Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Popped in to say Faye was let go before Christmas of last year and Will has started a great new job at a video game studio. All staff is gone other than some production folks, the company is totally dead.

A pity, but not the first game to suddenly die after short time in production.

Odd, they just ran a Kickstarter project for a new paint range in June. I didn't back it, went for the Kimera Kolors KS instead.

You know what the sucky thing is? They had a really solid Patreon set up and were putting out nice sets of models consistently- and then stopped completely, despite the 3D printing hobby being the reason they got to the point they were at. All this time later, and it still irritates me.

I know they mentioned concerns over piracy being a major contributing factor and the move towards only doing physical models instead was a big part of their decision, but it was just so abrupt. I know I told them my feelings at the time, as did many others, that it all seemed a bit premature to quite the STL business completely. I want to say all this went down prior to their Forged campaign.

A shame they didn't scale things down at the time rather than just stop completely cold turkey on the STLs as it could have been some steady income coming in, which in turn might have helped keep them off this path. They were doing this model of the month lootcrate thing for a while but that seemed to have completely fizzled out a while back.

I hope something positive can still come from this.
It's also yet another company that seems to have gotten burned by Siocast rather than have it be the revolutionary material many claimed it was.

it may well be the difference between running one of these STL things as a one man band and as a multi staff company

what can be a decent living via patreon etc for one person can look a lot less attractive when its being used to pay salaries/benefits/taxes for several members of staff

Its a shame this went belly up. They had a really interesting concept.

A number of game companies that are trying to move to other production methods are struggling right now. The only one that seems to be having any success is PP with their 3d printing. But whether that is a viable strategy for that company, given where they are, we shall see.

GW could do 3d printing (im convinced they do to some extent). But that would cut into the financial bottom line and GW doesn’t do that.

I'm not sure I'd say PP has been successful at the transition

Aside from ASOIF, does anyone know of a miniatures game (not boardgame) that has been successfully marketed to retail that was originally funded on KS?

I can think of many that tanked before they even shipped, and many more that died right after they shipped. But for the life of me can’t recall any that were a success at retail after the KS.
I didn’t back Rivenstone due to a lack of any of the factions resonating and I generally only back board games on KS for the above reasons.

 Ghool wrote:
Aside from ASOIF, does anyone know of a miniatures game (not boardgame) that has been successfully marketed to retail that was originally funded on KS?

I can think of many that tanked before they even shipped, and many more that died right after they shipped. But for the life of me can’t recall any that were a success at retail after the KS.
I didn’t back Rivenstone due to a lack of any of the factions resonating and I generally only back board games on KS for the above reasons.

Dropfleet Commander maybe?

I would like to peak into a world where Covid didn't happen to see how Warcaster ended up.

 Ghool wrote:
Aside from ASOIF, does anyone know of a miniatures game (not boardgame) that has been successfully marketed to retail that was originally funded on KS?

I can think of many that tanked before they even shipped, and many more that died right after they shipped. But for the life of me can’t recall any that were a success at retail after the KS.
I didn’t back Rivenstone due to a lack of any of the factions resonating and I generally only back board games on KS for the above reasons.

Wild West Exodus was successful-ish for a while after their initial KS. It lagged a bit then saw a pick-up (again, for a while) when Outlaw sold the IP to Warcradle, but it's been kinda stagnant as Warcradle focuses more on Dystopian Wars currently.

Off hand, I can't think of any non-boardgame miniatures games that have been longer term successful. Shadows of Brimstone is very successful after their several KS, but again that is a "miniatures boardgame," not a "traditional" miniatures wargame. I think that part of the problem with this style of game succeeding in retail is that it needs a constant stream of new stuff for people to grab. When so much is available via a Kickstarter, but trickles out to retail over a much longer period of time, I think that a lot of folks that were interested in the game already have that stuff from the KS, so new players buying in after retail release is not as common, and this leads to "failing" retail sales, which leads to less steady income for the company, which leads to issues maintaining continuing production, etc.

Edit: Oh, duh. Moonstone. They've had a few Kickstarters, all of which were pretty successful, and it's continuing to grow and get more and more interest and continuing releases. Also, it's a great game and fantastic models. Its biggest problem is that it's a small shop in the UK, and distribution outside of the UK is tricksy, but they are improving there, too.

I can't think of any that have been a big splash the two main ones i can think of are

Wrath of Kings was doing ok until CMON fumbled the non KS second edition (no new releases or restocks for a year or so, with the old minis available being the stuff that hadn't sold through well)

Dropfleet stumbled during KS fulfilment, and while TTCombat took it over from Hawk wargames it's never really managed to live up to peoples expectations (partly due to in not being the game of purely deep space battles that many wanted it to be)

Three smaller games that are still going after KSing are Counterblast from Bombshell miniatures, and Arcworld from Warploque (now Warp) miniatures and Darklands from Mierce

but then again the only new games that i can think of that have really hit big in the age of KS (without KS) are AoS (& Horus Heresy 1.0) which you've have expected anyway and Frosthaven

and maybe Saga, although i think although it launched after KS, people hadn't started thinking of putting games on there yet

Interesting. I know of a few of these but couldn’t recall the names, nor if they really succeeded in retail after the KS.
I think the above posts pretty much nailed why minis games don’t do great post-KS.
They just don’t seem well-suited for the platform, whereas board games seem to be tailor made for KS.

 Ghool wrote:
Aside from ASOIF, does anyone know of a miniatures game (not boardgame) that has been successfully marketed to retail that was originally funded on KS?

I can think of many that tanked before they even shipped, and many more that died right after they shipped. But for the life of me can’t recall any that were a success at retail after the KS.
I didn’t back Rivenstone due to a lack of any of the factions resonating and I generally only back board games on KS for the above reasons.

Relicblade doesn’t really have a retail presence, but seems to be doing well.

Not 100% what you are asking for, but Battletech is a game that was basically on life support before their first Kickstarter. There were two stores in my metro (that has 15-20 game stores) that carried anything Battletech at all. Now it is sold at every one I can think of it. One that I go to regularly the staff told me it outsells 40k (not all GW combined mind you, but 40k alone is really impressive).

That said I think you are generally right, miniature games that go to Kickstarter tend not to do very well, or are very small indie games by nature.

Shadowseas/Deepwars has been a KS exclusive game but still running new campaigns at least once a year. They do STL campaigns now with options for 3d printed stuff and sometimes darksword makes their minis for them.

They've been in retail before but not there anymore as far as I know-- but the line has done good for what it is.

Arena Rex is still making stuff as well but I don't think they've ever tried to be in retail sticking to being a boutique brand.

I think mini games struggle more post kickstarter as people expect regular releases and there's high expectations for them to be seen being played at stores to be successful while boardgames can be considered completely done once a campaign delivers and they're expected to be played at your house so no one cares if you don't see them at a store. So, write or wrong, there's stricter criteria what a successful miniatures game is vs boardgame.

fwiw, I don't remember Frostgrave rules being crowdfunded, but Northstar Figures has a periodic Nickstarter to crowdfund new mini's and other 'Grave rulesets.

I guess you can divide miniature games into large scale (eg. CMON, FFG's Runewhatevers) and small scale (eg. most others). Mantic Games used to have miniature lines on KS until about 2017 with Vanguard, but seem to put out more boardgame and terrain-only content. Mantic's Walking Dead, funded on KS 2016, was pretty successful retail, afaik, until the license wasn't renewed because the tv show was ending or something like that.

I think, with miniature lines being lifestyle games, it's more that the market can only support few of these games that you don't see them on KS? You *almost* never see CCG's on KS, either, although I know of exceptions, like Vampire the Masquerade and Doomtown.

 Monkeysloth wrote:
Shadowseas/Deepwars has been a KS exclusive game but still running new campaigns at least once a year. They do STL campaigns now with options for 3d printed stuff and sometimes darksword makes their minis for them.

They've been in retail before but not there anymore as far as I know-- but the line has done good for what it is.

Arena Rex is still making stuff as well but I don't think they've ever tried to be in retail sticking to being a boutique brand.

I think mini games struggle more post kickstarter as people expect regular releases and there's high expectations for them to be seen being played at stores to be successful while boardgames can be considered completely done once a campaign delivers and they're expected to be played at your house so no one cares if you don't see them at a store. So, write or wrong, there's stricter criteria what a successful miniatures game is vs boardgame.

Pre-pandemic, Shadowsea/Deep Wars had a booth at Gencon one year (maybe two, a bit fuzzy). I don't think I saw a single person at the booth the entire weekend, it was kind of sad. I don't know that the game has had anything more than the bare minimum of a following.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Monkeysloth wrote:
Shadowseas/Deepwars has been a KS exclusive game but still running new campaigns at least once a year. They do STL campaigns now with options for 3d printed stuff and sometimes darksword makes their minis for them.

They've been in retail before but not there anymore as far as I know-- but the line has done good for what it is.

Arena Rex is still making stuff as well but I don't think they've ever tried to be in retail sticking to being a boutique brand.

I think mini games struggle more post kickstarter as people expect regular releases and there's high expectations for them to be seen being played at stores to be successful while boardgames can be considered completely done once a campaign delivers and they're expected to be played at your house so no one cares if you don't see them at a store. So, write or wrong, there's stricter criteria what a successful miniatures game is vs boardgame.

Pre-pandemic, Shadowsea/Deep Wars had a booth at Gencon one year (maybe two, a bit fuzzy). I don't think I saw a single person at the booth the entire weekend, it was kind of sad. I don't know that the game has had anything more than the bare minimum of a following.

We actually picked up some Deep Wars stuff at that GenCon, so I can say that there were at least 4 people at that booth one time, even if it was just us.

Wouldn't most of Mantic's early games qualify as starting on kickstarter and segueing into retail from there?

Was Kings of War originally kickstarted? I know a variety of models were, and the 2nd edition of the rules were as well.

Deadzone definitely was.

I've seen both at retail off and on over the years. I know there was a bit of a retailer backlash towards Mantic relentlessly kickstarting things in years past. Not sure if that's as much of a thing these days.

Quick little update - anyone talking about Chris (one of the owners) being a liar, asking questions about their merger, where the KS money went, the layoffs, are now all being purged from the KS projects. Anyone see "canceling" their pledge is just being removed manually by him.

Looks like the rumors about how he treats customers (and apparently employees) are true. Scumbags gunna scumbag!


Automatically Appended Next Post:


They have also now locked their discord. I've never seen someone run away with that much money in real time, quite a sight to see!!

Surprised nobody mentioned Guildball as a KS to retail success. It died a pretty ignominious death, but there for a while was one of the most popular wargames around

As for Broken Anvil, that looks pretty damning

tintedbrush wrote:


They have also now locked their discord. I've never seen someone run away with that much money in real time, quite a sight to see!!

And they had just pulled in $144,000 a couple months ago with their paint Kickstarter.

 Kalamadea wrote:
Surprised nobody mentioned Guildball as a KS to retail success. It died a pretty ignominious death, but there for a while was one of the most popular wargames around

Guess you could add Godtear as well since that's the GB replacement from the same company and I see it in all the online stores. Don't think it's anywhere near as big as Guildball ever was but Guildball is also a symptom of part of our hobby that the really competitive crowd doesn't like to stick with a game for very long so if you don't manage to build up a more causal scene your game will only last so long. Privateer was/is having these same issues. Even with out all the missteps by them around the MK3 launch it was happening to Warmahordes as well.

Or I guess you could say it's amazing that GW manages to stay popular as all the other games seam to be much less resilient.

As for Broken Anvil, that looks pretty damning

It does. Especially for all the people that just backed the paints but they should be able to do chargebacks at least. Wasn't the owner someone that's been in the collectible figure/toy industry for a while with a pretty good reputation? Seams like he got enough from the sale to just not care anymore? Is this the new company causing all these problems as they're wanting to shed lower margin products? Or is the merger just a bunch of smoke and mirrors to try and get out of a situation that's clearly not gone the way they wanted with money raised in the KS campaigns?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

chaos0xomega wrote:

Pre-pandemic, Shadowsea/Deep Wars had a booth at Gencon one year (maybe two, a bit fuzzy). I don't think I saw a single person at the booth the entire weekend, it was kind of sad. I don't know that the game has had anything more than the bare minimum of a following.

Several of the KS campaigns always seams to be a lot of the same people but they keep putting stuff out -- even planning on an RPG this year. Even just did a collab for a really sweat modular sea-lab terrain set as well. But ya, it's not super popular by any means but it's still pretty good quality stuff. Some great monster STLs even if you don't care for the game.

I'll tag Wild West Exodus as a viable contender. Granted, the original company sold it, but it is still in production.

Also, Relic Knights may be in consideration still. Even though releases have all but disappeared, Ninja Division is still chugging along slowly.

Chris and Hanna were and are the owners of Level52 Studios, a failed statue company. Anytime someone brought this info up on their Broken Anvil discord they were quickly banned. A quick Google shows they have multiple undelivered products from years ago, an undelivered KS and their Facebook presence is pretty damning.

I would assume no one in their right mind would ever invest in either company, seeing as how they'd have to foot the bill to produce these kickstarters.

Seemingly a no good scamming couple piggybacking off of real industry professionals, which had surely happened before in the hobby, just a shame to taint so many customers! (Especially running off with the paint kickstarter funds)

As if a few weeks ago Chris was on their discord showing pictures from a hotel in Vegas where he was "working" for a new company, his linkedin profile also said he was the new director for Pointeast, some kind of factory in China. When this was brought up on their Discord the dude who discovered the info got banned and Chris privated his LinkedIn.

How difficult is it to cancel a KS pledge or is it too late in this case?

 legionaires wrote:
How difficult is it to cancel a KS pledge or is it too late in this case?

If Kickstarter has already collected pledges (usually within a few days of the campaign ending), then you have to contact the project runners and hope they will let you and send you a refund. Most likely, you're SOL.

Depends on the creator in question. Some companies have robust processes and customer service teams for that purpose, others....

I backed the paint KS. After the pledge manager I got a random £25 charge from Level52, asked them about it and they said it was indeed them. I assumed it was shipping for the kickstarter but they said it wasn’t, and never explained what the charge was for.
Strange all around.

Anyway. After reading this thread I posted it on the paint Ks to ask what’s going on. Will update if I get removed 😅

 Ghool wrote:
Interesting. I know of a few of these but couldn’t recall the names, nor if they really succeeded in retail after the KS.
I think the above posts pretty much nailed why minis games don’t do great post-KS.
They just don’t seem well-suited for the platform, whereas board games seem to be tailor made for KS.

KS are essentially a way to fund a print run. This is fine for board games because board games regularly go out of stock. If it does well enough to justify a second printing great, but there's no obligation to do so. It just doesn't produce content well suited to a monthly release to retail that a minis game tends to thrive on.

Did anyone back the Rivenstone campaign? What did they say in update #61 about those test models?