Please be aware that BSF had 2 (copies) sprues of NPCs, one of heroes, and one of the Big Bad. CB's definition of "unique sculpt" is same body, extra arms (see the 3 Cadmus going around, for example). I see duplication there too... To me, the deciding factor will be the models included, but it seems like the Deluxe edition is being fleshed as "all shasvastii needed to get a full shas army, with some units from Wildfire".
Still (much) less duplication than from GW (and what is not taken into account till now: Many of the sculpts in the GW Board Games are older sculpts that are reused. My last GW Board Game was the Assassin-Game (dunno what it was called) and only the 4 Assassins were unique, the cultists, the space marines and even the Boss (Space Marine sorcerer) were old sculpts) However, yes, they seem to go the Full-AVA-Route with Defiance. With the already leaked pictures Cadmus and Caliban will be playable with Full AVA when combining Definance and Wildfire and Beyond (4 of each). While one can argue if this is necessary for Infinity, isn't this what many wanted? Being able to play every unit WYSIWYG? Or to have one sculpt for every profile? And if there is a situation in Defiance, where 3 Cadmus are simultaneously on the table, I think it's great to have 3 of them in the game and if they are not looking the same. Even if 2 of them share the same body, they still look different.
Let's say lately I've been quite dissatisfied with the casting quality in CB (metal to be removed, crossed arms that won't fit at both sides...), and Mispack must be bored of me (to be fair, it's on the 1-2% mark, model-wise, but most of the problems come from boxes)... Btw, unless you have a rotary tool, it might be hard to magnet the new CB's bases (they place a dot of plastic on all four slots, so you might need to buy shorter magnets or remove the excess plastic -.-U) GW's plastic, however redundant, fits like a glove and needs only some sanding at most... and the bars between legs are much easier to remove if you want to pin the model to a scenic base :(
Yes, I bought shorter magnets exactly for this reason. I don't like the underside of the new bases, because a) most of the time you have only 2 options to place the model and to align them with the new LoF-markers is not that easy b) you can place the (shorter) magnets only pretty far outside, means far from center of gravity. Material-wise they are pretty good, because they are not as hard as the last ones, but harder than the old ones, but the underside is way too crammed.
But you will, you will I recently bought two boxes for Nomads, Zondnautica has a new box, and Puppetnautica has a new box and new bases. And this means that from now on all new models will have new bases ...
And I just crowned myself as the most disctracted with superglue this weekend... Nearly glued a Nox's face with the chin upwards (there is only one you need to glue the head) Used the new bases. After buying resin decorated ones and went trhough the trouble of making holes and placing magnets there. Yay me XD On the other hand, I feel like my interest in this KS will be based solely on Shasvastii...
I’m really hoping that Infinity Defiance will be a solid game on its own. It would be nice if they would make it board gamer friendly and include plastic minis instead of metal. They can always make the metal minis an add on in the pledge manager for the kickstarter campaign. Assembled plastic minis will lower the barrier of entry and allow Corvus Belli to reach a much broader section of the available gaming market. It would also save money on shipping for backers since the plastic minis will weigh less. I really want this game to succeed. I hope that the rules are solid, that there is a good story driven campaign to play through, and that we get quality components including pre-assembled plastic minis.
A minor quibble, but plastic minis would increase the overall shipping costs as they'd have to ship them from China, rather than from the production room to the packing room of their HQ. For better or worse they're wedded to metal miniatures, because that's what CB are arguably industry leaders in.
It's worth considering that the Defiance page on the CB website has two locked options under Villains in addition to Shasvastii. This may indicate another faction enemy in the Deluxe box.
If you're talking about the original Aristeia! box plastics, CB discovered the hard way that the 3D printer at the factory in China was nowhere near as good as the 3d printer at CB. For every A! expansion, CB has printed the master models in Spain and shipped them to China.
Or maybe they forgot to be explicit about how they should be printed (which seems to be extra important in some places...). Remember, there was a wrong sized model years ago... same thing.
No, that's a story straight from the horse's mouth, the masters for the core set were made by the manufacturer in China, but for the expansions CB created the masters and sent them physically rather than just supplying digital files, and the difference really does show.
