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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian-protocol/obsidian-protocol-mecha-miniature-wargame?ref=ksr_email_user_watched_project_launched_y2019


I spotted this one a while back and its just gone live and thought it would be worth showing here. Basically you've got anime style mecha with multiple component parts on offer. This you can build your own mecha from the core legs and body and then suit the head and weapons to the various loudouts. For a starting up game there's quite a staggering number of parts on offer for the various different forces of mecha. Honestly well worth a look and something quite different to the mech-warrior style of mechs that we tend to see far more of.

The demo mechs that they've got in the video look very impressive and they've clearly cast up a good number. They also show magnets right in use so clearly its a system designed with magnets in mind in terms of kitting out the mechs.

FUNDED now at £50K and onto stretch goals (first day funding)

Biggest risk is that this is their second campaign and the first, for a separate product, didn't fund. That said if you glance back the production value for the first was clearly much lower than for this second game. From the masters alone its clear they've already put a fair bit of work and money into this project.

Stretchgoals appearing and already some kickstarter exclusives (like a super neat backpack artillery gun and twin machine guns for arms) as well as confirmation on what the pink coloured items in photos are: Stretch clarification and goals will likely appear soon (apparently getting £50K in under half a day wasn't what they'd expected )

That game looks pretty freaking outstanding! I'm in for the MECHS alone...

Holy crap, those mech / gun designs!

...huh. That looks fantastic, and right what I was looking for right now (as in, modular mechs for Lancer ^^).

I'm highly suspect about the mech designs. While they look great, they look to me like they aren't optimized for production. The level of detail seems too fine to be reproduced accurately as a real miniature.

That's a huge amount of stuff in a box for £80.

So...basically Armoured Core - the board game?

This is the first KS board game that actually really tempts me.

They don't look much thinner/more flimsy than the slaanesh stuff I've got on the table infront of me.

And they are well up to £33K now so very high chance of funding at £50K!

I've been really hoping for something like this for years now. Very interested.

They've now hit funding to £50K on their first day

I'm very interested in those mechs. The fact that there's a game thrown in is just a bonus.

One question though, did they say what scale these are supposed to be in?

1:56 scale with the mechs supposed to be about 4m tall.

They are really nice models, and I love the modularity, but I really have no place for them

Huh. I just put two and two together. The creator had tried to get a similar game started YEARS ago on Kickstarter. It was called Ashes: Dark Side of the Moon.

I thought the style looked familiar. Cool on him for sticking to it and actually getting his goal reached.

I'm going to totally have to piggyback on Barzam's pledge.

Some of those melee designs are giving me flashbacks to Frame Gride, From's often forgotten fantasy mech arena game on the dreamcast.

Just watched the play-through video and I’m in for the core box and maybe a couple of the other side-boxes.

It strikes me as a crazy love child of Armored Core, X-Wing and Dust.

I’m pretty sure we could easily make an AC dungeon crawler for this with some NPC rules for other mechs and drones. Would also work for a larger scale heavy gear.

Yep. I’m down.

I'm totally in on the gamplay and models, but this seems like an exceptionally risky project.

Interesting, I really like the idea of modular mechs, and being able to use grid movement or a measuring tape is nice. The gameplay has some interesting elements; I like the hidden activation order and ability to shoot down missiles. Combat resolution feels a bit too complicated for my tastes; I can absolutely understand people liking the complexity and granularity, it's just a bit too cerebral for me...

The models look fine, but I'm not feeling any particular urge to grab them - it's just personal taste mostly. To me one faction feels very reminiscent of Armoured Core, another of Zone of the Enders, and the third reminds me a little of Horizon Zero Dawn. Is that just me?

I'm tempted, but I'm a little swamped right now (and for the foreseeable future), so I think I'll pass. I'm keeping my eye on it though; hopefully this takes off and builds a long-term following.

The biggest risk is that its a fist time campaign, though looking at the previous one, they've clearly come a long way in the time since it. Though I think its also important to realise that 3D printing isn't the full luxury that it once was, so capable prints are possible now without insane investment.
So I'd wager this campaign could very easily miss its funding target, which is the biggest issue as often campaigns fail when they miss that and then go on to run out of money for wages more than anything else (equipment and mould costs are big one time things, its wagers, rents, tax and shipping that tend to kill them)


The second thing is that its based in China rather than the USA or EU nations and such. So its quite a long logistical distance from, basically, everyone of their core market in the west. Shipping is thus a big concern, eps with the USA and China having a trade war which could make export and import more complex/expensive.




On the positive side they've hit £70K since last night and they've updated their stretchgoal display (though they've also now hit all the displayed stretchgoals!) First post updated with new graphic showing the goals.

Being based in China is actually an advantage. It's much cheaper to ship from China than to ship it elsewhere for fulfillment and then ship it again around the world.

Nurglitch wrote:
Being based in China is actually an advantage. It's much cheaper to ship from China than to ship it elsewhere for fulfillment and then ship it again around the world.

It makes no difference where you’re located. See Journey:Wrath of Demons for another high risk, tons in the box for cheap KS that is still trying to fulfill pledges after running out of funds years ago. They’re still trying to get backers what they paid for. Being in China doesn’t make it any easier or more difficult. Too risky for me despite the cool factor.

I'm just saying that the risk isn't in shipping. I can't make monetary sense of the amount of stuff they're cramming in the box either.

Mugaaz wrote:
I'm totally in on the gamplay and models, but this seems like an exceptionally risky project.

That's definitely my big fear as well.

Nurglitch wrote:
I'm just saying that the risk isn't in shipping. I can't make monetary sense of the amount of stuff they're cramming in the box either.

I assume they might be using a single plastic mould? Which in itself can be a risk having lots of things on a single mould casting which can then mean a popular line ends up running out of stock far more often whilst they are also lumped with loads of overstock on a less popular block of the models. Plus there's KS unique stuff on the mould too.

They have said to take the whole game to plastic would cost around £500K which is more in line with prices I'm aware of for plastic moulds from GW. I don't think they'll raise that much on this, its good creativity and they appear really dedicated having survived several years since the last KS (which didn't fund); but they are unknown. If anything raising too much now might be more dangerous for them in overstretching things

I don't think you can raise too much money, as the more money the better economy of scale you can have in production. Certain Kickstarters have deliberately set their goal lower than they could ever manage because beating that goal early and getting into stretch goals is how they get word of mouth, confidence, and so on. It's over-promising and under-producing that gets people, when they haven't taken all the costs into account and the money they raised underfunds their efforts. Better to have the QA eat into your profit rather than crashing the whole thing.

Too much can be a problem if they keep adding more goals because then they are getting more and more stock to produce; but the money they are raising is going into more moud production instead of into increased core production.

Plus there's a cap on how much they will be able to produce (and you don't want to front load a comapny with too much core production and then have the market reduce once the KS is over and be left with waste investments). It's simply a case that sometimes too much can overload things or result in a very long back-order situation .

That's not a problem with having more money though, that's a problem with how they're structuring their production. Catalyst Lab Games' Clan Invasion KS cleverly structured their production so that most of the stretch goals were simply more opportunities for backers to spend money rather than piling additional stuff on each pledge charge-free; they were never at risk of too much funding.

One thing to note, they said they've already partially raised funds via crowdfunding in China. That's why there's already a slew of unlocked stretch goals. Unfortunately, we don't know how much of the actual funding goal that covered, but it could explain the low funding goal here.

I love this kickstarter. But I don't see any way I ever actually play the game. So I guess I will just put this on the "wait and see, possible buy in 3 years when it releases" tab.

They've now breached £100K! Also a video added to the first post showing Greenstuff World assembling and painting up one of their mechs. Showing also the sockets and joints for how the arms work and such - a neat approach since if you don't use the magnets the arms just slot together easily (then glued in place of course).

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian-protocol/obsidian-protocol-mecha-miniature-wargame/posts/2630233

Updates on multiple customs free shipping regions (EU, USA, Canada, Australia, Japan) as well as new stretch goals.

The GBP thing is a little odd given how vendors typically want to be paid in USD. A friend of mine had his KS take a hit below the waterline because he ran the KS in $CAD and the loonie dropped against the buck from nigh-parity to 70c/$USD.