Do you seek him? Dark Dice is an actual-play horror D&D podcast, and it featured Jeff Goldblum as Balmur. That’s right, the famous Fly and Jurassic Park actor. Which movie makes you think of him?
And the combat wheelchairs that made some people insecure? Strata Minis made some up as models. Now, Dark Dice and Strata are on Kickstarter for a quick run 10-day campaign to fund crafted minis of the Dark Dice characters. You can see the details on the project page.
Geek Native is also lucky enough to have insight into the environmental decisions that influenced Strata.
The considerations are split in to different areas: Minis, packaging and extras. As a company, we take the environmental impact our models produce very seriously, we have to balance sustainability, quality and practicality on every new product we produce.
Note: I’m going to focus on minis below.
Miniatures can be made from numerous different materials metal, plastic, and resin. They all have different pros and cons in terms of practicality versus environmental impact. We looked at all of these options whilst exploring what we should make the Dark Dice miniature range out of. In the current market, metal is prohibitively expensive for 2 boxsets (twelve miniatures), and they are also the hardest to work with (for hobbyists). Resin is very high detail but produces a lot of waste and is generally the most brittle and prone to breaking of all the materials. Traditional injection plastics are durable but produce waste, and mass-produced plastics generally have the lowest amount of detail.
So we were looking for, durability, detail and also the least amount of waste as possible. None of these traditional materials really gave us what we need were aiming for. Instead, we have opted for a relatively new material and casting process for these miniatures. This set will be produced using a machine called The SIOform, by SIOcast and in a material called SIOres.
Of all the materials on the market SIOres by SIOcast gives us the manufacturer and you the hobbyist, the most out of what we aimed to achieve.
➼High Detail
➼Low waste (less than 1%)
➼Lightweight
➼Durable
➼Non toxic
The SIOform machine uses a relatively small amount of electricity and most importantly allows us to reuse any failures and sprue, a by-product of casting, over and over again to make more amazing miniatures.
There’s a £30 pledge which offers all the miniatures, which are 2 boxsets worth, as STL files for your own 3d-printing. There are also digital character cards for each. That means for those characters from Dark Dice.
The season 1 set of multi-park plastic kits (which means assembly required) is available as a reward at £35. There are 6 minis, 25mm scale, in the box, and each has its own QR-code-linked art card.
Or, for the same amount, backers can get season 2’s box set.
Economies of scale kick in at £60 and both boxsets, but that tier is limited and half-sold out in the few hours the campaign has been live. If you miss that, then there’s the £65 tier.
Dark Dice and Strata estimate delivery of May 2023 for the minis, but the digital version will be available at October.
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