I know it mostly humans against humans, but that doesn't necesarily mean its bad. I really liked the Battle for Westeros game.

Regarding Kickstarter, you are right it seems that many are abusing it and some of those game seem worse without the Ks exclusives and i read somewhere that does big Kickstarters whre you can get any all upcoming expansions really hurt retail sales.

2 minutes ago, Iceeagle85 said:

I know it mostly humans against humans, but that taht doesn't necesarily mean its bad. I really liked the Battle for Westeros game

It might not be bad, just that I don't feel it will interest me, but also historically accurate war games don't interest me either. I know the figures will be pretty! I would be more worried about the game mechanics, I feel that through the years CMON games have been hit or miss to me.

The game will be made or not based on how the Unique heroes are done. Red vs blue vs white is mucher cooler when it's Robb, Ghost, Great John vs Jaime, Tywin, The Mountain.

Very true and I could be wrong that once I have seen this game it could be the most amazing thing ever. I will definitely read up on its mechanics once they are revealed(were they shown on a video? I haven't been able to really watch anything form GAMA) I am not set into my opinion when I only have the barest of information. Also though I don't want to be derailed from my Runewars hype, I'm so excited about this game...

Yeah by next March we'll know what Runewars is enough to decide about jumping into asoif. I'm hoping I won't need to consider it because by then RW will be going very strong.

5 hours ago, Iceeagle85 said:

I know it mostly humans against humans, but that doesn't necesarily mean its bad. I really liked the Battle for Westeros game.

Regarding Kickstarter, you are right it seems that many are abusing it and some of those game seem worse without the Ks exclusives and i read somewhere that does big Kickstarters whre you can get any all upcoming expansions really hurt retail sales.

CMON is one of the worst abusers of kickstarter. They pretty much use it to generate preorders and you never see their stuff in retail for long (with a couple of exceptions).

I got all my Zombicide stuff on KS and my friends who've liked the game enough to buy it retail have sold their copies and just play at my place because it's not as fun without the exclusives.

I hope they don't do that to ASoFaI because that series deserves better.

CMON did mention that after the KS they were going to do retail only expansions for the game. They also announced an OP kit for blood rage so they will probably provide organised play for this game too. And Eric Lang is now the chief designer at CMON which is fantastic news.

Still I'm a hardcore terrinoth fan and FFG fanboy, plus the runewars system looks amazing.

It's a tough call.

1 hour ago, flightmaster101 said:

CMON is one of the worst abusers of kickstarter. They pretty much use it to generate preorders and you never see their stuff in retail for long (with a couple of exceptions).

I got all my Zombicide stuff on KS and my friends who've liked the game enough to buy it retail have sold their copies and just play at my place because it's not as fun without the exclusives.

I hope they don't do that to ASoFaI because that series deserves better.

Different this time.

According to my local store owner from Gama: CMoN are supporting stores with participation options in this KS. as a backer, I can do my KS pledge through my local shop and not have to pay shipping.

In addition, the KS is limited -- basically the starter box plus a few other options.

With expansions planned throughout 2018 (see gama videos) I think they've remedied this issue.

KS are always a risk, however. FFG are doing straigh release which is always nice.

2 hours ago, Shrapnelsmile said:

Different this time.

According to my local store owner from Gama: CMoN are supporting stores with participation options in this KS. as a backer, I can do my KS pledge through my local shop and not have to pay shipping.

In addition, the KS is limited -- basically the starter box plus a few other options.

With expansions planned throughout 2018 (see gama videos) I think they've remedied this issue.

I'll believe it when I see it.

I don't know what you guys are going on about, KS is the best way to buy models, they get the capital they need to start work on a project that may never see the light of day otherwise and you get cut rate cost on miniatures. I don't mind that it takes for ever to get them, if I wanted instant gratification, I'd wait for it to show up at my game store.

As for RWs, I'm sad that the release date was pushed back to april, I was looking forward to playing it this month...

The issue is bigger companies don't actually need the capital and they drown out the independent game creators who do need the capital.

2 minutes ago, flightmaster101 said:

The issue is bigger companies don't actually need the capital and they drown out the independent game creators who do need the capital.

I look for miniatures projects with great regularity, and have backed many of them, small and large. I don't agree with your statement as it didn't stop me or interfere with my bandwidth.

24 minutes ago, Taki said:

I look for miniatures projects with great regularity, and have backed many of them, small and large. I don't agree with your statement as it didn't stop me or interfere with my bandwidth.

You should read up on it. It is actually one of the things preventing self published games from getting funding.

As NDT says the great thing about facts is they don't care if you agree.

1 minute ago, flightmaster101 said:

You should read up on it. It is actually one of the things preventing self published games from getting funding.

As NDT says the great thing about facts is they don't care if you agree.

That's an opinion not a fact. It could also be that the smaller self published games are less polished and therefor less marketable. Looking at the difference between Raging heroes KS versus say, Pantheon of Chaos KS, it's easy to see why RH did much much better. And the smallest of companies have made great successes on KS, look at Kingdom Death for example, and Merc Games as well.

To say that big companies are squishing small companies is an oversimplification, and one that I've read about. You can just as easily point to the flood of crappy games that small publishers are overwhelming KS with and point to their lack of polish, poor art styles, and lacking vision. Many don't bring anything to gaming at all, and just rehashes of things we've already seen over and over, whereas games like Mythic Age Pantheon, or Medievo Universalis bring new things to the table and are well presented, so they get funding.

Maybe you should think about the things you read a little bit more deeply. Maybe the claims that are made might not be the exclusive answer.

Also this is off topic, as my KS support has nothing to do with my Runewars Purchase plan, which I'm buying for its IP heritage from Diskwars, Game Play Advancements to miniatures gaming, and its promising tournament play, and not for it's miniatures.

Read the New Yorker kid. Facts are facts, and just because it doesn't agree with your experience doesn't make it fake news mr prez

Anyways, since others want to veer off course, I'll try and get back on track.

I wonder if the boxes announced recently are going to be like faction expansions with equivalent plastic to half a core set or FFG is just going to throw tons of expansion boxes at us for the new factions. I hope it's the later, that could change my mind on playing elves if it's not.

Looks like I might have a trade to split my core set, so I will be running the undead. Looks like I will have to explore those expansion packs and the upcoming "orcs"

9 hours ago, Taki said:

I don't know what you guys are going on about, KS is the best way to buy models, they get the capital they need to start work on a project that may never see the light of day otherwise and you get cut rate cost on miniatures. I don't mind that it takes for ever to get them, if I wanted instant gratification, I'd wait for it to show up at my game store.

As for RWs, I'm sad that the release date was pushed back to april, I was looking forward to playing it this month...

The issue with big Kickstarters and big Kickstarters by CMON especially is that the games tend to be VERY hard to track down at retail after it is supposedly 'released' and a lot of expansions offered in the campaign often don't hit retail at all. The game line is most often never continued beyond what is unlocked in the campaign. The result being that you only get a real shot at getting the game during the pledge drive, if you miss it, it's gone. And then after it's dropped like a rock, people forget about it and go bananas after the next big thing and the cycle of one-shot lightning-in-a-bottle games continues.

CMON did a full-on miniature game on Kickstarter once before. It was called Wrath of Kings, raised a respectable 700k in USD and was all the rage when the pledge drive went on in 2013. You'll be excused for not knowing about it though, since it was dead in the water a month after release in 2014. Compare that market model with, say, X-Wing, which has been incredibly succesful and sustainable for however many years and still has new content steadily added to it.

Kickstarters are good for the publisher for raising a lot of money quickly and for the consumer to get a crapload of shiny stuff at a discount. It is however horrible for sustaining a healthy game line and playerbase.

@player1750031 I like you, I only ever agree with you like 50% of the time but you regularly educate me on my misinformation and you always come to the discussion fully prepared with your evidence, and I'm pretty sure if you were questioned you could start listing your sources in the posts. It refreshing on the internet, thanks!

2 hours ago, player1750031 said:

CMON did a full-on miniature game on Kickstarter once before. It was called Wrath of Kings, raised a respectable 700k in USD and was all the rage when the pledge drive went on in 2013. You'll be excused for not knowing about it though, since it was dead in the water a month after release in 2014.

Yeah that's why Beasts of War just did a game week on it a month ago and you can find fairly recent battle reports on youtube.

Wrath of Kings is actually a pretty fantastic game (and I'm normally critical of CMON). And yeah, it's been promoted fairly well lately

1 hour ago, Orcdruid said:

Yeah that's why Beasts of War just did a game week on it a month ago and you can find fairly recent battle reports on youtube.

There has recently been a kind of a 1.5 rules revision/soft relaunch of the game in an effort to keep it afloat, so it is indeed getting a bit more buzz in the last few months. It's undoubtedly due to the fact that the game has apparently finally picked up a UK/EU distributor and I'm sure that's who reached out to the BoW gang. It remains to be seen whether the WoK star will rise now or if it is simply too little and too late. My money is on the latter (quite sadly, the game looks quite interesting TBH, even despite the fact I'm not a fan of the Rackhamesque comicbooky aesthetic).

The fact that it took CMON three years to find a distributor in the Old World is in itself indicative of how well things are going on the WoK front.

12 hours ago, flightmaster101 said:

Read the New Yorker kid. Facts are facts, and just because it doesn't agree with your experience doesn't make it fake news mr prez

Again, you seem to have no notion of what opinion and fact are, and how they differ. I've read the same articles as you, and reject your appeal to authority, as it doesn't have any bearing. Learn to think for yourself.

3 hours ago, player1750031 said:

The issue with big Kickstarters and big Kickstarters by CMON especially is that the games tend to be VERY hard to track down at retail after it is supposedly 'released' and a lot of expansions offered in the campaign often don't hit retail at all. The game line is most often never continued beyond what is unlocked in the campaign. The result being that you only get a real shot at getting the game during the pledge drive, if you miss it, it's gone. And then after it's dropped like a rock, people forget about it and go bananas after the next big thing and the cycle of one-shot lightning-in-a-bottle games continues.

CMON did a full-on miniature game on Kickstarter once before. It was called Wrath of Kings, raised a respectable 700k in USD and was all the rage when the pledge drive went on in 2013. You'll be excused for not knowing about it though, since it was dead in the water a month after release in 2014. Compare that market model with, say, X-Wing, which has been incredibly succesful and sustainable for however many years and still has new content steadily added to it.

Kickstarters are good for the publisher for raising a lot of money quickly and for the consumer to get a crapload of shiny stuff at a discount. It is however horrible for sustaining a healthy game line and playerbase.

Now this certainly is an issue, though I have looked into Wrath of Kings and I didn't like the aesthetic of the miniatures and so didn't back it. I agree that the kickstarters need to do something to help their appeal in retail markets more, but I might point out that they might not exist in the first place if they didn't have a good kickstarter in most cases. Specifically regarding CMON, it is now in a position where it no longer needs KS to succeed, but that hasn't always been the case, and KS helped them get here. Further, they have been doing a lot of outreach to help FLGS with their products, which is a great step in the right direction. And while I agree that KS are bad at sustaining a healthy game, it really falls on the companies creating them to push for demos and self promotions beyond the KS, like what Soda Pop is doing and has done.

Also, KS might be a good way to get products that might not otherwise be possible. Let's take for example, Battle Lore and it's lack of Latari Elves. To do a full print run and develop and market them might not be feasible for FFG. We know that the company isn't making a killing on Battle Lore or its expansions, but we also know that the fans of the game have been asking for Latari Elves for that game since it came out. KS might be a way to make that possible to produce this product for the fans with little risk to FFG directly. If they can get the crowd funding to make it possible, then they can produce it risk free, if not they don't make it, which is what they're doing currently anyway. Or how about a 5-6 player expansion to Runewars the Boardgame? Same thing. Point is, KS can be used thoughtfully to help large companies service their clients in specific circumstances, and it can be used by small companies to create games which otherwise wouldn't exist. After that, it's on the Company, the player base, and the local stores to keep them alive

Biggest gripe and hopefully the rumors for new Kickstarter are true is that people that kickstart games gets most of what they need from Kickstarter. Which leaves not much for your FLGS.

And anything that helps those guys keep their stores a float is a good thing.

I am going to get one core and wait to play it some. I really want to play Elves so I might pick up some Undead Archers but I don't think I am going to go too crazy till I have real games under my belt.