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That's great. Sucks in a way too though, the more they make the more they gotta pay.. now $90,000 is going back to Kickstarter and Amazon

I'm sticking with $100, don't really need/want shirts and stuff.

Did they say when it's supposed to be released? I didn't see that

It is at the bottom of the Reward Level box that you selected.

It is easy to miss/overlook - because I did until someone else pointed it out to me!

Duh .. yeah, I just caught that too.. wasn't paying attention as usual.

It just shot up like 7k in the last 5 minutes. Doubt they'll make it to a million .. maybe Car Wars will

Necros wrote:That's great. Sucks in a way too though, the more they make the more they gotta pay.. now $90,000 is going back to Kickstarter and Amazon

I'm sticking with $100, don't really need/want shirts and stuff.

Did they say when it's supposed to be released? I didn't see that

That that I'm trying to talk you into spending more then you want but the big things you get with the $150 level and not the $100 include the carrying bag and a copy of pocket ogre when it comes out...

I think that Car Wars will beat this one and hit a million - almost guaranteed!

yeah I just didn't need the bag either. Probably nice and worth it and all, but I don't expect to be carrying this beast anywhere. Besides, I'm sure there will be custom battlefoam trays released like tomorrow.

Alpharius wrote:I think that Car Wars will beat this one and hit a million - almost guaranteed!

Thats the one i'm really looking forward to. Its going to be interesting to see if this type of project, i.e resurecting something old is the new thing to do.

It ABSOLUTELY is the 'right' thing to do!

If you're a child of the 80's, you're entering your peak earnings years and most likely have some spare cash to spend on nostalgia projects - provided they're based on something good and are done well too!

I might support "car wars" . This one doesn't really interest me... crazy that it almost hit a million, though!

Yes, necro, I know...but...

Still really really late, but coming soon, and look what you get:

Over Twenty-Five Pounds of Awesome!
Update #84 · Apr 24, 2013 · 78 comments

What You Get In The Box

We did the happy dance when a full set of Ogre arrived this week. We'll let the pictures speak for themselves:


Above: contents of the Ogre Designer's Edition retail box. Yes, that's the orange crater map way off in the horizon. Production Manager and Line Editor not included


Above: contents of the Ogre Designer's Edition Kickstarter box. Perhaps it's time to call your realtor?


Above: contents of the Ogre Designer's Edition Kickstarter box, plus one of each sponsored sheet

The pictures above don't include the Read Me First, or Pocket Ogre (for supporters at $150 and above).

The conference table is approx. 4 feet wide and 15 feet long. (Great for playing games!)

A Game System Of Truly Epic Proportions

For the Kickstarter box:

Box size: 24 by 20 by 5.8 inches
Box weight: 25.2 pounds
Maps laid out: 31 square feet
Maps laid out end-to-end: 13.8 feet long
Counter sheets laid out unpunched: 29.9 square feet
No. of 2-D counters: 1,100
No. of 3-D counters: 104
Total no. of counters: 1,204

We've mentioned that this should retail at around $400. We hope now you can see why. . .

In case you're still wondering about the sponsored sheets, these aren't in Kickstarter or retail copies of Ogre Designer's Edition. They're a separate purchase.

-- Daniel Jew

AND:

Ogre Garage Open For Business!
Update #83 · Apr 23, 2013 · 31 comments

Ogre Garage Now Full

Thanks for your patience! We've received penultimate tray samples, which are a beautiful fit.



All the 3-D counters in the Kickstarter edition. Enough firepower to take over the globe.



The Kickstarter edition, plus one of each sponsored sheet.

The great news is that it's possible to fit all the 3-D counters in the ogre garage, even with the sponsored sheets.

We'll receive the final trays (with minor tweaks) in the next week or two, but at this stage we're confident enough to proceed with production.

Sponsored Sheets Webpage

Our webpage for the $4,500 backer level sponsored sheets is up. Three sponsors, Drew Metzger (see sponsored sheets page), Fire Mountain Games, and Thirdpower, have pre-orders available now.

Happy shopping!

-- Daniel Jew

That is an insane amount of stuff.

No wonder they're taking a loss on this. Crazy.

Why is there a dragon and the sponsor backed tray? I'm assuming that's a design someone requested?

I missed this when it was up on Kickstarter, but Ogre was one of the very first war games I ever played. Going to keep my eyes out for this one.

I have a feeling we'll see some of these on ebay... I might even snap one up, which is my new strategy with these campaigns, rather than paying a year and a half in advance and having to wait

And agreed, that is a LOT of stuff! Something else to consider bringing to AdeptiCon 2014 for Sunday night board-gaming, Alph

 Alpharius wrote:
Yes, necro, I know...but...

Still really really late, but coming soon, and look what you get:

Looking forward to the day when my copy shows up.

As for the late bit, to paraphrase something they said earlier "You are only late until you ship, but sucking is forever". I'm glad they are taking the time to do things right, rather then just rushing a half baked product out the door to meet a deadline.

 RiTides wrote:
I have a feeling we'll see some of these on ebay... I might even snap one up, which is my new strategy with these campaigns, rather than paying a year and a half in advance and having to wait

And agreed, that is a LOT of stuff! Something else to consider bringing to AdeptiCon 2014 for Sunday night board-gaming, Alph

Ogre is coming in a HUGE box that weighs 20lbs., give or take.

I don't think Heroes of Normandie will end up being a light weight either!

I need to bring some miniatures to Adepticon 2014 - but maybe I'll just bring an INFINITY force... save on space...?

 highlord tamburlaine wrote:
That is an insane amount of stuff.

No wonder they're taking a loss on this. Crazy.

Why is there a dragon and the sponsor backed tray? I'm assuming that's a design someone requested?

I missed this when it was up on Kickstarter, but Ogre was one of the very first war games I ever played. Going to keep my eyes out for this one.

How are they taking a loss? I see no loss in how they produced this project. All I see is profit. And that is how Steve Rolls.

Unclear, but:

http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/steve-jackson-raised-almost-1-million-to-create-the-ultimate-board-game-and

“If it were sold at a normal gaming markup over print costs, it would probably go for around $400, but retail for the base set will be $100,” Jackson continued. “And it will be at least seven months late, and it totally wrecked the 2012 schedule and is impacting 2013, and it just about drove Phil Reed and Sam Mitschke mad as they managed the project, and we may very well lose money on it when all is said and done.” He also points out that, even at $100, the stores carrying the game will make their normal mark up.

So, maybe they will lose a bit on this?

Maybe?

Between all the unforeseen crap that waylaid the project (like having to figure out how to actually store the boxes, I think they needed to build a new prefab warehouse for those purposes) and how much it has messed with the schedule, I think it is probably safe to say that despite being wildly successful, it probably didn't make much. At the very least selling a $400 game at $100 would seem to imply the margins are razor thin. And shipping has shot up in the last year, so that $50 I paid to ship to Canada (let alone what others paid to the rest of the world) is probably much higher now considering the total weight.

But this was and always has been a straight up vanity project for Steve, so I don't think he minds too much.

Good call on the change in shipping rates from when this closed to now - ouch!

But yeah, as you mentioned, Steve Jackson wanted to get this done, was able to get it done, and if he makes only a little on it, or even loses a little (for now), I think he'll still be happy...

...and I know we the backers will be very happy!

I wonder if they still plan on having a release party at their HQ (they had mentioned the possibility early on)? I live in Texas, and would be more than happy to drive down to Austin to pick up my own copy.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
I wonder if they still plan on having a release party at their HQ (they had mentioned the possibility early on)? I live in Texas, and would be more than happy to drive down to Austin to pick up my own copy.

The cost of shipping that box will buy a lot of burgers and beer. They'd save money throwing a party, just from people doing pick-ups.

Darn, I am getting interested in this now . Like I said, may look to pick up a kickstarter backer's copy once they start shipping them out (via ebay or the like).

Alph, good point about the weight! Maybe just pick whatever your favorite kickstarter game is and bring that one

Can't wait for my copy, hopefully we'll see sets shipping soon, that 25lb box is going to be a beautiful thing sitting on my doorstep.

Were the actual ogres always planned on being cardstock assembled cutouts? I didn't really follow the KS much except for thread titles and pledge totals when it was active but I expected plastic ogres. I mean you do get a lot but the Pirates of the Spanish Main figs definitely surprised me.

It was always planned as an all card game. Plastic minis would have mean less actual stuff in the box and Steve wanted to make sure that this box contained everything from Ogre/GEV and a bit beyond. That said, the interest in it has rebooted the Ogre minis line, so people looking for minis will be able to get a supply of them.

But for me, high quality chits and 3D hard-board Ogres are perfect for me.

Interesting.. so if it wasn't the plastics molds that slowed them down so much, what did? You'd think printing on punched cardstock wouldn't be as time consuming and prone to delays as making plastic filled games.

If FFG can get a game like Twilight Imperium 3 out for £90 with hundreds of plastic models I don't see why SLG can't do OGRE with a $1,000,000 pre-order.

The cardstock ended up being an issue as they didn't have large enough equipment to pull it off in house, so they had to get that bit done over seas. The next major hurdle was getting the "Ogre Garage" completed. This was the internal storage that was able to hold everything the game came with (as well as the $4500 backer-level expansion sheets that can be bought from the backers that commissioned them). Despite numerous and exacting specifications sent to the manufacturer (again, it was a large enough project that they couldn't do it in-house at the scale needed) it kept on coming back wrong. They ended up having to custom build a masonite replica of what they wanted and send that. So that finally got it back on track. But it was a project of massive scale that SJG wasn't as equipped to handle as they first assumed. For reference this is all of the components of the KS box laid out on a 12' long table:



There were other delays to do with printing other bits of it and it all ended up adding up to close to a year of delays. Make no mistake, producing things in hard-board isn't any less complex just because it may seem that way. Especially not at this scale.

Thanks for the explanation. You'd expect a new company to have problem putting out stuff but it's a bit surprising to hear about it from one of the oldest gaming companies around. I guess bad outsourcing doesn't differentiate.

Well, what this actually is is a bad case of an established company being new to Kickstarter. Back when the designer edition was announced (years prior to the KS campaign) it came with a fair amount less (though was still pretty big in scope). Had SJG gone with that then it would have printed about 1500 copies (I think that was the original assumption) with a smaller amount of components. They knew they could store that much in their warehouse and they had it basically planned out.

But they decided to use Kickstarter to gauge interest in the project and instead of getting a few hundred backers and their initial $20k goal (which I believe they were totally earnest about) they ended up getting over 5000 backers and nearly one million dollars. Where the issues came was in something called "scope creep". As they smashed through stretch goals the weren't prepared for the scale things would get to and so a lot of stretch goals were ill-considered. I still remember when they updated saying that they had to stop adding to the boxes otherwise they would blow their shipping estimates out of the water.

In the end this all snowballed in to them having to add and redesign far past what they were expecting. And some of those stretch goals bit them hard in the arse (the vac moulded Ogre Garage being the biggest one, it was the $525k stretch).

If SJG only had to deliver the original project, then I have no doubt they would have nailed that October ship date last year. But this was one of the first real instances of a KS's success far outpacing the creator's expectations. I can almost assure you that the Car Wars KS will be a lot more measured and sedate than Ogre. SJG weren't prepared to create a game based on the KS paradigm and that cost 'em in terms of scope creep. It is a great warning lesson to any company looking to run a Kickstarter campaign. And for all the flack companies like Mantic and CMON catch for "fake" stretch goals, their planning for stretches far in advance prevent these kinds of surprises from occurring.

That said, other companies that were not SJG likely would have simply shrivelled and died from something like this. They would have likely come back, hat in hand saying that they simply couldn't meet the stretch goals. But Steve is a man of his word and Munchkin is successful enough to eat a lot of loss, so he cowboyed up and stuck to creating something that will end up being a massively over-produced thing of beauty. This is why I am sticking with it, because when I signed on I wanted the definitive Ogre 6e with all the bells and whistles that the creator always dreamed of creating it with. If it ends up being a year late, I will survive, because this thing will be a labour of freaking love.

Can anyone tell me what on that table is KS exclusive versus retail? I've been beating myself up for the last year missing this one (learned about KS a week after it ended), but looks like it's finally time to pre-order.