciation of willingness to buy any new miniatures.
Coupled with old miniatures, I think it would also help to have a single download of the game. I know some of the component parts are here, but I'm talking about a single download, expressly for people wanting to try it out. That's not currently possible (or perhaps "feasible" is a better word). While the rules and cardboard standups are in the media
section, there are neither scenarios (no offense to the homebrew uploads), nor tilesets. I'm thinking of a package with the rules (Black Box, already here), figures (Cardboard standups, already here), scenarios (maybe the elimination scenario from the demo package and Quarterback sneak?), and maps for those scenarios (single image file as most printers can now print in pieces). Having that both here and a place like BoardGameGeek* could help generate a lot of traffic and build some momentum for an eventual Kickstarter.
EDIT: Just noticed that at some point Clark uploaded the Scenario book from the Black Box and I hadn't noticed; that's one less obstacle, although it could do with a better scanBeyond the old minis, new minis would really need to be created for a re-release. Aesthetics have changed since the game was made, and visual quality of miniatures has made huge advancements since
LoS was released. Having said that, I don't think the old figures were conceptually bad (quite the opposite).
Whether sculpting or CAD is used for new masters, the question of how to do the minis remains. Some have suggested multi-part plastic minis are the way to go. I'm not really convinced of that, for a couple reasons: the expense, and the ease of play. The expense is straightforward; multi-part miniatures are more expensive to make tooling for, no matter how they're manufactured, and plastic tooling is at least an order of magnitude more expensive than metal or resin (although the "Trollcast" stuff
here might solve this) to have built. The ease of play thing is to do with having to assemble miniatures in order to play the game. I'm sure miniature gamers (which everyone here likely is) scoff at this being a problem, but don't underestimate the obstacle this presents to a more casual boardgamer. That more casual boardgamer is a market you do not want to alienate for something like this (in my opinion), and the original LoS was mindful of that with its Black Box. Single piece miniatures that can immediately be used are the way to go, in my opinion. You can always expand your line to more miniature gamer oriented stuff if you're initially successful.
I'll post some thoughts about other stuff like rulebook, tilesets, etc. later.
*
BoardGameGeek is, to the best of my knowledge, far and away the largest boardgaming site on the web. There is already an entry there for Legions of Steel, which is how a number of members here found this site (I posted the link on BGG). Each game entry has a file section where a demo package could be hosted for download.
