Ok, thanks. While I might only *maybe* will end up playing the actual game with the new (beautiful) models (most likely Alpha Strike or another game I have rules for, instead) I'm definitely thinking of picking up the Clan box and the main box set. While it's technically a waste of money to be paying for non-miniatures material I may not use, I don't know as I want to wait until a nebulous 2021 date for models at all, lol. Value vs. wait time.
It's likely that for the most part, I will be buying the models for either their looks, or for nostalgia value (mostly favorites from years of MW video games), as one of the rulesets I plan on using is not BT loadout related in any way, so mechanical effectiveness of one chassis vs. another not a driving force as much for me.
VictorVonTzeentch wrote: Lance and Star Packs are also for preorder on Miniature Market, and I've seen some of the Lances on sale in LGSs as well.
Yes, stores that were retail pledgers to the Kickstarter got their wave 1 stuff to sell now, where most of it won’t be fully available generally until it dribbles out over the course of 2021 other places.
Das_Ubermike wrote: I don't foresee purchasing any of the additional plastic lances or stars when they become widely commercially available (in like, 5 years...).
Insaniac99 wrote:If a store was a retailer Backer then they get it at the same time as everyone else. If they did not back, then the retail stores will release on This Schedule:
* Black Friday for Clan Invasion Box
* January for Map Pack Tukayyid and Elemental Force Packs
* February for the two Command Units
* March for the Last Two Force Packs
* Wave 2 Force packs stretch out over the rest of 2021, Starting April-ish and maybe then some.
Couldn't resist throwing another $150 at Wave 2 items. Alpha Strike being unexpectedly enjoyable, and needing higher model counts pushed me to want a little more.
Grabbed three Wave 2 Clan and Inner Sphere packs, and some more Elementals which you can never have enough of.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Yeah so I'm not really sure what the point of the pilot card decks are. They are just portraits and fluff. No rules or anything.
I re-opened the pledge manager, removed the others I had ordered from Wave 2, and used the credit on a DC T-Shirt and another Urbie.
During the campaign they seemed to insinuate they would have stats and special rules. They morphed into a way to fulfill the huge amount of canon characters people submitted.
Fortunately, I didn’t buy any of the cards, and only got stuck with the ones that were ‘gifted’ as part of my Star Colonel pledge. I am glad I did not make any effort to buy any more; all they are good for is landfill insulation or the recycling bin.
Can't say that I've got any use for those cards whatsoever, either. However, if you wanted piloting and gunnery skills on them, it would only involve a D6, a chart and a Sharpie to make it happen.
But, I have a feeling that several months/years down the line they're just going to end up in the recycling. Wait! It's laminated card! Scratch that idea...
Fortunately, most do specify the mech the pilot operates- so you can use them for random selection, if you don't mind narrowing it down to the ones in your collection. In that respect you can use them to create an opfor, though a chart is certainly easier.
I'm not saying it's a good use, just pointing out it is a use.
Here's a weird question, but where do you guys tend to get your scale non-mechs? I've never played with anything but BMs, until the recent KS where we've added Elementals to great effect. We're thinking of dabbling with infantry, tanks, etc... but outside of Epic 40k, I have never shopped for anything at that scale.
What about vehicles and such? With Reaper helping with Heavy Gear, I would imagine it is plentiful and cheaper?
Oh, any suggestions for prepainted terrain too? Time is at such a premium these days, and I can't get much it the way of time to paint. Scale urban ruins in particular as well as tiny trees? 95% of my horde is 28mm scale stuff.
Iron Wind Metals make official BT tanks and infantry, although I've never particularly cared for most of the classic designs and they're expensive as heck as well. The old metal CAV stuff worked well for BT tanks and VTOLs, but the newer plastic ones are re-scaled for 1/144 and are far too big and the infantry has always been too big. Heavy Gear is also 1/144 and too big.
We've never used enough non-battlemechs in games that people cared if they were the actual designs or not, but that'll vary by group. A few different scources for excellent generic sci-fi vehicles and infantry:
Bummer. I was just going to ask about whether anyone knew if the new Bones CAV vehicles would be too large to match against the current new plastic mech models, as they are nicely affordable and easy to get a hold of.
I do not have the new Battletech models yet(....yet, lol). How do the infantry from the old Clicky-based game scale against them? I have plenty of both normal infantry and different styles of Battle Armor I could rebase and repaint. I DO know that the clix-based vehicle are way too large.
Microworld looks like a good place to get stuff in the US, I have seen their stuff before. Plus they have the REALLY awesome not-OGRE cybertanks. In fact all of their New Terra stuff looks really Battletech-styled, full of sloped armor.
I just got the actual BTech vehicle minis. I think I have a bit over 100 of them now. I like BTech vehicle designs, especially the Clan ones, as they're so damned weird.
I mean take the Mars for example:
Spoiler:
It is the ultimate clash between actual tank design and the BTech design rules. It's absurd, and I love it.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I just got the actual BTech vehicle minis. I think I have a bit over 100 of them now. I like BTech vehicle designs, especially the Clan ones, as they're so damned weird.
I mean take the Mars for example:
Spoiler:
It is the ultimate clash between actual tank design and the BTech design rules. It's absurd, and I love it.
Plus it has a Futurama style robot head on its butt.
Fun fact - those "new" group shots are 4 months out of date and don't include a number of mechs. Anthony Scroggins posted the actual new renders that should have gone up in the kickstarter update in the Battletech painting and customs facebook group, I'd crosspost but I'm workblocked at the moment.
Looking at expanding to normal infantry and recalled that Troublemaker did 6mm plastics. I know they're not the best detail, but has anyone got any painted examples of the Troublemaker human infantry? Thinking that for the price they could be very useful for some Davion or Kurita ground pounder infantry.
judgedoug wrote: Looking at expanding to normal infantry and recalled that Troublemaker did 6mm plastics. I know they're not the best detail, but has anyone got any painted examples of the Troublemaker human infantry? Thinking that for the price they could be very useful for some Davion or Kurita ground pounder infantry.
I didn't know they had done, but at 8 Sprues for £12 I'll give them a go.
H.B.M.C. wrote: There's just something... off... about the new Turkina. The big frog just ain't as smooth as he used to be.
To me, it's the apparent lack of cockpit from the render. I see that it has that medallion looking feature in the center, and I think it's going to look much better once that's been painted as the cockpit. Right now it really looks like there's a crew hanging out in there, operating it all across the front torso- it really looks like a bridge, rather than a cockpit.
That being said, the arms are a HUGE improvement over the old model.
Damn... one week later still and I could've added more. Still, an extra $200 was spent on Wave 2 so I should just savor it. Plus it leaves me with loads of lance-packs to buy as they eventually release in shops.
I added another Star Captain pledge when it re-opened, completed it, then went back in again and upped it to Bloodnamed.
I've just got to decide on whether to go back in and add the luxury versions of the Jade Phoenix trilogy. Don't suppose anyone remembers the asking price, do they? I don't really want to unnecessarily risk the wrath of the pledgemanager gods for such trivial information!
I added another Star Captain pledge when it re-opened, completed it, then went back in again and upped it to Bloodnamed.
I've just got to decide on whether to go back in and add the luxury versions of the Jade Phoenix trilogy. Don't suppose anyone remembers the asking price, do they? I don't really want to unnecessarily risk the wrath of the pledgemanager gods for such trivial information!
The Pledge Manager closes for the final time on December 22nd. Any changes to your pledge must be completed by then.
I added another Star Captain pledge when it re-opened, completed it, then went back in again and upped it to Bloodnamed.
I've just got to decide on whether to go back in and add the luxury versions of the Jade Phoenix trilogy. Don't suppose anyone remembers the asking price, do they? I don't really want to unnecessarily risk the wrath of the pledgemanager gods for such trivial information!
The Pledge Manager closes for the final time on December 22nd. Any changes to your pledge must be completed by then.
Yeah, I know that there are still 10 days to play around, it's just that every time that I re-open the pledge, I get the feeling that something is going to go horribly wrong with it. The fewer times that I mess with it, the better as far as I'm concerned.
Does anyone know if the Salvage boxes had any possibility of getting anything exclusive to them? I finally opened my six, and between the Clan Box Set and Wave 1 Stars they were just duplicates.
Also, are the Legendary Boxes reproduced anywhere? IE are all the pilots in those also in the newly released Alpha Strike card packs?
Ghaz said earlier that the legendary boxes will be available via Catalyst Games' webstore and/or at events(you might remember those from the Before Times...).
The Salvage Boxes did not have any possibility for getting anything exclusive--however they're currently the only way for non-backers to get any of the Wave 1 Star mechs from retail, since retailers like Miniature Market got their Salvage Boxes but the Stars/Lances are slated for February and March of next year.
My two were sadly duplicates(Nova and an Executioner) of the starter set mechs. Had hoped for a Summoner, Hellbringer, or Vulture to replace my Grendel with!
I've got all of the available card packs and there's no sign of any of the Legendary character cards in them; the only one that I've got at the moment is the Grayson one that came with my random Legendary. The only way to make sure that you get them all (barring swapsies with someone, or maybe go for pot luck if they hit the CGL store), is to pledge for the whole Legendary Pack.
As far as the non-Legendary Salvage boxes, they're limited to the 15 Clan mechs from Wave 1. All the outstanding Salvage packs that are going to be delivered with Wave 2 are also going to be drawn from those 15.
I'm really hoping for better luck with those, because 3 out of the 4 that I got were sad disappointments; having 6 more turn up next time has to mean that I'll get ones that I want, right?
I will be hoping I have better luck with the five salvage boxes I’m due in wave 2 - three of the four I got in wave 1 were Mad Dogs. My Legendary box was always going to be a duplicate, since I bought the box set, and I got Kerensky’s Dire Wolf as a double.
H.B.M.C. wrote: BTW, anyone found a summary of the AMA that Catalyst did on Saturday?
Summary from the BattleTech Forums and here's a video of the full AMA from YouTube:
Most interesting points from the AMA:
3:22 mark, Questions start and first one is about BT minis coming on sprues.
Loren comments "I hope never unless we have high impact polystyrene like GW"
Randall kind of confirms that yes GW has the best quality of minis, but we have "right out of the box" ready minis which is a good selling point with a good quality for that. Sprues someday? Maybe, but this is our niche for now.
12:40 mark, Loren says "...next 6 to 12 months, big focus on mercenaries overall"
20:00 mark, ETA IlClan print book? Randall says "Spring". Ray says the slight delay is because they're working in tandem with Hour of the Wolf. Most of it written, but artwork and layout paused some progress. It won't drop right with Hour of the Wolf, but will follow afterwards.
23:10 mark, projected date for Wave 2. Answer: Jan 15, all stuff assembled and put in freight around the world, Feb 15 to Feb 25 they expect it all to be at the proper distribution hubs and will begin sorting into packages. By about March 10 latest, stuff ships to first backers for Wave 2. One big factor is how Chinese New Year just shuts down that country. Trying to get things moving before that though!
35:40 mark, odds that vehicles are in next KS? Probably good.
Next question TRO Irregulars due out? close, but also the dev doing that is doing Recognition guides. Less than 2 months, expect it early 2021.
57:30 mark, Will older authors like Charrette show up?!
A manuscript from Bill Keith is sitting on John's drive.
It is a GDL novel for next year.
We're also busy reconsituting the GDL into the new time line.
So expect stories from old and new eras folks.
1:10:00 mark redesigns of vehicles? That would be nice in theory, but they have a lot of Mechs to go through and they've been focusing on fundamental ones. Will they go through all vehicles? Maybe not, especially nothing recent. We have many many years of redesigns to go after all.
1:20:00 mark Someone wants a Scroggins redesigned Thorn. Redesigns are continuing!
1:22:00 mark Renegade legion? Well there's a patreon from another dev out there and a test pdf out there. Drivethru has playtest rules according to Randall.
totalfailure wrote: I will be hoping I have better luck with the five salvage boxes I’m due in wave 2 - three of the four I got in wave 1 were Mad Dogs. My Legendary box was always going to be a duplicate, since I bought the box set, and I got Kerensky’s Dire Wolf as a double.
I'm legitimately jealous of all your Mad Dogs/Vultures! All I got were an Executioner and a Nova
[EDIT]: A nice note from one of the posts after the summary:
"... they're working on a city map pack that's going to be dense urban terrain using 3D modelled buildings for the art like the ones seen in the other new map packs."
In that same picture, near the upper right, between what looks like a Stalker & Battlemaster, do my eyes honestly see a Longbow? If so, I didn't think they made an official miniature for that model (and what TRO is it in these days?)
Stormonu wrote: In that same picture, near the upper right, between what looks like a Stalker & Battlemaster, do my eyes honestly see a Longbow? If so, I didn't think they made an official miniature for that model (and what TRO is it in these days?)
From the BattleTech Forums on whether or not Recognition Guide Vol.11 will drop on New Years Day:
Cubby wrote:No, there's...ah...something else coming that day. A Rec Guide would be overshadowed. Rec Guide 11 will drop on Jan. 8, and Vol. 12 (you heard me, change of plans) on Jan. 22.
20:00 mark, ETA IlClan print book? Randall says "Spring". Ray says the slight delay is because they're working in tandem with Hour of the Wolf. Most of it written, but artwork and layout paused some progress. It won't drop right with Hour of the Wolf, but will follow afterwards.
I'm trying to figure out if I should bother ordering any wave 2 forcepacks before it locks down. Seems like they're at or nearp MSRP and Miniature Market and GameNerdz and such will be selling them at much less than the Pledge Manager. Any insight?
judgedoug wrote: I'm trying to figure out if I should bother ordering any wave 2 forcepacks before it locks down. Seems like they're at or nearp MSRP and Miniature Market and GameNerdz and such will be selling them at much less than the Pledge Manager. Any insight?
Depends on how soon you want the models or any Salvage Boxes, etc.
judgedoug wrote: I'm trying to figure out if I should bother ordering any wave 2 forcepacks before it locks down. Seems like they're at or nearp MSRP and Miniature Market and GameNerdz and such will be selling them at much less than the Pledge Manager. Any insight?
I grabbed a few more just because I am crazy about the current releases, and wanted to have some more options sooner. I still left probably 75% of the Wave 2 Packs for retail though. They really aren't a good deal, and the pure win-fall really is just getting stuff a few months early.
So that most recent kickstarter update confused the gak out of me.
Someone, please explain the reinforcement packs and which ones the Kickstarter is coming with by default and if I should/need to buy this one. Especially if any of them include vehicles or ground troop markers/tokens because combined arms combat is something I am super interested in.
It would seem the reinforcement packs are mostly just the Books with the Mech's Sheets in them. Which are the books for keeping track of your mechs in battle, and punchcard representations of mechs and support units.
That pack is just there to give you a bunch of extra 'Mechs using stand-up double-sided card-board tokens. They've been around since the 2nd Ed boxed set, maybe earlier.
This set in particular though comes with TONS of them, representing all the 'Mechs in the Kickstarter, plus all the record sheets for them. Good way to bulk out a game if you don't have a large miniature collection or if you want to play a massive game.
The counters are a nice bonus and fit with the cool mapsheet (only available inside that set ) and rules that are in the set.
CGL did tell me via the KS that the mapsheet may become available later on as a neoprene one. I want it in paper, but I don't need a bunch'a cardboard 'Mechs and 300000 record sheets.
judgedoug wrote: Looking at expanding to normal infantry and recalled that Troublemaker did 6mm plastics. I know they're not the best detail, but has anyone got any painted examples of the Troublemaker human infantry? Thinking that for the price they could be very useful for some Davion or Kurita ground pounder infantry.
I didn't know they had done, but at 8 Sprues for £12 I'll give them a go.
So I got some and they're not bad -
Spoiler:
There's not much detail on them but they might look OK with a few on a base.
Oh great, thanks much! I ordered some too (though still waiting, overseas and all), they are so cheap, why not. Yeah, a pile of 'em on a base and they'll be great for generic infantry. And there's little missile launchers, too? So rifle and SRM infantry.
I must be blind, not finding them, are they on the Vanguard Miniatures website? All I'm seeing is the troublemaker plastic terrain and vanguard metal infantry, don't see the plastic infantry/vehicles sprues
Kalamadea wrote: I must be blind, not finding them, are they on the Vanguard Miniatures website? All I'm seeing is the troublemaker plastic terrain and vanguard metal infantry, don't see the plastic infantry/vehicles sprues
Kalamadea wrote: I must be blind, not finding them, are they on the Vanguard Miniatures website? All I'm seeing is the troublemaker plastic terrain and vanguard metal infantry, don't see the plastic infantry/vehicles sprues
Kalamadea wrote: I must be blind, not finding them, are they on the Vanguard Miniatures website? All I'm seeing is the troublemaker plastic terrain and vanguard metal infantry, don't see the plastic infantry/vehicles sprues
Nice! Note to overseas buyers, the ebay store's postage is about four times higher than direct from the website
Edit! Mine just arrived. The figs are definitely thin but a set of eight of these sprues is absolutely worth £12 just for the eight AFV's, sixteen dudes w/ missile launchers and 112 dudes with rifles. the Not-Orks are just a bonus, and heck, you could probably use the Not-Ork Not-Trukk as an ARV or supply truck for non-Ork stuff.
so since I gotta wait till wave 2 for my stuff I ended up snagging a clan invasion box with some christmas money, gotta say I'm impressed by the detail on the mechs.
You think they'd do a CityTech box with plastic vehicles?
I figured they'd go for a different era, like Civil War or Jihad, and get in a bunch of later-tech 'Mechs. Jihad would allow them to do a "Word of Blake" set with the 6 Celestials in plastic.
I think the next Kickstarter is timed from post Tukayyid to the Great Refusal. This gives you Coventry, Op Guerrero, Chaos March, Op Bulldog and Serpent.
all we know about the next KS so far is that they said it would be focused on mercs. I believe they also said that they wouldn't completely rule out vehicles and non-mech assets, but the primary focus would be in bulking out the line of mechs and any non-mech minis would be severely limited
I think it'd be smart to stretch it out to the end of the fedcom civil war. it's only one more TRO, and that remaining TRO would have a lot of cross contamination as a lot of the stuff in it is from field manuals dating to bulldog/serpant. there are however some pretty iconic tro 3067 mechs, such as the Uziel that'd look good on cover art.
H.B.M.C. wrote: You think they'd do a CityTech box with plastic vehicles?
I figured they'd go for a different era, like Civil War or Jihad, and get in a bunch of later-tech 'Mechs. Jihad would allow them to do a "Word of Blake" set with the 6 Celestials in plastic.
I would buy entirely too many of that box of Celestials! And if they're especially cunning, they can take a page from Reaper, and do themed box 'expansions'. Imagine the Mercenaries Kickstarter.... with an option of a Jihad box of 8 or so mechs and a Civil War box with the best of the Lyran/Steiner gear from the era, like the AGOAC mechs only pack from this one.
Kalamadea wrote: I must be blind, not finding them, are they on the Vanguard Miniatures website? All I'm seeing is the troublemaker plastic terrain and vanguard metal infantry, don't see the plastic infantry/vehicles sprues
Nice! Note to overseas buyers, the ebay store's postage is about four times higher than direct from the website
Edit! Mine just arrived. The figs are definitely thin but a set of eight of these sprues is absolutely worth £12 just for the eight AFV's, sixteen dudes w/ missile launchers and 112 dudes with rifles. the Not-Orks are just a bonus, and heck, you could probably use the Not-Ork Not-Trukk as an ARV or supply truck for non-Ork stuff.
Why dont you just get the metal urban or nuclear waste troops by Vanguard Miniatures instead? Less fragile than the plastic ones.
The idea is to include interesting 'Mechs that are of that era and of the respective sides. You want to give the Davion side a Fafnir? One of the most Lyran-y 'Mechs to ever Lyran?
Whilst I fully agree that those are older designs, I'd very much like to see the remaining 3025 Mechs get a facelift as well.
As to giving a Fafnir to the "Davion" side, the existence of the Federated Commonwealth meant that both "halves" had
access to both Davion and Steiner designs.
From Sarna (Fafnir page) :
Peter Steiner-Davion - During the campaign for Tharkad at the end of the FedCom Civil War, Peter Steiner-Davion led his pan-Lyran coalition from the seat of a brand new Fafnir. During the climactic street-to-street fighting in Tharkad City, he used it to defeat his great-aunt Nondi Steiner in a one-on-one fight.
As to the Vulcan (Sarna) :
Coventry Metal Works produced their own upgraded variant around the same time, the VT-5S, which played a pivotal role during the FedCom Civil War as part of the Allied forces.
We'll see what the future brings for BattleTech, more redesigned Mechs in plastic are always welcome.
Old-Four-Arms wrote: Whilst I fully agree that those are older designs, I'd very much like to see the remaining 3025 Mechs get a facelift as well.
In a Civil War themed box, however?
Old-Four-Arms wrote: As to giving a Fafnir to the "Davion" side, the existence of the Federated Commonwealth meant that both "halves" had access to both Davion and Steiner designs.
Of course they did, but it's the more Steiner of the two 'big' designs (the more Davion one being the Saggitare), especially given the Lyrans and their love of all things HGR.
Old-Four-Arms wrote: Coventry Metal Works produced their own upgraded variant around the same time, the VT-5S, which played a pivotal role during the FedCom Civil War as part of the Allied forces.
Ok... and? The Vulcan is an old 'Mech, not a very popular one, and it is certainly not an example of the iconic designs of the Civil War era.
That's what I'm getting at: A Civil War box should showcase Civil War-era designs. It should be fun and thematic to both sides of the conflict. Your first suggestion was to include a Javelin, FFS.
Its not enough mechs frankly. I had a Bloodnamed and a Star Colonel, I wanted to upgrade the Bloodnamed to a second Star Colonel but could not do so.
This saved me from an overspend but meant I had $75 character credit rather than $150.
I was able to get nearly all the spheroids I wanted but only the 3050 clan designs, none of the later ones. That being said I had misgivings over most of the post 3050 clan stars, only wanting some of the miniatures, wheras I wanted all the mechs in the 3050 stars.
I also cheated over the elementals buying one star pack and mixing that with the four points I get elsewhere and will do some cutting to make two 'complete' stars. I see no reason why my elemental points have to have five suits in them, losses can and will occur, and the model doesn't necessary represent the number of surviving warriors in a point.
I didnt buy any merch except faction dice. I bought dice for the five houses, Fed Com and the four initial invading clans. Anyone else can use plain 2d6. Though I have heard mixed reviews on the dice since I havent amended the order to get something else.. The pins, patches t-shirts etc are not so important to me, though I chose them with care also as they were complimentary. I got a mix of Davion, Kurita and Jade Falcon merch from my two pledges quotas. Unlike the dice nearly everyone says they are good quality.
Other than that I bought two Retaliation sets extra, one Lance pack extra to round out my spheroids, two Urbies so I have an Urbie lance and the set of five maps. I was disappointed I had no opportunity to buy the grassland/tundra map without the six pack, so I got the other four grassland maps and the Strana Mechty map. I didnt bother with Tukkayid maps as I would want to play them all and will make do with paper maps provided. I don't normally use maps frankly, but premium maps might get me into it and the price looks fair for what you get.
Finally I bought two record sheet #2 and one record sheet #1 to add to the other one I get at Star Colonel. I wanted two copies of the record sheet books so I can cut up one copy for laminating and keep the other as backup and photocopying.
All in all I am at a sweet spot for expenditure. I maybe should have got Comstar dice, another level II (though I will likely use 2750 mechs for remnants mercs and rebuilds rather than Com Guards. I certainly wont paint my mechs as Com Guards as they have limited utility sitting out most fights.
I wanted a third Retaliation but that was just greedy and didnt like the ide of six Wolverines. Some clan mechs will be missed but I will find them as singles on ebay later next year.
I would would like an extra command star to get duplicates of the mechs included, particularly the Stinger, but on reflection didnt want three Arches or Marauders nice though they are and will get extra Stingers and Locusts again from ebay rather than buying full packs to get them.
All in all I was rather restrained and 'only' spent over $650 on this. Not bad for a late pledge backer who missed the ickstarter. But then I have been playing Battletech longer than most of the forum membership has been alive. Still remember Battledroids.
I get a bit OCD over hobby expenditure, working everything out, then reworking it according to actual expenditure. In some ways this saves me money as I get what I want and don't buy what I don't need. Yet it also gets me to upgun most of the limits. I end up buying several large mech forces rather than a company equivalent each of two favoured factions.
Here is my workout list
Spoiler:
Battletech to buy
ComStar Dice $5
Second Retaliation pack $40
Upgrade Bloodnamed to Star Colonel $150
yields +8 Forcepacks ($200 value)
+Command Star (2nd), Heavy Striker Star (2nd), Heavy Battle Star
+Command Lance (2nd), Fire Lance (2nd), Urban Lance (2nd),
+Comstar Battle Level II
+$150 to spend
Retaliation Pack $40
Comstar Dice $5
Premium Battlemat 5 map collection $120 or /w Tundra $150
Enamel Pins $8 each
T-Shirts $25 each
Dice $5 each pair
Coins $10 each
Patches $8 each
Double Bloodnamed
- 4 Forcepacks -$100
- Character -$75?
##Executioner, Timber Wolf, Nova, Grendel, Adder, +2 random, 2 points of elementals x2 - buy one extra
UrbanMech x4
##Command: Dire Wolf, Summoner, Stormcrow, Shadow Cat, Mist Lynx x1 (2) - buy two [Buy TWO, needed for Summoner and Stormcrow]
##Heavy Striker: Gargoyle, Hellbringer, Mad Dog, Ice Ferret, Viper x1 (2) - buy two [Buy TWO]
#Fire: Warhawk, Nova Cat, Cougar, Kit Fox, Fire Moth x1 - buy two [ Buy ONE, buy extra Kit Fox from ebay]
#Support: Night Gyr, Linebacker, Black Lanner, Battle Cobra, Arctic Cheetah (x1) - buy one [Buy ONE?]
#Heavy Battle: Turkina, Kingfisher, Crossbow, Ebon Jaguar, Huntsman (x1) - buy one [Buy ONE?]
Heavy: Stone Rhino (Behemoth), Supernova, Marauder IIC, Warhammer IIC, Hunchback IIC (x1) - buy one [ Consider dropping, buy Hunchback IIC from ebay]
Striker: Vapor Eagle, Conjurer, Horned Owl, Incubus, Piranha [ignore]
Ad Hoc: Kodiak, Fire Falcon, Hellion, Howler, Pack Hunter - buy one [Ignore, but one Kodiak from ebay]
##Elementals x1 - buy three [Buy TWO, have three elemental stars, two with bland faction camo]
9+1 Assault Mechs
2x Dire Wolf 100 Tons - Fire support. Wolf & Smoke Jaguar.
?x Kodiak 100 Tons - Close assault. Ghost Bear totem mech.
[0x] Stone Rhino 100 Tons - Fire support. Smoke Jaguar rare.
2x Executioner 95 Tons - Fast assault. Ghost Bear and Smoke Jaguar, dispersed.
Turkina 95 Tons - LATE Fire support. Jade Falcon totem mech.
Kingfisher 90 Tons - Assault. Ghost Bear.
[0x] Supernova 90 Tons - Laser fire support, not-Omni. Nova Cat.
Warhawk 85 Tons - Fire support. Smoke Jaguar primarily, Jade Falcon, Ghost Bear
[0x] Marauder IIC 85 Tons - LATE Fire support, not-Omni. Ghost Bear or Jade Falcon. Earlier for Home clans.
2x Gargoyle 80 Tons - Fast assault. Clan Wolf
[0x] Warhammer IIC 80 Tons - Fire Support, not-Omni. Snow Raven
Heavy Mechs
2x Timber Wolf 75 Tons - Fast assault. Wolf totem mech, dispersed.
Night Gyr 70 Tons - LATE Fire Support. Jade Falcon
2x Summoner 70 Tons - Fast heavy. Jade Falcon mech, dispersed.
Nova Cat 70 Tons - LATE Fire support. Nova Cat totem mech, copy of Night Gyr.
2x Hellbringer 65 tons - Fire support. Hells Horses, Jade Falcon.
Linebacker 65 Tons - LATE Fast Heavy. Wolf only.
Crossbow 65 Tons - Fast Heavy, early omni. Steel Viper.
Ebon Jaguar 65 Tons - LATE Fire support, replacement for Hellbringer. Smoke Jaguar totem mech.
2x Mad Dog 60 Tons - Fire Support. Smoke Jaguar, Ghost Bear, ubiquitous.
Medium Mechs
2x Stormcrow 55 Tons - Line mech. Smoke Jaguar, ubiquitous
Black Lanner 55 Tons - LATE Fast strike. Jade Falcon totem mech.
0x Vapor Eagle 55 Tons - LATE Fast medium. Steel Viper, Jade Falcon as isorla. Not required.
2x Nova 50 tons - Fast medium. Out of production, ubiquitous.
Huntsman 50 Tons - LATE Line Mech. Nova Cat.
[0x] Hunchack IIC 50 Tons - Line mech. Very common, especially Smoke Jaguar and Jade Falcon.
0x Conjurer 50 Tons - Second Line, not omni. Uncommon, ubiquitous
2x Grendel 45 Tons - Fast medium. Diamond Shark, ubiquitous for sale.
2x Shadow Cat 45 Tons - Line medium. Nova Cat, sold to Wolf and Smoke Jaguar.
2x Ice Ferret 45 Tons - Fast support. Wolf only.
2x Viper 40 Tons - Fast strike. Fire Mandrill, Ghost Bear.
Battle Cobra 40 Tons - Fast support. Steel Viper.
Light Mechs
2x Adder 35 Tons - Light fire support. Star Adder, common
Cougar 35 Tons - LATE Fast support. Jade Falcon.
0x Horned Owl 35 Tons - Light line. ??
Kit Fox 30 Tons - Light support. Cloud Cobra, Jade Falcon.
Arctic Cheetah 30 Tons - LATE Recon. Ice Hellion, Smoke Jaguar
0x Incubus 30 Tons - Recon, not omni. Jade Falcon.
?x Hellion 30 Tons - LATE Recon. Ice Hellion.
?x Pack Hunter 30 Tons - LATE Skirmish. Wolf-In-Exile
2x Mist Lynx 25 Tons - Recon. Smoke Jaguar, but common.
?x Fire Falcon 25 Tons - LATE Fire Support. Jade Falcon totem mech.
Fire Moth 20 Tons - Recon. Ghost Bear
0x Piranha 20 Tons - LATE Anti-infantry. Diamond Shark
?x Howler 20 Tons - Skirmisher, not omni. Jade Falcon.
1x Star Colonel pledge
1x Bloodnamed pledge
1x Retaliation force
2x UrbanMech
plus merch
STOP 18/12 finalised my selection. Deadline is 22/12.
Could not cancel Bloodnamed pledge and upgrade so had $75 credit only.
Added: $129.50 including postage.
1x Inner Sphere Retaliation $40
1x Urban Lance $20
1x Record Sheets Wave 1 @$5
2x Record Sheets Wave 2 @$5
1x Neoprene Map Set $120 Grassland/Alpine Map, Grassland/Desert Map, Grassland/Lunar Map, Grassland/Savanna and Strana Mechty Map. Map case.
Following occurs:
Limited clan, but with lots of salvage packs.
More extensive IS forces.
Clan:
(6A) 2x Dire Wolf, 2x Executioner, Warhawk, Gargoyle
(7H) 3x Timber Wolf, Summoner, Nova Cat, Hellbringer, Mad Dog
(8M) Stormcrow, 2x Nova, 2x Grendel, Shadow Cat, Ice Ferret, Viper
(6L) 2x Adder, Cougar, Kit Fox, Mist Lynx, Fire Moth
(10E) Makes two depleted stars of elementals 6x5, 3x4 and 1x3 suit points.
+17 random Clan mechs
This is a portion of one section of a very big .txt doc that covers my hobby planning expenditure and list building for just under a decade.
I log what I actually do.
Of particular note here are the force divisions, which accounted for the second Command lance pack which I didnt get, and thanks to my notes I now know I must rectify. These forces look rather fair. Commants welcome:
I also started a mini dossier based on post 3050 mechs, which I frankly don't know too well. I can rattle off the speed and armament of every 3025 mech, and know all the 3050 designs too, but not their configuations in full.
But I cant tell you what mechs are in most of the later books and wont recognise most from images. I looked through Sarna to get info of which mech belonged to which clan, and helped me decide whether I wanted them. By and large I did not. even so I was not able to satisfactorily make a number of forces for my clanners. I will have to see what salvage boxes come out of the magic bag anyway, so I stopped trying once I confirmed that most of the later clan stars are not of immediate value.
I just got one of every 'Mech on offer, with the exception of the 10 pack as I already had the Beginner/ATOAC boxes. Then got a second box Star (so another Mad Cat/Executioner/Grendel/etc.), and then a second Ad Hoc star for a friend.
Didn't bother with the Elementals as I already have 15 bases of metal Elementsl (and they have 3 minis per base, otherwise you get "Elemental Mosh Pit" syndrome).
I do wish I'd picked up some ComStar dice though...
H.B.M.C. wrote: I just got one of every 'Mech on offer, with the exception of the 10 pack as I already had the Beginner/ATOAC boxes. Then got a second box Star (so another Mad Cat/Executioner/Grendel/etc.), and then a second Ad Hoc star for a friend.
Didn't bother with the Elementals as I already have 15 bases of metal Elementsl (and they have 3 minis per base, otherwise you get "Elemental Mosh Pit" syndrome).
I do wish I'd picked up some ComStar dice though...
eh it's not like comstar are a real faction anyway
Dry your tears, the dice are not high quality. I toyed with the idea of cancelling mine.
I would not want three to a base elementals, it wouldn't sit right with me. However I am liking more and more the idea of having 3-5 elementals per base, it looks more irregular and more natural and consider the 9 bases I got to be a blessing in disguise.
I do think not buying the elementals to be a mistake, they are much better scaled and sculpted than the metal ones, when you get yours from the core sets you will see this for yourself and say 'why didn't I pick up a box (or two) of these'.
Orlanth wrote: Dry your tears, the dice are not high quality. I toyed with the idea of cancelling mine.
Mine appear to be perfectly fine. Not sure what the problem with them was.
Orlanth wrote: I would not want three to a base elementals, it wouldn't sit right with me.
It's a practicality thing. I own a lot of Battle Armour, and trying to fit, say, 4 Kanazuchi or, worse, 5 Golems onto a single hex base? No. They're too big. It's the "Elemental Mosh Pit" issue I talked about. Even smaller ones like Gnomes look weird when you mash 5 of them onto a base.
Orlanth wrote: I do think not buying the elementals to be a mistake, they are much better scaled and sculpted than the metal ones, when you get yours from the core sets you will see this for yourself and say 'why didn't I pick up a box (or two) of these'.
I have plenty of Elementals, of multiple different varieties (regular, Gnome, Rogue Bear, Golem, Corona, etc.). I'll be fine.
I am glad that your dice came out well but there were a lot of flaws. I have a couple of photos below showing the unevenness. Honestly it was kind of hard to tell at first just from holding them but when you lined them up against a flat surface it became apparent how bad the issues were.
Definitely dodged some autocannon bullets on the dice myself. I had considered getting more, but ended up with only the Wolf’s Dragoons ones from my pledge. They are okay, but noticeably not the same size, and I would never trust them for any actual gaming. Glad I went with other stuff instead of more dice.
totalfailure wrote: Definitely dodged some autocannon bullets on the dice myself. I had considered getting more, but ended up with only the Wolf’s Dragoons ones from my pledge. They are okay, but noticeably not the same size, and I would never trust them for any actual gaming. Glad I went with other stuff instead of more dice.
I spent some on extra Davion dice so that was kind of annoying. The bigger loss was getting a one of each dice set to use as a courtesy to opponents/potential display item. They are so irregular and generally off that they are suitable for neither. Really hoping CGL comes through with something on that even if it is just credit for their store.
I wanted to get the complete dice set, but as CGL has yet to provide any indication of a valid resolution to the problem other than "we're working on it" I played it safe.
I think I'll just use the matched trio (two of one shade of grey, one of another) of Spirit Cat dice that I randomly got in one of the Chessex "Pound o' Dice" bags, even if they are Dark Age-themed. I've had them for about 8 years and never even played Battletech (only the Clix game) so getting into Battletech now I think it's kind of a funny coincidence, even if I'd prefer more of them.
Alpharius Walks wrote: I am glad that your dice came out well but there were a lot of flaws. I have a couple of photos below showing the unevenness. Honestly it was kind of hard to tell at first just from holding them but when you lined them up against a flat surface it became apparent how bad the issues were.
So some of them are slightly smaller than the others? Or is it that some of them aren't actually cubes?
Alpharius Walks wrote: I am glad that your dice came out well but there were a lot of flaws. I have a couple of photos below showing the unevenness. Honestly it was kind of hard to tell at first just from holding them but when you lined them up against a flat surface it became apparent how bad the issues were.
So some of them are slightly smaller than the others? Or is it that some of them aren't actually cubes?
In my case two of my dice were not actually cubes. In the worst case the one corner was distorted such that looking down on it the angle was at off by at least 5 degrees (so an 85 degree angle). It almost looks like it was pulled out of the mold while not completely solid and that corner stuck. I'll post a picture if I can find them (I gave them to my kids so they could literally be buried at this point).
I've seen pics elsewhere of similar looking dice that are pretty visibly warped and not cube-like at all. Some looked like they had been stretched when they were pulled from the mold and I saw a few that looked like the mold was incompletely filled, i.e. they looked like a third of the die was missing.
BrianDavion wrote: I've just started reading it, but I've heard the winner is
Spoiler:
clan wolf
Well...
Spoiler:
Not only is it clan wolf, but they reduce the Falcons to non-entity and manage to turn on the Dragoons. All the while Devlin Stone goes "just as I planned it all!!!".
BrianDavion wrote: I've just started reading it, but I've heard the winner is
Spoiler:
clan wolf
Well...
Spoiler:
Not only is it clan wolf, but they reduce the Falcons to non-entity and manage to turn on the Dragoons. All the while Devlin Stone goes "just as I planned it all!!!".
Are the new KSBT minis a larger scale than the old Ral Partha/Ironwind metals? I was just watching a YouTube video and either they're significantly larger or the guy has tiny hands that I never noticed, lol. Or that I'm remembering the old 1/285 scale wrong I suppose...
They're definitely larger than the old minis, even the ones that got resculpts.
As people will have said previously, the so called 1:285 scale thing wasn't even a suggestion, the scale was all over the place. I've been comparing them over the past few weeks, the odd one is close in height, but width and bulk wise, the new ones are universally larger.
I've been trying to work out which of my old mechs would work with the new ones and decided that there are almost none that I'd be happy sticking on the table now. Pandora's Box has been opened, I have said "sod it!" and bought lots and lots of the new ones to basically replace 30 years of mech collecting.
Turns out that I'm picky about scale... which is why I'm not going to start playing any Star Trek games until I buy a 3d printer so I can get things done right.
My handful of IWM models all look wrong aside the KS plastics, but there's no going back for me. The new plastics are too awesome, and their consistent scale within themselves is excellent.
Chillreaper wrote: They're definitely larger than the old minis, even the ones that got resculpts.
As people will have said previously, the so called 1:285 scale thing wasn't even a suggestion, the scale was all over the place. I've been comparing them over the past few weeks, the odd one is close in height, but width and bulk wise, the new ones are universally larger.
I've been trying to work out which of my old mechs would work with the new ones and decided that there are almost none that I'd be happy sticking on the table now. Pandora's Box has been opened, I have said "sod it!" and bought lots and lots of the new ones to basically replace 30 years of mech collecting.
Turns out that I'm picky about scale... which is why I'm not going to start playing any Star Trek games until I buy a 3d printer so I can get things done right.
You cant take scale from the mechs at all, as they changed a lot too. Early Battletech was somewhat more sensible in that there was little difference in size between a light and an assault mech, the latter was just far more bulky. Late edition battletech for a while had a nonsense where lights were half the height of assaults, with other mechs grading inbetween. This made far less sense doubling the dimensions cubes the volume. The same scale illustration reduced vehicles to about the size of mechs feet.
The currently produced designs are a fair balance with some effort to rescale some miniatures and fix others.
For me the scale was not from the mechs or vehicles but from the people. To back up my old school mechs (80's sculpts) I used Epic imperial Guard. The infantry looked ok compared to the mechs and due to the lack of other reference I used that for scaling. I still do.
The new line is to scale, internally. The previous lines had massive scale issues- you might end up with light mechs bigger than assault mechs, or assault mechs looking up to mediums. They are undoubtedly out of scale with the older minis- but many of them are as well. The most notorious were the old starter set Catapult, which was often repurposed as a Raven because it was so small, and the plastech Fatapult which looked like it had eaten 2 Atlases. Keep in mind.... those were both plastic models of the same mech.
I hasten to add that all these mechs are still usable- treat them as different variants, or being produced by different manufacturers, or field modifications. It's a big galaxy.
Gitzbitah wrote: The new line is to scale, internally. The previous lines had massive scale issues- you might end up with light mechs bigger than assault mechs, or assault mechs looking up to mediums. They are undoubtedly out of scale with the older minis- but many of them are as well. The most notorious were the old starter set Catapult, which was often repurposed as a Raven because it was so small, and the plastech Fatapult which looked like it had eaten 2 Atlases. Keep in mind.... those were both plastic models of the same mech.
The out-of-scale miniatures and varying degrees of artistry (and talent) in the preexisting lines of Battletech miniatures was part of what gave the game its charm. It had a very underdog feel, and in a certain way, could help solidify the rickety world of 3025 with similar rickety models.
That's what I used to tell myself at least. Now that the new plastics are out, I say "to hell with charm and underdogs, give me top of the line minis." Now I can show Btech and alpha strike to people without beginning every conversation with "Okay, I know the minis aren't great, but..."
Some of those plastech models... and then the anniversary box set models... even a lot of the IWM models... they're just bad. Scaling wasn't even taken into consideration. Why is the Kit Fox just as big as the King Crab? Why are all of the cockpits different scales?
While i'ts more likely and issue of sculpting a lighter mech/vehicle could be larger than a heavier one (especially armoured vehicles) depending on how it's made,
just look at some of the tanks developed between WWI and WWII, while physically large and imposing their thin armour meant they were larger than later designs which both had thicker armour and were deliberately made lower and shorter to make them less easy to see and target
As others have said when you compare the old stuff to the new range it is instantly noticeable. That did make some stuff obsolete or at least makes me reluctant to put it on the table. There is no going back though, the new quality is a big jump.
Thanks for all the above confirmations. I just wasn't sure if there was an overall change (even with the wiggle room that every scale range affords for even the same weight/mass classes I assume) or if I was imagining it. The minis looked nice FWIW coming from a non-BT player.
I like the new figures because they look like big honkin' war robots. Too many of the old mechs looked far too much like 80's Transformers (unsurprising due to the Robotech mech connection), and while some love that look, it just wasn't for me. It used to be that with a few exceptions, I really only liked the looks of the digitigrade mechs like Catapults, Daishi and Timberwolves, but the new Catalyst mechs are making me like the humanoid ones more and more.
The Wave 2 mechs are really freaking awesome and even as a layman to the universe, some of the non-posterboy mechs that I had never heard of (like the Crockett) look absolutely sweet.
Rocked my CLAN GHOST BEAR shirt today for the first time- very solid. I got an XL and definitely should have gone for a smaller size, but that's on me. Also I wish they had gone w/ grey or something instead of black. I don't really wear much black but that's not CGL;s issue. 10/10, will keep in the t-shirt rotation.
You may have sensed that psychic scream last week when our plastics factory confirmed what we all feared, letting us know they weren't going to make the shipping deadline for Wave 2. I've been screaming in private and shouting politely (if there is such a thing) in conference ever since, trying to make the factory keep to the promises and schedules THEY set. Then there were a few days of denial, then a few days of anger and bargaining, leaving me only with depression and acceptance.
Bottom line: Wave 2 product will not leave China until after Chinese New Year.
IIf any of you backers are angry or disappointed, amp that up to “10” and you'll have an idea how everyone at CGL feels. We put so much effort into hitting our targets for each deadline (again, all set by the plastics factory), at the end pushing 12-16 hour days while coordinating no less than 8 different production lines in China, and had even resigned ourselves to paying exorbitant shipping rates to move everything before CNY. And all the other factories hit the deadline!
That's what really stings. We had contingency plans in place so if one of our auxiliary lines went down the rabbit hole, we could cope. Maybe even two of them, depending on which ones.
But plastics... That's our main product: The ForcePacks. The #1 item(s) most people are still waiting to claim from their Rewards. Even if the factory had missed by 10-20%, failing to deliver the last 2-3 ForcePacks, we might have found a way to deliver Wave 2 and just create a minor 3rd wave later on.
It was possible, anyway, until they told us how short they were going to be.
The last possible day they could, they told us that they would be short sixty percent of our product. That's right. They could only ship us six of the remaining fifteen ForcePacks. WTH??
I’m ranting a bit right now, because it's still a very raw wound. I wouldn’t have even been coherent last week. And my “Navy language” would have been VERY prevalent. CGL staff worked their backsides off, hitting the necessary deadlines on a calendar that they built. "Do this and we can hit your CNY deadline." That's what they promised. So we did. We didn't miss one of those critical dates that I am aware of.
What we're hearing from the factory (by way of reason or excuse) is that parts of China are locking down again because of COVID, and workers have been walking off the job at the factories since late December or early January. We've heard that from more sources than China, recently, so maybe it's at least somewhat true. But 60%? Hard to image they were ever going to deliver the full Wave 2 product list to us as originally promised. That is was not a matter of if they would fail, but by how much. Or so it seems to us.
So, where does that leave us?
We’ve been frantically shutting down our shipping plans this week, delaying all factories from shipping until after CNY. There is also a global container shortage right now thanks to COVID and various shutdowns/lockdowns, and shipping a single container is about twice as expensive as it was two months ago. Despite that, we were prepared to fork it over to get Wave 2 out to all of you on time—until this happened. Delivering Wave 2 was going to come with an additional $100k in "premium services" costs. If we'd had to pay those on top of losing the Wave 2 delivery schedule? That might have likely meant layoffs and product release rollbacks. Looks like we (barely) avoided that.
The factory promises(!) they will have all ForcePacks finished before the end of March. (Of course, I made them admit that was with the caveat that their workforce returns on time from CNY!) I'm betting April 1-15 is more likely. So let's pencil that in.
All other factories are ready to ship. Still! So, assuming this one gets their act together, we will move all of Wave 2 toward the shipping hubs in April. That sets an arrival at the main hubs on or around May 15th. And fulfillment starting by the end of May for a mostly-June delivery.
Like I said up top. Second verse. Same as the F*@$&##^ first.
[For our Asian backers, a slight ray of better news. Our Asian partner, VFI, has already picked up a lot of the material, and they will be back at this before anyone else in March, so this time Asia should fulfill in a timely manner with the rest of the world. Or so they say.]
I'm not sure what else to publish in this part of the Update. I hate having to come in and dump a truckload of bad news like this. We will put some production vids at the bottom of the Update, because as part of the factory’s chagrin they've been awesome recently in sending us production shots and videos. See how hard we are working! Like that makes up for blowing up our deadlines and Wave 2 shipment. (Yep, still some anger left in there. ARGH…. Okay, moving on...)
In the meantime, everyone at CGL wants to thank our backers for the awesome support you've showed us, and the incredible loyalty and love you have for BattleTech. We all know this is only possible because of you! And we still have lots of great plans for the future! We just need to get there!
Not even the Star League got it right the first time, either, I guess.
Best wishes,
Loren Coleman, and the CGL staff
(Fourteen curse words were discovered and humanely destroyed in the review of this message.)
You may have sensed that psychic scream last week when our plastics factory confirmed what we all feared, letting us know they weren't going to make the shipping deadline for Wave 2. I've been screaming in private and shouting politely (if there is such a thing) in conference ever since, trying to make the factory keep to the promises and schedules THEY set. Then there were a few days of denial, then a few days of anger and bargaining, leaving me only with depression and acceptance.
Bottom line: Wave 2 product will not leave China until after Chinese New Year.
IIf any of you backers are angry or disappointed, amp that up to “10” and you'll have an idea how everyone at CGL feels. We put so much effort into hitting our targets for each deadline (again, all set by the plastics factory), at the end pushing 12-16 hour days while coordinating no less than 8 different production lines in China, and had even resigned ourselves to paying exorbitant shipping rates to move everything before CNY. And all the other factories hit the deadline!
That's what really stings. We had contingency plans in place so if one of our auxiliary lines went down the rabbit hole, we could cope. Maybe even two of them, depending on which ones.
But plastics... That's our main product: The ForcePacks. The #1 item(s) most people are still waiting to claim from their Rewards. Even if the factory had missed by 10-20%, failing to deliver the last 2-3 ForcePacks, we might have found a way to deliver Wave 2 and just create a minor 3rd wave later on.
It was possible, anyway, until they told us how short they were going to be.
The last possible day they could, they told us that they would be short sixty percent of our product. That's right. They could only ship us six of the remaining fifteen ForcePacks. WTH??
I’m ranting a bit right now, because it's still a very raw wound. I wouldn’t have even been coherent last week. And my “Navy language” would have been VERY prevalent. CGL staff worked their backsides off, hitting the necessary deadlines on a calendar that they built. "Do this and we can hit your CNY deadline." That's what they promised. So we did. We didn't miss one of those critical dates that I am aware of.
What we're hearing from the factory (by way of reason or excuse) is that parts of China are locking down again because of COVID, and workers have been walking off the job at the factories since late December or early January. We've heard that from more sources than China, recently, so maybe it's at least somewhat true. But 60%? Hard to image they were ever going to deliver the full Wave 2 product list to us as originally promised. That is was not a matter of if they would fail, but by how much. Or so it seems to us.
So, where does that leave us?
We’ve been frantically shutting down our shipping plans this week, delaying all factories from shipping until after CNY. There is also a global container shortage right now thanks to COVID and various shutdowns/lockdowns, and shipping a single container is about twice as expensive as it was two months ago. Despite that, we were prepared to fork it over to get Wave 2 out to all of you on time—until this happened. Delivering Wave 2 was going to come with an additional $100k in "premium services" costs. If we'd had to pay those on top of losing the Wave 2 delivery schedule? That might have likely meant layoffs and product release rollbacks. Looks like we (barely) avoided that.
The factory promises(!) they will have all ForcePacks finished before the end of March. (Of course, I made them admit that was with the caveat that their workforce returns on time from CNY!) I'm betting April 1-15 is more likely. So let's pencil that in.
All other factories are ready to ship. Still! So, assuming this one gets their act together, we will move all of Wave 2 toward the shipping hubs in April. That sets an arrival at the main hubs on or around May 15th. And fulfillment starting by the end of May for a mostly-June delivery.
Like I said up top. Second verse. Same as the F*@$&##^ first.
[For our Asian backers, a slight ray of better news. Our Asian partner, VFI, has already picked up a lot of the material, and they will be back at this before anyone else in March, so this time Asia should fulfill in a timely manner with the rest of the world. Or so they say.]
I'm not sure what else to publish in this part of the Update. I hate having to come in and dump a truckload of bad news like this. We will put some production vids at the bottom of the Update, because as part of the factory’s chagrin they've been awesome recently in sending us production shots and videos. See how hard we are working! Like that makes up for blowing up our deadlines and Wave 2 shipment. (Yep, still some anger left in there. ARGH…. Okay, moving on...)
In the meantime, everyone at CGL wants to thank our backers for the awesome support you've showed us, and the incredible loyalty and love you have for BattleTech. We all know this is only possible because of you! And we still have lots of great plans for the future! We just need to get there!
Not even the Star League got it right the first time, either, I guess.
Best wishes,
Loren Coleman, and the CGL staff
(Fourteen curse words were discovered and humanely destroyed in the review of this message.)
ComStar has been editing messages for 'profanity' again, I wonder what else the robes have been redacting.
Is there somewhere on those record sheets where it tells you how many heat sinks a mech has? I mean, you can always scribble it in, but given all the other info it seems pertinent.
Edit: Nevermind, found it by the heat scale thingy.
Project Update #162: BATTLETECH: CLAN INVASION by Catalyst Games
Spoiler:
Fall From Glory epub, Operations: Klondike POD, Fang & Claw fiction, and other PDFs
Hey backers!
We're incredibly happy to announce that every backer of Warrior and above should be receiving an email by this coming Monday night notifying you all that you can go grab a digital copy of the author's definitive edition of the novel Fall From Glory (Founding of the Clans, Book One)!
For those that want a physical copy (and there are many of you!), we're releasing it first digitally to backers, as promised. In roughly two weeks we'll then make it available to the general public, which will also include the option for ordering a Print on Demand copy.
We're also pleased to announce that the BattleTech: Historical Operation Klondike sourcebook is available just now for Print on Demand as well.
This sourcebook remains one of our all-time favorites, and is a perfect companion to the Founding of the Clans trilogy. While the PDF has been continously available, it's been out of print for a lot of years. It's great to have it back available for physical copies for shelves.
And even more fiction! We've got the first of of the Honor & Glory fiction (the short story, Fang & Claw), available for all Ristar backers and above (once more, look for that email by this coming Monday night).
Finally, we're also happy to make the PDF for the new vintage-cover printing of Strategic Operations and Campaign Operationsavailable to those that ordered them; again, you who ordered these books will be receiving an email by this coming Monday night to go and claim the PDFs (physical books will be shipping later)!
As a final aside, China production is just starting to come back on line. However, for those that are not aware, China has one of the most unusual worker turnovers in the world. People come from all over China to work for a year, and then when they go back home for Chinese New Year, a large chunk of them stay home. So then every year manufacturers are "back" right after Chinese New Year, but it actually takes a week or three or them to rehire and retrain the large portion of their workers that didn't return.
What all of that means is that we do not yet have an update of when they will finish production and start shipping. But we are mostly through the other side, and hopeful to have updates within that next week or two timeframe.
In the meantime, we hope you enjoy some great fiction!
BattleTech wrote:Continuing our series of print-on-demand revivals of long-out-of-print sourcebooks, we're pleased to offer one of our longtime favorites, Historical: Operation Klondike - now available in PDF and POD at http://ow.ly/mjpl50DPqls
Finally, we're also happy to make the PDF for the new vintage-cover printing of Strategic Operations and Campaign Operationsavailable to those that ordered them; again, you who ordered these books will be receiving an email by this coming Monday night to go and claim the PDFs (physical books will be shipping later)!
Oh cool.
Very happy to get my hands on the revised Campaign Operations.
I imagine that the unit rating for Chaos Campaign rules will still be functionally broken.
Just got an email from CGL about them launching their new web site, and the first four ForcePacks are on there:
Inner Sphere Command Lance: Marauder, Archer, Valkyrie, and Stinger.
Clan Command Star: Dire Wolf, Summoner, Stormcrow, Mist Lynx, Shadow Cat
Inner Sphere Battle Lance: Warhammer, Rifleman, Phoenix Hawk, Wasp
Clan Heavy Striker Star: Gargoyle, Hellbringer, Mad Dog, Ice Ferret, and Viper
New minis and boxes look good. Size of the minis relative to each other in the IS Direct Fire lance look a little off (like the orion seems small) but probably perspective of that pic to blame.
I do really like the new take on the Crusader - badly wish they would sell the stl file for that one so I could print it bigger scale
petrov27 wrote: New minis and boxes look good. Size of the minis relative to each other in the IS Direct Fire lance look a little off (like the orion seems small) but probably perspective of that pic to blame.
I do really like the new take on the Crusader - badly wish they would sell the stl file for that one so I could print it bigger scale
Well it is standing between 2 100 ton beast. It looks like its prolly a little taller but similar bulk to the 10 ton lighter crusader nearby.
And I agree with you that crusader looks sweet. All my Kickstarter stuff was wave 1 but I'll be grabbing that lance pack at retail.
Longbow looks amazing. I think the Trebuchet has been juicing!
Not a fan of that Stalker though. Seems with each redesign that thing goes through it gets further and further away from the "Front of the space shuttle on legs!" aesthetic.
The Battletech video game made me really appreciate the Trebuchet, might need to grab this pack and make a fitting tribute. The others also look great, it's taking everything in me not to go head first into these new plastic releases since I'll never use them for anything.
Stormonu wrote: I'm not too familiar with the clan mechs - which ones are those, and specifically, what's the one that looks a bit like the inner sphere Wolverine?
In that lot we have the Horned Owl, a speedy jumpy Clan 2nd Line light 'Mech armed with pulse lasers, a Vixen, a very speedy Clan 2nd Line light 'Mech armed with lots of lasers and machine guns, a Piranha, a super-speedy Clan 2nd Line light 'Mech whose claim to fame is the 12 Machine guns it has (if that thing is behind you, you will probably die), a Conjurer, a 50-ton Clan 2nd Line medium 'Mech that is, for all intents and purposes, a Wolverine IIC, and finally the Goshawk, a fast jumpy 55-ton Clan 2nd Line medium 'Mech filled with lasers, missiles and machine guns.
Stormonu wrote: I'm not too familiar with the clan mechs - which ones are those, and specifically, what's the one that looks a bit like the inner sphere Wolverine?
That Wolverine looking one is the Wolverine IIC.
Well, it would be called that, if "Wolverine" wasn't a dirty word...
So, it's the Conjurer, or Hellhound to you freebirths.
Vejut wrote: Is that still a thing? I've been tempted, but I thought it was locked a while ago.
Wave 2 is currently arriving at the distribution points and backers should get their stuff from June. There's rumours of it being unlocked before shipping as some people need replacements / refunds (for things like the dice) and other people want to add stuff now they've seen the samples (like the books).
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Stormonu wrote: I'm not too familiar with the clan mechs - which ones are those, and specifically, what's the one that looks a bit like the inner sphere Wolverine?
Sorry - I'll try to remember to copy the labels over next time!
Honestly, at this stage its probably better to just get the stuff at retail. Unless you're adding an additional Star Colonel pledge to your order (and perhaps not even then), miniature market and others are offering the various lance/star packs for less than what it costs kickstarter backers to purchase them. The only real reason to buy them through the pledge manager at this point is if you really want to get more salvage boxes, 6+ months ago it was a slightly different story because you were paying for the convenience of hypothetically getting the product a couple months prior to it hitting retail and ensuring that the stock was available to you, now with the schedule slippages though it looks like retailers are going to be receiving the stuff roughly at the same time as backers are anyway, so theres no time value to be had from the PM.
totalfailure wrote: You can’t add anything, and the only thing likely to be ‘unlocked’ is the ability to change your address before shipping. Not buy more stuff.
As I said, it's a rumour - apparently based off a comment by CGI on KS update 161 -
We may reopen the PM briefly in February. That's being looked at by CrowdOx. Thanks to China, we have a little extra time...
But February has been and gone, so it looks unlikely.
The final five shipping containers that contain all of the plastic miniatures from Wave two: four containers are still booked to depart China on 5/1; one of the containers will depart on 5/5. Once we have confirmation of actual shipping, we'll let everyone know.
Jenner looks weird, but it doesn't matter. I have 4 Jenners, 3 Panthers, 2 Blackjacks and 2 Wolfhounds already, so it's not a big deal.
Now that Clan Fire Star... oooh... some nice things in there.
Having a plastic Dasher is great, that Masakari looks boss, the Nova Cat is beefy, the Cougar looks good and the Uller is incredible. Looking forward to that one.
After the new TROs have only Mechs, I guiess we will never see Plastic Vehicles...
Someone asked about a CityMech Box (included in another Kickstarter) in the future, but there are no plans for such a Box at this Time, only a Book that feature Vehicles (which is not a TRO) will come.
As an old school 3025 player that is instant recognisable as a Jenner. I think they did a good job and not really weird at all.
I wasn't in a position to go as crazy as I would have liked with this campaign, but I did buy two of the striker lances, and most boxes I could only afford one of, and many of the later clan design boxsets I didn't buy at all. I will be hoping to buy singles at a later date.
I am glad I bought an extra Striker lance, these are good sculpts in my eye and mins the Wolfhound these are some of my favourite mechs from my hands down favourite source in Battletech.
The Fire Star is nicely done, that is one of two stars I bought an extra one of, because got to love me some Kit Fox, because I am Jade Falcon. Cougar and Warhawk also help, I could have done with something better than a filthy cat, but its a good mech so I will let that slide. The 3050 mechs should have been separated out from other lesser designs from a post-nostalgic age.
Are any of these available via general retail yet, and if so, what's the rough price point per lance/box? I'm having some powerful BattleTech nostalgia all of a sudden.
Yeah the first wave is out and about MSRP is 20$/25$ depending on how many mechs in the box. Although a lot of the online shops are sold out atm.
I've seen the same rumour beast but more importantly I wouldn't use the current TRO release which are aimed at this Kickstarter as any sort of prediction for what will be in next Kickstarter.
Mr. Grey wrote: Are any of these available via general retail yet, and if so, what's the rough price point per lance/box? I'm having some powerful BattleTech nostalgia all of a sudden.
Retailer backers of the KS had all the Wave 1 stuff, and the first four ForcePacks had a limited release -
Inner Sphere Command Lance: Marauder, Archer, Valkyrie, and Stinger.
Clan Command Star: Dire Wolf, Summoner, Stormcrow, Mist Lynx, Shadow Cat
Inner Sphere Battle Lance: Warhammer, Rifleman, Phoenix Hawk, Wasp
Clan Heavy Striker Star: Gargoyle, Hellbringer, Mad Dog, Ice Ferret, and Viper
In the UK the only box still in stock anywhere is the Clan Elemental Star.
Mr. Grey wrote: Are any of these available via general retail yet, and if so, what's the rough price point per lance/box? I'm having some powerful BattleTech nostalgia all of a sudden.
Retailer backers of the KS had all the Wave 1 stuff, and the first four ForcePacks had a limited release -
Inner Sphere Command Lance: Marauder, Archer, Valkyrie, and Stinger.
Clan Command Star: Dire Wolf, Summoner, Stormcrow, Mist Lynx, Shadow Cat
Inner Sphere Battle Lance: Warhammer, Rifleman, Phoenix Hawk, Wasp
Clan Heavy Striker Star: Gargoyle, Hellbringer, Mad Dog, Ice Ferret, and Viper
In the UK the only box still in stock anywhere is the Clan Elemental Star.
Zatu have had a recent restock of the Clan Invasion box set. It's now saying 5+ available
Mr. Grey wrote: Are any of these available via general retail yet, and if so, what's the rough price point per lance/box? I'm having some powerful BattleTech nostalgia all of a sudden.
Lances are $20, Stars are $25.
Things are a bit weird though as there is a bit of a drip-feed going, with some places getting some stuff early or randomly. I'm kicking myself for not getting an Elemental Star off the shelf at my FLIS, as it's basically a crapshoot of when it will finally release en masse.
Right now though?
You can relatively reliably find:
Clan Invasion box $49.99
Clan Command Star $24.99
Clan Heavy Striker Star $24.99
Inner Sphere Command Lance $19.99
The Inner Sphere Battle Lance and Clan Elemental Star both had a release back in February/March...and then got relegated right back to "Preorder" status on Miniature Market and a few other spots I keep an eye on things. No idea why that happened.
Yeah I looked around a bit, $20-25ish retail is a bargain. Some really cool looking Mechs there. Maybe a bit later this year I'll dive back into Battletech.
H.B.M.C. wrote: It looks weird because it's very compact and curvy/smooth. I'm used to the more boxy style, either artwork of miniature.
It's instantly recognisable as a Jenner as a Jenner has a unique silhouette.
You are doing it wrong. 3025 mechs should be compared to the engineers style ink drawings from the 3025 book. Accept no substitutes, excepting minor changes to not completely replicate the unseen.
Mr. Grey wrote: Yeah I looked around a bit, $20-25ish retail is a bargain. Some really cool looking Mechs there. Maybe a bit later this year I'll dive back into Battletech.
Are you wanting Sphere or Clan? Don't forget that there's three "starter" products. Clan Invasion boxed set, "generic" Battletech boxed set, and the Beginner box.
The Beginner box is available for $19.99 and gets you two mechs, one of which(I want to say the Griffin?) is exclusive just to it. Can nab it from Barnes and Noble even.
The rumor comes from the comments section of the kickstarter itself, Catalyst posted that that was the plan for the next kickstarter sometime around the time the current kickstarter ended.
Mr. Grey wrote: Yeah I looked around a bit, $20-25ish retail is a bargain. Some really cool looking Mechs there. Maybe a bit later this year I'll dive back into Battletech.
Are you wanting Sphere or Clan? Don't forget that there's three "starter" products. Clan Invasion boxed set, "generic" Battletech boxed set, and the Beginner box.
The Beginner box is available for $19.99 and gets you two mechs, one of which(I want to say the Griffin?) is exclusive just to it. Can nab it from Barnes and Noble even.
Inner Sphere all the way. I don't even know what products are out there, so I wasn't aware of any starter products at all. I last played BattleTech probably 15 years ago. Have heard of Alpha Strike but don't exactly know what that is. My preference would be for the "classic" rules, if those are even still a thing.
Inner Sphere all the way. I don't even know what products are out there, so I wasn't aware of any starter products at all. I last played BattleTech probably 15 years ago. Have heard of Alpha Strike but don't exactly know what that is. My preference would be for the "classic" rules, if those are even still a thing.
Okay so:
Beginner Box. It's a Griffin and Wolverine, with Griffin being exclusive to the set as far as I know.
Spoiler:
A Game of Armored Combat(from what I've been told, this is "classic"? I never was into Battletech until the past few years, so cannot comment!)
Spoiler:
AGoAC gets you a Wolverine, Locust, Battlemaster, Awesome, Thunderbolt, Commando, Shadow Hawk, and Catapult.
Alpha Strike, from my understanding, is meant to be a bit faster playing but also larger in scope.
BattleTech has had the same basic rules since the earliest days with tweaks along the way. The MechWarrior: Dark Age was a collectible miniature "clix" game from Wizkids was the 'core' game after FASA closed shop, with the traditional pen and paper game continuing via a license as Classic BattleTech. Wizkids was acquired by Topps and made a division of that company. MechWarrior was put on hiatus in early 2008 and the Wizkids brand was closed shortly thereafter. At that time, the 'Classic' nomenclature was dropped from all new products produced by InMediaRes Productions who has the BattleTech license since 2007.
Inner Sphere all the way. I don't even know what products are out there, so I wasn't aware of any starter products at all. I last played BattleTech probably 15 years ago. Have heard of Alpha Strike but don't exactly know what that is. My preference would be for the "classic" rules, if those are even still a thing.
Okay so:
Beginner Box. It's a Griffin and Wolverine, with Griffin being exclusive to the set as far as I know.
Spoiler:
A Game of Armored Combat(from what I've been told, this is "classic"? I never was into Battletech until the past few years, so cannot comment!)
Spoiler:
AGoAC gets you a Wolverine, Locust, Battlemaster, Awesome, Thunderbolt, Commando, Shadow Hawk, and Catapult.
Alpha Strike, from my understanding, is meant to be a bit faster playing but also larger in scope.
I bought two Retaliation boxes, would have bought three but could not afford. Each includes the ten mechs from both the Beginner and Inner Sphere sets, including two Wolverines. It was the best bargain in the kickstarter and includes many of the best designs.
Orlanth wrote: Because it includes all the mechs from both boxsets. If they didn't include the second Wolverine people might complain.
Not the point I'm making. I'm wondering why they put a Wolverine in each box. It's not as if the Beginner's Box just has 2 of the 8 'Mechs from the main box; the Griffin is unique to that box, but both boxes have a Wolverine.
Why do 10 'Mechs, but one of them is a duplicate of one that's already there?
Orlanth wrote: Because it includes all the mechs from both boxsets. If they didn't include the second Wolverine people might complain.
Not the point I'm making. I'm wondering why they put a Wolverine in each box. It's not as if the Beginner's Box just has 2 of the 8 'Mechs from the main box; the Griffin is unique to that box, but both boxes have a Wolverine.
Why do 10 'Mechs, but one of them is a duplicate of one that's already there?
Had the molds already, it bulked out the number of models in the larger box, and most people don’t care if they have duplicates of some models.
Also not sure game wise if it is used by multiple factions, or just one army, I’m still far too new to Battletech.
The beauty of Battletech, I guess, is that for the most part any faction can use almost any unit, aside from the distinction between Clan mechs and Inner Sphere mechs (and as I understand it, even that eventually falls by the wayside to some extent and you find both sides using salvaged versions of eachothers equipment), so I really think it was a basic business decision, they saved $20k by not having to cut molds for a second mech in the beginner box which allowed them to hit their $19.99 price point.
chaos0xomega wrote: The beauty of Battletech, I guess, is that for the most part any faction can use almost any unit, aside from the distinction between Clan mechs and Inner Sphere mechs (and as I understand it, even that eventually falls by the wayside to some extent and you find both sides using salvaged versions of eachothers equipment), so I really think it was a basic business decision, they saved $20k by not having to cut molds for a second mech in the beginner box which allowed them to hit their $19.99 price point.
Our group honestly always used to play with proxies. Oh, we have all these random plastic mechs from old starters, and a few of the metal minis as well. Cool. Well, this Warhammer is gonna be an Atlas today because we don't have an actual Atlas mini. And so on. Which is kind of why I'm excited about these new plastics(I didn't get a chance to back the Kickstarter, but that's ok); if anything I'd love to just play using the actual designs, regardless of whether the mechs are "good" or not. Just have fun and blow up big stompy robots.
Orlanth wrote: Because it includes all the mechs from both boxsets. If they didn't include the second Wolverine people might complain.
Not the point I'm making. I'm wondering why they put a Wolverine in each box. It's not as if the Beginner's Box just has 2 of the 8 'Mechs from the main box; the Griffin is unique to that box, but both boxes have a Wolverine.
Why do 10 'Mechs, but one of them is a duplicate of one that's already there?
Maybe there was a late production failure* for one sculpt which needed a fast replacement.
Not a satisfactory answer, but best I can come up with. They might simply not cared.
*A Games Workshop term for when one gets to production mold stage before the sculpt fails. It is the worst form of failure as full design costs are sunk. I know this happened with the dwarf General and Battle standard set in about 2006 which is why this faction never had generic lord/hero plastic character minis despite an extensive overhaul.
chaos0xomega wrote:The beauty of Battletech, I guess, is that for the most part any faction can use almost any unit, aside from the distinction between Clan mechs and Inner Sphere mechs (and as I understand it, even that eventually falls by the wayside to some extent and you find both sides using salvaged versions of eachothers equipment), so I really think it was a basic business decision, they saved $20k by not having to cut molds for a second mech in the beginner box which allowed them to hit their $19.99 price point.
There are some Mechs, not all Factions have. Examples:
Raven: Only Used by Capella /Liao, maybe by St.Ives Compact (Succession War Era / Clan Invasion Era))
Catapult: Not in use by the Lyrans / Steiner
Old Star League Mechs: are mostly only used by ComStar until the End of the Clan Invasion Era. Some are used by the Clans in 3rd Line Reserve Units.
Orlanth wrote:Maybe there was a late production failure* for one sculpt which needed a fast replacement.
Not a satisfactory answer, but best I can come up with. They might simply not cared.
*A Games Workshop term for when one gets to production mold stage before the sculpt fails. It is the worst form of failure as full design costs are sunk. I know this happened with the dwarf General and Battle standard set in about 2006 which is why this faction never had generic lord/hero plastic character minis despite an extensive overhaul.
The Ork Warrior for 40k in 2008 had also issues in Production.
All models and starter boxes are system agnostic- they work with Alpha Strike or CBT. A mech is a mech, and works fine in either one. The starter boxes (both of them, and the Clan Invasion expansion box) contain record sheets for classic Battletech, and cards for Alpha Strike.
The Force Packs (Lance Packs, and Star Packs) have mechs you can use in both games, and the cards for Alpha Strike, but they do not have the record sheets. With a modicum of effort you can pull these from programs such as solaris skunkwerks, or you can buy the Battletech Record Sheets- Succession Wars which would give you all the Inner Sphere mechs from "Record Sheets: 3039 Unabridged, Record Sheets: 3050 Upgrade Unabridged-Clan & Star League, Record Sheets: 3058 Unabridged, and Record Sheets: 3075 Unabridged."
Essentially, anything Inner Sphere post succession war and pre-Dark Age.
Gitzbitah wrote: The Force Packs (Lance Packs, and Star Packs) have mechs you can use in both games, and the cards for Alpha Strike, but they do not have the record sheets.
chaos0xomega wrote:The beauty of Battletech, I guess, is that for the most part any faction can use almost any unit, aside from the distinction between Clan mechs and Inner Sphere mechs (and as I understand it, even that eventually falls by the wayside to some extent and you find both sides using salvaged versions of eachothers equipment), so I really think it was a basic business decision, they saved $20k by not having to cut molds for a second mech in the beginner box which allowed them to hit their $19.99 price point.
There are some Mechs, not all Factions have. Examples:
Raven: Only Used by Capella /Liao, maybe by St.Ives Compact (Succession War Era / Clan Invasion Era))
Catapult: Not in use by the Lyrans / Steiner
Old Star League Mechs: are mostly only used by ComStar until the End of the Clan Invasion Era. Some are used by the Clans in 3rd Line Reserve Units.
It is a given that any sizable faction can obtain at least one of any normal Clan or IS design. Though Clans will not normally use the IS mechs they capture in battle.
Raven was considered a Davion mech by many due to the large numbers that were captured in the fourth Succession War. Lyrans certainly did have Catapults in small numbers, and they were featured in several mercenary units under long term Lyran employ. Star League mechs were available throughout, but the lostech was usually gone.
Several designs are listed as near extinct, good example being the Javelin. This never prevents an IS player from either major or minor faction from fielding one. Just dont spam them.
In 2825, ilKhan Nicholas Kerensky, the founder of the Clans, gave his exiled, warrior-led people a dream: the first Clan to return to the Inner Sphere and claim Terra, the cradle of humanity, in honorable combat would claim the title of ilClan—ruler of all the Clans. The ilClan would reestablish the venerable Star League from the ashes of the old, and its Khan would become ilKhan, supreme ruler of all the Clans. Now, 326 years later, the Children of Kerensky have fought their way to Terra with the intent of fulfilling this dream. But will this dream become destiny or nightmare?
Experience the tumultuous Battle of Terra, which will shake the very foundations of the Inner Sphere. Then catch a glimpse of how the Great Houses and other major powers will face the outcome of this far-reaching conflict. Tactical maps, Chaos Campaign tracks, and new ’Mechs that debuted during the Battle of Terra all let you jump right into the cockpit and fight in the culmination of over three centuries of Clan history. Do you have what it takes to conquer the birthplace of humankind, or the courage to defend Terra from its enemies?
Information on other upcoming releases can be found at the link above.
Wave Two shipping consists of twenty-four containers coordinated from four different overseas manufactuers. Eighteen of those containers have arrived and their materials are at the various QML hubs around the world. That leaves six containers, which includes all of the plastics we are so anxious to get our hands on.
The miniatures shipments for all non-US locations areas are as follows: 7 days from our warehouse in Australia, 26 days from our warehouse in Germany, and 35 days from our warehouse in the UK.
For the US miniatures shipping: they've managed to get one contianer out of China, which will arrive in 22 days. The other five containers are estimated to depart on 5/22 (1 container, arriving about 7/5) and on 5/18 (4 containers, arriving on or about 7/8).
Yes, the single container leaving 4 days later is arriving 2 days earlier. Welcome to the crazy world of shipping, which is more insane than it has been in a quarter century of working in the industry.
Project Update #170 wrote:The Final Container is Away!
Yay!
So for those who haven't been following along on the worldwide shipping drama, the short version is this: Thanks to covid (among other issues) a lot of containers have been piling up in US ports and warehouses as product has been slow to move out into retail. It's caused all sorts of issues, including ships (which should be always moving) to be anchored for days or weeks at a time while wainting fo ra load of empty containers to return to China. Even now, looking out at Tacoma's waterways. I can see three large freighters at anchor. That's not normal.
The result being that shipping from China has been A) Expensive! and B) Unreliable.
Our final product for the Wave 2 fulfillment was (finally) finished on 3/28/21. We've been booked (and bumped) on three ships since then. We eventually had to divde up our containers to go on three different ships. One left two weeks ago. A four-container shipment left five days ago... And the LAST CONTAINER left port yesterday!
That's right! As of 5/23/21, all Wave 2 product has left China and is on the water (or already waiting at our distribution hubs)!
There is still a lot of work to do. Everyting has to arrive, be counted, be collated... and the be shipped! But getting it out of China is a HUGE step we've been waiting anxiously to report.
Invasion era means any conflict between 3049 and Fed-Com Civil War in 3062.
You could arguable dial it back to the Fed-Com vs Combine war of 3036 as it included the IS half of the technology by that time, though it was a transition event and much of the tech was still Succession War era.
Bushwacker was in production in 3053.
Nightstar was a Star League design resurrected in 3057.
Axeman and Cataphract are both in long production prior to the Clan invasion and had matured as designs.
As for the Clan designs.
The Turkina was deployed at Tukkayid in small numbers and was in full production as the signature Jade Falcon assault mech until post jihad.
The Ebon Jaguar is even older but was not well distributed/highlighted. It was available from 3049. Likely the mech was rolling off production lines during the long trip to the Inner Sphere, so it would be early reinforcements only. So certainly available for second wave.
The Huntsman was also produced in 3049 by the Cats, so will be avialable second wave.
The Crossbow and Kingfisher are older designs developed in the Golden Century by the Vipers and Ravens respectively. They may arguable be rare mechs but should be widely if thinly distributed by isorla alone. Especially the Kingfisher as its a solid design. I could well see the Falcons trade for some, and maybe also the Wolves and Bears.
I cant see a problem with any of the above designs as 'Clan Invasion era' though many were more prominent later. Nightstar is a more questionable include as the Invasion era was pretty much over by the time it service, but it would have been available for Bulldog and the Smoke Jaguar annihilation, which I would certainly count as a Clan Invasion campaign, the closing chapter of the era perhaps.
The problem is that have to put a date on the sourcebooks it was FASA's way, but the contents are arbitrary, some items included are much older, others are new hotness, others are designs that drew a lot of attention at the time.
Orlanth wrote: Invasion era means any conflict between 3049 and Fed-Com Civil War in 3062.
The actual Clan invasion, which this Kickstarter has gone to great lengths to show, has a specific timeframe. It starts in 3049 and ends on Tukayyid in 3052. The Bushwacker and Nightstar weren't part of that. Far as I can see they are the only two out of every 'Mechs in the KS that weren't around during those 3 years.
If they were doing the Clan Invasion Era, rather than the Clan invasion itself, then I feel they wouldn't've put such an emphasis on Tukayyid (a set of detailed maps + an entire full-blown source book), and stuck to actual 'Mechs that were around specifically during the Clan invasion. Otherwise we'd be seeing things like the Sunder, Avatar, Grand Titan, Fireball, Komodo, Gallowglas, and so on.
Orlanth wrote: Axeman and Cataphract are both in long production prior to the Clan invasion and had matured as designs.
I think they're just cramming several cycles of production into the first because the money is there to do it. We'll probably see the rest of those 3058 mechs sooner rather than later too.
Nurglitch wrote: I think they're just cramming several cycles of production into the first because the money is there to do it. We'll probably see the rest of those 3058 mechs sooner rather than later too.
IIRC the stretch-goal packs were put to a vote (edit: yep, first mentioned in Update #6). The rumour for the next KS was mercs & vehicles, but Dark Age / ilClan is getting some traction.
KS Update #6 wrote:It’s strange, wonderful, and humbling that 14-year-old me tried to figure out how to put lances together in 1986, and all these decades later, it’s still just as brilliantly fun and intellectually frustrating.
As we expected, the euphoria started to ebb a bit after the initial launch of the Kickstarter. The quintessential Clan Invasion ’Mechs are unlocked (of course all the original sixteen from Technical Readout: 3050 have to be there). Some all-important classics are available (squeal…cannot wait to march a new Archeror Warhammer or Crusaderonto the field!). Now, we start getting out in the weeds some.
In doing so, it’s easy to see how some may start to turn their heads slightly and scratch their chins at various choices made for the Kickstarter’s Star and Lance Pack stretch goals. With that in mind, we thought it would be appropriate to provide a behind-the-scenes-look at some of those design decisions.
Since I don’t necessarily want to talk about those packs as described above (who doesn’t want their Timber Wolf or Phoenix Hawk!), let’s move down the list a bit and look at the Inner Sphere Striker Lance (unlocked at $500k; that was a brilliant moment as we were all sitting there, graphics and updates loaded, waiting for the roll-over). It consists of the following BattleMechs: Blackjack, Panther, Wolfhound, and Jenner.
Now, when we’re building these Star and Lance Packs, several of us are involved, we’ve got a big spreadsheet open, and we’re plugging-and-playing and discussing (and oft-times arguing about) the different possible ’Mechs to include. But at the core, we’re using the following guidelines (in no particular order).
Position: What’s come before in the campaign, and what’s coming after. For example, at $450k, the Clan Heavy Battle Star was filled with heavy and assault OmniMechs. The Clan Support Star at $550k mirrored that. As such, the Inner Sphere Lance Pack unlocked between those two needed to edge heavily in the other direction.
Art Redesign: Just so we’re clear, every single ’Mech released as part of this campaign will go through the full redesign process, wedding the classic elements of each ’Mech that we fell in love with to more modern aesthetics. That said, some ’Mechs need a facelift more than others, so allowing them to be unlocked sooner than others is appropriate. (Though, as always, mileage varies as art is wonderfully subjective.) The Wolfhound is a great example of this “needing it more than others.”
Good Design/Fan-Favorites: What do we see the fans discussing at conventions and online? And even more importantly, what are they playing? What do we play? The Panther, Wolfhound and Jenner are excellent examples of great designs used on tabletops often.
Era Appropriate: With very few exceptions (usually created from trying to match all of these criteria) the ’Mech should be available within the Clan Invasion Era.
General Usage Within Inner Sphere: Again, with very few exceptions, almost everything unlocked to date have been ’Mechs available to most factions and widely produced within the universe. We’ve held off on designs heavily associated with a particular faction, so far. For example, just yesterday we discussed the Dragon, Maulerand Hatamoto-chi. Those are so quintessentially Combine that not having them in a “Lance Pack: House Kurita” just seemed wrong. So they’re much further down the list.
Formations: We use the rules from Campaign Operations (starting on p. 60) to ensure every lance fits within an established Formation. In this instance, the Striker Lance says the following:
“All units in a Striker/Cavalry Lance must have a minimum Walk/Cruise speed of 5, or a Jump movement of 4 or more. No units in a Striker/Cavalry Lance may be of assault weight class or above. At least 50 percent of the Striker/Cavalry Lance must have the Striker or Skirmisher unit Roles.”
Do the Blackjack, Panther, Wolfhound, and Jennerall fit those requirements? Yup.
Ephemera:This is the last piece, and it’s one that unites the other elements, or often provides just a gut sense of where we should take things. In this instance, the Blackjack fails most of the criteria above on its own. Yet, it’s one of the key BattleMechs in Harebrained Schemes’ BATTLETECH computer game…and is actually ridiculously fun to play in that experience. There were one or two other options for that last billet, all appropriate and vying for that slot, but that other connection tipped the balance.
TIME FOR YOUR INPUT
As you can see, there’s a long list of factors and making them all fit as best we can for maximum use and desirability is complex. Now and then, this leads to some squeaky wheels being included (hence, the chin-scratching noted at the beginning).
But the brilliant thing about this campaign is the access it provides us to several thousand passionate, knowledge fans. And we’re going to do that in two ways.
Survey
First, here’s a link to a survey of every ’Mech unlocked from $350,000 and above. (Earlier ’Mechs are simply too far along in the development and production process; and yes, 750k is not unlocked, but I feel pretty confident it will be shortly.)
Is there one design you just cannot believe we put in there and you want to see gone? Vote it off the DropShip! If there is a clear and heavy consensus surrounding some designs, we’ll take a long look at whether we should remove one or more in favor of others.
Make Your Case
Are you looking at all of the revealed Star and Lance Packs and wondering how X, or Y, or Z ’Mech hasn’t been added yet? Well, here’s your chance.
In the comments below, choose one design you absolutely believe should be included here, and make your case. Convince the backers (and us) of why it should be included. Better yet, we encourage you to go a step further: browse the Formation rules in Campaign Operations and tell us what pack you think your suggestion would best fit into.
As above, upon reviewing, if there is a clear and heavy consensus on some designs, we’ll take that into serious consideration when adding future packs and/or in combination with any that might be removed based upon the survey.
As a caveat, here, remember what we said in the input for the Clan battle armor update. Please be respective of your brothers-and-sisters in arms. We are all here because we love this universe. Let everyone make their case, support where you will, and let’s see where this takes us. After all, this is your campaign, and we want your help to make it the best it can be!
Orlanth wrote: Invasion era means any conflict between 3049 and Fed-Com Civil War in 3062.
The actual Clan invasion, which this Kickstarter has gone to great lengths to show, has a specific timeframe. It starts in 3049 and ends on Tukayyid in 3052. The Bushwacker and Nightstar weren't part of that. Far as I can see they are the only two out of every 'Mechs in the KS that weren't around during those 3 years.
If they were doing the Clan Invasion Era, rather than the Clan invasion itself, then I feel they wouldn't've put such an emphasis on Tukayyid (a set of detailed maps + an entire full-blown source book), and stuck to actual 'Mechs that were around specifically during the Clan invasion. Otherwise we'd be seeing things like the Sunder, Avatar, Grand Titan, Fireball, Komodo, Gallowglas, and so on.
Orlanth wrote: Axeman and Cataphract are both in long production prior to the Clan invasion and had matured as designs.
Again, was just talking about the Bushwacker and Nightstar, neither of which make sense as part of a Clan Invasion set.
Bushwacker was prevelant in the cartoon, which was based on the initial invasion. I know, I know, poorly written material that didn't follow actual canon and was retconned as an in-universe propaganda film, but the cartoon and the Mechwarrior PC games were many people's intro to BT and I'm sure I'm not the only one that had the Bushwacker toy from the show. So it's a weirdly iconic invasion-era mech despite the lore saying it didn't come out till after Tukayyid. I think it's the Battletech equivalent of playing with green plastic armymen and seeing the movie Patton and therefore associating the M48 Patton with WW2, even though the M48 was years later.
I know the Bushwacker was my first real taste of Battletech, with the campaign in Mechwarrior 3, a whole lotta years ago. And yes, I have the toy from the show, too, lol.
Jerram wrote: The Clan invasion did not end with the battle of Tukayyid. It ended with the Great Refusal in 3060 so both those mechs are good
Agreed, Bushwacker is a Clan Invasion mech. Nightstar appears slightly more questionable, at least from a Great House perspective. However I would consider the Smoke Jaguar Annihilation and Great Refusal part of the Clan Invasion, and I sincerely doubt the FedCom left such a potent clan killer design behind. Gauss rifles are as close as the spheroids get to clan weapons tech parity. However on some research ComStar has first generation Nightstars and would likely deploy any they had at Tukkayid as they emptied the bag. Note that this mech is listed as Fed-Com (plus successors) and ComStar on MWO.
Phobos wrote: Does anyone know how to get ahold of anyone running this KS?
I just realized I still never got my stuff.
Please note that if you picked any Wave 2 item and selected single shipping as an option, all of the goodies will arrive in Wave 2.
If that's not the case, then I'd advise you to try and get hold of Catalyst Game Labs directly (i.e. not through the KS messaging system)
Yeah, like Old-Four-Arms said, if any of your items were Wave 2 and you didn't pay for separate shipping, then your pledge is likely on the way over now.
After months of asking where my order was, about eight emails or so that were just plain ignored I finally got a reply after I lost my temper with them because I figured I was screaming into the void at that point.
"Thank you for your feedback! We're aware at Catalyst we've let a few balls drop as we've taken on new endeavors to juggle. In that process we've experienced some growing pains as a company and are regretful to have served you the experience you and others have encountered. Progressing forward we intend to do better by you all and to improve the overall relationship we hold with you as a company with our direct communication methods.
I personally hope you love your items once they arrive, and I can't wait for all of you to enjoy what we've excitedly produced!"
Terrible communicators and still no clearer as to what is going on. Had they just replied to my first email or sent out updates saying it was delayed I would have been fine.
If it doesn't arrive at Wave 2 fulfilment is the time to get worried. Also post fulfilment Catalyst will know what damage control is required.
Catalyst are not fly by nights, if we don't get our stuff they will try to set us right from retail stock. I don't think anything is entirely KS exclusive to the point that they don't have some lying around, and a retail release is intended.
In any case the best place to take issues, at the proper time is here:
CrowdOx and Kickstarter are business ends, the CBT forums are high profile and high-up in Catalyst intermingle with the fans. They will not like bad optics and will help people with problems.
But, if anyone is missing Wave 1. First, too fething late to moan now, second wait for the Wave 2 drop for clarity. Wave 1 to Wave 2 delay is an understandable error and easy to prove when you compare your rewards on Wave 2 delivery. It might be bad to have paid for Wave 1 and not got it, but the time to do something about that was when Wave 1 shipped, if you pay extra to get it early make noises early not when you will end up getting it Wave 2 anyway. At this point anyone who had Wave 1 stuff bundled is best off just waiting then asking for the Wave 1 shipping cost to be refunded. It will be easy to prove and easy to remedy.
TL;DR - the multi-part Black Knight “Clanbuster" "will go on sale later today, Thursday, June 10"
Spoiler:
The Com Guards created a special version of the Black Knight, known as the "Clanbuster," to face the Clans on Tukayyid. Wielding a special sword-shaped hatchet and an all-energy weapons array, this 'Mech proved effective in thwarting the Invading Clans' quest for Terra.
This premium variant, featured on the cover of the Battle of Tukayyid sourcebook, will soon be available as an all-new multi-part unpainted miniature to join your BattleTech force!
The miniature includes multiple optional parts--three hands, three arms, and three legs--allowing you to choose one of dozens of poses. This Black Knight miniature employs new modeling techniques which we hope to apply to many BattleMech designs.
A first-of-its-kind item for us, we're offering these Black Knights as a test case. They will go on sale later today, Thursday, June 10 through the Catalyst Game Labs store and are limited to one per order while supplies last.
As we work with the supplier of the Black Knight “Clanbuster" on their next design (and plan other potential 'Mechs to get this treatment), we invite our customers to take a brief survey below to help us gauge interest on this miniature and other great new products.
Until next time,
Ray Arrastia
BattleTech Line Developer
It matters in the sense that if doghouse set his shipping to wave 2 then hes being a massive gakhead who created his own problems and isn't taking responsibility for it.
That's a hard fething pass from me. That's crazy expensive. That's an entire Clan Star with the new redesigns in plastic.
Uhm, yeah, wow. I was ready to buy 3 of the things (if they weren't 1 per customer), but at that price I am buying precisely zero.
Doesn't even make sense, they'll charge me $5 a mech for fully assembled minis (less if I go to a discount e-retailer), but expect me to pay $25 for one I have to build myself??
I would be willing to pay the same as a IWM mech, but not more.
Likewise I too would be willing to pay the same as IWM mechs, in fact I'd pay a percentage more, but not this much more. Being made in the US isn't entirely an excuse, this is an extremely labor un-intensive process - the majority of it is fully automated, most of the cost is in overhead areas like facilities and utilities. Beyond that, given the current state of transoceanic shipping, the costs of producing in China for distribution in the US are basically on par with the costs of producing in the US.
It matters in the sense that if doghouse set his shipping to wave 2 then hes being a massive gakhead who created his own problems and isn't taking responsibility for it.
?
If he set his shipping to Wave 2 he saved money and everything is going to plan, he just forgot the plan.
If he included Wave 1 he bought a ticket he didn't ride and the advantage is time sensitive. The advantage of getting things early is to get them early, if you don't complain that you didn't get them early and get your early delivery fulfilled then you lose all benefit of Wave 1. As Wave 2 is on cusp of fulfilment this is an odd time to be asking that question.
In fairness to doghouse he might not be expected to remember all the details of his order. I don't know the details of mine, though I did know it was all Wave 2. So I did a hunt through my emails this afternoon and catalogued everything I had ordered. To my disappointment neither the Heavy Battle Star or the Heavy Battle Lance packs highlighted on the previous page made it onto my order list. So no Nightstar for Orlanth. I didn't like the old art, but really like the new model.
Yikes. I have been paying up $10-12 each for the existing Kickstarter models, as well as 3-D printed models from a couple of Etsy sellers. $25 is way too rich for my blood, even if I was absolutely in love with the mech.
I wish them grand success with this - I really do - because the more successful they are, the more likely they'll actually be able to distribute these to BattleTech stores that can sell things without exorbitant shipping costs (so places like Aries or Fortress).
I am not a Battletech whale, but even if I was I would likely baulk at those prices.
H.B.M.C. is right, what you need for kits like this are classic 3050 designs with configurations, not arm poses. A resin omni which covers a reasonable number of configs would be good. I would frankly sell them in pairs, so two Stormcrows with enough bits for one of each of configuration Prime through to D. Choose the two configurations you want.
it is the main excuse for GW prices, so why shouldn't it be an excuse for them (and to bring the other arguments, yo have to pay the designers and all the other stuff etc.
but they sold everything with a limited release and it is the first of its kind, and in a world were people pay 30 for a Primaris Marine, the price is not that off
However, I would not have bought it anyway no matter the price, see it more as just a proof of concept and the high price likley because of the low amount produced
as soon as the Marauder with enough bits to make all 3050 configs roll out we can talk again
chaos0xomega wrote: Yeah, what HBMC said. They were available for sale for at least 20-30 minutes. GW sells out in like 5.
Selling 10 a minute is impressive, especially as they were limited to one per customer. These (and the KS) has really shown that there's an appetite for decent plastics.
it is the main excuse for GW prices, so why shouldn't it be an excuse for them (and to bring the other arguments, yo have to pay the designers and all the other stuff etc.
Thats not GWs excuse at all. They are pretty candid in saying they produce a luxury good of unparalleled quality and are charging prives in line with that. Theres a reason they have a virtually unheard of 42% profit margin.
Kanluwen wrote: Not sure how to feel about the $25 pricetag. You get the extra leg variant for the Clanbuster, meaning poses will be able to be mixed up if you want.
On the other hand, Miniature Market was selling Salvage Boxes for around $14-$20 so maybe the $25 isn't that crazy?
The Stormcrow will be a bit more of a test I think, as it only features different weapons.
MM pricing them at $14-20 is more because of them setting their own prices for a product without an MSRP based on supply and demand during a time of product shortage more than anything else. Catalyst was selling them directly for $5-6 - retailers paid the same price for them (i.e. there wasn't a wholesale discount offered) so retailers had to set their own higher price in order to build in a profit margin, free salvage boxes included in their pledge rewards notwithstanding. To my knowledge the salvage boxes are not meant to be retail products at all (IIRC they were exclusive to the kickstarter and direct sales by catalyst only) and seemingly these plastic kits will potentially also be direct sales only, though that seems uncertain. If they were a retail product, I could understand them being priced at $25 due to the wholesale and retail markups, etc. (which in keeping with the industry rule of thumb generally means the MSRP is 5x the cost of production and overhead/logistics, in this case that would mean $5) - but I still wouldn't buy them at that price from my FLGS. I struggle to see the MSRP being *more* than $25 if they did put this out to retail, so I'm assuming the $25 would be the MSRP if they pursued that path of distribution - if thats the case then I think CGL would be much better off keeping these a direct sales only item and selling them in the $10-15 range instead. I very much doubt the product line will be a financial success or a hit with retailers at a $25 msrp, whereas they will sell like hotcakes at a lower price point.
Kanluwen wrote: Not sure how to feel about the $25 pricetag. You get the extra leg variant for the Clanbuster, meaning poses will be able to be mixed up if you want.
On the other hand, Miniature Market was selling Salvage Boxes for around $14-$20 so maybe the $25 isn't that crazy?
The Stormcrow will be a bit more of a test I think, as it only features different weapons.
MM pricing them at $14-20 is more because of them setting their own prices for a product without an MSRP based on supply and demand during a time of product shortage more than anything else. Catalyst was selling them directly for $5-6 - retailers paid the same price for them (i.e. there wasn't a wholesale discount offered) so retailers had to set their own higher price in order to build in a profit margin, free salvage boxes included in their pledge rewards notwithstanding. To my knowledge the salvage boxes are not meant to be retail products at all (IIRC they were exclusive to the kickstarter and direct sales by catalyst only) and seemingly these plastic kits will potentially also be direct sales only, though that seems uncertain. If they were a retail product, I could understand them being priced at $25 due to the wholesale and retail markups, etc. (which in keeping with the industry rule of thumb generally means the MSRP is 5x the cost of production and overhead/logistics, in this case that would mean $5) - but I still wouldn't buy them at that price from my FLGS. I struggle to see the MSRP being *more* than $25 if they did put this out to retail, so I'm assuming the $25 would be the MSRP if they pursued that path of distribution - if thats the case then I think CGL would be much better off keeping these a direct sales only item and selling them in the $10-15 range instead. I very much doubt the product line will be a financial success or a hit with retailers at a $25 msrp, whereas they will sell like hotcakes at a lower price point.
YEah, I was buying them for $8 at our local FLGS who doesn't do any discounts, and I live near Miniaturemarket's Warehouse and retail store. Guess where I bought mine from. Passing on this model at this price as I feel they went out drinking with GW before figuring out prices.
Lorcan Nagle wrote:The Black Knight that was sold on the CGL store is produced by Creative Juggernaut, a new company helmed by Blaine Lee Pardoe and Brent Evans, so the production economy here is entirely separate from the Kickstarter. The Black Knight is made from higher quality materials than the CGL plastics to boot.
Creative Juggernaut wrote:Recognizing a Little Victory as a Big Deal - for BattleTech!
Good morning BattleTech fans. Last night, between 4:03-5:01PM Pacific Time, something momentous happened (in the real world) of BattleTech – as the first limited production run of plastic miniatures made in the U.S. went on sale in Catalyst’s webstore. An email went out to some KS backers that they could finally buy the new ‘Clanbuster’ Black Knight, a frenzy of orders were placed, and in just under an hour the entire print run sold out.
Like all truly momentous events there were a lot of emotions and perspectives on the way things unfolded, but we wanted to offer a perspective most haven’t realized yet – that this little special event mini selling out that fast may be one of the biggest achievements for the BattleTech line – and all the players – in decades.
Here’s why…
Most gamers today are savvy enough to know that “the big game” of making games is a very high-risk endeavor. Costs are high and can fluctuate wildly. Logistics like materials, shipping, distribution & warehousing can be incredibly complex, and (since the pandemic) can dramatically change in ways that defy all comprehension. And every step in that process takes time. Then you add-in production overseas and all those risk-time factors multiply. This is the biggest reason why we gamers have seen so many game companies fold over the last decade. The nuances of working with foreign suppliers can hamstring or cripple companies.
So when Creative Juggernaut approached Catalyst with the news that we were starting a production shop in the U.S. to make plastic minis, they were justifiably skeptical for many reasons. Would we even be able to get the materials? Could we deliver an acceptable quality? Would the fans of today even want plastic unassembled plastic miniatures? What would the actual demand be? Would the costs associated with plastic production in the U.S. be prohibitive?
And there it was… that last question was the lynchpin upon which everything else hung. Could the fanbase swallow unassembled plastic miniatures at a price that a U.S.-made plastic miniature would have to carry in order to be truly viable?
Yesterday the fanbase answered that question like a Gauss Rifle shot to the face – YES!
Catalyst may play the “big game” safe and conservative, but they absolutely know how to double down on a good thing. Within the hour of the ‘Clanbuster’ selling out, Loren Coleman was on the phone with our company to arrange a second print run and to discuss how many, and how fast, we could produce them. And therein lies the magic folks – the reason why the Black Knight selling out that fast was such a victory for all of us fans of BattleTech… because we can make more, and do so quickly. No fighting for position in the production queues, no waiting 2-3 months for international shipping, no haggling with liaisons who don’t speak English or who will agree to anything whether they can deliver it or not. One call, to a friend, and within a month you can have more… and we can keep on making them until everyone who wants one (or 10) has them in their mini-loving clutches. It is important to note one thing and that is the price. Creative Juggernaut is manufacturing in the United States. Our prices will never be competitive with China or other overseas manufacturing. The final purchase price is set by Catalyst, not by Juggernaut. The tradeoff for a slightly higher price is that we can respond faster than a restock from an offshore company.
BOOM! That’s an Atlas-sized mic drop right there.
This is only the beginning. Here is a summary of our plans in regards to ‘Mech minis: • The Juggernaut team interpreted early on that the demand was going to exceed the initial order. Call it gut instinct. So, on our own dime, assuming all of the risk, we kicked off producing the next production run of Black Knights. That began two weeks ago. We didn’t even tell Catalyst. As such, we should have the next batch of BKs heading out to Catalyst at the end of the month. • We’ll also have the next ‘Mech to release – the Stormcrow Tukayyid Configuration out to Catalyst around the end of the month as well. So keep an eye out for that in July. We are going to put that in steady-state production as well in anticipation of the same level of demand. • We are already prepping the next two ‘Mechs for production this summer. Getting the Black Knight and Stormcrow out helped us refine production techniques and validated our proof of concept. Juggernaut and Catalyst are working together so that eventually we’ll be able to release sourcebooks right alongside the new mechs to the game, all while supplying the demand for previous releases without having to worry about selling out of a print run (because we can easily just make more.) That right there is the goal we are ultimately working toward, and it’s something the BattleTech game line has never had. All of this is happening in the background, as well as working on our own exciting game system and miniatures line for Land & Sea.
So were there frustrations yesterday? Yes of course there were. The announcement didn’t go to the whole fanbase, it wasn’t widely announced in advance, folks chaffed at the one-per-customer limit, the cost was higher than any similar mini, International fans choked on the shipping costs, and quantities were limited to a degree such that many fans didn’t get one. All of those frustrations are totally valid and from what we have been told, Catalyst absolutely heard you.
But amidst such frustrations I recommend we all keep our eyes on the Primary Objective here gang – because this opens the doors for many new and exciting opportunities and products for the fans in the coming years. With that tactical victory in hand, and knowing there is demand for a miniatures product line like this, Catalyst can absolutely invest the time and money to fix all those frustration points so that this becomes a much smoother, user-friendly process. We overcame enormous obstacles to get to this moment, and now we can move forward like Clan Invaders through Rasalhague.
So keep your targeting systems downrange, and eyes on the big picture, people. This first wave was only the beginning…
Yeah thats not really any new information to most of us. Likewise its also not really a good explanation. I have a pretty good grasp on the costs of plastics manufacturing in both the US and China, manufacturing in the US is more expensive, but its not *that* much more expensive. On average, the cost of producing in the US is somewhere between 2-3x more than the cost of doing it in China (particularly once you factor in all the additional costs involved with doing business in China like contracting independent QA firms, freight brokerage and insurance, etc.).
Theres definitely additional costs on the US side of the equation if you're also having to set up facilities, purchase equipment, hire and train staff, etc. etc. so I can't comment on Creative Juggernaughts full scope of finances, but most of this is stuff that should be amortized over time and a range of products and factored out as part of an economy of scale. If they really thought that demand for this was so low that 300 units seemed a reasonable production run, then I could see why they would set the price as high as they did - but if they were really that un-confident about the products viability they probably should have gone for resin minis instead as theres basically zero justification in investing into plastics for a few hundred minis.
EDIT - This was directed at the quote from CGLs forums, not the relatively more transparent post from CJ
chaos0xomega wrote: Yeah thats not really any new information to most of us. Likewise its also not really a good explanation. I have a pretty good grasp on the costs of plastics manufacturing in both the US and China, manufacturing in the US is more expensive, but its not *that* much more expensive. On average, the cost of producing in the US is somewhere between 2-3x more than the cost of doing it in China (particularly once you factor in all the additional costs involved with doing business in China like contracting independent QA firms, freight brokerage and insurance, etc.).
Theres definitely additional costs on the US side of the equation if you're also having to set up facilities, purchase equipment, hire and train staff, etc. etc. so I can't comment on Creative Juggernaughts full scope of finances, but most of this is stuff that should be amortized over time and a range of products and factored out as part of an economy of scale. If they really thought that demand for this was so low that 300 units seemed a reasonable production run, then I could see why they would set the price as high as they did - but if they were really that un-confident about the products viability they probably should have gone for resin minis instead as theres basically zero justification in investing into plastics for a few hundred minis.
EDIT - This was directed at the quote from CGLs forums, not the relatively more transparent post from CJ
It might depend on the technologies involved and why they were doing it; testing the waters for demand, for example, or using Master-Unit Dies and vinyl plastic might make more sense than traditional resin molding.
chaos0xomega wrote: Yeah thats not really any new information to most of us. Likewise its also not really a good explanation. I have a pretty good grasp on the costs of plastics manufacturing in both the US and China, manufacturing in the US is more expensive, but its not *that* much more expensive. On average, the cost of producing in the US is somewhere between 2-3x more than the cost of doing it in China (particularly once you factor in all the additional costs involved with doing business in China like contracting independent QA firms, freight brokerage and insurance, etc.).
Theres definitely additional costs on the US side of the equation if you're also having to set up facilities, purchase equipment, hire and train staff, etc. etc. so I can't comment on Creative Juggernaughts full scope of finances, but most of this is stuff that should be amortized over time and a range of products and factored out as part of an economy of scale. If they really thought that demand for this was so low that 300 units seemed a reasonable production run, then I could see why they would set the price as high as they did - but if they were really that un-confident about the products viability they probably should have gone for resin minis instead as theres basically zero justification in investing into plastics for a few hundred minis.
EDIT - This was directed at the quote from CGLs forums, not the relatively more transparent post from CJ
It might depend on the technologies involved and why they were doing it; testing the waters for demand, for example, or using Master-Unit Dies and vinyl plastic might make more sense than traditional resin molding.
Posted by God and Davion (CamoSpecs painter) on the BattleTech Forums:
God and Davion wrote:Since I painted two of those bad boys I can shed some light about the quality and some details.
They are resin miniatures, not plastic. The resin quality is good and I didn't have issues with the infamous air bubbles of doom. There are slight mold lines in some pieces and a minor problem in the back. It is nothing serious and that puts them on par with the best resin casted miniatures I have ever seen. They are above finecast and some forge world miniatures. Also, it is quite better than most of the metal miniatures and way better than the plastics. Those are some the best casts I have seen for Battletech.
The details are quite sharp and some pieces, like the extra hands, are very nice. In fact, some details are so small that you should be careful while cleaning. The parts for the variant, especially the sword, have the same level of details than the rest of the sculpt. This is not a plastic Black Knight full of details with a crude sword as an extra. The variant is the real deal.
Cleaning took me about half an hour. As a reference, it is half less than a metal miniature. The techniques you use for cleaning metal works almost exactly the same way with those resins. My only advice is to use a mask when sanding, resins in general are not very healthy if you inhale the dust. A regular mask will be more than enough.
Parts and reposing. The number of parts is high (2 hands, 2 arms, one torso, one head, one hip/leg and one leg) but it is not hard to glue them together. Just use superglue like with a regular metal miniature. We were asked to not repose the miniatures. Having said that, it is quite easy to repose the miniatures. The joints are spherical but they have a peg that allows you to glue them in a fixed position easily. You can sand them without worries and then the joints become fully posable. Even without the pegs the surface to glue the pieces is still quite big so it shouldn't be a problem. Since the blister comes with 2 left legs, there is a big degree of freedom. I am not telling you that you can use the spare leg to repose the plastic Black Knight or even use the spare hands (actually, I am telling you just that ).
All in all, a great way to have a good variant of the Black Knight. Expensive? Yes, it is expensive. Overpriced? No. It is a good quality short run resin model and that means that it is not cheap.
And, since this wall of text is too long... here is a picture of the Black Knight I am talking about. Enjoy
Add to that that Catalyst's shipping isn't great for anyone outside a 10m radius of their office, so that's a major hard pass.
thats not true at all HMBC...
I live in BC which is actually pretty cllose to their office. their shipping isn't great for anyone whose not in the USA. apparently it's cheaper to ship from seattle to Tampa Bay then it is to ship from seattle to Vancouver *eye roll*
Wait wait, what? They're *resin*? Thats absolute bs, they kept saying that these were *plastic* (which technically I suppose resin is, but its generally understood in the hobby as referring to two distinctly different materials). Like, I feel like thats a gross misrepresentation of the nature of the product, to the point that I would consider false advertising. If I bought something advertised as a plastic kit and received resin, I would be *livid*. I don't dislike resin miniatures by any means, but I base my value judgements around the type of material its cast in.
And after making all that commotion about how these are "made in the USA", as though resin miniatures aren't already being produced in this country. Absolute bull. Here I thought they were working on a legitimate plastic injection molding capability (and apparently it wasn't just me judging by some of the other comments I've seen elsewhere), instead they're just doing something fairly boring.
chaos0xomega wrote: Wait wait, what? They're *resin*? Thats absolute bs, they kept saying that these were *plastic* (which technically I suppose resin is, but its generally understood in the hobby as referring to two distinctly different materials)
They were originally saying they were plastic, but their last couple of posts referred to them as "plastic resin". I was wondering if it was something similar to Mantic's Restic.
I know a few places in the states have got machines in
injection moulding with themoplastic resin (as opposed to a 2 part liquid resin), an easy one to describe 'wrong'
I've been curious about that, the videos/photos on their site kinda leave a lot to be desired, quality wise, so I don't have very high expectations as to what level of quality that system/process can produce.
Also the sites layout and design reminds me a lot of the ones of budget chinese 3d printers.
EDIT: Just learned who Blaine Pardoe is (one of the financial backers of Creative Juggernaut) - thats a huge nope from me, not giving him my money.
One of the major factors in the significantly higher US costs is the set up and machining for the injection molds. While the US does have plastic injection companies the engineers & miller’s are fairly well paid for their skills (as they should be) Miniatures are incredibly detailed for their size and that’s not something a lot of plastic companies have in their set of expertise. Which is why folks like GW and Bandai are incredibly proud of their product lines as they are the only significant companies outside of China doing that work.
The companies in China have made a vested effort to produce high detail speciality items like models, their engineers and millwright are also paid a fraction of what US and Euro workers are, let alone for lesser skilled work like the packing labor. The largest investment in plastics is the milling stage and they can undercut other countries by as much as 80% because it’s subsidized by the Chinese government as a way of waging economic subversion and control against the west.
They secure and protect that work with government funding and making it priced so low that other nations can’t compete, it helps create an economic monopoly that’s very hard to break away from because you simply can’t afford to pay US or British workers what their skills are actually worth in a free market economy.
Wait wait, what? They're *resin*? Thats absolute bs, they kept saying that these were *plastic* (which technically I suppose resin is, but its generally understood in the hobby as referring to two distinctly different materials). Like, I feel like thats a gross misrepresentation of the nature of the product, to the point that I would consider false advertising. If I bought something advertised as a plastic kit and received resin, I would be *livid*. I don't dislike resin miniatures by any means, but I base my value judgements around the type of material its cast in.
And after making all that commotion about how these are "made in the USA", as though resin miniatures aren't already being produced in this country. Absolute bull. Here I thought they were working on a legitimate plastic injection molding capability (and apparently it wasn't just me judging by some of the other comments I've seen elsewhere), instead they're just doing something fairly boring.
I am not sure if this was wrong advertising or who is wrong here but that "plastic" and "resin" being mixed up is not uncommon
usually for miniatures Resin is used for Polyurethane and Plastic for High Impact Polystyrene (a mixture of PS and rubber) yet both materials are "resin" and "plastic", throw in PVC which is the most common plastic outside the miniature world, and is also a resin
as Resin is every solid or liquid that is convertible into a polymer and Plastic is every synthetic materials were polymer is the main ingredient (so actually there are no Resin Miniatures as by the time the material is made into a Mini, it becomes a Plastic)
So I guess the models is not made of HIPS, hence the painter calls it Resin, while the company calls it Plastic without going into detail which Plastic it is (and anything from PU to PVC is possible)
the one point that sets me off is the quality, because being better than Finecast or FW Resin just means being better than overpriced garbage and this is not the quality I was hoping for
H.B.M.C. wrote: They're not even plastic and they're charging that much? Holy gak...
you know that non-plastic models are the expensive stuff right?
metal > resin > PVC > HIPS
injection molded plastic is always the cheapest and if it is really silicon mold resin the high price compared to the standard plastic Mechs is more reasonable than making just 300 with injection molding
They were originally saying they were plastic, but their last couple of posts referred to them as "plastic resin". I was wondering if it was something similar to Mantic's Restic.
Mantics Restic is just PVC, same basic material as the plastic Mechs
So is the Black Knight HIPS? Or is it just the same restic as the Clan Invasion minis? Which while still being really good, solid restic (as opposed to Sedition wars stuff from 10 year ago, or Mantic stuff), still has some of the pain-in-the-ass qualities, like cleaning mold flash, which still doesn't scrape off nicely like HiPS.
I thought the main reason for the existence of Restic is it's a compromise between the high quality of HiPs, and the low cost of boardgame PVC plastic.
(I know Restic is just PVC, but it's still a good term to mark it as different than the really nasty boardgame stuff).
They secure and protect that work with government funding and making it priced so low that other nations can’t compete, it helps create an economic monopoly that’s very hard to break away from because you simply can’t afford to pay US or British workers what their skills are actually worth in a free market economy.
You know, people say that, but I've noticed that Games Workshop is making a lot of money paying British workers British wages.
AegisGrimm wrote: So is the Black Knight HIPS? Or is it just the same restic as the Clan Invasion minis? Which while still being really good, solid restic (as opposed to Sedition wars stuff from 10 year ago, or Mantic stuff), still has some of the pain-in-the-ass qualities, like cleaning mold flash, which still doesn't scrape off nicely like HiPS.
I thought the main reason for the existence of Restic is it's a compromise between the high quality of HiPs, and the low cost of boardgame PVC plastic.
(I know Restic is just PVC, but it's still a good term to mark it as different than the really nasty boardgame stuff).
Its not HIPS nor is it apparently PVC/restic nor is it conventional resin like forgeworld/finecast, etc. Its a thermoplastic resin, seemingly a proprietary composite blend from what I could find, possibly siocast but unconfirmed.
It's worth pointing out that Archon studios has come out of nowhere and started significant HIPS printing - the plastic that they sell with their dungeon and lasers KS is soooo cheap compared to other companies. Apparently they do the para bellum miniatures too.
The price of their stuff just sounds like they've actually paid attention to the benefits of plastic injection molding - the more kits you sell, the cheaper they get. So, they do loads of social media advertising, people see the great price and jump on board.
It feels like traditional miniature companies are scared of the upfront costs of tooling for injection moulded plastic, and then price to compensate. Then they never get the critical mass of supporters they need and struggle.
The startup costs associated with HIPS are very very steep, especially the equipment required to achieve the detail and geometry needed for miniatures. Not just in terms of the equipment itself but also the facilities and regulatory hurdles you have to jump through, etc. Its not really the kind of thing that you can start up in a corner of your basement or garage and expand out from. The knowledge/skill involved with that is also highly specialized/extremely niche and not widespread within the plastics industry - to avoid a lengthy and extremely costly learning curve of trying to figure it out yourself you would probably have to throw a large chunk of money at someone with experience in the miniatures industry to lure them over as a consultant or to head up your manufacturing operations. That skillset is almost nonexistent in the US - I only know of one person in the country who would *maybe* qualify as an SME in that industry niche and could approach it as a technical expert on the mold engineering and toolmaking side of the operation, theres a few more who can do it from the opposite side of product/kit design and parting but those are all guys who then send their work over to a shop in China that handles the hard part of actually engineering the mold and producing the goods. There might be a few more guys in the model railroad industry in the US who could get you close but the wouldn't have much experience dealing with organic forms (which is the hard part in all of this) found in infantry and simulated fabric, etc. You would basically need to import that talent from China, Japan, or the UK, as those are basically the only places that said skillset continues to exist in a meaningful capacity these days. There is basically almost nobody out there in the US that you can go to on a contract basis to get quality miniatures produced domestically (I've tried) - theres a couple of specialty shops that could probably get "close" but they have basically zero experience doing anything approaching the level of detail and complexity expected by modern tabletop miniatures customers, if you try to solicit them for something like a GW type mini they will either turn you away as it isn't worth the time and difficulty involved for them to make it happen or they will charge you through the nose to cover their risk and the time and effort needed to get the product where it needs to be.
On top of that, you have to realize that this is a veeeerry niche and very small industry that mostly operates on extremely narrow and tight margins (GW is the only real exception to this, but GW is generally an industry outlier and basically got lucky in terms of timing by doing something that would be much more difficult to replicate today). These guys aren't "scared", they are being realistic in terms of what their actual sales volume will be. Most miniatures produced by anyone other than a handful of the largest companies in the industry won't ever sell more than a couple thousand units - in general the volume is too low to justify moving into injection molding as the economies of scale simply don't exist. In short, its just not viable for most, and the few who are pursuing it (other than GW, of course) are able to do so because they have deep pockets and/or a well-established business that can survive the risk of failure - having an established product line with proven sales volume that can leverage the associated economies of scale certainly helps too.
Archon has been around for a loooong time (well, maybe not Archon itself since its almost universally agreed to be a shell brand or whatever for Prodos) and its only recently that they got into the HIPS game. As for ParaBellum - Yeah, apparently some (but not all) of the minis are made by Archon, but as I understand it thats a temporary thing while ParaBellum stands up its own HIPS capabilities in-house (which they can afford to do as they are financially backed by a fairly large and varied network of family businesses). From what I understand theres a couple ex-GW/Renedra toolmakers/mold engineers who moved into part time consulting in retirement that hop around europe advising companies on this sort of thing, I would imagine they may have worked with Archon, ParaBellum, and also Warcradle in helping them get their operations off the ground. You could probably get one of those guys to come stateside for a stint, but that obviously comes at a much higher price.
Small companies can get into modern CAD based HIPS easily, it is a maturing technology and costs a fraction of what it did not too long ago. Archon took the plunge, so did Renedra. It is then a licence to print money.
The problem would be having a market share to guarantee investment return. Catalyst is small minded, they have that market share and have had for years. They could easily get investment for the tooling for HIPS it might exceed what they could expect to crowdfund but allowing for what Chris Roberts raised i am not so sure.
Ok. Lets work it out. If CAD based HIPS costs say $20M USD can you crowdfund that. I think yes, you don't use kickstarter you go to the Battletech forums, the MWO forums, here and advertise your intentions, then set up your own. Let everyone know how many mechs they will get for their pledge and over what time period.
Divide the expected costs by the expected number of fans to find the average fans need to pay to unlock the goal of buying the hardware, be up front over this. Calculate a reasonable average via questionaire or even pre-pledges. Offset the remainder with a bank loan, which you should get as the expected return of in house Battletech miniatures should be good.
Catalyst should have got off their arses and done this years ago rather than go to China with Kickstarter.
Yeah, I think the kickstarter and my own tendency to bargain shop had given me a false idea of what Catalyst and Ironwind metal were charging for metal mechs these days. From the kickstarter, those new plastics are 4 or 5 dollar each, and absolutely gorgeous!
Plenty of folks are knocking off 10 and 20% online for new metals, and a few retail sites move them for 5-10 dollars each too (looking at you bvtraders- keep it up, you maniacs!).
But the Ironwind Metals store has 2 different Black Knights up for 18.50, for metal minis. 25 is still very pricey, but I think I'd be ok paying that for a command mech, or if I had a really good idea for a model that required extensive reposing.
Otherwise, I'm definitely sticking to the forcepacks- I like paying 30 for 5 mechs and a Black knight much more than 25 for a posable sword mech- but it's not a mech I'm invested in.
As many of you know, the much-anticipated release of the “Clanbuster” Black Knight happened last week—and promptly sold out in about an hour. Social media quickly lit up with a frenzy of comments, so the BattleTech team thought we’d post some insights and answers to the most common questions.
Please keep in mind just how very unusual this product was—BattleTech has never released anything like this before. Catalyst Game Labs simply had to roll the dice on whether or not customers would desire unassembled plastic miniatures at a price that would be viable for a U.S.-based manufacturer.
We hedged our bets and ordered 300 as an initial print run. However, there’s something about this miniature that is unlike most of our catalog, making Catalyst’s initial stock order easier to understand:
Creative Juggernaut is domestic, so they can simply print “on demand” and deliver product faster than any overseas producer can ship.
And that’s the crux. This is not intended to be a rare item; we can keep ordering more until every miniature-loving fan has them. In fact, production of Black Knights has been ongoing, so you can expect to see them back up for sale in the next 60 days.
Now on to the Q&A:
“Why didn’t you communicate this further in advance?”
That’s a really good question, and as always hindsight is 20/20. We felt that building up anticipation for a week or more on a mere 300 items was not the way to go.
“Is this the direction their business model is going?”
Oh goodness no. This is a specialty item. In this case, we chose to produce unique ’Mechs to go alongside the recent Battle of Tukayyid. We like the idea of being to produce and release new miniatures alongside sourcebooks and events in the future. There is no intention of having miniatures like this replace the core line products such as the Force Packs.
“What’s up with the price?”
This is a special release item, not the standard baseline product (such as Force Packs)—so extra value items like variant parts and custom pose-ability are natural features for a product like this. And $25 is exactly in line with the pricing of a convention exclusive or specialty item. Premium items are produced at a higher quality and in smaller numbers, which require a higher price.
Price-to-value is something we think about all the time. We are proud of the roughly $5 per miniature price on our Force Packs and box products, and it took an enormous amount of work to achieve that. It’s clear that the $25 price surprised some folks—some are in disbelief that domestic production is five times the cost of foreign production. And therein lies the confusion. The fact is the production cost on these Black Knights was far more than five times that of foreign production. There’s no fighting the math on that, we simply need to face it and build our product models accordingly.
Which is actually why Catalyst wanted to slowly begin exploring domestic plastic production. There was much feedback during the Kickstarter campaign about using China for production, and while we explained that there was no viable alternative, there was still a strong narrative of simply “trying to save a little money.” That perception is false. What we priced out with domestic companies that could have produced those box sets, would have resulted in retail prices of $200 or more per product. Which is why we decided to start testing the possibilities with things like this specialty product line—to weigh the strengths (production flexibility) against the weaknesses (production speed and costs).
“Why were we limited to only buying one?”
This was entirely to reduce scalping and to help ensure that the miniatures went to individual fans and not the secondary market. With limited quantities and a possibility of a quick sell through, we wanted to make sure we spread these as wide as possible.
“It sold out faster than I could place my order.”
We simply had no idea how fast it would sell out. We weren’t not going for FOMO, or creating scarcity to bump prices, we simply sold out of the initial print run much faster than expected. Not to worry, though—as we said above, we are already producing more.
“Is there a way to reduce International Shipping?”
We are working on it. We hear you and understand that this has been a problem, with no simple solution. We are working to set up three international warehouses to resolve this issue. The first will be servicing Australia, and we expect it to open soon. The second will be in Europe, which we hope to have established by the end of this summer, and the third will be in the UK soon after. The plan is to stock our game lines in all these locations so that everyone can get their games for a fair price. Please be bear with us until then.
“Will selling unassembled plastic minis compete with Iron Wind Metals?”
We have no interest competing with Iron Wind Metals. They are good friends of ours. Now that we’ve released our first domestic plastic miniature, I think it’s clear we aren’t trying to undercut them on price. Iron Wind Miniatures has nearly four decades worth of miniatures to choose from—we are simply delivering a different product model.
Thank you all for your ongoing support of BattleTech, for your passion of the game, and for keeping an eye on our continued expansion. Game on!
ComStar Command Level II - King Crab, Highlander, Black Knight, Exterminator, Sentinel & Mercury
Spoiler:
UPDATE #173 Post-Pandemic Shipping (A Tragedy in Two Parts) & ComStar Command Level II Photos
Spoiler:
Greetings, Backers!
We know a lot of you are patiently waiting, and have faith in your Wave 2 product showing up. Someday. For you, we can report that everything is still moving forward, albeit slowly and with great frustration, and we hope to have more positive news very soon.
We also know that for a lot of you it’s all about information. What’s going on? Why are we still delayed? So we are going to do a recap and new update on the shipping issue below. Let us know if you have any questions.
Part One
Just to recap, when Covid hit, it caused a LOT of delays in China. Even though we had left a lot of extra room in our schedule, it apparently wasn’t enough. First, our factories delayed us until after Chinese New Year. That was frustrating. Then they rolled us back an extra few months as they supposedly reopened from CNY slower than expected. FINALLY, they declared us ready to ship at the end of May. A lot of our material made it onto ships, heading to our distribution hubs around the world. But not everything.
Part Two
Also during Covid, there was an issue of all shipping heading one direction, from China to the rest of the world. As the US also shut down all domestic distribution centers and warehouses, containers piled up for months. This has caused a global container shortage, with ships anchored in our waters here, waiting for empty containers to take back to China. Meanwhile, once China opened up again, they were producing product, even though there was less shipping than normal to carry it. We have had our product bumped off at least four different ships now, as all ships move to “premium service” only. And last week one of our regular port cities in China partially closed because of a new Covid outbreak, and the ship we expected to pick up our last two containers (on June 25) bypassed the port completely. Didn’t even stop. Abandoning thousands of containers--including ours.
All of this has caused an insane escalation in shipping rates as companies who can afford to do so pay extortionate rates to move their freight to the front of the line. A 40’ container cost about $6500 two years ago. Last year it bumped to $8-10,000. Today, to rescue those two containers containing our Kickstarter product, we are paying something like $17,000. Per container! If you want the math on that…for something like A Game of Armored Armored Combat, that adds about 38% to our cost of goods. Or, put another way, eats away 20% of our gross margin. But we are paying it, because we believe we owe you the best resolution we can get.
FULFILLMENT DATES
Every time we think we have a handle on the schedule, the world shifts. All we can say is that we believe most product will be in hand by July 10th, and 100% of our product will be delivered on or around August 1st.
We are working with QML to determine if they have enough to begin shipping Wave 2 by the end of July, or if they feel they must wait for those final two containers arriving 8/1. At this moment, they believe that EU, UK, and AU shipments will begin earlier than the US, but the US will still get started no later than mid-August and delivered to backers before CGL heads to Gen Con in September. That’s a huge milestone, because if the backer shipments aren’t going out, we will NOT bring Wave 2 materials to GenCon, and that will also hurt the company, but less than it would if we were to break faith with you, who made all of this possible!
SHIP NAMES
We’ve had some backers asking about ship names so they can also track deliveries, and we’re happy to share what we know.
This is the best info we’ve been able to dog up about ships:
TAYMA V.0017W: Final ship to the EU
CAPE PIONEER V.888E: Wave 2 - Main Shipment to US
YM WITNESS V.030E: Wave 2 - Secondary shipment to US
I didn't back this particular Kickstarter, but just want to say how much I appreciate this level of communication from any Kickstarter creator. This should be the norm, not the exception.
Shame about the containers, but it's nice to have a KS that isn't plagued with failure and incompetence. Everything that's happened with this has been so far beyond Catalyst's control.
As a Battletech neophyte- is the Black Knight supposed to be so much larger than the King Crab? It's 25 tons lighter, and also looks the size of the Highlander?
AegisGrimm wrote: As a Battletech neophyte- is the Black Knight supposed to be so much larger than the King Crab? It's 25 tons lighter, and also looks the size of the Highlander?
I think it's just (another) bad photo - I would guess the Black Knight is about the same high as the Highlander but not as bulky, and the King Crab is hunched over.
While they're trying to keep the KS stuff in scale with itself, the rest of it is a bit of a mess - the metal Thanatos is much bulkier than the metal Highlander, despite being 15 tonnes lighter, for example.
There's some weird stuff though like ferro-fibrous armour, XL-engines, and endo-steel skeletons that are supposed to be bulky. To complicate matters, the Timber Wolf has all three and it's a bean-pole in all its incarnations.
Nurglitch wrote: There's some weird stuff though like ferro-fibrous armour, XL-engines, and endo-steel skeletons that are supposed to be bulky. To complicate matters, the Timber Wolf has all three and it's a bean-pole in all its incarnations.
Dont look at BattleTech that way. You have to take the rules as aggregate, so the component rules when blended together come to an in canon whole. Timber Wolf legs are not bulky but they have 'no room' for additional equipment. If a warrior wants to add leg weaponry (its rare anyway) he is told that doing so will 'compromise the endo steel load bearing structure' and has to back down with or without shooting the scientist who tells him the unfavourable information.
The two vessels containing the majority of our Wave 2 product have finally made port in Savannah. Four containers are processing through customs, and should reach our warehouse within the week. A fifth container has been flagged for examination; it will be delayed a few days, but should also make it to our warehouse in a reaonable time this month.
We have a few fill-in shipments that will be required to 100% fulfill Wave 2 to our backers, but QML will not need to wait for these to start. As such, they will begin planning the large shipment process, which will take weeks, and fill in those final items at the end. We do not have any exact dates yet for worldwide fulfillment, beginning or ending, but expect to soon!
At this time, QML expects to begin fulfilling Wave 2 in July for AUS and UK. August for US and EU. No word on Asia or the Rest of the World yet.
Nurglitch wrote: Did they ever mention the Imp or the Annihilator?
Shimmy has done a concept sketch for the Annihilator and I believe there's a 3D render out there somewhere but no word on when it may see production as a miniature or featured in a Recognition Guide.
