Fist off happening in January with Mythic Battles Ragnarok happening in June.
Greetings all,
How about a much closer a look at our plans for Conan: Beyond the Monolith and the upcoming Kickstarter campaign ?
There will be plenty of surprises once we reveal the full campaign, but we wanted to provide our community with much clearer picture of how we’re approaching this before we launch.
It has long been our aim to introduce our Versus system to Robert E. Howard’s vibrant and violent setting: the Hyborian Age. With the 2015 Conan game we offered high adventure with thematic missions and fixed character choices. The game was focused on story and immersion and we did our best to emulate and adapt specific tales of Conan the Cimmerian. Though we will offer more of those thrilling adventures with this project, our primary approach will be inviting players to take on the roles of commanders and warlords, who assemble their forces and crush their enemies beneath their sandaled feet.
Howard’s Conan is the foundation on which Monolith was built. We will call upon him in the months and years to come to expand our series of games, but Beyond the Monolith speaks to a much bigger project—one that will allow players to integrate different universes and themes into a common game system: Beyond The Monolith. Stay tuned as we reveal some of the exciting universes you’ll get to battle in.
What will the Conan BTM Kickstarter campaign offer?
The "Core System" box
This box contains all the essential material to play the new Versus system (rule books, command boards, high and low variance dice, gems, tokens, and player aids). Those who already own the Batman: GCC core game AND its Versus expansion, won’t need to purchase the Core System box as they already have 90% of the material it contains (we will provide the rest for less than $5 and will publish the brand new rules online).
Additionally, for those of our previous Batman: GCC pledgers (both the 2018 or the 2019 campaign) who would still like to get the “Core System” box, we’ll offer you a discount voucher redeemable during the pledge manager (Full details to follow).
Faction boxes
To properly introduce the Hyborian Age to the Versus game mode, we start with 4 factions, each of them in the form of a thematic box containing approximately 50 figurines of all sizes, as well as their tiles, tokens, a double-sided map board, and a booklet.
Our working titles for these boxes are "Pirates ‘n’ Privateers", "Dangerous Wilderness", "Demons ‘n' Sorcerers" and "Armies of Aquilonia". We are also creating a "Mercenaries" faction box. These mercenaries can battle beside any faction.
In the future we plan on adding more factions, associated with a specific regions of the Hyborian Age ("Combatants from Kush" or "Mysterious Khitai", for example) or a very particular thematic group (The Black Corsairs, The Red Brotherhood, or the Kozaki).
You don’t have to build forces for every faction. box offers a plethora of options to respond to each scenarios’ unique challenges.
You will no doubt notice that a large portion of the miniatures in these boxes come from the 2015 campaign. However, their quantities and color (related to their faction) have varied greatly. Versus mode didn’t exist in 2014 so we could not have guessed what Vs would require when we were creating miniatures and components for the Adventure Mode game.
We realize some of our fans and supporters will find these repeat offerings to be less exciting, which is fair. But if you previously pledged during either the 2015 or 2017 campaigns, we’ve got a bonus discount voucher to offer you, redeemable during the pledge manager if you just want to bolster your existing game with more of Conan’s adversaries or allies.
Because we are re-using existing molds, we can offer these boxes at an unbeatable price (when compared to similar games), and—for our faithful supporters—an even greater discount.
Monsters from the Monolith-verse.
Finally, during the upcoming campaign, you will be able to pledge for the "Massive Box of Monsters”.
Inside, you will find a sort of Monoliths’ “greatest hits” collection of our big ugly monsters. Each of these massive minis has been appropriately renamed according totheir new status within the Monolilth-verse. Each monster is accompanied by all the components required to seamlessly add them to your Core System Versus games.
Are you a previous Mythic Battles Pantheon or Claustrophobia 1643 backer? Perhaps you just want to add more muscle to your armies , Or unleash a few more Hellhounds! We got you covered with a discount voucher redeemable during the Pledge Manager.
As a bonus, we are including each monster’s respective Mythic Battlesantheon dashboards, troop cards, and activation recruitment cards so you can add them to your MBP army. Prior MBP minis only – the Claustrophobia 1643 demons refused to be drafted into Hades’ army; they serve something far eviler.
Of course, this approach raises questions such as, “Why not redo all the miniatures to coincide with the new gameplay initiative?”
Full disclosure: it’s because of the cost and break-even threshold. Conan BTM is a playable skirmish game for 2 or 4 players (the 4 players version requires 2 Core System boxes and the use of 4 factions). It is therefore aimed at a much smaller audience than our 2015 game. Its commercial ambitions must be more modest. We do not expect the January campaign will become the most backed game of the year. But this is the game we want to produce—one for which we see many exciting possibilities. If this campaign is a success, it will open the door to many other worlds that I cannot wait to talk about.
For previous Monolith pledgers, how will the Discount Voucher work?
We are currently working on implementing a discount system with Pledge Manager. Here is how it’s looking so far (keep in mind that the following is likely to evolve, depending on technical and legal constraints).
. Pledgers of the previous Conan campaigns will receive a code for each of the Faction and Mercenary Boxes. During the Pledge Manager phase, when selecting a faction or mercenary box, they will be asked to enter this code, which will automatically generate a credit toward the purchase of additional items or the payment of shipping fees.
. Pledgers of the previous Batman GCC campaigns will receive a code that can be used to purchase "Core System" boxes. During the Pledge Manager phase, when selecting the Core System box, they will be asked to enter this code, which will automatically generate a credit toward the purchase of additional items or the payment of shipping fees.
. Pledgers of the previous Mythic Battles campaigns will receive a code that can be used to purchase the "Massive Box of Monsters". During the Pledge Manager phase, when selecting Massive Box of Monsters, they will be asked to enter this code, which will automatically generate a credit toward the purchase of additional items or the payment of shipping fees.
. Pledgers of the previous Claustrophobia campaigns will also receive a code that can be used for the purchase of the Monsters Box. During the Pledge Manager phase, when selecting the Monsters Box, they will be asked to enter this code, which will automatically generate a credit toward the purchase of additional items or the payment of shipping fees.
In summary: all those who previously pledged for a Monolith game will be prompted, during the PM, to enter a special code for a particular item or items. This code will automatically generate a credit, redeemable for the purchase of additional items or for the payment of shipping costs. All these credits will be cumulative.
Warning : Each of these codes is totally unique, usable once, and associated with a specific item; however, if the code’s initial owner does not wish to use it, they can easily pass it on to someone else to use, even if this backer has never previously backed a Monolith Kickstarter.
What about the newcomers? What discounts will they receive?
For those who have yet to plunge into the worlds of Monolith the material will be, by definition, totally new. Nevertheless, we assure you that even without discount codes, the prices we offer in January will be the lowest the market can offer. All pledgers should keep in mind that the exceptionally low prices of these awards are due solely to the fact that this will be a special launch of our Beyond The Monolith range. New Monolith-verse boxes would require significantly more new minis, resulting in higher costs so we’d be unable to match these low prices in the future. We are also going to keep this campaign short (probably a week or less) with few ‘frills’. Keeping the “showtime” short helps us reduce expenses and offer such value.
Wait, wait, wait! What about those who want more Adventure Mode? Where are the tales of high adventure?
Though our prime focus with this campaign is launching the Versus system, we won’t leave our Adventure Mode fans with nothing. We will create a new book—similar to the Book of Set— featuring brand new AM scenarios that have been specifically designed to only require the Conan : the Boardgame 2015 Kickstarter core/retail box.
Additionally, all NEW miniatures produced for this campaign will come with tiles and/or hero sheets for Adventure Mode. Players won’t require these new miniatures, but we will provide options for swapping them with miniatures from the core game (similar to how we provided options in Batman).
The components included in the faction boxes only allow for the old Conan minis to be used in the new Core System Versus mode – BUT we have created a low cost addon pack that will contain all the necessary tiles, hero sheets etc. to incorporate those minis into your Conan: The Boardgame AM games.
In addition, in partnership with Modiphius, this pack will offer a set of fully cooperative scenarios using the co-op / solo mode written by Matt John and featured in the Conan Monolith Sourcebook.
We know that’s a lot of information and we thank you for reading and supporting us over these last (almost) five years! Again, we want to provide our faithful fans their due incentive to come back, while also offering tremendous value and excellent gameplay for all. We’ll see you soon with more information on the Conan: Beyond The Monolith campaign. Matt, Chaz, and I are all available to answer your questions.
Frederic Henry and the Monolith Team
The Beyond the Monolith post about how they want to break things up into smaller useable parts and allow people to reuse minis non from monolith in some of the systems (like VS).
Spoiler:
Beyond the Monolith… Article n°1
The Beyond Monolith project is a major element of the company's future strategy. Its implementation will begin in January, during the Conan campaign. In the weeks and months ahead, I will provide more information about the exact nature of this project, including specific details.
Beyond the Monolith—what is it?
In a few words, the approach of the Beyond the Monolith project is similar to generic role playing systems that are suitable for a variety of themes and settings, or like home videogame consoles and their games. In this way, we hope to separate the game engine hardware (if you will) from various settings and themes. Simply put, the goal is to provide what we’re tentatively calling an Engine Box, so that gamers will not have to buy an entire system every time, but rather just the material for their chosen theme—sort of like buying another game for your home videogame system, rather than buying a new console. The engine box would provide various dice, 2 Overlord tablets, 4 Hero tablets, colored base rings, a well-written rulebook,various Aids, cards and Tokens. When a new setting/theme becomes available you will already have all these materials, and will only need to buy the associated thematic elements (miniatures, special character sheets, tiles, etc) of your choice. This also means you will only have to learn the rules once, as they will be common across all settings. Today, the hardware components of the engine make up a significant chunk of our game prices. It is therefore time to drastically reduce the bill for our pledgers, starting by not selling them, again and again, the same material. This allows us to reuse the elements, thus saving money and shelf space. I will report back very soon with precise details on the Engine Box (the Console) content, so that you can see how attractive its price will be.
The Beyond the Monolith range will be divided into two product lines: The Second Life Kits and the Universe Boxes.
-The slogan of the Second Life Kits could be "Stop buying new miniatures and play more with the ones you already have".
Second Life is based on the observation that over the last few years, players have been accumulating more and more miniatures, which are seeing less time on the table. As a result, they tend to remain in their boxes, gathering dust, rather than gracing the game boards. In response, Monolith will offer, for excellent price points, VERSUS MODE THS kits * consisting of character tiles, equipment cards, as well as game maps and associated Scenarios. At first, these Kits will concern our proprietary worlds (Mythic Battle Pantheon, Mythical Battle Ragnarök, Claustrophobia), but very soon, they will be accompanied by many other universes, whose licenses are already being discussed and negotiated with other major market publishers. Some of these miniatures and settings from other popular games may already be on your shelf.
I Will be back very soon for announcing some very big partnership about some very successful games, which will become playable with our Engine.
Obviously, we want to reassure fans of Mythic Battles and Claustrophobia, that these two ranges will continue to grow with their own systems. In the future, we hope to bring a similar Second-Life ethos to each of our game systems in the form of Universe Boxes.
The slogan of the "Universe Boxes" line could be summarized as "Play now for less, in your favorite worlds".
Keeping potential slogans in mind, that of the "Universe Boxes" line could be “More Play, Less Pay.
Further, we want to reassure our Adventure Mode fans, that we are not abandoning this game mode. Though our main focus will be launching VERSUS MODE for Conan, We will offer further Adventure Mode content for the upcoming Kickstarter and maybe ever a third gameplay option.
As explained above, a large part of the manufacturing cost of our core-boxes comes from the hardware components that make up the engine. However, until today, not only did you have to pay for said physical material, but also for the license percentage that applies to all the elements in the box. We’ve come to the conclusion that this is not ideal and we decided to change our approach. So we expressed our ambition to our partners and they agreed on our vision.
From now on, we will be able to offer you Core-boxes which include our usual rich and detailed maps, minis, cards and tiles, but for prices much lower prices..
It’s a little too early to reveal which licenses we are perusing and/or in the process of signing. But we are in late negotiations with some very interesting names and products we think will add greatly to our existing game engine. After we resurrect Conan, we will offer universe boxes for other very strong IPs.
Sorry, you’ll have to wait and see about those.
Obviously, owners of Batman GCC will not be left out. Indeed, the existing game will be 100% compatible with the Beyond Monolith line.
I still have a lot to tell you about the future of Monolith. But I am told that long press releases bother readers. So, instead of knocking you out with information today, I'll be back soon, first to talk about the content of the Engine Box (including the dream team now in charge of writing rule booklets) .
Of course, if you have any questions about what has just been revealed, do not hesitate to ask us just here. Matt, Chaz and I will do our best to answer them within the limits of what we are allowed to say. Please know that English is not my first language, but I’m always happy to answer questions and drop hints. Moreover, do not hesitate to give us the names of the Universes you would like to see expand our range of Universe Boxes, or Second Life Kits (these are simple and quick to implement and we can easily build partnerships with our fellow publishers).
But above all, remember: "The membranes of the Multiverse are porous, and the Monoliths are the points of passage." (Zoltan Zenobee, March 2042).
Thank you for your attention,
Fred Henry and the Monolith team
* The THS (Tactical Homeostatic System) is the game system that powers Conan and Batman. Its purpose is to simulate, in an extremely simplified way, the energy cycle. The VERSUS mode, is the part which powers the game in a skirmish-like fashion. Its latest version, that of the Engine Box, pushes this simulation further, while simplifying the use (see article to come, explaining the changes).
Those new sculpts look great. I hope they consider adding some pose variety to some of the factions. The Bossonians and Picts for example get very repetitive with only two poses.
Hmm, this will be tempting. backed Mythic Battles Pantheon and Conan and the minis for both were great. I used all of these in my Pathfinder Council of Wyrms game... Will keep an eye on this.
I'm still hoping that they provide some way to get the unavailable content from the original - I bought all the KS exclusive stuff, but held off on the retail expansions (as I couldn't afford to go all in) - now those retail boxes are unavailable, and a HUGE amount of the extra content that has been released relies on those add-ons. Now, when I go to play a scenario, I first have to check if I even have the right board and content to play it - for example I cant use a 3rd of the scenarios in the 'Book of Set' missions book. It'll lead to a very fractured player base, who are always going to only be able to use a fraction of published content.
eddieazrael wrote: I'm still hoping that they provide some way to get the unavailable content from the original - I bought all the KS exclusive stuff, but held off on the retail expansions (as I couldn't afford to go all in) - now those retail boxes are unavailable, and a HUGE amount of the extra content that has been released relies on those add-ons. Now, when I go to play a scenario, I first have to check if I even have the right board and content to play it - for example I cant use a 3rd of the scenarios in the 'Book of Set' missions book. It'll lead to a very fractured player base, who are always going to only be able to use a fraction of published content.
They've been a bit vague on this but so far we know lots of the unavailable stuff will be in the new vs boxes. They also have some old stock of the old boxes they they're looking at selling but as for printing new box sets they haven't denied nor confirmed that it will happen.
That being said are going to have new Adventure mode stuff in the KSer that only focuses on the retail box and that they want to do more scenario boxes like the 3 from the first KSer (Red Nails is an example they've stated will happen at some point, just not this KSer).
Hmmm...will be interesting to see the actual project and what it offers. I'm especially curious as to the exact mix of models in each faction box as I would like to have at least one of all new models. I basically have everything from Conan except the Black Ones and the Dragon...easy enough to proxy the Dragon but not the BOs. I don't really want more of the Conan models I already have; hopefully they won't have faction boxes with one new model mixed with a bunch of old ones (so that you have to buy the whole box to get the one model). I also went all-in on the first Batman KS (only getting a few models from the second KS).
They are. From what the comments on Facebook have been most boxes will have a few new models. As to not annoy people that have everything they're offering the discount codes post kickstarter to "make it so you don't feel bad buying things you already have". The focus is the VS mode where you need more models then what the original KSer had and they realize not everyone will be happy with that situation which is again why they've said they're offering the discount code for people that previously backed. We don't know what those prices will be probably till next year.
A bit more from a facebook group Monolith people are in:
Something to consider, folks, is that within these boxes you're going to get all the new VS tiles, brand new minis, minis from Mythic Battles Conan fans may not already have, a new double-sided game board and some additional troops you'll need. Beyond that, yes, you'll get minis you may already have, but you won't find anyone offering similar value.
Now, if a scenario-based Versus mode (even with a 4 player option) isn't your jam, that's fair. But I do recommend trying it out or reaching out to those played Batman vs. I love it, and especially love the idea of now offering a trifecta of game modes. There will be a book of new Adventure Mode scenarios and a solo/co-op campaign.
This game is 5 years old and we have to step back in carefully in a way that offers things for previous fans and newcomers alike.
the factions boxes will contain some new minis and old minis--in many cases you need more units than were included in the original game (you'll need 8 pict archers and 8 pict hunters for example). And again, the prices will make you feel better about having some doubles. There will also be some MB sculpts mixed in that you may not have. I think you'll find the balance of price, new, and old palatable.
On why they won't just sell smaller groups of minis:
we have to include ALL necessary models. You wont have enough of certain units even if you already own everything. We considered offering just the components needed for VS, but the price wouldn't be much better. We're able to offer these for very good prices, in part because we're not using all new sculpts. I'd wait and see about those prices before you make up your mind
you'd only need to buy the engine box (probably 25$) and a faction of your choice, or two if you're supplying everything). If Vs isn't your jam, even when we're going to start adding some very enticing licenses into the mix, then you may just want the new scenario book. We're not offering a new game so much as we're offering a new game mode. The extra minis aren't really upping the price by much, becuase the costs of many of the molds and sculpts have already been paid, but you will need more of them (certain troops). I think the prices will make more sense when you see them.
On reprinting adventure mode content
the aim is to launch VS mode. We've already produced something like 70+adventure mode scenarios and will look more at that mode in the future. As I understand it, to reprint those boxes we need a HUGE demand or we'll lose a tremendous amount of money (don't quote me on this, as I don't deal with that side of things). That said, we may be selling more existing stock of those AM items, so those only interested in that mode may be able to scoop them up that way.
On new adveture box sets
Red Nails is still in the plans as long as we come back successfully. Ideally, Red Nails will offer new minis, maps, and scenarios for all 3 game modes. THAT is what I want to see--new stuff, yes, but more to do with it. Versus mode allows you to get a lot more use out of your minis.
we're offering a book of new scenarios for Adventure Mode and Solo/co-op. That's three different game modes. There are something like 60+ adventure mode scenarios already in circulation. We want to add something new and customizable. But if it's not for you, its not for you. Red Nails will happen down the road if this is a success.
Sounds like a lot of people aren't interested in yet another miniatures skirmish game. Frankly I'm not surprised, I own the core set from the first kickstarter and would have been interested in a follow-up with more minis and more scenarios. I have zero interest in a skirmish wargame, if I did I'd have backed either CROM or that other Conan skirmish game that failed on kickstarter earlier this year.
Frankly I'm surprised anyone at Monolith thought this was a good idea given that two previous kickstarters trying to push the same thing have failed in the past few years.
Difference is Monolith already has the system, Batman has had it for quite some time, so people know what to expect. The minis are going to be way cheaper from the sounds of it too.
I suspect this is happening for three reasons: 1) Drum up interest in a 5 year old game that hasn't had any releases in that same amount of time and see if there's enough interest in Conan for them to make more content for it. I suspect they don't get enough requests from people asking for stuff to be reprinted to make it worth wile to run a 1.5 kickstarter. Part of this is also probably showing Cabinet that people that know what they're doing with the Conan IP can make what others haven't successful so they don't get in the way of Monolith making more content again.
2) Pay bills. Claustrophobia wasn't super popular.
3) Show potential partners there's interest in the VS system so they can finish up the contracts for more of the IP in the Beyond Monolith system which is basically they want people to get more use out of the minis they have and based off of the recent friendliness between Monolith and CMoN I wouldn't be surprised to see a CMoN vs show up where for $25 you get what you need to turn all your various CMoN minis into a skirmish game.
Officially they say this is the game that they want to make right now.
Writing scenarios (adventure mode) is actually pretty difficult. With Descent 2nd edition (and other 1-vs-many) scenarios, the first scenario is a tutorial designed for the players to win and Game Master to lose. On top of this, FFG only wrote adventures that used the base game with *one* expansion set. A fanmade BGG strategy guide for the Game Master to select his monsters has some strong critiques against some monsters are being much less useful than others. Conan ran into audience criticism that heroes weren't interchangeable, and scenarios required expansion content that ended up not available retail. I do think Monolith *could* return back to the designing board (I'd like the game revised for the errata and the spell cards playtested in English), but Monolith seems to want to do what it wants, and that's what it's doing. (The solo and coop rules, btw, were something of a side result of the Modiphius RPG, which is why it requires components difficult to find at retail, as well.) It may not be marketable, but it's certainly motivated. Monolith could have just left Conan to disappear, but they're clearly doing *something* with it, in a way that will save customers some money.
Now... will it work? Cheapass Games had a line of inexpensive games that didn't include components that most gamers had (eg. dice). But it didn't last long. And RPG'ers already know that you can have one company for the game you're playing (ie. the RPG rules), and other companies the bits and pieces you use for the game (eg. dice, miniatures). But boardgamers don't do this, nor do the post-GW miniature gamers. (Historical wargamers often used rules from one designer, with miniatures made by a different company.)
I think the few fantasy wargamers on The Miniatures Page will be all over this, as well as the occasional RPG'er who wants crowd scenes. Certainly the recent Reaper Bones KS show that hobbyists will buy hundreds of miniatures in bulk. While Monolith assumes we'll use their game system (and at $25, why not), we at least have a company that makes Conan miniatures for whatever ruleset you choose. (Maybe I'll finally find some sun demons for Gloomhaven, but I don't think so.)
In any case, it's an interesting evolution that we shouldn't be surprised to see on KS. It's obvious that the Monolith gamers prefer VS. Now to see if (enough of) their customers do.
Zombicide experience thanks to their upcoming Kickstarter project, Beyond the Monolith.
Beyond the Monolith provides a generic gaming system without miniatures, but with more playable content! It’s designed to be able to handle any game style, including your favorite zombie-hunting action with Zombicide.
Stay tuned for more information about this exciting new system from Monolith!
Automatically Appended Next Post: from facebook about what it means?
more in time but allowing you to mix themes and tiles from various universes is the plan.
When asked about zcide versions it was stated that it should be all iterations of the game but Black Plague, Invader and Classic should be the first.
It's not any worse then the original which had a decent design but horrible execution. But the new one does fit the original description a lot better.
This man was naked except for a loin cloth and high-strapped sandals. He was brown-skinned, with close-cropped black hair and restless black eyes that set off a broad, arrogant face. In girth and breadth he was enormous, with huge limbs on which the great muscles swelled and rippled at each slightest movement. His hands were the largest Conan had ever seen. The assurance of gigantic physical strength colored his every action and inflection.
...
Slightly taller than Conan and much heavier, Baal-pteor loomed before him, a daunting image of muscular development. His mighty arms were unnaturally long, and his great hands opened and closed, twitching convulsively.
This was a post by monolith games about kickstarter:
$ 700,000?
- Why is the Conan: Beyond The Monolith funding level amount set at such a high level? -
It is well known that the funding level amount displayed during major KS campaigns does not reflect the actual financing needs of the project in question.
Marketing and the ability to proclaim that the campaign “funded” in an ever decreasing time period has meant the systemic reduction of funding level amounts to only represent a PROPORTION of the “actual” funds required to pay for the development, illustration, sculpture, manufacture, shipping , and the various taxes and royalties necessary for the completion of the project.
Monolith ourselves are familiar with this artifice as we have become accustomed to its usage.
During the Conan campaign, the funding amount didn’t represent a tenth of the actual financial requirements.
During the Mythic Battles campaign, the funding amount didn’t represent a 15th of requirements and during the Batman campaign, the funding amount represented, at best, a quarter of the actual financial requirements.
This allows publishers (ourselves included) to demonstrate their pride and gratitude and drums up buzz for the campaign.
"Awesome, Funded in less than 5 minutes!" While that feels great to say, behind the curtain, the whole team is crossing their fingers and sweating blood, waiting for the game to finally reach (ideally before the end of the campaign) its true target.
This artifice enables the launch of the Stretch Goal machine, convincing pledgers that these additional gifts are offered thanks to the decrease in unit production cost (irrespective of the fact that the economy of scale effect only starts to become measurable when the KS reaches ten or twenty times the stated funding level).
The problem with this type of subterfuge marketing is that it strongly encourages practitioners to get bogged down in non-financeable projects by clinging to the hypothetical and rarely verified hope of a Pledge Manager that will prove as lucrative as the campaign was hyped to be.
Using this model, publishers run the risk of embarking on a precarious financial reliance on a “ we hope the cavalry arrives during the PM” mentality.
Indeed, publishers collect pledgers' money during the campaign on the assumption that "it is what it is or we’ve got what we’ve got". Only "what it is” is sometimes far from enough, and publishers have absolutely no assurance that the PM will bridge the income gap.
Additionally if the PM doesn’t provide sufficient funds – kickstarter organizers can begin to “rob Peter to pay Paul – diverting funds from the latest Kickstarter to service the debts of previous kickstarters, locking those organizers into a constant need to create new kickstarters to remain afloat.
During the launch of the Beyond The Monolith range, I would like to break with this practice and set, perhaps for the first time, a funding level amount that corresponds to the true financing needs of the project and its future.
-Why set such a funding level amount?-
Because I am long-term planning. Because the Conan BTM campaign launches the Beyond The Monolith product range.
This BTM campaign goes way beyond just the Conan Intellectual property.
Additionally, to succeed in launching the BTM system and placing the Core System box in as many backers hands as possible, we are playing the price point card “hard” by recycling prior miniatures whose molding costs have already been absorbed in their original kickstarters`.
We are betting that these reduced “to the bone” prices will make the Kickstarter attractive to a larger potential backer pool.
So, for the first time ever, we will play the game of "all or nothing" that the KS platform advocates.
Why bother launching a project of this size if it does not receive the support of a sufficient part of our community and our partners’ communities?
So, by setting this realistic funding amount, it stops us from taking pledgers' money until the amount is enough to ensure that, in addition to completing the project itself, we are also able to ensure sustainability (ie to generate sufficient capital to invest in the longevity of the BTM product line).
From this point of view, the Pledge Manager funds will only be considered a "bonus", not a necessary requirement resulting from blindly following an evolutionary practice that perpetuates the dependence on being financially “saved” at the last minute by the PM cavalry.
In the past five years I have spent a great deal of time observing and discussing with my peers the evolution of pledger practices. A significant part of these evolutions are unfortunately only measurable using data visible only to the campaign organizers.
The first strongly visible trend was the explosion in the amount of “unpledge “actions occurring during campaigns—a good indicator of how volatile pledgers were becoming.
These days, you can see campaigns closing with the grand total of 10,000 backers when in reality, 15,000 backers may have pledged during the campaign, however 5,000 have cancelled their pledge.
These variations remain relatively invisible to the public who only have access to the net figures but are a real anguish for the campaign organizers who find themselves facing pledgers who, more and more, flutter from one campaign to another, attracted by a plethora of opportunities and options.
The second strongly visible trend is Late Pledging, which postpones the financial transaction.
We also note that many late pledgers have previously “unpledged” during the campaign and have made the choice to return at a later date.
The late pledge has an advantage both for the backer (payment delay) and the campaign originator (the PM turnover rate is generally lower than that of KS), but also has a major pernicious effect: the lack of true visibility over the final amount that the campaign generates.
These two strong trends contribute to the growing opacity of the actual financial results of campaigns, drastically increasing those financial results “virtual” nature (during the campaign) and “speculative” nature (from closure of the KS to the closure of the PM).
Now, this virtual and speculative nature of the financial results is at the very heart of the risk of waiting for the cavalry.
However, you can’t blame backers—unrealistically low funding amounts have just encouraged these two trends. Indeed, it’s common knowledge amongst backers that Stretch Goals only serve as adjustment variables to the pace of the campaign (the gaps widen when the campaign goes well and tighten when it slows down). In other words and roughly speaking, once the "financing threshold" (sic) has been crossed, the greater or lesser number of backers has, so to speak, only a marginal impact on the final overall product configuration.
Which implies that technically there is no real reason for backers not to shift the timing of payment to the PM instead of the KS.
So, to use an example I'm familiar with, Batman 2018, whether we raised $ 3M or $ 8M, would not have affected the amount of SGs that were unlocked (all the SGs were prepared and had their space allocated in the box) ... and included in the content that backers received.
The challenge posed by transferring the financial transaction to the PM is that campaign organizers with the courage to stop an underfunded campaign, rather than reap the cash, are rare.
Instead, we see the proliferation of multiple extension or multiple re-opened PMs, which never close until the actual funding amount is reached. ... in the hope, hypothetically, that at some point it will.
To me, the simplest solution to remedy this harmful process is the reinstatement of an actual funding level amount: the minimum amount required, without risk to the pledger, for the timely and quality completion of the project.
-Paradoxically, why such a short campaign?-
Because, as with the Claustrophobia 1643 campaign, we will not use the subterfuge of Stretch Goals.
From Day 1 pledger value is maxed out, what you see is what you get.
Any additional content would be detrimental to the profitability of the product on offer.
So, rather than purposely removing some of the game content to put it back during the campaign in the form of Stretch Goals, we think it's healthier that this value is built right into the game and immediately visible.
Therefore, we consider it a poor use of time to artificially prolong such a “value for money” product campaign simply to provide an online show.
(We think that once you see the offer for yourselves, you will agree).
-The Pledgers deal-
During this short campaign (probably a week, -anything more than that and everyone would get bored-), we will offer our pledgers, just for this BTM product line launch, at incredibly low prices – lower than the market standards.
This heavily discounted price point is our “gift” to Kickstarter pledgers.
In return for which, we hope pledgers will help us pass this realistic funding amount during the course of the KS.
Shipping costs will be clearly defined during the Kickstarter campaign to avoid any unpleasant surprises when the PM opens.
-Is this approach too cautious?-
I am perfectly aware of the potentially counterproductive nature, in business terms, of all these incorporated precautions.
But the fact is, that to this day, I have no idea what the BTM product line can generate in terms of results, and I do not wish to put at risk any of those who have put their trust in me.
- Indeed - There are zero 1 VS 1 games included in the top 25 grossing KS (*card games removed, focus on miniature boardgames)
Only two 1 VS ALL games are included (Conan and Batman :wink. Finally, only four Competitive-Multiplayer games are in this list. All the others (19/25 !!!) are Cooperative games.
Conclusion: We haven’t won yet, but deep down isn’t that what makes the risk exciting?
Thank you for taking the time to read this statement, and for your continued support.
Fred Henry and the Monolith team.
Oh no. I think it will be almost impossible to fund a $700k project out of the gates. Fake stretch goals etc. are the lifeblood of a campaign because it gives backers that dopamine hit of accomplishment and reveals of the next goal. Encouraging them to open their wallet by degrees.
Many many people back much more than they would have guessed initially by the end of the campaign.
Hopefully the one off, no retail plans, and cheap prices for this stuff will give people enough FOMO to get them to go for the $300
ya. I was pretty disheartened when I saw this a few weeks ago. I don't see how they'll hit that just due to how people have been conditioned for KSers. Maybe I'm just being negative but it doesn't seam like the average pledge will be more then $100ish at most and this is a skirmish game not a story based game the original is.
I guess they're thinking a more will known IP will do better then an unknown like claustrophobia.
But if you're not going to play the KSer game why be on KSer?
Something else to consider...CMON and Petersen Games both have some skin in the game...it is not impossible to see a large portion of that requirement met by companies "investing" in the KS to make sure it funds.
We have seen that before on numerous projects (Miniature Market) so it is possible that these companies will see this as a way to make their bought and paid for steel molds make more money.
Repackage game contents as Skirmish level forces, etc.
Well they're not playing the retail game as their projects are too expensive to make to be commercial (via distribution), so given that KS is really the only game in town
Monkeysloth wrote: ya. I was pretty disheartened when I saw this a few weeks ago. I don't see how they'll hit that just due to how people have been conditioned for KSers. Maybe I'm just being negative but it doesn't seam like the average pledge will be more then $100ish at most and this is a skirmish game not a story based game the original is.
I guess they're thinking a more will known IP will do better then an unknown like claustrophobia.
But if you're not going to play the KSer game why be on KSer?
Disheartened? I rather respect them for it as I kind of hate the kickstarter model myself heh.
Hmmm, I consider the $700k funding goal objectively, of all their regular KS games none has failed to more than triple that amount. Which would suggest hitting that goal should be a rather easy thing. Claustrophobia, which still made over $700k, was a different type of KS project in that it really didn't offer that much of a discount but supposedly was more like a pre-order where you didn't have the wait of a typical KS project either.
I'm ambivalent about the BTM system itself. I like the idea of energy cubes, but, when it came to the dice, your wanted to roll more bips than your opponent rolled baps. We already have plenty of boardgame and miniature skirmish games with "roll dice better" mechanics. But, as I understand it, while you bring your own miniatures, you still have to purchase cards for your IP-specific units (although this isn't too different from army lists). So it's still more component-specific than generic miniature skirmish rulesets, like Song of Blade and Heroes, and Savage Worlds. Let me know more if I don't quite have it right. I backed the Car Wars 6e KS, and I think that'll do for my dice-rolling table-smack-talking fix.
As for KS itself, they're still sheltering themselves from the retail risk by having their customers pre-order (ObDisclaimer: KS is still not a store), which is, nonetheless, one of the purposes of KS. I think part of the attraction of KS *is* the hype, and retail has it as well. Also, of course, you're always going to have backers who can't make the 7-day window, because they still haven't heard of it, don't have the gaming budget at the time, or have some other reason they can't suddenly drop $150+.
Still, the promise of cheap miniatures will always lure me in and I liked the Conan miniatures for 28mm gaming.
ced1106 wrote: I'm ambivalent about the BTM system itself. I like the idea of energy cubes, but, when it came to the dice, your wanted to roll more bips than your opponent rolled baps. We already have plenty of boardgame and miniature skirmish games with "roll dice better" mechanics.
I don't have a ton of experience with the Conan game, but the energy cube mechanic is really what sets this apart as a skirmish system for me. Managing the flow of your actions and exhaustion level really makes for a different game experience than the standard "each guy gets three actions, roll dice" setup of other miniature games.
Gallahad wrote: Oh no. I think it will be almost impossible to fund a $700k project out of the gates. Fake stretch goals etc. are the lifeblood of a campaign because it gives backers that dopamine hit of accomplishment and reveals of the next goal. Encouraging them to open their wallet by degrees.
The flipside is that Kickstarter is becoming more well-known for the projects that 'funded' but then failed, or are stuck in we-ran-out-money limbo, than for the projects that actually went without a hitch, and that's something that needs to change. If that means re-educating potential backers and finding new ways to get them interested in projects, then that seems like a sensible thing to do.
Gallahad wrote: Oh no. I think it will be almost impossible to fund a $700k project out of the gates. Fake stretch goals etc. are the lifeblood of a campaign because it gives backers that dopamine hit of accomplishment and reveals of the next goal. Encouraging them to open their wallet by degrees.
The flipside is that Kickstarter is becoming more well-known for the projects that 'funded' but then failed, or are stuck in we-ran-out-money limbo, than for the projects that actually went without a hitch, and that's something that needs to change. If that means re-educating potential backers and finding new ways to get them interested in projects, then that seems like a sensible thing to do.
Good on them for leading the charge.
I definitely agree on the need to educate backers etc. And on an intellectual level we all know that fake stretch goals are fake, etc. I just wonder how much of the capital that comes from Kickstarter is gained by emotional decisions, meaning people who pledge when they normally wouldn't because of the emotional journey and incremental reupping of pledges. For example, it is much easier to convince someone to spend $200 if they've already "spent" $150.
I will be pledging, and I hope others will as well! I want them to be successful, but I wonder if they are discounting the role that emotion and psychology plays in people's decisions to back
the other thing doing it this way means is they can't respond to backer request so there's a lot less group building
I know a lot of backer requests are nonsense, but some of them are worth listening to generally, and others if your after a certain type of customer, like boardgamers love for a huge empty box to put it all in
better to go for a reasonable offering to start with with additional timed unlocks, which, since you've not shown them, gives you the ability to respond to your backers if you do need to add something and remove some bling you now can't afford to do so
OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote: the other thing doing it this way means is they can't respond to backer request so there's a lot less group building
I know a lot of backer requests are nonsense, but some of them are worth listening to generally, and others if your after a certain type of customer, like boardgamers love for a huge empty box to put it all in
better to go for a reasonable offering to start with with additional timed unlocks, which, since you've not shown them, gives you the ability to respond to your backers if you do need to add something and remove some bling you now can't afford to do so
Aren't backer requests simply them acquiescing to things they had planned to to begin with?
Sometimes for sure but in the first Conan KSer, for example, there were no plans for a Camel. Everyone wanted one due to the scene in the movie where Arnold punches one so they added it. CMoN is also known to change things up. Reaper always adds a collection of backer recommended things at the very end. But I'm sure in the instance of CMoN and Reaper they swap out something for another of the same price and the backer recommended things are expected now so that has a flat budget regardless of what get's put in they won't go over that planned cost.
KSers have to be pretty well laid out from the get go to hit the hidden cost but you still have to have some flexibility to be able to adapt to what people are asking.
But asking for 700k over a campaign that's like 1 week long and not using any the of the standard tricks to entice people. Sure they're dumb tricks, we know that starting 100k is a fraction of what's needed but people want to see funded in one day and a huge amount over the "needed" total to determine if they should back. People have been conditioned to expect things and I don't think Conan is a big enough property to break that conditioning. They should have tried this with the second Batman KSer.
It's interesting to see this as marketing in itself. It'll draw lots of attention simply from people seeing if it works. Not that it works for people kickstarting a business, but if it works for established companies willing to be honest and up front about the costs of doing sustainable business, all the better.
Well, if you want some drama go read Monolith's social media accounts. They posted what the pirate box looks like. (sorry, don't know how to add attachments inline for this forum so it's at the bottom). $49 gets you 51 minis. Two double sided boards and other bits you need to play. Existing Conan backers will get a $5 discount for the box. Pretty good price but a lot of repeats, as expected but..wow...people are upset. Seams like Monolith really miss calculated how many people want a vs mode. Monolith even asked, in a different post, how many people would prefer to pay $40 for just new stuff in the box vs $44 (for those with the discount) to get the extra 31 minis that would be repeats from KS1 (and cost Monolith about $4 to make) and only about half said the second option. Now it seams they're looking into providing a "Legendary" box that will just contain the new minis and maps.
I'm still not sure how much I'll back. I'm one of those really not interested in the vs mode...but I do play the 2d20 RPG from time to time and you need lots of copies of mooks for that if using minis.
Carlovonsexron wrote:Do they have any images up for what an Aquilonian army would look like? I'd chip in for that almost assuredly.
Haven't shown any other boxes yet. With the KSer less then a month away I'd expect to see those reviled sooner then later.
Albino Squirrel wrote:So, are the forces set specifically for each scenario? Like there is no points based force building or anything?
Dono. I don't have any interest in VS mode so I haven't followed along but it's supposed to be the same as Batman. I'm sure someone else here who has that game can chime in.
Hmm I'm still interested but it does look like 5 of the sculpts are only of 2 of the characters. Undead I might well go for even with the repeats. Given the GW alternative costs $90 for 19 models (Start Collecting of Khorne set) and Mantic costs $90 for 63 models the moaners are being pretty petty in my opinion.
1) I just want to content to play vs mode and don't care about the extra minis I may need and don't want to rebuy what you've already sold me just to play.
2) I don't care about vs mode I just want the new stuff (as there is a new Adventure mode campaign being made too).
3) I just want the out of print stuff from the first campaign as the adventures Monolith released all require KSer exclusive stuff -- even post retail. Huge bungle on Monlith's part. The retail box has about half of what you need and everything else is unavailable or pretty useless. An example is selling a box of crossbowmen. No scenario comes with them. You can only use them if you happen to have one that does include them (which is one or two I think). The game also isn't designed to substitute things very easily.
Monolith has unofficially announced a solution to #2 though I suspect the price will anger people as there's only a handful of new sculpts and their molds have to be paid for somehow. The first KSer you got a LOT for $90 and I can't see this coming close to that value.
#3 they say they have sold old stock they plan on selling in the KSer but it's really limited. But from one of their Contractors (may be employee now) said that the box they're planning to cover #2 above will have some extra stuff to fill out what's needed for the old campaign books.
Not sure if they'll do anything for #1. That 700k funding goal is looking harder and harder to hit which existing fans only want a $30 or so upgrade. Not sure how wide of a net Conan casts as none of the other Conan skirmish games from the past 2 years have come close to funding and existing backers are split down the middle on this campaign.
Not sure if they'll do anything for #1. That 700k funding goal is looking harder and harder to hit which existing fans only want a $30 or so upgrade. Not sure how wide of a net Conan casts as none of the other Conan skirmish games from the past 2 years have come close to funding and existing backers are split down the middle on this campaign.
To be fair, the only two I now of were by the same guys, and while the sculpts looked cool they were supposed to be pre-painted, which certainly drove off people, including myself.
I do hope those sculpts turn up somewhere, some how.
Of course what I REALLY want is a Pallantides mini that looks like the old McFarlane action figure.
Thanks for the info. Myself, I wanted errata for the English translation spell and reference cards. Whaddaya mean I can't burst through a solid stone wall?
I'll definitely take a peek, but I'm still looking forward to Ragnorok (or however you spell it and I forgot again who the creator is.
Not sure if they'll do anything for #1. That 700k funding goal is looking harder and harder to hit which existing fans only want a $30 or so upgrade. Not sure how wide of a net Conan casts as none of the other Conan skirmish games from the past 2 years have come close to funding and existing backers are split down the middle on this campaign.
To be fair, the only two I now of were by the same guys, and while the sculpts looked cool they were supposed to be pre-painted, which certainly drove off people, including myself.
I do hope those sculpts turn up somewhere, some how.
Of course what I REALLY want is a Pallantides mini that looks like the old McFarlane action figure.
I saw some of the CROM artwork in the Monolith Sourcebook from Modiphous so if the sculpts were from that one they could have ben sold off. The shinobi 7 game is supposed to try again sometime next year I think.
ced1106 wrote:Thanks for the info. Myself, I wanted errata for the English translation spell and reference cards. Whaddaya mean I can't burst through a solid stone wall?
I'll definitely take a peek, but I'm still looking forward to Ragnorok (or however you spell it and I forgot again who the creator is.
I think Monolith has all those available in a pdf download. Maybe you can find them on BGG?
Also another update posted in unoffical groups by a Monolith Employee
Greetings all,
There are a lot of comments swirling around about the faction reveal, so I figured I’d provide some further clarification.
This upcoming Kickstarter campaign (January 6th) will offer content for 3 different game modes: Versus (new), Adventure Mode (the original) and Solo/Co-op (featured briefly in the Monolith Sourcebook).
I’m hearing some comments about Monolith “ripping off” original backers and expressions of general disappointment. I’m not sure I understand this reaction, but perhaps that’s because, as an employee of the company, I have more information about the upcoming campaign. Let me share some of that info with you now.
First, we ARE offering new Adventure Mode content. It will come in the form of a book and a special box where all the new sculpts will be made available to those who just want NEW items (though there will be a few classic minis in there to increase options for solo/co-op mode). These new sculpts, as well as only core/retail box material, will be used in the brand new Adventure Mode and solo/co-op scenarios featured in that book. We want to make things accessible for ALL fans. Many found this game later than the 2015 KS and don’t have all the materials as those who went all-in.
Secondly, some folks have expressed outrage that we’re recycling sculpts. Fair enough if you feel that way, but let me explain why we took that route. Versus Mode was designed years after Adventure Mode. We could not have predicted what it would entail--how many minis it would require, the fact that the tiles would need to be bigger for additional iconography. As designers, we learn new things every time we create a game and new ideas come to us, so change is bound to occur. But this isn’t even a second edition--it’s a new game mode. In short, for this mode, you need more than what you may already own to play it, including more minis (even those of the same sculpt in some cases--more pirates, apes, demons, etc).
If we decided to commission all new sculpts for these units, the price would be MASSIVE because we want to provide multiple options for each faction (meaning lots of choices of units to field). Instead, by recycling the old sculpts, we only need to charge approximatley 5$ per box for miniatures you may already own. I understand that, for some, this is still asking too much, but if we don’t take this route, we must provide a box that is partially empty (where the old but necessary minis have been removed or without trays for those necessary minis). This would mean you’d have to dig through several old boxes every time you wanted to put a faction together.The box has to be the same dimensions either way because it has to house the new game boards included with each faction.
So...we decided the best bet was to make one box, for an excellent price that would offer a complete faction. The biggest part of the price of these boxes IS the new sculpts, which require new and expensive molds. The re-printed minis are a tiny portion of that price.
Once we reveal the other factions, you will see other “recycled minis” many of which come from specific add-ons (the Dragon, the Black Ones, Guest Boxes etc). Admittedly, it is our all-in backer who will receive the most reprints, and if they truly feel ‘ripped off’ by these new offerings, I’m not sure how else we can pitch the VS mode portion of this project, but we want to honest with you, up front, about our approach. Perhaps the Adventure Mode box (featuring the new miniatures) and scenario book are more appetizing to you (consider it a like a maxi-expansion for the original game). In any case, we appreciate your support over the years and in encouraging us to create the best games we can.
-Matt
I'm kind of wondering why Monolith is doing so poor a job showing off this campaign to build hype when it's only a few weeks away. People are spending their money right now for the holidays, you'd think they'd want to grab a little mental space so people have it in mind they want to buy this in January. Even if it's not a $500 Kingdom Death style purchase, it's easy for people with a couple hundred on the credit card to just skip KS campaigns without bothering to look closely because they're "broke" for the month.
Fellow Gamers . From Monday January 6, 2020 at 9:00 p.m. (UTC + 1) to Monday January 13, 2020 at 9:00 p.m. (UTC + 1), the "Conan: Beyond The Monolith" Kickstarter campaign, our first universe product for the Beyond The Monolith project, will be LIVE.
To mark the occasion, we invite you to guess the final total raised, in US Dollars, that the campaign reaches upon closing (Monday January 13 9:00 p.m. UTC + 1).
You have until midnight Sunday, January 5, to enter your bet right here in this comments thread.
The winner will be the commenter whose guess is the closest to the final result recorded by Kickstarter.
- Ties will be decided by the Facebook time code of the guess: the first accurate guess posted takes home the prize.
Rules - - It is strictly forbidden to modify / edit a posted guess. - The number of guesses is limited to 1 per person.
Disclaimer: This promotion is not "sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with Facebook in any way.
The winner will be sent free of charge to the address they provide:
An All-in Conan + An All-in Mythic Battles Pantheon. + An All-in Batman GCC + An All-in Claustrophobia.
frankelee wrote: I'm kind of wondering why Monolith is doing so poor a job showing off this campaign to build hype when it's only a few weeks away. People are spending their money right now for the holidays, you'd think they'd want to grab a little mental space so people have it in mind they want to buy this in January. Even if it's not a $500 Kingdom Death style purchase, it's easy for people with a couple hundred on the credit card to just skip KS campaigns without bothering to look closely because they're "broke" for the month.
Maybe because they realize that most folks don't have the willpower or even realistic choice to save surplus cash during any season let alone the christmas one so it's a waste of time to promote heavily too far in advance? I don't intend that to sound snarky but I don't think there is a good way of getting that point across without that unintended tone. From a purely outsider looking in perspective following kickstarters over the past five years, I don't think alot of "common" sense works as intended in actual practice.
frankelee wrote: I'm kind of wondering why Monolith is doing so poor a job showing off this campaign to build hype when it's only a few weeks away. People are spending their money right now for the holidays, you'd think they'd want to grab a little mental space so people have it in mind they want to buy this in January. Even if it's not a $500 Kingdom Death style purchase, it's easy for people with a couple hundred on the credit card to just skip KS campaigns without bothering to look closely because they're "broke" for the month.
Maybe because they realize that most folks don't have the willpower or even realistic choice to save surplus cash during any season let alone the christmas one so it's a waste of time to promote heavily too far in advance? I don't intend that to sound snarky but I don't think there is a good way of getting that point across without that unintended tone. From a purely outsider looking in perspective following kickstarters over the past five years, I don't think alot of "common" sense works as intended in actual practice.
No snark taken, though just because your customers don't have much common sense doesn't mean it's wise to operate without it. Madison Avenue would tell you if you have access to free advertising platforms frequented by many potential customers then you definitely want to plaster your upcoming product all over it as aggressively as possible. The real time they have to worry about is the time running out before their campaign, and whatever people's thoughts are about too much hype or whatever, one month to go is never too far out to start the hype train, it's often pretty late to get started. And if they don't have time to advertise, they should fire themselves and hire someone competent immediately. I guess they have the long game of the late pledge, still, it's low on hype.
Yeah, if it wasnt for this thread I would have never known about it, and I'm probably one of their target customers- a guy who is really into the Hyborian setting, really would just want the minis, and missed out on the first kickstarter so don't have any of the minis at all...
Carlo, you can wait to see what Monolith offers, but also look for the Conan boardgame on sale. I'm not finding the low $70 prices anymore, but, since you're in China, a $100 copy of eBay may be worth it with the free shipping.
Amazon has it for $85 atm and I've seen it at other places for $70's just a month or two ago. I wouldn't be surprised to see Miniature Market or Gamenerdz put it on sale around KSer time to clear out stock as there will be a demand increase around that time and knocking some off the price is a good way to move the inventory as backers will post about it.
It is limited availability though. What's in distrubtion is all that exists as monlith doesn't keep a warehouse -- they just sent everything to Asmodee -- and there isn't plans on a reprint until they decide to do more stuff focusing on the adventure mode -- if they ever do.
A lot of the cool minis were KS exclusive for Conan, plus there are cool new minis coming. Definitely worth waiting to see what they offer in the KSimo.
I spent a lot of money trying to get the KS exclusive stuff off eBay... And I'll still probably go all in on this to get the things I just could never pull the trigger on (black ones, dragon, etc.)
Indeed... Again, I'm super, super hopeful they will give us a Pallantides figure based o the McFarlane figure, or at least from the art/concept art for the Black Dragons from the MMO.
I also backed Conan and Mythic Battles, but have been following the news of this new KS minimally. I have now read this thread and tried to decipher what the hell this new project is with somewhat mixed success.
Three different game modes...compatibility with other games...multiple types of boxes...basically what I'm getting is: it's a skirmish mode for Conan.
The original Conan Kickstarter was obviously massive, and I wonder if they aren't leaning a little too heavily on the results of that for their projections. That campaign was very straightforward. Hopefully they'll figure out some clear messaging for this by the time it launches, because with a fairly high minimal goal and a short campaign, it needs to be a success right out of the gate; not a lot of time for mid-campaign tweaking.
On Monday, January 6, the Conan, Beyond the Monolith Kickstarter campaign will be launched. We are excited to share the discount policy for our past pledgers, as well as new pledgers that they can sponsor. After several discussions with our pledge manager’s (Gameontabletop) technical team and our lawyer (given how restrictive European GDPR regulations are), we finally opted for the simplest solution to implement, which also mitigates legal-technical issues: A discounted price on items that pledgers to our previous campaigns might already own.
We will shortly contact former pledgers, through campaign updates from past KS campaigns as well as a Facebook announcement. Pledgers to past campaigns will be given the option to receive a discount, based on their participation in past campaigns, by simply entering their email address into a web form. Based on their previous participation, they will be assigned a Pledger Profile (Empty profile, Conan, Conan + MBP, MBP + Batman, Conan + Batman +MBP + Claustrophobia, etc.). These are listed in Column 1 of our Discount Table : https://the-overlord.com/index.php?/conan/discount-table/
Next up, three possible scenarios:
1) I have pledged to Monolith in the past and I’ll be pledging to the January 6 campaign: Easy! Keep your discounts by entering your email address in the discount offer form. As a bonus, you can receive more discounts by getting one or more friends to sponsor you, exclusively for this campaign.
2) I have pledged to Monolith in the past and don’t plan to pledge to the January 6 campaign: Sponsor a friend by entering their email address in the discount offer form, which will give them your discounts, exclusively for this campaign. It’s a great way to make sure the deal doesn’t go to waste!
3) I have never pledged to Monolith, but I plan to pledge to the January 6 campaign: Ask one or more friends to give you their discounts, exclusively for this campaign. They do this by entering your email address into the discount offer form.
What is my Monolith Pledger Profile?
- Each Profile is made up of a combination of the past Monolith campaigns in which the pledger and their sponsors have participated. - Any person having backed at least $20 on a campaign is considered as a pledger of this campaign.
How does this sponsorship and the temporary gifting of rights work?
- To sponsor someone, simply enter their email address in the discount offer form (available soon.) By doing this, you temporarily, and for this campaign only, give up that discount. The person you’ve sponsored can then add it to any discounts they already have.
!!! Which pledgers will have access to these discounts? !!!
- In order to access your Pledger Profile discounts, you must have backed the campaign at one or more of the base levels (“Pledge Leader” or “Bat-Pledge) during the January 6th to 13th Kickstarter campaign.
When can I take advantage of these discounts?
- The specific discounts linked to your profile will appear after the campaign, directly in the pledge manager, listed as KS campaign prices, minus the discounts listed in the Discount Table : https://the-overlord.com/index.php?/conan/discount-table/
If the discounts on the sums I paid during the Kickstarter are only deducted in the Pledge Manager, what can I do with them?
- Simple. You will be credited the difference between what you paid during the KS and your discounted price in the PM. That credit can be used to pay for shipping or additional items.
How much time do I have to fill out the Monolith discount offer form?
The form will remain live up until 5 days before the pledge manager opens. Please note that the form can only be submitted once. It is not possible, for example, to sponsor someone and then change your mind. In addition, given that profiles are linked to the email addresses used to log in to past campaigns, Monolith is in no way responsible for lost or changed email addresses.
If my initial profile already has a game that one of my sponsors gifted me, do the rights related to these games add up?
- They don’t. This would run counter to the spirit of the operation. This is why we are talking about the combining/merging of profiles, rather than adding on. Redundancies are ignored.
A few examples (from the simplest to the most complex):
Example 1: - I pledged to both Conan and Mythic Battles Pantheon. Therefore, my Monolith Pledger Profile is “Conan + Mythic Battles Pantheon”. This gives me the discounts shown in the Discount Table, row “Conan + MBP” : https://the-overlord.com/index.php?/conan/discount-table/
Example 2: - I pledged to Batman and don’t plan to pledge to the Conan BTM campaign. I can sponsor a friend by giving up all rights linked to my pledger profile—exclusively for this campaign. To do so, I just enter their email in the discount offer form.
Example 3: - I’ve never pledged to a Monolith campaign, but a friend pledged to Conan and another to Batman. Neither plans to pledge to the Conan BTM campaign. I can reach out and ask if they’d be willing to sponsor me. Their profiles, combined with my “Blank” profile, create my “Conan + Batman” profile, which gives me access to the discounts listed in the “Conan + Batman” row in the Discount Table, exclusively for this campaign.
Example 4: - I pledged to the Mythic Battles Pantheon campaign and I’ve got a friend who pledged to the Batman campaign, and doesn’t plan to pledge to Conan BTM. I can ask them to sponsor me. Once they do, my Pledger Profile becomes “Batman + MBP”. This gives me access to the discounts listed in the “Batman + MBP” row in the Discount Table : https://the-overlord.com/index.php?/conan/discount-table/
Example 5: - I previously made pledges using more than one email address. All I have to do is choose one email address and make sure to sponsor it from my previously-used addresses. This email address will be assigned a profile combining all of my previous pledges into a single Pledger Profile.
Example 6: - I previously pledged to Batman. I was sponsored by a friend who pledged to both Conan and Batman, but I’ve since decided not to pledge to the BTM campaign after all and I’d like to sponsor another friend, who pledged to Claustrophobia… Easy! I’ll just sponsor that friend, who will then be assigned a “Conan + Batman + Claustrophobia” profile. They’ll receive all discounts shown in the “Conan + Batman + Claustro” row in the table below.
This table gives you information on all discounts to which your Pledger Profile gives you access. View the table by using this url : https://the-overlord.com/index.php?/conan/discount-table/ Then simply go to the row corresponding to your Pledger Profile to see which discounts you will receive starting Monday, January 6.
Please, share this publication, so that a maximum number of friends take advantage of these Discounts.
It is a complicated way of making an easy chart: Pledged for everything they have done in the past? Get the bottom row discounts. Pledged for some random combination of the part projects: Get one of the other combination discounts.
For example, if you backed everything but Claustrophobia, you get 15/10/20/10/20.
If you only backed Batman and Conan, you get 15/10/20/10/0
I expect this table will make more sense once the project launches.
Dang, anybody want to send me a discount voucher they aren't planning on using? I couldn't pledge previous Conan campaigns, and had to buy it at retail.
I'll put up an add in swap shop when I get home from work, maybe I'll get lucky. I could offer something in return... I do decent art, could also send some minis depending on the size of discount.
I think this is an interesting and entirely rational way to offer previous backers discounts that will ultimately end up confusing people and make them feel weird emotionally.
Gallahad wrote: Dang, anybody want to send me a discount voucher they aren't planning on using? I couldn't pledge previous Conan campaigns, and had to buy it at retail.
I'll put up an add in swap shop when I get home from work, maybe I'll get lucky. I could offer something in return... I do decent art, could also send some minis depending on the size of discount.
I think this is an interesting and entirely rational way to offer previous backers discounts that will ultimately end up confusing people and make them feel weird emotionally.
I've got see what's specifically on offer and what the prices end up being before I decide if i'm backing or not (and what santa delivers),
but if I don't end up doing so i'll let you have my voucher (I've backed Batman from them previously)
Man I'm torn...one one hand I have the original Kickstarter that I am very much still trying to finish painting and I really shouldn't add anything else to my pile...
I think Monolith no longer does retail (they lost money on every box of the Conan boardgame they sold to distributors), so, if you want more Conan, pledge!
Other companies have Conan rights, but I think Monolith's the only one who will do miniatures? Modiphius has the RPG rights, and Pulpasaurus' (sp) miniatures game KS failed.
According to comments on Monoliths website there's no sole license for "miniatures" or "boardgames" so Monolith wasn't being blocked from doing their KSer by Shinobi 7 (who still has the a license) or Pulpasaurs (who doesn't) but there is a limit on how far apart KSers have to be and the games have to be different.
Ced is right they aren't doing retail as Conan was a huge loss for them to get Asmodee to carry it. However they've been talking recently about having an online store.
The scenery ended up with Reaper but I've not seen any of the others. Some of the art they showed from the CROM game ended up in some Modiphus books so those were sold off.
Thanks for the info about licensing, Monkeysloth! Licensing is a big yellow flag when it comes to KS, since licensing companies vary in how much they interfere with a project (eg. 20th Century Fox). Also, licensing terms vary considerably and you cannot make assumptions (and have every right to smack someone who does
Anyway, I got the email about the discounts and you need to have backed for $20 or more to qualify. No mention if a retail purchase counts.
"Note: Minimum pledge amount requirement: A backer must have pledged a minimum of $20 on a previous Monolith campaign to be considered a PRIOR backer in terms of this program. This restriction applies to both backers of the Kickstarter and/or late backers who came on board during the pledge manager."
Retail purchases do not count. They've stated this on FB. The reason they allow you to give someone else your code is partly to make up for this but they have no way to prove you backed and the discounts are geared towards providing people the copies of things from the old KSers at manufacturing cost.
Going back to licensing when the Pulpasourus game was announced I think even monolith though they had lost the license as their posts on their forums were pretty angry but all the comments at the time of the Shiobi 7 deal were announced had them stating things that I mentioned above. Now Maybe Monolith can't make a small scale skirmish game due to Shinobi's license and maybe Pulpasourus's would have prevented them from doing VS but neither would prevent the boardgame nor has them having the boardgame prevented other boargame or minis appearing (see privateer press).
as I suspect GW is going to find if Amazons LoTR tv show takes off as I suspect they're going to have to fork out for a licence for that too (the IP is not the one under which the movies were made) or another minis company will pick it up
Additionally , some backers found it challenging to fully understand the structure of the program, so we have uploaded a small discount calculator for you to use to help you figure out your final discount.
To see what your total discount on products in the upcoming Kickstarter will be, simply check the boxes of those campaigns in which you or your sponsor have participated, and your discount is displayed.
REMEMBER – you only get one shot at registering for and submitting the Discount Form, read it carefully, enter the correct email either for yourself or your sponsor, agree to the terms and conditions and fire away.
The Kickstarter campaign is called Conan: Beyond The Monolith – and it goes Live on January 6th and closes on January 13th,2020.
Thank you.
Team Monolith
Monolith No Hurry. You have until 5 days before the PM to register. But please, read cautiously the last update.
Automatically Appended Next Post: was posted on facebook, now deleted (looks like the links are broken)
the discount form link has been edited and is working
I'm still just waiitng for Ragnarok. I have some of the 2015 Conan boards and minis, but only the things I really liked. I have everything from Pantheon and my little lonely Norse warrior guy has been patiently waiting for years to be joined by friends
Monolith put out a video, French with subtitles ,covering Beyond the Monolith some more and mentioned they're currently in discussions to get Lord of the Rings and Shadown run. The way he talks about them is sounds like it's almost a done deal.
For the "Second Life" sets like Zombiecide they're hoping that the box will be $30 (maps, unit tiles and so on) + the $25 needed for the core vs box.
I know catalyst has a few coming up for 6th but both the LoTR and Shadowrun were talked about before the "Second Life" in the Universe Box section with Conan so it looks like Monolith will make them. Now if only Someone would buy the RPG rights that actually cares about the game and I'd be happy as Catalyst is in yet another refusing to pay contractors for work controversy.
Monkeysloth wrote: Monolith put out a video, French with subtitles ,covering Beyond the Monolith some more and mentioned they're currently in discussions to get Lord of the Rings and Shadown run. The way he talks about them is sounds like it's almost a done deal.
For the "Second Life" sets like Zombiecide they're hoping that the box will be $30 (maps, unit tiles and so on) + the $25 needed for the core vs box.
If they make decent Shadowrun minis I could be in trouble...
You'll be fine. There is an unspoken decades old curse on anyone who attempts to make quality official Shadowrun miniatures.
Case in point there were some pretty decent figures made for Boston Lockdown. That game shut down after only a few years and the studio that made it closed down (but will be coming back as the original devs got Microsoft to agree to video game preservation foundation to host servers).
Honestly that is a great idea, because it holds the amount of stuff they have to produce constant while still incentivizing backers to act as marketers/boosters for their product.
Stupid question, but I feel I have lost the narrative thread... So is Beyond the Monolith just a Conan Versus mode game reusing old models, or some multi-IP spanning system? All the references to Batman, Mythic Battles, and Shadowrun has me confused. :-p
I *think* it's a system compatible with all their ranges individually a battle mode, but I don't know if its balanced enough to let you have cross-range battles (Conan vs. Batman, for example).
Again though, I'm not really sure of that and you would be better by looking at their stuff directly.
What I DO know, is that its primarily old sculpts with a few new ones made for the different army sets.
Monolith is also negotiating with other companies to use their miniatures with Monolith's game system (eg. Zombicide, Cthulhu Wars?). CMON announced a top secret KS in January, so the speculation is that it's the Zombicide components you need to use the Beyond Monolith game system.
Most rulesets that have you use your own miniatures are exactly that -- rulesets. I get the impression that Beyond Monolith still needs you to have cards for the miniatures. So I'm curious how much these cards cost and how well Monolith can work with other companies to produce these franchise-specific components. I lump dice-based combat systems together and didn't find Conan's combat system that interesting (energy gems were a good idea, at least).
ced1106 wrote: Monolith is also negotiating with other companies to use their miniatures with Monolith's game system (eg. Zombicide, Cthulhu Wars?). CMON announced a top secret KS in January, so the speculation is that it's the Zombicide components you need to use the Beyond Monolith game system.
Most rulesets that have you use your own miniatures are exactly that -- rulesets. I get the impression that Beyond Monolith still needs you to have cards for the miniatures. So I'm curious how much these cards cost and how well Monolith can work with other companies to produce these franchise-specific components. I lump dice-based combat systems together and didn't find Conan's combat system that interesting (energy gems were a good idea, at least).
There's a youtube video I linked a few posts back. They're looking at $30 for a box to use Zombicide and CW in addition to the $25 for the core VS mode box. I think they'd have more luck if they sold the $25 core set and then did print and play for non-monolith stuff. Much easier to convince your buddy with Zombicide to play against your Conan if the only cost is some paper and toner (as I believe the $25 set covers what 2 people will need). That gets more people playing and more people buying the Monolith packs.
Any impressions on the system from Batman backers? I mean, this entire venture hinges on the system not being good, but being great enough to sustain interest, AND somehow evoke these IPs despite one set of mechanics.
I'd love to hear thoughts on what works or doesn't here.
I didn't play Batman, but Conan uses the same system.
My problem is the dice-based combat. I'm trying to roll more icons than you're trying to. That's it. You have the usual dice pool mechanics, like rerolls, different types of dice, and other modifiers, but don't tell me you haven't seen that before.
The energy cubes are a fatigue resource mechanic. In other games, you may only have IGO / UGO, or move-attack, move-move, or attack-attack choices. The cubes are similar to fatigue points in some games. Spend the cubes to perform more actions, but damage depletes your cubes. I like this system, although I haven't played it enough. (Gloomhaven fired everything)
Monolith is entering the crowded game space of combat rules. Zombies and barbarians have a good number of different combat rulesets, although Cthulhu and DC have much fewer.
Of course, if the different IPs will be compatible under this game system and you want Batman and Conan teaming up against zombies and shoggoths...
I like the idea of the game engine being it's own module that's separate from the actual "universe"; that's a lot like how some companies develop videogames, with an underlying engine and a "game" layer sitting on top.
Of course that means that any game you play with it will probably feel the same since the underlying mechanics are identical. I think that has advantages and disadvantages.
It really seems like they should be leading off with the new Conan content to expand upon the original game, and then say, "Now that we've got you here, check out our new universal game system!" From the comments it kind of looks like many potential backers are just not feeling the desire to spend $100 to get minis they already have for a versus system they really don't need. I'm not sure what's up with them for this campaign, very late getting info out, objectively poor advertising, overly complicated sales packages, and it looks like not much focus on making new, compelling content to get people to buy in.
It's certainly a mess and whoever is on facebook duty today isn't helping
I'm not really sure the new conan content is the big seller though as there isn't really that much, although it's obviously where they're hoping a lot of the backers will come from, as I think too many folk will resent having to 'pay' for stuff they already have (even though dropping the old minis would not reduce the cost much, and if they did people would complain the new stuff was too expensive for 'only' a few minis)
frankelee wrote: It really seems like they should be leading off with the new Conan content to expand upon the original game, and then say, "Now that we've got you here, check out our new universal game system!" From the comments it kind of looks like many potential backers are just not feeling the desire to spend $100 to get minis they already have for a versus system they really don't need. I'm not sure what's up with them for this campaign, very late getting info out, objectively poor advertising, overly complicated sales packages, and it looks like not much focus on making new, compelling content to get people to buy in.
What they should have done is do what people have been asking for is reprint of the old game and adding new dedicated Adventure Box stuff like the Red Nails campaign they've been talking about for years then add in Vs mode like they did for Batman. But they claim a reprint will loose them money as they don't think there's enough interest in the boardgame side of conan to justify it which makes you then wonder why they're bothering with Conan?
frankelee wrote: It really seems like they should be leading off with the new Conan content to expand upon the original game, and then say, "Now that we've got you here, check out our new universal game system!" From the comments it kind of looks like many potential backers are just not feeling the desire to spend $100 to get minis they already have for a versus system they really don't need. I'm not sure what's up with them for this campaign, very late getting info out, objectively poor advertising, overly complicated sales packages, and it looks like not much focus on making new, compelling content to get people to buy in.
What they should have done is do what people have been asking for is reprint of the old game and adding new dedicated Adventure Box stuff like the Red Nails campaign they've been talking about for years then add in Vs mode like they did for Batman. But they claim a reprint will loose them money as they don't think there's enough interest in the boardgame side of conan to justify it which makes you then wonder why they're bothering with Conan?
That's a good question. It feels like they only had $10,000 in development budget and so decided trying to milk that old cow rather than create something new and interesting, hoping people would just buy it. And I don't know, maybe they will, but it certainly is less of a campaign than I was expecting.
I haven't followed Batman but I'm thinking Vs must be very popular for that and they're looking at a way to get Vs in to retail as it's much more store friendly then these enormous adventure mode boxes.
With them going after LoTR (probably Amazon's version I'd guess?) I can easily see why they're going for standalone Vs mode and I wouldn't be surprised if part of that $700k is to get retail version of Batman Vs out the door as Monolith has stated several times this KSer is for funding Beyond the Monolith Vs mode which Conan is a part of.
The Adventure Mode stuff really seams to be a late addition by Monolith Matt, from what I've seen on Facebook, as he's the writer of the Monolith Sourcebook from Modpihius, he writes a large number of fan scenarios with some non-employees, so that fans of that mode had something to get excited for.
The Legacy box is also his doing to correct a long standing problem that most Scenarios available for Conan require KS exclusive stuff so you can't play 80% of what's available for the game. This box adds all the paper products you need to play and some of the plastic (with the missing stuff in VS mode boxes or just substitute your own plastic)
So basically its tabletop war-boardgame like Mythic Battles with some Conan the Boardgame stuff added for that group. The problem is they're trying to create a new game that can go to retail, while trying to appease the old fans and fix a problem for retail customers while trying to break the KSer mold (which didn't really work for them with Claustrophobia) and that's just making it a confusing mess.
I got the impression that, with Adventure mode, they couldn't -- or simply didn't -- design scenarios that allowed interchangeability or variable number of players. Different companies tackle this problem differently:
* With FFG's Descent, they only designed scenarios that used the core plus the expansion set. Number of monsters and Overlord cards drawn per turn scale with the number of players.
* With CMON's Zombicide, the scenarios require six survivors. Any survivors may be used.
* With Gloomhaven, the scenarios "only" use the core box. Any class may be used. Number and difficulty of monsters scale with number of players and character levels.
Matt wrote solo scenarios for the Modiphius Monolith Sourcebook that were popular. However, AFAIK, the Sourcebook is primarily an RPG product. So, with the Adventure Mode, the Conan boardgame has solo content, which was also in demand.
The original Conan boardgame was Adventure Mode and Monolith is adding Versus Mode to it.
Playtesting scenarios is non-trivial, but it's still a standard in many dungeoncrawler games. And hindsight is 20/20, so, while it's a confusing mess, there's an explanation behind it. Or, as the saying goes, "God rested on the 7th day because he didn't have an installed user base."
Matt wrote solo scenarios for the Modiphius Monolith Sourcebook that were popular. However, AFAIK, the Sourcebook is primarily an RPG product. So, with the Adventure Mode, the Conan boardgame has solo content, which was also in demand.
The sourcebook has how to create and design your own Conan Boardgame scenarios and the rules for that. Monolith didn't really use statistics/math/point values for things so the game can't scale as it's just create a scenario, play it, make changes, rinse and repeat until it's done. The solo/co-op campaigns are basically the same rules wise but the book calls out balance doesn't matter as it's not competitive. It also has lots of scenarios using the RPG tiles as well as the introduction of solo/co-op mode which is being refined for this new KSer.
I'm not really sure the new conan content is the big seller though as there isn't really that much, although it's obviously where they're hoping a lot of the backers will come from, as I think too many folk will resent having to 'pay' for stuff they already have (even though dropping the old minis would not reduce the cost much, and if they did people would complain the new stuff was too expensive for 'only' a few minis)
Do you have to pay for stuff you already have? My read was that you could pledge for just the "engine" and sets of cards that updated the old models, I thought you didn't need to buy the actual models again to use your old models with the new engine? I'll need to take another look later today, don't have time right now.
Reading your comment again, I realise now that you might be referring specifically to having to buy old Conan models in order to get the new ones?
For the "Legacy" conan boardgame you buy a set for $99 that has all the new stuff with a few repeats from the Kings Pledge that are used a lot in Scenarios outside of the core box. 32 minis I believe. This box also has tiles for a lot of stuff from the kings pledge and Mythic Battles so you can substitute your own mins for hard to find things (many which are in the new Vs boxes). This also contains a new book of scenarios both traditional (vs a GM) and co-op/solo play using everything in the Core Conan Game and the Legacy box.
If you want the Vs game you need the core Vs box and then buy a faction box to get the tiles (stat cards), tokens, maps and Vs scenarios for the maps and tokens. These boxes are mostly repeats from the Conan boardgame with some new stuff. These are complete factions for retail and contain more figures for a faction then were in the core box or kickstarter freebees. Since these repeats cost Monolith very little to make, but they need to be there as this is a retail box, they're giving discounts via the pledge manager (that you can use for shipping) to previous KSer backers for the cost of those repeats so while you're getting 30 pirates that you already have 20 of you're not paying for those 30 pirates -- only the new stuff in the box.
People have been asking for just the faction box contents without the minis but Monolith is saying that's not economical for them due to having to create two different versions of each box.
Couple of observations after following the project on FB, BGG, and seeing the KS preview page:
1. Monolith needs to seriously change whoever is deciding how to organize and present information to the public. The KS preview page reminds me of the Batman GCC rulebook.....just very poorly organized and confusing (even if the actual written words within are understandable)
2. They should have NEVER launched the KS preview page or ANY info until they had all such things exactly where they needed to be. Originally what they posted on FB, and the KS-preview page, just caused more and more confusion. Since then, I have seen few FB posts by Monolith staff (Matt and Chaz) that have done a much better job explaining a few things. Hopefully their explanations make it to the KS page, and not just in the FAQ section. It also sounds like there are portions of the KS page not posted yet which better explains some major questions as well.
All in all, I am going to be backing because I like the game (have Conan and Batman GCC) but good grief does Monolith have issues with presenting information in a clear simple format. They should hire Paul Grogan or Universal Head to handle this for them, or at least consult. (BTW Matt John is great, but I don't think he's deciding how to present information, just provides an English social media presence and helps clean up English spelling/grammar)
As for #2 they launched it so people could complain and offer feedback. A post today said they'd look into providing a single box that just contains all the Vs material from all for 4 boxes with no minis due to feedback -- assuming it's financially viable. I don't think people would be happy with the price if they did. Cardboard is expensive and those molds still need to be paid for.
Yeah, I get that and generally I agree with the concept. But how could they not guess that people would want to know what's actually in the Legacy box? They didn't post that info on the preview page.
It feels very much like they've got a launch date they have to hit (advertising already paid for and going?), but aren't really ready
the incomplete preview would have made more sense if they'd got a month to play with and could actually have made changes (3 days in and it's still incomplete.... wonder if somebody is still on holiday?) rather than just a week with nothing much seeming to happen
Automatically Appended Next Post:
A Minor Delay: Campaign Launch postponed by a week.
Greetings all,
Following the launch of the Draft/WIP page of our Kickstarter campaign, Conan: Beyond The Monolith, many of our loyal backers have requested that some of the miniatures that are bundled in our Monsters Boxes and Conan Faction Boxes would be made available for individual purchase.
This option would allow backers of our previous campaigns to avoid adding duplicates to their existing collections. This is not an easy thing to do, but we really wanted to do what we could in interest of our backers. So, after reflection and some tweaking, we are able to offer some of these miniatures on their own.
The selection of these miniatures was arrived at based on the following criteria.
1. The miniature in question would have to be one contained within its own mold or share a mold with another mini from the selection.
2. We would not offer any miniatures for individual sale that come from a multiple mini mold, as this would result in thousands of miniatures destined for the landfill – not cool.
This change in our plans, as well as some other tweaks we are hoping to make based on your feedback, means we have some additional costing research to undertake and some additional KS page redesigns to prepare.
We aren’t able to squeeze this additional research in before the obligatory Kickstarter validation period, so we are postponing the campaign launch until Monday, January 13.
We sincerely hope that these changes will meet your expectations.
Thanks for your dedication to our games and your valued feedback.
The Monolith Team.
clearly they've realised the need to do a bunch more work
Matt took Newyears day off but that's just one day off (and he's doing the KSer page rework). But I think they weren't expecting the level of push back they actually ended up getting to their plans. The initial reaction back in November should have been enough but I think a lot of people ignored the first posts and didn't complain until they saw the draft.
As for this I'm surprised. They said they weren't going to go down that route as they did it for Batman 2 and people were furious due to the cost.
Think a more official announcement is supposed to come today or tomorrow but this is in a FB group:
We will now be offering “Paper Proxy” factions during the Pledge manager phase. These boxes will contain the maps, scenarios booklets, tiles, and tokens—everything required for Versus game play except the miniatures, their plastic tray, and plastic base rings (a different factory handles the plastics). These require you to add in your own miniatures, whether they are Monolith Conan miniatures or whatever you deem to be appropriate substitutes or “proxies”. They will cost 32 Euros each (price subject to change slightly) and, again, will only show up during the pledge manager phase as an optional addition to your pledge.
Oh well, that's cheaper than I though they could get them, but I suspect not cheap enough for many (who don't realised paper products are just as expensive if not more so than plastic)
but they're clearly trying hard to please people,
now they just need to come up with a coherent and non confusing way to put it all on KS
Automatically Appended Next Post: They've updated the KSer page with the rest of the monster boxes, more graphics and single buy figures. Way too much stuff to put into a single post but I've embedded a few thigs:
The single buy cost really makes the box sets a good deal in comparison. The monster box, that most the Mythic Battles singles are in, are 54 euro for like 20 things. Where if you were to buy 3 things from the singles bin you'd hit the same price. Also to note Monotlith has said only things that are on a single mold are purchasable this way.
So this launches Monday. A few changes have happened:
-- Legacy Box is 10 Euro cheaper
-- The Legacy Upgrade Kit use to have exclusive adventure mode tiles, now it just is the plasticless Legacy Box and the content the kit has in also in the box.
-- All BtM boxes, including Monsters, will have plasticless versions in the pledge manager.
I was expecting to be a little more tempted by a new Conan campaign, but the minis don't really wow me, the price seems high for Kickstarter, and the expansion itself feels like an afterthought.
I would have thought they'd cash in on their successful 2015 Conan campaign more, it would have brought people in who weren't interested in Beyond the Monolith (awful, awful name) and perhaps sold them on the concept. Instead they led with the Versus System and made it a harder sale on themselves. Don't begrudge them trying to sell this game if they believe in it, but I just don't see the logic behind what they're doing from a marketing/sales perspective.
frankelee wrote: I was expecting to be a little more tempted by a new Conan campaign, but the minis don't really wow me, the price seems high for Kickstarter, and the expansion itself feels like an afterthought.
I would have thought they'd cash in on their successful 2015 Conan campaign more, it would have brought people in who weren't interested in Beyond the Monolith (awful, awful name) and perhaps sold them on the concept. Instead they led with the Versus System and made it a harder sale on themselves. Don't begrudge them trying to sell this game if they believe in it, but I just don't see the logic behind what they're doing from a marketing/sales perspective.
The Adventure mode stuff in the new Book and Legacy box isn't an afterthought so much as one employee pushing to keep that mode alive as he knows there's fans of it (including himself). Though, to be honest, maybe it would have been better to do two different campaigns. One for the PVP and one for the Adventure mode stuff. Would have been less confusing.
I'm guessing the reason they're going this route instead of doing a reprint or expansions to the original KSer is they know how well, or non-well, the core game has sold in retail as there are still lots of boxes from the original run 5 years ago out there for purchase at a great price (that's why it's not for sale in the campaign as you can get a better deal from amazon then monolith on it). They probably don't think there's a big demand for the original game but at the same time it's well known for being limited in what you can play unless you have all the OOP KSer stuff from the kings pledge as 90% of the additional scenarios for the game require it or the expansions which are also OOP. So there's not a huge incentive to buy the game as you are limited in play with the retail edition. Though so far the largest group of backers are for Adventure mode and then the 1 euro pledge. The PVP has the least but I think most of the 1 euro are people just wanting to see what's in the PM or pick up the core 25 euro set and then some of the mini-less boxes as for some stubborn reason Monolith won't tell people to add that amount to their pledge now to fund.
I don't see how the 700k can be reached that's roughly 7000 backers which is quite a lot. Batman season two did 1.3 million with 9k backers but that has the Batman brand to pull it along and only a 500k funding goal. Conan isn't anywhere near as popular. I would love to be wrong though.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Sacredroach wrote: Yeah, this is quite a mess, but I am in for the Legacy. It seems I really do like the Conan miniatures.
They're quite fun to paint.
I'm in for legacy but I might get more as I plan on doing another run or two of the 2d20 RPG and you really need lots of minis for that.
Q: How much will the Conan: the Boardgame (2015 edition) be in the Pledge manager?
A: The version available during the pledge manager is what has previously sold through retail channels, however during the Pledge Manager it would be available for €30 - a whole Conan game for 30€-
I was surprised to see how cheap they were selling the core game. Makes you wonder why they're not selling that in the KSer as a limited pledge for NA and Europe.
They stated that shipping right now is worst case scenario for costs and hopefully will go down as the negotiate.
This whole thing is a confusing and expensive clusterfeth of a mess - and on a 7-day schedule to boot. As someone who owns Conan, MB and Batman S1, I still have no idea what I'd actually want/need to purchase.
I mean, I'm not unintelligent. I could spend some time and try to figure it out. But you know what? I don't care enough to spend that time when I could be using it for something more productive and enjoyable. Like pretty much anything else.
All in all, this campaign is a fantastic solution and perfect antidote to the gamer-OCD-FOMO-collect'em-all mentality!
if you want the Skirmish game the Batman upgrade kit and then the paper only stuff for the factions you want.
If you want adventure mode then the Legacy Pledge.
There's lots of small things but the big confusing thing is the paperless, as they don't talk about the paperless stuff except in the FAQ, as for some reason they don't want those going towards their funding goal. I'm on the FB page one of their employees owns (it's a general conan one) and I know they've put a lot of effort into this but they still are just trying to do too much in one campaign I think.
The backers are split about equally now between the two modes but then you have another 30% or so that are in only for a Euro as they can't figure out it so clearly there's problems.
I will say it's raised way more then I thought it would in it's first 10 hours or so.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Looked at the Kicktrack for batman season 2 which is the closest of their games to this and it did almost 800k in the first day.
Conan ended it's first day with less then half the backers (by about 500) and brought in less then 200k and is only trending to barley fund and those fist day trending numbers are way high for the final amount.
I am actually surprised that they have not made a series of bullet points instead of all the exciting language in the KS...they are trying to do essentially two things: More NEW Conan stuff...Legacy Pledge one and done. And then a VS mode for all of their properties.
I fear that their love of Conan and their rush for the VS system is the basic reason for the terrible design of the project. The only clear part is for returning Conan backers. For the new system, most of what is actually needed is just now available in the project...it will be in the pledge manager. I get that they want to avoid the KS fees for the printed material, but...damn.
Umm, why is Atlas from Mythic Battles Pantheon pretending to be a "Mutant" in the spoiler images above? XD
We see you Atlas! You're not fooling anyone!
EDIT: Wait a minute, LOADS of the characters are from Mythic Battles Pantheon! I see all sorts of re-used sculpts! Why would I pledge to buy "Conan" miniatures that I already own from their other game? O.o
I also am under the impression that you don’t get to build armies yourself, you just use what the scenario dictates like in the original Conan. Am I wrong?
the main thrust of this isn't (just) for conan, but for a 2 player skirmish type game (based on the mode they developed for batman)
it's launching mainly using conan as an example but will (if successful) expand to include a lot of other stuff of theirs and other companies including Mythic Battles,
you will be able to pick up 'paper only' versions of the things in the pledge manager so you won't have to re-buy the stuff you own (but for some reason they're not putting these up on the KS itself)
Boy this doesn't look good. Apparently Fred, who owns Monolith, said in December that if this doesn't fund he's shutting down after delivering existing KSers.
If it reaches a million then he'll make the next mythic battles game. Sounds like he's tired of not making money off of projects and wants to be able to break free of KSer to some degree which is why this has such a high funding goal -- extra money to do that.
Seams like if this was the KSer to be the farm on they would have done a better job even explaining the game system but they didn't. In fact I wonder if this is a self sabotage to just close shop.
Gringe CommanderSuperbacker
29 minutes ago
All-In would cost 299-375, depending on discount level. That gives you 282 minis, but only 35 new ones if you own an all-in 2015 conan and MBP.
So i got 237 minis I already own. Hmm!?! If only there would be someplace to turn them back into money .... some mystical place where people auction their money for my stuff......
Oh yes i need the legacy update and tome of skelos as well
Aside from the fact that I can't be arsed trying to eBay models, that's not an exciting value proposition. I also have Zombicide PM due next week, and Vic's bushfire APCs to buy (aside from direct donations), and Sisters finally approaching. So.. not enticing at all. Even though I do like their models.
(and worrying for the last KS or two in the line, as a business looking to close is never as on the ball as one that's running normally, and if things go wrong investing more in a dead business isn't going to happen)
Agreed, Orlando. As a KS backer, those sorts of comments are also a fething big red flag when I'm looking at where to put my disposable income. I've lost enough money on KS at this point and had enough well meaning companies not fully deliver on their promised goods...
Reading the comments again, and this could be inaccurate as I don't speak french and trusting google, it really seams Fred is burnt out and upset people don't like the Vs mode he designed over some of the other game systems. So it's kind of this is what I want to make, if people don't like it then why should I stay in business -- which is fair.
People are starting to talk about Mythic buying rights back for Mythic Battles and maybe other games but they just did layoffs and who knows if they have the money to do that.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Even worse. An earlier post talks about how Fred will be financially ruined if this doesn't succeed as MBP 1.5 was so miss managed that the other partners want to leave so this is all on his dime.
It"s sad to see the situation on quite a few levels. But then again I don't (can't/won't) take responsibility for supporting other people through their poor business choices. ☹
Oh, I agree. I don't think anyone should back unless they want what's offered and trust it will be completed.
Fred posted this on Facebook (this is the translation)
Well... The start is more sluggish than I imagined. Obviously I was wrong. I believe very strong in the concept "beyond the monolith" but I couldn't explain it. Or worse, probably i explained it wrong. I may have talked too soon about "second life". I probably should not have set up a discount system that, it is not understood, is not understood. The presence of doubles is obviously also much more difficult than I imagined. I have greatly under estimated the psychological weight of these. It is also possible that the presence of a realistic threshold was a mistake. A big one. It gives the feeling of a walk too hard to pass. I've really wanted to play the transparency card in recent years explaining what's going on behind the stage. By getting involved in the public debate, even leaving feathers. How prices were composed. Where were the real costs. Why we made such a choice, sometimes (often) difficult, until " why such a threshold ".... basically I participated, on my small scale, to " disenchant " the world of ks, when in the end I would have without Doubt had to sell more dream.
So now what do we do?
On the side of monolith we will try to focus on the game itself. Explain it. Publish a draft of your rules asap. First in French, then translated into English. Let's try to talk about gameplay, its evolution towards Batman vs, its scenarios, but also the more global concept (our partnerships, with cmon and Petersen games, at first). We will try to fight on the field of the game itself. And I hope it will have a positive effect on the gauge. On the side of the pledgers, and if you're interested in the game, monolith will need your support for this campaign to pass. I didn't think I'd write this one day, but it might be the first "real" Kickstarter of monolith...
It's really dumbfounding that this would go the way of other good game design companies where you have a creative in charge that doesn't understand all the business side of things as I can't think of any other reason (as He's stated many times money isn't the cause for timing) that they rushed the KSer out without rules, with out a demo video and refusing the listen to people talking about how confusing it was. I don't add the people upset with the offerings as at the end of the day make the game you want and people will back if they agree. But at least try and sell it.
Monkeysloth wrote: Both mbp 1.5 and batman 2 are done manufacturing and on the way to hubs so Monolith is almost completely out of the picture for them to finish.
ah, I knew Batman 2 was on the way, but I hadn't twigged that Mbp 1.5 was the only other one outstanding and it was also moving
I guess part of the reason this is so important is it's not IP dependant, as Batman is certainly not going to stick around forever without another big royalty payment, and Conan is in the same place but probably with a longer shelf life and smaller cheque.
if the vs mode does take off there are plenty of other big minis heavy boardgames to pull in
Azazelx wrote: Agreed, Orlando. As a KS backer, those sorts of comments are also a fething big red flag when I'm looking at where to put my disposable income. I've lost enough money on KS at this point and had enough well meaning companies not fully deliver on their promised goods...
What he said is that if this KS doesn't fund, he would close business because they have made some profit and he could close monolith without any debt, and that the goal of the KS is so high because he doesn't want to be tempted to start the project with not enough fund to finish it.
To me it sounds rather comforting about their ability to deliver what's promised.
If zombicide was already available I may have backed as I have black plague and green horde. But I don't have conan adventure game so I'm not very enticed to pledge right now (though getting for 30$ in the pledge manger sounds tempting).
FH keeps saying how he's transparent, but he failed to tell customers that he's interested in supporting VS mode, not Adventure mode. His next mistake was not researching if anyone wanted VS mode in the first place.
And I don't think there's demand for another skirmish game. In fact, Pandasaurus ran a Conan skirmish game KS -- twice -- and failed. Knight Models already has a DC skirmish game, and, iirc, switched to resin from metal because they were trying to lower the price of the models to generate more interest in the game.
On BGG, boardgamers keep buying dungeoncrawlers, but skirmish games seem to only be in pockets of popularity. Frex, Imperial Assault posts on BGG are mostly about the campaign mode, rather than skirmish play. If you look at the Batman Versus expansion forum on BGG, there aren't many posts there (although this may be because the game hasn't shipped yet?). X-wing is immensely popular, but I don't think it has much audience crossover with VS Conan or VS Batman. Certainly there was a fair amount of upset against Batman S2, although this may be due to ala carte prices if you wanted "all the mini's".
I guess what I find frustrating is that FH has the skills to run a game company, but he makes the wrong business decisions.
Anyway, anyone have a link to more details about how MBP 1.5 was mismanaged? TIA!
Nostromodamus wrote:I also am under the impression that you don’t get to build armies yourself, you just use what the scenario dictates like in the original Conan. Am I wrong?
No, from what I've gathered you build your armies then choose the scenario (which are tied to maps).
ced1106 wrote:FH keeps saying how he's transparent, but he failed to tell customers that he's interested in supporting VS mode, not Adventure mode. His next mistake was not researching if anyone wanted VS mode in the first place.
And I don't think there's demand for another skirmish game. In fact, Pandasaurus ran a Conan skirmish game KS -- twice -- and failed. Knight Models already has a DC skirmish game, and, iirc, switched to resin from metal because they were trying to lower the price of the models to generate more interest in the game.
On BGG, boardgamers keep buying dungeoncrawlers, but skirmish games seem to only be in pockets of popularity. Frex, Imperial Assault posts on BGG are mostly about the campaign mode, rather than skirmish play. If you look at the Batman Versus expansion forum on BGG, there aren't many posts there (although this may be because the game hasn't shipped yet?). X-wing is immensely popular, but I don't think it has much audience crossover with VS Conan or VS Batman. Certainly there was a fair amount of upset against Batman S2, although this may be due to ala carte prices if you wanted "all the mini's".
I guess what I find frustrating is that FH has the skills to run a game company, but he makes the wrong business decisions.
Anyway, anyone have a link to more details about how MBP 1.5 was mismanaged? TIA!
The comment about MBP being mismanaged was from FH himself in the second link I posted. No other context was given but it could be a miss translation from google.
As for Vs mode vs Adventure mode. Since the other partners want out of Monolith so it's just FH running the show he wants to do Vs as that's his thing. Don't think he was as into Adventure Mode as the other founders as everyone that works for Monolith talks about how much Vs is his baby and what he really loves. So if you were him and your company was having these issues what would you do? Make the game mode you didn't care about or the one you wanted? Especially if you were trying to decide if you should keep the doors open or walk away as well? I personally would do something different but I'm not FH and I can see why he made the decision to make the game that would make you excited to keep the lights on.
> So if you were him and your company was having these issues what would you do?
I'd do some research. Survey customers and see what they want. If they don't want what I can offer, then don't waste resources, such as creating new miniatures, or expecting more than half a million dollars for a product that doesn't have enough demand. Cutting, for example, miniatures, would leave the Zombicide and Cthulhu Wars IP's.
Card games do this all the time. The cheapest components are for 54-card decks. This means having to design the game or expansion around these limitations.
Nobody owes a creator funding. He is wise to have a 700K goal, but I think there were many things Monolith could have done earlier to prevent VS from getting to this point. I'd like to know better why he lost the rest of the company, including the break with Mythic.
Personally, I think the hobby game industry is in its maturity (especially when much of it was purchased by Asmodee, which had no experience in boardgames), and was saturated even before KS ("cult of the new"). Leaving an industry around its peak isn't always a bad thing...
Monkeysloth wrote: Oh, I agree. I don't think anyone should back unless they want what's offered and trust it will be completed.
Yah. I just wanted to sort of cut off the whole "poor game designer really needs and deserves our money because poor business decisions" thing that people tend to throw up, especially with actual places/charities that deserve much more attention right now - and for me, on my doorstep and in my air right outside the door!
Azazelx wrote: Agreed, Orlando. As a KS backer, those sorts of comments are also a fething big red flag when I'm looking at where to put my disposable income. I've lost enough money on KS at this point and had enough well meaning companies not fully deliver on their promised goods...
What he said is that if this KS doesn't fund, he would close business because they have made some profit and he could close monolith without any debt, and that the goal of the KS is so high because he doesn't want to be tempted to start the project with not enough fund to finish it.
To me it sounds rather comforting about their ability to deliver what's promised.
If zombicide was already available I may have backed as I have black plague and green horde. But I don't have conan adventure game so I'm not very enticed to pledge right now (though getting for 30$ in the pledge manger sounds tempting).
That's all well and good, but as I said, I've been burned more than once before by campaigns that definately had everything worked out and there was no chance of anything going wrong and them not delivering. Definately. For sure.
On top of that, I'm not after (yet) another Skirmish VS game. I've got plenty of those already - especially one that wants me to rebuy a lot of models that I alrteady own and in quitye a few cases have already painted. Now I certainly understand wanting to leverage the assets of the moulds that have been made and paid for, and I don't begrudge them for that - or for looking longer-term when the Batman and Conan licences disappear - but at the same time, I don't have any burning desite to spend US$300 on rebuying them, along with a system that I'm not especially interested in, even if it does (now) promise that it will cross over with other systems (ones I own a lot of, even in ZC and CW) eventually, in the indeterminite future. Probably via another KS. If the doors don't close before then.
I'd much have more for the co-op and even solo play in adventure game form than reboxed skirmish mode with multiple monopose soldiers...
I mean, I understand the whole "art vs commerce" issue/dilemma, but when the art is also (or primarily) a commodity with a target audience, then it really does need to be aimed at what that audience wants to purchase if it it intended for that commodity, that product, to be a successful and even ongoing source of revenue.
I'm gutted. Been saving up for this one. I just don't understand all the people going on and on about redundant miniatures. The miniatures from old campaigns added $5 more per box. They gave old backers credits so the redundant miniatures were effectively free.
I've been trying to get all those cool miniatures from Conan for ages, and my chance just got cancelled.
Gallahad wrote: I'm gutted. Been saving up for this one. I just don't understand all the people going on and on about redundant miniatures. The miniatures from old campaigns added $5 more per box. They gave old backers credits so the redundant miniatures were effectively free.
I've been trying to get all those cool miniatures from Conan for ages, and my chance just got cancelled.
I concur with the complaints about the duplicate miniatures...I have no issue with lots more of the various figures...even the characters. Since I usually do not paint the boardgame pieces, spare characters end up on the painting desk instead. So more is better (says the guy with a 25 year backlog...)
I do hope that they take a hard look at what they want to do...the project was, in their own words, a maze. People don't like complicated projects...that Batman 2 was a mess, but still funded due to people liking Batman, but I think a couple of simple pledges and a limited number of add-ons would be beneficial to all. I get that they want to monetize the molds they already have...I want them to monetize them too. But tons of options...and tons more hidden options only to be revealed in the Pledge Manager? No, lets see more clarity and concise options.
I would suggest: A Conan 2 Adventures KS, with all of the listed Conan content. No mention of Batman, Claustrophobia, Mythic or anything. Just Conan 2. AND...offer the VS system for just Conan.
Then, once that clears, a few months later release the VS KS, featuring Zombicide, Cthulhu Wars, Batman, Conan, Mythic Pantheons, etc. Again, no slew of add-ons, just the core VS set, and relevant add-on boxes containing all of the cards and chits needed for the sundry properties. After all, I would not need Zombicide, but would definitely add Cthulhu Wars and Mythic Pantheons VS boxes.
After that settles, then VS 2 is the reprint campaign: All the minis needed to build forces. Need Deep Ones? Here they are, 5 to a box. Want more Pirates, 5 to a box. etc.
Would that be easy? No. Would it make things clearer? Well, definitely clearer than they are now. My 5 cents.
it will be back. The post from Fred was a big Mea Cupla:
Hello,
First of all, I would like to thank everyone who followed us and participated in this campaign. 250K remains a very nice sum and I am fully aware that many designers would love to reach these numbers. However, as high as it is, this amount would unfortunately not cover the development and licensing costs necessary for the successful launch of the range.
It is now more than obvious that the Beyond the Monolith offer did not attract enough pledgers to complete the project. I had high hopes for the concept and take full, personal responsibility for this failure. As I wrote yesterday on my Facebook page, I was unable to properly explain either the concept or the campaign. I thought the discount system was worthwhile and promising, but it quickly became obvious that it didn’t make sense to people and was not an appetizing incentive. I had hoped that the large drop in prices on existing models would outweigh negative reactions to offering duplicates. Again, this was a monumental mistake. I thought that setting a realistic funding threshold in relation to the project’s costs would express our respect and seriousness. [aa1] I made transparency and communication a priority and worked hard to explain the choices we made. Unfortunately, due to my poor language skills, I was only able to do this on French-speaking social networks.
Is a relaunch possible?
Yes. But it is now obvious that between BTM and Conan's Adventure mode, the pledgers' hearts are overwhelmingly with the latter.
If there is a relaunch, the offer will have to be completely revised. Put aside BTM (Who knows? Maybe in a few years, with some work and the right formula...), focus on Adventure Mode only (including Matt’s solo/co-op system), and give the Conan community what it wants.
I would also like to make it clear that Matt John continuously maintained that we should focus on Adventure mode. We often disagreed, but he has always been the voice of the community. He was right and I was wrong. When I took over the reins of Monolith, I mistakenly distanced myself from the community. He did not. Today, I wish I had listened to him. I know that he often took it upon himself to announce unpopular decisions that were mine. I would like to thank him publicly for his tenacity, which in the end convinced me that I was on the wrong track and that there was no point in being stubborn.
As far as I'm concerned, today, “down for the count”... But I will get back up. As many of you know, given the experimental nature of the campaign, I financed it entirely from my personal savings so as not to burden Monolith with the risk—I gambled and lost. “That’s Poker”
We have to proceed in order. Right now, I'm going to focus on getting Batman Season 2 properly delivered. Production has left China and is heading to the Hubs. Here's the shipment schedule:
- Australia (Aetherworks): The ship left China on January 13th and will arrive in Sydney on the 24th.
- Canada (Snake n’ Lattes): The ship left China on January 9th and is expected to arrive in Toronto on February 5th.
- Europe (Meeple Logistique): The ship left China on January 6th and is expected to arrive in Antwerp on the 31st.
- USA (Fun Again): The ship left China on January 11th and delivery to Indianapolis is expected shortly after February 6th.
- Asia: The shipment is being transported by truck to the VFI Asia warehouses and should arrive in early February.
Then, once the boxes have reached our pledgers, I will launch the new Conan KS, which this time, I hope, will be what the community is looking for (I will listen Matt). It will most likely be a smaller, less ambitious campaign, but, after a fall, I prefer to get up slowly.
Thank you for your understanding and for all your support and feedback.
Fred Henry.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Gallahad wrote: I'm gutted. Been saving up for this one. I just don't understand all the people going on and on about redundant miniatures. The miniatures from old campaigns added $5 more per box. They gave old backers credits so the redundant miniatures were effectively free.
I've been trying to get all those cool miniatures from Conan for ages, and my chance just got cancelled.
You might still have your chance for some as outside of the relaunched campaign they confirmed they had a bunch of Kings Pledges they were going to sell for 60 euro and still might in the next KSer.
For other figures they said the minimum print run would need to be 1.5k but at that amount the prices wouldn't be the best. We'll have to see what they end up doing but they guy in charge now, Matt, knows there's lots of people in your position and is trying to make available what was needed for official scenarios via this past KSer in some way.
I don't see many people saying it, but the big problem with this campaign is that it's a miniature game with no exciting miniatures to buy. Yeah people didn't like how confusing the campaign was, and very few gamers need to spend $120 on a new skirmish game, but people don't go to miniature company's Kickstarters to buy rules either way. I mean, it's obvious the FH doesn't understand the business side to his Kickstarters, but he REALLY doesn't understand it.
Whether you want to focus on your Vs. Mode or you want to expand the Conan game, for God's sake provide some new miniatures to cause people to actually throw their money at you. They tried to raise $700,000 based on a dozen new sculpts, pretty much all of which are boring. Not to mention the Conan expansion that had those minis was still a lot of old minis and cost nearly 100 bucks. I know on KS forums people love to brag about their independent wealth, but reality tells a different tale. Most people have more that they want in life than they can afford, so why spend $100 on something as uninspiring as that expansion box? And I know they gave discounts based on buying past campaigns for different packages, but if 90% of the miniatures in BtM armies are just duplicates of minis they have, most are going to wonder why they aren't getting a 90% discount as opposed to 5% one.
On top of that, you know Youtube is free to use, Facebook is free to use, why aren't they using it? It's either laziness or incompetence, and I know a lot of gamers don't get this themselves, but if you're playing for millions on Kickstarter you should have at least three or four Youtube videos up advertising and explaining your game. And people love to give their opinions, they're free, why find out the week before that people don't like your Kickstarter plans, ask them six months before on Facebook. Get free feedback directly from customers.
If you have the startup funds, doing a successful KS campaign is extremely easy so long as you follow the rules of what works, but for some reason some creators feel like they've got to do anything but obey them.
I think what they should have done is started out displaying only the new miniatures in each pack for the same cost. Then had tiny stretch goals that added in all the duplicate miniatures for "free". Would have been a huge difference psychologically.
When I first heard about BtM, I was mnoderately interested - my game group are boardgamers (why Conan was popular with us) not skirmish gamers, but "play more games with the minis you already have" sounded like a great pitch - I bought the King pledge and all the exclusive add ons, so some 200+ minis - bound to be plenty for a skirmish game right? Right? Then this mess launched, telling me that no, I didn't have enough minis, and what I should do was drop several hundred £'s more on lots more mini's, most of which would be duplicates of what I already had, and which would have no use in this new system....The whole thing looked like an exercise in churning out tons of plastic to fund a few unexceptional mini's to make a Vs wargame, of which the world doesn't exactly have a shortage.....
Aside from all the other issues pointed out, frankly, I just don't want to play a game with minis of varied quality and context. Conan minis were okay, Mythic Battles were great, Zombicide has it's own style. I know nothing about Batman game minis. Heck, throw in green army men, too, why not ?
Nah, not for me.
What IS for me will be a Conan-specific expansion. Even if the mini quality is improved over the original. Ideally, they could even redo all those original minis as stretch goals or big add-on. I know I'd buy it !
Yeah, my interest in Conan goes to the Adventure mode, and apparently I'm not exactly alone in that regard. The cancelled KS din't really make much sense to me.
I'm currently playing through warhammer Quest Silver Tower, and after that I plan on playing Blackstone Fortress. And maybe someday go back and see how far I can get in the original warhammer quest. anyway, for me personally, I'm not going to get a chance to play another fantasy tabletop wargame, even if it's really good. But I'd definitely be interested in a co-op adventure mode in the Conan setting.
So there's a planed update the middle of the week on what the new KSer will look like at a basic level (probably Wednesday) and set expectations. Also sounds like the new one could launch in 4-8 weeks (though no date like that has been given).
Matt has already said it's going to be all new, nothing from the first KSer, so that everyone playing conan can get "onto the same level" for scenario writers. Also sounds like they want to make it available post KSer so people that buy the retail version in the future will have a way to go forward.
There is, however, the possibility of all the tiles and hero sheets being reprinted from the first KSer in a bundle so people can get all the game play stuff.
As for old minis/expansions Matt and Chaz have said that it's not realistic at the current popularity of the game. If this KSer goes well and justifies more Conan then anything is possible but it might end up being resculpts for various reasons they haven't really stated. Though it does appear they don't have the rights to some of the artists boxes anymore so those sound like they'll never come back. I'm also wondering if they may not have some of the molds anymore as I would assume they have to pay to store those and after 5 years of not doing a reprint maybe some of them were recycled.
Nothing so far has been mentioned on the extra Kings Pledges they were going to sell in the previous KSer. So that may, or may not, be in the update they're talking about.
Well, that is a complete let down. Guess I just need to come to grips with never being able to get my hands on that cool Sabertooth tiger, Black Ones, or Dragon.
Behind the scenes, the Monolith Team is working together to prepare a second offer for our faithful Sword Brothers and Sisters. The failed launch of Beyond the Monolith served as a wakeup call, and spelled a significant loss for us, but we are NOT ready to give up. We’re mobilizing as we speak, preparing to deliver a final push to get Conan back on the Road of Kings so he may again take the throne of Aquilonia and rule for years to come!
So what are we proposing? Next month, we will launch a campaign that offers a bigger, better redux version of the Legacy pledge featured in our last campaign. It will include:
-Some brand new miniatures you haven’t seen yet.
-A new double-sided game board (Yes, you will have the Temple, but we want to save the ships for something more fitting down the road).
-A sizeable tome that incorporates brand new scenarios for Conan Adventure Mode AND the rules and scenarios/campaign for the solo/co-op mode.
-All of the new sculpts we unveiled during the Beyond the Monolith KS (in greater numbers than were featured in the Legacy Box) and no previously released miniatures.
In short, it will be an even-greater version of what we originally proposed, and all of it will be brand new material. You’ll only require any existing copy of Conan (and those will be available during the KS for those who need them).
We know this plan does not offer everyone everything they want, but we have to be careful and measured. That means, unfortunately, at this time we can’t launch any complex offers for older material. That does not mean we won’t be able to do it. In fact, we have a good idea of how to do it, and soon, but it has to be after this next Kickstarter. During this upcoming campaign we will offer what remaining stock we have (including King Pledges, Core boxes and others), and hopefully, soon after we’ll launch a second campaign to allow everyone a chance to get what they missed.
Thank you so much to everyone who has supported us along the way. This, as Fred already mentioned, will be a true Kickstarter. Next month, fate will look upon us, and we need your help to raise the banners and voice your support. We need you. Help us place the Crown of Iron back upon the troubled brow of King Conan.
Will you answer the call?
-Matt John
PS: as Fred already mentioned, we are focusing on the delivery of Batman GCC Season 2. Our commitments to our previous backers must be our top priority. Those pledges will reach their shipping hubs next month and fulfillment of that project will begin. Batman GCC Season 2 is safe and will be on the way soon.
Earlier in the week Matt asked is FB group what they would like to see in the new KSer and a popular suggestion was Ghouls. Welp, here's a preview but I have a feeling it's one Matt already wanted Ghouls in the new box as it's only been two days.
Seams like from what Matt has been hinting at he's planning to over the next few Conan KSers (assuming this one is successful) resculpt a percentage of old item that aren't available in any of the retail boxes (core + expansions) so people can get those units. The next KSer would be the long awaited Red Nails box which would include a new dragon.
I don't know if there are plans on making old sculpts available again that have been or planned on being resculpted nor how many redesigns we'll see. The Man-ape (Gray Ape) above, Baal Pteor are both examples from this KSer of exclusives being remade to be non-exclusives.
Well somehow I missed that, and I thought I'd been keeping up on this. Whoops! Much better than him just standing around looking at the filthy peasants.
So They're hoping to provide info on the KSer next week.
Also looks like the box will come with 5 of those apes. Price wise it's going to be more then the previous legacy box, but not by much (id expect around $120), and going to contain more copies of the minis that are new then what the legacy box has plus a handful of other minis that they're able to afford.
Considering how huge many of the minis are that will be a good price as the old Legacy box was a great price once you saw how big the Yog Aspect is (other companies have similar size/bulk things out in PVC for $50-60).
Also it seams from what Monolith people have said it will run at least 2 weeks. No word on if they're going to play the Stretch Goal game.
People demanded them in the BtM kickstarter and people are wired to expect them as they're still a really common request on various facebook pages for this KSer. Fred may hate them but they're too ingrained in KSer's culture to completely get away from.
From Matt's statement it seams like they're actually old school SG meaning they cannot afford to make them unless X amount is made instead of modern just already baked in SG as I suspect they're doing this to get the funding level low instead of 700k again.
Monkeysloth wrote: They are cool models but I don't think a single official scenario actually uses them.
I desperately want them in part because it is so hard to find tall and lanky miniatures. It is really hard to find lanky anything in miniature. Everyone is a beefcastle at any height.
Also, the Conan story they come from is great fun, and I've wanted to game it for a while.
Well you might get your chance. While nothing is confirmed it there are hints that Streach Goals would be extra Scenarios (not unexpected) and potentially reprints of the high demand stuff.
Q: Strechgoals or still allergic to basic user fun ?
A: we shall see. Might have a few things up our sleeves that are feasible for us, and will be welcomed by many backers.
Q: Please, make the Dragon and the Winged Ape available again!
Non-monolith Answer: winged ape is a yes for people who back the KS, but no dragon in this one.
Monolith reply to answer above: that's not true. We've got a few items dependent on funding levels. I'll explain more later.
Q: How many Co-Op/Solo scenarios are included?
A: at this point at least seven. That could increase depending on how we do.
I love both Conan and Batman, but honestly, how much of it do I really need? I feel like FOMO is making me want this much more than any actual want or need.
TwilightSparkles wrote: Tempted buteven with a new KS my "uh oh these guys are running out of money" sense is tingling.
Previously they stated they needed the last KS to do well.
Monolith has money. Fred, that owns it, doesn't as he took out a loan for BtM as he didn't want it to sink Monolith if it failed. He did say at one point he'd shut down Monolith if it did fail but that wouldn't be because of money. If he hadn't taken the loan against his house and BtM failed, like it did, then Monolith wouldn't be able to deliver Batman as he would have spent that money to finance BtM which he didn't want to do. Batman Season 2 was the only game monolith made a decent profit for them and his other 2 co-owners wanted to cash out and leave which left him with less money he was expecting and a bit depressed (thus the close it all down stuff). So why, yes, Fred needs this Conan KSer to do well for his loan he's shown he's pretty responsible with the money he raises from a KSer campaign and won't dip into the piggy bank to pay for other projects if it could endanger another one. Which is good as he can be a bit dramatic on the forums and social media.
More on Stretch goals from Facebook
I believe there are a few MB monsters that would blend excellently into the Hyborian Age. Maybe some already have the miniatures becuase they have MB, but they wouldnt have Conan tiles. My question is would a few big MB monsters as stretch goals--ones that cost backers nothing, ones that are feasible for us to provide--be mostly welcomed by the community or be shouted away by those who may already have them? The truth is, it may be better for us to offer nothing, than to offer something awesome like this. It seems absolutely nuts that I have to debate this, but such was the displeasure expressed by some backers during BtM. I almost want to do a survey that says would you rather Something or nothing?
I love both Conan and Batman, but honestly, how much of it do I really need? I feel like FOMO is making me want this much more than any actual want or need.
The conan minis are pretty much my main go to stuff for a lot of RPGs, same with Mythic Battles. So I get a pretty good amount of use out of my stuff and even have a decent chunk of Conan painted.
THe've also started their shift in approach to the KSer with this. They plan on doing more promos that will add new tiles to the box in the run up. One person seams annoyed others are happy they acting like a real KSer.
I'm not worried about their running out of money. If they needed money they could raise it by reprinting their various rare and popular stuff
The campaign should do fine if we can keep the screeching horde of "i aLrEaDy hAvE ThAt mInI YoU ArE GiViNg mE FoR FrEe! StOp tAkInG A DuMp oN PeOpLe wHo bAcKeD YoUr cAmPaIgN fIvE YeArS AgO!!" people from sinking it.
Monolith added a poll about SG being reprints from Mythic Battles. About a third are for no streach goals and the comments in several groups are getting pretty hostile towards Matt so I expect there to be none as he's stated he's taken aback by the negativity towards free stuff.
One reply from matt about SG should be new stuff only:
All the new stuff has been added to the Conqueror Box. It's completely new. We refuse to remove items that were meant to go in there to create the illusion of stretch goals.
So Matt is going to purpose, as it's stayed at a consistant 30% opposed to existing minis as SG, that the tiles and a scenario for the minis are unlocked as SG and in the PM there will be a 0$ add on for the minis if you want them.
Won't make everyone happy as there's a decent chunk of those 30% people that say the SG have to be 100% new or Monolith is screwing their loyal backers but I there's a lot of agreement that it's the best approach.
I don't really understand this angst about new but duplicate figures myself it just allows you to play games where you have even more of the same opponents....
It comes down to people being conditioned that SGs are new things they've never seen. To do that proper Monolith would have to do stuff like say for $100 you're getting 1 map and 30 figures and then "unlock" what they were originally planning on offering for the price which is 2 maps and 55 figures. People on the old KSer and in Facebook comments really think Monolith is pocketing the money after funding and just giving them cheap reprints. Monolith/Matt has tried to explain that they don't want to go the above route with fake SGs (which people still aren't grasping) so they're offering real SGs that can't be made unless funding is hit but all they can afford to do is reprints that have their own molds as I don't think Monolith doesn't expects this to do a million+. Matt has said they have to be very cautious in their approach financially so they what a success but doesn't have to be a home run.
So people are complaining as they see it as Monolith ripping them off by denying them new things.
One week from launch and we are getting the much requested Zenobia, who freed Conan in the only published novel (but one of the last chronologically) that he marries.
Also there's a preview of the KSer page coming this week.
Well they finally put up the new Kickstarter and it’s the best Kickstarter value I’ve seen in any Kickstarter. That king pledge plus stretch goals and new expansion plus stretch goals basically gives you 250+ minatures for 125$. That’s insane.... it’s very well done except those masssive bundles will sell out.
Well they're planning a reprint KSer next if this goes well, which we're all assuming will since the funding goal is so low, so people will get a chance later this year/next year for the kings pledge stuff.
It is an amazing deal and I use a lot of the minis from this game for RPGs. That and mythic battles gave me more stuff I use then Bones does.
One thing to note in the 19 euro add on the game board is half sized compared to the traditional ones. Looks like it's intended to be used by placing it next to the ship map in the core box.
Dang, whoever manages to snag those King bundles will be getting the best KS deal in years.
I left a comment telling them that they should auto include free miniatures and make the screechers deselect them in the pledge manager rather than vice versa. I recommend you all echo that sentiment in the feedback comments if you agree .
gungo wrote: Well they finally put up the new Kickstarter and it’s the best Kickstarter value I’ve seen in any Kickstarter. That king pledge plus stretch goals and new expansion plus stretch goals basically gives you 250+ minatures for 125$. That’s insane.... it’s very well done except those masssive bundles will sell out.
This one?
169 euros is aprox 185$ plus 50$ of shipping is about 235$. Maybe still a good price, but not the 250 miniatures for 125$ I think....
I left a comment telling them that they should auto include free miniatures and make the screechers deselect them in the pledge manager rather than vice versa. I recommend you all echo that sentiment in the feedback comments if you agree .
This was discussed on Facebook last week. The issue is the pledge managers don't allow for that. They could add it as a feature but Monolith would probably have to pay for that development. It sucks and most people, including Matt, agree with you but it's just the functionality limitation they have. There was the idea of having a "remove this figure" option for $0 but it was decided that might be too confusing and people might accidentally take them and not get a mini they want (I agree with this assessment).
There's still a lot of people complaining about the MPB figures, and it's not just the same group, so it's dumb and people are dumb but there we are.
gungo wrote: Well they finally put up the new Kickstarter and it’s the best Kickstarter value I’ve seen in any Kickstarter. That king pledge plus stretch goals and new expansion plus stretch goals basically gives you 250+ minatures for 125$. That’s insane.... it’s very well done except those masssive bundles will sell out.
This one?
169 euros is aprox 185$ plus 50$ of shipping is about 235$. Maybe still a good price, but not the 250 miniatures for 125$ I think....
Ok we will see what’s it cost in eagles. But it’s still a great deal at less then a dollar a mini... there was 185+ minis in the king pledge and I beleive 76 minis in the new box.
I'm kind of undecided. I have the base game and stretch goals from the previous kickstarter. It looks great, but I've never actually played it. It's too complicated I think to try to get a casual board gamer to give it a shot, and you need several people to play. So my main interest is the solo/co-op mode. But to pay another about $120 for just a 7 game campaign seems pretty steep. If there were more campaigns, even just released later as PDFs or something, It might seem more enticing.
There are lots of fan made ones that use the solo/co-op rules. The most prolific group has Monolith employees and contracters in it making the campaigns called the Nemedian Chroniclers and release a few sets of scenarios a year. So I expect more after this. Plus the Solo/Co-op mode allows you to swap heroes and the new ones will have swappable enemies too so there will be more replay value.
The minis from the first one were all quite good though there's some complaints about the lion in the Kings box as it was mushy detail but that appears to be because of the sculpt more then anything and the white coloring (instead of the gray) didn't help. The first KSer also used PVC for weapons so there's a bit of bendy in some. Not sure if this will have abs weapons but they did that with MBP and Claustrophobia so I would expect it. Some people call them trash but they're no worse then what CMoN was putting out 5 years ago and I think the people that dislike them just hate anything in PVC.
I've painted up about half my kings pledge and love the minis for RPGs. They scale just fine with the larger 28-32mm stuff.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Albertorius wrote: How good of a deal would be just the new box? The one with 58 minis with the stretch goals.
it's 90 euros and there one enormous figure that would easily retail for 50+euro before discounts and 6 other very large figures (20+ euros up to 40 euros due to the size) then the ballistas which might be 15 euros too each. Then there's 16 new scenarios and a double sided map. If your a fan of the game it's a great deal. If you just want the minis you'll have to decided if you like whats in there as most of the cost is the large figure (and the 3rd sg is even bigger) and the scenarios.
Albertorius wrote: How good of a deal would be just the new box? The one with 58 minis with the stretch goals.
it's 90 euros and there one enormous figure that would easily retail for 50+euro before discounts and 6 other very large figures (20+ euros up to 40 euros due to the size) then the ballistas which might be 15 euros too each. Then there's 16 new scenarios and a double sided map. If your a fan of the game it's a great deal. If you just want the minis you'll have to decided if you like whats in there as most of the cost is the large figure (and the 3rd sg is even bigger) and the scenarios.
Thanks! I'm actually much more interested in scenarios and more... well, game, than minis, tbh.
Well, Noble Knight has a box in "Fair" condition for $60 plus shipping. Much less than the $90+ I'm seeing elsewhere. The core plus the Conquerer pledge is all you need. Other miniatures don't have official support (eg. the dragon expansion only has one scenario).
Well I'm in, hopefully this is successful enough to keep them producing more and more Conan content.
Someday I may even get some of those sweet expansions and alternate sculpts.
Funded in 6min, all the barbarian and king pledges sold in an hour and half, and all stretch goals unlocked in 5 hours....
I only needed the new conqueror expansion plus the new campaign... so I didn’t need to be in a mad rush. However I’m going to try and pick up the dragon in the pledge manager and maybe the Colette box if they have it. As that’s all I’m missing.
The last SG hasn't unlocked yet. You're seeing the dollar amount auto coverted by KSer. The last one is 400k Euro so we've got another 20k or so to get.
Sounds like more SG might appear, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Dragon show up as one as there's only a limited number of single molds they have and Matt's already said that the Red Nails KSer will have a different dragon sculpt so I think it is a possibility as a free item.
AFAIK, Only the core set and Conquerer's pledge will be supported (eg. further adventures written for them), so, if you're primarily interested in gameplay, you don't need any other pledge. Personally, I played so many dungeoncrawlers that the system, where want to roll more pips on the dice than your opponent (or otherwise perform a skill check), that Conan's dice system isn't all that different. (Our gaming group prefers Gloomhaven over any other dungeoncrawler.) However, the game system is solo / coop, which is better for 1-3 players than dungeoncrawlers that require a referee (eg. Descent). Unfortunately, it looks like retail prices have risen since their clearance prices many months ago. IMO, The game also has annoying translation problems (the translations weren't playtested), annoying errata ("Oh, the errata says Conan can't go through that wall") and annoying gameboards ("Does that branch block LOS between these two spaces?"). While the rulebook was updated, I don't think the spell cards and reference sheets were (you can print them out, but I prefer reference sheets in card form).
None of the pledges include expansions from the original KS. Nonetheless, if you're all Conan for the miniatures pick up the King Conquerer pledge if you can. Many miniatures beyond the core set only had one or two official adventurers written for them. Myself, I *really* like the miniatures, and also bought them for the Conan RPG, if I ever play it.
IIRC, Monolith said that, since they had more than one smaller miniature on a mold, it was easier to give away larger ones.
BTW, If you're looking for Gloomhaven proxies, the pirates, archers, and acolytes in the base game box and conquerer's pledge have enough mini's for bandits, cultists, and other mooks.
Have they explained why they are/were somehow sitting on a couple of thousand king pledges ? That seems a lot of stock to not be actively trying to shift before now.
Alpharius wrote:If someone missed everything the first time around, loves Conan and can get/keep an All-In pledge here, would you recommend it?
My gaming ‘group’ is small - usually just the two of us, maybe sometimes there’s three...
So I haven't really played the game much tbh but most of the Adventure mode scenarios are for 3-4 (x-1 players and one Overlord) which is the default game mode but the new solo/co-op stuff can have any number and there's 7 in this campaign and a bunch of unofficial ones basically written by Monolith's Scenario staff (unpaid so unofficial) because the love the game so much. So if you prefer the co-op side of things more you'll probably like this more then the Adventure mode which is a vs mode. Some of the Scenarios, especially the unofficial ones written by Matt John, can be very hard even on the co-op side from what people say so part of the replay value is just trying to win once. They also allow for swappable heroes and monsters while Adventure mode it's pretty locked down what you can use for balance sake.
There's a mix of campaign and unlinked adventures (which it seams Matt and Fred prefer) but there's no progress system at all like in other games. That's nice as you don't really have to keep track of all these different sheets between play sessions -- especially if you don't meet that often -- and have to restart over and over again (my group has this issue with KD:Monster so I've told them I'm done playing it until they commit to only that game for like 6 months) but it does suck if your group prefers that. The maps are set and not random per scenario so you'll see lots of repeats of the same map over and over but with different placements and objectives. If either of those things sound meh then you may not be into it as much.
If you end up getting it and really liking it you'll have to get use to unofficial scenarios, especially for solo/co-op right now, but there's a website Monolith sponsors where you can get a bunch (conanscenarios) and a bunch on the Overloard.net too. Monolith allows you to download all of their scenarios from their website for free -- including the ones in various printed books people keep asking for in the comments so there's like 40 or so official Adventure mode ones right now I think.
As for the translation problems Monolith is plagued with solo/co-op stuff is all written by native English speakers as Matt doesn't speak French at all and I believe all his writers are Canadian or American.
TwilightSparkles wrote:Have they explained why they are/were somehow sitting on a couple of thousand king pledges ? That seems a lot of stock to not be actively trying to shift before now.
Nope. The most likely reason they didn't try to shift them before now is the game flopped in retail (and lost them money) so Fred moved on to different IPs that would pull in more money (basically batman). Sounds like he wasn't sure there were enough fans to do more conan with his boardgame. I think Matt John's relentless support of the game and getting official solo/co-op stuff resparked the game as it was a smaller user base before.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Edit: Also looks like we just passed the 400k euro mark so that's a free Typhoon/Unspeakable Horror for everyone that wants one.
I made a comment on one of their facebook posts saying I'd like to see more co-op scenarios or campaigns, even if they are just PDFs. Monolith liked the comment. Make of that what you will. Hopefully they have something in mind as a stretch goal.
I was hoping to have an update out tonight to provide our hungry backers a little something to chew on, but I'm not sure I'll have it out this evening. I'm still talking with the team and working a few things out. Seriously, folks, we didn't expect to be here at this point. So many many thanks again.
Of course, I'm really happy to have a successful KS; that's important, especially after what happened with the Beyond the Monolith campaign. But, I am mostly just happy that Conan is back, the community is healthy and hungry, and we can carve out a future for my favorite board game ever.
If can't get any fresh news from Fort Tuscelan tonight, it does not mean the Picts have banded together and are coming to destroy us. It just means we need a little more time to work some things out. Tomorrow we should have news about what's next now that we've unlocked the Nameless Horror. And we should also have part 1 of our Scryings of Skelos design diary out as well. In that I'll be highlighting several aspects of the solo/co-op mode--the rationale/history, mechanics, and some looks under the hood, as it were.
Seriously, you guys, this has been such an excellent start and a real gas for us. Let's see what tomorrow brings.
I suspect more scenarios are a strong possibility but we'll have to see what Fred approves.
They sent out an update allowing backers to vote on next stretch goal.
I feel like the Hydra is far and away the best fit for Conan. Other snakes could always find their way into Conan's world as well.
I went with the Basilisk as I don't have that mini and would fit the general feel of the genre but Polyphemus would fit in well with the Deepones. Though I'm pretty sure Hydra will win but I wouldn't be surprised that they do another one from here that was the 2nd most voted.
Matt also said the reason for no Conan reprints as SG, such as the dragon, is this KSer everything is supposed to be new to the Conan game.
On a positive note it sounds like there will be another small expansion addon like the pirates but with miniature(s) as there's talk of a naga (snake with human head) via what people are guessing from what Matt has been hinting in the comments.
He also said he has to be careful about adding scenarios as they're the biggest factor to causing a delay due to the time that takes to make them. So of there is a new add on that does another 4-6 scenarios that would be quite the load for the group they have.
Read that only factories making necessary items (eg. medical supplies) are open, and that most small and medium Chinese companies have reserves to only last one or two months. I'm also concerned if one company in the supply chain goes bankrupt, what will happen to others down the line.
On the fence, since I backed the original Conan, MBP, and haven't really played the games yet. Tiny Furniture announced their dead miniatures KS, and Hand of Glory's gonna have another magnetized oversized hands KS next month.
Krecik, we're weighing a few options at this moment. My preference is to just drop a few bonuses on you all without the chase. I have a few fun gameplay bonuses in mind, and one thing a little more substantial. So...we're discussing internally what is best at this point. There will be more stuff, but we're still deliberating and tossing around ideas.
Few more freebe's being added, sounds like we'll get one a day until the end due to them not wanting to have chase SG. The first two are hero sheets for Typhoon and the Winged ape and the ability for some scenarios to have a second Overloard player which controls one of those (or other possible villains).
there's a fair bit of churn and King & Barbarian pledges are coming free but getting snapped up again pretty fast, but if you were interested worth having a look
Also sounds like, which I thought would be the case last week, they're going to use the pledge manager to asses popularity of items for a reprint. Probably have some system for people to add to a watchlist that indicates they'd be interested in buying. Also would be surprised to see monolith do the reprint in conjunction with this new KSer and have everything deliver at once. if that's the case makes a lot more sense as why they didn't want to split shipping.
Also sounds like, which I thought would be the case last week, they're going to use the pledge manager to asses popularity of items for a reprint. Probably have some system for people to add to a watchlist that indicates they'd be interested in buying. Also would be surprised to see monolith do the reprint in conjunction with this new KSer and have everything deliver at once. if that's the case makes a lot more sense as why they didn't want to split shipping.
It could be unclear wording, but someone asked if the expansion boxes would be available in the PM with Matt saying they will have some. So it sounds like beyond just a future reprint they do have some undefined (probably very limited) quantity of the previous Kickstarter add-ons sitting around in the warehouses as well.
They will be selling left over stock in the PM but update 24, post funding, said:
Very soon we’ll make some announcements regarding our re-print plans for some of the older hard-to-get material. We’ll also reveal what we plan to do with the pledge manager and remaining stock. It may just be that these two elements are related.
So new update talking a bit about reprints. They're going to send a survey out via a kser update and then do a mini campaign for about a week. Then combine that reprint campaign's PM with the Conquerer PM and deliver both at the same time.
makes sense (and hopefully will capture the enthusiasm too)
the expansions are certainly not available over here for anything like a price i'd pay
hopefully they can tell us what the shipping costs associated with each will be too since they know how big and heavy they are, as otherwise I could see people changing their minds when presented with the bill since shipping has gone up so much since 2015
Even though we are ecstatic with the rejuvenation of the Conan game, we realise that there were some backers old and new, that were disappointed by what was NOT on offer during the last campaign.
To diligently gauge that interest and not totally pull demand figures from thin air we are offering YOU -the chance to let US know what YOU want! Use the linked survey to tell us what you, 100% guarantee you would pledge for, IF itwere available in a crowdfunding campaign.
Survey participation is OPEN to all – new and old alike, no previous backing of a Monolith Conan Kickstarter campaign required.
Pledge prices are as balanced and as fair as we can stretch to at this time, and they reflect our smaller anticipated production numbers and an increase in our production costs.
The survey will run for two weeks, so enter your email address, check those boxes and hit send.
A verification email will ping into your mailbox, for your reference and contains a link if you want to go back and makes some changes to your selection.
And after I have filled out my survey? What’s next?
Once we have locked down the survey and crunched the numbers, then we intend to launch a crowdfunding campaign on the GameOn crowdfunding platform.
This campaign will feature those items from the 2015 product range that we are confident on reprinting at this moment. Once that reprint campaign has closed, we will combine it and the Conan the Conqueror campaign into a single pledgemanager, saving on shipping and fulfilment costs. We will keep you up to speed with regular updates.
Oh and if that item you are looking for didn’t make the cut into the reprint campaign – don’t worry too much – it’s more than likely in the original 2015 stock available in the Pledge manager
Team Monolith
Automatically Appended Next Post: there's a problem with the above link, in that i'm seeing the email address & selections of somebody else as are a number of others on the comments
so maybe hold off for a while for them to read about the issue and try and fix it
Due to the machinations of Thulsa Doom – our initial survey data entry process was problematic, and as a consequence that we deeply regret, we need to ask you to re-enter your selection in the survey, now that we have fixed the bug/gremlin/securityissues.
The data set we received appears to be pretty corrupted and we want to ensure we make the best and most informed call that we can when it comes to the reprint –
The upshot, this data re-entry is ONLY required if you input your data between the launch and today at 10.30am GMT. If you filled out your survey during this time period, kindly resubmit.
Once again, our apologies and we entreat you to make your selection, cast your vote and open your castle doors and roar to the four winds – that everyone needs to fill the reprint survey out.
deano2099 wrote: So if they do reprint more stuff is anything worth getting? For the actual Conan game rather than just the minis? Are there new scenarios etc?
king pledge conversion and campaign book is great. I like the crossbow men as they are used a bit as well. Everything other addon is 1 off scenarios except expansions.
Ya. This whole survey shouldn't be this hard. Looks like it's just a simple google form and someone forgot to set it to public instead of locking it to monolith emails/accounts.
Over on Facebook Matt John is saying they're going to be either delaying the PM or leaving it open for a very long time (probably both) as they realize now is a very bad time to be asking for money when there are a lot of people unsure what the next month or two holds economically.
Also there doesn't sound like there will be any reprints as the numbers they're getting isn't anywhere enough to justify it for any item.
It makes one wonder how much stock they actually have in hubs and if the flubbing of the "would you buy this" form launch twice adversly affected them in any significant way.
I knew getting to around 1,000-1,200 (minimum is 1,500) orders for a lot of things would be hard but I'm surprised that the most popular items haven't hit near that which makes me think they're a lot more sitting around then we're expecting.
Monkeysloth wrote: Over on Facebook Matt John is saying they're going to be either delaying the PM or leaving it open for a very long time (probably both) as they realize now is a very bad time to be asking for money when there are a lot of people unsure what the next month or two holds economically.
Wise move. I've stopped backing plastic injection KS, with the coronavirus epidemic in China, and China's numbers not being trustworthy. Even in normal times, "Everything is fine until it isn't". KS creators often fly to China to make sure the plastics pass their QA, and you know that's not going to happen for quite awhile with nearly every province in China reporting infections. Last I heard, which admittedly was weeks ago, was that only essential factories were allowed to reopen, and local governments had a backlog of factories that wanted to open, I'm not clear about factory re-infections and immobility of workers returning to factories, nor Chinese businesses themselves able to withstand China's economic problems. I've read that most small and medium Chinese companies only have enough cash for one to two months, and that was back in February.
Monkeysloth wrote: It makes one wonder how much stock they actually have in hubs and if the flubbing of the "would you buy this" form launch twice adversly affected them in any significant way.
I new getting to around 1,000-1,200 (minimum is 1,500) orders for a lot of things would be hard but I'm surprised that the most popular items haven't hit near that which makes me think they're a lot more sitting around then we're expecting.
I remember seeing someone ask in the Backer questions what would happen if an item didn't get the numbers needed for a reprint, and iirc Monolith responded that if an item wasn't able to get enough commitment for reprinting then there would likely be enough stock in the hub to cover demand.
Whether that was a lie to keep backers from throwing a fit, them estimating a much higher demand for most expansions, or the truth I have no idea.
It's possible that they were forced to run a very large print of the expansions initial with the plan to take them to market, but backed off once the core game had low sales.
The low demand on the survey has likely also been massively influenced by the current uncertainty given they just asked this month and current events have been building since late last year.
Monkeysloth wrote: Over on Facebook Matt John is saying they're going to be either delaying the PM or leaving it open for a very long time (probably both) as they realize now is a very bad time to be asking for money when there are a lot of people unsure what the next month or two holds economically.
Wise move. I've stopped backing plastic injection KS, with the coronavirus epidemic in China, and China's numbers not being trustworthy. Even in normal times, "Everything is fine until it isn't". KS creators often fly to China to make sure the plastics pass their QA, and you know that's not going to happen for quite awhile with nearly every province in China reporting infections. Last I heard, which admittedly was weeks ago, was that only essential factories were allowed to reopen, and local governments had a backlog of factories that wanted to open, I'm not clear about factory re-infections and immobility of workers returning to factories, nor Chinese businesses themselves able to withstand China's economic problems. I've read that most small and medium Chinese companies only have enough cash for one to two months, and that was back in February.
I suspect a lot will be making medical supplies too if able instead of other orders.
Jack Flask wrote:
Monkeysloth wrote: It makes one wonder how much stock they actually have in hubs and if the flubbing of the "would you buy this" form launch twice adversly affected them in any significant way.
I new getting to around 1,000-1,200 (minimum is 1,500) orders for a lot of things would be hard but I'm surprised that the most popular items haven't hit near that which makes me think they're a lot more sitting around then we're expecting.
I remember seeing someone ask in the Backer questions what would happen if an item didn't get the numbers needed for a reprint, and iirc Monolith responded that if an item wasn't able to get enough commitment for reprinting then there would likely be enough stock in the hub to cover demand.
Whether that was a lie to keep backers from throwing a fit, them estimating a much higher demand for most expansions, or the truth I have no idea.
It's possible that they were forced to run a very large print of the expansions initial with the plan to take them to market, but backed off once the core game had low sales.
The low demand on the survey has likely also been massively influenced by the current uncertainty given they just asked this month and current events have been building since late last year.
The survey was open for a week or two before things really hit Europe so I'm inclined to think it's mostly reserve amounts as I figure the majority of people would have filled out the survey in the first week.
Also all Stretch Goals will be opt out if you don't want them (which is how it should have been in the first place but they were looking for a PM that would allow them to do that).
This is a list of what they'll have of existing stock
This is what will be reprinted:
Giant Wolves
Black Ones
The Dragon
Paolo Parente Box
Brom Box
Xavier Colette Box
Kushite Witch Hunters
Adventure Scenery Pack
10 doors Pack
Counterbases.
Yogah of Yag (confirmed on facebook).
Expansions are planned for reprinting, with new single player scenarios added, in the next KSer.
Cool. Hopefully I can get a set of Black Dragons, but what I really want that I missed last time is the Dragon, Yogah and the Black Ones. So, I'm pretty good on that.
I don't recall for certain, but I'd be surprised if they didn't offer a late pledge. Though for some reason I think that will open up after the backers have time to select from existing stock.
Sacredroach wrote: Cool. Hopefully I can get a set of Black Dragons, but what I really want that I missed last time is the Dragon, Yogah and the Black Ones. So, I'm pretty good on that.
Same. They did say that if things that aren't in the reprint sell out they'll reconsider adding them to the reprint as the number of people that actually responded to the survey seams to be around 20% of the actual backers so I'm sure there will be a lot more demand for somethings then the numbers show.
Well, they opened up the pledge manager a bit ago. Promptly crashed. No sabertooth tiger or crossbow men for me. The super low quantities in NA sold out nearly instantly.
Maybe I'll get lucky in the future? Pretty tired of the song and dance trying to get ahold of this game to a level that I want.
I did get some Black Ones, so I'm pretty happy about that.
I too played the game and failed including not being able to add any of the new expansions they are going to be printing which should have been unlimited
(well except for the updated rule book)
I really hope they haven't oversold some of the limited stuff but looking at some of the numbers I suspect they have
I actually managed to get in the first 5 min and get the few things in the non-reprint list I wanted (black dragons).
I suspect they'll announce more things added to the reprint list in a day or two as a small fraction of backers actually filled out the reprint survey.
So Fred posted this in facebook via a group about monolith's games about them not repriting the expansions right away:
Thanks. We are reading complaints. I can understand some of them. But peoples tend to forgot that we had to destroy 6000 english expansions in china when FFG deleted its order in 2016, because peoples were not interested by buying this expansions at this time. The minimum on quantity for printing them is 1500 ex per expansion in the factory and it s way more than the number of wishs of our survey. Speaking of the survey and the reprint, we are actually way under the quantity peoples annouced they would pledge. So we will actually lose money on some items people told us they would buy for sure.
Is he fething complaining less than 12 hours after opening the PM that he's going to lose money because he's "sold" way under the amount of product that he estimated for??
Or am I reading all this wrong? I hope I am reading/undertanding it all wrong.
No, this is normally how he writes. He's transparent, but could write less defensively. And, no, I've been following the Conan KS as well as anyone else, and didn't know that expansions were destroyed. I do know that this happens often, including outside of boardgaming, but had to read an article about estimating plastic injection costs to find out.
With KS requiring projects to have new content, I dunno what creators can best do to reprint expansions when they need a minimum order and want to not lose money. Even before KS, GMT has a P500 preordering system, where customers vote on which products GMT produces. Maybe Fred Henry could cheat like CMON did with their Time Vault by offering a new soundtrack with the reprint. Petersen Games essentially ran a KS for each language variant of Cthulhu Wars, so Monolith could possibly run a KS for each expansion reprint.
Backers are upset, but I don't think there's a good solution when demand outstrips supply, yet there's not enough demand for the company to risk another print run. Take too many risks, and the company may go out of business.
Since he's saying backers have ordered less of the reprinting items than they said they would in they survey i'm afraid that may, in part, be down to his choice of pledge manager
I was unable to add some of the reprint material although I tried but the PM just wouldn't let me (and I bet I wasn't the only one)
and since I missed out on all of the big three expansions i'm probably not going to go back and try again, a leas not yet, I need the sadness to subside a bit first
(not that there is anything they could have done about limited items not being enough to meet demand if that wasn't enough to cover a minimum order)
(and perhaps a better contract with Asmodee could have at least made them responsible for production costs if they cancelled their order)
I was able to add everything but I’m still back and forth in the dragon mostly because they are redoing a new version for the next Kickstarter red nails expansions.
The other thing is there is plenty of time to order this stuff as the pledge manager is due to stay open a while
To figure out actual demand they could just run a pre-order that required people to put down money and then refund money for items that didn't clear the number threshold.
I'm sure that there are many people who decided not to order anything after they found out they couldn't order the things they wanted.
ced1106 wrote: No, this is normally how he writes. He's transparent, but could write less defensively. And, no, I've been following the Conan KS as well as anyone else, and didn't know that expansions were destroyed. I do know that this happens often, including outside of boardgaming, but had to read an article about estimating plastic injection costs to find out.
With KS requiring projects to have new content, I dunno what creators can best do to reprint expansions when they need a minimum order and want to not lose money. Even before KS, GMT has a P500 preordering system, where customers vote on which products GMT produces. Maybe Fred Henry could cheat like CMON did with their Time Vault by offering a new soundtrack with the reprint. Petersen Games essentially ran a KS for each language variant of Cthulhu Wars, so Monolith could possibly run a KS for each expansion reprint.
Backers are upset, but I don't think there's a good solution when demand outstrips supply, yet there's not enough demand for the company to risk another print run. Take too many risks, and the company may go out of business.
I agree. Fred is not one that's very good and holding back his thoughts or information. He's not mean about it but it does come off as defensive a lot. But I wasn't really posting due to the current low purchase numbers as that's Fred being Fred and was only one day into the PM.
I hadn't known about the 9k boxes being destroyed and it's been confirmed by other people (employees and non-employees that were on the Monolith Forums at the time Fred originally talked about it) as there's talk about how poor the game sold back in the day but seeing the orders from the expansion dropped by 3000 each one is quite a large amount. There's some massive wining in one of the two Facebook groups (the one that looks official but isn't where this quote) that Monolith lied about expansion availability, that it was false advertising and that they didn't tell people ever that they were limited. I can't think of how many times all that was stated but there's a decent size group of people reacting worse to this then any other similar thing (black Friday or CMoN timemachine). Maybe because it's a more niche product? There was one guy seriously trying to convince the Conan Monolith Facebook group to not be about Monolith games because of this.
Gallahad wrote:To figure out actual demand they could just run a pre-order that required people to put down money and then refund money for items that didn't clear the number threshold.
I'm sure that there are many people who decided not to order anything after they found out they couldn't order the things they wanted.
They're working at reprinting them later on with more content Seams like Fred is really wary of the expansions and Matt's plan to reintroduce them with the next campaign with more scenarios (solo/co-op added) is what convinced him. But we'll have to see what becomes of them.
TwilightSparkles wrote:To only backed to go in on the PM but those UK shipping costs are eye watering.
Yea Brexit! But I've seen some price comparisons on Facebook and ya, the UK stuff sucks but at least your not iceland where it's like 100 euros to ship or something around there.
Items in the Pledge manager oversold. We own that! alongside Game On TableTop.
We are working to ensure that we deal with this oversell situation as FAIRLY AND AS QUICKLY as possible.
We wish to find solutions and ask for your patience while doing so.
In the worst possible scenario we will fully refund any oversold item at 100% + additional compensation.
On a positive note we had NOT included ALL the copies of our Limited quantity stock.
We had set aside an amount to deal with contingencies, so we can say that the oversell in most cases is not as dramatic as it may have appeared on the pledge manager.
The addition of the contingency stock has already significantly reduced the number of items effected.
We are preparing an item by item overview and once we have finalized our research will be able to clarify which items still remain a challenge.
In order to facilitate this overall reduction, we will move items of inventory from one distribution hub to another, while checking with every distribution hub globally to access their inventories.
Including our US and EU based inventory held at mass market retail warehouses. No stone will be unturned in order to maximize the reduction of the oversell, these numbers may be small, but they will have an impact.
The instructions to provide an accurate inventory went out to our global distribution hubs on Friday and we are eagerly awaiting those responses.
We anticipate being in a position to have final numbers of available inventory and be able to begin the process of determining who did and who did not make the cut in the near future with a view to making any decisions known no laterthan early June, if not earlier.
To repeat any oversold item will be refunded at 100% and additional compensation.
The method of verification will be the transaction date stamp.
We will continue to keep you updated on a regular basis – as we resolve this challenge.
well I guess I dodged a bullet by not getting any of the limited stock, i'd be very sad to have won the race and then have it taken away (although Monolith look to be handling it as best as they can and offering compensation too is a good touch)
I suspect the best way to handle this sort of scramble in the future is NOT to tell backers when the PM is launching beyond a 'sometime in the next month' and stick the limited stuff up at a random point during the month. People that really want stuff will keep checking, the less committed won't, and once the stuff is up word will spread, but hopefully slow enough that the software can cope
I suggested a lottery when they first said they were planning on selling limited stock. That's really the only fair way but probably something they didn't want to do due to not having a webstore or way to sell these to winners outside of like paypal.
TLDR: they're reprinting the expansions. The more the sell the more solo/co-op content they'll add.
First up, the “oversold” items. There was indeed a server problem with the Game on Tabletop format and that resulted in some selling of quantities we did not have. However, after discovering the total number of items was 462, we dug into other hubs, older distributors and retail stocks everywhere and we’ve managed to almost entirely fix the situation and can report most items sold will be honored. There are only 11 items in total we were not able to track down. Those individuals affected will be contacted by us via email by June 17th. Here are some specifics:
-All theoretical “oversell” of Sabertooth, Black Dragons, Vanir Valkyrie, Baal Pteor, Artbook-Campaign books, are secured and confirmed for everyone. There has been no ‘oversell’ on these items.
-All Demon of the Earth, KHITAI, NORDHEIM, and STYGIA sales are also secured. In fact— and here’s the big news:
WE ARE REPRINTING STYGIA, NORDHEIM, AND KHITAI! These “Big 3” expansions will be available in unlimited quantities and will ship worldwide. All three are now available in the PM (in the “add-ons” section, under 2015-2017 items we are reprinting). This was a big undertaking for us. It required tons of negotiation with our factories and partners, but it still represents some financial risk for us. We are really hoping the survey data our fans provided is accurate. The ball is in your court!
What’s more exciting is that we’ll start off offering one Solo-coop scenario for each of the Big 3. These will function as a mini-campaign and will be available online after the Pm but before delivery. However, once we’ve sold a total of 1800 copies from among these three expansions (old stock included) we will turn this three-scenario campaign into a six-scenario campaign, with one scenario for each map. Players can, of course, play these scenarios independently, but for those who buy all three, you will have the entire campaign. We have had preliminary discussion about the thematic direction for this campaign, but Matt John has stated he’d like to call it “The Jeweled Thrones of the Earth”. Draw from that what you will.
TLDR: they're reprinting the expansions. The more the sell the more solo/co-op content they'll add.
First up, the “oversold” items. There was indeed a server problem with the Game on Tabletop format and that resulted in some selling of quantities we did not have. However, after discovering the total number of items was 462, we dug into other hubs, older distributors and retail stocks everywhere and we’ve managed to almost entirely fix the situation and can report most items sold will be honored. There are only 11 items in total we were not able to track down. Those individuals affected will be contacted by us via email by June 17th. Here are some specifics:
-All theoretical “oversell” of Sabertooth, Black Dragons, Vanir Valkyrie, Baal Pteor, Artbook-Campaign books, are secured and confirmed for everyone. There has been no ‘oversell’ on these items.
-All Demon of the Earth, KHITAI, NORDHEIM, and STYGIA sales are also secured. In fact— and here’s the big news:
WE ARE REPRINTING STYGIA, NORDHEIM, AND KHITAI! These “Big 3” expansions will be available in unlimited quantities and will ship worldwide. All three are now available in the PM (in the “add-ons” section, under 2015-2017 items we are reprinting). This was a big undertaking for us. It required tons of negotiation with our factories and partners, but it still represents some financial risk for us. We are really hoping the survey data our fans provided is accurate. The ball is in your court!
What’s more exciting is that we’ll start off offering one Solo-coop scenario for each of the Big 3. These will function as a mini-campaign and will be available online after the Pm but before delivery. However, once we’ve sold a total of 1800 copies from among these three expansions (old stock included) we will turn this three-scenario campaign into a six-scenario campaign, with one scenario for each map. Players can, of course, play these scenarios independently, but for those who buy all three, you will have the entire campaign. We have had preliminary discussion about the thematic direction for this campaign, but Matt John has stated he’d like to call it “The Jeweled Thrones of the Earth”. Draw from that what you will.
Well, looks like I'll need to pick up Nordheim now, as they strongly suggest that this will be the final reprint.
The completionist in me is screaming at me to pick up Khitai as well, but that setting just doesn't grab me.
from the number I've heard on Facebook and that they've mentioned that they need to sell to get all the bonus missions I have a feeling they'll have some left over for the red nails kser and maybe even their webstore. I also suspect, though this is just my opinion, that if Conan keeps doing well and bringing in new players they'll reprint the big box expansions again.
What they don't want to do, which most in the community seam to agree with, is release small boxes that just have one scenario as those didn't go over as well, and stick to boxes that have 4-5 scenarios and sets of minis.
Sounds like in the latest update they have enough for the 3 expansion reprints..
But this last update adds everything people have asked for in this game.
options to switch out hero’s to different hero’s.
Options to switch out monsters to make the game easier or hard mode.
Solo play options
Game board options with treasure rooms
And they are literally reprinting almost everything you can want.
barbarian pledge
3 expansions
the majority of addons
Gives you nearly everything minus the king pledge minis which sold out and very few missing addons.
It’s a great resource management miniature game and I’m extremely happy with this latest Kickstarter for expanding the playability of this game. Official scenarios alone we will have over 50+.
antheon dashboards, troop cards, and activation recruitment cards so you can add them to your MBP army. Prior MBP minis only – the Claustrophobia 1643 demons refused to be drafted into Hades’ army; they serve something far eviler.
but allowing you to mix themes and tiles from various universes is the plan.
. Finally, only four Competitive-Multiplayer games are in this list. All the others (19/25 !!!) are Cooperative games.
