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I got a box and they're quite excellent. I'll post some pics later tonight when I get home.

That would be good. I'm tempted right now but unsure if I'm going to bite the bullet.

Also have the new plastic pathfinders and they are fantastic.

just stumbled on this therad and i can't believe how are you guys enjoying so much being so harsh to a small company that is ran by only three people.

i really don't understand all that hate for aow. their situation is easily expalined, and no reason to hate them: they failed with warcast mass production so they are doing the regiments with plastic injection now. the fail with warcast made them delay a lot, sure, but there were no bad motivation on their side.

Anyway, there is a lot of us who support them and will continue to buy from them!

i hope you don't mind someone who likes aow posting here, because i plan on posting a lot of positive things abouth them!

It's not so much hate, as despair that despite the actual sculpts being amazing, the production and admin... Isn't.

 Goliath wrote:
It's not so much hate, as despair that despite the actual sculpts being amazing, the production and admin... Isn't.

I know them personally as I go to their HQ to play warthrone every friday eve.
Their production delays are very easily understood:
-they tried first ABS. Sculpting a full 3up set of thgat quality for ABS by only one guy + tooling by renedra + plus seeing it does not sell enough to recover the investment= 1 year gone
mistake by aow: investing about 60.000 GBP in doing ABS. Yes, let's punish them for that! Instead of understanding they lost a whole lot of money and time, and i suppose it was a very big disaapointment for them. 1st very hard fall.

Anyway, they stand up and try another method of producing regiments. No money now, as a lot were lost with trying ABS, so they do the indiegogo campaign to do production in warcast plastic resin. They get (after tax and commissions) about 30.000 US$.
warcast molds are cheap, but mass-casting warcast is a big problem. Again, after months of trying and quite a lot of invested money (they hired three full time people only to be able to produce warcast) they must accept warcast is not feasible for mass-producing regiments. Another year and again a lot of money gone. 2nd hard fall!

They stand up again, and decide to invest money again, this time on pvc injection plastic. PVC allows for quality plastic mass production at a more affordable price (Not as expensive as ABS but still in the thousands of dollars per mould).
All the dwarf regiments have to be modified to apply for PVC tooling (again all the work for only one guy, Felix): more time gone.

So here they are now, with three plastic regiments tooled (about 50.000 US$ invested) and carrying on.
I know directly from them that finally they have found a good balance between investment and sales with PVC.

They have been for the last close to three years just trying to find a way to mass produce regiments.

My view, is that at least they have tried, with a lot of work and a lot of money invested, and while they failed twice (with ABS and warcast), they did their best efforts on both tries., this is not something to blame or mock about. On the contrary.

Hope you don't mind the long text, but I really feel you knowing better the Felix & co. insides might help not hating them so much

@Adder Ant

I honestly don't care about their internal issues. They are a business that has failed to meet their obligations at this point to people who have given them money. The amount of time it took to meet their previous obligations for people who had given them money was ridiculous.

I put in for a standard bearer from the Indiegogo. I didn't expect it to show up anywhere near on time reasonably based on prior performance. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to say something. At this rate the units listed for production from the Indiegogo are going to take 3-4 years to complete. And he's decided he's going to sculpt the model most people invested in last. That's piss poor customer service and I'll say as much.

There is a reason many people won't buy directly from AoW and wait for his product to show up in stores/webstores before purchasing. If he met his obligations he'd be ablet o take a larger cut of every sale. But he didn't and he's not doing anything to improve that situation.

 Hulksmash wrote:


I honestly don't care about their internal issues.

So you don't care about people circumstances. Nice!
I take note.

Adder Ant, you also are ignoring the fact that, regardless of production, the rate of sculpting means that he's not going to have the IndieGoGo campaign fulfilled for years if he continues at this rate!

He also stubbornly relegated the standard bearer, a figure which almost every single backer needs, to the very end of the queue.

It's not just production mistakes, it's refusing to listen to what his customers want- which is the LE model they almost all paid for, and many JUST for that. Seriously, I'm not kidding about "years". If that model is last in line, I don't think it has any chance of being done in 2014

If you hang out with them, maybe you could communicate how much ill will that one very, very poor decision is garnering them, and get him to sculpt the darn thing already! You can't blame that on casting, that is entirely in their control and they continue to pump out other awesome solo figures while neglecting to do the one hundreds of people have paid for!

Not when they have taken my money and not produced what they promised to produce. Not saying they won't eventually get around to it but at this point the time frame is a complete guess.

Business isn't charity. I care about people's circumstances but businesses, contrary to US law, aren't people. For people, I donate to charities and fund raisers. For businesses I give them money and they provide a service or product. See the difference?

I see no one posts here the good news regarding the indiegogo camapign:

The Dwarf army Indiegogo campaign was designed to produce the regiments in Warcast. As some of you may already know, after months of attempts & frustration, we had to discard this material for regiments that require a wide distribution, and switch to plastic injection molds for these regiments.
Today, there are already three regiments of Dwarves available in plastic, and more will in the future.

The problem is that the perks for the campaign were calculated for warcast production, not plastic. While plastic injection production needs a much greater initial investment (about a hundred times greater than warcast!) eventually, once the injection molds are amortized, plastic parts are cheaper to produce than the warcast.
Therefore, the price of our plastic regiment boxes is chepaer than the warcast indiegogo prices. So backers of the campaign would be now paying more for plastic regiments than non participants. That should definitely not be this way.

To fix this problem, we decided to apply the following rule:
Each miniature you got in the campaign can be changed for 1 waracst figure or 1.5 plastic figures.
That is, if you got 40 figures during the campaign, you can exchange them for 40 warcast figures or 60 plastic figures, or 10 warcast figures and 45 plastic figures, and so on.

This way, those who took part in the campaign can still get warcast figures if they prefer resin over plastic, and can get plastic regiments at a better price than non-participants (including any of the available offers).

Thanks for reading!

Form their forum here:
http://www.avatars-of-war.com/eng/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=966

Adder Ant wrote:
I see no one posts here the good news regarding the indiegogo camapign:

The Dwarf army Indiegogo campaign was designed to produce the regiments in Warcast. As some of you may already know, after months of attempts & frustration, we had to discard this material for regiments that require a wide distribution, and switch to plastic injection molds for these regiments.
Today, there are already three regiments of Dwarves available in plastic, and more will in the future.

The problem is that the perks for the campaign were calculated for warcast production, not plastic. While plastic injection production needs a much greater initial investment (about a hundred times greater than warcast!) eventually, once the injection molds are amortized, plastic parts are cheaper to produce than the warcast.
Therefore, the price of our plastic regiment boxes is chepaer than the warcast indiegogo prices. So backers of the campaign would be now paying more for plastic regiments than non participants. That should definitely not be this way.

To fix this problem, we decided to apply the following rule:
Each miniature you got in the campaign can be changed for 1 waracst figure or 1.5 plastic figures.
That is, if you got 40 figures during the campaign, you can exchange them for 40 warcast figures or 60 plastic figures, or 10 warcast figures and 45 plastic figures, and so on.

This way, those who took part in the campaign can still get warcast figures if they prefer resin over plastic, and can get plastic regiments at a better price than non-participants (including any of the available offers).

Thanks for reading!

Form their forum here:
http://www.avatars-of-war.com/eng/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=966

Except it was noted and some people gave kudos (including myself) last page:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/330/472398.page

Adder Ant, that was posted as it's own thread- I'll find the link for you. (Edit: Also discussed on the last page of this thread, as Hulk shows, but here's the link to the other thread: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/553453.page )

Also, I appreciate your posting here! But if you could respond to my point about the standard bearer, and better yet, talk to AoW into some sense regarding it, that would be great.

You'd be amazed how much that one decision change would help them! Adding more dwarfs to rewards is great, but if they don't exist yet it doesn't do nearly as much for backers as delivering the single model that hundreds of them are waiting on. It's sooooooooo easy!

 Hulksmash wrote:

Business isn't charity. I care about people's circumstances but businesses, contrary to US law, aren't people. For people, I donate to charities and fund raisers. For businesses I give them money and they provide a service or product. See the difference?

We are talking about a three people garage-type business here, for god's sake.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 RiTides wrote:
Adder Ant, that was posted as it's own thread- I'll find the link for you.

Also, I appreciate your posting here! But if you could respond to my point about the standard bearer, and better yet, talk to AoW into some sense regarding it, that would be great.

You'd be amazed how much that one decision change would help them! Adding more dwarfs to rewards is great, but if they don't exist yet it doesn't do nearly as much for backers as delivering the single model that hundreds of them are waiting on. It's sooooooooo easy!

I agree about the standrd bearer. I am going this eve to aow hq, so i will definitely speak to felix about the standard bearer, and also let him know about this thread.

Sorry about reposting the news. i thought this was the only aow related thread.

Edit: Ninja'ed! Also, I found the link to the other thread and posted it above.

Adder Ant wrote:
I agree about the standrd bearer. I am going this eve to aow hq, so i will definitely speak to felix about the standard bearer, and also let him know about this thread.

Sorry then! i though this was the only aow related thread.

Okay that would be fantastic, and much appreciated by everyone involved! Thank you

I know he wants it to be high quality, but changing that one decision and sculpting it now would be a great act of goodwill to his backers, and would really help get things positive again for AoW's reputation!

We all love their sculpts, so that is never the issue . But putting that sculpt last is getting him terrible press for no reason!

Cheers Adder

Getting the standard bearer done would immediately satisfy Felix's obligations to fully half of his creditors. One sculpt, and half his bad PR disappears. Not doing it as one of the very first ones is just foolish.

Adder Ant wrote:

 Hulksmash wrote:

Business isn't charity. I care about people's circumstances but businesses, contrary to US law, aren't people. For people, I donate to charities and fund raisers. For businesses I give them money and they provide a service or product. See the difference?

We are talking about a three people garage-type business here, for god's sake.

I agree about the standrd bearer. I am going this eve to aow hq, so i will definitely speak to felix about the standard bearer, and also let him know about this thread.

Sorry about reposting the news. i thought this was the only aow related thread.

Well, that is three people who have no clue how to run a business and satisfy their customers needs. I will not touch AOW with a barge pole despite the quality of their sculpts. I refuse to support businesses that take money and then just proceed to dick around and not fulfill what they promise.

Felix, as talented as he is, is a dumbass for not doing that standard bearer when it was promised and it has cost AOW a huge amount of goodwill.

You can make all the excuses you like, but AOW haven't focused on delivering what people have paid for, go off on tangents and do something else and IMHO shouldn't be in business if they cannot fulfill what they have taken money for. It is business - people hand over hard earned money and expect to get what they paid for in a reasonable time.

Adder Ant wrote:

 Hulksmash wrote:

Business isn't charity. I care about people's circumstances but businesses, contrary to US law, aren't people. For people, I donate to charities and fund raisers. For businesses I give them money and they provide a service or product. See the difference?

We are talking about a three people garage-type business here, for god's sake.

Which has no bearing what-so-fething-ever on the need to fulfil his obligations. Zilch.
Being understanding about a delay, fine. I'd be happy to. Two requirements though:
(1) Show reasonable progress and focus on the project. As RiTides already noted, it'll take ages (I reckon somewhere 2016-2017 at the current pace? ) for him to even sculpt everything from the dwarf range, yet he's still spending sculpting time on other ranges, as I understand it. That's more than a little unacceptable, given his projected release times during the project.
(2) Communicate. I can't stress enough just how much this matters. Communicate, and show some willingness to take on customers' requests/advice/whatever. His boneheadedness about the standard bearer alone speaks volumes, never mind the rest his general lack of communication.

It's fine to just take our money and do no more than bare fulfilment of obligations, but really, really don't go off crying about a lack of understanding on our part if you fail on that account as well.
If you do choose to behave like 'the big boys' in such a manner though, don't count on much understanding - you've never bothered to foster it.

Adder Ant wrote:

 Hulksmash wrote:

Business isn't charity. I care about people's circumstances but businesses, contrary to US law, aren't people. For people, I donate to charities and fund raisers. For businesses I give them money and they provide a service or product. See the difference?

We are talking about a three people garage-type business here, for god's sake.

Key word is still business Adder Ant. And they have still taken money and not provided what they promised.

Taken directly from the Indiegogo campaign page:

The different regiments and heroes will be released from August 2012 until January 2013.

What's today's date again? Oh yeah, September of 2013. And he's produced 4 regiments. Two of which can't be ordered and two of which can be out of 10 units. He's 40% done with regiments and 150% beyond his timeline. And that doesn't count the single models.

I understand not being 100% on time. I understand things slipping. But not doing the single model that will get a ton of people off his back and improve his PR is beyond silly to me. Not to mention that having an awesome standard bearer in hand would encourage more people to purchase units from him as they come out.

sorry guys didn't get a chance to take a pic to post. I will definitely have time tonight.

They are excellent casts, I was very trepidatious when I ordered them but was very pleased with what I received. Plus through Miniature Market they were like 35 bucks for the box of 20.

AoW, even by being a small company of three people, can assign 30 minutes *every day* to read and answer all e-mail. The lack of communication by their part is what is driving the nail into the coffin.

Dang guys I understand the frustration, but jumping down Adder Ant's throat is not going to help resolve it.

He actually personally knows, and can talk to, Felix! That is an amazing opportunity. So let's give him a little bit of a warmer Dakka welcome, and hope he can talk some sense on the standard bearer issue.

It's awesome that he posted here... let's not drive him off! We can be upset with the progress, and still be civil. As noted by many folks above, the sculpts are fantastic, but he needs to do the standard bearer! It would satisfy so many people, and it's just one sculpt. So easy

To re-quote Adder Ant's post:

Adder Ant wrote:
I agree about the standard bearer. I am going this eve to aow hq, so i will definitely speak to felix about the standard bearer, and also let him know about this thread.

Sorry about reposting the news. i thought this was the only aow related thread.

No problem about reposting the news, that was indeed a great gesture of goodwill on AoW's part. Now if Felix would just agree to sculpt the standard bearer, they could actually get some really good press! And that results in more orders, which helps make up for the losses on previous casting methods. Win-win

Also note that this thread has 33,000 views! So turning the narrative from one of "He has hundreds of people waiting for a single sculpt that they paid for" to "He's delivered that sculpt and has given a credit on the regiments for when they are done" would be really fantastic for Avatars of War's prospects not just here, of course, but everywhere they are discussed on the web.

Well I'm looking forward to Judgedougs photos. I wanna see how the models he ordered looked since I do eventually plan on a dwarf army for fantasy by AoW. I just won't buy them from AoW but will wait for general production.

I would take advantage of deals like AoW have now for the pre-order if I was sure my product would show up on time. I just wish AoW could capitalize on the awesome sculpts they do by combining it with awesome service. Getting the standard done would go a long ways toward resolving my simmering dislike of AoW right now.

guys, going to aow now, so I will speak to felix in very few moments.

glad to be able to do something to help them with their reputation.

Agreed Hulk- and I'm sure that is true of almost everyone. Hopefully Adder Ant can make that point to Felix, or at least point Felix here and have him see for himself!

Until the standard bearer is sculpted, it is going to be hard for any excuse to appease backers- there is very little that can stop a sculptor from making a single model, other than choice. I know it was his original plan to do it last, but plans have obviously changed with delays, so that one needs to, as well.

Edit: Ninja'ed again!

Adder Ant wrote:
guys, going to aow now, so I will speak to felix in very few moments.

glad to be able to do something to help them with their reputation.

Fantastic, thank you Adder Ant

 Hulksmash wrote:
Well I'm looking forward to Judgedougs photos. I wanna see how the models he ordered looked since I do eventually plan on a dwarf army for fantasy by AoW. I just won't buy them from AoW but will wait for general production.

I would take advantage of deals like AoW have now for the pre-order if I was sure my product would show up on time. I just wish AoW could capitalize on the awesome sculpts they do by combining it with awesome service. Getting the standard done would go a long ways toward resolving my simmering dislike of AoW right now.

Since switching from Warcast to the new plastic stuff, I think they've met every release date (well all two of them so far).

After I post pics and you see, I'd recommend getting the pathfinders from miniature market. Then if you know you like it in the flesh, then try the preorders. The pathfinders came out on schedule and it looks like the thunderers will too.

I can certainly understand their horrible luck with the expensive plastic slayers, then difficult warcast, but it now really seems like the third time's the charm. I hope they can keep up their quality and release schedule as I'd like them to succeed and I'd also like to keep getting great minis for pretty cheap, haha.

Adder Ant wrote:
guys, going to aow now, so I will speak to felix in very few moments.

glad to be able to do something to help them with their reputation.

Yeah this dude needs some PR,

When you do a kickstarter that people dropped over 40k on you need to be on your A game.

 Hulksmash wrote:
I just wish AoW could capitalize on the awesome sculpts they do by combining it with awesome service.

TBH I'd be fine with acceptable service - just an end to the most ridiculous delays and preorder-uncertainty we've seen would go a long way. I'd take a miscast, not replaced model every once in a while as a tradeoff, if need be.

Adder Ant wrote:
Also have the new plastic pathfinders and they are fantastic.

just stumbled on this therad and i can't believe how are you guys enjoying so much being so harsh to a small company that is ran by only three people.

i really don't understand all that hate for aow. their situation is easily expalined, and no reason to hate them: they failed with warcast mass production so they are doing the regiments with plastic injection now. the fail with warcast made them delay a lot, sure, but there were no bad motivation on their side.

Anyway, there is a lot of us who support them and will continue to buy from them!

i hope you don't mind someone who likes aow posting here, because i plan on posting a lot of positive things abouth them!

You will not be alone

If either of you gents spend any time here, you'll see that people feel that Felix is a brilliant sculptor, but that he holds a rather recalcitrant attitude towards his backers, customers and obligations.

A change of attitude on the Standard Bearer would be a lovely display of goodwill towards the people who may or may not choose to buy more of his products. This - more orders - would probably be a good thing for someone who has a business selling those same products.

If I got my Standard Bearer, I would definitely look into purchasing more models from AoW, because I have always liked dwarfs for fantasy.

His models are fantastic, his business skills are lacking however.

And Adder Ant, thanks for posting news and trying to help out! Not easy to be the middle man in cases like this.