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Most likely yes.

 tre manor wrote:
Most likely yes.

Squeee!!!!!!

i am just trying to figure out how far to go with the first KS. Teh rules are not yet finished but I plan to be play testign them this month. They will NOT be ready for print yet but at the very least I will have the fluff well established and the base plate rules in place.

I have noticed a few new products recently debuted at Adepticon that are eerily similar so I want to try to get out in front of those.

I will be postign a new thread here at Dakka which will act as the new pre-marketing thread for the project. I feel like if I sit on it any longer I will miss the opportunity.

Maybe just offer a .pdf of beta rules for a $1 pledge reward/ part of the package for bigger pledges .

Are you still planning on only launching 2-4 of the (what was it, 6 total?) armies.

A q Tre, I see that you have some amazing dwarves on Hasslefree, are these only available from them? Can't seem to find them on your website.

Hi Tre some simple questions hope you don't mind them.

I don't do KS, I mean in all these years of KS I only backed one and I'm not a fan of the waiting and all that. So I did not back yours, sorry for that... if there's a sculptor that deserves my patronage your one of them.

So for the boring questions...

1. Scale. Hey these are far bigger than your usual stuff correct? For me its a plus since I really want a big regiment of barbarians to put against my GW goblins and I don't want them smaller than the gobbos.
2. Are the beserkers bigger scale wise than the chosen?
3. Price point they are good if you want to have only 5 but if you want to scale up for regiments of say 30 its a bit expensive any idea or plans for deals of buying multiples? I think you with this KS were aiming for the mass battles market right?
4. The most important question is obviously when do you intend to put them up on your store so non KS fans can buy the goods?

General comments, scale is always the damn subject on the table and I think you can get away with rpg markets or even LOTR, but for mass battle games the scale needs to be as these last big boys and gals you did. Your proportions are the best outhere they just need to be heroic enough to deal with mainstream ranges for the big games. You may say, Navarro STFU its my babies and Im happy with the scale! and I will respect that... but just saying

Oh of course congrats for the KS results, glad you reached your goals.

 NAVARRO wrote:
Hi Tre some simple questions hope you don't mind them.

I don't do KS, I mean in all these years of KS I only backed one and I'm not a fan of the waiting and all that. So I did not back yours, sorry for that... if there's a sculptor that deserves my patronage your one of them.

So for the boring questions...

1. Scale. Hey these are far bigger than your usual stuff correct? For me its a plus since I really want a big regiment of barbarians to put against my GW goblins and I don't want them smaller than the gobbos.
2. Are the beserkers bigger scale wise than the chosen?
3. Price point they are good if you want to have only 5 but if you want to scale up for regiments of say 30 its a bit expensive any idea or plans for deals of buying multiples? I think you with this KS were aiming for the mass battles market right?
4. The most important question is obviously when do you intend to put them up on your store so non KS fans can buy the goods?

General comments, scale is always the damn subject on the table and I think you can get away with rpg markets or even LOTR, but for mass battle games the scale needs to be as these last big boys and gals you did. Your proportions are the best outhere they just need to be heroic enough to deal with mainstream ranges for the big games. You may say, Navarro STFU its my babies and Im happy with the scale! and I will respect that... but just saying

Oh of course congrats for the KS results, glad you reached your goals.

Scale shot from the KS that was posted earlier in the thread:

 corgan wrote:
This is the pic from Update 19

Berserkers should be the same size as the Chosen just with no armor and plenty of muscle.

Kickstarter fulfillment should happen in May and Tre has been on time for the last few RBG KS he's run so if the KS ships in May that should have the models up in his webstore for retail in June.

No worries Navarro.!

Yes the berserkers are equally scaled with the Chosen. In reality most of my human figures are abotu the same size. There are variances in girth and height based on the characters themselves. Some of the Aenglish for example are smaller than others just because i try to make some variation but most of the warriors are the same general size.

The elves and Dwarves and goblins are noticeably smaller than those of most contemporary ranges and this won;t change. I just liek it that way.

I was indeed trying to court the war gamers with this campaign but I think I have learned that for the most part the RBG fans are skirmish gamers and role players first and foremost. This has me rethinking things a bit more. I am not opposed to going after the mass battle crowd but I think I will HAVE to use plastic to make this happen. I prefer metal but I am just nto sure I can afford to price the figures low enough to be able to afford to make the figure affordable enough for building mass battle units. :(

and yes these will be available throguh the store very soon.

Maybe just offer a .pdf of beta rules for a $1 pledge reward/ part of the package for bigger pledges .


Are you still planning on only launching 2-4 of the (what was it, 6 total?) armies.

Well without going in to too much detail in this thread ( I want to try to keep it all in one thread if possible. ) I am taking a slightly different route with the composition of the game. There will be factions, but they are nto as rigid as what you might find in other games. The initial offering will offer the components needed to build a wide variety of war bands. The intent is that the players are supposed to write their own stories through the composition of their war bands. There are over arching powers within the world that have definitive goals and agendas but the war bands that at play between these powers may or may not neccessarily be their " faction ".

I know that seems cryptic...... Think of it this way. The factions themselves have internecine power struggles where members of high standing vie for power by undermining their greaters or rivals or by serving their greaters or rivals. This will see members of the same faction doing battle with each other almost as often as not. Other times you will see two totally different factions have similarly aligned goals which will allow them to cross populate their war band lists.

Example; House A is loyal to the God King of the city state of blah blah but the second son of the Prime Patriarch of House A is secretly a cultist of the Death God which makes him an enemy of the state. So.......FIGHT!!!!

Now when player A plays as the Loyalists they can draw from the House Guard, mercenaries, and slaves. Choosing to build a powerful but somewhat restricted list by drawing options from the House Guard ONLY. They are all loyal to each other and to the same goal so they work better together and will by extension pass morale tests and psyche tests better and will have access to higher level tactics abilities and actions as a group. Player B plays as the Cultist and is able to draw from house guard ( to a very limited degree) , mercenaries, slaves, and cultists. The Cultist player has a broader range of possibilities but none of them work together as well as those from a single " faction " would / do. Now if Player B CAN draw only from Cultist lists and have "stronger" list for it but it is not a rigidly demanded neccessity. Player B Chooses to have a broader variety of troops for the benefits each one provides rather than limiting their tactics strictly to the Cultist's abilities.

So when I offer a set of Barbarians, a set of Imperials, a set of Cultists, a set of Mutants, a set of undead, a set of amazons, and a set of Lizardmen. Most of those sets will be able to work together in the same list ( some of them will have more drastic restrictions working with specific other groups ). The lynch pics of the warbands will be the " masters " these are the deicidign factors of which elements a war band can be built and how those different elements will work together.

Thanks for the answers guys

Tre Im in for a big unit of these fellas I think they will look great as chaos marauders and the scale is just perfect. They remind me of the old drunes from rackham and since I have 6 on horses already I will have my marauders all sorted with your latest project.
Yes its not going to be cheap but I guess I will only do one unit.

Anyone know about my question?

I believe those were Tre's first round of sculpts that he decided were too large for what he wanted. (to my chagrin, I that they were absolutely perfect ) So I believe he sold the molds to Hasslefree, so I doubt that he is still selling them as they belong to Hasslefree now. The rest of his dwarves are a little bit smaller then those, so they would match style wise, just not quite sizewise. You could use them as heroes and are larger abstractly, or maybe a different race of dwarf. I would love for him to do more dwarves in that scale but he just confirmed in this thread that won't happen.
If I am wrong about anythng Tre, please correct me



Automatically Appended Next Post:
But Mymearan, if you see the other models that aren't dwarves on Hasslefree site of Tre's, I would suggest getting them. They are models that Tre discontinued, but are still awesome and scale with his current stuff just fine.

Thanks Madzerker. Sorry I missed your question previously Mymearan

Thanks! I guess I'll just have to buy all the dwarves then

Sounds great to me!

 tre manor wrote:

I made mistakes in setting up the campaign for war gamers rather than role players assuming that people would want multiples of the Chosen or the helsmaidens or berserkers. I think that has had a very negative effect on people's satisfaction with the campaign. I think that if nothing else this campaign has proven to me that armies are not neccessarily the right avenue for my efforts with the RBG lines. Or at least not War Game level armies anyway.
(and later)
I was indeed trying to court the war gamers with this campaign but I think I have learned that for the most part the RBG fans are skirmish gamers and role players first and foremost. This has me rethinking things a bit more. I am not opposed to going after the mass battle crowd but I think I will HAVE to use plastic to make this happen. I prefer metal but I am just nto sure I can afford to price the figures low enough to be able to afford to make the figure affordable enough for building mass battle units. :(

Tre' - with figures priced at $10-15 each, it's not really a campaign at a price point for wargamers. It's not about which games your supports like and play, but the overall costs to build units at these prices. While I love your figures, and I might be willing to pay the $10-15 for a few character models, but $10 a pop (or $8 at the higher levels, if you're in the US) just isn't going to happen for rank and file. It's more than inflated GW rank and file metal prices off eBay. $160-200 for a unit of 20 guys? A wargame army at those prices? Not happening. It's expensive even for a Necromunda/Mordheim/Blood Bowl team's number worth of models (in metal). With them likely to be more expensive at retail... you'll have a lot of RBG fans on board for the game, but it's not going to go much bigger or be any threat to Infinity, Malifaux, et al...

I totally get that. That is why I set up the Vanguard pledge level to allow peopel to get each figure at a deeper discount $6.00 each per figure. Teh idea was increase the pledge level once more units were unlocked to allow an incrementally increasing discount per figure based on sales volume.......The demand just did not materialize.

I understand. What I'm saying is that even $6 per R&F is still quite expensive when you're building armies made of units of 20+ figures. Especially if these are KS prices and the retail will jump later. It's just not feasible for anyone outside of your most devoted fans.

Your price structure will work for smaller skirmish games of 10-20, then a slow build of more, but it's simply not large-scale wargamer friendly. If it was, I'd probably be buying a couple hundred bucks worth each month or so - and I'm not trying to belittle you in any way, either.

How large a scale are you planning for it to be?

If you want something with a couple of hundred miniatures each side, you're looking at either historical games or Mantic. For historical the sweet spot is about 50p (about $0.75) per infantry miniature in plastic, Mantic are similar depending on the range and material.

GW obviously charges much more but they've been struggling to shift their mass battle game for years.

Full metal armies of 100+ models are doable for those manufacturers that sell each model in the $2-4 price range (or unit deals that break down to those prices). That doesn't seem to be in the range that Tre' can afford to sell his models for - even with KS pricing let alone at retail - which places large scale armies out of the reach of all but the most dedicated RBG fans. I'd love to build a KoW army made mostly of Helsvakt (among others) but it's just not realistic.

 Azazelx wrote:
I understand. What I'm saying is that even $6 per R&F is still quite expensive when you're building armies made of units of 20+ figures. Especially if these are KS prices and the retail will jump later. It's just not feasible for anyone outside of your most devoted fans.

Your price structure will work for smaller skirmish games of 10-20, then a slow build of more, but it's simply not large-scale wargamer friendly. If it was, I'd probably be buying a couple hundred bucks worth each month or so - and I'm not trying to belittle you in any way, either.

This is actually a good point, and well worth considering as you are designing the game as we speak! 20 models at most per side would be ideal, imo, with the average being much lower, perhaps around 10. Brushfire had this issue where the rules wanted the armies to be big, but metal minis just cannot compete with plastic for rank and file... Infinity does just fine with metal, but everything is a character, and you almost always only field 10 models or less - only oddball or some hardcore lists have more, but everyone I've seen locally uses a single grouping of 10 models. That is your sweet spot, imo

You'll also find that gamers like to "buy the faction" and have options to swap in and out, so if the game is centered around 10 or so models, most gamers will end up buying at least 30 over time. But they're much more likely to buy in if they can play a game with 10, and then buy more options later. Infinity has mastered this model, I think you would do very well to emulate their business model but on the fantasy stage!

Actually, there are good quality metal fantasy figure ranges in an affordable price range for unit and army building, (not just historicals) but I'd rather not go much further into that in Tre's thread.

That's fair, but if we're talking about a game like Infinity, Tre's price point is right on target... people will only pay that if you have some of the best models in the world, but gladly do for Infinity. I think Tre could easily tap that market, but on the fantasy side... particularly with 9th edition coming to put an end to the warhammer fantasy world as we know it.

Sure. That's the point I've been making - For a skirmish-sized game of 10-20 figures - 30 on the outside, Tre's prices would work. For "mass battle" games and the like, RBG's prices won't work but there are other metals out there that still work price-wise for R&F. It doesn't mean that RBG fans are only roleplayers or skirmish players though - far from it!

I totally don't mean this in a critical way, just a genuine observation/ question out of curiosity. I'm wondering why most of your models start off with almost identically posed legs?

I'd like to see some with legs spaced closer together, or running/ about to jump etc.

Hey grimstonefire! it is just a happy medium kind of posture that works for action and rest equally as well. They could be at the end of thier motion or at the beginning. Plus I just like it.

It also makes for a more stable figure as well during the sculpting process. i will try to get mor evaried posing in play though.

And I never take criticism as abuse or offense.

Same goes for your opinions and advice Azazel. I know you onyl want to help!

The intention was to allow the price per model to drop as the funding grew. Teh way I had planned the price woudl have come down to $4 per model by the time the campaign concluded if the demand was sufficient. I needed to be able to afford to sell cheaper per figure by sellign more copies per figure. I did not want to set the funding goal high at the out set as I wanted to get over the first goal and onto the next. I had assumed that people wanted to build armies out of these rather than just buy the singular units.

I AM checking in to plastic production and I am very close to making the plunge and having a test tool made.

I am thinking that my goblins and undead and Aenglish woudl especially benefit from plastic production as all three coudl easily be horde products. Aenglish for pseudo historical wargaming, Undead for wargaming and for role playing, and the same for the goblins.

I am also working on modular terrain pieces which woudl be cross compatible with Dwarven Forge covering themes they have not explored yet.

I am also getting the rules and art for the rules book underway at long last. the rules are most likely goign to cover Infinity sized games but they are a work in progress.

I think sticking to metal and your price point is fine - it's what you know well and do best, and is suitable for characters, just like Infinity. I'd like to see you develop the "secret" project more and sculpt more amazing figures rather than investigate plastic again (just imo, of course, others may differ).

Well being flatly honest Plastic is goign to be the only way to survive in the industry in a short matter of time.

 tre manor wrote:
Well being flatly honest Plastic is goign to be the only way to survive in the industry in a short matter of time.

I don't think that's true Tre.

Plenty of companies are doing perfectly well with entirely metal product lines. Corvus Belli, of course, is a prime example, but there are plenty of others. The Wolsung range is primarily metal, and the miniatures are about 10 bucks each. Lots of historicals are primarily produced in metal. Otherworld Miniatures is almost entirely metal, Hasslefree is almost entirely metal, Lead Adventure is entirely metal, Crooked Dice is entirely metal, Knight Models is entirely metal. Reaper is still primarily metal. Freebooter Miniatures is entirely metal. The list is rather long.

Metal is fine for character models. If you have a skirmish game in which you don't expect to have many or any duplicates, metal is great. Metal is also easy for small companies to produce. The costs of plastic production are prohibitive for a great deal of small manufacturers. For the cost of a single plastic injection mold you can capitalize a brand new spin casting setup.

Today, white metal is less than a dollar an ounce. Mold blanks are typically less than twenty dollars. A vulcanized rubber mold will be good for hundreds of spins. With ten grand a new company can supply itself with all of the equipment and materials necessary to produce dozens of molds and thousands of individual models. If you don't want to spin cast in house these services can be contracted out for a fraction of the cost of setting up plastic injection molding.

I don't think metal is going away anytime soon. At the very least, boutique manufacturers will be using metal unless and until setup costs for plastic injection molding come down far more dramatically than they already have. There's also a pretty good choke point in plastic injection manufacturing. How many manufacturers are capable of doing it for wargaming scale miniatures at an acceptable level of quality and are willing to do the kind of small production runs this industry demands?

There are already lots of companies producing plastic wargaming miniatures. It hasn't killed the market for metal miniatures. For plastic to kill the market for metal I think the costs of production will simply have to drop, and they may if manufacturing becomes more competitive. But how much can the costs realistically come down? I honestly don't know.

I have priced out spin casting metal, so I have a decent idea about the costs involved. Contract rates can only drop so far because Tin is a commodity. You've got to pay for the alloy, the mold, the labor, and other associated costs such as energy, facility costs, etc. You have variability in most of those costs aside from raw materials. Tin just costs what it does, and you don't get much of a price break from volume purchasing. That said, you can also have an entire spin casting setup housed in a small garage and a trained money can operate a spin casting machine.

What are the material costs associated with tooling a plastic injection mold, what sort of labor is involved, what sort of training do you need, how much does the machinery cost, and what sort of space do you need to operate it? In short, how much more democratized is plastic injection going to become?

My wild, shot-in-the-dark guess is that until you can get a 200 shot production run down to about $2000, spin cast metal is going to occupy a healthy slice of the market.

Personally I hope metal doesn't go away anytime soon. I like resin most of the time, but it is too fragile for smaller stuff. I hate plastic most of the time, models just don't have the detail in it and I abhore restic!

I'm certainly far from an expert in the matter but given that most of Tre's RBG minis are single piece casts would using "boardgame plastic" be an option? I don't know what the difference is between HIPs and Restic/PVC and boardgame plastic etc. but that struck me as an interesting option.