Ex Illis....some mixed feelings

As part of my ongoing prep for my Witchfire Trilogy campaign I realised there would be a number of occasions where I would need figures for members of the city watch.  These are basically men-at-arms wearing heavy armour and armed with halberds.  I got a copy of Ex Illis a couple of years ago so I already had the perfect figures on hand and I'd been looking for an excuse to paint them for a little while.

Once I dug these guys out I started going through all my Ex Illis stuff and getting really excited again.  The game has great figures and a fantastic plastic tabletop as well as a cool setting with lots of neat stuff.  I got so excited about the figures that when I was done putting together my men-at-arms I threw together this Decurion (an angelic army general) to lead my forces.

By way of a coincidence Ex Illis (which was discontinued about 18-24 months ago) is re-launching via a Kickstarter campaign.  The great thing about the re-launch is that this time they are going to publish a rulebook so you don't need an iPad to play the game.  I don't want to turn this into another discussion about the many reasons I'm not a fan of Kickstarter (support your local retailer by the way) but I do have to point out that this particular Kickstarter seems even more ridiculous than most.
Basically the only new product included in ANY of the Kickstarter packages is the rulebook, every other incentive or add-on or whatever is a model that existed before and has probably been sitting in a warehouse for a year. 
I say my feelings are mixed because I am still genuinely excited to be painting Ex Illis models again and I intend to support the game once I can make my purchases through a brick and mortar retailer again but this is exactly the kind of thing that makes me question whether crowd-funding is actually doing anything for us (you know us; the crowd) or if it's just become a low risk way for game companies to sell us products? 

-Jay