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 Gomezaddams wrote:
All completely valid points.

Lower funding/risk of failing - I get that. But other companies meet some of that with there own capital, and I don't think they have it... and at this stage they probably should.

There's very little activity about Mierce outside of this thread which given the number of sculpts, quality of the figures etc. Is surprising. How are they selling figures outside of Kickstarter is my question - especially with so many figures outstanding

Like I said, if love to be wrong. Let's come back in 12 months and see where things are at.

Oh yes, I want to get egg in my face and have people point out how wrong I was!

I have £130 tied up in store credit, andther £100 unspent from the Loads of Monstrs Deal and another £150 in infinished orders!
I WANT TO BE WRONG!

But some of those minis were funded nearly 2 years ago:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mierceminiatures/darklands-mighty-monsters/posts/1571514

Thuulac, the giant crab, was beautifully rendered by Bob a yeat ago,
At this stage, they do not have a means to produce him!
I asked mid last year, and Rob replied that to print Thuulac and Brebeca would cost £1600, which is 10% of the cost of a printer itself

Given this; why on Earth have we not simply been asked to help fund the printer itself...??

My feeling is that the Kickstarter is indeed being used to raise money to keep the business going, having one for a 3D printer would require Rob to actually spend all the money on one!

God I hope I'm totally wrong, and that by June all the sculpts fron Mighty Monsters part one and two will be completed and shipped!



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Samko wrote:

yxalitis wrote:
they are nearly a year overdue already.

nearly a year overdue ?


I backed New Kindreds in 2014 and I'm still waiting for magma svrill and helmed ophios, that 2.5 years overdue !
I'm never backing mierce again for anything that's not already released.

And some kickstartes never deliver anything...we should not let these set the starndard for completion however.
The first few Mierce kickstarters got everything out the door in around 18 months, and those were mammoth £100,000 plus projects
Given that Mierce have now run 19! kickstarters, they shouild be very sure how to deliver on time.
New Kindreds was funded in Septmber 2014, and still has one outstanding sculpt.

http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/mierceminiatures/darklands-starter-hosts-ii/

This one is going to fail...a kickstarter for resculpts was a bad idea IMO, resculpts...now, with that backlog?

Stupid thing is these could have been offered as part of a 3D printer KS, would have been perfect in that situation.

 skullking wrote:

Yep, Mierce seemed t have dropped some very good sculptors recently.

Umm, so are Mierce Minis, we pay top dollar for quality.
So... Rob asked if he could do them cheaper, Roberto declined. So Rob found another way, that was cheaper. #runningabusiness

Prayers

Hmmmm repeated long running sales, large backlog of pre paid for products, terrible looking financials.

That seems to ring a bell for some reason, if I had any money tied up in this pyramid it would be squeaky bum times.

I would be looking on companies house for any other new companies registered in Rob or his familys names and for mentions of assets moving outside the company.

I hope we see more things like those Blight Beasts in the future (which I just got in, and are quite nice as expected).

Reasonably priced, nice casts, good size, and using existing figures as a base to work from hopefully results in less overhead expenses but still offers consumers something new.

SeanDrake wrote:
Hmmmm repeated long running sales, large backlog of pre paid for products, terrible looking financials.

That seems to ring a bell for some reason, if I had any money tied up in this pyramid it would be squeaky bum times.

I would be looking on companies house for any other new companies registered in Rob or his familys names and for mentions of assets moving outside the company.

Wow, that's got to be bordering on libelous!

Perhaps refrain from making baseless and inaccurate accusations before you get yourself into serious trouble?

You've clearly no idea how stringently the official receiver would examine an activity such as the transfer of assets from a failing/failed business, and as pyramid schemes are illegal in the U.K. you're essentially publicly accusing someone of fraud, with, one assumes, absolutely no evidence to back it up?

Based on the information available, concerns about Mierce are understandable, but dragging up and then misrepresenting past events like this aren't going to help anyone.

Wait, hold up a second - the Blight Beasts are based on the smaller versions of Morannach, but have been released before the base models? Does that mean the proper ones will be out sometime soon then?

SeanDrake wrote:
Negative stuff

Unless you can back any of this up with facts, that's a rules violation.

 Yodhrin wrote:
Wait, hold up a second - the Blight Beasts are based on the smaller versions of Morannach, but have been released before the base models? Does that mean the proper ones will be out sometime soon then?

Yep, I thought that was odd too.

yxalitis wrote:
Thuulac, the giant crab, was beautifully rendered by Bob a yeat ago,
At this stage, they do not have a means to produce him!
I asked mid last year, and Rob replied that to print Thuulac and Brebeca would cost £1600, which is 10% of the cost of a printer itself

Wow, I didn't realize that - but this is my concern with so many digital sculpts. Very affordable to render, but costly to print the masters so that they can be cast...

They have gotten a lot of goods out the door over the past few years, that's for sure, and their range of minis is now HUGE.
But their website is terrible, and finding anything is very hard, having unspellable, unpronounceable names for everything doesn't help.
Back in the Maelstrom Games days they had fantastic photos of each mini including a scale for size, and closeups :




How informative is that?

Now they have just one photo!

I suggested that a site revamp would help, but they have no time for that...

The issue is very simple, they need a break out game.

 RiTides wrote:

yxalitis wrote:
Thuulac, the giant crab, was beautifully rendered by Bob a yeat ago,
At this stage, they do not have a means to produce him!
I asked mid last year, and Rob replied that to print Thuulac and Brebeca would cost £1600, which is 10% of the cost of a printer itself

Wow, I didn't realize that - but this is my concern with so many digital sculpts. Very affordable to render, but costly to print the masters so that they can be cast...

$20k for a 3d printer? What are they looking at getting a power based one or a carbon STL? A good resin printer for prototyping is about $5k and that included support contacts and upgrades.

 Monkeysloth wrote:

 RiTides wrote:

yxalitis wrote:
Thuulac, the giant crab, was beautifully rendered by Bob a yeat ago,
At this stage, they do not have a means to produce him!
I asked mid last year, and Rob replied that to print Thuulac and Brebeca would cost £1600, which is 10% of the cost of a printer itself

Wow, I didn't realize that - but this is my concern with so many digital sculpts. Very affordable to render, but costly to print the masters so that they can be cast...

$20k for a 3d printer? What are they looking at getting a power based one or a carbon STL? A good resin printer for prototyping is about $5k and that included support contacts and upgrades.

Well, I'm no expert in professional 3D printers, but that did strike me as high when i read it...
I asked them what brand and type they were looking at, and was told to mind my business (in as many words)

Also, £800 to print this:

Does seem high...but, again, i don't know enough to be definitive.
But even so, that's silly, why not print the basic one, cast it off, and get the barnacles and starfish attached separately with good old fashioed resin, and recast?
And at £60, they'd pay the cost in a couple of dozen orders.

yxalitis wrote:

I suggested that a site revamp would help, but they have no time for that...

I offered to assist them with the performance aspect of their site in exchange for resin and got ghosted.

But really, if they're a KS company, and the majority of their sales come from KS, why bother with a fancy website? People are buying your stuff site unseen as is.

skarsol wrote:

yxalitis wrote:

I suggested that a site revamp would help, but they have no time for that...

I offered to assist them with the performance aspect of their site in exchange for resin and got ghosted.

But really, if they're a KS company, and the majority of their sales come from KS, why bother with a fancy website? People are buying your stuff site unseen as is.

Because you need a sustainable market outside the kickstarter community...as few as 200 people support the entire company, that's not enough!
They need to get out there and attract buyers to purchase the stuff that the KS made possible, NOT just toss one kickstarter after another to create 100's of minis that not enough people are buying.

Having a really attractive, easy to use website helps.

yxalitis wrote:


Thuulac, the giant crab, was beautifully rendered by Bob a year ago,
At this stage, they do not have a means to produce him!
I asked mid last year, and Rob replied that to print Thuulac and Brebeca would cost £1600, which is 10% of the cost of a printer itself

Given this; why on Earth have we not simply been asked to help fund the printer itself...??

My feeling is that the Kickstarter is indeed being used to raise money to keep the business going, having one for a 3D printer would require Rob to actually spend all the money on one!

God I hope I'm totally wrong, and that by June all the sculpts from Mighty Monsters part one and two will be completed and shipped!

So this is an interesting point Yx, and now that I see what you're trying to say, I apologize for not understanding it initially.

When you said you wanted a KS to 'Fund a 3D printer', I assumed that meant that you just thought they should start it with that goal, and that only. No stretch goals, or anything else. Which, to be fair, is really what KS was created for. Now I see you want it so that Mierce is locked into having to purchase the printer (assuming the KS is successful). And, everything that they are doing for this KS, could have been put in a stretch goals for that. That to me makes more sense, as there is incentive for people to pledge, but also a clear goal and reason for the KS. That I think, is a good idea, and technically, might be what they are using the money for, but, no one but them know that.

On a different note. What do you feel Mierce needs to do to right themselves (assuming you are correct in regards to them needing help), and get back on course? However, please take into account all the things I mentioned that they ARE doing in my last post.

 skullking wrote:

Most of the money from each kickstarter should be banked to pay for the production of mins paid for IN THAT KICKSTARTER...NOT to pay wages and rent now.
So how SHOULD they pay the employee wages? Not trying to sound mocking by asking, I am curious what alternate means of getting money you believe they should follow. They have lots of sales, and have added at least 100 new models to their online retail store in the last year. They go to cons to sell figures, they hold tournaments. Tim (a payroll employee/company head) even does conversions which are sold in the shop, and, are timed well with what is popular in other game systems (in fact, all I'm getting in this current KS is stuff I didn't get in previous ones, and some of Tim's new blight figs (which look awesome!)). What else is there?

And the fact that they have said that 2018 is a year devoted to getting things sculpted/molded/done. I think too many people criticize companies for something they see as bad, but few actually offer solutions/guidance.

Also, as has been mentioned, the resculpted Sigewulf's pack from the Angelcynn Ceorl Support host were IN LINE to be sculpted next! Just look at savage hordes, if you go down the line of stretch goals, they are the next thing that needs to be sculpted!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mierceminiatures/darklands-savage-hordes?ref=profile_backed

When this KS was run, it was said that they'd just be conversions of the current Werwulf models, but, Rob chose to resculpt them, since they had to be done anyway. Though i realize this irks you because you feel its unnecessary, getting digital versions offers the ability to add new versions of the unit in the future easier, and for less cost to Mierce. Much like how your beloved Thuulaac got his Encrusted version, they can do alts much easier if they're in the computer already. The other items they want to do would infact be added to 'the end of the sculpting line', and there for making it longer, but they are at least all figures which exist already.

Regarding Thuulaac - I think that's the question, though. Is it really easier to make the Encrusted version digitally? It's easier to show the render, but it's only actually easier to make if you have access to in-house, high quality 3D printing...

And even then, converting casts of the original masters (like the blight creatures from a few pages ago) still seems easier than printing and cleaning all new masters from the variant digital sculpt...

 skullking wrote:

On a different note. What do you feel Mierce needs to do to right themselves (assuming you are correct in regards to them needing help), and get back on course? However, please take into account all the things I mentioned that they ARE doing in my last post.

I have already answered your first question, although of course that's my opinion, I've run a small business, but not in retail.

 skullking wrote:

Most of the money from each kickstarter should be banked to pay for the production of mins paid for IN THAT KICKSTARTER...NOT to pay wages and rent now.
So how SHOULD they pay the employee wages? Not trying to sound mocking by asking, I am curious what alternate means of getting money you believe they should follow. They have lots of sales, and have added at least 100 new models to their online retail store in the last year. They go to cons to sell figures, they hold tournaments. Tim (a payroll employee/company head) even does conversions which are sold in the shop, and, are timed well with what is popular in other game systems (in fact, all I'm getting in this current KS is stuff I didn't get in previous ones, and some of Tim's new blight figs (which look awesome!)). What else is there?

The KS is there to fund the sculpt, pay for the artist to make the pretty picture, pay for the sculptor to sculpt it, and pay for the actual mini to be molded and shipped to each backer.
The day to day running costs of the business have to be funded solely from sales outside the KS, otherwise the business is not tenable, that's the hard truth of business.

Roberto 688176 9794712 wrote:

 skullking wrote:

Yep, Mierce seemed t have dropped some very good sculptors recently.

I don't think anyone was dropped, they just have an in house sculptor for a lot of the stuff they're doing now. So they can more cost effectively get through that backlog of figures. There's nothing stopping them from using any of the old sculptors again, unless they work for someone else (like Aragorn).
I was in conversation with Roberto, he was not treated well by Mierce, according to him, tehy jsut pulled sculpts from him.
I queried Rob, he said "well, he is expensive"
Umm, so are Mierce Minis, we pay top dollar for quality.
So... Rob asked if he could do them cheaper, Roberto declined. So Rob found another way, that was cheaper. #runningabusiness

Hello skullking, Roberto Chaudon here, can you tell me where did you get this info? The line that says I declined a Rob offer please. Thanks!

Hey Roberto!

Apologies if this statement is false. I was however just presenting an example based on what Yx had quoted Rob as having said, and his conversation with you. I should have cited it as such, which is totally my bad.

Also, when Yx quoted HighLord Tamberlaine and my conversation in his post here.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/1410/688176.page#9793449

We were actually talking about Roberto Cirillo, an illustrator who works with Mierce. He however was unable to do drawings for them, due to him being hired full time by another company.

 skullking wrote:

Roberto 688176 9794712 wrote:

 skullking wrote:

Yep, Mierce seemed t have dropped some very good sculptors recently.

I don't think anyone was dropped, they just have an in house sculptor for a lot of the stuff they're doing now. So they can more cost effectively get through that backlog of figures. There's nothing stopping them from using any of the old sculptors again, unless they work for someone else (like Aragorn).
I was in conversation with Roberto, he was not treated well by Mierce, according to him, tehy jsut pulled sculpts from him.
I queried Rob, he said "well, he is expensive"
Umm, so are Mierce Minis, we pay top dollar for quality.
So... Rob asked if he could do them cheaper, Roberto declined. So Rob found another way, that was cheaper. #runningabusiness

Hello skullking, Roberto Chaudon here, can you tell me where did you get this info? The line that says I declined a Rob offer please. Thanks!

Hey Roberto!

Apologies if this statement is false. I was however just presenting an example based on what Yx had quoted Rob as having said, and his conversation with you. I should have cited it as such, which is totally my bad.

Also, when Yx quoted HighLord Tamberlaine and my conversation in his post here.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/1410/688176.page#9793449

We were actually talking about Roberto Cirillo, an illustrator who works with Mierce. He however was unable to do drawings for them, due to him being hired full time by another company.

Nope, i was talking about Roberto Chaudon, the sculptor, not an illustrator.

"Yep, Mierce seemed t have dropped some very good sculptors recently."

I can see the confusion, however. #Toomanyrobertos

yxalitis wrote:

 skullking wrote:

Roberto 688176 9794712 wrote:

 skullking wrote:

Yep, Mierce seemed t have dropped some very good sculptors recently.

I don't think anyone was dropped, they just have an in house sculptor for a lot of the stuff they're doing now. So they can more cost effectively get through that backlog of figures. There's nothing stopping them from using any of the old sculptors again, unless they work for someone else (like Aragorn).
I was in conversation with Roberto, he was not treated well by Mierce, according to him, tehy jsut pulled sculpts from him.
I queried Rob, he said "well, he is expensive"
Umm, so are Mierce Minis, we pay top dollar for quality.
So... Rob asked if he could do them cheaper, Roberto declined. So Rob found another way, that was cheaper. #runningabusiness

Hello skullking, Roberto Chaudon here, can you tell me where did you get this info? The line that says I declined a Rob offer please. Thanks!

Hey Roberto!

Apologies if this statement is false. I was however just presenting an example based on what Yx had quoted Rob as having said, and his conversation with you. I should have cited it as such, which is totally my bad.

Also, when Yx quoted HighLord Tamberlaine and my conversation in his post here.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/1410/688176.page#9793449

We were actually talking about Roberto Cirillo, an illustrator who works with Mierce. He however was unable to do drawings for them, due to him being hired full time by another company.

Nope, i was talking about Roberto Chaudon, the sculptor, not an illustrator.

"Yep, Mierce seemed t have dropped some very good sculptors recently."

I can see the confusion, however. #Toomanyrobertos

Yup! YOU were, we were not.

And I was talking about Danny Cruz.

I also found myself glossing over the fact that he did the art for the new mounted Annik too!



Never fails to impress the quality of artists they've got working on Darklandds. That Savage Hordes book better be chock full of the same caliber of art, considering the wait!

yxalitis wrote:

 Monkeysloth wrote:

 RiTides wrote:

yxalitis wrote:
Thuulac, the giant crab, was beautifully rendered by Bob a yeat ago,
At this stage, they do not have a means to produce him!
I asked mid last year, and Rob replied that to print Thuulac and Brebeca would cost £1600, which is 10% of the cost of a printer itself

Wow, I didn't realize that - but this is my concern with so many digital sculpts. Very affordable to render, but costly to print the masters so that they can be cast...

$20k for a 3d printer? What are they looking at getting a power based one or a carbon STL? A good resin printer for prototyping is about $5k and that included support contacts and upgrades.

Well, I'm no expert in professional 3D printers, but that did strike me as high when i read it...
I asked them what brand and type they were looking at, and was told to mind my business (in as many words)

Also, £800 to print this:
Does seem high...but, again, i don't know enough to be definitive.
But even so, that's silly, why not print the basic one, cast it off, and get the barnacles and starfish attached separately with good old fashioed resin, and recast?
And at £60, they'd pay the cost in a couple of dozen orders.

Well resin that's final product can be used for mold making is about $200/liter (though it really varies but I don't think you need the more expensive dental stuff that's $400). I'm not an expert on STL printing but I think you get something like 90% out of a bottle so I don't think 800 pounds is too far off once you consider that you have supports that are added in all those parts would pretty much need them), the enviable bad print, the time (probably several days) cost of printer wear (resin vats are like $50 and don't last very long) and employee cost to it. I know a lot of smaller companies in our hobby have been buying them. Heck Hobbyist resin printers are about $800 now and they could print your typical Reaper Miniatures level of quality for about $10-15 of resin (which is only getting cheaper.

 Baragash wrote:
The issue is very simple, they need a break out game.

I did hope Darklands could be a new big thing, but after seeing the rulebook, I doubt it. I found it to be on the level of a first-edition Spartan Games book in terms of needless complexity, poor organisation and super-dry rules descriptions. It really needs a revised edition, because I can see a lot of interested people coming for the miniatures and then bouncing off the rules system. I'm reminded of Malifaux, which started off with a cool miniatures line and a flawed system, but with Malifaux, the quirkiness of the card / cheating system felt fun, Darklands just reads to me as laborious and fiddly.

(And come to think of it, what happened to that setting / army list book? That's one thing I'd like to get hold of, as I can always use more cool settings for use in RPG's, etc.)

Mierce Miniatures 19-time creator 4 minutes ago

Right! £7k is nearly with us!

I am going to bring you Cynemon resculpt (makes sense because of the upcoming SH3 mounted version) and something else today. Let's get cracking on this project! £3k to go!

Out of curiosity (and I know its a non representative sample) but how many people commenting in the thread have actually played or tried to play the rules? And how many are using the models for another game?
I only ask as these fantastic miniatures are being produced for a reason. Personally I'm not sure the collectors market is big enough to sustain a range of this size, and (I assume) for the longevity of a company like this, they'd want a specific and IP protectable game/universe/ruleset to use them in.
I have played the game on several occasions, and using different kindreds.
I really like the ideas behind the rule set, however they are not the easiest to read/navigate. Hopefully this is something that is being looked at.
For me, the one thing Mierce need to work out how to do is get a presence and get people playing the game.
They have had one of the most impressive tables at Salute, and this years looks like it will be incredible too, but the number of people who are actually able to play the game in situations such as this is limited.

I hope that Mierce goes on to have a long and successful life, and being a Kickstarter company is not necessarily a bad thing, and I look forward to the (hopefully successful) return of Darkholds!

Deathwatch101 wrote:
Out of curiosity (and I know its a non representative sample) but how many people commenting in the thread have actually played or tried to play the rules? And how many are using the models for another game?
I only ask as these fantastic miniatures are being produced for a reason. Personally I'm not sure the collectors market is big enough to sustain a range of this size, and (I assume) for the longevity of a company like this, they'd want a specific and IP protectable game/universe/ruleset to use them in.
I have played the game on several occasions, and using different kindreds.
I really like the ideas behind the rule set, however they are not the easiest to read/navigate. Hopefully this is something that is being looked at.
For me, the one thing Mierce need to work out how to do is get a presence and get people playing the game.
They have had one of the most impressive tables at Salute, and this years looks like it will be incredible too, but the number of people who are actually able to play the game in situations such as this is limited.

I hope that Mierce goes on to have a long and successful life, and being a Kickstarter company is not necessarily a bad thing, and I look forward to the (hopefully successful) return of Darkholds!

Like many I was drawn in by the quality of the models to start with, and then the Darklands setting really grabbed me - a twisted version of the dark ages across the British isles and northern Europe is right up my street. I bought the rulebook fully intending to play the game, but although it's really nicely produced it's also ridiculously complicated and badly laid out as a ruleset. Mierce seem to be pushing it as more of a mass battle game as well, a successor to Warhammer Fantasy, and the prohibitive cost of the models (which are excellent quality) just doesn’t make that viable for me - in a rare case of my common sense overriding my lust for awesome models, I decided not to go any further down that road. (Also, from what I can gather, there are only two or three people who play it within a hundred miles of me.) I've got a handful of their models just as display pieces and thoroughly enjoyed painting them, but I think in order for it to be a viable game it needs to be stripped down, streamlined, and presented as a warband/skirmish level thing. Then I'd be all over it.

£8,500 - Cynemon, Wiglere of Mierce

Wahey! With Annik and Leofwen in, let's get a hold of something at £8,500 - and that's a lovely resculpt of Cynemon, the Wiglere of Mierce for the Anglecynn!




This stretch goal aims to digitally resculpt the existing Cynemon miniatures on foot by Bob Płociennik and ensure the Cynemon on Horse miniature (as revealed in Darklands: Savage Hordes III) will be sculpted by him too, ensuring Wulf Skull Cynemon will also get a horsed version.

Cynemon? Sounds delicious

I played off and on when the big book came out and quite enjoyed it (I do like complex rule sets though), but the moving away of pretty much all of my previous gaming group means I don't any more

(and the continual work on the rules means I probably have only a minimal handle of the game as it is now, especially the force building but then that's the trouble with new rule sets do you leave them alone for a few years so people can play withough trouble, or do you evolve them to make them better but lock out all except people who are really on top of things)