QML has been busy recalculating shipping charges with correct weights, and for backers that previously did not have shipping charges, your shipping will be estimated in a second wave. We will continue to keep you updated on the progress as we move forward!
For any backers concerned with taxes, we're currently exploring how state/regional taxes affect our campaign bundles and how to better optimize this.
To follow-up on last week’s update, QML is currently working their way through our list and making adjustments to shipping prices that will correct both the error with the Savannah BattleMat and the packing fees. This recalculation could take a couple of weeks, and we will be doing everything in our power to help expedite this process on our end.
For any backers who have already charged their cards based on what they saw in BackerKit, please rest assured that we will be refunding the remaining amount after we have posted the correct shipping charges. We are also looking further into the complexity of taxes and VATs to certain areas to double check that everything is correct, thank you backers for pointing us in that direction.
Thank you backers for any and all feedback, it truly does help us do right by you.
After researching these shipping charges, we have discovered a couple of errors. First, there was an error in the upload of the shipping charges form that included the total amount of shipping, handling, and fees, instead of JUST shipping. Additionally, we identified that the Savannahs Battlemat listed the wrong dimensions (instead, with the dimensions of a BFM). Most backers receive the free Battlemat with their order, so this erroneously upped the shipping fees due to large box dimensions. Because this affects all Veteran and above backers, QML needs to re-work the entire shipping upload, which will take some time.
Once both fixes are made, 95% of all orders are going to be under $150 for your total amount of shipping. Those remaining we believe are non-continental US, the rest of the world (outside of hub centers) stores, and similar extremely large orders.
Backers that had zero shipping listed were finalized after QML received their last data pull in December, so we'll be sending the updated list to them, as well. There were also some odd $1 shipping amounts that did not import correctly through the upload, and this will be updated.
Finally, the April 12th deadline is removed. We will take as long as it needs to fix all issues.
We had genuinely hoped that this would be an easy process, and are deeply apologetic for the undue stress this has caused all of you. But rest assured that we are committed to getting shipping issues fixed. This is a monster project, and we are so grateful to all of you for your support.
Thank you dearly to all backers that reached out about these charges to bring them to our attention.
Come join us over on Tuesday Newsday as well! Live now!
Quick update, as we know you are waiting to hear from us today. We have a meeting set with QML at 4-5pm ET today to go through all of our questions and anomalies we've found. We'll then make an action plan, and get a backer update out this evening.
The QML meeting is also the same time as Tuesday Newsday, so we'll be pushing the stream back two hours, and Rem will talk about the plan of action.
Stay tuned, and we'll have more for you later today.
We have received notifications from backers that the shipping charges for orders, primarily internationally, have been above what was expected for this project. This is to say, we absolutely agree.
For some context, these are not charges that have been generated by BackerKit or Catalyst ourselves. Our fulfillment house has generated these shipping charges based on the current price of shipping as they see it and how it is to be shipped (PO boxes, sizes and amount of boxes to effectively ship, etc.) These charges are not meant to make profit on any backer's order as they are being paid separately by us.
While we knew going with a higher quality shipper would be pricier, we did not know it would be to this level for some of you. There could be packing inefficiencies with especially small and large orders that could be leading to higher shipping charges to the best of our knowledge. We've spent last night spot-checking and pulling some of the more pricey charges to bring to our fulfillment house to see exactly how these charges are being calculated. If there is any part of these charges that does not seem correct to us, we will let you know and have these charges re-evaluated, likely pushing back our lock date.
There is a chance that these charges are correct and this is just the state of mass distribution. If that is the case, Loren and the distribution team plan to come up with a solution to help us stand with our backers.
We can assume that they will not be able to get back to us until after Easter weekend, where we should have a statement that I will post here updating all of you about the re-evaluation.
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Address Changes
We've been notified by a wonderful member of our Discord that backers may be able to change their state in BackerKit. While we do not currently have a way to open the state field for backers within the project, you may be able to solve it independently.
If you are having issues changing your state, please try going to your account information in BackerKit by going to "My BackerKit" and changing your address information in your profile. If this worked, you should be able to see the change reflected in your Mercenaries order page. If this works please let us know down here in the comments!
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We love being able to bring BattleTech to new fans of the game all across the globe and we are working to make sure even more people can enjoy it, you backers come first. For now, rest easy and enjoy your Easter weekend, from what I hear painting minis makes great practice for painting eggs!
We have the low down for what you can expect in the next few days.
Here soon we will have addresses unlocked where you will be able to update all of your shipping information excluding changing your Country. After updating this you can lock your address again, if you have no need to change your address then do not worry, we will be re-locking all of these on April 5th.
We also have provided shipping fees to BackerKit, which they are currently plugging in for all of you. We will post another update when we are told they are payable! Once they are payable, you will be able to pay on those until April 12th at 12AM ET, when we will be locking the Pledge Manager.
After review, there have been estimations in the US and Canada that have had some larger charges for oversized orders heading to PO Boxes.
Please note that QML has provided these charges based on how your order was at the end of December last year, as it does take quite a while to calculate charges for this large of a campaign. Any backer that has made additions since then may receive a secondary charge closer to the time of fulfillment which will make up the difference there. This will not effect your current order in BackerKit as the final export will be happening on April 12th just after locking the Pledge Manager.
This is Rem (Community & Marketing Director) stepping in for a moment to talk about BattleTech: Encounters. I found out about this yesterday, and it is important to all of us at Catalyst to communicate as quickly and transparently as we are able. To refresh your memory, Encounters is a dice game that was planned for future release, but we moved up production as a reward once reaching the $1 million stretch goal. Regiment backers and above will receive a free copy as part of fulfillment.
We had planned to release this after the Kickstarter fulfilled.
On Friday this week, a photo and link was sent to me showing that Encounters was in the wild at Barnes & Noble stores. I immediately asked the CGL team, and no one knew. After some back and forth, here is the context I got:
Our fulfillment agency and distributor has an exclusive relationship with Barnes & Noble. One of the only ways in the industry to get a game into B&N is to go through them. The distributor is constantly pitching games to them that they present from their warehouse stock. B&N has been incredibly happy with the results of having BattleTech in their stores, so when the distributor pitched a stand-alone game set in the world, they jumped. It is exceptionally rare to be accepted into B&N, so the distributor moved quickly. So quickly, that it seems they forgot to communicate with us at Catalyst.
Once a game is in the wild, it’s very hard to pull back. And the reach that B&N gives us to the next generation of BattleTech players that might not have found the hobby otherwise is exceedingly valuable to the future of this game. There is nothing we can do at this point about the B&N release.
However, we have made the decision that Catalyst will still not yet release via our store until after fulfillment. This may hurt our overall sales, as buyers seek it out at B&N, but it is important to us to honor our commitment to our backers as much as we are able. All backers will still receive their games as promised when we fulfill (we are still on track for June as of now).
Thank you all for your understanding, support, and patience. This is further proof that the reach of this game keeps exceeding ALL of our expectations.
Here’s Randall showing off some 40th Anniversary Editions of the Beginner Box and A Game of Armored Combat! I hear that he’ll have a combat manual coming out in the next one!
Here's a hint for what house the combat manual is about: During the Fourth Succession War, who united with House Steiner to create the Federated Commonwealth?
With the large amount of address changes coming in, we would just like to announce once more to message us here on Kickstarter if your shipping address will be different in 2024 so we can get that updated for you! To send us a message go to the main page of the project, and click on our name - Catalyst Games. Click “Contact Me” on the pop-up to send us a message!
We hope that you all have had a great holiday season so far and are looking forward to 2024!
And of course, we have another bonus for everyone, here we have Randall unboxing some Salvage Boxes!
EDIT: 12/27/23: From the Comments in Update #76
When we gonna be shipping?
Catalyst Games - CREATOR wrote:Early 2024 by our estimations, mid-2024 if there are any additional speedbumps!
Thank you to everyone who dropped by to say hey during PAX Unplugged! We are still working to ensure everything stays on track and is on course for our projected fulfillment period early-mid 2024! If you run into any issues please message us here on Kickstarter from the project's main page, and click on our name - Catalyst Games. A pop-up will appear. Click on "Contact Me." This will open a Kickstarter message to us.
In the meantime, we have another showcase from the man himself, Randall!
In addition to the livestreams, we're thrilled to share the news of our partnership with Veiled Resin! Art has played a crucial role in shaping the world of BattleTech, and collaborating with such a talented artist is sure to elevate BattleTech even further.
And as a bonus, we've got a video featuring Randall giggling while unboxing the BattleTech Core Rulebooks, showcasing the stunning BattleTech Universe books!
We love the enthusiasm that you bring to this project. Thank you all for your patience as we finalize the Salvage Box additions, plan for the disbursement of finished digital rewards, and sort and format all the various data needs for the manufacturer.
An issue has been brought to our attention - we've already traced and resolved it, but we want to communicate openly with you, our fans, and backers.
Some of the limited edition hardcover and leatherbound fiction for this project was sent by our warehouse partner to distribution. This means that a few retailers were able to get copies of the books to sell. We are committed to fulfilling for YOU, our backers first. We have contacted our warehouse and the distributors affected and asked them to pull the books. Our investigation indicated that less than 1% of the total quantity of books to fulfill were impacted. We apologize that the leak occurred, and are working diligently to make it right.
This will not impact fulfillment in any way, and we look forward to blazing forward toward fulfillment.
Thank you so much for your support, backers. BattleTech is alive and well because of YOU!
After going through several hundred messages and emails for the salvage boxes and EdgeZone Tokens, we are now coming to the end of those revisions! Once we are done and have received any additional information that is pending from you we will be sending off these orders, currently aiming for early this week.
If you still have an open request for a change of address or any simple swaps to your order please try to have those adjustments in as soon as possible, that information can be provided in your initial message and we can let you know if this is possible. We are also organizing all of the digital rewards, so please stay tuned - more is coming!
For backers who need to message about adding salvage boxes to your order, this is your last call! If you qualify, send us a message here on Kickstarter with your selections.
To clarify, backers who qualify are those who have chosen an add-on pledge level bundle at the battalion, company, or regiment level and have also selected either the Inner Sphere or BattleField Support: Objectives Forcepacks as part of their add-on pledge questions. If you meet these criteria, you qualify to receive additional salvage boxes in equal quantity (Excluding Battlefield Support). We apologize for any prior confusion or misunderstanding.
Let's shoot for no backer left behind, we will keep you updated as we gather all of your requests.
A huge thank you to all of you backers for making this a smooth operation!
Great news! With the PM officially closed, we're gearing up for the final production phase thanks to your incredibly helpful responses.
If you haven't completed your survey yet, please do so ASAP. We want no backer left behind! If you need your survey or haven't received it, check your spam folder. Use your Kickstarter email and this link to access the PM: https://battletech-mercenaries.backerkit.com
We attempted charges last week; however, some didn't go through. We'll make one more attempt.
And a reminder to everyone who chose an Inner Sphere ForcePack or Battlefield Support: Objectives ForcePack, you also get to choose a Salvage Box (excluding the Battlefield Support Salvage Box)! Please leave a message on Kickstarter with your choice and we will be adding them shortly!
Thank you all for your support and enthusiasm, and we look forward to the next steps in the process!
We're thrilled to announce that the Pledge Manager has ended and the last of the cards have been charged! We're currently in the process of assembling all the digital rewards, keep an eye out for the next update!
For those of you who added a Pledge Bundle Add-On and selected Inner Sphere Forcepacks, please send us a message specifying which Salvage Box (other than Battlefield Support) you would like to include with your order! Let us know, and we'll make sure it's added to your package.
Great news for those of you who have also supported Edge Zone! Edge Zone Damage Tokens will soon be available as an option to be added to your Pledge Manager orders. If you'd like to include these tokens with your rewards, message us, and we'll make it happen free of charge.
A quick reminder that the Pledge Manager will lock everyone's orders tomorrow and charges go through over the weekend. Again, this is an automated process so we do not have a specific time for this. Make sure you have your pledges updated!
It's been brought to our attention that some cards have begun being charged, and we have informed Backerkit to stop these charges. We are unsure as to why these charges have begun this early but we are looking into it with them, more to come on this as we know.
Just a couple of things as we sit 10 days away from the end of the pledge manager!
On September 15th the Pledge Manager will lock everybody's orders, since this is an automated process we do not have a specific time for this, so try to have everything locked in the night before! On the 16th we will be running the payments, since there is quite a bit of payments to run, there is not a specified time.
On any new content that has been released, please message us to unlock your pledge and you'll be able to view the full catalog!
Letting all of you know that all pledge levels have been unlocked! While the pledge levels themselves are locked, you have the flexibility to adjust your questions and add-ons. If you would like a change of pledge level, please message us!
To ensure the most accurate shipping rates, we'll be holding off the collection of shipping costs until we're closer to the actual shipping date. The pledge manager is now set to close on September 15th, so be sure to make any desired adjustments before then! Thank you everyone for your incredible support!
We have been working to make the Pledge Manager fully customizable by all of you and we believe we have found it! We are ready to open adjustments and here’s how it will work. We just opened the Recruit tier today as a smoke test to make sure nothing breaks and then we’ll open the rest of the tiers in the next few days, meaning the PM will no longer be closing on the 31st.
You’ll still need to message us to change your pledge level, but you can adjust your pledge choices and add-ons.
Some great progress is still being made on the War of Reaving novels and we can't wait to share it with you.
Of course, with the end of the Pledge Manager as we get closer to the end of August, try to submit all of those alterations to your orders! For now, we are shooting for August 31st to have all alterations in.
More updates as we get closer to the closing of the Pledge Manager!
War of Reaving novels are underway! The writers are writing! We won't know too much more until they turn in their drafts, but progress is being made.
BattleTech: Universe:
You've been asking and we finally have some great details for you! And who better to walk you through what comes in the Precentor Martial Edition of the BattleTech: Universe book than lead developer, Randall Bills! Check out the video!
It was so great to meet so many of you at Gen Con and share our love for BattleTech together! Seeing the amount of people shopping, playing at the demo tables, laughing and sharing stories are just a few of our favorite things about this passionate community!
We had so many great games and panels - from BattleTech authors, developers, and fiction writers to games of Alpha Strike and Ray vs. Brent in AGoAC!
Quick update - Dice credits will be FINISHED being added tonight! There were so many! Thank you all for your patience as we got these sorted.
Now that we are home from the convention, we'll be leaning heavily on Backerkit about those adjustments. Stay tuned - we are hoping for a final answer and course of action any day now.
Once all pledges are locked down at the end of August, we'll start on the Salvage Boxes from pledge add-ons. As a reminder, it is infinitely helpful if you select ForcePacks that come with a free Salvage Box as part of your main pledge. The bundles we will have to add manually at the close of the pledge manager, which means going through a lot of messages - more work for both you and our small team.
Thank you all so much for your patience as we work to make sure everything is clean before we wrap this massive, record-breaking campaign!
Coming to you with another update, we are postponing the end of the Pledge Manager until late August! Make sure you are getting all of those adjustments in so you get everything you want!
We are also looking to get everyone's dice credit added by the beginning of next week, so be looking out for that so you don't miss out. We are also incredibly excited to see you all at GenCon, come on by the booth and check out all that we have!
The unlock for Backerkit has finally gone through! As always, there are a few glitches we are working through. At the moment, Backerkit is not allowing adjustments to previous selections – apparently, too many adjustments of adding/removing from carts cause code issues. However, we all expected to be able to make those adjustments, and are working with them to try to fix that.
Other News:
Ironwind Metals are some dear friends and partners of ours, and one of their core team are going through a terminal medical issue. We’ve partnered with them to bring 3 new Drop Ship miniatures to the pledge manager. All profits from these minis gained from the pledge manager will go directly to Ironwind to help cover medical expenses. Once the pledge manager closes, we’ll purchase the minis from them to keep producing under the Catalyst flag.
Thank you all for your patience as we get through the next set of pledge manager glitches. We are in the home stretch!
We have some fantastic news to share! The pledge manager will be unlocking over the next few days and you will have until the end of July to lock in your final choices for your pledges. We'll send another announcement as soon as the unlocks go through. Don't forget that once you confirm your order, it will lock again, so be super sure of your choices!
Big Kappas – items that qualify for the 2 years of product are being automatically added to your orders, so double check everything so you don’t pay for extra items you don’t need! One of our delightful Kappas has been maintaining a list of what items are (or not) not included in the 2 years of product, so check out the exclusive discord server to review!
Pause for Dice Sneak Peek:
Retailers – we appreciate the support of our retail partners and value the opportunity to collaborate with you in bringing our product into a wider audience. Please remember that you MUST submit your resellers certificate to us and a photo of your store to store@catalystgamelabs.com. If we do not receive those items, any retailer tier items will be removed from your pledge before we close the pledge manager. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out and we will be happy to help.
Clan Invasion Backers: Your dice credits should be applied to your orders! If you don't see your credit, please contact store@catalystgamelabs.com and we can check on it for you.
Thank you all so much for your patience as we prepare for the final sprint of the pledge manager. We'll be in touch again over the next few days.
The tax issue you’ve reported should now be fixed. If there is still anyone having an issue, please reach out to us.
Please send in your verification of your resellers certificate and photo of your store. You can email this to store@catalystgamelabs.com. By the end of the pledge manager, anyone who does not submit those certificates will have their retail pledge items removed from their orders.
Due to a programming error, many retailers were given credits instead of being charged when they did their initial surveys. This has been fixed, so please check your account for a remaining balance, and please reach out if you have any questions.
Dice Credits
Backers of Clan Invasion may have noticed – our team has started applying dice credits to your pledge manager accounts! This is what is covered:
· The free dice set we put into place at the end of the Mercenaries campaign covers your free dice set from Clan Invasion that were either missing or badly manufactured
· If you purchased additional dice and/or the collectors set during Clan Invasion, your credit will be applied to the pledge manager
· If you purchased decks from the Clan Invasion Kickstarter (these were the ones that could not be fulfilled), your credit will be applied to the pledge manager
· Our team will be working through the week to get these credits applied. There are a lot of them, and our list is alphabetical by email address, so keep that in mind while checking for your credits.
More Add-Ons
The team has been adding additional items to Add-Ons here and there, so when the pledge manager reopens near the end of the month, keep a close eye out to make sure you got everything you wanted, and don’t miss out on those new items.
Over 15,000 of you have locked in your pledges for this first round! That's more than half!
We've made our way through the majority of messages - there are a few that have some unique questions that are taking additional time to research, so we'll get back to you as soon as possible.
For those sending in questions to the store@catalystgamelabs.com email, or sending messages through BackerKit (which go to that same store email), Chris is doing his best to catch up, but there are a lot of requests. Please be patient and he will answer your questions as soon as he's able.
Many of you have seen that we've opened the retailer wholesale prices. We'll be following up if we haven't heard from those retailers about their Resellers Certificate and proof of store, so watch your emails.
Additionally, we are looking into how to send Pre-Order/late backers an email to get them their digital content/locked updates we've made here on Kickstarter. We are trying to find a way to do that without emailing EVERYONE, but we may have to. Either way, you'll receive an email by the end of the week.
As a reminder, if you need Add-Ons unlocked, just send us a message here on Kickstarter. On the main campaign page, click on the Catalyst Game Labs name at the top. From there you can click Contact and send us a message.
We are not planning on closing the pledge manager until AT LEAST the end of June. If we stick to that schedule, we'd be reopening the second round of selections in about two weeks, but that could get pushed or pulled early depending on the number of locked orders and if we feel we've resolved all needed issues.
Thank you all so much for your continued support and patience!
Thank you so much for reaching out with questions and unlocks. We've gotten hundreds of emails, comments, and messages. We are going through them ALL so no worries if you haven't gotten your response yet. Promise it's coming.
Glitches:
You guys are ON IT! You've helped find some programming errors and a few of our own mistakes. Thank you for your communication and patience through such a massive pledge manager launch. This community is AWESOME!
Tamar Rising: Many of you reported that this item was showing up as $0. We've fixed it . If you chose it as an add-on, please make sure it is showing up in your add-ons. If you grabbed it at the wrong price, there's a chance the system removed it from your add-ons when it was reset.
The Faction Swag Bundle II had a glitch where a ton of product was showing up as add-ons that had nothing to do with the Faction Swag items. This has been fixed. If you grabbed it, there's a chance the system removed it from your add-ons when it was reset, so double check it in your order, please.
The laser chevron collector sets was showing up as $10. This has been fixed. If you chose it as an add-on, please make sure it shows up in your add-ons as they may have been removed from your order when reset.
Just want to make sure everyone gets what they need!
Update:
We discovered something with the free Visigoth for backers from the first 48 hours. The Visigoth is showing up in the back end for us, but not on the front end for backers. We are asking Backerkit for how to fix. Some people have commented that they now can see theirs, so it may have been fixed already, but we still plan to followup. Once we're told it's fixed, we'll send another update to you so you can double check your order and make sure no one is missing these who should be getting them.
News:
I saved the best news for last. We understand the frustration about the Salvage Boxes being unavailable for selection with the Pledge Bundle Add-ons - we're frustrated too. The challenge for a solution outside of Backerkit is complexity. The spreadsheet of backer surveys and total orders for fulfillment is MASSIVE, and we don't want to risk messing with the formatting, which could ultimately impact the distributor's fulfillment process and cause mistakes.
We've had a lot of conversations about how to work around Backerkit or the spreadsheet and what we can do, and we have an idea, but we need your help:
* As mentioned in the previous update, please use your Pledge Reward ForcePack options to choose as many of the Inner Sphere and Objectives ForcePacks that come with the Salvage Boxes as possible.
* After we reopen orders near the end of the pledge manager timeline, if you still need additional Inner Sphere or Objectives ForcePacks through your add-on bundle, go ahead and choose them . Once you submit your order and close it again, send us a message and we can add a free Salvage Box for you for your selections. This is a manual process, so please prioritize your choices to the main reward as much as possible.
We will continue to look for an easier solution in the meantime, but we have a plan!
Thank you all again for reporting the issues you find, and for all the encouraging words and enthusiasm for the pledge manager. We'll be back at it in the morning!
Firstly, thank you very much to our early-access smoke testers. Your feedback was super helpful in catching some phrasing and option issues.
The good news:
Over 1,000 backers got the first test email, and we got less than 50 questions and bug reports (many of them duplicates), so we feel comfortable opening up the pledge manager. Loren has been pushing through another 5,000 backers every few hours (hoping to not crash the system by unleashing smaller numbers at a time).
The OK-ish news:
One of the largest complaints we've received is that the add-ons selected in the Kickstarter are locked in Backerkit, instead of allowing for flexibility. We thought it would be more flexible as well. The bad news is there is no way to unlock everyones' Kickstarter add-ons at once. The good (but frustrating) news is that we have the ability to manually unlock those options for backers - that could mean A LOT of unlocking. But we are here for you. Rem Alternis' team is back with Bri and Tyler who will be responding to questions, comments, and messages for the rest of the week. If you need your Kickstarter add-ons unlocked, please send a message through Kickstarter. Bri and Tyler will review and unlock the items you request (so please be specific!) and let you know when you can go back in to make changes.
Next, when the Kickstarter was live, part of why we delayed adding pledge bundles as an add-on for so long was that we wanted to make sure with Backerkit that their system could do everything we needed it to for selections. When they said yes, we made those pledge bundles options as add-ons. Now, they tell us that their system can't nest multiple questions into their add-on items (meaning we can't ask 1. which forcepack do you want? and then ask 2. If you choose forcepack a,b or c, you get a Salvage Box to choose).
This is why there are no Salvage box choices for pledge bundle Add-Ons. BUT, there are a couple options you have:
* For your pledge reward (not add-on) choose all ForcePacks that come with a Salvage Box, and then for your pledge bundle add-on, choose ForcePacks that do NOT come with the Salvage box.
* Message us and ask us to unlock your pledge bundle add-on. Then your funds will open for you to spend them in other ways to customize your choices.
Other FAQs
How do I confirm my free Visigoth Fighter?
If you qualify for backing in the first 48 hours of the Kickstarter campaign, you should see the Visigoth Salvage Box in the list of items to the right on the Add-On screen. If it isn't there, and you think you qualify, please send us a message here on Kickstarter.
What if I pledged for a Legendary Mecharrior I pack as an Add-On on the Kickstarter?
Unfortunately, these were added to the Kickstarter in error, and once a single backer pledges for it, we can't delete it. We tried to communicate that, but it's understandable with such a big campaign for news to get missed. In the pledge manager, you'll be able to choose a different ForcePack with a $5 discount savings credit instead. If that doesn't work for you, reach out to us and we can either unlock your add-on for you to spend the funds on something else, or issue you a store credit or refund.
Any ideas of shipping costs yet?
We are still interviewing distributors for this campaign. Once decided, we are hoping to get quotes from them before we unlock the pledge manager options for the final time before closing. We'll keep you posted if that isn't possible for some reason, but we expect it to be doable.
How will the Clan Invasion credits work?
If you backed Clan Invasion and are owed a single set of dice, those will be fulfilled as the free set of Chevron laser dice we communicated at the end of the Kickstarter campaign. If you were owed multiple sets, we will be adding those credits manually in the pledge manager over the next few weeks. We'll communicate more about that in a separate update as the process starts.
How do I choose digital items, or make sure they are added to my pledge?
Our first goal was to get the physical items working in the pledge manager without breaking the system. We'll be getting digital items added shortly, definitely before the final unlock of pledge choices.
Thank you all again for the kind encouragement, feedback, and support through this process and test phases. Keep the questions coming, and we'll get answers out as soon as we are able.
Exciting news! Tomorrow we are starting the "smoke test." About 5% of backers will get an email with access to the pledge manager to make their selections and test out that everything is working.
If you are one of the lucky, randomly-selected backers and you find something off, please send a Message so we can fix it!
We ran into some issues with the Pledge Manager setup. We gave y'all so many options to pick from that Backerkit is having difficulty tweaking the infrastructure so we can do everything we need to or want to. We're putting them through their paces, and most of the issues are figured out, but we need a little extra time to get it finalized. As of now, we're thinking early next week to launch.
An update on Digital rewards progress:
*Double-Sized Mercenary issue of Shrapnel: Due by December 2023 as the end of year issue.
*Fortunes of War #2: Draft in edit, will be released in May!
*Fortunes of War #3: plan to release in June
*Fortunes of War #4: plan to release in July
*Fortunes of War #5: plan to release in August
*Tales of the Bounty Hunter: In production, no date yet
*Sun Tsu's Art of War: in editing, no pdf date yet
*Splinter of Hope: In production, no date yet
*Rock and a Hard Place: In production, no date yet
*Close Quarters: In production, no date yet
*Eclipse: In production, no date yet
*Graphic Novel: Getting authors on board
*Cookbook: In production, no date yet
*Wars of Reaving #1: In production, no date yet
*Wars of Reaving #2: In production, no date yet
*Wars of Reaving #3: In production, no date yet
Have questions about BattleTech Mercenaries or BattleTech Essentials? We'll be hosting an AMA on Wednesday, May 10th at 9pm EDT with Randall, Ray, and Aaron on https://www.youtube.com/@catalystgamelabs9349 See you there!
The pledge manager is ALMOST ready! We have a team reviewing each and every item to make sure we are ready with all the items we (and you!) want in the pledge manager. Unless something big comes up, we expect it to launch NEXT WEEK!
For digital rewards:
We’ve replaced the large desktop wallpaper image in the google folder (located in the previous update).
Fortunes of War #1 had just the epub file – now it has the mobi file too!
BattleTech Essentials
Many of you saw the social media announcement about the BattleTech Essentials box set coming to Target. We are so excited for this partnership as it targets (heh) an entirely new generation of potential BattleTech players. This is essentially (heh again) a starter set that will be placed in front of an audience that often wouldn’t otherwise run into BattleTech.
While we don’t have any information at this time about how long this set will be exclusive to Target stores, we do hear the concerns of international customers. To answer questions and talk about the future of BattleTech, we’ll be hosting an AMA live at 9pm EDT Wednesday, May 10th (Thursday, 1am GMT) on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@catalystgamelabs9349.
If you can’t make it, please feel free to drop your questions here, and we’ll do our best to answer as many as possible.
We are still hard at work typing away at the pledge manager to make sure it’s ready when we launch. There’s still a lot to do, so expect about 1-2 weeks more before we’re ready to go live.
A couple of things:
Those who missed the Kickstarter will get a chance to pre-order in the pledge manager. When it goes live, you’ll see a “Pre-Order” button on the top of the Kickstarter page. Pre-Order purchases do not count toward stretch goals, but they DO qualify for getting stretch goals based on pledge levels, as they do during the Kickstarter campaign.
Big Kappas:
This week Rem will be reaching out to you via KS message for your Discord ID to add you to a channel in the CGL server. This gives us the ability to announce news directly to the Kappas, and begin to plan KerenskyKons, or talk about product shipments. Please check your KS messages!
Digital Rewards:
The Digital Rewards that are for all backers will be in a link in the next update which gives Backers access, but not public access. Not all digital rewards are ready for release, yet, so here is the list of what is available at this time. Future Backer Updates will announce if anything has been added.
Digital Rewards for all Backers:
*Digital short-story: “A Night at the Lake” by Michael A. Stackpole (in the google link)
*Digital novel: “Double Blind” by Loren Coleman (in the google link)
*Digital novella: “Not the Way the Smart Money Bets (Kell Hounds Ascendant #1)” (in the google link)
*Digital novella: “Fortunes of War #1” (in the google link)
*Digital novel: “No Greater Honor” edited by John Helfers and Philip A. Lee (in the google link)
*Audiobook novella: “A Splinter of Hope” by Philip A. Lee (alternatively available as a digital novella – See FAQ) Not released in the google drive yet. *Audiobook novel: “A Rock and a Hard Place, a Gray Death Legion Novel” by William H. Keith. (alternatively available as a digital novel – See FAQ) Not released in the google drive yet. *Audiobook Novel: “Close Quarters” by Victor Milan (alternatively available as a digital novel) Not released in the google drive yet. *Digital copy of the “Cracked Canopy Cookbook: Recipes from the Inner Sphere” by Jennifer Bixby (in production.)
*Audiobook novella: “Eclipse” by Jason Schmetzger Not released in the google drive yet.
Digital Rewards that are for certain levels and above are still being coordinated. We’ll have more news in the next several updates. Same with audiobooks as we decide on the best way to deliver those to you.
That’s all for now! Thank you all for your support.
See the Kickstarter for UPDATE #45 for access to the digital rewards for backers.
Most of us are home and recovered from the 24 hour livestreams, and we're hard at work getting the pledge manager ready to launch.
Once again - we are so grateful to each and every one of you for your support of this project, and love of this game!
There are over 400 items, bundles, and pledges to add and configure to the pledge manager JUST from this campaign. We are compiling a list of everything we want to add from the online store and the previous Kickstarter as well. For every item, we need to prepare an image, description, and price, and enter them into Backer Kit. We expect that to take 2 to 3 weeks before it's ready to launch.
You can expect a minimum of one update a week between now and fulfillment - more when we have news to share. We'll also continue the video updates with Talon, and an occasional AMA to get some face time with you all and answer your questions about the project.
Next week, we'll have some more information for our Big Kappas and get you information for your point of contact.
Thank you all again, and we'll see you at the next update!
*The Faction Officer Swag package comes with a lapel pin, patch, and challenge coin. The Faction Officer Swag+Dice comes with a pair of laser dice, lapel pin, patch, and challenge coin.
*The Liquid Core Dice are only available in the BattleTech Chevron.
COMPANY STORE/RETAILER CLARIFICATIONS
There have been questions from retailers regarding accessibility to all the add-ons for the BattleTech: Mercenaries campaign. A few things may change as we begin building out the Pledge Manager, but overall here is what we can say with fairly strong confidence:
Pledge Level: You do not have to pledge for multiple “Company Store” reward levels to get more Mercenaries box set or other basic rewards. You will have access to the 6-box cases in the Pledge Manager. (The Pledge Level already includes the appropriate discount.) Currently, there is no “Company Store” bundle.
SWAG: A Company Store reward allows for a choice of six Officer Swag items, which should include faction dice, patches, lapel pins, and challenge coins. Currently, after these choices, you can purchase entire collectors sets of each of these items at your discretion at a standard 50% discount. There might not be additional chances to customize with individual SWAG choices due to restrictions in our fulfillment service.
ForcePacks: All ForcePacks from the Mercenaries and Clan Invasion campaign will be available at the standard 50% discount.
Add-ons: With a few exceptions, retailer backers should be able to get all Add-ons made available through the campaign. Exceptions will be noted after we have prepped the entire Pledge Manager.
4" Timber Wolf: These will also be made available at regular retailer discount.
Tax Free: If you have a valid reseller’s certificate, we should be able to supply you with everything free from domestic taxes. We have no idea how foreign taxes (VAT) works for retailer purchases. We are looking into this. (We assume you do not pay VAT as you are collecting VAT form your customers.)
Free Shipping: Domestic shipping is often free for retailers. If the Pledge Manager technology does not allow for this, we will create an ‘offset’ product or bundle to make up for any shipping costs.
Fulfillment: Retailer backers should get their shipment toward the end of the fulfillment cycle, after the bulk of our fan backers.
Street Dates: Retailer backers should get all materials at least 30 days ahead of any release of product to the hobby trade. Since ForcePacks will be released at a rate of only 2-4 per month (at best) retailer backers should have some ForcePacks at least 90-120 days ahead of a full hobby release.
With all of the Actual Play videos for Aces from the last few days, people have been asking where they can find those files. Here is a quick link to said files.
Additionally, in part of last night’s livestream, the community requested access to the pdf rulebook for the A Game of Armored Combat.here is that fil:
Finally, we are incredibly excited to share a preview of our upcoming Universe Book. As you will see from some marks in the pdf, this is a prefinal version. But it is close enough that we felt we just had to show you how glorious this book will be for brand new fans or long-time fans.
Thank you everyone! With your help, and the help of some really shiny dice, we made it to $6.5 million with a little over 24 hours to go!
That means you all get the free audio book: Close Quarters by Victor Milan! It also means you've unlocked the Blue Star Irregulars and Tamar Pact swag items as choices for pledge levels and add-ons!
We've also reached the TOP 25 FUNDED KICKSTARTERS OF ALL TIME!!!!! Backers, MechWarriors, new and old fans alike - THANK YOU! What an achievement! Who would have thought that BattleTech would make it to this???
We love this game! We love this community! We love how all of YOU made this possible!
We’ve some fantastic news to share today as we near the final 24 hours of this record-breaking campaign. We are incredibly excited to announce we have just finalized a deal for making high-quality dice for BattleTech.
We have chosen to work with Fanroll (by Metallic Dice Games), a domestic manufacturer with nearly a decade of experience making a wide range of high quality dice. In this update, you can see some renders Fanroll has provided of the two different types of dice that will be available: Laser and Liquid Core.
As a celebration of this stunning campaign, every Veteran level backer and above will receive one free pair of BattleTech Chevron Laser dice (as depicted in the render). This free pair of dice are not part of any pledge or add on; simply one pair of these dice will be sent to every Veteran level backer and above.
In the Clan Invasion Kickstarter from 2019, we included faction dice. Despite our best efforts, those dice failed to match the high quality of the rest of the components for that campaign. These free Chevron Laser dice make good on our commitment to those backers from that campaign; these precision-edged, laser foil-effect dice, manufactured with cutting-edge techniques, are simply superior to the Clan Invasion offering.
Furthermore, right now you can go to the Add Ons, and you will find a pair of Laser faction dice that will cover every single faction from the Clan Invasion as well as every single faction ultimately unlocked as part of this campaign. (Yes, nearly 60 of them!) You will choose the specific faction in the Pledge Manager. There will also be one BattleTech chevron Laser dice, as noted above, as well as one BattleTech chevron deluxe Liquid Core dice.
We have also added various bundles. The first is the Faction Officer Swag: one each of the lapel pin, patch and challenge coin for a given faction. The next is Faction Officer Swag + Dice: one each of the lapel pin, patch, challenge coin and a pair of dice for a given faction. And of course, Collectors Set Bundles. There are four Mercenaries Collector Bundles that allow you to grab every single unlocked faction item; all of the lapel pins or all of the patches, and so on. And finally, there are four Total Collector Bundles that net you every single faction item from both the Clan Invasion and Mercenaries. (The final cost of these might be adjusted up slightly, as there are still eight factions that could be unlocked.)
Also, you will find new Dice Trays by Fanroll, featuring the following factions: Houses Kurita, Davion, Liao, Marik and Steiner; Clans Wolf, Ghost Bear, Jade Falcon, Smoke Jaguar and Sea Fox; mercenaries Wolf’s Dragoon’s, Kell Hounds, Eridani Light Horse, Northwind Highlanders, Gray Death Legion, and Hansen’s Roughriders; as well as the BattleTech chevron. You will choose the specific faction in the Pledge Manager.
As a final note, anyone that purchased multiple dice from the previous Kickstarter will take a survey for how they wish to receive their credits as part of the upcoming Pledge Manager.
Thank you again for this amazing campaign and pushing BattleTech to all new heights.
We're in the final stretch! Starting to see increases in backer count and pledge amount each day!
If you missed day one of the livestream of Ash vs. Randall - Ash won 2! Randall clearly needs to step it up. The third game saw big casualties on both sides, that will carry into this morning's 4th game. Tune in at www.twitch.tv/sixsidesofgaming now until we are done playing the final 3 scenarios today!
We'll get the final 24 hours livestream schedule out later today, so keep watching here and on socials.
We have a couple more FAQs for you too:
The Add-On list and the Backer Update 17 list of books that can be upgraded to leather or hardcover differ. The Update is correct. Gray Death Legion trilogy (Decision at Thunder Rift, Mercenary's Star, Price of Glory), Warrior trilogy (En Garde, Riposte, Coupe), Blood of Kerensky trilogy (Lethal Heritage, Blood Legacy, Lost Destiny), Legends of the Jade Phoenix trilogy (Way of the Clans, Bloodname, Falcon Guard), as well as, Main Event, Close Quarters, Double Blind.
Are any of the posted LosTech dice pucks new releases? No. The most recent dice pucks were released during GenCon last year, and some haven't made it to the website yet.
Excited to see what today brings to the Kickstarter!
Well, everyone - we are in the final four days! We want to create some more excitement for the end of the campaign - so here's the news:
Randall, Talon, Rem, and Michael are all headed to Toronto today for the final 3 days of livestreams and events. You know about the Ash vs. Randall event for day 3 and 2, and the 24 hour livestream for the last, well, 24 hours. We'll be releasing the calendar of events shortly so you don't miss a moment!
Less than $150K to $6M when we promised to reveal the $8M stretch goal, so stay tuned.
-----------JUST KIDDING!-------------
Ya know what? We're too excited and don't want to wait another minute!
We've finalized the $8M stretch goal and we want to tell you about it NOW! There are still 4 days left - let's go for it!
We have a mission, MechWarriors! Let's execute it together!
BattleTech Paint Starter (The Army Paint)
CountersPack: Alpha Strike
CountersPack: BattleForce
Pledge Bundle Add-Ons for Veteran, Company, Battalion and Regiment
(These pledge bundles include all pledge rewards and stretch goals. They do not include digital rewards or special per-backer gifts like the 48 hour Visigoth Salvage Box or the 4" Timber Wolf. It does not combine with a Kerensky double-reward offer).
Just a note - at this time, we plan to release the Faction and Collectors Swag Bundles at the time of the Pledge Manager.
Even MORE exciting - we have some videos from the manufacturer! Check out the PVC Injection video and the assembly vid they've posted!
BattleTech Mercenaries is now the 39th most funded Kickstarter of all time, across all categories! You all clearly love this game, and so do we!
19,000 backers! Just – wow! How much this community has grown! As a reminder, Clan Invasion reached
11,277 backers by the end of the campaign, so this growth means so much!
$5.5 million! That means several things:
· All backers will receive a free audiobook full-length novel: A Rock and a Hard Place, a Gray Death Legion novel by William H. Keith
· The Lindon’s Battalion and Oberon Confederation swag are unlocked as pledge level choices and add-ons!
· We are only $500,000 away from the announcement of the $8 million dollar stretch goal!
News:
To clarify some questions, in Update 9 we mentioned that Veterans will receive a free Salvage Box as part of their stretch goals at $5M. When we released the graphic for $5M, we forgot to include it. To confirm, Veterans WILL receive a free Salvage Box. We’ll get the reward and stretch goal graphic updated shortly.
Based upon the wonderful suggestions from backers to unlock more faction swag alongside the fiction, we've dug into the lore. Finding some great old and new factions, along with much-requested mercenary outfits. Thanks for the idea! Many of you have already noticed that we stealthily updated the graphics already for $5.5M and $6.5M to include these options.
We’ve also revealed the $7.5M stretch goal! Check out our graphic for that one too! Now, who’s ready to hit the $6M mark and see that $8M stretch goal?
We’ve already announced that on April 17th and 18th, Randall and Ash from Guerilla Miniatures Games will be facing off for two days of BattleTech! There will be ways for the audience to “help” your favorite side gain the upper hand, so don’t miss it! Both days, games will start at 10am EDT and run until the day’s games are done. You’ll find us on www.twitch.tv/sixsidesofgaming.
Finally, we are planning for a POWERFUL final 24 hours of the campaign. Starting on April 19th at 10pm EDT, we’ll be livestreaming for 24 hours straight. AMAs, interviews with gaming luminaries, writers, freelancers, artists, developers, world builders…you name it! The final hour, we’ll assemble the Catalyst Team on stream to ring in the end of the campaign together with you.
We can’t wait for all the fun, the laughs, the sleepless nights and ending the campaign with the people that made it all happen. Our backers.
We’ve seen some confusion regarding maps over-all, so we thought we’d spend an update clarifying matters.
WHAT IS A “MAP”?
To help define “map” for everyone, when we use that term, we are specifically referring to a single side of a physical paper mapsheet measuring 17” x 22”.
MAPPACKS
While MapPacks are always paper, they can be slightly different in their content, which changes the price. Hence you have MapPack: Alien Worlds for $25, MapPack: Grasslands and MapPack: Deserts for $30, and MapPack: Battle of Tukayyid for $35.
MapPack: City ($35)
Like MapPack: Grasslands and MapPack: Deserts, MapPack: City contains 6 double-sided, folded 17” x 22” sheets of paper. And each side then is a map, giving us 12 total mapsheets to play on. The names of those maps are as follows:
Corporate Campus
HPG Offices
HPG Heliport
Central Park
Family Quarters
HPG Engineering
Roundabout
Plaza
Shopping District
Business District
Observatory Hill
Park District
The reason this set is $35, is that like MapPack: Battle of Tukayyid, it includes a diecut sheet of extra counters (such as rubble hexes for tracking destroyed buildings).
MapPack: Savannahs $30)
This MapPack also has 6 double-sided, folded 17” x 22” sheets of paper, giving us 12 total mapsheets to play on. The names of those maps are as follows:
Large Lakes #1
Large Lakes #2
Desert Sinkhole #1
Desert Sinkhole #2
River Delta/Drainage Basin #1
River Delta/Drainage Basin #2
BattleTech
Box Canyon
City Ruins
CityTech
Mountain Lake
Wide River
For long-time players they’ll note that these maps are pulled from various old mapsets. However, the art has been reimagined to our latest quality. Additionally, as needed, maps have been modified to make them fully playable. For example, the previous River Delta maps were nearly unplayable. We’ve taken our modern experience of map designs–such as using Depth 0 Water hexes–to turn those maps into wonderfully looking, but also wonderfully playable, with lots of fun new strategies.
As this MapPack does not contain a dicecut sheet of counters, it is the more standard $30 price.
WHAT IS A “BATTLEMAP”?
A BattleMat refers to a double-sided, high-quality neoprene play mat. They measure 34” x 22”. In other words, they are “two paper mapsheets wide”.
BattleMat: City & BattleMat: Savannahs ($40 each)
Currently there are six BattleMats as part of the campaign. Their size represents four total mapsheets to play on: two on one side and two on the other.
BattleMat Bundles ($100)
Three BattleMats would equal $120. The bundles, then, give you a $20 discount.
We hope this walk through of all the maps currently available answers any final questions.
Thank you to everyone who rang in the $5 million milestone with us last night on livestream, and thank you ALL for helping us get there! We are in awe of this campaign. Because of you, BattleTech: Mercenaries is in the top 50 Kickstarter campaigns of all time, across all categories (46 as of this post)! Just – wow. Thank you.
A couple of updates for you, and then a whole list of FAQs.
We’ve unlocked the $5M goal, which means Company backers receive 1 free ForcePack and Battalion backers and up get 2 free ForcePack choices.
We have updated the reward tier graphics to include all stretch goals and retail values through the $5 million goal.
The $2M graphic has been expanded to include more information about the “BattleTech: Universe” book.
Add-On Info
We have increased the maximum ForcePack and Salvage Box Add-On quantity to 99. It should no longer block you from ordering more than 10.
Plushies are now available as Add-Ons!
Mercenaries Retaliation is now available as an Add-On!
Alpha Strike Retaliation is now available as an Add-On!
Salvage Boxes with Legendary Mechs are now available as Add-Ons
Salvage Boxes with Vehicles are now available as Add-Ons.
FAQs
1. Will there be an additional ForcePack bundle added as an Add-on or as a reward tier?
We are looking into the possibility.
2. Will plushies be available as Add-Ons?
Yes! There is an Add-On option to put $30 toward your choice of plushie that you can choose in the pledge manager. $30 is the minimum cost of a plushie, but may be more depending on which one you select.
3. (UPDATE) Will retaliation boxes be available as Add-Ons?
Yes! And they are live Add-ons on Kickstarter now.
4. Will there be swag bundle Add-Ons?
Yes. You will be able to choose from collector sets of all patches, all pins, or all coins as well as faction packs, which would allow you to grab the patch, pin, and coin set for the faction of your choice.
5. Will more Big Kappa spots be added?
Yes, we will add 10 more shortly.
6. What is the cost of the poster bundle?
Poster bundles will be available as Add-Ons in the pledge manager for $10 for all three supersized posters.
7. Can we order posters rolled instead of folded?
Unfortunately not. Poster tubes can not be packed easily within packages, which means they have to ship separately, which means a large increase in shipping costs. Additionally, the way they are handled in post means they can often get easily damaged and we have no control over these types of shipping issues.
8. How does VAT work with this project?
To our knowledge, VAT applies to what you pay for an item, so theoretically you wouldn’t be required to pay for freebies. BUT we are not experts and have no control over what each country’s government qualifies or doesn’t. Please refer to your local government tax websites for information.
9. Can I back multiple reward tiers?
Yes. While Kickstarter does not allow you to select additional reward tiers, there will be options for additional reward bundles in the pledge manager. (Optional: add additional funds to the Kickstarter now to help achieve new stretch goals, and then spend those additional funds on the reward bundles/add-ons of your choice in the pledge manager)
10. If I back for multiple reward tiers, do I get the stretch goals for each reward?
We are reviewing our numbers to ensure this is doable – we’ll get a definite answer for you soon.
11. Will the double-sized Mercenary Themed Shrapnel have a print copy, and will it be available for this KS as an option?
The Mercenary issue WILL have a print copy available, but all the stories still need written, so it won’t be ready to fulfill physically be the time we start shipping. Therefore a physical version will not be available as part this Kickstarter.
12. Currently, only the 1st and 2ndgraphic novel pdfs are part of the pledge/reward levels. Will volume 3 and 4 be added as future stretch goal rewards?
It’s possible, but we will need to review timelines. Producing graphic novels will be a new venture for us, so we don’t want to overcommit to an unreasonable timeline. Our goal is to fulfill this Kickstarter quickly for everyone, so we want to consider carefully.
13. When do the 2 years of product for Big Kappa begin?
It begins at the close of this Kickstarter campaign.
14. Is it possible to swap swag items in the pledge manager?
Very likely. We are working on making all swag options interchangeable as long as the pledge manager allows us that customization.
15. If you increase your pledge level in the pledge manager, do you still get access to all unlocked stretch goals for that new pledge level?
Yes. You can change your pledge level until the pledge manager is locked for fulfillment.
16. Will the Visigoth Salvage Box be available as an add-on?
Yes.
17. What are all the items and prices of add-ons for Clan Invasion items and retail store items?
All of these will be available in the pledge manager. This is a LOT of items that aren’t relevant to the live Kickstarter. While we are committed to making as many things available to backers as possible, you’ll have to wait for the pledge manager to see the full details.
18. What vehicles will be possible to get in the Salvage Box: Vehicles?
ALL of them will be available, and each box will contain two random vehicles, with the exception of the Long Tom. If you get a Long Tom, you will get both models that make up this miniature.
EDIT: 4/6/23: ADEPTICON INTERVIEW WITH RAY ARRASTIA
Hey all! Just decided as a team to jump on stream to celebrate the halfway point (and maybe $5M???), answer questions, and talk about the whole experience!
Tune in on the page, right here, or chat with us on YouTube!
A summary of the livestream taken from the Kickstarter comments
- the logistics for Retaliation boxes have been sorted out and they are now available on the add-ons tab.
- An option to reserve plushies has been added to the add-ons tab.
- The 4" Timber Wolf and Early Bird Visigoth are both 1 per backer.
- Additional 4" Timber Wolves might be available as an add-on but they currently do not have the numbers ready to be completely certain about the specifics.
- Because of how the pledge manager works they cannot confirm what you get in a second "pledge" with the same account at this time as you technically cannot pledge twice on the same account, "pledge levels" as add-ons are manually created bundles and stretch goals might not be included (depends on some behind the scenes stuff)
- there will be another live stream on Saturday
- The cookbook is coming regardless of hitting $7 million, it would just take longer if we don't reach the stretch goal.
- Audio Books will start to be released in more places once some royalty paperwork has been figured out.
EDIT: 4/4/23: ADEPTICON INTERVIEW WITH RANDALL BILLS
Excited to share this special release with you! Catalyst contracted Rem Alternis Productions to create a Crescent Hawks training video, educating new recruits about the types of 'Mechs & Mercs they may face in the field.
This video covers notable events, persons, and dates of the Kell Hounds mercenary unit.
We hope you all enjoy it! Give us a like, a subscribe, and tell us what you think, especially if you'd like to see more content like this in the future!
Less than $160,000 to $5 Million! Wow, everyone!!! Thank you all so much for being part of such a massive event! Keep an eye out - one of our next updates will be a special content release for you!
Here are some more questions and answers for y'all!
1.) Will there be an unboxing video?
Not at this time. No copies have been printed yet. Rest assured when we get a copy, we'll produce an unboxing.
2.) What books are available to choose from for Paper Pusher?
Paper Pusher will be able to choose from the following books (in both Premium Hardback and Collector Leatherbound editions): Gray Death Legion trilogy (Decision at Thunder Rift, Mercenary's Star, Price of Glory), Warrior trilogy (En Garde, Riposte, Coupe), Blood of Kerensky trilogy (Lethal Heritage, Blood Legacy, Lost Destiny), Legends of the Jade Phoenix trilogy (Way of the Clans, Bloodname, Falcon Guard), as well as, Main Event, Close Quarters, Double Blind.
3.) Will posters be folded or rolled? Will we be able to get them as an add-on?
Posters will be folded for ease of shipping. The poster bundle of all 3 will be available as an add-on.
4.) Will there be swag bundles as add-ons?
Yes. You will be able to choose between all challenge coins, all pins, or all patches. You'll also be able to choose a complete clan set.
5.) Which items will be available in pledge manager from Clan Invasion?
That would be way too many items to list. The short answer: most of the items.
6.) Which items will be available in pledge manager from the online store?
That would be way too many items to list. The short answer: most of the items.
7.) Tell us more about the BattleTech Universe book!
This is a comprehensive BattleTech lore book. Timelines, notable people, factions, in-world events, etc. We'll be releasing the back cover copy soon.
* Premium Mech Sheets
* Legends II book
* Legends II book Limited Edition
* Legendary MechWarriors I
* Legendary MechWarriors II
* Legendary MechWarriors III
We also updated the Mercenary Box Set graphic with what minis come in the box. AND the FAQ about what could possibly come in a Mercenary SalvageBox has been updated with the complete list of possible Mechs.
And FINALLY, my last update for today is about STRETCH GOALS! Here's what's coming:
The most pertinent information from the interview for the Kickstarter:
Will the products from the new Kickstarter start releasing this year or next year? Oh, it'll definitely be next year. We will fulfill to our backers end of this year/beginning of next year, probably. We predicted June 2024, but things are going so smoothly at the moment that it looks like we'll fulfill very early. Backers first, then the hobby trade will be somewhere within three months after all backers are fulfilled.
Big shoutout to James B. Hill Jr. for collecting these and organizing them. Here are the Q&As I have so far from James and from the Messages:
1: What miniatures are included in the Mercenary box?
Chameleon, Starslayer, Caesar, Devastator, Flea, Firefly, Quickdraw, Ostsol, Galleon Light Tank (x2), Maxim Hover Transport (x2)
2: Will there be a graphic for the Battlefield Support: Rifle And Command ForcePack?
It won't have a graphic because it's not completely designed yet. (About 70% there)
3: Will the Premium Mech sheets be available as Add-Ons?
Yes. Will be adding soon!
4: Will the double sized, Mercenary Themed Shrapnel have a print copy, and be available as an Upgrade or Addon?
Still getting answers - stay tuned.
5. Will Legends II have a premium edition like Legends I? Will it be possible to upgrade a given copy?
Working on it! Will be available in the add-ons and upgradable in the pledge manager.
6: Currently only the 1st and 2nd Graphic novels pdf are part of a pledge, what are the chances of volume 3 and 4 added? AND will they have a print copy available as an Add On?
For the first part of the question - still getting answers. For the second part of the question - no. Print copies will not be ready until after the Kickstarter is fulfilled.
7. Will we get a Reinforcements 2 Boxset, like the Clan Invasion KS had?
No plans for this at this time.
8. Will items from AdeptiCon be available as add-ons?
Mostly. We are still looking into the feasibility of the premium mechs and Destiny Scale Marauders, but everything else should be available.
9. What is available in the Mercenary Salvage Boxes?
The Mercenaries box and 5 Inner Sphere ForcePacks include 28 Inner Sphere 'Mechs, and the 2 Clan ForcePacks include 10 Clan 'Mechs, for a total of 38 'Mechs. The Mercenaries SalvageBox will include 1 random 'Mech from those 38 'Mechs. (This will not include any of the vehicles, or the 'Mechs from the Legendary Packs.)
10. Do free Visigoths apply per backer or per Pledge? For example, if I pledge 1 Regiment now and 1 Batallion in PM, do I get 1 or 2 Visigoth?
Still getting answers.
11. Which Merc Lance/Star Boxes will be available in the PM for Addon?
All Clan Invation Standard Forcepacks will be available. We are still looking at the Legendary Pack I. Mercenary ForcePacks are still TBD as we figure out what we are beholden to for exclusivity contracts. If it's not exclusive, it will be available. These will definitely be available: Wolf's Dragoons, Snord's Irregulars, along with the UrbanMech Lance and Proliferation packs.
12. When do the 2 Years of Product for a Big Kappa Start? Is this KS Included? Is Adepticon included?
Still getting answers.
13. Can we have a FAQ telling people the various ways to find their Pledge Number, and what was the last Pledge Number qualified for Early Bird?
You can find your backer number in your backer confirmation email, or by clicking on View Pledge, but it doesn't show a time stamp. We won't know until we get the full backer report. If you pledged before 10am CST on Saturday, you get the Visigoth.
14. Do we have graphics of any of the new Maps / Battle Mats?
Working on it.
Will there be more details/descriptions of each Add-On?
Yes. Stay tuned.
15. What is the BattleTech Universe book?
This is a book with a fancy box (we're going to dig in to what the distributor can pull off!). It will have about 6 sections of multiple acetate sheets featuring various units. There will be multiple gatefolds of high quality artwork, envelopes with additional specialized content (still under development), and more!
16. What is the minimum pledge to ensure I get access to the pledge manager?
$1. And if you miss the campaign, the Kickstarter page will have a "Pre-Order Now" button that will allow you to join the pledge manager until fulfillment is ready.
17. Are more stretch goals coming?
Yes! You'll see an update with more soon!
18. If I have a refund credit from Clan Invasion, can I use it on this Kickstarter in the pledge manager?
To show our gratitude and love for you all, we decided to add alittle extra something for you for surpassing $4.5 million!
You'll be receiving the audio files for "A Splinter of Hope" audiobook novella. The fiction and audio line is near and dear to our hearts, and we are thrilled to share this with you.
Thank you all so very much for making this Kickstarter such a success.
This community still astonishes me every step of the way.
As promised, here are the details for the $4 Million stretch goal:
We are about to post the updated reward graphics that include all stretch goals and savings.
$5 million is coming with more plastic, as promised, and we’re still working out the final details on specifics. Stay tuned for news on that.
We are also updating the Swag and ForcePack listings so you know all your options and what is included. More graphics of the minis themselves will be coming (likely after the convention), but in the meantime there is a TON of content still over the next two days on twitch with Six Sides of Gaming. Here is the link and the schedule for Saturday.
Ava, Thor and Chris did an amazing job today and are taking a well-deserved rest. I'm here with one final update for the evening (Chicago's evening, anyway).
I'm Rem Alternis and I'm the new Community and Marketing Director for Catalyst. I was at AdeptiCon today getting Ava, Thor and Chris answers to all of your questions, and discussing the next stretch goals with the team, and we have news!
First, I've got to say, you blew us all away! We planned for up to $2 million in stretch goals and thought we'd have a day or two to iron out the rest of the details. WRONG. Y'all DEMANDED more BattleTech, and we're thrilled! THANK YOU.
So I'm here to fill you in on the next couple of stretch goals, and we've got some bigger plans I'll be releasing within the next few days.
$4 Million: a new Battlefield Support Forcepack will be unlocked for Add-Ons AND all backers will receive the "Tales of the Bounty Hunter" digital shortstory anthology.
$5 Million: Veteran level backers and above get a free Salvage Box. Battalion level backers and above get a free salvage box and a free ForcePack. ALL backers will receive free audiobook files of a novella (to be decided soon).
These are a baseline - we might add more to these or our higher levels over the next few days (we have some calls to make to vendors to see if they can bring these ideas to life, and we have to see what Anthony can actually sculpt for us in a reasonable amount of time to fulfill).
Additionally, we are reviewing our Big Kappa quantities over the next few days. We hear you - we know you want more! But we need to figure out logistically how many we are able to accommodate without the quality of the KerenskyKon experience declining.
Thank you again for an AMAZING day one. I'll be here with you all day tomorrow to answer questions. I'm even trying to get another video update from Talon so you can get a peek at AdeptiCon.
Streaming with Six Sides of Gaming also continues tomorrow. Here's the schedule and you can tune in again at https://www.twitch.tv/sixsidesofgaming. Have a great night everyone!
PLAYING CATCH-UP UPDATE #9
Hey all!
Rem again. I'm taking today off from AdeptiCon and GaryCon to dive into comments, messages, etc. AND to address some of your requests.
I'm working with our graphic designer to update the Rewards levels to include ALL stretch goals that each reward is currently getting (including 4 million, as I'm hoping to have the graphics as we cross that line). We will also be calculating the total retail range for each reward and stretch goals so you can directly see your savings. This will be within a range since several items vary - like ForcePacks, for instance, which can be between $30 and $40 depending on which you choose on the Pledge Manager.
We are also getting graphics for the newer stretch goals for you so you can see what you are getting.
One of our initial goals of the campaign was to have all pre-production, sculpts, art, etc. DONE so that we could fulfill quickly for you. All ForcePacks up to the $3 million stretch goal mark are already completely ready to produce.
However, one of the main things we've gleaned from the feedback you've given is MOAR MINIS! Got it, loud and clear.
So here's our new plan. Every $2 million starting at $4 million we are going to unlock a new ForcePack for add-on. We have 2 ForcePacks that are 70% designed, but each one will extend the time of fulfillment to put the work in. All said and done, we're talking 2-3 more months for up to $8 million on the Kickstarter. ($8 million is going to be REALLY special, but we're ironing out some final details before I can announce what is in each of the ForcePacks).
Additionally, every $2 million starting at $3 million means more plastic for you. More Salvage Boxes and ForcePacks.
AND, like I said in the last update, we are working with some vendors and crunching some numbers to see what else we can add to sweeten the pot as we continue to grow.
Remember, we are only in day two and most of our team is at the convention. Let's celebrate this first weekend together, and then make some more decisions as we go.
Today, my focus is on updating the Kickstarter page for clarity and responding to this passionate community.
Ava, Thor, and Chris are here supporting me too, but taking some time to rest for themselves after the excitement of yesterday.
Thank you all for the feedback and support.
EDIT: 3/23/23: From Facebook
Spoiler:
Early bird reward? Yes please!
Back within the first 48 hours for your FREE Visigoth Aerospace Fighter!
You know your mission:
EDIT: 3/22/23: From Facebook
Spoiler:
Choose wisely, Mechwarrior.
We've been giving you some sneak peeks at the Battletech: Mercenaries Kickstarter campaign reward tiers. Whether you are a new recruit, a veteran, or you control your own regiment, there is something for everyone.
Check it out, and don't forget to follow the pre-launch page so you are in the front lines of this project!
Finally, we have the Big Kappa. Check out the LONG list of rewards for our biggest backers!
EDIT: 3/22/23: From Facebook
Spoiler:
Choose wisely, Mechwarrior.
We're giving you some sneak peeks at the Battletech: Mercenaries Kickstarter campaign reward tiers. Whether you are a new recruit, a veteran, or you control your own regiment, there is something for everyone.
Check it out, and don't forget to follow the pre-launch page so you are in the front lines of this project!
Next up, we have something for the Regiments, including the Mercenaries Box, 12 ForcePacks of your choice, 4 Challenge Coin of your choice, 2 swag items of your choice, the "Double Blind" digital novella, and a 4" Timber Wolf!
EDIT: 3/22/23: From Facebook
Spoiler:
Choose wisely, Mechwarrior.
Over the next few days, we'll be giving you some sneak peeks at the Battletech: Mercenaries Kickstarter campaign reward tiers. Whether you are a new recruit, a veteran, or you control your own regiment, there is something for everyone.
Check it out, and don't forget to follow the pre-launch page so you are in the front lines of this project!
Next up, we have something for the Battalions, including the Mercenaries Box, 6 ForcePacks of your choice, Challenge Coin of your choice, 1 swag item of your choice, the "Double Blind" digital novella, and a 4" Timber Wolf!
BattleTech: Mercenaries Launches in 24 Hours! Plus, Final Preview Designs
Launching at Adepticon near Chicago, Ill., there is a ton of news surrounding this project. Back the Kickstarter starting Thursday, March 23 at 10 a.m. CDT at http://bit.ly/3FCjPrO.
At funding:
All backers at Recruit level and above will receive a link to the Night at the Lake short story by Michael Stackpole, as well as an Eridani Light Horse wallpaper.
Early Bird Reward:
If you back within the first 48 hours, you’ll receive a Salvage Box: Visigoth aerospace fighter for free!
4” Timber Wolf Model:
All backers at the Veteran level and above will receive a FREE 4” Timber Wolf model.
ForcePacks & Swag
Choose which ForcePacks and swag you want through the pledge manager at the end of the campaign. More ForcePacks and swag option are unlocked through Stretch Goals.
Content
Don’t worry if you can’t make it to AdeptiCon or any of the launch parties, we’ve got you covered. Six Sides of Gaming will be livestreaming all day from Thursday through Sunday. Check out the schedule on our social media, and tune in at www.youtube.com/@SixSidesofGaming.
Mercenaries Kickstarter Preview 08
We continue our in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the development of the miniatures for this Kickstarter Preview 08 PDF is now available–for free as always–covering the Scorpion and the Warrior VTOL!
Over the next few days, we'll be giving you some sneak peeks at the Battletech: Mercenaries Kickstarter campaign reward tiers. Whether you are a new recruit, a veteran, or you control your own regiment, there is something for everyone.
Check it out, and don't forget to follow the pre-launch page so you are in the front lines of this project!
Next up, we have something for the Company Store, including 6 copies of the Mercenaries Box, 6 Challenge Coin of your choice, 1 swag item of your choice, the "Double Blind" digital novella, and THREE 4" Timber Wolf models!
EDIT: 3/21/23: From Facebook
Spoiler:
So what does 'swag' mean?
EDIT 3/21/23: From Facebook
Spoiler:
Choose wisely, Mechwarrior.
Over the next few days, we'll be giving you some sneak peeks at the Battletech: Mercenaries Kickstarter campaign reward tiers. Whether you are a new recruit, a veteran, or you control your own regiment, there is something for everyone.
Check it out, and don't forget to follow the pre-launch page so you are in the front lines of this project!
Next up, we have something for the Company, including the Mercenaries Box, 2 Forcepacks of your choice, Challenge Coin of your choice, 1 swag item of your choice, the ""Double Blind"" digital novella, and a 4"" Timber Wolf! (What's included in the swag? Guess you'll have to watch out for the next post!)
EDIT 3/21/23: From Facebook
Spoiler:
What was that about a 4" Timber Wolf statuette? Well, they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so check it out for yourself!
EDIT 3/21/23: From Facebook
Spoiler:
Choose wisely, Mechwarrior.
Over the next few days, we'll be giving you some sneak peeks at the Battletech: Mercenaries Kickstarter campaign reward tiers. Whether you are a new recruit, a veteran, or you control your own regiment, there is something for everyone.
Next up, we have something for our Veterans, including the Mercenaries Box, Challenge Coin, Double Blind digital novella, and a 4" Timber Wolf! (You read that right! Watch for tomorrow's post to learn all about this awesome part of the reward).
EDIT 3/20/23: From Facebook
Spoiler:
It's time to ramp up the excitement and start sharing some sneak peeks into the Kickstarter launching THIS THURSDAY at Adepticon!
Let's start dropping some rewards! The recruit is the smallest reward level for those dipping their toe into Battletech.
The next exciting chapter of BattleTech history will launch March 23, 2023 at AdeptiCon in Schaumburg, IL!
In 2018, Catalyst Game Labs built upon the thirty-five-year legacy of BattleTech with the release of the A Game of Armored Combat and Beginner Box sets. Those boxed sets included re-imagined miniatures which retained the core of each ’Mech’s identity, updated with modern aesthetics. Upon that foundation, our Clan Invasion Kickstarter unleashed nearly one hundred additional miniatures and finished among the top 100 Kickstarter campaigns ever. By the end of this year, more than four million high quality, affordable, ready-to-play plastic ’Mech miniatures will have hit gaming tables in just four years.
The next chapter of BattleTech’s titanic resurgence will be the Mercenaries Kickstarter campaign. The new campaign will introduce more than 50 new designs, including ’Mechs, armored and support vehicles, a VTOL, additional battle armor, and a new aerospace fighter–all to the same high-quality standards and ready to play right out of the box.
We are beyond excited to officially announce that Catalyst Game Labs and AdeptiCon have partnered to launch the BattleTech: Mercenaries Kickstarter on March 23rd, 2023, 10 a.m. Central/11 a.m. Eastern–the first day of AdeptiCon. We’ll be livestreaming throughout the weekend, including the campaign’s launch, Q&A sessions, developer interviews, actual-play events, and more!
“I’ve been to hundreds of conventions all over the world, and AdeptiCon is a wonderfully unique experience,” said Randall N. Bills, Managing Developer for Catalyst Game Labs. “I’m an equal-opportunity gamer and enjoy playing nearly any type of game. But walking past endless tables of amazing terrain and fantastically painted miniatures is an incredible experience unto itself. If you love miniatures games, AdeptiCon is the place to be. And we couldn’t imagine a more perfect venue for launching our Mercenaries Kickstarter.”
AdeptiCon is the world’s premiere wargaming convention, running more than 650 tournaments, event games, and hobby seminars–along with hosting over 115 exhibitors–each year. AdeptiCon 2022 also saw the return of the prestigious Golden Demon painting award to North America, which will return in 2023. Catalyst’s presence at the convention has continued to grow over the past few years, with Catalyst Demo Team events drawing experienced MechWarriors and new players alike to the battlefields of the Inner Sphere.
“For quite a few of us in this hobby, BattleTech provided our first foray into the world of table-top miniatures gaming,” reminisced Dave Pauwels, AdeptiCon Media Director. “The idea of replacing cardboard tokens with painted models of two-story high ’Mechs was a revolutionary one back in the day and a lot of us were hooked (one of the first miniatures I ever painted was a Demolisher). To see the game experience a sort of renaissance now, in 2022, is incredible and AdeptiCon loves being an event where you can find finely painted ’Mechs waging war over beautiful terrain tables. By partnering with Catalyst Games for the Kickstarter launch, AdeptiCon proudly plays its role in the continued success and popularity of one of our favorite games.”
Stay tuned to AdeptiCon.com and bg.battletech.com for future news surrounding all the games and events you can experience with BattleTech–and Leviathans (monstersinthesky.com)–at Adepticon in 2023!
About Catalyst Game Labs
Catalyst Game Labs is dedicated to producing high-quality games and fiction that mesh sophisticated game mechanics with dynamic universes—all presented in a form that allows beginning players and long-time veterans to easily jump into our games and fiction readers to enjoy our stories even if they don’t know the games. Find Catalyst Game Labs online at www.catalystgamelabs.com.
AdeptiCon
AdeptiCon has grown consistently over the past seventeen years, from the humble 110 person event in 2003 to over 5,700 attendees AdeptiCon hosted in 2022. Over those 20 years, AdeptiCon has been held at five different venues. We have expanded from a handful of events to well over 650 tournaments, event games, and hobby seminars covering all aspects of the miniature wargaming hobby. Despite the continued growth and necessary expansion, we have made every effort to keep consistent focus on one major priority: to present to our attendees the highest quality wargaming event possible. This will remain our priority for 2023 and beyond. Find Adepticon online at www.AdeptiCon.com https://www.adepticon.org.
Across the BattleTech universe, mercenary warriors are an undeniable presence on the battlefield. Whether they fight for pay, personal glory, the thrill of combat, or just the hope of keeping their unit together a little longer, mercenaries have played a decisive role in conflicts around the Inner Sphere for centuries.
Building on the wild success of the Clan Invasion Kickstarter, the new campaign from Catalyst Game Labs will bring more than 50 new plastic miniatures to your battlefields, including BattleMechs, and for the first time ever, plastic combat vehicles to augment your ’Mech forces. Among the miniatures in production are the Firestarter, Griffin IIC, Ostroc, and Kraken ’Mechs, as well as the Galleon Light Tank, SRM/LRM Carrier, and Demolisher Heavy Tank. A variety of mercenary-themed stretch goals will also be included.
BattleTech: Mercenaries Kickstarter Preview #1 PDF Only: Free!
In 2018, Catalyst Game Labs built upon the thirty-five-year legacy of BattleTech with the release of the A Game of Armored Combat and Beginner Box sets. Those boxed sets included re-imagined miniatures which retained the core of each ’Mech’s identity, updated with modern aesthetics. Upon that foundation, our Clan Invasion Kickstarter unleashed nearly one hundred additional miniatures and finished among the top 100 Kickstarter campaigns ever.
In the last four years, the avalanche of high-quality, affordable, ready-to-play plastics–coinciding with exciting original fiction and campaign play set in the new ilClan Era–has unleashed a massive wave of BattleTech interest, with more gamers of every age and type playing than ever before. By the end of this year, more than four million high-quality, affordable, ready-to-play plastic ’Mech miniatures will have hit gaming tables in just four years.
And soon we’ll be leaping back into that action: the Mercenaries Kickstarter launches on March 23, 2023, live from AdeptiCon!
We found during the Clan Invasion Kickstarter that the community loved behind-the-scenes looks at how we transitioned fan-favorite BattleMechs into our modern plastics. And we want to offer that again. This time, well before the Mercenaries Kickstarter launches, as we are so much further along on the project!
Today we’re launching the first of a series of preview PDFs that will roll out over the coming weeks. Each PDF walks you through that re-imagining process: basing each, of course, off of Duane Loose’s amazing original illustrations (as well as other artists). And then, starting with sketches (often several), through the renders, into the final plastic samples, and finally gloriously painted miniatures by the Camos Specs team.
We hope you love this journey as much as we have, and look forward to joining you on launch day!
I guess I'll have to try and recreate my mercenary armor company (4 Manticores, 2 Bulldogs, 2 Galleons, 2 SRM Launchers, 2 LRM Launchers) with the new plastic miniatures, or find suitable alternatives.
Alex Keller wrote:Just looked at the Kell Hounds Striker Lance box a little bit more closely... the Nightsky has been replaced with a Hatchetman. :-[ I hope that is not the case!!!
Not the case. I mistakenly used the year+ old render image without realizing it. Sent in an updated PDF but it probably hasn't filtered through the system yet (if it will). Contents have not changed.
You also missed that the Crusader should be the one with the removable jump plume
As the calendar turns to 2023, and we prepare another exciting year of BattleTech for customers and fans, we thought it appropriate to pause, and look back at the unbelievable success of the line over the past few years.
January 2023 will mark four years since the release of the A Game of Armored Combat and Beginner Box sets, the match which set off the current explosion of the game we all love so much. It’s the perfect time to journey back to see the arc that brought us here, reveal some data about that success, and talk a little about the shape of things to come.
In 2015, Catalyst embarked on a radical plan to redesign all of the unseen ’Mechs that, for legal reasons, had been removed from the universe. Our publication of those first redone images–in the Warhammer and Marauder–spurred other BattleTech licenses to embark on their own redesign efforts, resulting in all of the fan-loved classics appearing in Piranha Games’ amazing MechWarrior Online and MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, along with Harebrained Schemes’ award-winning BattleTech.
But we wanted to take it further. That meant all-new, ready-to-play, high-quality plastics–and completely redesigning the core products to match that quality, including a brand-new, never-before-seen item for BattleTech: the Beginner Box. These were a success from the moment they became available in January 2018; advance order sales were so high that we began second printings before the first even got to market. The seventh printing of A Game of Armored Combat and the eighth printing of the Beginner Box were being loaded on ships at the end of 2022, and once they go on sale there will have been 160,000 copies between these two boxes moved into the market in four years.
A full spread of the redesigned miniatures so far.
But this was just the foundation. While it was brilliant to see the core products in the market again, they offered redesigns of just nine ’Mechs. What we really wanted was a massive redesign of a huge swath of ’Mechs, with corresponding plastics. So, in July 2018, we ran what became one of the Top 100 Kickstarters of all time, unlocking nearly a hundred additional BattleMechs. It was amazing, stunning, and fantastic!
Yet, the question remained of whether those 15,000 backers–awesome, brilliant backers!–were the ceiling of this new resurgence? Or was this success only a taste of what was possible? Once the nearly two dozen different ForcePacks from the Kickstarter hit the market, once again, they exploded. More than 600,000 ForcePacks have been printed, with more than 500,000 selling within the last two years.
Coming out of the Kickstarter, the Clan Invasion boxed set has absolutely kept up with the first two boxes, despite releasing two years later: the fourth printing is being put on a ship at the end of 2022, and will bring the total number of copies of that box in the market to 55,000.
Four new mercenary ForcePacks–Eridani Light Horse, Kell Hounds, Northwind Highlanders, and Hansen’s Roughriders–will reach Catalyst’s warehouse in January, and four more ForcePacks will finish printing by March, including the Gray Death Legion and Snord’s Irregulars ForcePacks, along with an UrbanMech Lance–four different variants of that iconic ’Mech–and a surprise pack. All told, this will total another 160,000 ForcePacks.
Of course, we can’t discuss the success of those ForcePacks without talking about our new Alpha Strike box set, showcasing the BattleTech game designed for the modern tabletop player. The initial run of this box set was the largest amount we’ve ever printed before: 25,000 copies. We retained 5,000 of those for shipping to Australia and Europe (they’re on ships now). The rest, we brought to the U.S. We sold through two thirds of that printing in mere days, and worked with our fantastic printer to quickly get a second printing of 20,000 copies done ASAP; that will get loaded on a ship in mid-January.
Once all that material moves through game stores by mid-summer 2023, we’re looking at more than nine million plastic miniatures put into the market in four-and-a-half years!
Painted versions of upcoming ‘Mech miniatures
But it’s not just the miniatures. Sales of our rulebooks and sourcebooks have exploded as well.. Every single rule, campaign, and plot book we’ve published has immediately gone back to reprint. This includes the brand new ilClan Era campaign books. One of the best sellers is Total Warfare, whose tenth printing hits the warehouse in January. All told, we’ve sold more than 100,000 books in that same time frame. Supporting these products are our numerous digital-only items as well, such as the long-running Recognition Guides, arguably the best-selling digital-only series in our history. Not to mention all the ancillary products: for example, in the last four years we’ve published nearly fifty new BattleTech maps via paper and our deluxe neoprene, and we’ve got many more to come.
The BattleTech fiction line has also grown to match the game’s current lofty heights. We republished the entire Dark Age Era novel line–all 30 volumes–with all-new covers. Eleven issues of the official BattleTech magazine, Shrapnel, have seen print, as well as twenty-two new novels, eight short novels, eleven novellas, and fifty-seven short stories. All told, we’ve published more than 6.2 million words of new and re-issued fiction in the last four years!
And we’re just getting started! We’ve paired up with AdeptiCon, “The World’s Premier Tabletop Miniatures Convention,” to live-stream the launch of the Mercenaries Kickstarter on March 23, 2023.
A selection of ‘Mechs and vehicles coming in the Mercenaries Kickstarter.
Our upcoming Kickstarter will unlock more than fifty new plastic designs, including a slew of long-desired, fan-favorite ’Mechs, such as the “Ost” series; the Goliath and Scorpion, the first four-legged ’Mechs; as well as the original Technical Readout: 3055 Clan IIC ’Mechs. Plus, we’re beyond excited to bring more than a dozen vehicles to game tables, all molded in the same high-quality plastics and ready to play straight out of the box–including working turrets! The Kickstarter will also deliver a new Mercenaries box, a dozen new ForcePacks, new challenge coins, patches, pins, and all of the paraphernalia needed to celebrate mercenary life!
We’ve started releasing behind-the-scenes PDF previews of those coming designs; Preview 02 is available right now! That preview also teases the launch of The Mercenary Tales in January, a monthly installment of mercenary action all throughout next year!
Dominions Divided, the third ilClan Era campaign book, releases in January, along with a new series of Recognition Guide PDFs. New premium miniatures, fiction, t-shirts, plushies, and always more epic tabletop play, both at conventions and at your local friendly game stores….
By any metric, BattleTech is now more successful and more popular than ever before. With the coming Mercenaries Kickstarter and the lead-up to BattleTech’s 40th anniversary, there’s an excellent chance our current staggering success will be eclipsed as BattleTech reaches even more fans.
Thank you. To all the fans that have stuck with us through all these years. To the returning fans, and to the new fans finding us now. Welcome to all of you. This explosion of popularity–where we watch actual-play videos, painting photos, lore videos, excited discussions and more, happening every day on social media channels–is because of all of you! We could not do what we do without you by our sides.
We hope you love what’s happened with BattleTech over the last four years, and will join us as we charge onto even larger battlefields in our desire to ensure that everyone, everywhere knows how amazing BattleTech is, and have them give it a try.
The plastic mechs are what got me to finally pull the trigger... I'd been eyeing off Battletech for years, but the dorkiness of so many of the mech designs just didn't do it for me. The redesigns were a huge improvement, and plastic instead of great lumps of metal just sealed the deal.
Finally jumped in with the Alpha Strike set. Kind of a redemption project from when I failed to figure the universe out in the early 90's. Now I've got to figure out what else I need before this KS adds more to the pile.
Are these going to be actual plastic, or the same trash material they've been using so far? I wanted to get into battletech, but the soft detail and preassembled models was a hard no.
LunarSol wrote: Finally jumped in with the Alpha Strike set. Kind of a redemption project from when I failed to figure the universe out in the early 90's. Now I've got to figure out what else I need before this KS adds more to the pile.
Irdiumstern wrote: Are these going to be actual plastic, or the same trash material they've been using so far? I wanted to get into battletech, but the soft detail and preassembled models was a hard no.
The material they've been using so far is actual plastic. Probably PVC. It's not High Impact Polystyrene, which is only one kind of plastic... and these days it might be questionable as to whether it's even still the most common plastic used for miniatures.
LunarSol wrote: Finally jumped in with the Alpha Strike set. Kind of a redemption project from when I failed to figure the universe out in the early 90's. Now I've got to figure out what else I need before this KS adds more to the pile.
insaniak wrote: The plastic mechs are what got me to finally pull the trigger... I'd been eyeing off Battletech for years, but the dorkiness of so many of the mech designs just didn't do it for me. The redesigns were a huge improvement, and plastic instead of great lumps of metal just sealed the deal.
Exactly what brought me into the fold. I have played the computer games all the way back to Battletech on the Sega Genesis, and Mechwarrior 2 on the PC, and knew a somewhat decent chunk about the universe, but the game never pulled me in for the 25-30 years I have been painting and gaming. Mostly because of the awkward models.
Now I have about three large-ish forces of mechs and am planning on getting Alpha Strike soon.
I love how Ash Barker of Guerrilla Games said "If you told me three years ago that my one of my most played games in 2022 would be Battletech, I'd never have believed you."
LunarSol wrote: Finally jumped in with the Alpha Strike set. Kind of a redemption project from when I failed to figure the universe out in the early 90's. Now I've got to figure out what else I need before this KS adds more to the pile.
Thanks! Any suggestions on Lance/Star packs that are worth picking up?
That's the most difficult question to answer ever. With so many mechs to pick from it will boil down to whatever strikes your fancy. Catalyst has made a good job of spreading the mechs in the boxes following in universe themes (Support lance, pursuit lance...) The one clear divide is between Clan, and Inner Sphere. Clanners use a 5 mech config, while the IS prefers 4 mech lances (then you have Comstar but Comstar is going to Comstar)
M.
Edit: Clans are the bad guys, don't let anybody fool you. Really evil... and I'm not biased against Clans. Totally not biased!
The Inner Sphere Command Lance has three frequently used mechs, the Marauder, Archer, and Stinger. It also has the Valkyrie, but I'm not familiar with that one as my B'tech materials are the FASA 2nd ed and selection of mechs was limited. That's a regular product, so no hurry on that one.
Similarly the Inner Sphere Battle Lance has four frequently used mechs: Warhammer, Rifleman, Phoenix Hawk, Wasp. It's a strong contender for me and my older material.
I see the price went up by $4.99, so I'm glad I bought mine just after this past Xmas.
What would I need to update my 2nd ed B'tech and Citytech to the current iteration of the game? (Besides Succession Wars record sheets for the mechs that were not in those two boxed sets.)
I see the price went up by $4.99, so I'm glad I bought mine just after this past Xmas.
What would I need to update my 2nd ed B'tech and Citytech to the current iteration of the game? (Besides Succession Wars record sheets for the mechs that were not in those two boxed sets.)
Quickest update is probably just grabbing either the Battlemech Manual (if all you ever want to play is mechs) or the Total Warfare book (which has all the mech rules, plus infantry, vehicles, etc.). I have PDFs of both (thanks Humble Bundle!) and dead tree of TW, but honestly Battlemech Manual is easier to use for look-up and reference.
The Inner Sphere Command Lance has three frequently used mechs, the Marauder, Archer, and Stinger. It also has the Valkyrie, but I'm not familiar with that one as my B'tech materials are the FASA 2nd ed and selection of mechs was limited. That's a regular product, so no hurry on that one.
Similarly the Inner Sphere Battle Lance has four frequently used mechs: Warhammer, Rifleman, Phoenix Hawk, Wasp. It's a strong contender for me and my older material.
I'm regularly finding myself quite pleased with the Alpha Strike box. It has an Archer, Phoenix Hawk, Warhammer, Wasp in the mix, along with a few iconic must haves like the Timber Wolf and Atlas. Maybe I just learn to be happy with what I've got rather than buy more.
LunarSol wrote: I'm regularly finding myself quite pleased with the Alpha Strike box. It has an Archer, Phoenix Hawk, Warhammer, Wasp in the mix, along with a few iconic must haves like the Timber Wolf and Atlas. Maybe I just learn to be happy with what I've got rather than buy more.
<Vizzini> Be happy with what you've got?! INCONCEIVABLE! Now you'll tell me that you are going to get involved in a land war in Asia! </Vizzini>
@Valander: Thanks for the reply. I've put both in my Miniatures Market wish list, along with Alpha Strike. I'll figure out what I want once they are restocked.
Our preview, pre-launch page is live on BackerKit, right now! This preview page offers a look at what’s coming in the Mercenaries Kickstarter when it launches on March 23 at AdeptiCon. This includes a list of all the ForcePacks that will be available; a new 4” Timber Wolf for Veteran-level and above backers; the Salvage Box: Visigoth aerospace fighter, free to those that back in the first 48 hours; the incredibly exciting Kickstarter Launch Parties that might come to your corner of the Inner Sphere; and playtesting materials you can access right now by registering on the BackerKit pre-launch page!
We continue our in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the development of the miniatures for this Kickstarter. Preview 03 PDF is now available–for free as always–covering the Ostroc and Mobile HQ!
I'm not surprised. Until the previous KS, Battletech was this big mech game that had lasted for years but was kinda in the background for many and I suspect many knew it more as the Microsoft Games than as the board game.
The last KS blew the doors wide open for new and existing people and a second kickstarter after a successful first is a golden goose for many. It's bound to at least make a fortune even if they just get returning fans and no new ones.
NH Gunsmith wrote: Wow. Catalyst is going all out with this Kickstarter.
This looks like it's going to be smaller than the Clan Invasion Kickstarter, just with a bigger variety of miniatures with the addition of the vehicles.
NH Gunsmith wrote: Wow. Catalyst is going all out with this Kickstarter.
This looks like it's going to be smaller than the Clan Invasion Kickstarter, just with a bigger variety of miniatures with the addition of the vehicles.
Mainly talking about CGL going to be funding launch parties. Would be like GW paying for food and drinks when 9th edition 40k dropped. Absolutely mad for any company to provide.
NH Gunsmith wrote: Wow. Catalyst is going all out with this Kickstarter.
This looks like it's going to be smaller than the Clan Invasion Kickstarter, just with a bigger variety of miniatures with the addition of the vehicles.
Mainly talking about CGL going to be funding launch parties. Would be like GW paying for food and drinks when 9th edition 40k dropped. Absolutely mad for any company to provide.
Look at the notes on the Backerkit pre-launch page for how they will decide which stores will get a launch party. It looks like not everyone is going to qualify for a launch party.
But the launch parties will have at least some of the new models as prizes, months (probably years) before kickstarter fulfillment. It's a gloriously bold move, and I hope to find one within travel range.
NH Gunsmith wrote: Wow. Catalyst is going all out with this Kickstarter.
This looks like it's going to be smaller than the Clan Invasion Kickstarter, just with a bigger variety of miniatures with the addition of the vehicles.
Mainly talking about CGL going to be funding launch parties. Would be like GW paying for food and drinks when 9th edition 40k dropped. Absolutely mad for any company to provide.
Look at the notes on the Backerkit pre-launch page for how they will decide which stores will get a launch party. It looks like not everyone is going to qualify for a launch party.
I get that, I read the notes as well. But it doesn't change the fact that with enough interest, CGL will fund the food and drink for your local store.
And as mentioned above, the perks don't stop at just food and drink for your local store if you qualify.
It is an incredible move for a company to even attempt this the type of release.
Gitzbitah wrote: ... months (probably years) before kickstarter fulfillment. ...
I believe you're seriously overestimating how long fulfillment is going to take, especially since unlike the Clan Invasion Kickstarter most of the miniatures for this one have already had 3D renders and been prototyped.
Spoiler:
NH Gunsmith wrote: I get that, I read the notes as well. But it doesn't change the fact that with enough interest, CGL will fund the food and drink for your local store.
'Refreshments' can be as little as as some sheet cakes and some 2 litre bottles of soda. Hardly bank breaking.
I'm really amped up for this after getting some more details. Myself and most of my local Battletech community will be Adepticon (my first time there too) for the launch. I'm expecting to have a really good time!
Overread wrote: I'm not surprised. Until the previous KS, Battletech was this big mech game that had lasted for years but was kinda in the background for many and I suspect many knew it more as the Microsoft Games than as the board game.
The last KS blew the doors wide open for new and existing people and a second kickstarter after a successful first is a golden goose for many. It's bound to at least make a fortune even if they just get returning fans and no new ones.
Yeah, I'd really like to go big again, but I'm just not sure I will be able to this time around, both because everything is worse than it was and due to the new shipping costs worldwide :(
As to the store parties, I don't expect any over here xD
EDIT: So, basically from what I'm seeing, the new "Battlefield Support" rules are using the AS ways to use infantry and vehicles in regular Battletech games, right? That could be interesting, particularly for MW campaigns.
Gitzbitah wrote: ... months (probably years) before kickstarter fulfillment. ...
I believe you're seriously overestimating how long fulfillment is going to take, especially since unlike the Clan Invasion Kickstarter most of the miniatures for this one have already had 3D renders and been prototyped.
That depends of what they add for stretch goals. Many companies get carried away with their promises when pledges roll in.
Gitzbitah wrote: ... months (probably years) before kickstarter fulfillment. ...
I believe you're seriously overestimating how long fulfillment is going to take, especially since unlike the Clan Invasion Kickstarter most of the miniatures for this one have already had 3D renders and been prototyped.
That depends of what they add for stretch goals. Many companies get carried away with their promises when pledges roll in.
Often its not so much adding a few more models that causes problems. It's that the more backers you get the bigger everything gets. Sure you can make savings on big orders; BUT things also go up in cost; up in complexity. Eg if you've got 500 more customers that's 500 more boxes to produce, 500 more to pick, pack, store, warehouse, transport etc....
Plus because its a one and done big volume order you often can't increase production capacity to meet that demand.
Kingdom Death is a great example of where excess success resulted in degraded performance because they couldn't upscale everything and thus delivery times got way way longer.
Reaper had similar issues with their Bones campaigns early on and quickly learned that they had to break orders into blocks so that they had the option to stagger production, shipping, warehousing, delivery and more so that when they passed certain thresholds of volume they had room to give themselves longer deadlines and move things about. Rather than sticking to one massive volume with one delivery date etc....
Gitzbitah wrote: ... months (probably years) before kickstarter fulfillment. ...
I believe you're seriously overestimating how long fulfillment is going to take, especially since unlike the Clan Invasion Kickstarter most of the miniatures for this one have already had 3D renders and been prototyped.
That depends of what they add for stretch goals. Many companies get carried away with their promises when pledges roll in.
The much-anticipated BattleTech Mercenaries Kickstarter campaign has been officially scheduled for late March 2023.
As recently as last month, Catalyst Game Labs intended to launch the campaign in Q4 2022. However, the overwhelming recent success of BattleTech following the Clan Invasion Kickstarter necessitated the move.
“We simply can’t make new products quickly enough,” stated Loren Coleman, CGL’s founder and owner. “We’ve created more than half-dozen new BattleTech products in the past year, including the new Alpha Strike box set. Our miniature sculptors need more time to complete the designs required to launch the Mercenaries Kickstarter.”
The Mercenaries campaign will introduce over 50 new designs, including ’Mechs, armored and support vehicles, a VTOL, and a new aerospace fighter. Catalyst intends to have all of the new miniature sculpts completed before launching the next campaign, in an effort to prevent long delays in production. Though the campaign date has shifted into next year, the majority of our work will be completed prior to its launch to limit delays in fulfillment.
We are excited as you to launch this Kickstarter and can’t wait to return to the battlefield with BattleTech supporters around the world.
I believe that CGL has things well under control for the Mercenaries Kickstarter.
Gitzbitah wrote: ... months (probably years) before kickstarter fulfillment. ...
I believe you're seriously overestimating how long fulfillment is going to take, especially since unlike the Clan Invasion Kickstarter most of the miniatures for this one have already had 3D renders and been prototyped.
That depends of what they add for stretch goals. Many companies get carried away with their promises when pledges roll in.
The much-anticipated BattleTech Mercenaries Kickstarter campaign has been officially scheduled for late March 2023.
As recently as last month, Catalyst Game Labs intended to launch the campaign in Q4 2022. However, the overwhelming recent success of BattleTech following the Clan Invasion Kickstarter necessitated the move.
“We simply can’t make new products quickly enough,” stated Loren Coleman, CGL’s founder and owner. “We’ve created more than half-dozen new BattleTech products in the past year, including the new Alpha Strike box set. Our miniature sculptors need more time to complete the designs required to launch the Mercenaries Kickstarter.”
The Mercenaries campaign will introduce over 50 new designs, including ’Mechs, armored and support vehicles, a VTOL, and a new aerospace fighter. Catalyst intends to have all of the new miniature sculpts completed before launching the next campaign, in an effort to prevent long delays in production. Though the campaign date has shifted into next year, the majority of our work will be completed prior to its launch to limit delays in fulfillment.
We are excited as you to launch this Kickstarter and can’t wait to return to the battlefield with BattleTech supporters around the world.
I believe that CGL has things well under control for the Mercenaries Kickstarter.
I would be absolutely delighted to be wrong. Even Reaper Bones, to me the gold standard of kickstarter campaigns, I've never seen delivered within a year. I don't think Catalyst can pull it off- especially not as I'm looking over at my Kell Hounds Lance, Eridani Light Horse, and Dominion Divided book - all of which were supposed to be coming out Quarter 3 of 2023. They make absolutely fantastic product, and the value is totally there- but the speed of release is not.
I think a lot depends how much they've tooled up before the KS and how much money they need from the KS to tool up the rest. If all the models are designed, tooled and made up then all the KS needs to do is generate orders for preorder so that can cut a lot of work and time out of things.
As I recall Reaper Bones has a big period of development and many of the things they unlock require taking from concept to finished model. So that adds a lot of time, a lot of back and forth making sure the sculpt works as a cast model and the like.
I just wish they'd make some D6 clan themed dice. There's official dice packs out there that are pretty good for the inner sphere factions but most of the clan dice i've seen out there were fan made/commissioned.
I remember seeing images of very urban city themed maps in testing. Maybe those will be a part of the KS, wouldn't mind seeing those in neoprene either.
Overread wrote: I think a lot depends how much they've tooled up before the KS and how much money they need from the KS to tool up the rest. If all the models are designed, tooled and made up then all the KS needs to do is generate orders for preorder so that can cut a lot of work and time out of things.
We've got pics of minis that will be in the Kickstarter in the BattleTech thread dating to last April.
Overread wrote: I think a lot depends how much they've tooled up before the KS and how much money they need from the KS to tool up the rest. If all the models are designed, tooled and made up then all the KS needs to do is generate orders for preorder so that can cut a lot of work and time out of things.
We've got pics of minis that will be in the Kickstarter in the BattleTech thread dating to last April.
Yep, my impression is they've got a lot more of this campaign tooled and made up front. Which suggests that they can do a much faster turn around than the first campaign which was used to generate a lot of the money needed to take concept sketches into 3D designs and then into models. If those first two steps are already done then all they really need is a lot of orders for a bulk shipment
Waves would be smart, its how Reaper manages to do their massive orders and at least helps them sort out production and shipping.
Waves can certainly let you deliver to a bigger customerbase with everyone having sort of sensible estimations on delivery rather than some getting them super early and others having to wait weeks to months longer just because its such a huge amount of product to move all at once.
And if they are setup for waves and they never hit the wave goals or they manage to sort things to not need them; then its just a logistical element and those in "latter" waves will be all the happier to get their purchases sooner
About as much as there was a "Clan" or "Inner Sphere" pledge last time: That being there wasn't one. The vehicles are just the force packs. If you only want vehicles, only select the vehicle force packs.
The only mixing you'd be "forced" into would be the Mercs box that has 'Mechs and vehicles.
Ok, well, don't say HBMC never did nuthin' for the peoples*, as Lauren Coleman himself got back to me RE: T-Shirts, with this:
Lauren L. Coleman wrote:Not saying no... but may have to. Or have to limit how many. Please remember, even one shirt design can create 8-16 skus. It created a logistical problem. the most mismanaged item(s) in our Clan Invasion campaign, when it came to fulfillment? T-shirts.
A year ago, Catalyst partnered with Barnes & Noble to release the Wolf’s Dragoons Assault Star. You, the community, helped make that ForcePack a massive success, prompting Barnes & Noble to stock a larger selection of BattleTech games across all their stores and increasing the chances for new players to find the game and universe we love.
Catalyst is pleased to announce we’re expanding that partnership with the upcoming release of the Eridani Light Horse Hunter Lance–once more, exclusively through Barnes & Noble for the first six months of its release.
From their origins in the Star League Defense Force, the Eridani Light Horse have fought through the triumphs and the tragedies of Succession Wars, emerging as one of the finest and most honorable mercenary commands.
Unleash the Eridani Light Horse Hunter Lance! Included are the new Sagittaire, reposed Banshee, and new variants of the Cyclops and a jumping Thunderbolt—no assembly required—along with four MechWarrior pilot cards and four Alpha Strike cards. Perfect for BattleTech and Alpha Strike action!
Finally, some vehicles, I can now make a proper Hell's Horses Nova Star, mixing and matching mechs, Elementals, and armor. Hopefully they'll go with the ones clans and Sphere can use.
ProfSrlojohn wrote: Finally, some vehicles, I can now make a proper Hell's Horses Nova Star, mixing and matching mechs, Elementals, and armor. Hopefully they'll go with the ones clans and Sphere can use.
No Clan vehicles in the Kickstarter, only Inner Sphere
Lovely mechs. But Eridani? I remember when the Eridani were all about finesse, movement, and striking at the exact spot at the right time. "two of the three batallions possess no mechs heavier than 60 tons" (Mechwarrior RPG 1st Ed)
ProfSrlojohn wrote: Finally, some vehicles, I can now make a proper Hell's Horses Nova Star, mixing and matching mechs, Elementals, and armor. Hopefully they'll go with the ones clans and Sphere can use.
No Clan vehicles in the Kickstarter, only Inner Sphere
But there is definitely hope- most of the Rec guides have given a Clan variant for each of the originally IS vehicles. Condor, Demolisher, Maxim, and even the Pike all have a clan variant. Others as well, likely.
ProfSrlojohn wrote: Finally, some vehicles, I can now make a proper Hell's Horses Nova Star, mixing and matching mechs, Elementals, and armor. Hopefully they'll go with the ones clans and Sphere can use.
No Clan vehicles in the Kickstarter, only Inner Sphere
But there is definitely hope- most of the Rec guides have given a Clan variant for each of the originally IS vehicles. Condor, Demolisher, Maxim, and even the Pike all have a clan variant. Others as well, likely.
No. It's been confirmed that there will be no Clan vehicles (i.e., those vehicles designed and built by the Clans such as the Epona) in the Mercenaries Kickstarter.
A little bit of info concerning the Mercenaries Kickstarter from the WolfNet Radio interview of Loren Coleman, via the BattleTech Forums:
MarauderCH IIC wrote:Loren Coleman is on the latest WNRP podcast and has stated that there will only be one shipping wave in this kickstater. He also stated that there will be dice!
TThe owner and players of the Gathering shop has been supporting Battletech for decades here in Ireland and competing abroad in tournaments. Gets listed as part of the UK for the KS launch parties by Catalyst. 🙄
Ancient Otter wrote: TThe owner and players of the Gathering shop has been supporting Battletech for decades here in Ireland and competing abroad in tournaments. Gets listed as part of the UK for the KS launch parties by Catalyst. 🙄
That error was pointed out yesterday on the BT forums and has been corrected in the meantime :
But still not corrected n the announcement page. Can't wait for them to announce a shop in India or Hong Kong as the next UK store to have a launch party
Ancient Otter wrote: But still not corrected n the announcement page. Can't wait for them to announce a shop in India or Hong Kong as the next UK store to have a launch party
Ancient Otter wrote: TThe owner and players of the Gathering shop has been supporting Battletech for decades here in Ireland and competing abroad in tournaments. Gets listed as part of the UK for the KS launch parties by Catalyst. 🙄
I'm curious - has the owner from the Gathering indicated that they've been offended by this at all, or are you trying to make it a thing when they're not bothered?
When the Mercenaries Kickstarter launches from the floor of the first day of Adepticon, Thursday, March 23, you’ll have a front-row seat thanks to the livestream we’re offering throughout the weekend. Keep an eye on bg.battletech.com this Friday, March 10 for the full schedule and guest list for the livestream from Adepticon.
Even better, we’re inviting BattleTech fans worldwide to join in the celebration, with Mercenaries launch parties planned around the globe! Here’s the lineup so far:
California: Gamelandia, 290 California Ave, Ste A, Palo Alto, CA 94306
New York: Legendary Realms Games, 294 E Montauk Hwy, Lindenhurst, NY 11757
North Carolina: Hangar 18 Hobbies, 112 Kilmayne Drive, Cary, NC 27511
Texas: The Forge Hobbies and Games, 14520 Memorial Drive, Suite 28 Houston TX 77079
Washington: Zulu's Board Game Cafe, 10234 Main St Bothell, Washington 98011
Canada: Ogre's Den Gaming Club, # 23, 3220 5th Avenue NE, Canada.
Germany: UniPlay e.V., Heckerdamm 210, 13627 Berlin, Germany
UK: Travelling Man/Leeds Wargames Club - Hicks Hall, 60 Bankfield Terrace, Leeds, LS4 2RE, United Kingdom
Ireland: The Gathering, 43 Lower Gerald Griffin St, Limerick, V94 Y1F7, Ireland
One additional venue is in the process of being confirmed, and will be announced shortly. Additional information about the launch parties will be posted in our next update on Friday, March 10,.
We’re extremely excited to reveal our guest list and schedule for the livestream at AdeptiCon 2023 for the launch of the Mercenaries Kickstarter.
We’d like to thank the Lynnvander Studios team that will be running and hosting our livestream, which will be hosted at www.twitch.tv/Sixsidesofgaming and YouTube.com/sixsidesofgaming
GUESTS
The following BattleTech guests will be available directly at the show for questions, autographs, and handshakes, as well as participating in the livestream.
Randall Bills
Randall N. Bills has been writing and game designing for more than twenty-five years. He’s overseen the publication of hundreds of sourcebooks, rulebooks, boxed games and more for BattleTech across four different companies, as well as creative input on numerous other beloved game universes, including Shadowrun. He’s also written a half-dozen novels–including the Founding of the Clans trilogy–was the lore advisor on Harebrained Schemes’ BattleTech computer game, and was the co-story developer for Piranha Games’ MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries computer game. His most recent game publications include the alternate history tabletop miniatures game Leviathans and the Dungeons & Dragons Dragonfire deck builder game.
Loren Coleman
Loren L. Coleman is the owner and publisher of Catalyst Game Labs, and the most prolific writer in the History of the BattleTech Intellectual Property. Since 1994, starting with FASA, Loren has published 13 novels, scripted four computer games, written more than 100 short fiction pieces, and has been a major contributor in dozens of sourcebooks. #annoyingmikestackpole.
Ray Arrastia
Ray Arrastia is the BattleTech Line Developer for Catalyst Game Labs. His passion for the game goes back more than three decades, when he started playing the game at local game stores with friends. For the last 18 years, Arrastia has been a key part of BattleTech in a gamut of roles from QC, art, design, production, development, storyrunning, and management. He is a proud member of the team that has revitalized BattleTech for both the new and old generations of fans.
Brent Evans
Brent Evans is a long-time illustrator and award-winning art director. As an artist, he began freelancing in 1987 and worked in many genres including political cartoons, comics, and children’s books. In 2005, he was hired by gaming visionary Jordan Weisman to work on several games, and immediately distinguished himself as one of the core illustrators for the BattleTech franchise. His creative design and project management style inspired his elevation to Senior Art Director in 2009 for many legendary gaming franchises, including BattleTech, Shadowrun, D&D’s Dragonfire, Valiant RPG, and many more. From 2017-2019, he took on the additional role as Line Developer, leading the overhaul of the BattleTech product line and catapulting the brand into the industry-leading global success it is today. It is said that Brent’s “superpower” is the ability to recruit and develop creative talent.
Additionally, Brent is a graduate of and serves as a Board member for the Game Design & Development program for the University of Washington. In January 2023, he launched his first new franchise creation called LAND & SEA, with a novel trilogy available as an Amazon exclusive.
Anthony Scroggins
Anthony Scroggins is the art director of miniatures design for BattleTech, wrangling a team of ’Mech nerds. Back in the year 2000, he discovered MechWarrior, and has been a fan of BattleTech ever since. A feelance scifi artist for 14 years. Mechs, armor, and space have always been a focus of interest. He lives in rainy Oregon, and has been enjoying the resurgence of tabletop BattleTech in a rapidly growing local gaming community.
Marco Mazzoni (Only Available Saturday and Sunday)
Marco Mazzoni is a concept artist/art director at Harebrained Schemes and a cover illustrator for BattleTech. With a love of the universe that goes back to the late ’80s, he is living his childhood dream of painting mechs and contributing to the recent resurgence.
John Helfers
John Helfers has been working in branded IP development and publishing for more than twenty-five years. During his eighteen years at Tekno Books, at one time the largest book packager in the nation, he managed several New York Times-bestselling novel series, working with such authors as Tom Clancy, Charlaine Harris, Dale Brown, Mercedes Lackey, Stephen Coonts, and many others, as well producing hundreds of anthologies and novels.
Currently, he’s the Executive Editor at Catalyst Game Labs, where he oversees the fiction lines for BattleTech, Shadowrun and Leviathans, publishing more than 1.5 million words of original fiction every year. He lives and works in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Michael Ciaravella
Michael J. Ciaravella is the author of three BattleTech novels (Grey Watch Protocol, Paid in Blood, and The Damocles Sanction) a half-dozen short stories, sourcebooks, and the occasional witty remark. Constantly shocked that he has been playing BattleTech for nearly thirty years, Michael is honored to be allowed to indulge in his passion for writing in a universe that has been close to his heart for as long as he can remember, and working with the team that has done so much to reinvigorate the game we all love. In his remaining free time, Michael is the Chief Executive Officer of Clarion Game Studios, and is a Game Designer known for his work in the Hull Breach, Henchman, and Four Horsemen gaming IPs.
More
And there may be others, from additional BattleTech luminaries to reviewers, industry professionals, and more, all sharing what BattleTech has meant to them.
I'm just hoping they're offering the boxed set miniatures as separate purchase options.
They did it during the last KS - you could get the 10 'Mechs (including the double Wolverine) from the Beginner/AGoAC boxes as well as the 5 Clan 'Mechs from the Clan Invasion boxes as separate buys - so I'm really hoping that the Alpha Strike and Merc Box 'Mechs/Vees are available separately.
I'm also trying to find out if there are any Early Bird specials that will be heavily fought over in the opening seconds, because for those of us on the other side of the planet this launches at 3am.
Im just hoping for further lance pack stretch goals than what we know of so far. So many units with new amazing art that so-far are not being covered in this kickstarter.
A box with a single figure. One of the campaigns had urbanmechs and aerospace fighters available in this single figure format. So if you bought it, you knew you were getting, say, a single urbanmech.
They also had random mech assortment available. You knew it was a mech but not which one. The random ones made it to retail.
The bigger pledges during the last campaign all came with X amount of Lance/Star Packs.
Lance Packs came with 4 'Mechs. Star Packs came with 5 'Mechs.
So if you wanted nothing but Lance Packs you would technically be getting less for the same cost.
To mitigate this, they had SalvageBoxes. If you chose a Lance Pack as one of your "included" packs, you got a SalvageBox to go with it, and as many as you chose Lance Packs. Your pledge level comes with 6 packs, and you chose all Lance Packs? You get 6 SalvageBoxes.
You could also purchase additional SalvageBoxes if you wanted.
BattleTech wrote:Choose wisely, Mechwarrior.
Over the next few days, we'll be giving you some sneak peeks at the Battletech: Mercenaries Kickstarter campaign reward tiers. Whether you are a new recruit, a veteran, or you control your own regiment, there is something for everyone.
Check it out, and don't forget to follow the pre-launch page so you are in the front lines of this project! https://www.backerkit.com/.../8fd3639a-e1cd-44b9.../landing Next up, we have something for our Veterans, including the Mercenaries Box, Challenge Coin, Double Blind digital novella, and a 4" Timber Wolf! (You read that right! Watch for tomorrow's post to learn all about this awesome part of the reward).
Destiny-scale Marauder ($244.99) There will be a limited number of these gorgeous, large-scale, resin figures available each day of the convention. Clean up and assembly is required.
These figures are a test product; their availability after Adepticon 2023 and outside of convention sales has not been determined.
And that's only 25-28 mm. To fit with the old TYCO action figures they'd be a bit larger.
I mean, the 4" Timberwolf is cool, but honestly I'd have no use for it. Hopefully there's a swap-out or something. If not, I guess it'll just collect dust, or I'll eBay it.
4" Timberwolf, meh. I find that very underwhelming.
The Destiny scale Marauder is much more exciting. It looks pretty good. Is this a higher detail model? Or is it the same files scaled up. If the latter I can do that much cheaper. If the former, please give us some tasty pictures. Plastic Battle Armor in Destiny scale please!
If they add some of these to the Kickstarter I might have to get a Warhammer (if they make one). I find the Catalyst Marauder to not be my favorite nuMarauder. So for $250 I would just print one of the ones I like better.
Yeah. It looks great too. And is infantry, so in resin might still be a reasonable price. But would be better in plastic. Both for durability and price.
That picture definitely doesn't show any extra detail on the large mechs. So it appears they are just the same files scaled up.
Albertorius wrote: Must admit that the price to stuff of the unveiled levels seems so far... a bit light. We'll see how the KS develops.
I thought that, but the $150 mark in the clan invasion looked pretty much the same. Clan box, 2 force packs and some merch. The Madcat is basically swapped in for some of the other merch.
As noted above, it will depend on double mech stretch goals and suchlike kicking in.
If by "ForcePacks" they also mean the Battlefield Support sets (vees), then the Company Pledge
could net 28 minis (4 vees & 8 Mechs in Core Box + 2 Support sets of 8 vehicles each).
I have the intuition that the pledges levels and amount of minis in the final offer will be very similar to the Clan Invasion campaign, which was a perfectly decent value. This time they may just double their funding though.
frankelee wrote: I have the intuition that the pledges levels and amount of minis in the final offer will be very similar to the Clan Invasion campaign, which was a perfectly decent value. This time they may just double their funding though.
I think you're right- the notable omission is the double force packs, which will hurt the overall value of higher level pledges.
I can see double forces being a stretch unlock. A good way to get a mid-campaign bump in funding, and they will know very closely from the clan campaign what the impact will be.
Yeah, I absolutely believe extra packs will get unlocked as stretch goals. Otherwise it would be massively cheaper to wait and buy it all from an online retailer, which I think the people at Catalyst are smart enough to realize isn't viable.
I am not sold on the 4" mech, its not big enough for a game of battletroops or as a shelf sitter, and the pricetag of $45 is ridiculous.
Methinks they only exist to provide the illusion of a deal, almost every pledge will include one and priced accordingly, yet it will be just as small sprue throw in. Notice how big the mech looks, and how it is visually compared to the 28mm one. It is easy to forget and be misled.
Now if they were to make a plastic kit mech scale dropship, Leopard or Union, that would be a better add on. Take a leaf from Archon Studio who made bigger things than that to throw in. They even made a quad mech in a recent campaign, and you got one for free if you pledged high enough.
Is a plastic Union dropship in this KS far fetched. Not at all. If you pledged for the last Archon Studio campaign you got a Tarrasque, its 14" long and was FREE.
Now Catalyst is not Archon Studio, they don't have the same infrastructure and tooling. But if Catalyst can add useless junk mechs that you cannot use in hard plastic they can make something better that we can. I would settle for a bunker, command post or mech repair gantry or useful obstacle or objective terrain piece.
I am not impressed, and I hope there is a non-entry pledge that doesn't include worthless junk at extra cost. I might start with the intro pledge, I might as well get one, its the only way to get a Vindicator. Though hopefully we will see Retaliation boxes in the campaign. I bought two last time and wish I had bought more.
I thought that, but the $150 mark in the clan invasion looked pretty much the same. Clan box, 2 force packs and some merch. The Madcat is basically swapped in for some of the other merch.
As noted above, it will depend on double mech stretch goals and suchlike kicking in.
$95 was the reward level for the Clan Invasion box, 2 lance/stars and Clan Challenge Coin. But that was four years ago and a bit has changed in the world since then.
I hope the 4" mech is in parts so I can easily magnetize it. Also, with the size of it, i'm worried more about shipping costs. I like the large mech, but I also have 2 3D printers and would rather print larger versions of the Mech I want and get another force pack for the price.
Theophony wrote: I hope the 4" mech is in parts so I can easily magnetize it. Also, with the size of it, i'm worried more about shipping costs. I like the large mech, but I also have 2 3D printers and would rather print larger versions of the Mech I want and get another force pack for the price.
At the 'value' that Catalyst set a Force Pack costs considerably less. Even so I would exchange any 4" mech for a Force Pack as a straight swap without hesitation.
Orlanth wrote: I am not sold on the 4" mech, its not big enough for a game of battletroops or as a shelf sitter, and the pricetag of $45 is ridiculous.
Methinks they only exist to provide the illusion of a deal, almost every pledge will include one and priced accordingly, yet it will be just as small sprue throw in. Notice how big the mech looks, and how it is visually compared to the 28mm one. It is easy to forget and be misled.
Now if they were to make a plastic kit mech scale dropship, Leopard or Union, that would be a better add on. Take a leaf from Archon Studio who made bigger things than that to throw in. They even made a quad mech in a recent campaign, and you got one for free if you pledged high enough.
Is a plastic Union dropship in this KS far fetched. Not at all. If you pledged for the last Archon Studio campaign you got a Tarrasque, its 14" long and was FREE.
Now Catalyst is not Archon Studio, they don't have the same infrastructure and tooling. But if Catalyst can add useless junk mechs that you cannot use in hard plastic they can make something better that we can. I would settle for a bunker, command post or mech repair gantry or useful obstacle or objective terrain piece.
I am not impressed, and I hope there is a non-entry pledge that doesn't include worthless junk at extra cost. I might start with the intro pledge, I might as well get one, its the only way to get a Vindicator. Though hopefully we will see Retaliation boxes in the campaign. I bought two last time and wish I had bought more.
Full agreement. For me, minis are for use, not display. So that Timber Wolf is worthless to me, or worse, since I'd have to ebay it, and I don't want that hassle. Like Orlanth, I hope there is a pledge without this negative value "bonus". I was looking forward to the KS, but if the only non-Timber Wolf option is the Recruit pledge, I'll wait for retail. I just bought the Beginner Box a month ago, and I have three unread BT novels on my Kindle. So for me, the deal is poor value. It needs more sweetening.
I suspect there may be a $1 level pledge like the last one for people to just buy a copy of the Mercenaries box in the pledge manager, whether it qualifies for stretch goal goodies is another issue.
Well, if there's a $1 pledge available day 1, take that and provide polite feedback about how the presence of the 4" Mech is disincentivising you from a larger pledge.
And, no, throwing around "worthless junk" in your comment takes it out of the "polite feedback" bracket.
Dysartes wrote: Well, if there's a $1 pledge available day 1, take that and provide polite feedback about how the presence of the 4" Mech is disincentivising you from a larger pledge.
And, no, throwing around "worthless junk" in your comment takes it out of the "polite feedback" bracket.
At first, I was mildly excited by the 4" Mad Cat because it's nifty. But it's just nifty and as someone just getting into Battletech, I too would rather be able to swap it for another force pack. It won't necessarily dissuade me from one of the larger pledges, but the option sure would be nice.
By the end of the campaign, if I can pick up everything I think I need with just a company pledge, then cool. I'll take the 4" novelty figure. If not, I might drop to a recruit pledge (or drop out entirely) and consider other options. Being able to swap it out for one more force pack might make the difference.
I’m looking forward to it! I’ll have the standard sized one, a 10mm scale one I printed and this one at 20mm scale How many other scales are worth doing I wonder!
I think the ability to trade out the Mad Cat for a couple more force packs would go over quite well. It is such an awkward scale. Even one force pack would work. However they valued it at $45. If that is truly what they think its value is, two lances, or one larger pack and some salvage boxes would be more appropriate.
Justyn wrote: I think the ability to trade out the Mad Cat for a couple more force packs would go over quite well. It is such an awkward scale. Even one force pack would work. However they valued it at $45. If that is truly what they think its value is, two lances, or one larger pack and some salvage boxes would be more appropriate.
Justyn wrote: I think the ability to trade out the Mad Cat for a couple more force packs would go over quite well. It is such an awkward scale. Even one force pack would work. However they valued it at $45. If that is truly what they think its value is, two lances, or one larger pack and some salvage boxes would be more appropriate.
It’s just a extra thing that’s added to each since it’s easy, if I could I would trade in the swag and the coins. And we will be getting so extra freebies as well added in.
It also sounds like the mini was more of a gesture towards the players for the most part, and taking it out wouldn’t really free up any space.
There already is a lot of stuff in each pledge that is of no value to most backers, so adding this mini as mandatory is a bad move... half the value comes from coins, merchandise and such, this is bizarre.
I will back it anyway and I am confident the value will be OK at the end, but I do hope they get a fair amount of (fair, constructive) backlash for bloating the pledges with non gameplay gimmicks. Maybe they will reconsider the next time.
Swag is nice for those who want it. I say that while still having the Davion keyring from the HBS Kickstarter. The hat, the banner, the other swag.... they got maybe 10 seconds of my attention and are taking up space in a drawer somewhere. Swag rather than items you are actually backing the KS for can deter some people. Or reduce how much they are willing to back for.
Some will argue these are free additions. Why complain? Well I'm not really complaining, mostly just stating it would be more value to me with less swag and more product. Second it is not free. The costs of making the swag has to come from the pledges just like every other product they put in the KS,
IMO, the pledge levels have been set up to take into account backers that will go full vehicles.
If we consider that any ForcePack (be it an Inner Sphere Lance, Clan Star or Battlefield Support vehicle set) equals one reward,
completely disregard all other content (rules, cardboard, novels, swag) and not take into account shipping costs (unknown at this
point), then you'd end up with the following price per mini (ppm) :
"A" opts for Inner Sphere Lances only, whereas "B" only takes Battlefield Support sets.
Recruit (35 USD) 3 Mechs (11.66 ppm)
Veteran (80 USD) 8 Mechs + 4 vees (6.66 ppm)
Company (2 FP, 150 USD) "A" - 16 Mechs + 4 vees (7.5 ppm)
"B" - 8 Mechs + 20 vees (5.35 ppm)
Battalion (6 FP, 275 USD) "A" - 32 Mechs + 4 vees (7.63 ppm)
"B" - 8 Mechs + 52 vees (4.58 ppm)
Regiment (12FP, 500 USD) "A" - 56 Mechs + 4 vees (8.33 ppm)
"B" - 8 Mechs + 100 vees (4.63 ppm)
Admittedly, the vehicle-only pledge is the big winner here. It'll be interesting to see what the pricing will be for individual Lances /
Stars / Battlefield Support Sets when taken as add-ons..
Company (2 FP, 150 USD)
"A" - 16 Mechs + 4 vees (7.5 ppm)
"B" - 8 Mechs + 20 vees (5.35 ppm)
Battalion (6 FP, 275 USD)
"A" - 32 Mechs + 4 vees (7.63 ppm)
"B" - 8 Mechs + 52 vees (4.58 ppm)
Regiment (12FP, 500 USD)
"A" - 56 Mechs + 4 vees (8.33 ppm)
"B" - 8 Mechs + 100 vees (4.63 ppm)
Currently the retail value of Lance packs is approximately $6ppm for mechs. That is retail, not purchased from a discount online store. Vehicles have traditionally been two to a pack for a similar price as an equivalent 'mech. I do however expect those deals to get sweeter as the KS progresses.
Currently the retail value of Lance packs is approximately $6ppm for mechs. That is retail, not purchased from a discount online store. Vehicles have traditionally been two to a pack for a similar price as an equivalent 'mech. I do however expect those deals to get sweeter as the KS progresses.
If one of the stretch goals were to add another ForcePack to pledge levels frex, that would change the equation.
That being said, I prefer a realistic KS over one that promises the moon and then has to ask backers for more money
(which has happened in the recent past).
In the Clan campaign, the lance packs were evened out with the Star packs by using salvage boxes. I thin the PPM value should be based on 5 models, rather than 4.
Yeah, people should realize vehicles are packaged eight to a box because people don't value them the same as Mechs, so they have to have more for the same price. Part of Kickstarter are special items and material, people should try to look at it as bonus material there to make them happy, not something they're paying for, and then wait to see what the actual offer is at the end of the campaign in terms of value. The same way CMON campaigns tend to double the stuff you get from beginning to end.
Flinty wrote: In the Clan campaign, the lance packs were evened out with the Star packs by using salvage boxes. I thin the PPM value should be based on 5 models, rather than 4.
Just done some calcs and if I have understood the methodology properly, assuming 5 mechs per force pack brings the A-type assumptions above down to about 6.5ppm to 6.8ppm, so consistent with the PPM for the $80 pledge.
Comment on Facebook: I wonder what are the stipulations for '2 years of free BattleTech product'?
Reply from Catalyst: Anything we produce from the end of the Kickstarter for Battletech. No "stipulations".
Comment on Facebook: I wonder what are the stipulations for '2 years of free BattleTech product'?
Reply from Catalyst: Anything we produce from the end of the Kickstarter for Battletech. No "stipulations".
Well then if they produce the large scale Marauder that would be a nice treat....not a $5,000 treat, but still a nice free add on. plus you get the 2 4" bookends to keep your shelves organized.
So reviewing the stretch goals, it looks like there are none that increase the number of minis with any of the pledges except regiment (who gets one salvage box at 1.5m)?
Edit - I see company and above gets 1 salvage box at 1m also.
petrov27 wrote: So reviewing the stretch goals, it looks like there are none that increase the number of minis with any of the pledges except regiment (who gets one salvage box at 1.5m)?
Edit - I see company and above gets 1 salvage box at 1m also.
There is the Visigoth for Early Bird, Veteran and above gets a salvage box at $500k, company at $1m and Regiment at $1.5.
Albertorius wrote: Honestly, right now I'm leaning on "I don't want any more swag of any kind", so it seems more interesting to just wait for store release.
Conversely, I only want the swag. IS vees have no appeal to me as a Clanner.
Albertorius wrote: Honestly, right now I'm leaning on "I don't want any more swag of any kind", so it seems more interesting to just wait for store release.
Conversely, I only want the swag. IS vees have no appeal to me as a Clanner.
Will we be able to buy the 'Mechs from the box sets by themselves as we could in the first kickstarter? We are working to find out if Retaliation sets will be offered again, as well as similar sets.
Yeah, I do want all those forcepacks, but without double forces the value is pretty bad. I don't care much about the coins and swag and the rest of the pledge is about the same as retail pricing, slightly higher...
Before VAT and shipping that is... then it is 30-40% more expensive even...
I hope they somehow add gameplay value or I might just wait for retail.
Dysartes wrote: Up over $1.8m from what I can see - clearing $2m tonight?
Question - would this be a good jumping-on point if you have a vague interest in BattleTech?
Yes.
To expand on that a little, the add-ons include basically everything released to date, so if you want either the Classic playstyle or Alpha Strike, you can get a full set up to whatever your budget is in one hit, along with whatever trinkets take your fancy
Dysartes wrote: Up over $1.8m from what I can see - clearing $2m tonight?
Question - would this be a good jumping-on point if you have a vague interest in BattleTech?
Yes.
To expand on that a little, the add-ons include basically everything released to date, so if you want either the Classic playstyle or Alpha Strike, you can get a full set up to whatever your budget is in one hit, along with whatever trinkets take your fancy
Last time around, you could buy pretty much anything Catalyst makes through Backerkit as an add-on.
I threw in a couple books I was missing, because it's only money.
Almost two million dollars in and all we ACTUALLY get is one extra salvage box per pledge. Everything else is illusory.
The 'unlocks' were already completed content we knew about, and everything else is a download.
At 2 million we get advanced news of a product to be released retail. Yay.
We are closing in on the endgame for Clan Invasion and that got extra mechs and double force packs.
I think we backers are gorging ourselves out of a future meal.
Remember that most backers will back now, especially as we get the Visigoth, there will be a desert of backing the remaining month until the last 48 hours. We are in danger of front loading this too much and never getting double force packs.
Flinty wrote: Frosthaven made $4m on its first day, and ended up at $12m. that seems to be the target. Do they have the stamina for it
I don't think that will happen. Frosthaven sold to a much larger crowd, this product is for niche nerds the vast majority are on the CBT forums or Sarna. Very few Battletech players will not know of this and a heavy proportion will back today or cant afford to back.
There will be fresh blood trying Battletech for the first time from the computer game community, but I dont think that is a lot of people, I think most Battletech players are already alert to this.
Now I cannot critique Catalyst for their marketing, but I do believe this project will ride in with the storm but only offer a continued drizzle of funds afterwards.
By my guess this campaign will reach a little over 4 million at campaign end. It would always make more than Clan Invasion because Mercs are a bigger draw and Clan Invasion was a vanguard for new mechs, up until that point we had seen only crappy produst from Catalyst when it came to actual miniatures. But I do think we will get well over half the pledges today.
I would very much like to be wrong.
Jeebus, I was expecting 1.5mil to be the slowdown point for day one. Colour me surprised and impressed. Hopefully they didn't underplan on stretch goals with the expectation of it only doing around the same level as the Clans KS.
Backed at the Battalion level. After the headache of actually finding the force packs in the wild for retail, I figure I'll get what I actually want this time rather than leave it to chance. If the post 2mil stretch goals are where the extras start piling up, then I'm cool with that, but I don't much mind paying close to retail for the guarantee of actually getting the things I want. I'm also glad they've removed a lot of the stuff that caused the Clan KS to become a -show in places (goodbye terrible and awkward canon characters, may ye never return).
I've heard that the conventional wisdom is that a KS will do 33% of its funding in the first 48 hours, 33% in the final 48 hours, and the final 33% in the intervening period. If this is true we could be looking at a $6 to $7 million Kickstarter
Orlanth wrote: I think Catalyst are scrooging the backers here.
Almost two million dollars in and all we ACTUALLY get is one extra salvage box per pledge. Everything else is illusory.
The 'unlocks' were already completed content we knew about, and everything else is a download.
At 2 million we get advanced news of a product to be released retail. Yay.
We are closing in on the endgame for Clan Invasion and that got extra mechs and double force packs.
I think we backers are gorging ourselves out of a future meal.
Remember that most backers will back now, especially as we get the Visigoth, there will be a desert of backing the remaining month until the last 48 hours. We are in danger of front loading this too much and never getting double force packs.
I'll just steal this and paste it in the comments.
The value just isn't there for me, though I still am loving the game right now. I'll probably pick up all the lances at retail, but do the $80 pledge if it at least has some stretch goal value.
I could see this campaign going over 4 million, but I have seen this story before with CMON, people pledge a lot on day one thinking the add-ons are coming, and when they don't, and rent comes due, the total starts going backwards. Kickstarter is still not a store, people are expecting a way better value than retail. So not a snowball's chance in Hell that it makes it to Frosthaven levels.
One thing to consider is that just because they've got more funding doesn't mean they can just add things. Many a KS has burned itself because they funded TOO WELL and added loads of things which causes delays and the more customers you have the more costs go along with that and the more production pressure etc.....
Heck Kingdom Death is a fine if not posterchild example for this - though they've managed to survive, some burn themselves out entirely.
So I'd not 100% expect loads of extra freebies; hope for more but be glad for what you've got.
Overread wrote: One thing to consider is that just because they've got more funding doesn't mean they can just add things. Many a KS has burned itself because they funded TOO WELL and added loads of things which causes delays and the more customers you have the more costs go along with that and the more production pressure etc.....
Sounds a bit like the Clan Invasion Kickstarter...
I thought this was interesting in the comments in response to "will there be bonus lance packs/minis added like the Clan Invastion"
They answered this question during the Twitch stream: Nope, nothing extra. They are doing this to not undercut the brick and mortar stores selling the product. So by design, it is not any cheaper to get the KS, the swag is the bonus.
Generally speaking, the problem with stretch goals is that if its not already in the production pipeline when the KS begins, it can't be added in a way that doesn't jeopardize the original fulfillment schedule. The lead time on these things is just too long for stretch goals to actually be able to offer "new" stuff that is at all meaningful.
Yeah, but for this one its not really about new things, its about matching the value of the previous campaign with additional stuff that already exists. They will be able to trace their profit margin on each pledge, and work out how much more they can sub in before it hits them hard.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Dysartes wrote: Did they say anything at launch about stretch goals past $2m, or was that the top end of them?
I just got a message from them through Kickstarter that says more goals will turn up soon.
I was looking forward to this to try get back into BT as its been hard to find the starter box and other packs, but adding VAT and shipping the value is just not there.
TalonZahn wrote: If they wanted to help out B&M, then they shouldn't have ran a KS.
That line almost seals the "no double Force Packs" comment they made.
It will bite them in the ass in the end.
Why? they've just made $2million in sales through KS in a few hours. People are already super hyped to buy the stuff right now, they don't need to sweeten the deal any more.
As for not running the KS to help stores, that's a tricky thing. I think pricing so that they aren't steeply undercutting is good and sensible, but running the KS itself provides a MASSIVE amount of hype and marketing that sales through regular stores won't generate. Like it or not the last KS and this one have pushed BTech from a super tiny niche game that hung on for years; hard into a mainstream game once more. It gets a LOT more attention, hype, marketing and chatter and so long as it goes well it means that whilst stores might see a dip, they should see a rise in demand after.
The real damage is done when its a one-and-done game such as boxed board games; or where they steeply undercut the prices or even go wholesale prices in the KS so that the stores can't compete at all on the prices and customers come pre-loaded expecting much lower prices and balking/pulling back when the store is "charging way more"
The real damage is done when they don't up the ante and people realize it will be cheaper to wait it out.
Sure they get some hype, but when people start putting together spreadsheets to show value breakdowns, and they will, pledges will go backwards.
There's already comments doing cost breakdowns and it's currently MORE expensive to pledge than buy at retail, and the "swag" is a weak gimme.
[Edit] Just go look at the comments section. It's already becoming a shitstorm of "not enough value" comments. People are already saying they are pulling back their pledges to lower levels because you can't get the Vehicle Packs and have to pick Force Packs. Those same packs can be had for $16-$22 all over the place. Again, making the KS more expensive than just sitting out and waiting for retail.
Ghaz wrote: I've heard that the conventional wisdom is that a KS will do 33% of its funding in the first 48 hours, 33% in the final 48 hours, and the final 33% in the intervening period. If this is true we could be looking at a $6 to $7 million Kickstarter
TalonZahn wrote: The real damage is done when they don't up the ante and people realize it will be cheaper to wait it out.
Impatience is a thing. The Company Store backers won't get their pledges until after regular backers and then will have a 30-day guaranteed window before a regular hobby trade release.
Just go look at the comments section. It's already becoming a shitstorm of "not enough value" comments. People are already saying they are pulling back their pledges to lower levels because you can't get the Vehicle Packs and have to pick Force Packs. Those same packs can be had for $16-$22 all over the place. Again, making the KS more expensive than just sitting out and waiting for retail.
Woah, woah, we can't pick the vehicles packs?
Or is that people wanting JUST vehicles and nothing else?
TalonZahn wrote: The real damage is done when they don't up the ante and people realize it will be cheaper to wait it out.
Impatience is a thing. The Company Store backers won't get their pledges until after regular backers and then will have a 30-day guaranteed window before a regular hobby trade release.
I don't disagree, but that's going to be a small amount of people that would rather pay $30 for a pack at Day X than $22 at Day Y.
Again, the comments section is strongly going the way of people lowering pledges as they see the value just isn't there like last time.
Right now, Veteran ($80) or Company ($150) pledges are about the only place there's actual value.
Last time around the $275 pledge was the sweet spot.
[Edit] No, you get to pick FORCE packs, NOT Battlefield Support Packs. I'm trying to find where the difference was said by CGL.
[Edit 2] I asked, and replies have been exactly what I stated, but not from an official CGL person yet, but they also mentioned the same post I'm looking for.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Force packs are AUD$50 in Oz, hard to find in bulk, and you never know when something will be out or be in stock.
12 of them would be AUD$600 before you add the Merc Boxed Set.
Seems like a good deal to me...
Seems like it is a good deal for your specific situation, and I'm glad that it is. I think for me is less of a good deal, as distribution here is good and I have a local store that's carrying a lot of Btech (wargenwargames.com).
Flinty wrote: On the Kickstarter page at least the battlefield support packs are pictured in the box labelled forcepacks.
Yet, they are NOT Force Packs and multiple people are waiting for an official answer since we can't find the original answer that they are NOT Forcepacks.
Which, is odd since they are the main reason most people are in this KS to begin with, lol
Yes, latest word on KS is: Please note: The Battlefield Support Packs ARE available as selections for your pledge. The information we had was incorrect and it is being corrected.
As a US backer, this currently feels like a pretty bad deal. Outside of say neoprene maps, the contents of their KS'ers have generally been available at retail for quite a cheap price, and fairly consistently.
I personally can barely tell the difference between many chassis of mech, and own mountains of them from the last KS. What I, and many others want are just numbers of vehicles/support stuff, and without a more value rich way to get them in bulk, I feel like I need to skip this one, despite really wanting to back it.
No double-packs makes this one a rough proposition.
petrov27 wrote: I thought this was interesting in the comments in response to "will there be bonus lance packs/minis added like the Clan Invastion"
They answered this question during the Twitch stream: Nope, nothing extra. They are doing this to not undercut the brick and mortar stores selling the product. So by design, it is not any cheaper to get the KS, the swag is the bonus.
Interesting to know this. I wont go above Battalion then. I was hoping to upgrade in the pledge manager.
The one thing this campaign gives us is a universal price for force packs in the pledge levels. I will use my six packs with Battalion to fill up on vehicles, then buy my new lances on top post pledge. Vehicle packs are billed at $40, Clan at $30 and IS mechs at $25, with no Salvage box equalisers.
Also with no double Force Packs there is no incentive to pledge any more right now, instead I can drip feed money into the pledge manager in the next few months. I have an idea of what I want to buy long set up from the pre campaign info drops. So six boxes of vehicles seems right to me.
Upon reflecting on the fact that all the "swag" from the previous kickstarter has sat unused up in my attic compared to the actual miniatures, I've decided to cancel my pledge and just wait for retail.
I also get to sit on my moral high horse for supporting a brick-and-mortar store, too.
infinite_array wrote: Upon reflecting on the fact that all the "swag" from the previous kickstarter has sat unused up in my attic compared to the actual miniatures, I've decided to cancel my pledge and just wait for retail.
I also get to sit on my moral high horse for supporting a brick-and-mortar store, too.
The T shirts were reasonable, and I will admit the faction pins were high quality. I was impressed with the ones I got.
I bought lots of faction dice and they were very poor.
Apologies for the confusion regarding Battlefield Support Packs and whether or not they can be chosen as part of your pledge tiers as a "Forcepack: Mercenaries".
There was confusion and miscommunication behind the lines, as it were, and wires got crossed. We've been informing (and wrote in the last update pre-edit) backers that no, those were not a choice. However, we were wrong. They are, in fact, a part of that choice. The only thing that's not is the Battlefield Support Deck.
Apologies, this has been far more hectic than we could have ever dreamed.
Note on the Battlefield Support: Battle & Fire Lances ForcePack:
Included inside are two Manticore Heavy Tanks, and two Vedette Medium Tanks, along with two LRM Carriers and two SRM Carriers (with enough turrets to make four of either one)—no assembly required—along with eight Battlefield Support cards and eight Alpha Strike cards. Perfect for BattleTech and Alpha Strike action!
by now the only thing that would make sense for me if the crack the larger numbers would be going for translations of the rules (French, German, Spanish version)
Allowing for their ethos so far maybe this is not a correction but a heavy backtrack.
Catalyst were getting greedy because they were getting massive funding without having to offer any tangible pledge rewards over the basic pledge level. So why add value if you get paid anyway?
Meanwhile people were doing the maths.
I had not even realised that vehicles were not included as the 'Support Packs' were listed amongst the 'Force Packs' and there was no clarity on what was acceptable.
What makes it bad is that Support packs were showcased on the pledge levels themselves.
Note on the Battlefield Support: Battle & Fire Lances ForcePack:
Included inside are two Manticore Heavy Tanks, and two Vedette Medium Tanks, along with two LRM Carriers and two SRM Carriers (with enough turrets to make four of either one)—no assembly required—along with eight Battlefield Support cards and eight Alpha Strike cards. Perfect for BattleTech and Alpha Strike action!
I did note a response again denying they would do the double forcepacks request but that they were "hearing the disillusionment" and talking to "upper management"
I think it is going to do just fine and they are going to make bank either way but I guess we shall see - all part of the Kickstarter "fun"
I see little reason for myself to back this, even at the recruit level. As I already have 2 beginner boxes and if I wanted a third I could get one for 20-25 bucks right now as opposed to 35 plus shipping from this KS. I think i'll wait and grab a lot of this stuff when it hits the shelves with the lgs discount later next year.
The veteran level is like a glorified full price pre order. The 4 inch timber wolf is of no use to me and the challenge coin can go in the trash bin. Now if they had put in one of those upscaled redone elemental armors as a shelf piece instead, now that'd be something worth considering.
Well the latest seems to be confusion about import duties, the pledge levels say this will be paid in pledge manager ( so even more expensive than just VAT, Shipping) but there has been some comments about shipping from an EU hub to avoid VAT, (which is illegal, so hope they meant duties).
Edit, just as I posted they confirmed EU/UK duties will be covered by catalyst, but customers have to pay VAT, so standard KS stuff.
Sad. I was really hyped for this KS, first time in years, but they are just pretending value by giving out novelty stuff that I am not interested in. Going just by the miniatures and gameplay components, I am looking at retail + roundabout 20% cost as of now, taking the 275$ pledge.
That is pretty bad.
Luckily there is nothing that could trigger FOMO right now, so maybe I'll stay there or just get a few choice Forcepacks where I fear they might sell out fast in retail.
They also just clearly explained in some update comment, that they will deffinitely not do double-forces.
For a fair deal I would have happily thrown a few hundred bucks at them, but this will be far, far less.
Maybe some PDF supplements at least? Spot on mercenary XYZ? Turning point XYZ? Old stuff even? Pretty Steiner please?
MaleficentRuler wrote: Well the latest seems to be confusion about import duties, the pledge levels say this will be paid in pledge manager ( so even more expensive than just VAT, Shipping) but there has been some comments about shipping from an EU hub to avoid VAT, (which is illegal, so hope they meant duties).
Edit, just as I posted they confirmed EU/UK duties will be covered by catalyst, but customers have to pay VAT, so standard KS stuff.
Well, that settles it, no way I'm gonna go in then.
There are multiple hubs so many regions will not have import tariffs. In this Catalyst has been diligent and deserve some credit.
The hubs listed are USA, Canada, UK, EU, Asia and Australia. We need some clarity on the Asian hub as Asia is not a tariff region.
No import duties does make a massive difference especially as import duties come with fees claimed by the importers. Fed Ex and UPS are notorious for the gouge they add as handling fees for items they are already paid to handle.
However all this melts away because we are paying full retail, in some cases more for the pledge items and that is without VAT on top.
These prices are looking horribly uncompetitive compared to retail, especially as retail is normally discounted and this is full price PLUS 20% extra.
This afternoon I just backed, it is a 28 day run so I could afford to pledge now, work it all out later. The more I work out the less good this deal is. I will keep commenting, when the pledges dwindle I will maker price comparisons and if rthey are still unfavourable petition for double Force Packs. I know they have already talked out those, but it may well be double or nothing.
MaleficentRuler wrote: Well the latest seems to be confusion about import duties, the pledge levels say this will be paid in pledge manager ( so even more expensive than just VAT, Shipping) but there has been some comments about shipping from an EU hub to avoid VAT, (which is illegal, so hope they meant duties).
Edit, just as I posted they confirmed EU/UK duties will be covered by catalyst, but customers have to pay VAT, so standard KS stuff.
Well, that settles it, no way I'm gonna go in then.
Pledge now, at any workable pledge level, to be eligible for the Visigoth, you have 27 more days to work out whether it is worth staying.
You are not committed until the campaign ends.
Because I hate myself, I have been chatting all over, and have mentioned in multiple places that people in the U.S. can get any current non-Exclusive Forcepack for $15 to $26.
CGL is really going to need to move the marker. It's not worth DOUBLE the cost to get it 4 months earlier and so Randall Bills can "support local FLGS" by not undercutting them.
He gets his money either way, he just gets MORE if you use the KS.
TalonZahn wrote: Because I hate myself, I have been chatting all over, and have mentioned in multiple places that people in the U.S. can get any current non-Exclusive Forcepack for $15 to $26.
CGL is really going to need to move the marker. It's not worth DOUBLE the cost to get it 4 months earlier and so Randall Bills can "support local FLGS" by not undercutting them.
He gets his money either way, he just gets MORE if you use the KS.
GW Direct Order Only anyone?
I realize you're having a grand time commenting all over the internet, but we already know that the MSRP of the new packs is going to be higher so the fact that you can get old packs for cheaper plus retailer discount isn't really relevant. If getting the stuff earlier with fun bonuses isn't valuable to you, then wait for retail. The KSFAQ itself says exactly this.
Flinty wrote: Well, they've got a couple of weeks to crash together something to encourage higher spending in the currently pledged bods.
They need to do something. Two of the things I would naturally add - the two map packs - are now free for a certain pledge level... so I have no reason to add funds.
They're not offering 'Mechs from boxed games as separate purchases... so I have no reason to add funds.
They're not offering the newer non-KS force packs as separate purchases... so I have no reason to add funds.
They're not doing T-shirts via the KS... so I have no reason to add funds.
Free fiction doesn't cut it, I'm afraid.
frankelee wrote: So not a snowball's chance in Hell that it makes it to Frosthaven levels.
If by "fun bonuses" you mean throwaway items that sit on a shelf and digital stories you'll read once.... you might need a new definition of "fun" and "bonus".
I guess you can play with your patches and tokens. I'd guess they are sitting in a box somewhere.
Where's the MSRP posted in the FAQ? It's not. But if you look at the Add-On cost on your pledge.... the prices are the same as the current ones. $30 MSRP.
Only the Vehicle ones are $35.
{Edit} Of course the price is relevant, we're literally discussing PPM here.
Overread wrote: Considering they are heading toward $3Million I don't think they are hurting for funding right now
Agreed, but people are fickle. They have leveraged a great deal of community goodwill and excitement for the kick off, but once the euphoria fades, and the 28days start to tick by they need to avoid backers getting cold feet. Amd there is no further road map for people to get excited about. Regardless of whether or not they had already sorted all of the stretch goals, it gave something for people to get excited about. But now there is nothing to stretch for and the pledges are less generous than the previous campaign.
I am by no means an expert in retail, kickstarting or psychology, but surely there are a few red flags kicking in.
For me red flags are companies that overpromise on extras and addons without any game plan or evident proof that they can do what they say they will.
A company not bending over backwards to shower you with free stuff is just, honestly, normal. If anything its a positive in my view because it says that they are playing it safe and want to stick to their deadlines and schedule and production investment plans.
A company just showing extra stuff is a panic and a worry because it means they are increasing their costs but not their profits; that CAN mean that they hit payment issues, cashflow shortages and suffer because of the extended production time due to having so many customers and so much additional content and having so little profit overhead.
I think some firms have a setup that realises that the "golden days" of KS offering so much so cheap have backlashes.
Retail stores dislike it greatly because customers come pre-loaded with super low price expectations; they also buy a glut in the KS and then nothing for retail. If the prices are closer to equal then yes there's less pressure to go for the KS, but people will to be first. However it means that stores aren't being undercut and the market isn't being flooded with cheap stuff as much (which can lurk around on ebay and such for ages).
I do agree that with 29 days it can be a risk (many KS are now only 2 weeks long because that's basically fitting with the high first and last days and having less middle-row thinking and pulling out).
However they've nearly hit 3 million - they'd have to make some serious massive huge errors to see that drop dramatically (that or an outside influence like a global disaster)
I think it's a good thing that they haven't got a list of 100 "stretch goals" that amount to little more than concept art and promise of "We'll make it eventually... I guess!", but what we've got here seems very much the opposite.
"Here's what we made. Keep pledging and we'll unlock pins and other crap."
I don't want pins and other crap. I wasn't something of value.
@Overread - your points make total sense, and I’m just randomly twoodling thoughts at this point as it’s late and I should really go to bed.
I think your logic makes most sense if the campaigns were the other way around. Am I right in thinking that Clan Invasion released 21 new star and Lance packs? And that was against a much less sure backdrop of know.on demand.
Now that they know the demand better, and have proven themselves in Delivering something pretty stretchy, I wonder if they’ve pulled back too far into easy surety.
It might be they've just pulled back to retail instead of wholesale. Again a lot of KS have grown big by basically selling wholesale to customers. However this backfires at times and also can mean that the company just left money on the table
It can also glut the market and sap sales potential in the future.
A healthy company knows KS is a big cash injection, but they also really don't want to rely on that. A good KS for a long running product line generates a cash injection that allows a big investment; but doesn't mean that the next few years see vastly reduced sales as the company relies on those to keep their lights on.
Of course customers will argue and fight for everything they can get and in BIG campaigns you get more people who are "grabby/greedy" who will argue that they need more free things to make it worth backing.
Mature companies should realise that whilst they can agree and adjust things somewhat; they really should stand firm and not give in entirely. Otherwise they are just throwing money after a few when the masses are content.
I also think that we are seeing more KS who are playing it safer. They've had several years of increasing operating and shipping costs; unreliability in the whole system of supply and more. Those are huge things that leave many firms unwilling to make sharp discounts and leave themsleves with no safety net and reduced income and the risk that the KS could end up costing them.
Heck I've seen a few KS who survived only through seeking outside investment in excess of the KS to provide for the KS. Esp over the last few years. Those were often start-up firms who already spent most of the KS money on tooling and moulds and designs and such.
To have hit 3million so fast they've done things right. Could they offer more? Perhaps but if they offer too much it will bite them back and they don't need to bend over backwards. They will get a huge cash injection; a huge marketing boost; a huge boost in active player groups and all that will generate healthy long term sales for them ontop of the KS.
Two of the pluses I see is an earlier delivery than the Clan Invasion Kickstarter (they were still designing 'Mechs and deciding on ForcePacks - sorry if you wanted the Berserker that was announced for and then removed from the Clan Invasion Kickstarter - while the Kickstarter was live) and easier shipping (Loren Coleman has already stated that there will only be one wave for shipping).
Flinty wrote: Well, they've got a couple of weeks to crash together something to encourage higher spending in the currently pledged bods.
They need to do something. Two of the things I would naturally add - the two map packs - are now free for a certain pledge level... so I have no reason to add funds.
They're not offering 'Mechs from boxed games as separate purchases... so I have no reason to add funds.
They're not offering the newer non-KS force packs as separate purchases... so I have no reason to add funds.
They're not doing T-shirts via the KS... so I have no reason to add funds.
Free fiction doesn't cut it, I'm afraid.
frankelee wrote: So not a snowball's chance in Hell that it makes it to Frosthaven levels.
Does that matter?
For those of us following the conversation, that was mentioned as an opening day comp. So... YEAH.
I think Catalyst have quite a success on their hands, but it's going to stall out Trudvang style, complete with people in the comment section shouting, "WE ARE BATTLETECH: MERCENARIES BY CATALYST GAMES!!!" I think when you've got an audience willing to throw an interest free loan at you, with a window of 2 to 4 years to get back to them, you don't screw that up by playing games. Play games at the table, not with your finances Loren. But that's just me.
TalonZahn wrote: Because I hate myself, I have been chatting all over, and have mentioned in multiple places that people in the U.S. can get any current non-Exclusive Forcepack for $15 to $26.
CGL is really going to need to move the marker. It's not worth DOUBLE the cost to get it 4 months earlier and so Randall Bills can "support local FLGS" by not undercutting them.
He gets his money either way, he just gets MORE if you use the KS.
Keep it up. The last thing we want is a veneer of complacency because Catalyst threw us a bone and begrudingly gave higher tier backers a few free mechs.
Yes it sounds ungrateful to want more after the 3 million mark stretchgoal reveal, but that is so far under what we should be getting.
Isn't it just. Yesterday I thought of the 4" mech and compared it in size and price to the new release IG Sentinel. Very similar in size, and identical in 'value'. $45 GW full price retail.
Keeping step with Games Workshop on model prices is not a good sign in my opinion.
Orlanth wrote: I do not understand your comment, please clarify.
There are 12 force packs. If you're at the pledge level that has all 12, what value prospects does adding a 13th give you?
There are IIRC 14 total. Even so unless you want a wall collection for some reason I suspect most backers, especially those in at Regiment will want duplicates. Also as the vehicle sets also have inherent duplication I do not see the logic behind your point.
I for one have long preplanned what packs I want and was waiting for the KS to show me the prices. This includes multiples of some packs and non of others. I don't think that will be unusual, in fact I think most backers will be lobsided buyers, buying the assets they like to play for the faction they want to collect.
Overread wrote: Considering they are heading toward $3Million I don't think they are hurting for funding right now
Agreed, but people are fickle. They have leveraged a great deal of community goodwill and excitement for the kick off, but once the euphoria fades, and the 28days start to tick by they need to avoid backers getting cold feet. Amd there is no further road map for people to get excited about. Regardless of whether or not they had already sorted all of the stretch goals, it gave something for people to get excited about. But now there is nothing to stretch for and the pledges are less generous than the previous campaign.
I am by no means an expert in retail, kickstarting or psychology, but surely there are a few red flags kicking in.
From observation, very few people back out of the project unless they suspect it is a scam.
Catalyst may be counting on keeping the lions share of what is already pledged,. people are yet to realise that there is no deal here, just paying well in advance for overpriced minis.
Overread wrote: For me red flags are companies that overpromise on extras and addons without any game plan or evident proof that they can do what they say they will.
A company not bending over backwards to shower you with free stuff is just, honestly, normal. If anything its a positive in my view because it says that they are playing it safe and want to stick to their deadlines and schedule and production investment plans.
False analogy. Companies not bending over backwards to offer free stuff are not doing so because they are retailers and you come into the door or onto their website.
We are backers, paying in advance and without the normal retail monetary safeguards.
Damn right we want a kickback.
A company just showing extra stuff is a panic and a worry because it means they are increasing their costs but not their profits; that CAN mean that they hit payment issues, cashflow shortages and suffer because of the extended production time due to having so many customers and so much additional content and having so little profit overhead.
Some companies do overreach, Catalyst did as do a lot of miniatures companies. Archon offers way too many stretchgoals and got ito trouble with it. Catalyst didn't suffer for going double, they suffered insrtead because of the canon character brainfart and the massive logistical headache is caused.
Free stuff that is already intended for production is not a problem, it becomes a problem if you have to sculpt and produce it and find you need to include massive quantities of bonus boxsets which are inconvenient as a follow up retail product. This is what caused Archon problems. Double force packs is not the same. There is zero extra sculpting and tooling for free stuff that is additional copies of intended content. As these are plasdtic production runs are very cheap, it costs pennies to make the mechs, the cost are in tooling and change of production runs. Once a tool is in the press it costs marginally more to make 2000 Atlases than it costs to make 400.
Furthermore all production in a pledge campaign comes with the advance knowledge of how many of each item you need to make, and gives valid marketing data of which lines will retail well afterwards.
The campaigns that do well offer stretchgoals and incentives and make those stretchgoals reasonable.
Catalyst are trying to be wise and efficient but are instead going cheap and sleazy.
The first million in stretchgoals were 'unlocks' of product that was teased months ago and was long known to be in the project. It smacks of dishonesty to make those unlocks. Catalyst have already actioned the tooling; so cut the BS please.
I have a low opinion of market hype combo-d with bad deals on pricing. You feel like you are being rolled by a used car salesman and just being there makes you a sucker.
I could go for a company of Battalion pledge, I like my Battletech. But I would be too embarrassed with this campaign to turn up at a Con with a 'VIP' invite and be the guy (one of 40) who dumped $5K on 28 boxsets and a few gimics. And Catalyst are too cheap to even give you a full star of 4" Timber Wolves for doing so.
I think some firms have a setup that realises that the "golden days" of KS offering so much so cheap have backlashes.
Retail stores dislike it greatly because customers come pre-loaded with super low price expectations; they also buy a glut in the KS and then nothing for retail. If the prices are closer to equal then yes there's less pressure to go for the KS, but people will to be first. However it means that stores aren't being undercut and the market isn't being flooded with cheap stuff as much (which can lurk around on ebay and such for ages).
The golden age is over because of increased occurrance of scams, and the fact that the economy is worse now than during and before Covid. It is especially bad now. Catalyst are unlucky to be launching now at the cusp of a banking collapse. They started a 28 day clock when the bank collapses are picking up steam and going international.
I do agree that with 29 days it can be a risk (many KS are now only 2 weeks long because that's basically fitting with the high first and last days and having less middle-row thinking and pulling out).
However they've nearly hit 3 million - they'd have to make some serious massive huge errors to see that drop dramatically (that or an outside influence like a global disaster)
I don’t really think it will drop much, but the question must be, how to entice some of the 3500 Company levels (where I am sitting at) to go to battalion?
Or how much is it useful for them to get half of the veterans to bump up to company for a quick 100k bump in revenue.
Don't forget a lot of people will not back until the last day to "see everything" and also because that's the day they get charged. Same for many upgrading. Many will drop a pledge and wander away and won't pay attention nor keep up until KS emails them in the last few days.
Plus don't forget the post-KS period. A lot of money can be gathered in then from people who don't have money today but who take the cheapest pledge and add later ;and those who are fully committed who are spent up now and add more later.
Orlanth wrote: The first million in stretchgoals were 'unlocks' of product that was teased months ago and was long known to be in the project. It smacks of dishonesty to make those unlocks. Catalyst have already actioned the tooling; so cut the BS please.
Yeah I hate stretch goals like that. They remind me of those Achievements they put into video games that you get for completing the tutorial and the first level or acquiring your first weapon - things that are essentially unavoidable and are no more an "achievement" than loading the game.
You should post this (or a version of all that) to the KS comments. Just avoid uses of words like 'sleazy' because they'll just use that as an excuse to call you "toxic" and ignore what you're saying.
Overread wrote: Don't forget a lot of people will not back until the last day to "see everything" and also because that's the day they get charged.
They showed off almost everything prior to the KS starting. That's why the initial unlocks are so stupid. They're things that they were going to sell anyway and are already in production. There was no doubt to their existence. They're not something added to entice us to pledge. They're something that was already part of this from its inception.
A 4" Mad Cat that virtually no one cares about and some rando pins or patches for merc companies are not enough to get people on board. They have to start adding value.
Orlanth wrote: I for one have long preplanned what packs I want and was waiting for the KS to show me the prices. This includes multiples of some packs and non of others. I don't think that will be unusual, in fact I think most backers will be lobsided buyers, buying the assets they like to play for the faction they want to collect.
Yeah fair enough. I have a weird hang-up with duplicate unique miniatures - not just in BTech, I have a spare Cadian Sergeant and Flamer that a friend gave me over a decade ago and simply owning them drives me crazy... it's an OCD thing - so I hadn't really considered that someone would actual want multiples of a force pack. That and I already own sometimes up to 7 of each type of 'Mech already, and don't really need a 6th Hermes II or Clint.
To have hit 3million so fast they've done things right.
Yes. For example, the Clan Invasion kickstarter, where backers were presented with the opportunity to get great value in exchange for their early support.
Tbh large parts of your posts read as bluster, my friend. Like I can see that you fancy yourself a kickstarterologist, and probably have a lot of experience with the platform and various campaigns of differing sizes and scopes... few of which seem to be relevant to this situation. As people have pointed out, CGL had all of the (most important) products ready to go for this KS. They don't actually need any funding. If Kickstarter, the company, had gone bankrupt on March 20, Catalyst's product line over the next few years would likely be unchanged, other than that some releases would trickle out instead of launching at the same time.
I'm just upset, one of MANY, that the value just isn't there.
Hell, I don't even want double Forcepacks, I'd settle for KS Exclusives, alt sculpts, even .5 more Forcepacks, maps, big discounts on non-KS Add-ons, SOMETHING.... anything that adds value that isn't a cheap token or patch that gets tossed in a drawer or a digital (read once) E-Book.
If their *Big Sell* is that you get your toys at retail 4 months before everyone else, that's bad business.
Most of the people backing already have the vehicles, in metal, at home right now.
Many of them will just wait to get the packs for, up to 50%, less at retail and not have to pay for S&H, VAT, whatever else.
I want it to succeed, but not at the cost of the people pushing it.
I'd like to be able to fill my own lances. A veritable nightmare, I know.
Maybe one day I'll be able to do it through IWM, but I need more Wasps, and Stingers in my life than I do heavier designs.
So at the moment double packs or not I'm going to stay at the company level, and add the limited run box. Maybe even create a second KS account to double dip on the big boxes if the buddies want to join.
M.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Was I dreaming or didn't we were told that mechs from TRO 3055 would be in this KS because I don't see any IS.
A pack with mechs like wasps and stingers with alternate poses would be nice. Imagine a box with a Valkyrie with alternate pose, 2x wasp and 2x stinger. Valkyrie was like the conventional baseline light mech of the AFFC, need more of that one!
Most of the people backing already have the vehicles, in metal, at home right now.
Just picking one part of that as I am keen to find out why you think this?
Consdiering the groundswell of players that have come from the past kickstarter, what makes you think that the majoirty of people have these vehicles in metal?
I am basing it on my local situation but majority are new players who are keen for the opportunities to build up for the first time and are looking to see how it ends up.
Definitely will be looking at the value at the end and would always prefer more than less but wanted to see if I was missing anything specific that was known or if you were basing it on your own local experience as well where your opponents are long in the tooth grognards whith deep collections?
Most of the people backing already have the vehicles, in metal, at home right now.
Just picking one part of that as I am keen to find out why you think this?
Consdiering the groundswell of players that have come from the past kickstarter, what makes you think that the majoirty of people have these vehicles in metal?
I am basing it on my local situation but majority are new players who are keen for the opportunities to build up for the first time and are looking to see how it ends up.
Definitely will be looking at the value at the end and would always prefer more than less but wanted to see if I was missing anything specific that was known or if you were basing it on your own local experience as well where your opponents are long in the tooth grognards whith deep collections?
I have no local situation anymore, lol
However, I would base it off a few things;
Vehicles aren't new, they have been around forever in metal and are still widely available from new to used.
BT has a secondhand market that rivals GW secondhand and it's more centralized.
Battletech is FAR more friendly to proxies and 3d printing.
The amount of new fans (since the last KS) is probably outnumbered 2 to 1 by long time players. Sure, I pulled that out my ass, but who do you think carried the last KS? Long time fans/players.
I'm a psycho like HBMC and have triple digit numbers of BT vehicles.
TalonZahn wrote: @Orlanth - Can't tell if that's sarcasm or not.
The 'keep it up'. No, not sarcasm at all. People are commenting here that you are making Catalyst uncomfortable with home truths on their stingy stretchgoals there. I consider that good work.
If we are to get any value out of this we will have to out-type the fanbois. This may be a thankless task.
Catalyst are replying to every fawning message in the comments section and it is reinforcing them. If these same people were aware they are talking themselves out of free stuff they might actually stop.
Hell, I don't even want double Forcepacks, I'd settle for KS Exclusives, alt sculpts, even .5 more Forcepacks, maps, big discounts on non-KS Add-ons, SOMETHING.... anything that adds value that isn't a cheap token or patch that gets tossed in a drawer or a digital (read once) E-Book.
I think Catalyst are looking for a fast turn around this time. They have already done all the sculpts, in Clan Invasion they added mechs on the fly and sculpted them later. They have pre-loaded everything, with some fake unlocks to parse it out, for fifteen minutes. It is amateur and greedy in equal measure.
Point being they will not want any extra work like new sculpts. Now I am not accusing Catalyst of being lazy here, instead I think they want to presell us out mechs, shovel out a little bit of tat and as much digital tat as possible to give the illusion of a deal.
The good news is that we will not have to wait anything as long as Clan Invasion, which better for us and better for them, but we are unlikely to get actual genuine stretchgoals.
Nowe I could be wrong, its sales (I cant really call therm pledges at this point) soar they might make production promises add new stuff and make us actual backers rather than retail customers without the rights.
My strategy is to make a few comments here for now, which is fuelling ideas for others to copy paste and arguments to bolster existing complaints.
I commented once early in the day and again once when the only forcepack freebie was announced. I dont want to over do it right now. The problem with Kickstarter is the forums is deliberately flat so it acts only as a peanut gallery. If you want to get Catalyst to listen post on the CBT forums. I will be doing this later.
I already have posted my slogan 'double or nothing'. I am of the opinion that pricing is so uncompetitive that unless double force packs are agreed there is no point in making any pledge higher than Veteran or at most Company. I want to give it a week so the comments section is quieter so people actually get to read comments.
I will not encourage people to cancel pledges, Catalyst don't deserve that, but if enough people threaten to downgrade unless backers get a better deal that retail we might get Catalyst to listen,
The clincher here is to separate backing from retail, too many people think it is the same. It is not. Kickstarter is itself clear on this at every pledge confirmation. There are risks there are reduced consumer rights, so there must be genuine compensatory benefits, and receipt of product four months early just doesn't cut it.
I backed quickly due to how excited I was, and then fairly soon after realized the value is not there. I am not giving them a loan for 14 months at full MSRP when the stuff is coming to retail anyway. Not a chance.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Yeah I'm not sure most people would have vast swathes of vehicles at home already.
I mean, I do, got close to 200 of the damned things, but I'm also crazy.
But if you end up with a second Ostscout, but only tell yourself need one, you get a sudden twitch and cant sleep for weeks?
We all get some form of hobby OCD, for me its making sure I have every paint in a set. I get a tad angsty when GW increase their range, it means more paints in colours I likely will never use.
That being said I have an impressive collection of SRM carriers. My local clan player believes Clan ERPPCs with targeting computers are fair but strongly dislikes my SRM60. He loves his Warhawk Prime and Blood Asp A too much, so I played in cities with Hetzers and SRM carriers lurking behind hi-rises. Backed up with LRM carriers with Thunder. He has kittens over this, so I bought another twelve.
I put in a pledge. But unless something changes drastically I plan to cancel in the last two days.
Currently this KS works out for Catalyst. Who make more than retail on product they would normally sell to distributors who then sell it to the retailer, who then sell it to the customers and everyone makes a profit along the way. Added to that they are getting the money a year and half in advance... And lets not even talk about shipping. Which most of us wouldn't pay because we would purchase at a local store, or hit the free shipping threshold from an online discounter.
The excuse is that they don't want to hurt local stores? Looks more like wanting to pad their pockets to me.
Ghaz wrote: Two of the pluses I see is an earlier delivery than the Clan Invasion Kickstarter (they were still designing 'Mechs and deciding on ForcePacks - sorry if you wanted the Berserker that was announced for and then removed from the Clan Invasion Kickstarter - while the Kickstarter was live) and easier shipping (Loren Coleman has already stated that there will only be one wave for shipping).
Aww man I love the Berserker and had hoped it would have been announced later in this campaign. I didn't know it was pulled from the Clan Invasion KS.
“if you are asking yourself why is the value of the ForcePacks basically MSRP, if you don't care about the swag, that is by design. If you wish to wait and purchase them from your local game store, awesome.”
From the KSFAQ,
The clincher here is to separate backing from retail, too many people think it is the same. It is not. Kickstarter is itself clear on this at every pledge confirmation. There are risks there are reduced consumer rights, so there must be genuine compensatory benefits, and receipt of product four months early just doesn't cut it.
-show in places (goodbye terrible and awkward canon characters, may ye never return).
