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Conan: Rise of Monsters is an epic fantasy battle game with high-quality painted, 34mm, hardened PVC figures, fast-play rules, custom dice, and more. The backstory is a brand new tale inspired by Robert E. Howard's original Conan tales and the Marvel and Dark Horse Comics stories and adaptations.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2060871444/conan-rise-of-monsters-relaunch/description

Is this an expansion for the other game?

Nope...this is a new miniature game.

Looks OK, but feels rather pricey, especially for what's contained in the boxes 'right now'.

And "Pre-Painted" miniatures, well...

Still, as always, best of luck to all involved here!

There was a previously Kickstarter for this at the end of 2015 but it really struggled to fund so was cancelled. The original campaign had a target of $250,000 and raised just over $100,000. The new campaign had a goal of only $40,000 which it has already passed.

Given the price and the quality of the pre-paints I just can't see this worth the money. They have offered all the rules for free download though so would be interesting to see how people find them.

Aeneades wrote:
There was a previously Kickstarter for this at the end of 2015 but it really struggled to fund so was cancelled. The original campaign had a target of $250,000 and raised just over $100,000. The new campaign had a goal of only $40,000 which it has already passed.

Given the price and the quality of the pre-paints I just can't see this worth the money. They have offered all the rules for free download though so would be interesting to see how people find them.

There was a whole different game, as well... That is where the confusion is setting in.

Box full of mini's, then .... this. Question still stands as to what the relationship is here.

 Grot 6 wrote:

Aeneades wrote:
There was a previously Kickstarter for this at the end of 2015 but it really struggled to fund so was cancelled. The original campaign had a target of $250,000 and raised just over $100,000. The new campaign had a goal of only $40,000 which it has already passed.

Given the price and the quality of the pre-paints I just can't see this worth the money. They have offered all the rules for free download though so would be interesting to see how people find them.

There was a whole different game, as well... That is where the confusion is setting in.

Box full of mini's, then .... this. Question still stands as to what the relationship is here.

This is Conan: Rise of Monsters, a stand alone pre-assembled, pre-painted, non-collectible miniature game.

This is a reboot. The pledges are $150+, which is pretty insane.

The game uses custom dice, marked with a different symbol on 3 (sword), 2 (shield), and 1 side (sigil). Kind of like the old HeroQuest dice. You need 10-20 of these(!). There is also a Fate deck and a number of markers and counters, including "Destiny".

Players roll for initiative and the alternately activate units. Units must move before acting and measure from the base. Pretty standard move, run, charge, stuff. In Melee each side rolls attack dice equal to its Melee Attack Rating, looking for swords. For each hit suffered, the unit then rolls one dice plus its Defense rating (so a unit that suffered 2 wounds and had 2 Defense rolls 4 dice) looking for Shields, which negate wounds.

Shooting is pretty much the same and you can shoot into melee, but risk wounding your dudes (sigil) with no save.

Units reduced below half wounds roll 2 dice and if no swords show, it flees. Fleeing units use the same mechanic to rally at the start of its activation.

There are special rules for Fear, Poison, etc.

You get 1 Destiny point (used to augment rolls) per unit fielded (regardless of whether it is still alive), which is kind of odd (hordes of cheap troops then generate more Destiny and are more reliable).

All in all, looks pretty lackluster as a game, and falls firmly into the buckets of dice for fun category.

Yea....at first I was like WOOHOO more Conan!

Then.... not so much.

Very pricey, then pre-paints.... sculpts are boardgame level at best, and that's being generous.

Anyone remember the old prices? Just to compare?

150 is high, and 300 for all of it (well not even all of it) is a lot. Maybe if it was 50 for a set, so 100 total. Even then, FFG games offer more (as do GW !)

I just don't see what this really offers. Conan board game is already there and amazing minis.

Better paint jobs then D&D minis but that's not hard to do.

I did read the rules, its very bland. Small reroll system, add total to beat total, deal wounds and move on. Meh
Nothing unique, movin on....

Passing as well (Dwarven Forge! Reaper! Doomtown!

How Come More Miniatures Aren't Stretch Goals? We're offering all the miniatures up front this time, divided into two boxes—the Conqueror core set and the Warlord expansion. The problem with offering the miniatures in the Warlord Expansion as Stretch Goals is a little complicated if you haven't been run a Kickstarter yourself, but here's the situation for those who are interested. The usual way to get people excited about board and miniature games on Kickstarter is to offer a basic package then add to it as the project is successful until the package becomes too good to pass up. Most of the games that do this are able to do so because plastic minis on sprues are very inexpensive if you have enough quantity to make the molds in the first place. Conan: Rise of Monsters high-quality, painted miniatures means a higher cost per miniature (but we think it's still a fantastic bargain!). A typical plastic sprue might cost pennies, but our minis are assembled, painted, vacuum packaged, and come ready to play. When we followed this model the first time, it was hard to get to the Stretch Goals we accounted for because they were at fairly high levels to actually cover the costs. That means there's a sweet spot between what we want to be in the box and the price... just like every other non-Kickstarter project out there. Makes perfect sense, right? But since this is Kickstarter and we all want cool Stretch Goals, we decided the best thing for this project is to offer what we think is a fair deal for the game and minis, and then add all the other things we think add tremendous fun to the game.

ced1106 wrote:
Passing as well (Dwarven Forge! Reaper! Doomtown!

How Come More Miniatures Aren't Stretch Goals? We're offering all the miniatures up front this time, divided into two boxes—the Conqueror core set and the Warlord expansion. The problem with offering the miniatures in the Warlord Expansion as Stretch Goals is a little complicated if you haven't been run a Kickstarter yourself, but here's the situation for those who are interested. The usual way to get people excited about board and miniature games on Kickstarter is to offer a basic package then add to it as the project is successful until the package becomes too good to pass up. Most of the games that do this are able to do so because plastic minis on sprues are very inexpensive if you have enough quantity to make the molds in the first place. Conan: Rise of Monsters high-quality, painted miniatures means a higher cost per miniature (but we think it's still a fantastic bargain!). A typical plastic sprue might cost pennies, but our minis are assembled, painted, vacuum packaged, and come ready to play. When we followed this model the first time, it was hard to get to the Stretch Goals we accounted for because they were at fairly high levels to actually cover the costs. That means there's a sweet spot between what we want to be in the box and the price... just like every other non-Kickstarter project out there. Makes perfect sense, right? But since this is Kickstarter and we all want cool Stretch Goals, we decided the best thing for this project is to offer what we think is a fair deal for the game and minis, and then add all the other things we think add tremendous fun to the game.

This right here is what made me pull my pledge. Little to no offer of anything for supporting them...looks like the retail price plus shipping instead of waiting for it to hit stores.

Those are atrocious models, and the game looks paper thin. On paper I should be excited by this one, but I feel like this is completely lacking direction.

It just feels... I don't know, cheap?

Is CONAN the new ZOMBIE <keyword> for Kickstarter?

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:Those are atrocious models, and the game looks paper thin. On paper I should be excited by this one, but I feel like this is completely lacking direction.

It just feels... I don't know, cheap?

Very much so. Doesent seem like a game an actual company would make

Alpharius wrote:Is CONAN the new ZOMBIE <keyword> for Kickstarter?

Ha, and Cthulhu. Open licenses come with many piles of and few gems

Aeneades wrote:
There was a previously Kickstarter for this at the end of 2015 but it really struggled to fund so was cancelled. The original campaign had a target of $250,000 and raised just over $100,000. The new campaign had a goal of only $40,000 which it has already passed.

Given the price and the quality of the pre-paints I just can't see this worth the money. They have offered all the rules for free download though so would be interesting to see how people find them.

That lower funding target is not necessarily a good thing. Too many kickstarters set artificially low funding goals that they can't actually make the game on in order to encourage initial backing and hopefully get enough steam to pass their real goal down the line... and if they can't then they just cancel to "restructure"/try again at a latter date. The really bad companies don't even bother doing that but rather just pocket the money and keep the game in limbo for years.

I'm trying to stay unbiased, but some of the "creators" are also locals and have some pretty suspect tastes regarding what makes a game playable or not... That also make its harder for me to be excited.

For those curious about the previos KF: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2060871444/conan-rise-of-monsters?ref=discovery

Looks like they are on track to match or beat the old one.

Interestingly, the Kickstarter indicates that the license they have does not allow for unpainted minis. Monolith and Ares both did unpainted, but for board games. I wonder who the license is from since it appears that the original writings fell into public domain in 2006, Paradox's sneaky attempt to manipulate EU rights notwithstanding.

 warboss wrote:

Aeneades wrote:
There was a previously Kickstarter for this at the end of 2015 but it really struggled to fund so was cancelled. The original campaign had a target of $250,000 and raised just over $100,000. The new campaign had a goal of only $40,000 which it has already passed.

Given the price and the quality of the pre-paints I just can't see this worth the money. They have offered all the rules for free download though so would be interesting to see how people find them.

That lower funding target is not necessarily a good thing. Too many kickstarters set artificially low funding goals that they can't actually make the game on in order to encourage initial backing and hopefully get enough steam to pass their real goal down the line... and if they can't then they just cancel to "restructure"/try again at a latter date. The really bad companies don't even bother doing that but rather just pocket the money and keep the game in limbo for years.

I agree that lower campaign goal is a bad thing. I know that they have done quite a bit of the work already but I worry they will struggle with funding when production starts.

The miniatures look poor, I have to say. The pre-painting looks worst.

I know they're not Monolith, the makers of the "other" Conan game, but are the minis significantly larger? The Rise of Monsters minis are "34mm" - sure would be a missed opportunity if they were very different from Conan the boardgame from Monolith

 warboss wrote:
That lower funding target is not necessarily a good thing. Too many kickstarters set artificially low funding goals that they can't actually make the game on in order to encourage initial backing and hopefully get enough steam to pass their real goal down the line... and if they can't then they just cancel to "restructure"/try again at a latter date. The really bad companies don't even bother doing that but rather just pocket the money and keep the game in limbo for years.

Could also be that they've paid for the molds, so now they're sunken costs, and they're not making an attempt to recover them through backer pledges, because, frex, they've paid them off over the last two years or had outside investors. I've seen another miniatures KS reboot that pretty much did this. Note that the SG's are only 5K apart, and introduce only Unit Cards, not new miniatures, which traditionally had goals further apart.

If you look at the staff of Pulpasaurus, it includes "Jack Emmert, founder of Cryptic Studios, creative lead of City of Heroes, City of Villains. Champions Online, Star Trek Online, Neverwinter Online, and now Studio Head for Daybreak". If you look up Cryptic Studio's financial reports (not that I quite understand them), they made $16 *million* dollars in revenue (that's enough for me to understand), and Daybreak $91 million, so it's not like Jack himself can't be a investor. Of course, with all this money, Daybreak could have gone the Riot Games route and sold the game direct to customers, so I'm not sure why they're going the KS route, which, given the decision for the backers to receive all the miniatures up front, is as close to a pre-order as I've seen in a KS (although Johnny Lauck did this as well!). Perhaps Daybreak saw the game as too much of a diversification from their "core values" to sell it through traditional avenues. Shane Hensley, founder of Pinnacle Entertainment Group, has used KS several times to fund PEG projects, so perhaps they're using KS because that's what Shane has experience with. KS is also used to gauge interest and provide marketing, rather than for actual funding, so maybe Emmert and company less need funding, than want to know the market demand for the game so they're not stuck with boxes of vanity product.

Anyway, speculating as much as anyone else here.

http://www.hoovers.com/company-information/cs/revenue-financial.Cryptic_Studios_Inc.b642f4eb31b5c703.html
http://www.hoovers.com/company-information/cs/revenue-financial.Sony_Online_Entertainment_LLC.b09df3fc383facb0.html

No, I think you are spot on ced1106; it definitely looks like a pre-order.

ced1106 wrote:

 warboss wrote:
That lower funding target is not necessarily a good thing. Too many kickstarters set artificially low funding goals that they can't actually make the game on in order to encourage initial backing and hopefully get enough steam to pass their real goal down the line... and if they can't then they just cancel to "restructure"/try again at a latter date. The really bad companies don't even bother doing that but rather just pocket the money and keep the game in limbo for years.

Could also be that they've paid for the molds, so now they're sunken costs, and they're not making an attempt to recover them through backer pledges, because, frex, they've paid them off over the last two years or had outside investors. I've seen another miniatures KS reboot that pretty much did this. Note that the SG's are only 5K apart, and introduce only Unit Cards, not new miniatures, which traditionally had goals further apart.

If you look at the staff of Pulpasaurus, it includes "Jack Emmert, founder of Cryptic Studios, creative lead of City of Heroes, City of Villains. Champions Online, Star Trek Online, Neverwinter Online, and now Studio Head for Daybreak". If you look up Cryptic Studio's financial reports (not that I quite understand them), they made $16 *million* dollars in revenue (that's enough for me to understand), and Daybreak $91 million, so it's not like Jack himself can't be a investor. Of course, with all this money, Daybreak could have gone the Riot Games route and sold the game direct to customers, so I'm not sure why they're going the KS route, which, given the decision for the backers to receive all the miniatures up front, is as close to a pre-order as I've seen in a KS (although Johnny Lauck did this as well!). Perhaps Daybreak saw the game as too much of a diversification from their "core values" to sell it through traditional avenues. Shane Hensley, founder of Pinnacle Entertainment Group, has used KS several times to fund PEG projects, so perhaps they're using KS because that's what Shane has experience with. KS is also used to gauge interest and provide marketing, rather than for actual funding, so maybe Emmert and company less need funding, than want to know the market demand for the game so they're not stuck with boxes of vanity product.

Anyway, speculating as much as anyone else here.

You make some good points and some of those I considered myself which is why I said it's not necessarily a good thing (leaving wiggle room). With my own limited personal experience with KS, I've been taught that the platform will do nothing to curb fraud or even just discourage it passively and that companies know they can be as dishonest as they want to be. That unfortunately sets my default POV to pessimisstic and the potential "gotchya!" possibilities stand out for me. I don't know enough about this studios or it's staff to say anything specific about them but rather it's just, as you said, speculation about what could happen in a worst case scenario.

 jmurph wrote:
No, I think you are spot on ced1106; it definitely looks like a pre-order.

I agree, and they did give an approximate retail value of $175. So if you pay the $150 plus the $20 to $40 for shipping you are getting no deals for backing them.

I would assume the reason they're on Kickstarter is that it's pretty much given that It's the defacto method of advertising a new game for all be the largest companies. KSer has been a pre-order system for years now lots of discussions on BGG about this and other places about this.

Bad news for the future of this game: Our core team received the latest manufacturing quotes here at the Origins game convention and decided that Conan: Rise of Monsters won't be offered through traditional distribution. The nature of our project and the tight margins means it's really a direct-only product. We will work with individual stores sometime after the Kickstarter backers get their orders and offer the Conqueror and Warlord expansion at a "net price" with a suggested retail of $199 each. Individual figure sets will only be offered directly through our website.

'I wouldn't want to sell to any customers who would buy my product.'


?

Honestly, if your pre-painted minis are that rough and that costly, you need to go back to the drawing board and start over.

I see that they have gone back on not having the budget for miniatures so only having miniature stretch goals now by adding a stretch goal for new painted unit.