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It won't be changed radically enough I suspect. My guess is that he'll take off the Palladium employee names, wait for the bgg entry to be put up, make a nicer video but behind the scenes it'll still be the same with the same people involved. Not he nor anyone on his team (mostly palladium employees) apparently learned anything from the Robotech debacle after four years of ongoing failure except how to further CYA with one sided disclaimers absolving them of most any responsibility. Kevin and Carmen will soon return probably with a more polished dog and pony show to allow them go big now/fail big later the next time instead of going home empty handed like now.

If Carmen wants to actually succeed then he needs to start with realistic goals not based on vapid empty praise from palladium superfans. The starting point should be a small $50-75 boxed set with a smaller number of highly requested resin or metal minis and cardstock components that then works up logically to his dream of a 32 all plastic mini meganox imo. Even of only the former funds, he could still upgrade it later after he actually gets a good rep for the company instead of the commonly assumed palladium shell (regardless of whether or not they're legally separate).


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Also, I already see fellow palladium employees praising the "brave" move and denouncing the "trolls" who ironically were the only ones being honest and open in the entire kickstarter discussion.

Maybe their board game will actually have a board next time around.

 John Prins wrote:
Maybe their board game will actually have a board next time around.

Or actually show off a game with rules and stuff. You don't get that kind of deep, knowledgeable advice apparently from years of behind the scenes input from fellow palladium collaborators/contributors and select groups of superfans. Apparently only "trolls" can come up with obvious flaws in Carmen's business plan.

 warboss wrote:
It won't be changed radically enough I suspect. My guess is that he'll take off the Palladium employee names, wait for the bgg entry to be put up, make a nicer video but behind the scenes it'll still be the same with the same people involved. Not he nor anyone on his team (mostly palladium employees) apparently learned anything from the Robotech debacle after four years of ongoing failure except how to further CYA with one sided disclaimers absolving them of most any responsibility. Kevin and Carmen will soon return probably with a more polished dog and pony show to allow them go big now/fail big later the next time instead of going home empty handed like now.

If Carmen wants to actually succeed then he needs to start with realistic goals not based on vapid empty praise from palladium superfans. The starting point should be a small $50-75 boxed set with a smaller number of highly requested resin or metal minis and cardstock components that then works up logically to his dream of a 32 all plastic mini meganox imo. Even of only the former funds, he could still upgrade it later after he actually gets a good rep for the company instead of the commonly assumed palladium shell (regardless of whether or not they're legally separate).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, I already see fellow palladium employees praising the "brave" move and denouncing the "trolls" who ironically were the only ones being honest and open in the entire kickstarter discussion.

Actually it was mostly us "Trolls" who kept saying Carmen would be better off if this project did not fund or he cancelled it, he was ill prepared for this project and even worse yet, it showed.

I think that the minis designs would do well enough if they were available as a stand alone item without a game. No idea if that'd be possible under the license or not but it's something that has value and could be tweaked a bit, perhaps offering them in metal. Yeah it doesn't have the same appeal of a big box board game but it could potentially be used to recoup on the investments he's already made. All the leg work of the 3d is done so if they changed the material format for the minis it'd be a much more attainable goal to offer in metal.

Ignoring the connections to Palladium, IMO the main issue with the KS was that the game components and graphics looked pretty rough, certainly not the worst of gaming products but KS tends to cater to crowds who want something polished and sleek feeling. Big box style games rely heavily on the art presentation which this one fell a bit flat with. If you look at the visuals of any of the CMON games or even the stuff Ninja Division did with Robotech the graphics are all very colorful and slick which give their games a very professional look. A relaunch of the Rifts boardgame would benefit significantly if they got a better graphic designer to help with the layout.

Also the promotional photos need to be a bit better, as people noted earlier in the thread the ones used for the FB posts and depicted in the first few pages were fine but the ones used for the KS were all backlit and the miniatures were in shadow. Proper lighting makes or breaks a photo, while it was intended to show off the minis it kind of backfired and makes the project photos look a bit rushed or amateurish, which wouldn't be the case if they'd simply used the other set of photos they already had. There's a lot of small tweaks that can be done with the presentation that would have a really positive impact on a future relaunch.

Not trying to bash the previous efforts, just trying to point out where some improvements could be made for the future.

Release some minis, straight up. No Kickstarter, just straight to retail.

I would buy some. I know I am not alone.

 paulson games wrote:
I think that the minis designs would do well enough if they were available as a stand alone item without a game. No idea if that'd be possible under the license or not but it's something that has value and could be tweaked a bit, perhaps offering them in metal.

Rifts has those, but they're garbage at the moment, so I can see that potentially working. If you're going metal, you'd have to get Infinity/Warmachine levels of quality, as the market is going to resist anything in metal that's below that.

It almost might we worth trying to kickstart, say, a multi-piece plastic Dead Boy trooper box set, by itself. Rifts RPG players would love it, and it could be used as stand-ins in other game systems really easily. If the campaign does well enough, add-in Dog Boys, Skelebots and SAMAS at reasonable thresholds. You can use any old 28/32mm minis for character heroes (read: use Infinity minis) aside from a few things (Glitterboys), but then you're looking at ONE product to start, minimal set-up, zero playtesting or balancing, and it could be worked into a Rifts boardgame or wargame at a later date.

 John Prins wrote:
Maybe their board game will actually have a board next time around.

Maybe Carmen will realize he isn't selling a boardgame!

Didja see the video? He's essentially selling a miniatures skirmish game with a paper map. That's actually how many skirmish miniature games, such as A-43, Confrontation, Mutant Chronicles, Terminator, etc. were sold (although none of those games are around...). He should shoot a video on a terrain board with futuristic buildings, and all that. Unfortunately, from the PB gRIFTS forum, he doesn't know his terminology. First he called the game a "dudes on a map" game, which, in BGG terms, means an area control game like Risk, Blood Rage, or Rising Sun. Then, he called it a "boardgame" like Descent and Imperial Assault. But, when it comes to the video, it's two gangs facing off and making die rolls with card modifiers. To me, that's a miniatures skirmish game.

Anyone here follow metal miniature games on KS? I did a quick search for "Kickstarter miniatures science fiction" and found some which funded for less than 67K:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/822163699/astropolis
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1559814207/the-drowned-earth-miniatures-game

This assumes, of course, that the sculpts are as good as customers want. From the first page of this thread, my impression is that customers liked the (resin?) miniatures, and glitterboys were the most in demand.

ced1106 wrote:

 John Prins wrote:
Maybe their board game will actually have a board next time around.

Maybe Carmen will realize he isn't selling a boardgame!

Well, that too. It very much is a skirmish miniatures wargame. But he's calling it a board game.

Anyone here follow metal miniature games on KS? I did a quick search for "Kickstarter miniatures science fiction" and found some which funded for less than 67K:

Yeah, half decent metal mini KS fund all the time. It takes very little to fund a rubber mold, and it's almost failure proof, barring complete fraud.

Given that the project is cancelled I'm going to close this thread. We can start a new on in the Micl Mini game forum to continue discussions or open a new one if/when this is relaunched.