Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Necros wrote:
There’s the red and blue special dice,

Gonna need me some o' them thar dice!

Not sure how long it will take for the fellas at Game Salute / Ship Naked to pack up all the extra stuff, but I instructed them to pack up the remaining back-stock minis where we have enough for full gangs just in bags with no cards or retail box. Since I’m redesigning the cards folks can download new ones or get print on demand versions if they want a nice thick card. Once all that old stuff is sold out and I need to get new copies of gangs produced I’m going to have Iron Wind do the packaging there in the factory and everything will come in nice clamshells. Decided not to sell every gang member individually right now, because that will just be a nightmare of SKUs for the warehouse to keep track of. We’ll stick to the 5-man gang packs and solo hired guns.

So for the other items left from the previous kickstarters we’re going to have packs of 6 blue colt 45 dice or 6 red sheriff dice, packs of 5 random secret weapon resin bases (they’re all mixed up with odd amounts so it’s easier this way), 2 army painter starter sets, and a whole bunch of GameCraft buildings.

Lastly, for the Gatling Gun, we only have 11 copies of Wilde’s Rangers left so I have to get new stuff made, what I decided to do is when the current box sets are sold out, Wilde’s Rangers will become a 5 man gang just like all the rest and the gatling gun will no longer be included. If I include it I’m gonna have to crank up the price, and i don’t want to. It’s just cheap now cuz Game Salute wanted to get rid of the old stock. So the 5 man gang will be $15, and the Gatling Gun will be $5. I guess I could have made the gang $20 and kept the gun in, but I like having all of the gangs the same price

I was also thinking of updating the Artillery rules and have them treated like Hired Guns, so you can have 1 Hired Gun or Artillery piece for every 5 models in your gang. I’m gonna be adding more artillery too, we’ll have the Grappler that will be the Gatling Gun carriage with a ballista looking thing on top that shoots Mancatcher-like spears attached to a rope, for slowing down beasts that run too fast. Then when we do undead we’ll have something similar for shooting giant wooden stakes at vampires/wendigos.

 Necros wrote:
Lastly, for the Gatling Gun, we only have 11 copies of Wilde’s Rangers left so I have to get new stuff made, what I decided to do is when the current box sets are sold out, Wilde’s Rangers will become a 5 man gang just like all the rest and the gatling gun will no longer be included. If I include it I’m gonna have to crank up the price, and i don’t want to. It’s just cheap now cuz Game Salute wanted to get rid of the old stock. So the 5 man gang will be $15, and the Gatling Gun will be $5. I guess I could have made the gang $20 and kept the gun in, but I like having all of the gangs the same price

Seems reasonable, but you might need to bump up the stats of one of the three Privates (maybe a promotion to corporal?) so Wilde's Rangers doesn't become too handicapped as a faction without the Gatling Gun. Take away their Gatling Gun and Ambler/Connors/Watson become easy pickins.

I was thinking of that actually.. What I was thinking of doing with BWG2.0 is advance the timeline by a couple of years, and they would all have promotions.. Sergeant Wilde will become Lieutenant Wilde, etc. But yeah I think I could give 1 promotion now.

I was doing some minor tweaks to other characters in the new cards, mostly since there's a couple of henchmen that had a 1 for Stamina or other stats, I bumped them up to a 2 or 3 and swapped some stats around. I think it was just 1 guy so far but there might be a couple more before I'm done. I have all the outlaws done now

I decided to switch to model photos for the cards rather than art, since I don't have nice color art for the first 4 gangs.. but then, the beasts will be art since I don't have the models yet. Will that be weird if some cards are art and some are photos?

 Necros wrote:
I was thinking of that actually.. What I was thinking of doing with BWG2.0 is advance the timeline by a couple of years, and they would all have promotions.. Sergeant Wilde will become Lieutenant Wilde, etc. But yeah I think I could give 1 promotion now.

Perfect!

 Necros wrote:
I decided to switch to model photos for the cards rather than art, since I don't have nice color art for the first 4 gangs.. but then, the beasts will be art since I don't have the models yet. Will that be weird if some cards are art and some are photos?

Well, the cards are like that now (the early dudes have photos of the actual minis while later dudes have artistic renderings) so I don't see it being a big deal. Especially if you plan on having the cards be web-based exclusively. You can start with art renderings, then update them to photos when they are ready.

And you should definitely post here and at The Miniatures Page when you get the GameSalute/ShipNaked stuff in stock at the website.

Something else I’ve been thinking about.. how about adding mounted minis? I have rules for horses, but no models of my own yet. I was thinking of possibly doing something like a resculpt of some of gang leaders and/or hired guns and have a mounted & unmounted version of them, it should be pretty easy to do the 2 different versions of a mini in 3D, just sculpt him once and make 2 different poses.

Or is a skirmish sized game better off with just guys on foot? Just not sure how practical horses would be in the game, I playtested with them a while back and it seemed ok, but it always felt like having men on foot was easier and more fun. Felt like the extra rules for horses slowed things down.

 Necros wrote:
Something else I’ve been thinking about.. how about adding mounted minis?

It would be tough to make it work well. To be realistic, horses would have to be both more powerful and more maneuverable. So being faster and hitting harder would make them overwhelmingly better than "standard" figures, so they would likely end up being overcosted as well. And like you said, in addition to being overpowered they would likely bring a whole raft of new rules with them. So while it might be interesting (and thematic) to see them in the Gulch, it might be more trouble than it's worth. (But who knows, maybe someone has some better ideas on how to make them usable without being game-enders.)

I have some 28mm Perry Union & Confederate mounted generals (painted up quite nicely) that I have used as "Victory Point Locations" in a few of my objective-oriented Gulch scenarios. (Fight your way to the general, and keep him from taking more than X damage.)

For the Hired Guns, you could make a homage to the show Supernatural and add Sam and Dean Winchester as some type of beast fighting duo. Possibly with the names Sam and Dean Colt or Flintlock.

Planning that.. I was going them merge it into one, Dr. Samuel D. Manchester III, Esq.

And then when we start the undead faction there will the infamous witch hunter Ashford Campbell, armed with his trusty top of the line double barreled remmington.

but.. of course!

I would prefer the Supernatural Homage to be 2 characters though..

any chance of scientists who bust ghosts and other ectoplasmic terrors?

Ha.. actually I was thinking of a ghost hunting gang just like that, with steampunky backpacks and special ghost killing weapons. They'd be good against undead, but I wasn't sure how to make them good against people too, and don't want them to be too 1-sided. Maybe I could make it just 1 guy instead of all 4?

A little worried though cuz I've heard they can be pretty lawyer-happy.

Another thought that might get around issues..

Make the Supernatural Homages female..

Samantha and Deanne Manchester..

Hmm girl hunters might be cool I’d probably wait though till we do the undead stuff, and have 1 as a monster hunter and the other as a witch (undead) hunter.


Anyway, crazy idea about Henchmen… for BWG 2.0 I was planning to level up each current henchman character to a professional, and then release new packs of 3 generic henchmen all armed with the same type of weapon. So for instance, a pack of Drifters would be 3 different guys all armed with shotguns, and each type of henchman would have the same stats. They’re no-name cannon-fodder townsfolk. What I hope to be able to do is give players more options and variety for building gangs. Leaders will be sold separately, professionals in packs of 2, and henchmen and packs of 3, so you can just get the packs with the minis you want in your gang. The beasts will be sold in that same format with an alpha/monster separately, fiends in 2-packs and minions in 3-packs.

I’ve been going through and updating all of the current character cards to the new style and now I’m starting to think why wait? I don’t want people to buy these cards and then a year later suddenly have to buy an all new deck for 2.0, that’s too GWish. The only problem is that means with the latest rules I’d have no henchmen models for a year or so, they’ll take a while to sculpt and I want to focus on getting the beasts up and running. You could build henchmen characters and use any mini you wish if you make your own gang from scratch though.

So, if you want to play using the Savage Beasts rules, the mandatory Henchmen rule would be dropped. Just take that 2.0 rule I was planning and do it now. You just need 1 Gang Leader / Hero, and you can have any number of Professionals or Henchmen, as long as both players have similar Fame levels it should still all be OK. You can use more professionals if you want to have more of an elite gang with fewer men, or more henchmen if you’d like to try and outnumber your enemies.

Also, since there will be fewer Hired Gun cards than Outlaws and Lawmen, I figured I would add new new henchman types to that deck, giving them the hired gun icon so they could join either faction. There will be Bandits and Drifters with ranged weapons and Crooks and thugs will have melee weapons. Or would it be better to have 2 join the lawmen and 2 join outlaws? Or different versions of each type for each faction and call em deputies instead of bandits? That means I'd have to eventually sculpt 24 new minis instead of 12. Might need to start buying some lottery tickets...

So, next minor dilemma on my mind.. Should I redo the rulebook now?

I didn’t want to do it now purely for money reasons, because there’s still around 200 copies of the current left right now and I want to sell them rather than recycle them

But I’m wondering if, from a new player perspective, it would be better to have an all in 1 book available in the Kickstarter and an easy “2 player starter bundle” pledge. The content would be pretty much the same as it is currently, I would just update the fluff in the beginning and gang creation and character creation sections to include the different factions, and I could also include the new professions. I would have to make it a print-on-demand book and I imagine the price would be $20, which is 2x more than the current book because print on demand is more expensive, but allows me to print only as many as I need rather than hundreds more to get the best price. Really I just thought it would be best to have everything all in 1 place rather than a bunch of different PDFs, I thought it might be easier for people if there’s just 1 rulebook (printed or downloaded) to rule them all. It wouldn’t take much to redo the book, I already have all of the content ready to be cut & pasted, so I don’t see it delaying the already delayed new campaign at all.

But again, with the current books that’s a lot of money worth of stock to just throw away, and I don’t want to annoy people who bought the current book recently. The current book would still be valid, the rules themselves won’t really change, but I don’t want to confuse people by having 2 different versions of the same thing. So I’m kinda torn.

Anyway, what do y’all think?

You could sell the rest at the next origins demo along with some models to get some revinue then probably wait a few months before you release the updated rulebook.

I'm one of those guys who just bought the new rulebook (to replace a very old first edition print copy). I may be a TEENY bit annoyed at a new version, but would still grab a hard copy of it. And I wouldn;t hold a grudge over it (for too long )

I see some options.

Print up enough of a 'supplement/expansion' rule book (with any needed addendum to the current version plus the New Stuff) to have one per remaining copy of the current version and sell them only as a pair. Try to sell them at enough to cover your print costs but if possible a tiny bit less than the New All In One edition which incorporates all the new stuff with changes to the old into a new book. Downside: May be throwing more money after bad covering the costs of printing the 'New Stuff' expansion. Mitigation: Don't order a print run of the New All In One until you've sold off most (75%?) of the current plus expansion two book sets.

Go with the plan you mention in your post. Downside: As you explained, you are stuck with 200 copies of current edition. Mitigation: Offer them as prize support for folks running your games at conventions, with a printed card giving a link to the new PDF. Offer them as prizes for various social media contests (Facebook, BGG, Dakka, etc). Throw a copy in with any figure order over $X.00.

Sell the current rulebook as part of starter sets. Maybe a couple different two player sets with a handful of figures (randomly grabbed from your excess stock?) Include the printed sheet with link to New Version.

Just some ideas...

Jake

Yeah I gave it a lot more thought and decided to have 3 books

So we have the original book, we'll keep that till it sells out. Once that's gone then I'll switch to just having the updated full book.

Then, the "Beast Expansion Guide" which is pretty much the same as what's the PDF I have posted now, only with the new Henchmen added, will be around 40 pages total and I think around $10. I'll print what we need for the campaign, then it will be print-on-demand only after that.

And then, I'll do the full new version, "Blackwater Gulch: Savage Beasts Rulebook" that will be geared toward new players for $20. Same thing, I'll print what's needed and then that will be print on demand afterwards.

I still would like to do a nice and big hardback 2.0 book, but I'd rather wait until I have the new factions more fleshed out and a lot more artwork and stuff. So that would likely be a year or more away.

Also, for the Kickstarter I'm going to do one full deck of updated character cards. There will be 80 cards in all including every character so far and every beast, and I think that will be $20 as well. It will be cheaper that way than doing 4 faction decks of 20 that would end up being $7-8 each, and less chance of the warehouse guys getting them mixed up

So then, I can make a special 2 Player Starter Set pledge level that will have the new full book, card pack, 1 human gang and 1 beast pack

There's always a bald pain in the neck to any would-be Demon Knights....

 Necros wrote:
Also, for the Kickstarter I'm going to do one full deck of updated character cards. There will be 80 cards in all including every character so far and every beast, and I think that will be $20 as well.

When Battlefront did Dust Tactics 2.0 you were able to buy a deck of 100 updated cards for an MSRP of $12, which usually ended up as $10 in the shops.
Just sayin'.

Yeah I definitely don't want them to be too expensive, but I'm basing that on print-on-demand prices. BF could probably afford to print 1000's and that drops the price down a lot, the more you print the cheaper it gets. I'm getting some printing quotes now though, hopefully I can find one that can do it cheaper.

I'm also going to list all of the new stats in the rulebook and as a free PDF. The physical cards are more of a convenience and for folks that prefer to have a nice card rather than cheapy printer paper

 fightcitymayor wrote:

 Necros wrote:
Also, for the Kickstarter I'm going to do one full deck of updated character cards. There will be 80 cards in all including every character so far and every beast, and I think that will be $20 as well.

When Battlefront did Dust Tactics 2.0 you were able to buy a deck of 100 updated cards for an MSRP of $12, which usually ended up as $10 in the shops.
Just sayin'.

I suspect Battlefront, as a much larger company, doing much larger print run, probably got a better price per deck and were able to pass that on.

Just sayin'.

I know I keep flipflopping, but as I’m putting together the updated rulebook it’s getting cumbersome keeping track of 6 different factions in 1 little book. So I’ve re-decided to just stick to primary races. We’ll keep humans as is with no lawman or outlaw factions, just a bunch of gangs like it is now. I will be upgrading the stats of current henchmen and making everyone a professional though, and going forward with generic henchmen types, eventually to be sold in packs of 3 all armed the same and with the same stats. Then we’ll have all of the Beasts as the 2nd faction in the game. Undead will be the 3rd. Kind of toying with the idea of splitting undead into 2, where the Wendigo will be separate from zombies. In the fluff, wendigo are vampire-like, but not really dead, just crazy cannibals.

About the cards again… the quote I’m getting is for a deck of 80 cards, all current characters + beasts. Would it be better to just make a deck for all of the old characters + new humans from the new campaign (so, less cards), and then include the beast cards with the new models? I wanted to try and get away from that, to make the minis a little cheaper and easier to pack in small clamshells. But, with the changes I was thinking about going forward with for Bad Lands I kind of want to plan ahead, and I think it might be best if the cards come with the models. Or, maybe, cards are included with starter sets, but not for individual models sold separately? I’d still have the downloadable cards too, of course.

 Necros wrote:
About the cards again… the quote I’m getting is for a deck of 80 cards, all current characters + beasts. Would it be better to just make a deck for all of the old characters + new humans from the new campaign (so, less cards), and then include the beast cards with the new models? I wanted to try and get away from that, to make the minis a little cheaper and easier to pack in small clamshells. But, with the changes I was thinking about going forward with for Bad Lands I kind of want to plan ahead, and I think it might be best if the cards come with the models. Or, maybe, cards are included with starter sets, but not for individual models sold separately? I’d still have the downloadable cards too, of course.

By my count, you would need 58 cards to update every mini from BWG "V1" so that could be the catch-up pack. Then, when it comes to the "V2" stuff (that hasn't been released yet) you could go with what WotC did with Axis & Allies: Angels 20 which was to have the starter sets contain ALL of the cards for that expansion round. So maybe Expansion Wave 1 has 20 total minis, you might have 10 of them in a Starter Set, but that Starter Set would contain not only 10 cards for the 10 figs included, but also another 10 for the minis you could get individually. That means you don't have to mess around with cramming cards into clamshells (since they would also be available for download) but it gives people a way to get the "proper" physical card, as well as selling more Starter Sets. Then when you get around to releasing Expansion Wave 2, you do the same thing, with a new Wave 2 Starter that includes all of the cards for that wave of figures.

This all assumes you have the expansion waves thought out beforehand, and wouldn't switch up which characters belonged to which wave mid-stream.

I was thinking about that very thing.. updating the starter sets for each gang and including cards for every member of the gang even if they're not in that particular set.

But, what I've decided on now is just including the new cards with new minis. And doing the deck too, for the Kickstarter. Still waiting on my price quotes for that but I think having them printed professionally will be cheaper than print on demand.

So anyway, if you get an old starter set, you can download the new cards or I'll have a print-on-demand option for Wargame Vault.

After the current starter sets are sold out and I need to produce more minis, I'm planning to switch the gang starter sets to 3 minis to keep the prices lower, and they will have the current leader and current 2 professionals, and it will include the cards for them.

Then, there will be 2-man gang booster packs who have the current 2 henchmen (who will get promoted to professionals with the new cards).

And then, we'll have 3-man Henchmen packs that contain generic henchmen, all armed with the same weapon and just 1 card. Since they're more like reference cards and not used to track damage like Warmachine, I figured we could get away with doing just 1 card. Seemed like a waist to buy a pack of bandits, and get 3 copies of the same bandit card. And the hired guns and artillery will come 1 model per pack.

So also, the beasts will follow that same format. 3-model Werewolf Starter pack (with named character werewolves, not generic ones). 3-model Chupacabra Minions. Later on we'll do the 2-model boosters for them too with werewolves with different sculpts. Each skinwalker animal aspect will be treated pretty much like a human gang.

I'm waiting on some sample clamshells that will be slightly larger than an average playing card, so I'm hoping they'll be good and I can use them for packing. I'll probably get an extra card printed for each set that will have the product info on it, so I don't need to print clamshell backing inserts separately.

Also I have the updated full rulebook just about finished, probably tonight or tomorrow, so I'll post that when it's ready

OK, here’s the updated full rulebook. It’s still missing a lot of art, photos and diagrams, but the content is all there at least.

http://www.gangfightgames.com/download/1820/

Final count will probably be around 84 or maybe 88 pages after we add more art, but this will be the PDF I’ll have available for the Kickstarter. Price will be $20. For the smaller expansion book, that will just include all of the beast info from the big book, plus a few extra pages detailing the henchmen, gang building and rule updates for artillery.

As far as the rule updates go, I’m removing horses as I mentioned before.. I will add those old horse rules and an optional PDF for anyone that wants them, but currently don’t have any plans to make mounted minis. I’d like to some day, but I have a whole lot of on-foot models to get out of the way.

When making your own characters, skills won’t be tied to attributes anymore, you can just pick any skills you want up to your intellect level. And I added new game modes basically just recommended board sizes depending on how many models you have. A Dustup is for up to around 4 minis per side on a 2x2’ board. A Throwdown is up to 9 per side on a 3x3, and a Gangfight is 10+ per side on a 4x4. Those are minimum recommended board sizes though, if you really want to play on a bigger board, feel free

Also, I’ve decided to change the bounty hunter ability. Now, Bounty Hunters get a +1D6 to hit vs humans. Monster Hunters get a +1D6 vs Beasts, and eventually Witch Hunters will get a +1D6 vs Undead. I thought it would be cool having all 3 with a similar bonus. I haven’t decided yet, but I also thought about limiting the amount of professions you can have to 1 per gang.. so we don’t end up with people making custom gangs of 8 bounty hunters? Also just for diversity and stuff.

Had to put this list together for the warehouse guys, thought I'd share.. After all of the current starter sets are sold out and we need to produce new copies of our minis, here's how the starter sets and support packs will work out for all of the gangs.

Bandidos Mexicanos Starter Gang
El Jefe, Cabo Mendoza, Esteban Cruz
Bandidos Mexicanos Support Pack 1
Susana la Loba, Diego Torez

Bloodwolf Tribe Starter Gang
Chief Bloodwolf, Boneshirt, Top Hat
Bloodwolf Tribe Support Pack 1
Spearman, Mohawk

Clancy Gang Starter Gang
Wilt Clancy, Lee Roland, Jacob Sparks
Clancy Gang Support Pack 1
Sam Winston, Nate Winston

Dockside Drifters Starter Gang
Dr. Belfree, Tennessee, Paco

Dockside Drifters Support Pack 1
Eddie Escobar, Mongo

Secret Fist Starter Gang
Mr. Foo, Chang, Dr. Hoo
Secret Fist Support Pack 1
Jen Choi, Wu Teng

Tranquility Crew Starter Gang
Captain Reinholdt, Adam James, Dr. Simmons
Tranquility Crew Support Pack 1
Reverend Sheppard, Julie

Vigilance Committee Starter Gang
Sheriff Dawson, Dr. Trent Dougall, Gramps Fillickson
Vigilance Committee Support Pack 1
Carl Williams, Jeb Williams

Widowmakers Starter Gang
Nightshade, Lily, Oleander
Widowmakers Support Pack 1
Buttercup, Wisteria

Wilde’s Rangers Starter Gang
Sergeant Wilde, Corporal Thompson, Private Ambler
Wilde’s Rangers Support Pack 1
Private Connors, Private Watson

The Gatling Gun and all current Hired Guns will still be sold separately.

Fortunate that I have most of the gangs already; it makes it easier to continue... I've had some sets for a while and bought more after the demo I got at Origins.

With the upcoming Savage Beasts set, I was initially apprehensive, usually I'm a little reluctant to "stray from the script". I was delighted to see your concept; I'll likely support it fully.

A potential answer to your mounted issue is to use something like the Litko "Warhorse" Mount Marker which fits 30mm lipped base figures. http://www.litko.net/products/Warhorse%2C-Character-Mount-Marker-kit.html#.VYyGCTpREqQ

Thanks

I like that warhorse marker I was thinking if I ever was able to do something like a plastic model stagecoach kit, I'd have it where you can pull the top off and there's circles in the inside floor where you can stick a couple of minis inside. But plastic molds are so expensive it's just silly :(

I was delightfully disappointed with the SHIP NAKED folks; they didn't give me time to anticipate the arrival. I ordered on Friday and had it in hand by Monday.... I didn't get the pleasure of waiting and waiting........

Yep they're good people

I personally love how the only thing I have to do to ship stuff is click my forward button when someone places an order