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 ced1106 wrote:

 skullking wrote:
I'm happy with this update. Not just because it adds in a good amount more figures, but the new expansion looks good too. I'm not sure how many it will bring back, but the campaign has already been quite successful. I hope they'll stage it better next time, so that it flows more smoothly, but, to be fair, I think Gencon may have thrown a wrench in it a bit. Or perhaps Riotminds could be more difficult to work with than we know BTS? That's one of those things that can mess up a project, and they can't really tell people about it.

I do really wish CMON would just do a Miniatures only KS, and not couple it with a game or anything. Just a bunch of cool, nicely sculpted minis that would be useful with a variety of games (maybe even ones they've done already). Sort of like a Reaper BONES KS, but with their design, sculpts, and material instead.

I still think the problem was only one of perception, by using EB's that front-loaded pledges. On BGG, someone noted that CMON assumed the momentum of the campaign of the first day would continue, and priced SG's assuming so. So, when the pledges slowed down, the campaign stopped reaching SG's. CMON did use EB's in Bloodborne, but Trudvang is no Bloodborne.

As for miniatures only, Reaper Bones and Dwarven Forge pulled in $3M each, but this is still less than Bloodborne and Zombicide:Invader. Boardgamers have more money as a population than miniature painters. Closest CMON did with miniatures is a base insert campaign with Micro Arts Studio that brought in 88K. I dunno who at CMON would want to risk their job advocating a miniatures-only campaign.

I definitely agree with you about CMON pricing the goals in accordance with the EB 1st day pledges. I think they assumed it would continue, but of course it didn't.

I disagree about them doing poorly on a 'minis only' KS. Sure they've had boardgame ones that did well, but to be fair, those weren't all/only boardgamers pledging in those. There were plenty of folks (such as myself) who had no interest in the game, and just wanted a bunch of cool miniatures. Also, I don't think a 'bases only' KS is a good reference for how well they'd do if they did a 'minis only' campaign. Not everyone wants/needs fancy bases, so you're not going to get the full brunt of minis fans pledging. On the other hand, CMON has run a number of 'card based games', and 'non, or low mini games', which haven't gone gang busters also. In these instances the games didn't really need many if any miniatures to accompany them, so there wasn't really any point in adding them. All that proves is, the key to success in a combination of the two, but I think if they didn't bother with adding any sort of game to it, they could have a lot more freedom to make 'Cool Mini's' . Not having any sort of gaming framework to deal with also means you don't have to make any sort of 'how to play' videos, and you don't have to get a bunch of youtubers to go through the game and review it beforehand (if they aren't paying them to do this, it's not really a big deal I guess ) . Trudvang seems like a game that could easily function without any miniatures. The miniatures are the only reason I pledged though, so I guess they understand that to have success you need both. It would be interesting to see them try a minis only KS though, just to see how well it did. Probably won't beat the really big games (will anyone ever touch KD:M at 12 mil?) but could be decent money (any minis) for less hassle. And I would assume you'd be more liable to lose your job pitching a 'cards only' game at CMON then a 'Minis only' one. But then again, it's already happened.

That seems to have helped cash-wise:



But not so backer-wise:



Still I’m happy with latest developments!

> But then again, it's already happened.

You're halfway there. (: Looks like Xenoshyft card game designer Keren Philosophales disappeared while designer Michael Shinall is still around, particularly for ASOIAF which looks to have been well-received by Dakka (and seems to heavier on the miniatures than cards since it's not a boardgame). IIRC, Xenoshyft was designed by an intern, which is kinda Cool Mini Or Not. (:

Anyway, glad to see Trudvang'ers get an expansion for their trouble. In previous KS, base pledges got a smaller expansion as part of their initial pledge. Seems that CMON didn't follow advice on KS to offer a base game pledge that stood alone without SG's as something attractive.

Shinall has worked on a lot of games with CMON, first getting started in Dark Age if I remember correctly.

What they should do is take the framework from ASOIAF and set it in the Xenoshyft universe. Trays of bug swarms or giant bosses taking on elite units with support mechs or gun ilnes of cannon fodder or the meat grinder.

Plus any actual loss or shortalls on Trudvang can quickly be made up with Zombicide. Ankh will probably help too if only for the minis alone.

 highlord tamburlaine wrote:
Shinall has worked on a lot of games with CMON, first getting started in Dark Age if I remember correctly.

What they should do is take the framework from ASOIAF and set it in the Xenoshyft universe. Trays of bug swarms or giant bosses taking on elite units with support mechs or gun ilnes of cannon fodder or the meat grinder.

Plus any actual loss or shortalls on Trudvang can quickly be made up with Zombicide. Ankh will probably help too if only for the minis alone.

I would spend a stupid amount of money on a sci fi game built on the ASOIAF framework. I'm not a big GoT fan, haven't watched the series or read the books, but I have bought in heavy to the game because it plays fast, rewards clever play, and is full of interesting choices. I'm still thrilled at just how much different commanders can change how an army plays.
Trays full of bugs sounds awesome.
Unfortunately I don't know that it translates well into a game where most units will have ranged attacks. Shooting is fairly subdued in ASOIAF in my experience. It is very much based around melee combat and maneuvering to flank.

Trudvang has been doing ok. I think limiting it to the 10k stretch goals has really helped. Plus, most of them are TROLLS!!

Pretty sure the Wildlands release for the 11th will be the Huvfurwurm/Hydra shown in the Norse influence video. And the one on the 13th will be another troll/Muspeljotun they showed. We'll see though.



Also, Mountable Dragon!!

Some fun developments on the ASOIAF Facebook group for UK/EU supporters of the game.

Adam Lovell of CMON (VP of Sales and Operations IRRC)posts
"Regarding recent rumours that our partner Asmodee is restricting sales of Song SKUs to six per order:

I've been in communication with their team this morning and there is no truth to this from their position. There was a limit of six per SKU at UK Games Expo months ago due to limited stock, but they are well-stocked for the August 9th releases."

In turn a load of members post photographic evidence of multiple examples of Asmodee limiting boxes to six per retailer and some skus even being sold out before release.

So Asmodee continue to do a GREAT job supplying ASOIAF whilst also possibly not being entirely truthful to CMON. Funny that Asmodee have no real issues supplying FFG products around Europe, I am SURE there is nothing sinister going on.

If the restrictions are there (and I bet they are) it's because CMON can't supply enough (any?) product a thing we kept seeing with Wrath of Kings & Dark Age whoever was meant to be distributing it

so it's hard to tell who's really at fault, but doesn't help the game grow or prosper either way

Pretty much, neither party is taking responsibility. That is a shame as it is a great game, but limited stock on shelves means fewer new players and a dying game system. Oh well, plenty of other games to invest in.

CMON doesn't have any incentive to sell fewer boxes, so I'm much more likely to believe that Asmodee is intentionally slow walking the releases of a competitor than that CMON is trying to intentionally make less money in the UK.

well its a small positive in terms of backer numbers (much better in terms of cash), but it does look like Trudvang has finally turned the corner with the daily unlocks plus some genuine stretch goal unlocks combined more are backing than pulling out

Trudvang is down nearly 5,000 EB backers from the peak, I do believe unless they drop a big ol' bunch of Chinese unlocked Stretch Goals on the campaign they will manage to lose over half of their EBs by campaign's end. I'm keeping on open mind on re-pledging for the core during the pledge manager, the designs from the RPG are just so cool. And by then I'll know what the shipping is and more about what Mythic is putting out this fall.

Eh...?

It 'recovered' nicely once CMON started paying attention to what was going on (right around the end of Gen Con):




I'm pretty happy with where we're at now in terms of content - and these minis will go nicely for games here, and in the Trudvang RPG too!

frankelee wrote:
Trudvang is down nearly 5,000 EB backers from the peak, I do believe unless they drop a big ol' bunch of Chinese unlocked Stretch Goals on the campaign they will manage to lose over half of their EBs by campaign's end. I'm keeping on open mind on re-pledging for the core during the pledge manager, the designs from the RPG are just so cool. And by then I'll know what the shipping is and more about what Mythic is putting out this fall.

That number is completely wrong.

there are 6380 EB backers left,


I suspect most of the 1st 2 days on kicktraq are EB backers (it doesn't do the days quite the same as KS, rolling over at midnight in timezone X)

so 11772 - 6380 = 5392

so they probably have lost 5000 or so EB backers, just a lot of them have been replaced by new ones (or the same ones coming back and paying the extra $10)

Edit: but KS naturally have a lot of 'churn' and if the project had been gaining backers every day (despite the losses) you probably wouldn't notice. Even on well run projects that are going well I think 10-20% of day 1 backers drop out and with an EB it's probably towards the higher end of that range as people grab now think later)

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
there are 6380 EB backers left,


I suspect most of the 1st 2 days on kicktraq are EB backers (it doesn't do the days quite the same as KS, rolling over at midnight in timezone X)

so 11772 - 6380 = 5392

so they probably have lost 5000 or so EB backers, just a lot of them have been replaced by new ones (or the same ones coming back and paying the extra $10)

Edit: but KS naturally have a lot of 'churn' and if the project had been gaining backers every day (despite the losses) you probably wouldn't notice. Even on well run projects that are going well I think 10-20% of day 1 backers drop out and with an EB it's probably towards the higher end of that range as people grab now think later)

This guy gets it! I recalled around 11,600 EBs and 150 regular birds at the end of the first day, and Kicktraq seems to confirm my memory, which tends to be pretty accurate in general.

Definitely you're bound to lose EBs, the point is to get people who aren't totally sold to pledge anyway, but I have a feeling Mr. CMON would like to see them tighten up those numbers quite a bit next time around.

P.S. It's also right now only at $119 average per backer, which if you compare it to the Monolith/Mythic Kickstarters I'm more familiar with, is a very low level of investment in this game by current patrons. With a $145 all-in gameplay add-on, and $85 in additional books, it seems like people are holding back due to some combination of shipping fears, gameplay concerns, low value concerns, insufficient FOMO, or just general feelings of "meh" about the game.

frankelee wrote:
Trudvang is down nearly 5,000 EB backers from the peak, I do believe unless they drop a big ol' bunch of Chinese unlocked Stretch Goals on the campaign they will manage to lose over half of their EBs by campaign's end.

Dunno if this matters, though. With rising shipping prices, I'm thinking CMON is going after the whales, not the cheapskates. We already know a fair number of CMON and KS backers are "all-in" FOMOs who will spend $300+ on a KS, including the expansions with their higher profit margins. CMON has the numbers from previous KS of how many whales vs. cheapskates they have, and may be more apparently going after one over the other. In other words, with retail being the "standard version" of a product, their KS campaigns are for the "deluxe version", not a "pre-order discount" one. Maybe.

With Ankh, CMON will be switching target audiences to the cheapskate BGG audience with their seasoned vocal minority CMON-KS-Exclusive-miniature-haters. Rising Sun pulled in more money and more backers than Bloodborne (29K backers for $4.2M vs. 24K for $4M), yet only had one gameplay expansion. Should be "interesting" how CMON handles them. Will they try timed EB's again, or will they repeat Rising Sun's campaign? Stay tuned for the ever-cMontinuing saga, or just back the halfling and elf Egyptian resin miniatures instead (in addition?

Somehow I still have a pledge in this as well. Cheapskate all the way! May get the recruitable dragon if I stay til the end.

I like they've been unlocking lots of monsters lately.

Ankh is certainly going to be curious how it'll be run.

frankelee wrote:

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
there are 6380 EB backers left,


I suspect most of the 1st 2 days on kicktraq are EB backers (it doesn't do the days quite the same as KS, rolling over at midnight in timezone X)

so 11772 - 6380 = 5392

so they probably have lost 5000 or so EB backers, just a lot of them have been replaced by new ones (or the same ones coming back and paying the extra $10)

Edit: but KS naturally have a lot of 'churn' and if the project had been gaining backers every day (despite the losses) you probably wouldn't notice. Even on well run projects that are going well I think 10-20% of day 1 backers drop out and with an EB it's probably towards the higher end of that range as people grab now think later)

This guy gets it! I recalled around 11,600 EBs and 150 regular birds at the end of the first day, and Kicktraq seems to confirm my memory, which tends to be pretty accurate in general.

Definitely you're bound to lose EBs, the point is to get people who aren't totally sold to pledge anyway, but I have a feeling Mr. CMON would like to see them tighten up those numbers quite a bit next time around.

P.S. It's also right now only at $119 average per backer, which if you compare it to the Monolith/Mythic Kickstarters I'm more familiar with, is a very low level of investment in this game by current patrons. With a $145 all-in gameplay add-on, and $85 in additional books, it seems like people are holding back due to some combination of shipping fears, gameplay concerns, low value concerns, insufficient FOMO, or just general feelings of "meh" about the game.

...or:

 Alpharius wrote:
And yet I'm pretty sure that this will end up making more than all the other Trudvang Kickstarters did, combined.

And I say that having backed all of their English language RPG campaigns too.

We just might have hit (or just about hit) the ceiling for what was a niche within a niche's niche to begin with!

I don't at all disagree with CMON perhaps shooting for whales ced1106, but it brings up an interesting point, are they getting whales, and are they getting enough money from whales to lose everybody else? Las Vegas itself rolls out the red carpet for high rollers, but if they lost the regular vacationer, they'd go bankrupt. You want one, you still need the other. I don't for a second think they're not making decent money from even core pledges on KS given their margins. But also paradoxically, when you look at a Mythic Battles Pantheon which offered what one may even call "too good of a deal," for $100 (90 for early birds!), they had significantly higher average backer numbers, cheapskates and all! Personally, I felt like throwing on a lot of additional money to that campaign for add-ons due to a combination of excitement for the campaign, and a certain level of consumer gratitude for the amount of material provided to me in my core pledge. So right there, again paradoxically, the value led to the high levels of spending. And they had a pretty decent 1.5 follow-up campaign, because it was popular and successful enough to warrant that next cash in (and I felt like they deserved, the first campaign was pretty successful but deserved more given how great the value/content/gameplay all turned out to be).

On the other hand, I do generally disagree with the niche of a niche of a niche thinking. I just have never seen any evidence that an IP totally hardcaps a game, nor do I ever see evidence that an IP fully wrings out a game's potential earnings. What is Kingdom Death, how many niches deep is that? What about the not nearly as successful Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game? What is say Netrunner compared to Trudvang? The reality is people give all IPs a fair shake on the whole, and the IP is only a portion of what interests/disinterests or sells a person on a product related to it.

Just because Trudvang is a Swedish, fantasy RPG property, based off of Tolkein, Beowulf, and Dungeons and Dragons doesn't mean anything to a person stumbling on it. A customer doesn't ask themselves, "Well do I like Swedish things? No. Well then I won't back this game!!!" Game of Thrones are based on books, based on the 100 Years War with American fantasy tropes thrown in all over. I guarantee you the HBO series had lots of viewers who didn't read the books, don't read fantasy books in general, don't know or care about the 100 Years War, etc. And I mean, the HBO series was very popular, the miniature wargaming Kickstarter was not very popular. How can that be? It just doesn't work that way, for determining either failure or success. A better run campaign would have made more money, the IP is good, it's not a hindrance to that at all.

It may also be that a well run campaign turns cheapskates into whales...

I think that CMON is operating under the false assumption that people are either whales or cheapskates, when I believe that the real key to a massive campaign is snagging as many cheapskates as you can, because once you get someone to open their wallet for $100 core pledge it is much easier to sell them $30 expansions. That is why suit salesman always try to sell you the $30 tie after they sell you the suit. It looks cheaper by comparison.

I would bet good money that the conversion cost to turn cheapskates to whales is much smaller than finding random whale megafans who will drop $300 from the get go.

Yeah, I'll still agree that CMON may not be going about their hunt the right way. Certainly they lack the fuzzy feelings of customer relations that many other KS (eg. KDM, Middara) have, and many backers apparently value. The "loss leader" strategy is common, especially around turkey time, where the cheap turkey meat gets the customer to buy the high-profit stuffing and other trimings.

Trudvang is ending in 8 hours. Final miniature count looks like 80 or so in the base pledge, about 60 unique sculpts.

A few of that number seem to be larger trolls, wyrms, dragons, and demons as well if you want your big baddies with a more Scandinavian flair.

I still find myself oddly tempted by this despite having backed other games like Tainted Grail which seem to attempt to do a similar style storytelling.

Zombicide 2nd Edition is our next Kickstarter campaign - stay tuned to our channels for more information!

Looks like the display card was right 2019 KS rather than 2020 maybe they decided to move it up ahead of Ankh to boost KS income for 2019.

Tully Cavaliers finally get a release on September 6th

https://cmon.com/news/a-fish-on-horseback

Those are nice. Is the ASOIAF stuff scaled the same as Black Plague and Massive Darkness?

ecurtz wrote:
Those are nice. Is the ASOIAF stuff scaled the same as Black Plague and Massive Darkness?

I don't have massive darkness or bp to compare, but I'm pretty sure they are a couple mm taller in general. They are pretty big miniatures.

ecurtz wrote:
Those are nice. Is the ASOIAF stuff scaled the same as Black Plague and Massive Darkness?

Sort of? Black Plague has a much more cartoony look because it's based on that French artist's designs. I'd say the ASOIAF minis are more like BloodRage or Rising Sun in scale and proportions.

Has CMON finally said anything about the future of Dark Age ? ...