Jerram wrote: Any plans to make the wolves available separately for those of us getting starter armies ?
Depends if the other starter armies we have planned for get unlocked or not.
Maybe I'm missing something but why would unlocking other starters effect providing an addon for models you are already offering as part of the raiding party ? Or is that just your way of saying be patient you have a plan. Course I'm hoping the bear cavalry are one of those two add on stretch goals between now and 60k. A man can dream cant he.
@Jerram
We have done our homework quite some time now and before launching we had created 3 different plans that are all financially viable and will/should allow things to keep on rolling without stopping, thus ensuring a great campaign for all!
I realise you will be ultra busy but where is the best place to send any noted errors etc- eg: p4, last paragraph, 8th line - coltivate should be cultivate I think.
I realise you will be ultra busy but where is the best place to send any noted errors etc- eg: p4, last paragraph, 8th line - coltivate should be cultivate I think.
I'm on the fence about this one. It's a great deal, but I'd like to see what's in the stretch-goal pipeline before committing.
I'm another that isn't a fan of the hair that's waving in the breeze- how difficult would it be to do separate resin heads that those in my boat could purchase as add-ons? It seems pretty clear that the current aesthetic won't change, so something supplementary could work?
We are reading the comments but we can't commence making changes when people who have already pledged their hard earned money have been shown these designs instead. Having accusations we altered what we initially portrayed is the last thing we would like to see.
At best we can have an extra stretch goal created for additional heads. Still a long way to go however, plenty of time left.
Still pledging, and maybe even a huge chunk. I donĀ“t really like the skullmasks with more of the fluttering "schampoo and conditioner" -hair but the rest of the new models look nice.
I would absolutely love a cheap add-on for fierce short haired and more warriorlike heads tough! And maybe resin helmets + hair that could be added after trimming away the super hair from the existing heads? The facial features seem really good so would not need to be wasted. :-)
Looking at their art, I'd expect at least one spiky mohawk, and Angelos seemed receptive to my "several Lagertha-style haircuts" suggestion, so I'd imagine that there should be at least some on-sprue that you'll be happy with.
I think a nice mix of fluttering hair and other hairstyles is best. Not the biggest fan of everything blown to the side myself.
You haven't advertised the maidens with a big "all hair looks.like this" disclaimer, as long as the hairstyles shown sre featured along mowhawks, sidecuts, braids everyone should be happy. Less hair volume overall means more space for bits on the sprues, too.
Edit: More detailed. The maiden with the morning star has braids and long hair, it look great. Maiden with the double-edged sword has sidecut, veeery cool. Spearlady looks okay because a lock of hair falls over her face. The fourth maiden looks pretty boring in comparison because het hair is again being blown to her left side but she has nothing to differentiate it from the rest of the other hairdos. It looks lrss finished, so maybe it is unfair to conpare it to the rest, but IMO it'd look better if it was for example streaming back instead of to the side. Gusts of battlefield.winds can't be THAT uniform
As long as they all blow in the same direction.....and any banner that they may have goes the same direction, then its alright with me. I don't want a star trek moment happening where half the crew moves right and the other half goes left during an impact.
A great book with great concept artwork for the game itself is necessary and part of this project and -while often neglected- we support artists & editors and consider them necessary for "War is Coming"!
Maybe make the bits box something people can opt out of in the survey - seems like it will add a lot to your international shipping costs, so if folks are already set for bits boxes that would help the cause.
Good point - in their first Kickstarter they put minis in retail packaging to keep them from breaking, but if including this box they could keep them safe without that!
The number of free things makes me a little nervous, but it's good that the next plastic kit isn't until 60K, as that seems reasonable.
Azazelx wrote: Putting resin models into the Bits Box is a great idea.
A bunch of stuff from the first kickstarter arrived in those boxes - they're small and basically the resin figures were split into different compartments for each unique piece.
Just saw in my email that SW have cancelled the project. Very disappointing, as the shieldmaidens were well funded.
Did I read this right?! :-(
Yes, I'm afraid you did. After an 8-hour long discussion here at Shieldwolf HQ, and after each member debated their own, we took a decision and it was unanimous;
"If such a great part of potential backers thinks the deal has not been good enough to jump right on, then we really don't know what else is going to entice them and it's not really worth the trouble keeping the campaign running. Cancel it, fix it, and re-launch."
This is *not* a rage-quitting decision, quite the opposite! A very painful one I'd dare say.
Please try to immagine how much work we ahve put into this, how much time, thinking dedicated, and how happy we were when we got funded! People over here were high-fiving each other shouting "Real quality army gaming isn't dead! Real quality army gaming isn't dead!", and not only did we have a great deal from the start, for every plastic kit we funded we would throw even more, therefore it was only going to get better! Alas, it was not.
Campaign stalled (even backslided a bit) on the 7th day?! On a 30-day project? NO! No, no, no we've been through that on our KS-1, and we had said ever since "never again". It is painful and not easy to describe if you haven't lived through it. It's definitely *not* like someone wrote on a forum "when you go out there and beg for money", heck, we are not begging for anything, we are offering a great honest deal here! Watching this get stuck at the 40K mark, backslide, people tossing away Early Birds... no, we are not willing to go through another one of these, we have done so once, and it's really to much to bear it a second time...
Yeah, but what if things picked up? Or if you tossed some add-ons?
Things should have never stopped in the first place, the reason for this happening is beyond us. And even if we open the "allow-access-to-some-of-our-webstore-items" door, it's only going to help maybe reach the 2nd plastic kit. If backers don't see the initial value, they would see it then?! Nah, highly doubt that. But for arguments sake, even if so, then what? We also have stretch goals of 25-30K gaps, what would be done there?
Effectively...Nothing! Even with a few add-ons to spare, what would 9-15$ add-ons help at? Add 1-2Ks of funding? Everything seems black...
What were the mistakes?
We still don't know all of them, it is fair to disclose that we have been private talking with a number of you and it comes to a combination of factors.
- We hadn't communicated the real value; some people came in thinking the best mammoth currently available worldwide was a... 50$ add-on?! I'm sorry to say this but 50$ doesn't even cover the production expenses, let alone fees and packaging materials.
Or people thinking a 2,5K stretch goal could possibly ever be for a unit of bears w/riders? :-(
That would be three different sculpts, on 75x50mm bases + 3 different riders + alternative bits... yeah, more like a 10K SG I'd say...
- We didn't allow enough flexibility in the initial pledges not because we didn't want to go the extra mile, but because we sincerely couldn't!
Many many people messaged us saying "I would love to back for a campaign army, but I don't want the Dragon. What else do I get?" When we explained that we didn't have the manpower to handle switches while securing same costs, all these people (and there have been plenty that asked us this question both here, on email and FB page!) were never heard from again :-(
We were thinking to ourselves "well if you don't want the dragon, then sell it or gift it or throw it away or whatever, the rest is still great value!" but that was us, not them. Therefore the mistake is (again) charged on our tab...
- No knowledge from professionals on crowdfunding platforms; while in our honest and humble opinion we commissioned great artwork, great sculptors, great graphics and great painters, we never hired an expert on crowdfunding lay-out. Apparently we should have done that too...
But couldn't you just keep on going with the current backers and see where this lead instead of cancelling the project?
No. Instead of doing what we wanted to in our KS-1 (where we opted for 5 armies at a single campaign), we decided to take it one step at a time, funding two full/complete armies in every KS and launching a single project every 12-14 months, so after a few years we could have a complete game!
If in this KS-2 we sufficed in only a couple of kits (when the competition funds 5-6 times over using the same platform), then it's a contest we are hopelessly entering to lose. We feel like we asked for support and we are very grateful to those of you that gave it to us, more than you can imagine maybe, but we feel like we are holding a knife, and the opponent gets to choose which type of assault rifle he's getting... :-(
So trying to put things into place...
we would be putting so much more of our own funds into this,
we would have to work for an entire year labor-free to keep costs low,
we would have to keep on monitoring all forums, threads etc to keep contact
we would have to keep communication levels the same as KS-1, thus having to constantly check on a daily basis and take up the responsibility and risk the name and reputation of Shieldwolf
we would make sure all backers received a great deal for their involvement, faith and patience, trying to make this a really great experience
and we would be honestly willing to do all this but we would still not get at least a couple of full kitted armies....?
Yeah, that doesn't sound right... :-(
It means a lot to us and we are willing to wait for years but with this pace it would take decades, so as hard as it is for us, it's best cancelling it and relaunching. This has been a very very difficult decision for us to take. But we are doing something wrong, and we have to fix it...
Finally, a big last THANK YOU
Thank you for the trust and enthusiasm you shared with us not only during the days this project was live, but also prior to it, since many of you were on our KS-1 and it was a great honor seeing you back with us.
We know some (probably most) of you might not like this update, maybe feeling we threw in the towel too early and stuff like that, but please try standing in our shoes and seeing it from our perspective.
Hopefully you will like what we try to do in the future and support it again, just like you supported us on this endevour. We too are gamers and hope in the spirit of this genre of gaming that things will work out to everyone's benefit :-)
Sincerely yours,
The Shieldwolf Team.
It's a shame -- I was very happy with what I was getting, even sans stretch goals. But I'll stick around and see what happens next, and very probably pledge.
Reading through the update more thoroughly, it seems they really did cancel because they wanted to fund multiple plastic kits.
I think funding just the one (maybe two by the end!) kit would have made for an incredible campaign. It also seems like you had everything needed to do this. There's nothing wrong with making single armies at a time...
I know there's a long delay for tooling where you wouldn't be able to run another campaign (but maybe folks wouldn't mind if you did, if running multiple smaller campaigns and able to show the tooling in-process?). But 40k with lots of time left seemed plenty for the one kit, and it would show your skill. I think you should relaunch quickly and just focus on one or two kits!
Campaigns slow down towards the middle. It happens. No need to restart the whole thing!
Also, if the value is really good and people still aren't backing, that's not a problem with what is being offered, it is a problem with marketing and possibly timing.
Not many people have heard of the company, or the KS, I only noticed the Ks 2 days ago.
Also, it's January, most people don't have much money left.
Does seem more like a case of the stretch goal amounts just not being enough to fund the KS.
If I had any recommendations for the re-launch it would be to really focus on a *single* army, with the base pledge being as much hard plastic as you can fit in there + a few resin characters.
Also, you can replace kits rather than add them as you make the campaign if you want to make it great value from the start.
For example, the base $100 pledge could be 120 plastic "Infantry models" + 3 resin characters. People can see the value there right away, and put money down for that. All 120 of the infantry would be shieldmaidens to start with.
Then, for the $60k stretch goal, replace 40 of the shieldmaidens with warmaidens, leaving every backer with 80 basic infantry, 40 elite infantry and 3 characters, a very solid army.
All of the other resin monsters, dragons, mammoths and things can be add-ons.
If a plastic kit needs $30k, and that's what you need, be clear about that and really focus on it.
Or, if you really want to simply do a campaign with a $60k goal for a single army with 2 plastic kits, make that as the starting goal, load it up with a ton of minis in the base pledge, plenty of add-on options to choose from and leave it there, once it hits $60k don't worry too much about stretch goals.
Replacing rather than adding kits is a very good idea!
I also think doing a single army is a good idea. I was watching for orcs but they weren't going to get something until after 60k I think, so probably best to just focus on shieldmaidens. It worked really well for Raging Heroes!
Hope you try again and take some of this onboard to tailor the offerings. In your update you mention the dragon being asked about, which makes sense, too. Having the base pledges just be awesome plastic (maybe a few resin characters) with other beasts from your webstore as add-ons would make it simple and obvious value - I didn't realize the "Army II" option that had this was something you could choose with a standard pledge until looking at the page several times.
But overall, I think it did well... some simplification and marketing could help, but if you launched again next week just for shieldmaidens, I think you'd do great!
Well hopefully this helps them get some more attention to their next campaign. Showing that they are listening will help too. Maybe some tweaks to the hair on the shield maidens, or a separate sprue for alternate heads will help things along further.
Maybe the next time around I'll have the cash to join in.
Also I think a Resin Monster pledge could help out. I don't need more orcs (yeah right), but I could use a mammoth and a Wyvern. The Dragon is not my cup of tea either, so either make the big ugly an add-on, or give it a separate pledge level where you make money off of it and then people can add-on the plastic infantry.
so pledges could be set up as
Big bucket of plastics (all new plastics with best overall value, no add-ons at this level) easy man-power saving for them as this pledge is x boxes of kit 1, x boxes of kit 2 done +shipping (like dungeon saga core box A
A-la-carte plastics (Selection of new kits at a great price, but add-ons are a little bit more than the above) helps them get funding, but also caters to the crowd that wants a specific army goal and affords them the extra labor costs of pulling a special order.
Resin Beasties (Just big models for people who missed the first Kickstarter) value at better than their website costs, but still not as good as the first KS so those backers have something to brag about. No add-ons , this would allow for easy to pull orders, and would just allow for getting some more value out of previous kits. (Could ship quicker and free up warehouse space, also gives them something to do while waiting for kits to get manufactured.
If people want the first and third option (or any two options) then they need to have two different pledges.
Well, that's disappointing. I feel like they had high expectations that were unlikely to be met. Pity, I was looking forward the models eventually.
I'm of the same mind as the others. Have it set up so that you can run a campaign for the one army, Sheild Maidens. Essentially work to fund 3 Kits. Personally I think they should be Standard (which includes 2 hws, hw & shield, spear & shield), Heavy (Heavy armor, 2 Handed Weapon, Hand Weapon, Sheild), and Skirmish (Light armor, various ranged weapons).
Once that one is completed and tooling is underway then you can do the Orcs separately. I was actually interested in the Valley Orcs because I like orcs in heavier armor vs. the GW leather armor or the mountain naked/savage orc style.
Personally I'm leery of KS's that has too many options and stretchgoals. It tend to lead to problems and vastly delayed deliveries.
I'd reccomend running a simple campaign to fund the basic plastic regiment. Have the goal be what you actually need in order to produce it and have addons ready for if you do exeed that.
It's tempting to run a KS with artificially low goals to get people to flock to the campaign and unlock stretch goals but then you're not using it as a funding platform but as a advertising system. Such tactics are best left to bigger companies like CMON who don't actually need the KS money to get the product out.
I want more clarity on the plastic kits themselves the next time. I blind backed this, but every csmpaign boils down to people wanting pics next to rulers, scale bitching, etc. Best to nip this in the bud and offer it right from the beginning. A campaign about a plastic kit should state possible amount of different sprues, parts per sprue, options, etc. The existing Orc sprues should've been shown as exapmles and proof and advertisement. My KS comment was longer' but I think more people would've backed if the $ per mini was advertised more aggressively, the kit(s) described more detailed and more and more useful pictures shown.
And, possibly, one of the multiple maiden kits should maybe be full of bikini armour, as sad as this sounds. Maybe the Warmaidens, explain it away with magic demon- warding scars and tattoos and stuff, make $$$ of people into that stuff.
Yeah, I'm getting the impression that they were expecting much more than is/was realistic. The stuff about competitors and knife to a gunfight is a bit silly. SW isn't in competition with Mantic, and Mantic certainly isn't in competition with SW! Without being rude, I doubt that SW is even on Mantic's radar, and I can't think of any other "competitors" really in the same space. Mierce? Different Ballgame. CMON? Even more different. Mantic took a fair few years to get to the point where they are now, and really, they took a fair few years to get to the point where they were with their first KS. KoW has a solid following at this point in time, and their last KS was before AoS killed WHFB with a solid enough following and more than a few campaigns under their belts.
Even so, with a successful game in 1.5 edition and a dedicated following for both the game and their company - In Mantic's second KoWKS, they they only took in $366k before the pledge manager and funded a total of what? four HIPS kits? Abyssals, Succubi, Lizardmen, Naiads. Many of the resins and metals were already sculpted/in progress and were pretty much part of their normal business. To have funded in three(?) days and have taken in more than 10% of Mantic's KoW2 total in a week is actually pretty good. If you were expecting $150 or $200k, I'd suggest those to be unrealistic goals. $60k would have been pretty good for funding two kits (or 1.5 kits) and anything more would have been amazing.
While I was happy enough to back with only the base-level pledge on offer and would have been quite satisfied to get to 60k, the stretch goals weren't especially helpful. To be blunt, no-one really cares about a bits box - especially one that's 10 months away when they can and do buy similar from the local hardware store for a couple of dollars, and they care even less for a PDF with art and background (as a "stretch goal" anyway..) Lowering the $60k reward to one bonus box instead of two, but offering it to everyone and perhaps offering a single sprue per $5k or $7.5k to every backer in the interim would have been more attractive to people who are just there for the figures - which frankly is going to be most of the backers and pretty much all of the backers coming on board after the initial surge. I can absolutely see how Orc backers who were hoping for more would have felt put out when the SM backers were potentially getting so much more for essentially the same financial commitment. A $30k or $27.5k gap between (meaningful) stretch goals for a campaign from a company the size of Shieldwolf may as well just say "that's it for the stretch goals, guys." They need to be both achievable and meaningful in order to build and maintain momentum. They were achievable but not meaningful, and the ones that were known about may have served to alienate up to half of your backers - and potential backers (the Orcs).
To elaborate on the PDF not being meaningful as a stretch goal - At this point people have no investment in the game that may or may not come out at some unspecified time in the future. Dreamforge is supposed to have a game. Their KS ended in 2012 and finished delivering a year or more ago. Mierce who have been pretty successful in their many KS campaigns was supposed to have a game out a year or two ago by now. Tre Manor from Red Box has been talking about his game for the past 3-4 years. Basically, until it comes out, anyone's game is tarred with the same brush. Big fans/supporters will care, but no-one else will. The people who will care almost all backed on Day 1, so it's not something that's going to draw in additional backers.
To revisit Mantic again, they got their $355k by offering up pretty much everything in their back catalogue, which has a lot more depth than SW does.
10 different mega-starter armies
10 different starter armies
7 different army boosters
It took all this to fund the book ($25k) and four kits. They only funded four HIPS kits from $355k + PM monies.
Shieldwolf has one army/one HIPS kit in the existing catalogue really - Orcs. Two if we count(ed) the Shieldmaidens. You had one HIPS kit funded pretty safely and were well on target for a second.
There's also a bit of a problem setting the goal for $30k and then cancelling it a week in having achieved $40k, or 33% over. I imagine that a few bridges have just been burned there and certainly impacts on trust in terms of the next campaign. It kind of makes the initial pledge target as well as everything we saw into worse than "fake stretch goals" but "fake targets" instead. Was the actual target $80k? $100? $150? $200? Whatever it was, backers will now have uncertainty about whether a future funding target is a real one, and others will have enough of a bad taste on their mouth to skip it entirely.
I don't know how much the banner ad art helped or didn't, but I personally found it to be sub-par. It looks like late-80's-early '90's RPG art, and I feel like I could probably do something better. I'm a decent painter and I can draw pretty well too, but I absolutely shouldn't ever feel like I can do better than the art that a professional company puts front and centre in 2015. The art should make me feel like a kindergartener.. there's a ton of great artists on Deviantart. I assume that more was expected from the advertising on Beasts of War as well, but that's out of all of our hands. Perhaps sending them an Orc or Mammoth kits (or both) or even 3-d printing them some prototypes or 3-ups of the Shieldmaidens to play with would get "media" like that more engaged with the product to talk about the Kickstarter instead of leaving it as a footnote of "Kickstarters starting this weekend".
Anyway this is a bit rambling. I'd PM it, but I think the open discussion here is probably more useful as people can agree or disagree with my various points.
Azazelx wrote: To be blunt, no-one really cares about a bits box - especially one that's 10 months away when they can and do buy similar from the local hardware store for a couple of dollars, and they care even less for a PDF with art and background (as a "stretch goal" anyway..)
I was an EB backer and pretty much this. I also found the page layout terrible. When I give up trying to find what the stretch goals are and resort to posting asking about them, the page needs work. Ive backed a lot of KS projects.
There's also a bit of a problem setting the goal for $30k and then cancelling it a week in having achieved $40k, or 33% over. I imagine that a few bridges have just been burned there and certainly impacts on trust in terms of the next campaign. It kind of makes the initial pledge target as well as everything we saw into worse than "fake stretch goals" but "fake targets" instead. Was the actual target $80k? $100? $150? $200? Whatever it was, backers will now have uncertainty about whether a future funding target is a real one, and others will have enough of a bad taste on their mouth to skip it entirely.
So much this. Cancelling after funding because you didn't explode like some of the banner miniature Kickstarters (that, incidentally, had way more breadth than yours) seems super disingenuous. I'm curious what your true goal was.
Binabik15 wrote: I want more clarity on the plastic kits themselves the next time. I blind backed this, but every csmpaign boils down to people wanting pics next to rulers, scale bitching, etc. Best to nip this in the bud and offer it right from the beginning. A campaign about a plastic kit should state possible amount of different sprues, parts per sprue, options, etc. The existing Orc sprues should've been shown as exapmles and proof and advertisement. My KS comment was longer' but I think more people would've backed if the $ per mini was advertised more aggressively, the kit(s) described more detailed and more and more useful pictures shown
This. I only went in for the cheapest $9 pledge, with the view to upping to one of the larger pledges once they gave us a bit more info/pics of the sprues/kits.
But, i also agree with what other people have said about them cancelling a Kickstarter that had met its funding goal, and even exceeded it by a third.
There's also a bit of a problem setting the goal for $30k and then cancelling it a week in having achieved $40k, or 33% over. I imagine that a few bridges have just been burned there and certainly impacts on trust in terms of the next campaign. It kind of makes the initial pledge target as well as everything we saw into worse than "fake stretch goals" but "fake targets" instead. Was the actual target $80k? $100? $150? $200? Whatever it was, backers will now have uncertainty about whether a future funding target is a real one, and others will have enough of a bad taste on their mouth to skip it entirely.
So much this. Cancelling after funding because you didn't explode like some of the banner miniature Kickstarters (that, incidentally, had way more breadth than yours) seems super disingenuous. I'm curious what your true goal was.
Yeah, canceling after funding is just odd, and is a bit of a bummer. I was excited at having just backed the KS and grabbed the last open EB, now, eh, I don't know if I'll back it again, will it just get cancelled again or what? Might check in the last few days to see if it's definitely not cancelled again and then pledge.
If they reboot quickly, they'll keep a lot of their previous backers, but it is a ticking clock kinda thing.
Shieldmaidens only, aim for $30k - $60k - $90k with 3 plastic infantry kits and see where it goes.
TBH, the original campaign was still gaining a solid $1-2k per day when it got cancelled, it was on track to have reached the $60k goal before the final few days, at which point the boost at the end could have easily got them to $90-$100k.
No idea what the expectations were but if it was canceled because it was clear it wasn't going to get $250k+ then that's really not so good.
Miniatures Kickstarters don't do as well as board games, fantasy doesn't do as well as sci-fi, mass-batlles doesn't do as well as skirmish. New companies don't do as well as established ones. All things considered, $40k after a few days of the KS was actually a huge achievement for shieldwolf, their first KS only got $30k total, no idea how getting a third more than that in a quarter of the time counts as a failure.
The only conclusion is that they ran the maths and realized they couldn't deliver the KS without putting the company into debt. Not quite sure what the point was about them losing money on the mammoth at $50, but if that's a problem, then surely the solution is to raise the price to $80-$100 (still a really good price for a gigantic mini?).
I think it's necessary for a campaign like this to have tiered goals:
1. Base goal, the basic product can be made. The creator may need to chip in a bit, but it's at least their minimum target for successfully delivering the product.
2. Stretch goal, expanding the offerings a bit but still the same amount of manpower / company resources allocated to get the job done.
3. Over the top funding, a plan needs to be in place to expand manpower / company resources to get the extra work done.
I feel like #1 was already met and #2 (a second plastic kit by the end of the campaign) was likely, and this should have been enough to continue.
After you think it over, I hope you'll try again and if the campaign does similarly, view it as a success! Who gets to make hard plastic sprues like that, without having to take a huge gamble with a loan or wait years to save up for it? I think it'd be awesome and I hope you guys do it
RiTides wrote: I think it's necessary for a campaign like this to have tiered goals:
1. Base goal, the basic product can be made. The creator may need to chip in a bit, but it's at least their minimum target for successfully delivering the product.
2. Stretch goal, expanding the offerings a bit but still the same amount of manpower / company resources allocated to get the job done.
3. Over the top funding, a plan needs to be in place to expand manpower / company resources to get the extra work done.
I feel like #1 was already met and #2 (a second plastic kit by the end of the campaign) was likely, and this should have been enough to continue.
After you think it over, I hope you'll try again and if the campaign does similarly, view it as a success! Who gets to make hard plastic sprues like that, without having to take a huge gamble with a loan or wait years to save up for it? I think it'd be awesome and I hope you guys do it
Oh what do you know about running a successful Kickstarter that arrives on time (Next time schedule your spawning out of the kickstarter cycle ).
Just kidding, You ran a tight KS, well thought out, no fake stretch goals and production was almost ready at the get go, not still in 3d render phase. It's nice to have tangible things to show the client ahead of time.
Disappointed to hear about this. I'm surprised as well but mostly just disappointed. I really believe that if they'd stuck with it things would have picked up.
Bummed this ended. I was looking for at least 100$ of pledge, and poking local folks to jump in as well. I think lots of the advice given here is good, making it just about maidens and not orcs, actually setting your funding goal at the "good enough" level, and clarifying what you get when.
Hopefully when this relaunches that will be taken into account and this will work out.
Azazelx wrote: There's also a bit of a problem setting the goal for $30k and then cancelling it a week in having achieved $40k, or 33% over. I imagine that a few bridges have just been burned there and certainly impacts on trust in terms of the next campaign. It kind of makes the initial pledge target as well as everything we saw into worse than "fake stretch goals" but "fake targets" instead. Was the actual target $80k? $100? $150? $200? Whatever it was, backers will now have uncertainty about whether a future funding target is a real one, and others will have enough of a bad taste on their mouth to skip it entirely.
I find it a bit amusing when people talk about "fake stretch goals" for a such small project like this when we've seen projects like Zomibicide put up stretch goals for 200,000 USD to produce a single plastic miniature.
200k for a single model isn't actually nuts. Remember that model is going to every backer (assuming it is free and not an add on). People have to touch that model to put it in boxes, count that there is the right amount, etc. A lot of Kickstarters become victims of their success because they underestimate the costs of new freebies etc., thinking the 100th model will cost as much as the first 10 to get running.
Besides, it isn't as though the company isn't trying to make money off the KS. No one is interested in giving out stuff at cost, they need a paycheck too.
Theophony - Good points . On that note, Shieldwolf's first campaign (which I backed and loved the mini I got!) was both successful and on time! They reference it in that update like it was a big letdown, but I thought it was a great first campaign, and they were obviously already building on it - this one was double the total of the first, with a lot of time left.
I really hope they decide to relaunch for the shieldmaidens, it just seems very worthwhile to have them made, and they could work on other things in the interim (I could even break my personal rule and back another campaign of theirs before the first delivered, as long as it was obvious the first was progressing well with tooling).
Hoping for the best here once they get their heads together and decide how they want to proceed!
I hope they have tiers geared more towards plastics only. I got the add on pledge and a box of shieldmaidens because I really didn't want to pay slightly more for a bunch of resin minis I'll never use. A $50 pledge for two boxes of shieldmaidens, with maybe a stretch goal of a war maiden sprue if the project really takes off, would have been ideal in my eyes.
First of all: Hello! (Created the account for my two cents):
Shieldwolf has presented this project with great value from the start. With their first KS they have shown their abiltity not only to create great products, but keeping timelines, having very good communication and last, not least, beeing faithful to concepts. What could a backer wanting more, I don`t know, but after backing several Mantic KS that was exactly what I wanted.
But altough beeing successful, SW cancelled the project for not beeing successful enough. That just means they took a huge hidden risk and started this project beeing overoptimistic. As Azazelx has already outlined, the assumtion they might end near the result of the KoW2 KS is ... just wow! Reducing KoW2 KS to the 2 new armies (4 HIPS), with some add-ons, would also reduce the final result not in a minor way (my guess: only one third of final amount was pledged for the new armies). Given the fact that Mantic was by the time of KoW2 KS an established company (in the sense of networking, product line...) already, for SW every result between 50-60K would have been a great result. But aiming at more ...
So where to go from here for SW?
Frankly, I hope SW reconsiders the use of the KS-platform for the moment.
They might achieve a slightly better result next time, but honestly I think the now cancelled KS was already very good, and a slightly better result might not be what SW has in mind. They believe in their products, and rightly so. So why not change the plan. Work on the product line, do promo, let the word of mouth spread, then maybe 2 years later do a - limited - KS. Or, as another possibility, why not cooperate with the competion? Why not speak with warlord games or mantic games? SW may have abilities or products they lack...
In one way or another, I hope the great concepts SW has shown for the shieldmaidens become reality
Well.. huh..
If they expected this to be like Bones KS then they're missing the variety. There's also not an immediate demand that I'm aware of for an all female fantasy army outside of their own fledgling system.. Granted they could easily be Chaos Marauders or whatever.. but a little market research would've gone a long way. Instead we got months of hints and promises on how awesome it would be that at times felt brazen considering how many times we've seen KS prove that nothing is certain.
I think SW has fantastic potential. I like that they are doing their own thing. While they expected more $$ from backers, I suspect that many of us expected more from them as far as what we were going to see.
Azazelx wrote: There's also a bit of a problem setting the goal for $30k and then cancelling it a week in having achieved $40k, or 33% over. I imagine that a few bridges have just been burned there and certainly impacts on trust in terms of the next campaign. It kind of makes the initial pledge target as well as everything we saw into worse than "fake stretch goals" but "fake targets" instead. Was the actual target $80k? $100? $150? $200? Whatever it was, backers will now have uncertainty about whether a future funding target is a real one, and others will have enough of a bad taste on their mouth to skip it entirely.
I find it a bit amusing when people talk about "fake stretch goals" for a such small project like this when we've seen projects like Zomibicide put up stretch goals for 200,000 USD to produce a single plastic miniature.
Try reading what I actually wrote instead of what you think I might have written. If $40k of a $30k target wasn't enough to continue with the project, then clearly the $30k was a "fake target". We do get those in lots of other campaigns as an already-funded project is more likely to attract additional backers, but those tend to be much larger projects started by much larger, and more well-established "Kickstarter Companies" who have a much larger built-in following. I assume these are the ones that SW feel they're in direct competition with (Mantic, CMoN, Mierce, etc).
Further, Zombicide and what CMON do with fake stretch goals for an alternative sculpt doesn't have anything to do with feedback for Shieldwolf, either.
Yeah, pledged for this but mostly on whotta deal impulse. Don't really need ''realistic'' (boring ) female warriors as others have noted. And more orcs.
Some over the top curvy chainmail bikini army would be nice tho!
scarletsquig wrote:TBH, the original campaign was still gaining a solid $1-2k per day when it got cancelled, it was on track to have reached the $60k goal before the final few days, at which point the boost at the end could have easily got them to $90-$100k.
Worth noting though that one the last day they actually dropped nearly a grand - the mid-campaign 'deadzone' most KSs face has become a free-fall instead for a lot of projects... I think they could see that coming and realised it was all going to fall apart. I don't think $60K was possible at all, TBH.
RiTides wrote:... Shieldwolf's first campaign (which I backed and loved the mini I got!) was both successful and on time! They reference it in that update like it was a big letdown, but I thought it was a great first campaign, and they were obviously already building on it - this one was double the total of the first, with a lot of time left.
I can understand why they thought it was a letdown - $20k sounds like a good sum; but Kicktraq tells a different story. They had over $30K, and lost ten grand as people backed out. That must have been a nightmare for them, and they obviously felt they couldn't face it again.
So I get why they cancelled... but I do agree, it was the wrong thing to do. It needed another week just to see for sure which way things were headed. I reckon they let their emotions get the better of them; but to be fair, that's very easy when you are running a KS!
Very difficult and sad situation - I have not lost anything at all apart from a bit of time on kickstarter and talking about it. It must be really difficult to try and do these things -I only back them so no idea how much work it is - I assume a lot.
I pledged for the campaign army and all the related add ons and then was really waiting for new stuff to come up so I can spend the money on it I had a couple of hundred ready to go. I will also welcome free minis - but was not really bothered - I was getting more than enough and was interested in buying the other variants of the Shieldmaidens.
I was also more than happy to pledge based on the basic mock ups but I could see that some people might ask what exactly would the finished products look like and it was a little vague.
I hope they are able to move forward and produce the models so I can buy them
I agree with most comments, feels like they backed out too early. almost all campaigns have a mid-campaign-slump. But they probably had waaay higher expectations. Which were probably kond of unrealistic for a new company.
Still I feel that the product seems very good and the demand for more female sci-fi and fantasy minis is definatley there (see raging heroes and so on).
I messaged them both on the KS and on Facebook, they will be back next week after their time off..They are "cooling their heads" so I imagine emotions were running abit high recently, which Like Lovejoy said is perfectly understandable.
I am sure they will explain all when they return and I really do hope that the re-launch will be a huge success as the guys deserve it.
Thanks for that, Goregut! Here's hoping after the time off they "come to their senses" and let us fund their awesome shieldmaidens unit (and maybe a second one if things go well).
Again, I at least would not hold them to the idea that they couldn't do other work in the interim while the unit was made - particularly if the Kickstarter is a very limited thing, just for the plastics (and maybe a resin character or two). Then they could continue with the rest of their catalogue in another avenue, while the shieldmaidens are being tooled up.
Well I'm sad it didn't keep going. I hope they do revamp their approach and try to hit 1-2 kits at a time for each army. They can run them around 3-4 or even 6 months apart when they have the tooling capacity for the additional sets. Personally I think 2 sets at a time and one for each "faction" is the way to go. So Basic Valley Orc and Shield Maiden units. And then next time Great Weapon Valley Orc/Shield Maiden units. And then ranged units (if their game has them). It won't be a windfall but it'll build their catalogue. Especially if they produce 1-2 resin models or units at the same time.
Hopefully they do come back and can be happy with building success. I was getting kinda excited for the bikini clad warrior women
Mr Morden wrote: Out of interest does anyone know how much it costs to make a box of plastic figures from scratch - I am assuming its an awful lot of money?
Let's start with sculpting. That's roughly Ā£700+ per figure, production so casting for plastic is massively expensive... put it this way it costs 3 to 4 times more than metal which can be up to 2000 per mould, even more though the Spanish firm I dealt with was fairly cheap. ( these tend to last a few goes but still a plastic one can cost anything up to 200,000. This was one of GWs moulds .)Then you have to pay for casts . I've looked at it seriously for some time now and you need between 6000 - 15000, just to break even depending on what you are casting.
Mr Morden wrote: Out of interest does anyone know how much it costs to make a box of plastic figures from scratch - I am assuming its an awful lot of money?
Dunno what industry standard rates for that might be, but SW was fairly consistent in saying that they could do one plastic kit for every $30,000 raised.
Cancelling the project was premature and petulant. However, it is in the past, so here is what I think they should do:
1. Relaunch soon. The longer you wait, the more people will spend their money elsewhere and forget about you.
2. Restructure rewards to focus on the plastic. This is likely where your margins are the highest, so you have the most room to offer deals. I would have four tiers of rewards a) One box of plastic b)Two boxes of plastic c)Four boxes of plastic d)Eight boxes of plastic
2.a The discount for each tier of rewards should be increasing ex. reward a)$25 b)$45 c)$80 d)$140
3. Leave the resin things as add-ons. This lets people choose which ones they want, and you don't have to cast stuff that many people wouldn't use.
4. If Renedra charges by how many parts they have to cut on a tool, do stretch goals to add stuff to the sprue. Seriously, this is a good way to keep momentum going with smaller stretch goals. ex. stretch goal to fund some small optional armor bits on the sprue to make all of the 'no exposed navels' people happy, or an alternate head, etc.
5. I would set up a campaign to fund basic shieldmaiden infantry and have the big stretch goal be the more nekkid ones (just like last time).
6. Having pieces from your store available as add ons with little to no discount is a no-brainer. People like to pick up things in big lots to avoid high shipping, and there are likely people who have been waiting to make orders because they wanted to do them at the same time as the KS (possibly hoping for a discount)
7. People should be able to swap any available/unlocked plastic boxes. ex. I pledge for $80, and I can get two boxes of mountain orcs and two boxes of shieldmaidens.
8. Don't do stretch goals for your rulebook. It isn't the focus of the campaign, and to be frank, it is something you want to fund more than your customers do.
The plastic is your biggest advantage over all the other small resin/metal companies out there, so utilize it!
Mr Morden wrote: Out of interest does anyone know how much it costs to make a box of plastic figures from scratch - I am assuming its an awful lot of money?
Its Jack wrote:I backed at $190, I saw the little green dot on my activity and thought i'd be getting some freebies and its gone...
This is a bit disappointing. It feels like they lowballed their initial funding goal to pass their funding and hoped to get more later on to compensate for it. This happens all the time on Kickstarter where companies put their initial funding lower, then use cheaper stretch goals to make the actual amount.
What they really needed to do was have pictures of sprue layouts and renders instead of boxes on the rewards section. People are more likely to perceive value when they see 40-50 odd renders than a box with quantity listed next to it
I don't understand why they cancelled it when they did, most other companies wait until near the end to cancel it. Yes, people were complaining about value, comments like that are ten a penny on any Kickstarter comment section. Yes, funding dipped, that happens to nearly all Kickstarters after the initial wave of followers and people who see the kickstarter advertised on TTGN or adverts slows down. It normally speeds up again in the last few days as people add to their original pledge or back to avoid missing out.
The last update states it isn't an emotional response, but it reads like self entitled complaining that people weren't spending enough money. That alone has put me off backing their Kickstarter again in the future.
Shieldwolf Miniatures wrote:I'm sorry you feel like that. We didn't lowball anything, the funding goal was what it had to be, we weren't asking for peanuts, and I can assure you that cancelling funding was the last thing we ever thought we'd have to do.
People saying "they should have asked what they really wanted to" is beyond human logic, does anyone honestly think we could have ever asked for e.g. 160,000$ and have the slimmest chance of ever funding that?
You're wrong about people not spending enough money, we never had any issues with any of the backers that had already pledged their hard-earned money in this project, our issues rose with backers that never pledged, yet they kept hammering us night and day with all kinds of demands in what we believed an honestly good deal for everyone. Obviously they didn't...
Do you think we would ever gamble the reputation of our company? It has taken years to build, and it's a great asset for us. The honorable thing to do was cancel. That's what we think and that's why we did it, there are no secrets behind that.
Having sprue lay-outs is not going to happen, if we genuinely had all that ready, we wouldn't be needing the additional funds. We are not mad or angry as some people suggested, we are sad that we didn't convince enough people to make this explode. Maybe we have too high expectations in an era we (apparently falsly) thought wargaming needs a new army game.
Anyway, we will be back in the comment section sometime next week, for now it's time for responsible reflection before any decision making.
Hmmm... "Responsible reflection" probably means letting go of the idea that it was the "honorable thing" to cancel... it's not just most posters on Warseer, or Dakka, who feel this way - the gaming group local to Wehrkind and I, who Wehrkind was getting interested, reacted the same way without a post from him.
The fact is SW acted a bit rashly, but it's not the end of the world! If their quote / contract allows them to just have two sprues made, rather than 160K worth of sprues, they should go for it! Hope to see them back
Yeah, I feel like they felt like the only way this was going to be successful was to fund 4-5 plastic kits. Unless it was a volume discount kind of thing I hope they come back and reasonably try to fund 1-2 kits at a time.
Hulksmash wrote: Yeah, I feel like they felt like the only way this was going to be successful was to fund 4-5 plastic kits. Unless it was a volume discount kind of thing I hope they come back and reasonably try to fund 1-2 kits at a time.
I honestly think this is probably the way to do it 1 of each races kit so 1 orc, 1 barbarian , then if they get enough expand it
This was a pretty incredible step to take. I had decided to pledge, hopped on a long-haul flight home, and when I got off the campaign was cancelled!
I think that only two improvements could have been made really. Firstly I think that the valley orcs should have been the 60k kit- there was no real incentive for backers that were interested in orcs, so I think that they could have drawn more backers through that. It was supposed to be shield maidens vs orcs, but felt like it was just a shield maidens Kickstarter.
Secondly, as everyone else has said, I think they expected too much from this. The reality is that most people are buying their miniatures to play other games- the rules are not why most people went in, I assume.
I was planning to back the relaunch... but have just spent the money I did have pledged for this one, on Mierce metals instead. I might still back depending on the deal, and when it happens. Still very interested in shieldmaidens. Not really interested in the game -- I had a look at the PDF but it really didn't grab me.
I am massively sympathetic to Shieldwolf though. Running a KS must be pretty terrifying. And this isn't a huge business... it's just a few ordinary (but very talented) people.
Yea, this was weird to me. I hadn't backed yet because I wasn't sure if I wanted 50 or 100$ for my pledge, and figured I would see what the local group was up for. We usually will back projects under one person to save on shipping then just distribute on game night.
It worries me when they say the problem wasn't the backers spending enough money, but the lack of backers relative to those making demands. I can see how that is frustrating, but listing that as a reason to stop is sort of... odd coming from someone I hope to be a responsible adult. I mean, best case say "People seemed unhappy with how we set up the value proposition, so we decided to start over and redesign things a bit." That makes sense. Otherwise it sounds like they are saying "People said mean things we didn't like so we decided to quit," when what they should be saying is "Hey, we think this is a hell of a deal, but if you don't agree, that's cool; we'll see you at retail."
Like Ian Sturrock said, I'm sympathetic to them and will give them the benefit of the doubt for sure. Hoping they come back stronger for this, maybe this coming week!
Surprised this was cancelled, especially considering it was over double their funding goal and had plenty of time left. They barely had time for hype to grow for it.
As others have also said, i don't think that a majority of the backers cared about the rules, they just wanted the plastic.
I'm definitely going to think twice before pledging on any other shieldwolf kickstarters, and i don't think that I'm the only one.
Some good points here, and I especially like Gallahad's post.
I'm still very disappointed - notsomuch in missing out on some more toys, but in their actions - and surprised that they had such an unrealistic set of expectations. $160k.. that's almost half of Mantic's KoW2 campaign. Which as I said before, had an established ruleset, fanbase and 10 armies on offer as add-ons.
They've actually gambled their reputation significantly by cancelling rather than continuing - unless going through with what was already on offer would have been unrealistic or cost them money to fulfill (in which case, don't set it as a funding goal).
Similarly, I don't understand what they think is "honourable" about setting a target of $30k, and then cancelling in a week after getting $40k. I've been a supporter of SW for some time, but this strikes me as quite the opposite of honourable - so might not be the best word to use here. Again, if it risked their business then fair enough - but don't set a funded goal that would hurt the business if that's all that is achieved in 30 days.
As with Ian, though - I've spent the money I had aside for this on several "Start Collecting" boxes and some other new GW stuff. We'll see what happens from here. I can always have more money, but whether I'm quite as enthusiastic next time around remains to be seen.
Yea, there is definitely a lot of competition out there these days! As consumers of kits we have no real reason to wait with baited breath for any one thing, as there are 5-6 others on the list of stuff we want at any given moment Especially seeing as how KS are 'pay now, get fun stuff a year + from now' it makes it a rough deal. I am cutting back on KS stuff this year because my wife points out that I spend the money but don't get toys, making me want to spend more money to get more toys now. Unfortunately, I think she is right.
Yeah, I'm pretty much done with KS at this point, with a few very specific exceptions - mostly a very limited few self-contained boardgames that will ship from a local hub so as not to get shafted hard by shipping. Even WarPath is my final Mantic kickstarter the way I see it.
This was one of those few exceptions. The way I see it is that I've bought a ton of stuff, most lilely more than I'll ever use, so unless there's something that really specifically ticks one of my boxes (like Zombicide) I certainly don't need any more.
Even moreso when stuff will take a year or more to actually get here....
I will be pledging for their next KS if its for the Shield maidens - although the unpainted minis are piling up :( I need to start getting them to my painters!
Hopefully in a year or so I will have a fully painted Shieldmaiden and Amazon army
I have backed quite a few KS over the last few years (about 20) - pretty much all are late (some very very late) but luckily I am in no real hurry for them.......
(copy-pasting it here for those of you who don't use FB)
SHIELDWOLF NEWSLETTER JANUARY 27Ī¤Ī, 2016
Hello everyone, and a happy 2016, with health and prosperity to you and your beloved ones!
This newsletter is being issued after long and hard discussion regarding our KS-2 "Shieldmaidens vs Orcs" which unfortunately had to be cancelled. We will point out the mistakes we think we made and also try shedding some light to clear any false thoughts.
After discussing it over many many hours, we arrived at the conclusion that the main error from our part was the over-evaluation of the need for an alternative army wargame currently in the market. After monitoring and/or interacting at various forums worldwide, we had come to believe that the timing for a new fantasy army wargame was at its best moment. Our game (even at a beta version) and the quality of the miniatures we have and aim for should have been a winning combination to fill a gap in the market. Apparently most of our supporters were simply looking for some new miniatures and many even missed the fact that they were receiving an enriched version of our rulebook, which is the ultimate purpose of the company (i.e. to create an army game and the miniatures to support it).
The issue with the mid-campaign slump which we said we had prepared for, is something that too must be cleared. In a 30-day campaign, we were expecting a slump between the 15th and 25th day. Unfortunately this happened just after the 7th day (!), so just as we explained on our update #5 at that moment it became pointless thinking the aces we had up our sleeves would suffice to maintain the momentum.
Another issue that came up was the funding goal. We find it funny having to address that, but it is just we do so. People that were informed about us know that when we launched our first Kickstarter (KS-1), we stated āwe want to fund five full armiesā and we commenced with a 5,000$ goal. Not a single person complained about it, since itās obvious that the goal was set in order to build upon and it naturally wasnāt enough even for a single (let alone five) full armies!
For our KS-2, we took it down to two armies (Orcs and Shieldmaidens) and asked for 30,000$ to co-fund the first plastic kit, everything else was already available and either co-funded in KS-1 or had been directly made available from Shieldwolf. People who hadnāt been following us implying that the goal was too ālowā have simply misunderstood what the ultimate goal was about.
However, we would still like to make it as clear as humanly possible that we have assumed full responsibility for the miscommunication.
Having to press the āCancel Fundingā button was a very difficult thing for us, one we had thought we would never have to bother with. If people think that it was an easy choice, they couldnāt be more mistaken! We would kindly like to remind that a lot of time, effort and funds have already been invested by Shieldwolf and by cancelling the project it is us who risk losing all of it, while securing that our supporters donāt risk a single penny or waste of their time by needlessly allowing this to drag on. In our book, that is honorable behavior and it is a sign of who the people behind Shieldwolf are. We have made a name for ourselves in the past years regarding customer service, communication and high quality product; it means a lot to us, we are proud of it and we would never risk/gamble/jeopardize it for any reason!
This brings us to the next point: where do we take it from here?
After having cooled our heads a bit, we united in our HQ to discuss the options. For two consecutive nights we have been debating vigorously of what do to. The main perplexity is that if army wargaming is dead or dying, the number of people willing to start a completely new army such as the Shieldmaidens or the Orcs will not suffice to make back the investment made by Shieldwolf. This brings us to whether army wargaming is infact dying or not however.
We have decided to give it one more chance, this time with some variations however. In this new approach we will work with our supporters (there are still 312 tenacious backers who held on to their pledges even knowing the project was being cancelled), and show of drafts of how the new project is going to be like. We appreciate all feedback, comments, suggestions etc and are looking forward to interacting with you once again. Whatever happens when this launches, even if it funds for a tiny tiny bit, we will carry it on and deliver just like we have done in the past.
If army fantasy wargaming (meaning rank nāfile mass army gaming) has a strong future ahead, then this plan with the new project should not have any issues. Fingers crossed it all works out and we are looking forward to your comments.
Thank you.
The Shieldwolf Team.
Shieldwolf Miniatures wrote:After discussing it over many many hours, we arrived at the conclusion that the main error from our part was the over-evaluation of the need for an alternative army wargame currently in the market. After monitoring and/or interacting at various forums worldwide, we had come to believe that the timing for a new fantasy army wargame was at its best moment. Our game (even at a beta version) and the quality of the miniatures we have and aim for should have been a winning combination to fill a gap in the market. Apparently most of our supporters were simply looking for some new miniatures and many even missed the fact that they were receiving an enriched version of our rulebook, which is the ultimate purpose of the company (i.e. to create an army game and the miniatures to support it).
By default, creating a new game in this market hurts your customers. Fantasy army games are utterly dependent on the network effect and require a large investment in time, money and space, so people are better off if there is only a single game that utterly dominates that niche so that they only need to make that investment once. The only reason to add a new game to the market is if you have a compelling reason to believe that your game does something that the existing dominant game cannot - either one that serves a different niche, such as sacrificing the fine detail of the simulation for the sake of speed versus sacrificing speed for the sake of the simulation, or one that is a strict upgrade meant to avoid the mistakes of your predecessors. If you can't offer that, your customers would be better served by a shiny new army book with rules for playing the army in Kings of War and The Ninth Age (or models whose function is sufficiently close that they can use existing rules) than a new game that either forces your opponents to invest time and money into becoming compatible with your game or is simply discarded in favour of the existing game.
I think the main reason for the mid Kickstarter slump was most probably a lot of the people who were only interested in the orcs pulling out. It looked like it was going to only just (if at all) make the 60k stretch goal for the 2nd shieldmaiden plastic kit and not get anywhere near the 90k and 120k to make any new plastic orc kits. They most probably felt a bit ignored and didn't feel like waiting roughly a year for some orc models that are already for sale on Shieldwolf's website to be sent (albeit at a discount).
I think when/if they relaunch they should just stick to funding 1 army at a time and try to get as many plastic kits out of it as possible. They should also with the stretch goals not go overboard with too many free rewards (not saying I wouldn't have wanted them if they were there) and maybe just have unlockable add-ons of individual characters or smaller units (monsters, cavalry etc) on the whole. Also maybe don't have non-model stretch goals back to back would help maintain interest. Having the stretch goals laid out 3-4 in advance would also help in keeping the total ticking over and give people something to aim for even if they next goal isn't to their liking.
Interesting on the newsletter there, rather than via KS etc. (or KS messenger as well). I didn't even know they have a newsletter.
The thing about a new ruleset is that it might still be a great time for one, but it's not what to sell the KS on the back of since it doesn't add value for the people who just want miniatures to play Warhammer/9th Age or even KoW with. Carts before the horse there. I've been an interested SW supporter, but I'm not here for their rules.
And really, we can all "want" whatever we like. But that doesn't mean it's going to happen, as demonstrated by my "wanting" to win the lottery over Christmas and then it not happening. If the campaign is relaunched with an expectation that it'll fund two full armies, or even one full army, it's going to fail again. And by "fail", I mean (probably) reach the initial funding goal but not everything that SW expects.. and possibly get cancelled again? That'll be in people's minds. It'll be a harder road next time as they've damaged their reputation and trust with people by cancelling a funded project. There were some very unhappy people and burnt bridges in the KS comments when I was following them during the immediate aftermath.
Ah, comments. Probably would have been better to send as a KS Update as comments are easily lost and many who don't follow them on facebook would be less likely to follow the comments.
We think it best however not to issue an update just yet, but instead a newsletter which we will post on our FB page. At that point, we will re-establish the dialogue in the comment section here to discuss it with you. Once we have talked about it with you here, we will post the update to inform all 312 (and anyone else interested in reading the update naturally) on how this has evolved. :-)
They also said:
Yes, our expectations are now better measured I suppose. I cannot see how backers can be dissapointed especially since this time they will have seen the draft and we will alter it according to feedback to work together with the people who are making this happen :-) For example as people suggested a SG for instance that will allow alternative head versions for both sides (more "Lagetha-like" for the Shieldmaidens without flying hair and more like the initial renders we had shown back in 2013 for the Orcs), alternative weaponry as suggested for the same kit, SGs kept closer together, ruleset not to be included in this KS, a 15-day campaign and not 30 like the previous ones, and many others changes like that. We have received a LOT of feedback and personal messages once this got cancelled and we mean to listen to the community and see how they find our newest approach.
But if anyone does have any feedback for them, they are very vocal on both their FB page and on KS so I highly suggest sending any feedback their way, im sure they will be here eventually though but I think they are putting a prio on the KS at the moment.
I guess i'm just totally miss reading them, but to me it seems they are just totally in the dark.
Are they a miniature company trying to bring out rules for a game to sell their miniatures, or are they a rules company trying to bring out miniatures to play with their rules? I'd say the first one is more accurate as they already have models out in the world, and they have a decent following. They need to grow that part of the business and drive their name, because even though they have a thread here on Dakkadakka, they are still a tiny fish in the business with a small name that is getting bad press from these decisions. Release the models for a counts as army, then you can release your own rules later on.
It also sounds to me like they think the gaming market is shrinking around the globe. Just the way it is worded it seems like they thought the funding wasn't there to be had because people didn't care for mass combat fantasy games . I guess the whole KOW2 kickstarter has ruined the market and GW was right to blow up the old world since no one cares. I think they need to spend a little more time thinking this through .
A miniatures company who wish in the future to bring out a gaming system for people to use, I think they are focusing alot more on making miniatures and developing their IP and getting it out there like you said they are a pretty small fish but these small fish have big dreams
The next KS will (from the best of my knowledge) be a short one according to them 15 days and will be about getting the basic shieldmaiden kit funded with some odd stretch goals to customize them.
The next KS will (from the best of my knowledge) be a short one according to them 15 days and will be about getting the basic shieldmaiden kit funded with some odd stretch goals to customize them.
The one they just cancelled already funded the basic Shieldmaiden kit in less than half that time and was on the way to unlocking customization.
But no, let's cancel that and risk losing a bunch of backers so we can try to do it again a few weeks later.
They need to leave aside their ruleset for now and focus on getting there HIPS kits out, even if they have to do it one KS at a time. This way you can have market saturation with their lovely HIPS kits (hopefully better then Mantics offerings). And then when enough kits have been produced then you'll have your freedom to produce your own ruleset.
The 2.0 KS lets call it was about funding 2 complete armies. They had a bunchi of stuff planned etc etc which enticed people to pledge because all the possible things they will be getting, since it slumped so early I can only guess their reasoning would be "if its going doing this early, we will never reach were most people were wanting" so therefore more people would drop out as the things they hoped would be unlocked simply wont be. Maybe that wouldnt have happened, but either way no point in dwelling on it.
The 2.5 KS will solely be about shieldmaiden basic infrantry with "small" stretch goals which would allow you to make them into different units and thats it (I think)
Do keep in mind this is my interuptation of whats being said over in the comments so dont quote me on any of this! im sure the guys will be around to explain it "properly" at some point.
Overtyrant, I believe that is now their goal, their plastics are made by Renedra I think the company is called, their plastics are good from what ive gotten from them and I think the newer mantic plastics also come from their but I may be mistaken.
Yes, our expectations are now better measured I suppose. I cannot see how backers can be dissapointed especially since this time they will have seen the draft and we will alter it according to feedback to work together with the people who are making this happen :-) For example as people suggested a SG for instance that will allow alternative head versions for both sides (more "Lagetha-like" for the Shieldmaidens without flying hair and more like the initial renders we had shown back in 2013 for the Orcs), alternative weaponry as suggested for the same kit, SGs kept closer together, ruleset not to be included in this KS, a 15-day campaign and not 30 like the previous ones, and many others changes like that. We have received a LOT of feedback and personal messages once this got cancelled and we mean to listen to the community and see how they find our newest approach.
Well, that sounds very promising to me (although I think it's actually very good that they didn't post the Facebook / comment text further up this page as an update, as it still seems to miss the point a bit on why this project likely could raise what it had, but not the amounts something like Kings of War can... and that is an established ruleset, which is a huge factor for fantasy right now).
I love the idea of alternate head versions and alternate weaponry for the same kit as stretch goals. Since they really hate the mid-KS slump, a 15-day campaign isn't a bad idea, either! (Although sometimes that center portion does significantly add to the total, even with negative days mixed in)
I also think the campaign either should have the orcs not included at all, or have them closer for an initial offering, if possible - to avoid folks pledging for orcs bailing because they think they won't get funded.
Overall, hopefully this is a good lesson learned and they approach this next campaign with the right expectations and with a clear plan for a feasible funding amount (say $60K by the end - I think it's doable if they can get people into it again and I am certainly up for it, although I didn't have need of Shieldmaidens I am definitely watching this). Several local gamers were interested and might jump onto a new campaign. So, onwards and upwards, Shieldwolf!
One to two kits. Personally I'd prefer they set up a goal for mountain orcs and shield maidens. Set the goal appropriately, and then set SG's to enhance the sets with their catalogue available at a discount as add-ons.
But they do need to get a bit over themselves, start with alternative models and then once you're established and have a solid line then do an actual rules for your game.
At least 20 people play KoW at my local club, with a few very rare games of WHFB (not many holdouts left), even had a 20k points mega battle recently. Fantasy gaming with large armies is still alive. GW simply decided to focus more on the 8-16 year old market with their AoS rules (which are simple to learn, fast to play and don't require the painting of many models, it suits their physical retail store business model better), rather than veterans.
They've probably lost me as a returning backer at this point, if a company doesn't have confidence in its own product or if I catch a hint of anything like "the KS money wasn't actually enough to create the product so we cancelled", I get nervous about the product not delivering.
Im still backing the next one because well I really want the shieldmaiden models, and I have alot of faith in SW in general, they didnt bail when their first KS went downhill by a considerable amount and to be fair they did something not alot of companies would have done so gotta respect them for that.
I understand completely why some people wont be onboard! I really do, but (no offense intended obiviously) I hope that your actions wont be what the majority decides to do.
I have to agree with people saying a new rules set is not their best move right now. Not only because there are a lot of rules sets out there that are cheap, but also because they don't have the models for the rules! I personally like using a lot of counts as and the like, but what really draws me into a game is either great rules or great models and fluff that pull me in. Really the models and fluff are the bigger deal for me, as I put off PP for years because I thought the models were ugly.
At any rate, Shieldwolf is falling down on both counts, as they might have good rules, but who knows. And as others had said, who knows how much better they really are? Worth the marginal effort?
Worse, even if a faction does get me all excited (Shield Maidens HO!) without models to collect they have to sell me on the rules. And if my buddy wants some other faction that doesn't have models yet, well, there is really no reason to play their game instead of using whatever cool stuff is available to play a different game.
I dunno, maybe it is just me, but I am totally on board for cool models, but yet another rule set, with or without models, is not terribly exciting. Show me you have a crazy awesome rule set that I would play with models I already have, or sell me awesome models then suggest a rule set that really plays to their fluff and feel.
Since when is a slump a week in somehow unexpected? While you don't want to go into free fall (neg funding daily totals each day for days), it's been my observation that practically every completed kickstarter I've followed has had meteoric first and last two days with a pretty much flat trend throughout the middle 80%.
Yeah. Not to be blunt, but people don't care about their rule set. There are tons of rule sets on the market already, why should we care about this one? On the surface, its another fantasy mass-battle system, which means no one will bother to even read the rules. Why would they when they can play KoW, a game that has a large following, good rules and the ability to use basically any models you can think of with appropriate army lists? It's a bit baffling to me why anyone would enter that market right now. But yes, Fantasy mass-battle wargaming is probably facing a heavy decline compared to the glory days of WHFB and LotR. I can't imagine KoW has even a fraction of the amount of players those games had at their height. Skirmish and/or sci-fi seems to be where it's at.
Very few companies are going to successfully sell a wargames ruleset via KS. A Song of Blades and Heroes did it for their advanced version, but that's a much-loved, well-established game that's been heavily playtested.
One note on companies doing a second campaign for something after (for whatever reason) cancelling their first - This actually is not necessarily a bad thing, it really varies in each instance. I've seen campaigns that do worse, one in particular that did 10x better, and several do about the same.
I expect this one to do about the same, really - the product offering is still awesome and a great value, and I think this was just a bump in the road. Looking forward to seeing their draft of it
I think the plan of 3 Maiden kits for the next campaign is good, 15 days is bad, launching soon and keeping their booked slots is best.
Ideas on the ideal campaign structure?
A SG map should be there from the beginning with kit 2 visible, but the SGs in between kit 1 and 2 could be adjusted after the first few days in regards to monetary level.
I think funding should be kit 1, then some "secret" SGs (shown on the roadmap but not unveiled frim the beginning( that should unlock free additional sprues, more options on sprues or such, to keep the excitement of discovering what's coming next, a SG for the production of add-ons like bear cav, which should probably be known from the beginning to have a goal to work towards and the next plastic kit also shown with the $ amount needed and a decent bit of information about it. The last kit could be hinted at in a rather obvious way to come at milestone X from the beginning and have a few teasers on the campaign page (at least weapon artwork or some such), with a big info dump after kit 2 is reached. By then the SGs between 2 and 3 should be set in stone as well and added to the roadmap.
Layout:
Campaign page
Pics, pics, pics and infos, infos, infos about the sprues and model concepts. Seriously. Artwork. Concept sketches. Designer interview as an KS update.
A "x dollars gives you y amount of stuff saving z from retail price!" graphic. A BIG one.
KS header and campaign name
Drive home that the campaign is for HIPS modular fantasy28 mm warrior/Viking/barbarian WOMEN. That's a freaking niche that is just BEGGING to be exploited going by hundreds of comments from unique commenters on forums, KSs and coversations I've read or had over the years. Especially if there are women without chainmail bikini in there, though those have fans, too.
Thoughts? I REALLY want this to be succesful.
Edit: If I understood their anwer to my post on KS right they're not going to relaunch in Feb. Giving up on a 2016 delivery and their booked slots, postponing this for who know's how long. And not even trying to get all three planned SM kits out, but a smaller KS. Really? They were pretty much guaranteed to unlock two kits already. They tease heavy armour and 2handed-axe girls and on the same day tell us that we'll have to wait whoever knows how long for them?!
I'm actually starting to get disappointed the BAD way.
Scratch that. I'll sculpt and convert my own Viking girls. I only really needed a dozen or so anyway.
I'd still back them for some of the cavalry they mentioned for the shieldmaidens. Based on their current range, I'd even back them just based on concept art.
I agree that they should focus on selling their models first. Mantic blew up with KoW2, but before that it seemed like their angle was "buy armies cheap!" I know I saw a decent amount of Chaos Dwarf players (online anyway) using Mantic's models in WHFB 8th. I saw a lot of Mantic's undead also.
Shieldwolf's miniatures are great. Better than anything GW/Mantic are making right now imo. Just like Mantic snuck into my brain/wallet by offering alternate GW minis, maybe Shieldwolf should focus on offering alternate KoW minis.
I think it is important to remember that it has taken Mantic years and years to get their KoW rules to this level of visibility in the community. There may be space in the market for another mass battle game, but it will take time to develop that space and what sets Shieldwolfs' offering apart from the many other options.
The way you get there is by first selling great miniatures. I would be doing everything in my power to re-launch in Feb and keep the existing production slots at Renedra. Even funding a single plastic kit would put them in a very elite group of kickstarter projects, and something that would pay dividends for their business for a loooong time. The only reason their first campaign went as well as it did was on the strength of their plastic orcs.
Seriously, there is decent money on the table from lots of backers if they can launch fast enough to take it.
Shieldwolf's miniatures are great. Better than anything GW/Mantic are making right now imo. Just like Mantic snuck into my brain/wallet by offering alternate GW minis, maybe Shieldwolf should focus on offering alternate KoW minis.
They're nice models, but in terms of "better than anything made by GW or Mantic"... No, they're really not. I like the orcs and have a ton of them, but they just have the one kit. Mantic's newest fantasy plastics (just delivered recently to KoW2 backers) are actually pretty bloody decent, and GW kits blow both of them away by far. I know that Angelos feels that his resin figures are better then Mierce and AoW and even there we've politely agreed to disagree. He's hardly able to be objective, after all. The Mammoth is pretty special, though even I don't see the value in +50% for the howdah.
I think a 15-day campaign is a mistake. While it minimises "the slump" that appears to terrify them, it also cuts out people who get paid monthly in a big way, and is also pretty inconvenient for those of us who are paid fortnightly. I'd certainly be backing with a far lower amount (and no, I'm not willing to save up my money in advance. Not for miniatures or a kickstarter.)
Of course, giving up on a 2016 delivery means I'm out completely pending changes to local import/tax laws. My kickstarting is coming to a close - as I've said before - with very few exceptions. This was one of them.
I really liked the project, but the stretch goals left me thinking "hmm, I barely really need 40 shieldmaidens, I may have to find someone to sell the spare 40 to" rather than "AWESOME more shieldmaidens."
Shieldwolf's miniatures are great. Better than anything GW/Mantic are making right now imo. Just like Mantic snuck into my brain/wallet by offering alternate GW minis, maybe Shieldwolf should focus on offering alternate KoW minis.
They're nice models, but in terms of "better than anything made by GW or Mantic"... No, they're really not. I like the orcs and have a ton of them, but they just have the one kit. Mantic's newest fantasy plastics (just delivered recently to KoW2 backers) are actually pretty bloody decent, and GW kits blow both of them away by far. I know that Angelos feels that his resin figures are better then Mierce and AoW and even there we've politely agreed to disagree. He's hardly able to be objective, after all. The Mammoth is pretty special, though even I don't see the value in +50% for the howdah.
I think a 15-day campaign is a mistake. While it minimises "the slump" that appears to terrify them, it also cuts out people who get paid monthly in a big way, and is also pretty inconvenient for those of us who are paid fortnightly. I'd certainly be backing with a far lower amount (and no, I'm not willing to save up my money in advance. Not for miniatures or a kickstarter.)
Of course, giving up on a 2016 delivery means I'm out completely pending changes to local import/tax laws. My kickstarting is coming to a close - as I've said before - with very few exceptions. This was one of them.
Ah, yes - a fifteen day 'No, We Don't Want Your Money' Kickstarter....
I was holding off for the orcs, so I was part of the problem, but 15 day Kickstarters just seem to be a case of treating asymptom, while leaving the disease to run its course.
The Auld Grump - an 8 day Kickstarter was why I couldn't put money toward the Heroines in Sensible Shoes Kickstarter.
Wonder if it really comes down to needing xxx money by xxx date and not having enough time to do a 30 day campaign? yes I've run out of tinfoil for hats.
After the Kickstarter cancellation I made an order direct with Shieldwolf miniatures for some of their models so that I could see their quality and decide how much I would order when they eventually relaunch the kickstarter.
The Mountain Orcs Infantry kit is really well made - right up there with Games Workshop in terms of quality of kit. However, the issue I have is the separate lower jaw. This is a good idea in theory but in practice they are an absolute pain to attach and due to the limited contact points with the upper part of the orc skull they really don't look like they will stand up to much handling before breaking off.
The Mountain Orc Boar Chariot is a beautiful design. However, the join between the chariot base and sides look very flimsy and looks like it will need a lot of further support/pinning for it to stay together for any length of time.
The Heavy Skeleton Infantry and Death Deceivers were really disappointing. They are made out of some kind of white resin that is really rubbery and flexible. They are just so flimsy and breakable. Was expecting much better from these models.
Overall, it was a bit of a mixed bag and has most probably limited the amount of money I will put into the relaunched Kickstarter quite significantly. I had pledged for 2 of the largest army sets and the shieldmaidens vs orcs starter set before the cancellation. Now I may give it a miss altogether or at least only go for one of the cheapest options. At the very least I will need to see a sprue breakdown for the 1st plastic box of shieldmaidens before pledging a significant amount.
AdamBridger wrote: After the Kickstarter cancellation I made an order direct with Shieldwolf miniatures for some of their models so that I could see their quality and decide how much I would order when they eventually relaunch the kickstarter.
The Mountain Orcs Infantry kit is really well made - right up there with Games Workshop in terms of quality of kit. However, the issue I have is the separate lower jaw. This is a good idea in theory but in practice they are an absolute pain to attach and due to the limited contact points with the upper part of the orc skull they really don't look like they will stand up to much handling before breaking off.
The Mountain Orc Boar Chariot is a beautiful design. However, the join between the chariot base and sides look very flimsy and looks like it will need a lot of further support/pinning for it to stay together for any length of time.
The Heavy Skeleton Infantry and Death Deceivers were really disappointing. They are made out of some kind of white resin that is really rubbery and flexible. They are just so flimsy and breakable. Was expecting much better from these models.
Overall, it was a bit of a mixed bag and has most probably limited the amount of money I will put into the relaunched Kickstarter quite significantly. I had pledged for 2 of the largest army sets and the shieldmaidens vs orcs starter set before the cancellation. Now I may give it a miss altogether or at least only go for one of the cheapest options. At the very least I will need to see a sprue breakdown for the 1st plastic box of shieldmaidens before pledging a significant amount.
It is true that the skeletons and death deceivers are poor sculpts compared to the orcs and the sculpts made after the first Kickstarter. However these are some of their first and oldest sculpts, released during the first days of Shieldwolf's creation. And to be fair their price is quite cheap (both are less than one pound per figure ).
I really encourage you to give it a second try and get some of their newest sculpts such as the Orc chieftains or the Lions. While their aesthetic is absolutely a matter of personal taste the production quality is really top level.
Apart from any issues some may have regarding the cancellation of the last Kickstarter, the majority of people, who have bought Shieldwolf's minis express quite positive opinions of the quality of their products. These guys really know how to make miniatures and are dedicated to provide a good product.
Ok. Good to hear about the jaws lasting well. Still fiddly as hell to attach though. They are truly excellent sculpts.
I am wondering about the shieldmaiden figures though as the concept art showed them with very thin waists. If they come on the sprue as separate legs and torso that might worry me as that joint would take a lot of the pressure when moving the models.
I think posting the link to their draft of KS 2.5 is okay, they want feedback after all.
And it seems like they might go with my suggestion of adding the"exploded" shieldmaiden to the banner pic. After someone else agreed with me and Shieldwolf responding to him, not me, but hey, in my heart I'll always know that my idea influenced this campaign. Go me!
I like the pledges and stretch goals a lot but the layout is very messy, even ignoring the fact that the graphics are all placeholders. It's hard to get an overview of what's available without scrolling down the whoooole page. Needs a smaller list with smaller pics of all the options at the beginning, like Mierce always does.
Heh, stretch goals of plain hair and nonmidriff armor to make them less interesting, thanks sjw's. I hope there are futher stretch goals of shorter hair and bulkier armor until they are indestinguashable from men. For feths sake
SJWs? Really? Warrior women in full armor, looking like they could actually go to war, would far more interesting to me than Frank Frazetta scenes airbrushed on the side of a van. Sadly, options for the former are greatly outnumbered by the latter. If someone made models like that, in plastic and at an affordable price point, I would gladly pick them up.
Options are so evil. Why do SJWs campaign tirelessly for more choices for me? Don't they know I already have trouble deciding my favourite toothpaste? Why must they insist that manufacturers flood the market with all different kinds of minis?
Well, I always find that if there is a range of options, some people will like some of them, and others will like others. Sometimes people call options that they don't personally like "boring", though I prefer to just assume this stuff is a matter of taste, rather than tell people that their preferences are dull. For example, I find golf a bit dull, but I wouldn't say that to a keen golfer, because I recognise that they might find Clark Ashton Smith dull, and though I could probably produce an argument that showed them to be wrong, it wouldn't really be productive to do so.
Personally I own several more cheesecakey female minis already, and I like them. So for me this really is about having more options. Right now I cannot buy well sculpted female warrior minis that look like they are ready for war. This KS could change that. But obviously spotting a gap in the market, and wishing it were filled, is the same as fighting for social justice, because... Wait.
Mayhaps they are boring for you, but not for others? Or is this a "perish the thought that anyone has different likes and dislikes than me" situation?
I mean, for all you know, for other people is the bare midriffs the ones that are the boring option, and they would have a point, seeing as the minis market is kind of flooded with those.
The fact that they went for this semi-cheesecake design instead of committing to one way or the other is possibly a reason for why the original KS didn't perform as well as they hoped.
If something is to be called boring shouldn't it be the bare-midriff female barbarian design that we have seen a million times already rather than the "SJW-clothed and armored female" that's almost unknown in miniature form comparatively?
Fully clothed warrior women fill a niche, especially in modular plastic. It's great!
They can always do a titty kit later on, in a seperate campaign preferably. Otherwise the comment section would be a cesspool of bickering and flamewars between the cheesecake fans and the feminists, people who want more practical female wargear, (concern) trolls, etc., driving backers away. Warmaidens will go more into that direction, anyway.
Love the stretch goals! With the covered midriff option, I will be much more likely to back this time. That Starter Army II is an incredible price per model! Still hard to tell it's choosable for $100, but the layout on the page is better.
And again just love those stretch goals . Great job Shieldwolf!
ArtIsGreat wrote: Heh, stretch goals of plain hair and nonmidriff armor to make them less interesting, thanks sjw's. I hope there are futher stretch goals of shorter hair and bulkier armor until they are indestinguashable from men. For feths sake
People liking different things than I like = SJWs.
Just curious, but what sort of clothes and armor would you expect a warrior woman to wear? Would you describe historical figures as "SJWs" because they didn't have bare midriffs? Jean D'arc, she was one of those SJWs, wasn't she?
Zywus wrote: The fact that they went for this semi-cheesecake design instead of committing to one of the other is possibly a reason for why the original KS didn't perform as well as they hoped.
Yeah, I'd much rather have seen the two extremes - half-naked Marauder-types and heavily armoured Warrior-types (like this?). And no wind-blown hair, so that you can turn a model's head without having it going everywhere.
Yep, either you go full cheesecake with super model bodies and stripper poses like Raging Heroes, or you make (semi-)believable warrior women. The middle ground isn't appealing enough to any group I think.
I like the ability to go either cheesecake or non-baremidriff personally. I would think it would be better to make the 70k goal just to have a box of Rangers. Dual Kits are going to increase their cost per box meaning retail the dual kits are going to cost more to sell in all likelihood than if they had two individual units.
That said I'll be glad if it gets there for them. I'll probably be going back in because my Varangar KoW army isn't going to be a real project for at least a year between my lizardmen, beastmen, and dwarves.
I don't see how the expect this to do any better than last time. It's pretty similar, except with no chance of unlocking that second kit that they almost had unlocked last time. Adding crossbows and stuff to the kit at 70k is nice, but making it a combined kit seems likely to mean that it won't work well, because none of them will be posed like the might be firing a crossbow.
This was an issue with, for example, the GW Savage Orc box. It came with bows as an option, but the only way to assemble the models made it look like the orcs were going to use the bows to hit their opponents. There wasn't any way to make it look like they might consider actually using the bows to fire arrows.
re the image of the warrios - I think quite a few people - partly inspired by the Shieldmaiden bust they made hoped for something along these lines:
There are not many female warriors like her around and certainly not in plastic - I have "cheescake" / "Skyclad" warriors in my armies - be they Vikings, Nymphs or children of Bast - so the (lightly) armoured warrior in this theme appealed to me.
Nostromodamus wrote: The recent Oathsworn KS proves there is much demand for ladies in appropriate attire for combat. It would be a good route to take.
Yup. 1000 backers pledging for roughly 30Ā£ on average.
Of course the market for RPG minis and plastic regiments is somewhat different but I'd think it's fair to assume at least half of those backers would have had an interest in putting in a slightly bigger investment for twice the number of models (with the majority being modular plastic) provided that the design appealed to them.
Not sure I like the concept of stretchgoals adding variant torsos and weapons to the sprues. Doesn't that mean that there are room on the sprues for these things no matter what, so if those stretchgoals arent reached, will there just be big empty sections? It feels kinda like day-one-DLC in videogames.
Tooling will be more expensive for those added parts, though - I don't think it's like day-one DLC at all! Having a packed sprue would be awesome, or a secondary sprue to add more weapon / head / torso options.
RiTides wrote: Tooling will be more expensive for those added parts, though - I don't think it's like day-one DLC at all! Having a packed sprue would be awesome, or a secondary sprue to add more weapon / head / torso options.
That's true.
It does make more sense to have the add-ons be separate sprues though. Otherwise you can't start designing the sprue layout until after the KS is done and you know what's supposed to fit on them.
Yes, odd they'd make halfway absurd shieldmaidens and then what appear to be way over the top warmaidens. Why not make the one completely boring while the rest of us have the warmaidens? Instead they go partway and offer sort of apology concessions? As stretch goals?!
Could be wrong, mebbe they've struck the perfect balance and this makes enough moneys that they won't throw another temper tantrum, take their ball and go home. Hope this lasts long enough to see what they're planning with the warmaidens.
I guess we won't know how "boring" or "exciting" these ones will be until we see actual unit previews, instead of that single and rather static render.
Think the guys have been working pretty much nonstop on the draft making sure it looks as good as they can. ill try my best to keep people informed but they spend most of their time on the comment section.
AdamBridger wrote: I think when/if they relaunch they should just stick to funding 1 army at a time and try to get as many plastic kits out of it as possible. They should also with the stretch goals not go overboard with too many free rewards (not saying I wouldn't have wanted them if they were there) and maybe just have unlockable add-ons of individual characters or smaller units (monsters, cavalry etc) on the whole. Also maybe don't have non-model stretch goals back to back would help maintain interest. Having the stretch goals laid out 3-4 in advance would also help in keeping the total ticking over and give people something to aim for even if they next goal isn't to their liking.
overtyrant wrote: They need to leave aside their ruleset for now and focus on getting there HIPS kits out, even if they have to do it one KS at a time. This way you can have market saturation with their lovely HIPS kits (hopefully better then Mantics offerings). And then when enough kits have been produced then you'll have your freedom to produce your own ruleset.
This product will never make it through retail without crowdfunding. We will simply lose the investment we made.
Azazelx wrote: I know that Angelos feels that his resin figures are better then Mierce and AoW and even there we've politely agreed to disagree.He's hardly able to be objective, after all.
Fair enough, no? :-)
Azazelx wrote: The Mammoth is pretty special, though even I don't see the value in +50% for the howdah.
The howdah takes 3x times casting and 4x times packaging. The +50% is a fair cost in our opinion. :-)
Binabik15 wrote: The polar bears woud've been 15$ a pop. If they come close to JAG's "Kraan on bear" for Mierce...droool.
Canceling this campaign, sigh.
They still are, we have pulled one of the bears much earlier on the campaign for you to judge for yourselves! :-)
Theophony wrote: Wonder if it really comes down to needing xxx money by xxx date and not having enough time to do a 30 day campaign?
Yes it does, funds must have been collected by mid/end March at the very latest, so we must also have time to sculpt + 3d print + mail the 3ups to Renedra for our production slot to move forward. Simple as that.
Mymearan wrote: It's hard to get an overview of what's available without scrolling down the whoooole page. Needs a smaller list with smaller pics of all the options at the beginning, like Mierce always does.
We have made two pics ("Pledge" and "Goal Stretch" Maps) available, it should make it simpler and easier...? :-)
(hopefully it's enough)
Fully clothed warrior women fill a niche and that's one of the things people were complaining about during KS-2. We think we have found a way to make everyone happy.
Albino Squirrel wrote: I don't see how the expect this to do any better than last time. It's pretty similar, except with no chance of unlocking that second kit that they almost had unlocked last time. Adding crossbows and stuff to the kit at 70k is nice, but making it a combined kit seems likely to mean that it won't work well, because none of them will be posed like the might be firing a crossbow.
This was an issue with, for example, the GW Savage Orc box. It came with bows as an option, but the only way to assemble the models made it look like the orcs were going to use the bows to hit their opponents. There wasn't any way to make it look like they might consider actually using the bows to fire arrows.
Fair question, only the kit you are referring to IIRC has bodies that don't have the modularity ours will offer, in this case the arms. We will post even more pictures during the next updates, this is a *very* modular kit and the reason we went with the 3D sculpting and sculptors who have worked for the giant manufacturer and have loads of expertise and personal will to make this an awesome product!
ArtIsGreat wrote: Yes, odd they'd make halfway absurd shieldmaidens and then what appear to be way over the top warmaidens. Why not make the one completely boring while the rest of us have the warmaidens? Instead they go partway and offer sort of apology concessions? As stretch goals?!
Could be wrong, mebbe they've struck the perfect balance and this makes enough moneys that they won't throw another temper tantrum, take their ball and go home. Hope this lasts long enough to see what they're planning with the warmaidens.
We have listened to backers and decided this is a manner of pleasing more people and offering more to everyone, this time only in miniature rewards however.
People weren't interested in our rulebook, but we won't give up on it, simply we need to lay low for a while (couple more years apparently). A rulebook has costs (translator, editor, artists etc) and that's something we didn't get across, since some people insinuated we were doing it to stretch the funding. Absolutely false!
Did we drop the ball and go home to fast? Perhaps we did, but same thing happened to our KS-1, we held tight and delivered all the same. You didn't live through it and won't be able to understand how hard it was for us, making a mistake and relaunching ASAP was the best solution in our opinion. Time will tell I guess...
Azazelx wrote: If the campaign is relaunched with an expectation that it'll fund two full armies, or even one full army, it's going to fail again. And by "fail", I mean (probably) reach the initial funding goal but not everything that SW expects.. and possibly get cancelled again? That'll be in people's minds. It'll be a harder road next time as they've damaged their reputation and trust with people by cancelling a funded project. There were some very unhappy people and burnt bridges in the KS comments when I was following them during the immediate aftermath.
That's not the intention/expectation this time however. And the chances are ZERO as stated in our update #6.
Nostromodamus wrote: They announced the relaunch 3 days ago elsewhere, you'd have thought they would have announced it here as they were so active previously.
We wanted to do so earlier, but first we had to work on the draft itself, we are also responding to multiple messages and pm's and emails (all of which cannot be seen from the outside).
Hulksmash wrote: I like the ability to go either cheesecake or non-baremidriff personally. I would think it would be better to make the 70k goal just to have a box of Rangers. Dual Kits are going to increase their cost per box meaning retail the dual kits are going to cost more to sell in all likelihood than if they had two individual units.
Yes, but it also helps and minimizes storage and packing.
It will also reward more those who jumped in during the KS for obvious reasons :-)
And finally, the version of the twin-headed Dragon as one last thing before leaving, we will be back later tonight to answer any questions/comments you might have.
Theophony wrote: Isn't the dragon 28mm scale also? It says 54mm scale?
28mm scale and 54mm scale, the one shown above is the 54mm scale one we hadn't revealed.
They are the same sculpt and only change in size (thanks to 3D technology which we have started using) and we have posted it mostly to show what the miniature really looks like (mainly for the pm's we received about not liking/wanting the particular Dragon). Hopefully this will help them change their minds, otherwise we now have one more Starter Army (for a total of 3) + the Garrison Armies added to allow people selecting what they like without us having to do switches to their pledged rewards.
Ketara wrote: You misspelt mammoth as 'mamooth' in the pledge picture, shieldwolf.
Errr.. I did and thank you for pointing this out, but the "misspelling" is done on purpose ;-)
We have secured IP for MammoOth as the wording of our unique miniature (we didn't know but others have secured Mammooth as their brand name for other things too!), so while everyone understands it's obviously Mammoth we can point out it's not the same and thus protect ourselves legally easier from any aspiring copy-cat casters.
I can't explain it any better and we don't know much about legal stuff but our lawyer here insisted, so...*shrugs shoulders*
If you notice anything you think wrong on our draft, please don't hesitate to point it out, we really appreciate the support! :-D
Albino Squirrel wrote: I don't see how the expect this to do any better than last time. It's pretty similar, except with no chance of unlocking that second kit that they almost had unlocked last time. Adding crossbows and stuff to the kit at 70k is nice, but making it a combined kit seems likely to mean that it won't work well, because none of them will be posed like the might be firing a crossbow.
This was an issue with, for example, the GW Savage Orc box. It came with bows as an option, but the only way to assemble the models made it look like the orcs were going to use the bows to hit their opponents. There wasn't any way to make it look like they might consider actually using the bows to fire arrows.
Fair question, only the kit you are referring to IIRC has bodies that don't have the modularity ours will offer, in this case the arms. We will post even more pictures during the next updates, this is a *very* modular kit and the reason we went with the 3D sculpting and sculptors who have worked for the giant manufacturer and have loads of expertise and personal will to make this an awesome product!
That a good point. If I remember correctly, the major problem with those GW Savage Orcs was that the arms could only be attached in one position, which I suppose was necessary because they weren't wearing anything and the muscles on their arms and shoulders needed to match up.
Will you have some images of the posed models during the campaign? Or the additional pieces to create the rangers? I'm definitely looking forward to seeing more pictures.
Shieldwolf Miniatures wrote: Errr.. I did and thank you for pointing this out, but the "misspelling" is done on purpose ;-)
We have secured IP for MammoOth as the wording of our unique miniature (we didn't know but others have secured Mammooth as their brand name for other things too!), so while everyone understands it's obviously Mammoth we can point out it's not the same and thus protect ourselves legally easier from any aspiring copy-cat casters.
I can't explain it any better and we don't know much about legal stuff but our lawyer here insisted, so...*shrugs shoulders*
If this is not a joke at GW's expense, your lawyer appears to be giving you bad advice. Your specific sculpt is protectable, and already was, but the idea of a War Mammoth is not. Even if you do succeed in making sure any copycats call theirs a "Mammoth" while only yours is a "Mammooth", what benefit does it give you if someone searching for a 28mm scale mammoth finds everything except your model?
@AlexHolker
I honestly don't know, the agreement we have signed with the firm is that as long as we do what we are told, then for any penalties/issues the firm is going to be liable for all of them.
I will make a note to re-look into this however, as I said we know nothing of legal matters but asking another lawyer/firm can't do much harm, can it? :-D
@Albino Squirrel
We will be posting additional images to show how well these fit and the augmented modularity the kit(s) are going to offer, yes :-)
Shieldwolf Miniatures wrote: Errr.. I did and thank you for pointing this out, but the "misspelling" is done on purpose ;-)
We have secured IP for MammoOth as the wording of our unique miniature (we didn't know but others have secured Mammooth as their brand name for other things too!), so while everyone understands it's obviously Mammoth we can point out it's not the same and thus protect ourselves legally easier from any aspiring copy-cat casters.
I can't explain it any better and we don't know much about legal stuff but our lawyer here insisted, so...*shrugs shoulders*
If this is not a joke at GW's expense, your lawyer appears to be giving you bad advice. Your specific sculpt is protectable, and already was, but the idea of a War Mammoth is not. Even if you do succeed in making sure any copycats call theirs a "Mammoth" while only yours is a "Mammooth", what benefit does it give you if someone searching for a 28mm scale mammoth finds everything except your model?
Much as I hate to agree with Alexholker, he's right. You were already protected against any form of recast, and 'Mammooth' just makes it look like you've misspelt it whilst excluding yourself from search results.
If it was some kind of separate concept, or strong IP you were out to protect, I'd understand. But a war mammoth doesn't really qualify there, it's been done plenty of times.
Just my two cents. I've no doubt you'll prioritise the lawyers opinion over this one (heck, I would if I'd paid for it), but I'm really not seeing the logic I'm afraid.
EDIT
Shieldwolf Miniatures wrote: @AlexHolker
I honestly don't know, the agreement we have signed with the firm is that as long as we do what we are told, then for any penalties/issues the firm is going to be liable for all of them.
That makes more sense. So the law firm is going above and beyond in order to ensure that they're not held liable for any sort of legal fees. Doubtless they googled 'war mammoth', saw other companies have made them, and in order to pre-emptively head off any legal issues (with no understanding of how minuscule the odds are somehow would file over the name 'war mammoth') are making sure the odds are zero.
Usually that would be a good strategy with regards to IP, but by labelling it such, I fear it may actively hurt sales of the model when it hits the market, by pure virtue of the fact that anyone searching for a war mammoth won't see yours.
The Heavy Skeleton Infantry and Death Deceivers were really disappointing. They are made out of some kind of white resin that is really rubbery and flexible. They are just so flimsy and breakable. Was expecting much better from these models.
Their newer resins (Orcs, Shieldmaidens, Mammoth) are far better quality than those early kits, so their resins in this KS would have been made from the better stuff. I noticed that Mierce has a gigantic Mammoth (or is it a War Elephant? howdah or not?) in their latest KS, which can only hurt SW due to their decision to cancel.
Azazelx wrote: The Mammoth is pretty special, though even I don't see the value in +50% for the howdah.
The howdah takes 3x times casting and 4x times packaging. The +50% is a fair cost in our opinion. :-)
Here's the thing. As a retail customer/end user/KS backer of a product, I don't actually care how much it cost you to produce X versus how much it costs to produce Y. I only care about value, quality and service. It seems that the howdah is something that's not going to provide very good margins at all compared to the mammoth, because the perceived value at the pointy end of the stick isn't there compared to the mammoth. Especially when we can make out own howdahs out of plasticard or balsa that might not look as good but will cost cents on the dollar. We can't sculpt our own Mammoth, on the other hand (generally speaking).
Or to put it another way. I could buy two mammoths with howdahs, or three mammoths and make my own howdahs. Or one mammoth and a whole lot more models (and make my own howdah.) Which one do you think people would prefer?
Azazelx wrote: If the campaign is relaunched with an expectation that it'll fund two full armies, or even one full army, it's going to fail again. And by "fail", I mean (probably) reach the initial funding goal but not everything that SW expects.. and possibly get cancelled again? That'll be in people's minds. It'll be a harder road next time as they've damaged their reputation and trust with people by cancelling a funded project. There were some very unhappy people and burnt bridges in the KS comments when I was following them during the immediate aftermath.
That's not the intention/expectation this time however. And the chances are ZERO as stated in our update #6.
That may be so, but as consumers we get lied to all of the time. Just ask Mantic. The fact is that by cancelling KS2 that had met (and more) of its target goal, you did lie to your backers, so a "fool me once...." reaction is inevitable. I've been a supporter of yours for some time, as you know, and I feel deceived and misled. I understand the logic of a funded campaign being more likely to attract more backers, etc, but the fact is that it was already funded and cancelled once, so...
Now if I'm feeling this way - someone who has been a supporter and someone who understands the "funded!" issues, then I'm sure others will be even less understanding. I guess we'll see next week. Or whenever.
Shieldwolf Miniatures wrote: Errr.. I did and thank you for pointing this out, but the "misspelling" is done on purpose ;-)
We have secured IP for MammoOth as the wording of our unique miniature (we didn't know but others have secured Mammooth as their brand name for other things too!), so while everyone understands it's obviously Mammoth we can point out it's not the same and thus protect ourselves legally easier from any aspiring copy-cat casters.
I can't explain it any better and we don't know much about legal stuff but our lawyer here insisted, so...*shrugs shoulders*
If this is not a joke at GW's expense, your lawyer appears to be giving you bad advice. Your specific sculpt is protectable, and already was, but the idea of a War Mammoth is not. Even if you do succeed in making sure any copycats call theirs a "Mammoth" while only yours is a "Mammooth", what benefit does it give you if someone searching for a 28mm scale mammoth finds everything except your model?
Alex is absolutely correct here. On all points.
If China or Russia recasts your Mammo(o)th, it's not going to matter how it's spelt, just as it doesn't matter whether GW call it an Elf or Aelf.
I noticed that Mierce has a gigantic Mammoth (or is it a War Elephant? howdah or not?) in their latest KS, which can only hurt SW due to their decision to cancel.
Nah, we've seen the product. Comes more expensive (even at the KS discounted price) and doubt they can stock more detail than ours, at best they'll match it.
Concept wise we prefer ours but YMMV so no argument there. Also, no howdah version and (if KS-2.5 works out fine) no crew either.
That along with a couple more things... yeah, no worries :-)
Azazelx wrote: The Mammoth is pretty special, though even I don't see the value in +50% for the howdah.
The howdah takes 3x times casting and 4x times packaging. The +50% is a fair cost in our opinion. :-)
Here's the thing. As a retail customer/end user/KS backer of a product, I don't actually care how much it cost you to produce X versus how much it costs to produce Y. I only care about value, quality and service. It seems that the howdah is something that's not going to provide very good margins at all compared to the mammoth, because the perceived value at the pointy end of the stick isn't there compared to the mammoth. Especially when we can make out own howdahs out of plasticard or balsa that might not look as good but will cost cents on the dollar. We can't sculpt our own Mammoth, on the other hand (generally speaking).
Or to put it another way. I could buy two mammoths with howdahs, or three mammoths and make my own howdahs. Or one mammoth and a whole lot more models (and make my own howdah.) Which one do you think people would prefer?
Actually we trust people will still prefer to have the howdah but even if they don't that's perfectly fine, we will be very honored all the same if they choose to support us by pledging for the beast alone :-)
Spoiler:
Azazelx wrote: If the campaign is relaunched with an expectation that it'll fund two full armies, or even one full army, it's going to fail again. And by "fail", I mean (probably) reach the initial funding goal but not everything that SW expects.. and possibly get cancelled again? That'll be in people's minds. It'll be a harder road next time as they've damaged their reputation and trust with people by cancelling a funded project. There were some very unhappy people and burnt bridges in the KS comments when I was following them during the immediate aftermath.
That may be so, but as consumers we get lied to all of the time. Just ask Mantic. The fact is that by cancelling KS2 that had met (and more) of its target goal, you did lie to your backers, so a "fool me once...." reaction is inevitable. I've been a supporter of yours for some time, as you know, and I feel deceived and misled. I understand the logic of a funded campaign being more likely to attract more backers, etc, but the fact is that it was already funded and cancelled once, so...
Now if I'm feeling this way - someone who has been a supporter and someone who understands the "funded!" issues, then I'm sure others will be even less understanding. I guess we'll see next week. Or whenever.
I understand what you are saying and I'm sorry you feel this way, honest. We however feel we have maintained a 100% transparent stance; because if what you say is true, then in the same line of reasoning we must have also horribly lied during our KS-1, claiming 5 whole armies instead of 2 this time, and the funding target there was 6 times lower (5K compared to 30K). The fact not a single person complained about that reassures us we kept our word and people knew what they were pledging for but we do assume responsibility for the miscommunication which (undeniably) did exist.
Confusing this however with the attitudes of other companies is unfair imo, we never promised anything to anyone and failed to deliver it, whether that concerns materials, communications, final aspect of product and anything similar to that. No, not even close.
Shieldwolf Miniatures wrote: Errr.. I did and thank you for pointing this out, but the "misspelling" is done on purpose ;-)
We have secured IP for MammoOth as the wording of our unique miniature (we didn't know but others have secured Mammooth as their brand name for other things too!), so while everyone understands it's obviously Mammoth we can point out it's not the same and thus protect ourselves legally easier from any aspiring copy-cat casters.
I can't explain it any better and we don't know much about legal stuff but our lawyer here insisted, so...*shrugs shoulders*
If this is not a joke at GW's expense, your lawyer appears to be giving you bad advice. Your specific sculpt is protectable, and already was, but the idea of a War Mammoth is not. Even if you do succeed in making sure any copycats call theirs a "Mammoth" while only yours is a "Mammooth", what benefit does it give you if someone searching for a 28mm scale mammoth finds everything except your model?
Alex is absolutely correct here. On all points.
If China or Russia recasts your Mammo(o)th, it's not going to matter how it's spelt, just as it doesn't matter whether GW call it an Elf or Aelf.
That's up to the law firm to deal with if we spot it. You both have a valid point apparently and we will look into it after KS-2.5 ends.
PS. Sorry for all the mix-ups with the quotes, tired and still not made it in time to go to bed, 05:42, yeah good luck with that now, lol! :-)
I understand what you are saying and I'm sorry you feel this way, honest. We however feel we have maintained a 100% transparent stance; because if what you say is true, then in the same line of reasoning we must have also horribly lied during our KS-1, claiming 5 whole armies instead of 2 this time, and the funding target there was 6 times lower (5K compared to 30K). The fact not a single person complained about that reassures us we kept our word and people knew what they were pledging for but we do assume responsibility for the miscommunication which (undeniably) did exist.
Confusing this however with the attitudes of other companies is unfair imo, we never promised anything to anyone and failed to deliver it, whether that concerns materials, communications, final aspect of product and anything similar to that. No, not even close.
No, the reasoning is quite different:
The difference is that the KS1 campaign wanted to fund 5 armies. While it didn't get there, it did allow itself to finish and provided all of the content that was unlocked. There's no lie or deceit there because when was funded got produced.
KS2 wanted to fund 2 armies. It funded the first kit, and was on the way to (probably) fill the second kit. It would still have only funded part of one army, but Orcs backers would still have gotten a bag of toys, and if allowed to complete, the campaign would have provided all of the content that was unlocked. Except it was cancelled suddenly. Well, suddenly to all of your backers. Therefore, what was funded was not produced for behind the scenes reasons - not meeting your backstage/hidden expectations while the existing backers felt that they had collectively achieved the main thing - the SM kit. Cancelling a $30k campaign while it was on $40k (funded at 133%) because it wasn't likely to make $150k or $160k by the end of the campaign is actually quite deceitful, and leaves a bad taste in the mouth. That really is a promise that failed to deliver. You can disagree with me, but read through the comments on the KS page and even in this thread once the campaign was cancelled. It hurt your reputation, no question.
Speaking for myself, I was happy with the day 1 value, and I was happy even if it only funded the one kit.
On the other hand, I think the stretch goals were badly handled as I wrote several pages ago, as was the "treatment" of the Orc backers - in getting less than Shieldmaiden backers. Even if it would have evened out at $120k, that doesn't matter when a campaign is at $35 or $40k or $55k.
The other thing is that comparing you to other companies is just something that's going to happen, especially on Kickstarter. You actually delivered (mostly) on time for the first KS, but the "golden age" of Kickstarter is over. People are more cynical now. People are more cautious now. People have been lied to too many times. People have been burned too many times to take the promises of a new company on face value, and you are a relatively new, unknown company.
Look at CMON who can actually be relied on to deliver. Black Plague was supposed to arrive in December, then before CNY, then they missed CNY, which you'd think would cause a month's delay, and now the new guesstimate is August or some such instead of March-April. There's some dishonestly going on there with regards to fulfilment, no question. Mantic... well, despite the fact that you'd like to make much closer to their totals, look at how well their current "million dollar, one pledge level only, one shipping wave, no add-ons" is doing. So even the "big boys" aren't always truthful, and in Mantic's case, fail to make their targets (spectacularly in this case since they've gone to the damage control solutions of multiple pledge levels, add-ons, multiple shipping waves). Obviously I don't need to give examples of Mantic changing their minds, breaking promises, changing materials, providing garbage quality items, etc.
Regarding the impact of the Mierce Mammoth/Elephant. The fact is that most normal people (not me, then) probably only have space for 1 or perhaps 2 giant pachyderms in their armies. The point I'm making with that is that with your KS2 being cancelled, that would have cancelled some SW Mammoth customers that would now be buying the Mierce ones right now - because despite Rob Lane, Mierce have built a top-tier reputation for models over the past 3? 4? years that is way beyond SW's reputation...
The difference is that the KS1 campaign wanted to fund 5 armies. While it didn't get there, it did allow itself to finish and provided all of the content that was unlocked. There's no lie or deceit there because when was funded got produced.
On the contrary we have the strongest of beliefs that if we had decided to pull out after witnessing how pledges were being massively dropped I think no-one would have blamed us.
If anyone thinks otherwise, we will politely have to agree to disagree.
But we didn't. We stuck around although we never reached our expectations and fulfilled as promised. Doing it a 2nd time... no,no,no... "we are definitely doing something wrong here, the reasonable thing to do is cancel/fix/relaunch."
On KS-2 @Azazelx we wanted to fund two whole armies. We had some basics and needed all the rest. Agreed, we hadn't properly communicated it and don't know how many SGs each army may have unlocked (i.e. maybe the Orcs would not have gotten any of their Monstrous Cavalry for example) but they would still have had to enrich their ranks a lot. The way it was going, well, that wouldn't happen (also due to our SG's not being well planned out, again we have assumed all responsibility). Also, in all this it's important to take under consideration (yet impossible to prove to anyone, let alone transfer the feeling) of how being continuously messaged from people complaining about us "being too rigid" -in what we still consider a very good and honest deal- was affecting us.
When the rule-set let down struck it got worse; people weren't as interested as we thought they'd be. We have admitted it was an over-estimation from our part repeatedly. Does that make us dishonest? None of us here thinks so, it's only human to overestimate and as long as we secured noone has lost a single dime in our book damage control in this case was almost perfect (except the bit of time people invested in following the progress of the project these 7 days, that unfortunately we cannot give back). Some will disagree with this mentality of ours, hands up, no argument there, to each his own. Fact remains the game is important to us and a rulebook has costs, we need a professional translation and editing, then the concept artists must be paid, these things don't come free. It's been written on our webstore page some years now so it's not something we have suddenly made up, but... People not being interested only made matters worse on how the planning of KS-2 was going to affect it.
TLDR;
I think it all comes down to a matter of perspective. Cancelling something in order to fix it and come back with what makes *both* parties happy is imho what the cancel button is about. Then again someone may argue that we should have directly asked for a couple of hundred grant since that was our main purpose. Well, if someone believes that was the "honest" thing to do and that we still would have the slightest chance to fund... yeah, OK, we will simply agree to disagree.
We will take it much slower, maybe hoping to fund a couple of kits per year as someone else said a couple of pages back. Maybe, just maybe, we can hope to gather enough so in 2-3 years we can come back and have the big break we are looking for... We feel optimistic for how the relaunch is going to work out however, after the cancellation we still received a lot of messages and comments on KS and FB page. We will see how it works out I guess, just a couple of weeks give or take for KS-2.5 to finish, first days will be crucial as we unfortunately didn't have time to rebuild the hype we did for KS-2 but we hope for the best. :-)
PS. I think you will all excuse me as I try to retain myself from commenting on the other companies for obvious reasons.
Shieldwolf.. is there ANY way the women can have a hammer as a selection? That one change means that the kit is ready to go for Mordheim. It also means they are far more useful for roleplayers.
If I may suggest.. If 200k or whatever is unrealistic.. then hold that. Set your starting point for 2 battling warbands. Let it grow naturally within the confines of the KS and let the demand set the pace. Set your starting intentions and starting funding goal be the same or I'm afraid we'll see a repeat.
EDIT: Oh.. and as long as the other faction is Orcs.. I can't really justify buying it. I have hundreds of Orcs already. If it were lizardmen, beastmen, some sort of woodland forces, demons, dark elves, dwarves, or pretty much anything.. I'd be good to go. I just have sooo many Orcs from all the different companies doing them :(
I remember them saying that there are other races in the pipeline, but I cant remember which. I would like to see SW's take on the traditional fantasy races though! especially beastmen as I feel thats a type of mini which isnt as widely available as the others like elves etc etc.
Maybe the warmaidens will have a 2H option and perhaps one would be a hammer? I do like me some hammers
I agree.. Beastmen and Lizards are probably 2 most useful and while either have "some" alternatives out there.. there's really not much. Especially where variety is concerned (looking at you Meso American lizardmen..) Most Beastmen also tend to be goats.. which is fine but they all tend to look really really similar. I have to look again but I was pretty sure D&D Beastmen had some variety past goat.
Orcs on the other hand are being made by everyone. They are almost as saturated as zombies.
GW, Reaper, Hasslefree, Mantic, CMoN just to name a few.
The part that makes it worse is that Mantic has had 2 recent kickstarters with Orcs (KoW and Dungeon Saga) and CMoN had at least one with the B-Sieged expansion.
There are alot of Orcs around, but the vareity in them is what I think makes them allright to still produce. Especially SW's mountain orcs which have a very savage beast vibe to them.
But for now im happy enough with some warrior women, maybe sometime down the line we will see what other races they have planned
Dan king over on the KOW fanatic page did some cat women out of the new succubi models, think he got one of the cat heads from the sisterhood panthers and magic molded himself aload and stuck it onto the succubi, looked rather good.
Goregut wrote: Dan king over on the KOW fanatic page did some cat women out of the new succubi models, think he got one of the cat heads from the sisterhood panthers and magic molded himself aload and stuck it onto the succubi, looked rather good.
sounds fun
Wargods do some great ones but hard to get over here :(
I wish there was a pledge level with no resin component that still had stretch goal excitement. I guess I'll just stick with one single add on box of shieldmaidens on the add on only pledge.
During the first campaign, they had a 9? dollar pledge for add ons only, then the next lowest was $50 for a box of shieldmaidens, two resin heroes and some resin wolves. As a customer who is pledging for plastic and only plastic, this was less appealing than say $50 for two boxes plus stretch goals, or $35 for one box plus a sprue of any stretch goal plastics.
Last time I looked at the rough draft for round 2, it had the same options.
MLaw wrote: Shieldwolf.. is there ANY way the women can have a hammer as a selection? That one change means that the kit is ready to go for Mordheim. It also means they are far more useful for roleplayers.
The only variants for what you are asking belong to the Talliareum faction, also being the only female units in Talliareum (Bombardiers have both male and female). That would include a female monk-type unit and a holly order (plate armor), first is a bit "I strike hard and last little", while the other is something like "I cost a lot more but stand my ground".
We have some time to go before that happens though, we still haven't even funded KS-2.5 to even consider start talking about these...
MLaw wrote: If I may suggest..
If 200k or whatever is unrealistic.. then hold that. Set your starting point for 2 battling warbands. Let it grow naturally within the confines of the KS and let the demand set the pace. Set your starting intentions and starting funding goal be the same or I'm afraid we'll see a repeat.
Yes, we will take and produce whatever we fund in our next KS(s), after which we will wait and see when (and if) we get a "really good KS project" which will allow us to move much faster than we are currently doing. Our abbandoning the "only-one KS per time" Policy might also help us get rid of that problem, as we have said this seems ito have caused us more harm than good.
Goregut wrote: Maybe the warmaidens will have a 2H option and perhaps one would be a hammer? I do like me some hammers
Only the fourth (and last planned) Shieldmaiden kit, the Dragonbred wear heavy armor and have two-handed weaponry, but it's mostly axes, no hammers I'm afraid.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: During the first campaign, they had a 9? dollar pledge for add ons only, then the next lowest was $50 for a box of shieldmaidens, two resin heroes and some resin wolves. As a customer who is pledging for plastic and only plastic, this was less appealing than say $50 for two boxes plus stretch goals, or $35 for one box plus a sprue of any stretch goal plastics.
Last time I looked at the rough draft for round 2, it had the same options.
Yes, actually the $9 dollar pledge was set in order to signal that the lowest add-on would be $9, we didn't know people would have prefered a $1 and still do the same :-)
Anyway, we have fixed that now, live and learn for us I guess.
I've wanted tigermen since Breath of Fire 3. Magic has cool looking ones as well, design wise. And the 6th edition Beasts of Chaos book talks about Ind's weretigers. I wanted them so, so much.
There's at least one ogre sized werebear and and even bigger bullman (not minoraur) available from some range, beautiful models, have them both, as well as countless boarmen (PP alone), werewolves, goatmen, crocodile or gatormen, fly-heads as bits and even some catgirls, both scifi and fantasy, even lion dudes can be bought, but Idon't know aboutany tigermen ;(
If Shieldwolf were to get Fausto Gutierrez to design a set full of catpeople like smaller Antipodes/dogfaces (lion heads, tiger heads, heck, wolf heads should fit such bodies as well), oh my.
Binabik15 wrote: I've wanted tigermen since Breath of Fire 3. Magic has cool looking ones as well, design wise. And the 6th edition Beasts of Chaos book talks about Ind's weretigers. I wanted them so, so much.
There's at least one ogre sized werebear and and even bigger bullman (not minoraur) available from some range, beautiful models, have them both, as well as countless boarmen (PP alone), werewolves, goatmen, crocodile or gatormen, fly-heads as bits and even some catgirls, both scifi and fantasy, even lion dudes can be bought, but Idon't know aboutany tigermen ;(
If Shieldwolf were to get Fausto Gutierrez to design a set full of catpeople like smaller Antipodes/dogfaces (lion heads, tiger heads, heck, wolf heads should fit such bodies as well), oh my.
Have you checked out Alkemy. They just did a Kickstarter a little while back to try and get the game out there again (4th time I think), but one of their better lines is the Khaliman Empire , cat people of Arabic styling.
http://alkemy-the-game.com/en/category/factions-en/khaliman-republic/ Not a huge selection, but it's a skirmish game.
@Barzam
Wolves + Dragons will be available as add-ons in "Add-on pack-1", affirmative, we will post this in our update #1 or #2.
(and before you ask, Talliareum + probably Araves from our current range are going to form Add-on pack-2)
:-)
Depending on the bears (please let them have fierce looking heads like the Mierce one and not Winnie-approved-cuddly ones like Scibor, oh, and well sculpted fur) I might drop that for a box of maidens or two and an add an unhealthy amount of ursines.
Depending on the bears (please let them have fierce looking heads like the Mierce one and not Winnie-approved-cuddly ones like Scibor, oh, and well sculpted fur) I might drop that for a box of maidens or two and an add an unhealthy amount of ursines.
If they keep to the concept pics they have shown in the past, i think you will be pleased!
Sculpts are very faithful to the concept artwork and very detailed. The bears have all been commissioned to Paolo Fabiani, the same person who has sculpted our Orc heroes.
You will see (and quote me) for yourselves :-)
I have seen those pics. The bear on the black and white one looks good and intimidating, the one on the image with tan backround looks a bit herp-a-derp with a too round face (in miniature form bears need a slightly exagerated look to not look too round faced and soft/chubby), which is why I've been lobbying for really mean bears since they posted the scale mock-up between their lions and bears.
Backed at $95, but largely in hopes of bear midriffs.
No! Got confused there. Either covered midriffs (human) or angry bears (containing midriffs). I suspect that if neither of those shows up as an unlock or option at the $95 level, I will be pulling out, or dropping back to $50. Not so interested in the orcs as I was last time around, don't really like the two-headed dragon much, not totally sold on the battle yak.
Update #1 posted with pictures of the Ice warbears! Also note you dont have to put those ice shards onto the bear, they come seperate. Looks good to me
Is the head a little large or is it just the angle of the pic? Also, it looks like you'll have an empty socket you'd need to do something with if you left off the ice shards?
I like that the rider is fully separate, means these could be used for other things too
RiTides wrote: Is the head a little large or is it just the angle of the pic?
We will see if we can get some lateral/side pictures to solve that issue, some others have thought so in the comment section of the Kickstarter too, best show them the model at a different angle (have to dig you a picture for that though!)
RiTides wrote: Also, it looks like you'll have an empty socket you'd need to do something with if you left off the ice shards
IIRC the ice shards bases are almost vertical, the uncovered part could be painted as part of the armor.
I remember in the first KS the lions could be used with some 40k space wolves, do you have a rough idea of what other minis might fit ontop of these lovely beasts?
Goregut wrote: I remember in the first KS the lions could be used with some 40k space wolves, do you have a rough idea of what other minis might fit ontop of these lovely beasts?
Yes. Shieldmaiden riders .
Seriously now, I haven't tested out in hand so can't say for sure I'm afraid... :-(
Is this a new unit that rides Shieldmaidens into battle? Sounds... interesting..
Automatically Appended Next Post: I was having a look.. I thought there was a pledge for just one box of each maidens and Orcs.. would be kinda nice for us that don't really need much of either but wouldn't mind a little of both.
That said.. I'm here looking at add-ons. Wolves, that wonderfully sexy Yak, and the Mammoth are all great.. BUT.. I can't seem to find the piggies as an add-on *gasp*
I'd say at some point you probably have enough animals to do a zookeeper add-on pack (hint hint)
That said.. I'm here looking at add-ons. Wolves, that wonderfully sexy Yak, and the Mammoth are all great.. BUT.. I can't seem to find the piggies as an add-on *gasp*
I'd say at some point you probably have enough animals to do a zookeeper add-on pack (hint hint)
As i understand it, some stuff like that may be added as add-on options later.
That said.. I'm here looking at add-ons. Wolves, that wonderfully sexy Yak, and the Mammoth are all great.. BUT.. I can't seem to find the piggies as an add-on *gasp*
I'd say at some point you probably have enough animals to do a zookeeper add-on pack (hint hint)
As I understand it, some stuff like that may be added as add-on options later.
Not later; the first add-on pack is either coming today or tomorrow.
Second add-on pack will come after a few more days.
I've been quite busy the past few days, so good to see that this is back on. The projected December delivery date intrigues me. How likely is that? Hopeful or close to definite? I'll trust Angelos to be straight with us on that where others often aren't.
Is there a specific reason you're trickling out the add-on packs rather than having them all upfront? Keeping people interested and looking at the page in the hope they add more to their pledges?
With a (probably) 2015 delivery date, I'd probably have backed day 1 if I was paying attention at the time, but that's a moot point now. I do wonder if it'd be better for the health of the campaign if I backed tonight, or if I waited a few days in order to help keep up the appearance of the pledges still continuing to come in?
Azazelx wrote: I've been quite busy the past few days, so good to see that this is back on. The projected December delivery date intrigues me. How likely is that? Hopeful or close to definite? I'll trust Angelos to be straight with us on that where others often aren't.
Is there a specific reason you're trickling out the add-on packs rather than having them all upfront? Keeping people interested and looking at the page in the hope they add more to their pledges?
With a (probably) 2015 delivery date, I'd probably have backed day 1 if I was paying attention at the time, but that's a moot point now. I do wonder if it'd be better for the health of the campaign if I backed tonight, or if I waited a few days in order to help keep up the appearance of the pledges still continuing to come in?
Hi @Azazelx!
Well, it's a legitimate question. Program (very rough break-down) is something like this:
March- collection of funds sculpting of 3ups for the plastics
April- finish with any sculpting corrections we'd like to make, 3D printing here in Greece and shipping at UK
May - additional time for any corrections/delays
June- control of the 3ups and planning lay-out of items at Renedra (late June)
July- tooling
August- tooling (plus if we are very lucky, some vacation too!)
September- tooling, sending proofs and printing of the actual product. Then shipping to Greece. (THIS is the month that carries most of the weight and tightest of them all.)
October- packaging.
November- contact with backers for P&P payments
December- shipping rewards to backers.
It is a reasonable & doable plan, even considering having lost some time due to what happened to KS-2 we are still on time. Also need to note that all of the above has to do with the plastic production which is the main target of KS-2.5; it has not referred to the Pledge Manager which we must -obviously- take care of, while in the coming months we will proceed to cast/QC/pack and store all resin rewards. ALL of the items currently shown and funded are already sculpted (*except one Shieldmaiden model that is still WiP, but almost finished), so whatever we might fund according to "artwork-only" should be easily sculpted, shipped & casted in our facilities.
Accidents and delays may eventually happen, but we will try everything humanly possible not to delay. We count on making the 2016 X-mas special, because we too as backers would really like that to happen.
As for the add-ons we will indeed post the first pack rather quickly, we were holding on to them to spark the campaign, but with 2 weeks remaining, our main target completed and all the Team happy here, there's little to no reason to hold them back. As for the timing of any additional support, I honestly can't tell you. I don't have the slightest clue.
Regardless of you choosing to back us again or not (which I can totally understand if you don't), I really appreciate your genuine interest in the doings of my company and I'll do my best to honor said interest.
Thank you.
Are there unpainted pictures of the wolves side by side so we can see the differences? To me those look very similar and the paintjobs are making it hard to spot any differences.
The other animals.. uh.. hm.. guess they're better deals in the armies..
Main difference is the rope around the Great wolf and the Ice wolf doesnt have it and is abit more fluffy. The ice wolf also has earings and a chain going around its neck, but its really hard to see with the white paintjob
Not a problem! they will be adding more stuff from their store at a later date (cant remember when but soon I imagine) Not sure what but I remember hearing their Ogres and some other stuff.
Is this a new unit that rides Shieldmaidens into battle? Sounds... interesting..
Automatically Appended Next Post: I was having a look.. I thought there was a pledge for just one box of each maidens and Orcs.. would be kinda nice for us that don't really need much of either but wouldn't mind a little of both
Wehrkind wrote: I like those new heads. I am always on the look at for good female heads for various reasons, so it will be nice to get a few extras of various types.
Well it seems we are going to be among the very few of these who will be offering them in hard plastic! :-D
And it seems we'll probably have to add some braids too in the normal/original "windy" versions.
Wehrkind wrote: I like those new heads. I am always on the look at for good female heads for various reasons, so it will be nice to get a few extras of various types.
Well it seems we are going to be among the very few of these who will be offering them in hard plastic! :-D
And it seems we'll probably have to add some braids too in the normal/original "windy" versions.
Putting braids into the originals is an awesome idea! Would really add some needed variety, and make them look more warrior-like.
The standard bearer is going to be a good add to the army! I would suggest though that the arm holding the banner should be up more, closer to parallel with the ground instead of down at ~45 degrees. A banner that size would be really awkward to hold in general, probably needing two hands, and the way she is currently holding it would be really difficult even with one end buried in the dirt. Another way of looking at it is that she is holding it like it is a rifle, not a banner. The hand wants to be closer to the center of gravity of the whole thing, otherwise the bottom just gets levered out of the ground.
Anyway... finding pictures of that is harder than I expected. Long story short, her left hand needs to be nearer the center of the flag pole.
@Wehrkind
It probably will be that way, plus we have to do so for balance reasons. The other change we are more likely to do is close her legs a bit, so she stands within the area of the base, the way she is right now she probably won't fit for our rank n' file.
Besides these minor changes the final concept will be kept faithful to, that's what we have promised and that's what backers are pledging for.
Glad you like it, we found it an appropriate reward for a round number SG :-)
Also, 300/500 backers for the free sprue we promised... All right! :-D
are these extra heads going to be resin or plastic?
because i sort of assumed they were just going to be included on the plastic sprues, but the image above suggests that they only come with the gold and silver pledges - so if i just go for the $1 add-in pledge and the add a single box of maidens then i dont get these extra heads, right? which to me suggests they are not going to be on the main plastic sprue...?
if they are going to be plastic will they be included in the retail/box release...?
If I pledge $1 for the add on level, will I get an invite to the pledge manager in order to add on add ons later? KDM's surprise shipping charge took my allocated Shieldwolf budget below the cost of a box.
All the shieldmaiden parts (excpet the characters) will be in plastic. I asked over on the comment section and got this reply from a fellow backer:
the extra heads, torso's and command bits, and ranger bits are all on a 2nd sprue, which will be sold separately at retail. anyone at the $1 pledge level doesn't get them.
(Keep in mind that the command bits and ranger bits are SGs aswell and at the time of writing this hasnt been unlocked)
Also Bob, I have asked that to SW aswell and they the answer I got was pretty much a yes:
We can't confirm that but there's a 99% chance we will do so, yes.
We will be sending out to each and everyone of you personally via pm a link *and* a confirmation message just like we did for our KS-1 (only this time we will try having better sized pictures) via our own/private Pledge Manager (PM).
We haven't decided yet when (and if, but as I said it probably will happen) we will re-open the PM, nor how exactly since we are also considering an alternative option easier to process from a logistic view directly from our website.
are these extra heads going to be resin or plastic?
because i sort of assumed they were just going to be included on the plastic sprues, but the image above suggests that they only come with the gold and silver pledges - so if i just go for the $1 add-in pledge and the add a single box of maidens then i dont get these extra heads, right? which to me suggests they are not going to be on the main plastic sprue...?
if they are going to be plastic will they be included in the retail/box release...?
The heads above are planned for plastic production. The intention however is that they be tooled separately so we may be able to also sell them in our bits section of our webstore.
The backers who are not eligible to Gold/Silver level rewards are not going to get them, correct. IF (and I would like to underline "IF") however we find obstacles in the different tooling we currently plan for (without the actual 3ups for the lay-out and definite tooling it is impossible to know prior to that) and we are forced to include them in the same sprue of the "plain/naked" add-on box, then rest assured we will throw something extra in order to compensate the backers eligible to the additional rewards; it's only fair we do so after all. :-)
Goregut wrote: I believe she will be, ill poke them about that now as I believe they were supposed to add it to the addon part a few days ago (such slackers!).
Ok, decided to give you guys another go, pledged at the Garrison level, but will only keep it if the covered mid drift SG is unlocked. Also can I 'add' on items in the pledge manager?
overtyrant wrote: Ok, decided to give you guys another go, pledged at the Garrison level, but will only keep it if the covered mid drift SG is unlocked. Also can I 'add' on items in the pledge manager?
And the trust will be repaid. Don't know if the SG you mention gets unlocked, we certainly think and hope so, but for us primary mission has already been accomplished. :-D
As for your question, and this is valid 99% (we always withold a 1% when we aren't absolutely certain)
1st Pledge Manager (PM) you will have to choose what you pledged for during the KS.
2nd PM is planned to come out after we show you proofs (sprues) and sculpts of unlocked minis. We think this will be mid/late Q3.
And perhaps more importantly, once the rider is unlocked, I assume that the armoured/clothed midriff-variation will be shown.
The design of that is probably a dealbreaker for me and I'm interested in how they plan to engineer that option.
The render shown at the moment has the front half of the torso attached to the legs, so either the components would be changed to have a detachable torso all together, or there'll be a plastic part to attach onto the bare midriff.
The render shown at the moment has the front half of the torso attached to the legs, so either the components would be changed to have a detachable torso all together, or there'll be a plastic part to attach onto the bare midriff.
Negative @Zywus, for it is none of the above. We will tool two completely different bodies to add to the existing ones armoured/cloted midriff variations (two planned for sure and if possible even three as long as they fit) for a minimum total of four.
This will leave only two naked/little-clothed midriff variations for those who still want to choose them however.
(Hope I made sense, lol)
Would the armoured/clothed midriff'ed bodies* be in addition to the bare ones (meaning there would be some spare incomplete bodies left after assemby) or is the same number of bodies as without the stretchgoal, only more variations?
Zywus wrote: Would the armoured/clothed midriff'ed bodies* be in addition to the bare ones (meaning there would be some spare incomplete bodies left after assemby) or is the same number of bodies as without the stretchgoal, only more variations?
*Front torso + legs
The first. But if you're good with some greenstuff, it's only the rear torso missing, we have already thought of suggesting placing a shield on their backs and each box will contain around 10 more miniatures, totalling 30 instead of 20!
That's also the reason we pushed this SG ahead of the Command. We find it makes the kit of extremely good value. :-)
RiTides wrote: One question that might be obvious - if the clothed midriff torsos are only replacing the front, does that mean the back of the torso is still bare?
The back torsos will be tooled in such a way that will fit both versions. They are a small piece so it's easy to add some cloth/fur/chainmail/whatever and still be fitting for both clothed and unclothed body types :-)
Automatically Appended Next Post: (give me a sec and I'll upload a picture to show you what I mean!)
Zywus wrote: Would the armoured/clothed midriff'ed bodies* be in addition to the bare ones (meaning there would be some spare incomplete bodies left after assemby) or is the same number of bodies as without the stretchgoal, only more variations?
*Front torso + legs
The first. But if you're good with some greenstuff, it's only the rear torso missing, we have already thought of suggesting placing a shield on their backs and each box will contain around 10 more miniatures, totalling 30 instead of 20!
That's what I was thinking! I'm not a GS-master by any measure but some spare shields or capes from thee bitz box and it should't be to difficult to make some extra ladies. I do think the design shown as a render would fit very well with a cape anyway.
They could also easily be used for some really high quality casualties to spruce up some bases.
Zywus wrote: Would the armoured/clothed midriff'ed bodies* be in addition to the bare ones (meaning there would be some spare incomplete bodies left after assemby) or is the same number of bodies as without the stretchgoal, only more variations?
*Front torso + legs
The first. But if you're good with some greenstuff, it's only the rear torso missing, we have already thought of suggesting placing a shield on their backs and each box will contain around 10 more miniatures, totalling 30 instead of 20!
That's also the reason we pushed this SG ahead of the Command. We find it makes the kit of extremely good value. :-)
Why not just add 10 extra backs and make it unquestionably better value without asking people to use shield, greenstuff and other half-measures? Seems like a no-brainer to me.
I think the idea with not adding any kits 'officially' is so that the no-navel-gazing crew (in whose ranks I am proud to count myself) can legitimately have an all-covered Shieldmaiden army, and then not be annoyed at having some spare parts that we could potentially convert into extra Shieldmaidens for the same or another project, because they are bonus bits rather than oppressive semi-cheesecake.
So, with the new stretch goal (if we reach it) we can make 20 Shieldmaidens with covered middrits without having to green stuff or add shields to their backs and an additional 8-10 with green stuffing? If this is so it is amazing value for money!
Zywus wrote: Would the armoured/clothed midriff'ed bodies* be in addition to the bare ones (meaning there would be some spare incomplete bodies left after assemby) or is the same number of bodies as without the stretchgoal, only more variations?
*Front torso + legs
The first. But if you're good with some greenstuff, it's only the rear torso missing, we have already thought of suggesting placing a shield on their backs and each box will contain around 10 more miniatures, totalling 30 instead of 20!
That's also the reason we pushed this SG ahead of the Command. We find it makes the kit of extremely good value. :-)
Why not just add 10 extra backs and make it unquestionably better value without asking people to use shield, greenstuff and other half-measures? Seems like a no-brainer to me.
In fact it wouldn't be but we have in mind a specific lay-out and the sprue space may not suffice to throw in the extra backs. Plus we have a specific box size we are currently using so if we do change the sprue size it's probably going to end up causing us new issues with the packaging of the retail version. We wouldn't like to state something and then not do it, it is human to make mistakes one had not thought of but if we have foreseen it is best saying it upfront, it's the honest thing to do.
It's way better ending up with delivering something more than promised instead of promising something and failing to deliver... :-)
overtyrant wrote: So, with the new stretch goal (if we reach it) we can make 20 Shieldmaidens with covered middrits without having to green stuff or add shields to their backs and an additional 8-10 with green stuffing? If this is so it is amazing value for money!
Thank you for the pic Shieldwolf! It took me a minute even looking at it, but now I see - the midriff is actually part of the same piece for front and back. Very nice design . Seems like it might be a little more challenging for the tooling with the non-bare midriffs, but I am sure you are on that!
Micky wrote: Will the ogres become available as add ons later?
Only in the remote case we are in need of something extra to fill in a relatively small gap in order to unlock a SG (e.g. if we find ourelves being at 68K and need the 70K in order to unlock the Rangers or something like that, I think you understand what I'm trying to say...)
They had a bit of a simpleton look to them. Like they weren't all that bright (or dangerous). Gave me a Lenny from Of Mice & Men vibe for some reason.
"Tell me about the lizards George!"
lol, that's way funnier than it should be..
I plan on looking at them to see about sculpting them into Femurs. If not, I have some really really interesting RPG uses lined up (or I'd buy enough to do both).
The Mammoth is very very nice and I think it's really reasonable too.
(yeah right), but I could use a mammoth 
and a Wyvern. The Dragon is not my cup of tea either, so either make the big ugly an add-on, or give it a separate pledge level where you make money off of it and then people can add-on the plastic infantry.
(Next time schedule your spawning out of the kickstarter cycle 
.
. Great job Shieldwolf!
The fact is that by cancelling KS2 that had met (and more) of its target goal, you did lie to your backers, so a "fool me once...." reaction is inevitable. I've been a supporter of yours for some time, as you know, and I feel deceived and misled. I understand the logic of a funded campaign being more likely to attract more backers, etc, but the fact is that it was already funded and cancelled once, so...
