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Schmapdi wrote:

 DaveC wrote:
Adam posted the final MSRP

Core Game - $200
Flower Knight - $50
Man Hunter - $50
Lion Knight - $50
Dragon King - $80
Gorm - $80
Dung Beetle Knight - $50
Spidicules - $80
Sunstalker - $80
Lion God - $50
Lantern Festival - $80
Slender Man - $50
Lonely Tree - $60

(all expansions bought through KS are currently budgeted to get the full retail packaging)

Yikes. Fear of retail pricing is one of the things that kept me from going big into the KS. I'm glad I didn't take the plunge. Too pricey for me to add onto later at retail, especially given Poot's stance on retail discounts.

Yes, that's going to be a...hard sell for any of my friends. A hard sell for me, frankly - I only got in on the "late backer" pledges, where the options were 1) a survivor pledge with no add-ons, 2) survivor+every single expansion listed above at an increased price, and 3) everything produced in plastic for the campaign for an eye-watering sum. I went for the only option under $500, with the hopes of picking up a couple of expansions at retail (as I don't think there's enough monster variety in the base box), but every single one of those costs as much as 1 or 2 full standalone board games.

An odd question, perhaps, but was anyone else expecting the RRP of these sets to actually not increase in price relative to the PVC versions advertised? The tooling costs for hard plastic are obviously so much higher, but the Kickstarter presumably covered those costs, meaning that Poots would end up with high-quality stuff for a very low material cost and the ability to go truly mass-market. I suppose that would spoil the 'boutique' part of his business model, but it also means that I'm never likely to convince other people that this is worth a go.

Tooling for PVC is a bit cheaper than polystyrene,

layout is easier as some undercuts are possible, and (some of) the machines run at somewhat lower pressure meaning you can use cheaper aluminium moulds (and possibly copper from a recent Marrow Productions shot) which are a softer metal thus faster to tool (which is where a big chunk of mould costs come from)

I think another 'problem' is that Adam keeps adding things, squeezing extra bits onto the sprues and cards into the decks, more art (and thus pages) into the rulebooks etc

which is where a fair bit of the extra costs come from

I always knew it was going to be expensive but hoped (and it certainly looks like my faith has been rewarded) the quality would make it worth while

Yeah, wow. Full game and all expansions from retail is 960. Full game and all expansions with the original Kickstarter price is 470 (assuming no early bird special). That's more than half off.

That'll certainly help me sleep a bit easier about the money I dropped on this.

Slow afternoon here at work, so...

Item/Kickstarter/Retail/Delta

Core Game $100.00 $200.00 $100.00
Flower Knight $15.00 $50.00 $35.00
Man Hunter $20.00 $50.00 $30.00
Lion Knight $25.00 $50.00 $25.00
Dragon King $30.00 $80.00 $50.00
Gorm $40.00 $80.00 $40.00
Dung Beetle Knight $25.00 $50.00 $25.00
Spidicules $40.00 $80.00 $40.00
Sunstalker $45.00 $80.00 $35.00
Lion God $25.00 $50.00 $25.00
Lantern Festival $45.00 $80.00 $35.00
Slender Man $25.00 $50.00 $25.00
Lonely Tree $30.00 $60.00 $30.00

$465.00 $960.00 $495.00

I know I spent...a lot... on this one, but I'm now really glad I did.

The quality will be there, and I'm not sure that this will ever hit 'discount' retail anywhere, given Adam's past/current selling stance combined with the overall theme of the miniatures and game...

wow, these retail prices are brutal. Glad that I got almost everything on the Kickstarter

Yeah, really excited about this game and expect really good things, but... those prices. This game has got to blow the competition out of the water to warrant people buying it at retail, with prices that high.

Holy heck that's a steep fee for anyone who didn't pay into the KS. =/

While the KS prices are pretty great - it forces you into a cycle of either: a) Dropping $500+ on every KD Kickstarter to get them while you can at a decent price b) Paying double (or more than) at retail pricing.

And I do think it will greatly reduce the sales to people who didn't get it on the KS.

I know I would balk at $200 for a game + $50 for an expansion that had a single mini in it. Even if they were super super high quality.

I don't think that's an issue for him, Schmapdi. Poots sells his stuff for a premium anyway and has always been a boutique business and never intended to be a "mass" market game maker the likes of Dreamforge or CMoN.

If you don't like the price you can just quit and play some other game! I'm tired of all this whining!





Honestly though. I'm another person who's very happy to have gotten in on the kickstarter. I think the retail prices may be more palatable after we get them in our hands to actually see what's in the box. All the expansions seem especially brutal, but I'm hoping there's a lot of cards and such to help make the eveything's cost more understandable.

If you had to choose, Sunstalker or Spidicules? I chose Sunstalker because of the "extra" character(Miko), and the fact it can be used as a final boss.

First, I am indeed glad to have gotten in on this early.

Second, it occurs to me that we may be looking at a different reality then during the Campaign: that is, during the campaign the talk from Adam and others was that this game would remain boutique, sold through limited retailers and kept out of the general pool of discounters that we would expect a war game to attempt to break into. But it's worth remembering that the decision to go into hard plastics for this project didn't happen during the campaign, but a good deal after, to the best of my knowledge.

But the current reality is that the project is fundamentally different then it was at conception, and that these prices may not just reflect the contents of the boxes swelling, but also a potential new retail strategy. Put simply, having paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to tool the molds necessary for this project, the change in the material of the components fundamentally changes the math for selling.

Formulated another way we can look at what the costs would have been in restic or metal or whatever. For any of those set-ups, there is a very limited economy of scale; molds for spin cast resins, metals and so on wear out and that cost has to be figured into the production costs. But plastic, hard plastic, is different. Hard plastic is the medium of choice when the machines are meant to run day and night and put out piles of components. Far more then will ever be consumed even by the hunger of a paltry few thousand backers.

In hard plastic, with the molds already paid for up front, the model components go from a significant element of the price of these kits to a much, much smaller share. If my reasoning holds, these prices may reflect the possibility of these kits entering the normal (i.e., discounted) stream of retail selling. After all, these prices may be high, but knock 10-15-20% off, and they start looking pretty damn fine to people that didn't get the chance to get in on the campaign.

Just to be clear I don't mean this in a conspiratorial or condemnatory fashion; I'm just pointing out that if you are going to go through the costs of making the components of a kit in hard plastic, you want to make as many as you can.

Sinful, I like the spidicules better than the sunstalker, but prefer the sunstalker armor to the spidicules armor... I went with both, but would go with the sunstalker if only one, because you're going to be using armor more often than monsters, presumably.

200 bucks is fairly high in comparison to most table game. But as mentioned his stuff is generally higher end than say stuff from CMON.

If the game is a home run and the quality is great I think it would have little issue of selling among your more devoted gamers.

I compare board game to seeing a movie. If you have a group of 4 people, and get 10 to 15 hours of game play out of it, you at least get your money's worth. More than that, than it's likely you really enjoyed the game and well worth the price.

 spiralingcadaver wrote:
Sinful, I like the spidicules better than the sunstalker, but prefer the sunstalker armor to the spidicules armor... I went with both, but would go with the sunstalker if only one, because you're going to be using armor more often than monsters, presumably.

On that note, have we seen the updated Spidicules yet? I agree completely with your sentiment btw. The Sunstalker armor looks much better IMO, and Spidicules(before an update anyway) seems to be a cooler model than the Sunstalker. Which is why Miko and the final boss addition helped me decide.

Piston, that's a pretty good idea of measuring. I'd actually say movies less expensive than your gauge since buying a DVD is pretty cheap, but also would factor in painting to the game's value, meaning a good game with nice minis is worth a lot to me.

Sinful, no, I don't believe we've seen the spidicules in quite some time.

I got in at the midnight hour with PayPal.

Anyone have the link to the pledge manager? I'd like to add a few more survivor's, and armor sets, and the last expansion that I'd overlooked at the time.

Game isn't something for the mass market, or you are going to get some left wing liberal gob crying about how its "offensive" and steps on any number of any social engineered groups rights. Best left at the "Boutique level of pricing to keep out the riff raff.
Wait till this thing hits market, you will hear no end to the B!@#$ing and Moaning about how it hurts peoples "Feelings".

I for one, can't wait. I'll be playing it any chance I can get.

Only concern I have for a couple of the models is how they are going to stand up, and if some of the legs are going to be too thin to keep the beasts upright. Spidicules is one of them, Slenderman is another.

 Grot 6 wrote:
Only concern I have for a couple of the models is how they are going to stand up, and if some of the legs are going to be too thin to keep the beasts upright. Spidicules is one of them, Slenderman is another.

Spidicules is made of lightweight plastic and has tons of gribbly legs to attach to the base. Doesn't seem like too much of a problem in terms of standing upright. I still wish we had an image of the model. It's the one I'm looking forward to most. I love spiders.

 Grot 6 wrote:
I got in at the midnight hour with PayPal.

Anyone have the link to the pledge manager? I'd like to add a few more survivor's, and armor sets, and the last expansion that I'd overlooked at the time.

Game isn't something for the mass market, or you are going to get some left wing liberal gob crying about how its "offensive" and steps on any number of any social engineered groups rights. Best left at the "Boutique level of pricing to keep out the riff raff.
Wait till this thing hits market, you will hear no end to the B!@#$ing and Moaning about how it hurts peoples "Feelings".

I for one, can't wait. I'll be playing it any chance I can get.

 Grot 6 wrote:
I got in at the midnight hour with PayPal.

Anyone have the link to the pledge manager? I'd like to add a few more survivor's, and armor sets, and the last expansion that I'd overlooked at the time.

the link to reopen the pledge manager is here

https://kingdomdeath.com/reopen/login.php

These high increases in retail price makes me fear that Adam Poots want the backers to drop even more money into it, and since he allows people to join the "ks" late (even if they weren't actually backing the ks), this would force even more of those to "pre-order" the game.

For me, these increases of price stands for something else other than a justified cost of RRP. I don't like the way this is turning. :/

grefven wrote:
These high increases in retail price makes me fear that Adam Poots want the backers to drop even more money into it, and since he allows people to join the "ks" late (even if they weren't actually backing the ks), this would force even more of those to "pre-order" the game.

For me, these increases of price stands for something else other than a justified cost of RRP. I don't like the way this is turning. :/

As far as I know, people who ordered one of the Black Friday offerings are not allowed to use the pledge manager; the re-opening additions is just for people who backed during the initial offering. The BF "anniversary edition" folks had their choice of canned options and that's all they would get. The re-opening of the pledge manager has much more to do with giving the backers a second bite at the apple, especially given how much said apple has changed since we initially pledged. It's a "thank you" for our patience and faith, not a required "you must pay me more" scenario.

I suspect Buzzsaw is correct that the new retail pricing really reflects a new retail reality. His initial plan was that after the KS fulfillment you could buy the game and expansions from him and a few select retailers in keeping with KD's boutique nature; primarily CMoN with whom he has a good working relationship and various B&M stores. That was based on PVC plastic and a comparatively small production run. Now that he has most of the game in a mass-market material, that equation changes sharply.

Fortunately, I have only an academic interest in that part of things since I'm good on KD:M stuff for a while yet.

Thankfully, the fiancee and I already dropped a gak-load of money into this the first time, getting all game things minus the lonely tree and lion god, and we each got a few pin-ups, so we shan't be dropping any more on this. It's a good feeling, since it devastated my wallet the first time around! Still, it's awesome that people have a chance to add more, even if it is more expensive.

 Krinsath wrote:

grefven wrote:
These high increases in retail price makes me fear that Adam Poots want the backers to drop even more money into it, and since he allows people to join the "ks" late (even if they weren't actually backing the ks), this would force even more of those to "pre-order" the game.

For me, these increases of price stands for something else other than a justified cost of RRP. I don't like the way this is turning. :/

As far as I know, people who ordered one of the Black Friday offerings are not allowed to use the pledge manager; the re-opening additions is just for people who backed during the initial offering. The BF "anniversary edition" folks had their choice of canned options and that's all they would get. The re-opening of the pledge manager has much more to do with giving the backers a second bite at the apple, especially given how much said apple has changed since we initially pledged. It's a "thank you" for our patience and faith, not a required "you must pay me more" scenario.

I suspect Buzzsaw is correct that the new retail pricing really reflects a new retail reality. His initial plan was that after the KS fulfillment you could buy the game and expansions from him and a few select retailers in keeping with KD's boutique nature; primarily CMoN with whom he has a good working relationship and various B&M stores. That was based on PVC plastic and a comparatively small production run. Now that he has most of the game in a mass-market material, that equation changes sharply.

Fortunately, I have only an academic interest in that part of things since I'm good on KD:M stuff for a while yet.

Just about all reactions have been "thank lord I backed this during the KS", and none have said "great, I'll wait for the retail". This means, since there is such a huge discrepancy that people will put more money into this now rather than wait for the retail. Seen from a business point of view, this is a very shrewd move because it is far known that the longer it takes for people to buy something the less is the chance that they actually will buy it (there is a reason to why so many companies these day use KS compared to "traditional release"). This will also mean that if you ever wanted to get something from this, you will basically have to get involved in this post-KS-pre-order thing that is happening. This makes me wonder if Adam believes that he will not be able to move the basic game into a wider audience, and is jacking up the prices to force people into believing that they will make an even bigger deal now, when the reality might be that he might not have any real intention into actual making it a viable product after. So, basically, a cash-grab.

Obviously, I am not saying that it is like that, I am merely reflecting my emotions regarding what is happening. So take it for what it is.

I had to pay 3 grand for my dog's surgery while this KS was running, and had to back out with a week to go due to lack of funds.

Since then every time I've checked the updates on this I always had "Well at least I can pick this up when it hits retail" On my mind.

Now with the pricing, I honestly don't know if I can do it unless I curb my hobby spending for a bit. I expected it to obviously be more expensive than the KS price, but $200 for the base game hits me hard. :( It's a shame because I love the look of it

Like so many have said. I'm glad I got one of the early birds. I have spent close to a thousand dollars on this game and couldn't imagine paying retail for it. But then, for my thousand dollars I have all of the game pieces to play this game from start to finish and not have to worry about finding the next expansion. It's alot of money for a game and I truly believe it's going to be worth every penny.

erratyk wrote:
I had to pay 3 grand for my dog's surgery while this KS was running, and had to back out with a week to go due to lack of funds.

Since then every time I've checked the updates on this I always had "Well at least I can pick this up when it hits retail" On my mind.

Now with the pricing, I honestly don't know if I can do it unless I curb my hobby spending for a bit. I expected it to obviously be more expensive than the KS price, but $200 for the base game hits me hard. :( It's a shame because I love the look of it

Well, you are in luck then. Because this will really open up for people to pre-order extra from Adam that they then can put up on ebay!

grefven wrote:

 Krinsath wrote:

grefven wrote:
These high increases in retail price makes me fear that Adam Poots want the backers to drop even more money into it, and since he allows people to join the "ks" late (even if they weren't actually backing the ks), this would force even more of those to "pre-order" the game.

For me, these increases of price stands for something else other than a justified cost of RRP. I don't like the way this is turning. :/

As far as I know, people who ordered one of the Black Friday offerings are not allowed to use the pledge manager; the re-opening additions is just for people who backed during the initial offering. The BF "anniversary edition" folks had their choice of canned options and that's all they would get. The re-opening of the pledge manager has much more to do with giving the backers a second bite at the apple, especially given how much said apple has changed since we initially pledged. It's a "thank you" for our patience and faith, not a required "you must pay me more" scenario.

I suspect Buzzsaw is correct that the new retail pricing really reflects a new retail reality. His initial plan was that after the KS fulfillment you could buy the game and expansions from him and a few select retailers in keeping with KD's boutique nature; primarily CMoN with whom he has a good working relationship and various B&M stores. That was based on PVC plastic and a comparatively small production run. Now that he has most of the game in a mass-market material, that equation changes sharply.

Fortunately, I have only an academic interest in that part of things since I'm good on KD:M stuff for a while yet.

Just about all reactions have been "thank lord I backed this during the KS", and none have said "great, I'll wait for the retail". This means, since there is such a huge discrepancy that people will put more money into this now rather than wait for the retail. Seen from a business point of view, this is a very shrewd move because it is far known that the longer it takes for people to buy something the less is the chance that they actually will buy it (there is a reason to why so many companies these day use KS compared to "traditional release"). This will also mean that if you ever wanted to get something from this, you will basically have to get involved in this post-KS-pre-order thing that is happening. This makes me wonder if Adam believes that he will not be able to move the basic game into a wider audience, and is jacking up the prices to force people into believing that they will make an even bigger deal now, when the reality might be that he might not have any real intention into actual making it a viable product after. So, basically, a cash-grab.

Obviously, I am not saying that it is like that, I am merely reflecting my emotions regarding what is happening. So take it for what it is.

I believe you keep overlooking the fact that only the original kickstarter backers have access to the pledge manager. He's only milking the people who already have been milked. No new backers are getting access to it. If he really wanted a cash grab, the better thing to do would be to open it to all.

I AM glad I got this during the kickstarter, but I also intend to pick up some things after retail as well. Some sculpts I wasn't find of during the campaign, or didn't have the cash at the time- so it much more realistic to wait(for me at least) even at the new retail prices. So I'm not happy to pay the retail price, but I'll probably do it anyway.

 Krinsath wrote:


I suspect Buzzsaw is correct that the new retail pricing really reflects a new retail reality. His initial plan was that after the KS fulfillment you could buy the game and expansions from him and a few select retailers in keeping with KD's boutique nature; primarily CMoN with whom he has a good working relationship and various B&M stores. That was based on PVC plastic and a comparatively small production run. Now that he has most of the game in a mass-market material, that equation changes sharply.

Then he's going the wrong way - since he invested into pricey mass-market material he shouldn't then be raising the prices to price out the "mass" of the market.

I mean obviously, due to subject matter, KD:M isn't going to be found in every home in America. But it'd still be popular enough that an extra $50 tacked onto the price of the core set does more harm than good IMO.

Yeah, expecting he's trying to recoup losses associated with more expensive molds, but I think it would have been wiser (particularly for the life of the game) to have it cheaper, particularly the core even if it ends up with a very small profit margin.

Schmapdi wrote:

Then he's going the wrong way - since he invested into pricey mass-market material he shouldn't then be raising the prices to price out the "mass" of the market.

I mean obviously, due to subject matter, KD:M isn't going to be found in every home in America. But it'd still be popular enough that an extra $50 tacked onto the price of the core set does more harm than good IMO.

If, and only if, his distribution model stays the same where it's him, CMoN and a few B&M retailers. If he instead opens it up to a more normal distribution channel, then the inevitable discount tiers that come in as a result will drive the actual price point lower. A 20% discount (not a horrifically uncommon level in this market) would make the core game $160 which, while still expensive for a game, isn't vastly beyond what most people would have "expected" based on a KS price of $100. It's certainly more, as KS prices have typically translated to roughly the wholesale price, but it's not *vastly* more.

Now, if Adam were to come back with the plan for distribution was unchanged, then yes, many of the costs now become prohibitively expensive for most people in the market and a great deal of resources will go underutilized as a result. It's rare to see a game that will actually cost you more than a GW army, after all. Some would characterize that as a mistake, and commercially speaking it is, but perhaps that's where Adam wants things to stay is as a small operation instead of a huge company that he can no longer be as "hands on" with everything. I've never gotten the feeling that Adam is in this for the money, so it might be a conscious effort to force the project to remain small. On the flip side of the coin, "just getting by" artist isn't a fun level to be at and you can bring a lot more art into the world if you work the market well as well as living a bit more comfortably.

Time will tell which way he's decided to go with things, I suppose. Whichever way it is though I'm reasonably certain that it wasn't arrived at without a great deal of consideratioin by Adam.