Ten years ago, back in 2013 (I had to check) I had my first "bad" Kickstarter experience. These were the days of innocence when Kickstarter was used to fund projects not as a sort of pre order system. Baker Company (UK not US) announced their Kickstarter and wanted to raise £3000 to fund a matched pair of Winter War armies in 28mm . Sixty quid (£60) was going to get you an infantry platoon plus a shedload of stretch goals. Seemed like a good deal so I chucked some ££££ at it to get a Finnish infantry platoon.
As you can see - quite a lot of "stuff"
The problem was, so did everyone else. £57021.00 was actually pledged. Baker Company were in trouble because their Kickstarter was so popular - they had factored in about fifty orders to fulfil, and in fact ended up with 428 backers. They didn't have the capacity to do it all. The project was a disaster that killed off Baker Company. They struggled to fill those orders, missed schedules and it all went pear shaped. The original plan to ship in one lot was replaced by shipping in smaller parcels to try and give everyone something, meaning the shipping cost calculation went south. Pressure from backers "where's my stuff" etc meant they rushed the production and at least from the models I received they were wearing the moulds out and including models with terrible mould lines and miss casts that should not have made it past Quality Control. I made a decision to collect from a show - can't remember which, which turned out to be a wise decision given the whole thing collapsed, taking the company with it. I got some, or most, but not all of what I was expecting, but quite a lot of is was so badly cast as to be almost unusable. Many backers didn't even get that. With hindsight I don't blame the creator, or rather I don't think for one moment this was deliberate, just a guy with what looked like a good idea getting overwhelmed and not being able to deliver.
As I said, quite a lot of the "stuff" I got was not great. The figures were ok when cast reasonably, detail was "soft" but shrug, snowsuits. There was way too much flash on some and some mould slipping. This was particularly the case with the metal parts on vehicles. The Field Kitchen was the worse, but quite a lot of infantry was "not great" . I marked this up as a "lesson learned". I painted up a dozen or so but the whole project was tainted for me and I stuck it in a drawer.
To be fair some of the bigger models did look the business - this is the Aerosan. It was a bit of a pain to assemble, and I think I got two left skis which didn't help, but like I said, I think it looks good.
On and off I added some extra bits - a T34 from Warlord with a turret swap option, and a StuGIIIG from Rubicon. I posted my progress on the StuG
here https://twtrb.blogspot.com/2017/05/stug-life-part-1.html
and here https://twtrb.blogspot.com/2017/05/stug-life-part-2-when-is-stug-not-stug.html
and here https://twtrb.blogspot.com/2017/05/stug-life-part-3-winter-is-coming.html
Ten years later and I was surfing the web and found Parkfield Miniatures Winter War range. These looked suspiciously familiar and at first I though this was Baker Company reborn (apparently it's not). The Winter War range was however clearly designed (or coincidentally) to match the Baker Co models. I banged a test order in and was happy with the resulting figures. They're well cast, detailed and animated, and match my old Baker Co figures (almost) perfectly.
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| All Baker Co |
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| Baker, Baker, Parkfield, Parkfield |
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| P- B |
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| P - P - B |
So that's why I'm currently up to my eyeballs in white paint and am studying Chain of Command lists. Between the better Baker Co figures and Parkfield I think I can get a good CoC force out of it. If I finally get to play with them this could possibly be the longest \ most drawn out wargaming project from start to table I have ever done.
Cheers!
