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Would they really do more terrain if they're saying the existing deadzone plastic stuff is not selling nearly as well as expected?

I guess the Mars Attacks terrain works well anyway, it's what I'll be using for the game.

Ronnie does talk a good bit about his love of terrain in the BoW video so if they can raise the funds it looks like they will do it whether there's much of a retail market or not. I get the feeling by 3D terrain they mean scatter terrain like crates and loot and cars, cars get mentioned a lot.

The 20th century brick terrain will cover buildings and that's available right now no need to make it and no need to offer it as part of the KS (other than perhaps as part of the pledge level?) so less to pack and ship (and upset retailers about)

I doubt that they will do more building terrain, but Ronnie was talking about (what we consider) scatter terrain. He was gushing over the dungeon saga terrain at one point before I shut it off, so I see more stuff like shelves, vending machines or objectives to be searched or lend atmosphere. I could also see barricades being made for missions like attack the rivals stronghold.

I also hope the size difference is not to large as the Mars attacks marines would be a good group to have at the beginning of the zombie outbreak. Larger scale just means Carl's head gets larger as well

 DaveC wrote:
Ronnie does talk a good bit about his love of terrain in the BoW video so if they can raise the funds it looks like they will do it whether there's much of a retail market or not. I get the feeling by 3D terrain they mean scatter terrain like crates and loot and cars, cars get mentioned a lot.

I hope they don't hire Antenocities to smash up die cast cars and sell us recasts for twice what they cost in a toy store again.

Some useful info on todays beasts of war interview with Ronnie,

The recent KS shipping had about 10% of backers reporting missing/damaged items (which since most people don't ask about extra stuff probably means 15-20% of orders with packing errors)

so it's clear the simple one plege level no add ons essential

(just think of that shipping costs)

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
Some useful info on todays beasts of war interview with Ronnie,

The recent KS shipping had about 10% of backers reporting missing/damaged items (which since most people don't ask about extra stuff probably means 15-20% of orders with packing errors)

so it's clear the simple one plege level no add ons essential

(just think of that shipping costs)

And that 10% are just the emails they've responded to in the last 6 weeks

10% is a lot. You're talking about 100s of backers.

Simplified pledges are probably a very good idea, and mantic add ons have tended towards poor quality in any case. While the core game + expansions for Dungeon Saga were all top notch, stuff like the trap counters, acryllic counters, dice bags and so on were very poor quality and likely not worth the money or the extra hassle of complicating the packing arrangements.

Based on their historic performance it seems the more options they give backers, the more they mess up. It may change this year with the new names in place (and I have a lot of faith in Matt delivering a substantial step change in the way they run things), but it remains to be seen.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
Some useful info on todays beasts of war interview with Ronnie,

The recent KS shipping had about 10% of backers reporting missing/damaged items (which since most people don't ask about extra stuff probably means 15-20% of orders with packing errors)

so it's clear the simple one plege level no add ons essential

(just think of that shipping costs)

I'm going to guess he was referring to DBX wave 2, where
1) the pledge manager just up and ate some options
2) nobody told the packing drones that some teams were bundled in 1 bag, some were in 2 different bags and some needed 2 identical bags

If he meant KoW2, which had pretty simple upgrade options and all components were pre-packed, then a 10% failure rate is horrific and they should get rid of pretty much everyone involved

Well he was talking of spending all of the last week (since he was in talking about walking dead the interview is pretty recent) in the warehouse packing pledges as they were so under the gun so it must include the most recent set of shipping at least,

but I suspect he's talking more broadly and probably about 2015

I still haven't received KoW2 wave 1 or wave 2. 10% sounds likely from here.

 Taaloc wrote:
Based on their historic performance it seems the more options they give backers, the more they mess up. It may change this year with the new names in place (and I have a lot of faith in Matt delivering a substantial step change in the way they run things), but it remains to be seen.

Good to hear the news.

Including existing terrain that they've already made makes marketing sense. The terrain molds have already been paid for. Sending physical product to backers may encourage them to buy more after the KS. Existing terrain product will still be new to new backers. It's like giving away free product samples except your customers are paying for them!

 squall018 wrote:

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
$100-125 is quite a high starting point for a game with a retail price of $50, so I do wonder quite how much extra will be in there for that
but I do approve of the single pledge level as they really, really do need to solve their warehouse issues

I thought the same thing, especially since it will only be around $40 once the online retailers get ahold of it.

A single, simplified pledge type isn't a bad idea at all, as CMON have shown with games like Blood Rage, etc. At $100-120 for the pledge for a RRP$50 game, they'll need a ton of stuff in the starting pledge to get people on board. Are there really enough Mantic/TWD fans to pledge 2-3x the retail price on Day 1 for the typical "Kickstarter starting box" that has like 6 sculpts and 30 models with the hope that it'll become actually worthwhile by day 15 or 30?

On top of that, they'll probably have free shipping for the UK and US as usual, but it'll really need some seriously solid value to make it worthwhile for ROW backers to go in as to date they haven't had the whole local distribution hub thing worked out that allows a solidly good-sized CMON KS pledge to cost $30 shipping to AU.

Did Mantic do free shipping on the last KS? I thought they added in shipping costs at some point during the deal.

privateer4hire wrote:
Did Mantic do free shipping on the last KS? I thought they added in shipping costs at some point during the deal.

The rediculous shipping costs were part of why I dropped Warpath.

 Alex C wrote:

privateer4hire wrote:
Did Mantic do free shipping on the last KS? I thought they added in shipping costs at some point during the deal.

The rediculous shipping costs were part of why I dropped Warpath.

Same here.

Ah - my mistake then. I thought US backers still had free shipping on that one.

So while this might seem like a great money maker for mantic in kickstarter, I was just thinking it could be a real bust. Though the franchise is huge, look t the target market. Your probably not going to get a bunch of 30 something people who have more disposable income to just jump in to wargaming with this. Since it's based upon the comic series your main audience will be the comic collectors, who from my experience working and managing comic book shops (20 years ago mind you), don't have a lot of spare money to play with. Along with that you have mainly comic buyers and mainly gaming buyers, I am one of those rare geeks that did both, but eventually stopped buying comic books to have the money for minis. On top of that I figure that Mantic is looking for the big push from the kickstarter. Lets be realistic with this point in particular. Mantic have a very mixed track record with Kickstarter. Though all of their stuff has shipped relatively on time there has been a lot of open criticism in the comments section and very little follow up in those areas in the past. With that and the quality of some of the products that have been produced by kickstarter (trolls and basilleans ) some people will be put off and not take a second look. These are comic collectors who actually read, are usually internet savvy, and have a specific art style that they like so these better be dead on and not Mantic Almost. I think the only thing that could really draw attention to these and bring in the crowd would be a commercial during the T.V. show, which i really doubt mantic would spend the cash on.

Just my 2 cents

On the other hand, regardless of what Mantic does they seem to have people jumping on their KS's----even folks who give them a good bashing on here. I predict it will do well.

It'll be their most profitable KS ever.

Senior Mantic people are talking in the millions.

What was their prediction for the WARPATH Kickstarter?

I think they were expecting over a million on it. Someone said a few pages back, but i'm too lazy to look now

I'm most likely to back if there is decent value for money with the Kickstarter. I think this may suffer from lack of addons though as they really help keep momentum through the slow periods.

I could see them doing a single red brick town or city addon, that shouldn't make the packing too complicated and would help promote the existing red brick range.

Let's be honest here. Matic's KS Crtitics are a vocal minority.

Even if Mantic screws up bad enough that 10% of its backer won't back Mantic any more it still leaves 90% that are happy. Those happy people are likely to back again, and tell their friends.

Dreadball 2,539 backers
Dreadball Extreme 2,482 backers
Kings of War 1,568 backers
KIngs of War 2 2,747 backers
Deadzone 4,306 backers
Deadzone Infestation 2,810 backers
Mars Attacks 2,753 backers
Dungeon Saga 5,963 backers
Warpath 3,355 backers

Walking Dead is a storngest property that Mantic has ever dealt with. You are looking at Wargamers, Zombie Enthusiasts, Comic Book Fans, and 12 million + TV fans, in the US alone.

If 1 in a 1,000 of them were to back we would be looking at 12.000+ backers.

Do I honestly think we'll get 12,000+ backlers ? No. Mostly because of the limited form of internet only and word of mouth advertising Mantic is using and the short lead time.

I would honestly be shocked if the Walking Dead Miniatures Games isn't succesful.

The first Zombicide game, a completely unproven property had 5,258 backers.
Zombicide:Black Plague had 20,915 backers

If The Walking Dead Miniatures Game could capture HALF the people interested in Black Plague. a spin off of Zombicide, it would still be wildly successful.

They will make millions for sure just based on the walking dead name. They will make even more depending on three further issues:

1: Sculpts of the TV show characters (how most got into twd)
2: quality of gameplay
3: quality/realism of the sculpts

I'd wager to say they would double theit profits just by using the TV show characters as well as the comic characters (they are similar but yet very different).

Good call mantic... good call...

For this Kickstarter it is believed to be Comic Book only.
If it's wildly successful they may be able to pony up the cash for the TV license as well in a future kickstarter.

You do know they cannot use the TV show characters, right?

 adamsouza wrote:
Let's be honest here. Matic's KS Crtitics are a vocal minority.

Even if Mantic screws up bad enough that 10% of its backer won't back Mantic any more it still leaves 90% that are happy. Those happy people are likely to back again, and tell their friends.

Dreadball 2,539 backers
Dreadball Extreme 2,482 backers
Kings of War 1,568 backers
KIngs of War 2 2,747 backers
Deadzone 4,306 backers
Deadzone Infestation 2,810 backers
Mars Attacks 2,753 backers
Dungeon Saga 5,963 backers
Warpath 3,355 backers

Walking Dead is a storngest property that Mantic has ever dealt with. You are looking at Wargamers, Zombie Enthusiasts, Comic Book Fans, and 12 million + TV fans, in the US alone.

If 1 in a 1,000 of them were to back we would be looking at 12.000+ backers.

Do I honestly think we'll get 12,000+ backlers ? No. Mostly because of the limited form of internet only and word of mouth advertising Mantic is using and the short lead time.

I would honestly be shocked if the Walking Dead Miniatures Games isn't succesful.

The first Zombicide game, a completely unproven property had 5,258 backers.
Zombicide:Black Plague had 20,915 backers

If The Walking Dead Miniatures Game could capture HALF the people interested in Black Plague. a spin off of Zombicide, it would still be wildly successful.

If you look at the numbers you posted you'll see a drop after the first of each of those games.
Dreadball-Dreadball extreme=lost about 50 backers
Deadzone-deadzone infestation= lost about 1500backers
The only growth ones have been Kings of War, if you don't think the demise of Warhammer fantasy had anything to do with it then your mistaken. Even still it only gained 1200 supporters out of all of the warhammer fantasy people who had left the game.
Mars attacks barely beat out the KOW2 crowd, and that was a licence on a major motion picture with lots of star power.
Dungeon Saga did very well, but look at the product produced with errors in printing the wrong version of the game, and I believe it's the first of the Mantic KS that was considerably late (only a couple months, but the rest were relatively on time). They also got a huge bump from the boardgaming crowd, and that is a linked business where comics are not, neither is watching TV shows. There is some overlap, but I think they are overestimating how much of an overlap.

I think that they will make their goal, but that's to be expected. I don't see many KS that fund that aren't actually expecting much more than their base goal. If they have all these sculpts done already then their costs have already been covered, now they are looking for that great push to make a name for themselves and to really just get the word out.

They'll make $$$, I just hope they make enough so they can get a better hold on their design studio, and set an art direction for all future releases.

 CptJake wrote:
You do know they cannot use the TV show characters, right?

I'm not sure I get the continued mentioning of this. I read the comics and love the show. There's plenty of crossover, and with a bit of creative licence (well after this battle you've found a crossbow, and look, theres a new follower that wants to join with biker leathers) you get pretty much all the characters you want.