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Hmm... not a bad idea then to blow it all on current offerings, and just spend more and more and more and more in the future!
All of mine is going to existing stuff/KS 2 things which I missed out on due to being broke at the time. The cutoff for that is end of May, the stuff funded in this KS remains good throughout the year. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the bonus figure for the specified units isn't just in this initial period, but valid in the pledge manager as well.
I do wish the extra 10 for every 100 spent carried forward. With Amazon fees, its my understanding that Mierce actually benefits more from post campaign bumps than during the campaign, and it helps encourage people to "top off" close purchases with an odd mini or two they may not otherwise get. Similarly, would be cool to see if we can get a unit or two unlocked post campaign, but maybe its just best to wait until KS 4.
It ended at £130,735 - just not enough to get me the Walrus Man!!!
Or the Sloth Men!!!
I will survive - and start saving.
The Ancient Irish and the Atlanteans are only 6 months away after all!
I'm guessing that both the Walrus man and the Sloth men (and many of these stretch options) will he in the later stretches for the next Kickstarter too, since the next kickstarter is focusing on Eriann, Atalantes, Cavalry and archery. On the other hand, I'm guessing that means bear cavalry for the Fomoraic, which should be popular.
Interesting graph... only 13 new last day backers. Given that the spike before the free figure expired on the 14th was 46 backers (with the two days leading up to it being 26 and 13 respecitvely, equal to the last day backers!), I'd say this lends credence to what I was saying earlier: a deadline like that is a real disincentive for late pledgers. Obviously, it got some people in early, but resulted in less people coming in later:
For reference, on the previous two campaigns there were at least 43 last day backers.
...BUT, apparently a lot of you upped your pledges on the last day given the difference between the above and the below graph:
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2014/04/23 21:40:24
Yep, Salute was on the 12th, so probably had some impact.
You could take the "13 last day backers" point in a vacuum, and just compare it to the prior 2 campaigns having at least 43 last day backers.
I do think the promotion ending that night is pretty obviously the reason for the spike of backers hitting on the 14th, though.
Clearly jumping in on the last day was not something desirable to most people for this campaign... it's just interesting to note is all (from a strategy perspective on how to lay out a campaign).
(although whether missing out on Sathach acted as a disincentive, or whether everybody who was able to put together a £100+ pledge actually did so before the deadline it's hard to say)
A better way of pointing to the fact that the 46 backers on the 14th was due to the deadline and not Salute? The fact that the next five days went 1, 1, 4, -1, 2 backers . The 14th was already 2 days after Salute, so if it was from that, there would have been more "residual pledgers" from it on say, the 15th. I'm sure it was somewhat of a factor, but apparently no one who heard about the campaign at Salute but missed the deadline wanted to pledge... or at least, only 2 of them did over the next 2 days after that
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2014/04/23 21:47:23
RiTides wrote: A better way of pointing to the fact that the 46 backers on the 14th was due to the deadline and not Salute? The fact that the next five days went 1, 1, 4, -1, 2 backers . The 14th was already 2 days after Salute, so if it was from that, there would have been more "residual pledgers" from it on say, the 15th. I'm sure it was somewhat of a factor, but apparently no one who heard about the campaign at Salute but missed the deadline wanted to pledge... or at least, only 2 of them did over the next 2 days after that
You absolutely can't separate the effects of a deadline and Salute. Too much speculation. I wish Mierce had faith in their product enough to let it drive sales from Salute. As is, there's the post Sathach mental disincentive, which at best meant 33 less Sathachs were given out. I find that campaign deadlines for freebies leaves a worse taste in your mouth than missing early birds. It also means a lot of drop off at the end (which was happening throughout the past few days if you were paying attention).
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My random thoughts on the campaign in hindsight with an outsider's view:
First off - overall brilliant campaign. Great concepts, and seems to have accomplished the main goals of expanding everyone a bit, but making Byzantii and Albainn into viable factions. I have a list of suggestions on improving it, but the campaign was overall very well run.
I wish there were incentives between £100 and £400. That's a really big step. I was at £200, and probably could have been pushed to £250 or £300 if there was some middle step. Have Sathach at £100, mounted Sathach at £250 and mounted Uhtred at £400. Adding in the incentives to level off at an even hundred, and there's a lot of pressure to increase pledges (though with average pledge per backer of £289, I'm not sure that was a real issue).
Love the extra £10 per £100 during the campaign. While Mierce gets more money after the campaign, this encouraged more actual spending during the campaign, rather than getting your foot in the door and buying more later. You can still do that, but it costs more.
Having gold and bronze levels just added confusion. Just make pledge value eligibility for free figures. That combined with the extra credit per £100 pledged makes a difference, but with the shipping charged, there actually isn't much of an advantage to backing the campaign at lower levels. Bronze level pledges being worse value will actually probably be a disincentive to post-campaign pledges from those backers.
I loved the slight modifications to existing miniatures to make campaign exclusives. Great way to push people towards pledging for the units. The limit 1 free per backer per unit is strange (just pushes you away from buying more), as is making the infantry cheaper per model at 5+1 than at 10+1 (£4.67/model for 5 man units, £4.73 for 10 man units). Not a big difference, but it's once again putting the value at buying less. One qualm I have is that at £15 per model, it's very spendy to get those models without buying the units, and some units were almost triple the buy-in price of others. I would have preferred something like getting to choose one free exclusive model for every new multi-model unit costing £50 or more, which means no deal for 5-man units, but you can collect the exclusives by getting the new units you really want to (including multiples of new units). It would have been easy enough to verify orders too, even if the webstore can't automatically calculate it - the number of exclusives just have to match the number of new units, with each getting a unique code at the start of the name for the campaign. Very easy to check that kind of thing for only 500 orders. That way, if I want the Oghurithne, I'm not forced to get a naked model that I don't really want (or more, there are other models that I want more).
In both of the previous campaigns, Mierce opened the next stretch that was narrowly missed post-campaign (Beowa for KS1, Gorgonrar for KS2). I wonder if Mawdred will be opened for this campaign, making the Shadow-Drunes equal value to other new units in the campaign.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/04/23 22:49:45
RiTides wrote: Interesting graph... only 13 new last day backers. Given that the spike before the free figure expired on the 14th was 46 backers (with the two days leading up to it being 26 and 13 respecitvely, equal to the last day backers!), I'd say this lends credence to what I was saying earlier: a deadline like that is a real disincentive for late pledgers. Obviously, it got some people in early, but resulted in less people coming in later:
Spoiler:
For reference, on the previous two campaigns there were at least 43 last day backers.
...BUT, apparently a lot of you upped your pledges on the last day given the difference between the above and the below graph:
Interesting... I may try and whip up some quick analytics on these Mierce campaigns. It would be a shame if MM fell into the same pattern that seems to have overtaken Mantic.
Very different campaigns. Mierce are never going to have the same "sweet spot" £100-150 pledge level that just gets a ton of product piled on to it until it's a must buy.
This was truly intended as an add-on to the last KS. Most of the new backers from KS 2 will not even have seen product from that campaign yet as Wave 1 doesn't ship until June.
Right. That's why I think the time limited Sathac was a bit of a misstep. Salute would have brought in backers regardless and the lack of a freebie for all at 100 might have discourage late comers or people that would have otherwise bumped their pledge more.
I'm also sure that some people still didn't understand that they could pledge more than 100 at the Gold level, or pledge 400 to get mounted Uthred without pledging it to the All The Units tier.
Yeah I didn't go for this one partly because of the time limited freebie. I was aware of it, and it kind of messed up my plan to decide in the final days - I could have backed this and decided whether or not to drop out instead but I didn't like the hard sell so I ignored the deadline and when it came down to the decision today my mind was already made up. It's not like I really wanted the free model either, but since I missed it...
plus I spent way too much money this month anyway (primary reason for not investing this time). I'd also really like to get all my KS2 stuff before spending any more on mierce. There's still a few minis that I want, I'll wait until the next KS I suppose (already decided I'm not buying any more mierce at retail prices)
One interesting thing between this campaign and the last one is that essentially all the difference between the totals is covered by the fact that there was 3 descendant pledges in KS2.
I pledged less upfront this time than the other MM KSs I backed, mostly because the list of sculptors this time didn't seem very fleshed out. At least for new units.
Unless I missed proposed sculptor lists that MM was posting in the comments section, it seems like only 3 or 4 sculptors were listed for around 50% of the proposed units and monsters. I've had a busy month so I haven't been browsing comments much so I may have missed it. And if updated sculptor info was available that I missed it should have been on/in the only places I frequented during the campaign, the front page and the updates.
I'm not sure the mierce campaigns will ever have those surges like many of the "quantity" ks projects do simply because that isn't their aim. I'm okay with that because it continues to allow them to produce high quality sculpts on time with the worlds best sculptors. And I stress that "on time" part because the mierce campaigns (aside from the werewulfs) have either hit or been early on all of their goal dates.
I'd rather smaller chunk projects with limited scope that hit their targets than larger full bore projects that don't come close to their dates due to scope creep (and I think that's generous as most of the time it's been creep explosion).
cincydooley wrote: I'm not sure the mierce campaigns will ever have those surges like many of the "quantity" ks projects do simply because that isn't their aim. I'm okay with that because it continues to allow them to produce high quality sculpts on time with the worlds best sculptors. And I stress that "on time" part because the mierce campaigns (aside from the werewulfs) have either hit or been early on all of their goal dates.
I'd rather smaller chunk projects with limited scope that hit their targets than larger full bore projects that don't come close to their dates due to scope creep (and I think that's generous as most of the time it's been creep explosion).
Agreed with this. I've almost stopped entirely pledging for quantity based kickstarters - I'd rather spend my budget on quality (I'm actually in the process of reducing the miniatures space that I'm occupying). In terms of quality, Mierce is tops.
One interesting thing in terms of price that Mierce did was not building in false value. Each unit that was funded was 20% off of where they'll likely end. Adding a free character was really adding a free character to an already discounted unit. That was really refreshing, as lately there's been a number of projects I've followed that started out as bad value, then had lots of freebies added that make it seem like tons of value is there. I'm not sure new Mierce customers would really recognize that (though the pictures did spell that out), but the units funded in this kickstarter, even ignoring the 10 GBP bonus for ever 100, was better value in most cases than KS2 bundles.
I agree that these won't be like the "bucket o minis" campaigns, not should they be. Quality over quantity!
That said, the prior campaigns had many more backers join at the end was my main point. I.e. comparing Mierce to itself.
These stretches seem to go pretty far out in terms of waves (5, right?). Are the factions still needing more units to be very playable in the game? It always seems like there's many, many more things they'd like to sculpt, almost never ending!
Yeah, that wasn't super clear to me (obviously in hindsight!). I think if things get too far along here there is the risk of just having a core group of very dedicated people, but not a broader appeal... just something to think about for the next campaign (or normal release). Obviously this was called "2.5", but it really felt like that... like coming in halfway through a story.
But enough of my musings I just find it all very interesting...
Outside of the girly sell sword, there weren't many base pledge incentives.
What I mean by just having a base pledge incentive is like last time around you got the two freebies just for ordering the rulebook (which was the point of the KS). I thought that was cool. I had originally only put in for that. My total spent wasn't anywhere near some of you, but it's a lot for what little hobby money I get to play around with. It also keeps getting added on to, month after month, which is a really cool option.
I wonder if what was available also played a part. Last time you had all kinds of individual figures, while this time around it was much more unit focused.
Poorly lit photos of my ever- growing collection of completely unrelated models!
RiTides wrote: I agree that these won't be like the "bucket o minis" campaigns, not should they be. Quality over quantity!
That said, the prior campaigns had many more backers join at the end was my main point. I.e. comparing Mierce to itself.
These stretches seem to go pretty far out in terms of waves (5, right?). Are the factions still needing more units to be very playable in the game? It always seems like there's many, many more things they'd like to sculpt, almost never ending!
From our limited experience, the game is fairly playable right now. The Anglys, without any monstrous infantry, actually haven't seemed to be affected by that in a negative way. Angrislaug is very good.
What I mean by just having a base pledge incentive is like last time around you got the two freebies just for ordering the rulebook (which was the point of the KS). I thought that was cool. I had originally only put in for that. My total spent wasn't anywhere near some of you, but it's a lot for what little hobby money I get to play around with. It also keeps getting added on to, month after month, which is a really cool option.
I wonder if what was available also played a part. Last time you had all kinds of individual figures, while this time around it was much more unit focused.
I actually looked at that as pretty much buying the rulebook and the figures. It was 30 gbp for the earlybird rulebook + 2 figures + 10gbp shipping. If each figure is worth 10 gbp, is the rulebook for a game I've never played really worth 30gbp? I didn't like how so much of the 'freebies' were tied to one specific product actually, whereas in this campaign, it was just tied to how much you spent.
I much prefer a great bargain on the units + character, with a few general stretches pushing you to higher levels. As mentioned in my previous post, I do wish those 'freebie' models were a big more flexible.
And yeah, this time it was much more unit focused, but not overly so. Each 10k of stretches had a unit, a character (that came free with that unit) and at least one big thing (occasionally 2 big things). Compared to last campaign, which had 40 individual models (and the rulebook) as the original project, with most of the units being promoted being older units that were already funded (the hosts).
I suspect one of the reasons why they're not allowing 'free choice' of the freebies, but rather tying specific ones to units is to do with the costs tied in with resin casting
Each mold (set) cost money to make and you only get a limited numbers of casts from it before it breaks down and you need to spend more on a replacement
If there was total free choice of freebies some would be a lot more popular than others (everybody would want nude Ciniod to scare the children)
meaning quite a few molds for the popular ones, but they'd still have to make at least one mould for each figure
whereas tying specific figures to specific units will give a far more even spread which will mean less mold replacements (in an ideal situation they'd hope to get away with only having to do a single one for each figure)
which makes sense when they only have £2500 to play with for the sculpting (admittedly limited in many cases), mold making and casting, and raw resin
Mierce has its loyal following - they'll be in for every Kickstarter.
They'll attract new backers as they continue to grow, and put out fantastic looking miniatures.
KS1 was an amazing deal - apparently too amazing as Mierce may have taken a bit of a hit on it.
KS2 was a good deal, especially at 'The Sweet Spot' - but again, that seems to have been something that caused them difficulties.
KS2.5 was an OK deal, in terms of % off retail, but of the three, it is the one that probably looked the least like a 'good deal' from the outside looking in, especially for new backers.
As it was kinda/sorta intended as an 'add-on' from KS2, that's probably OK.
But as Mierce looks to grow the brand and launch the Darklands game for real, I'm thinking they're going to have to try and find a happy medium between KS1/KS2 and KS2.5.
As has been noted many times, they'll never get to that ridiculous level of 'stuff' that most Mantic KS get too - and that's OK.
But to get the pledges to 'the next level' (whatever that means) or to expect a 'surge of last day backers', there's going to have to be more incentive to do so - whatever that means!
perhaps more introductory/ starter type bundles or pledges?
But then again, they did say the hosts were a bit of a headache...
Totally switching gears for a moment. I see a lot of people chomping at the bit for the Irish and Atlantean factions.
What's the attraction for the lot of you on Dakka that are looking forward to them? Just genuine curiosity? Heritage? Under represented tabletop faction?
Poorly lit photos of my ever- growing collection of completely unrelated models!
given the difference between the above and the below graph:
. The 14th was already 2 days after Salute, so if it was from that, there would have been more "residual pledgers" from it on say, the 15th. I'm sure it was somewhat of a factor, but apparently no one who heard about the campaign at Salute but missed the deadline wanted to pledge... or at least, only 2 of them did over the next 2 days after that 
