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eh, needs moar skullz.

Curses Mantic, why does the Deadzone KS have to start and end right during crunch time for my savings account for my wedding?

Ah well, at least this means the full Warpath KS will be nudged back far enough for my wallet to recover and reap the bounty in full.

They'll be doing a KS for warpath? At some point, they really need to launch this stuff without having to Utilize KS. Specialty games make sense, but if you are struggling to obtain stable fan bases for your core games and have to "jump start" a game, you may need to re-evaluate your business plan.

Sure. It's great for the players who can get their stuff cheap, but all these games should be producing revenue to further expand other games. That way they aren't tearing into their profits everytime.

Earth Dragon wrote:
They'll be doing a KS for warpath? At some point, they really need to launch this stuff without having to Utilize KS. Specialty games make sense, but if you are struggling to obtain stable fan bases for your core games and have to "jump start" a game, you may need to re-evaluate your business plan.

Sure. It's great for the players who can get their stuff cheap, but all these games should be producing revenue to further expand other games. That way they aren't tearing into their profits everytime.

Not sure if you're serious?

Kickstarter has become, for some companies, a nice way to get a pre-order out there, gauge interest, market it, etc.

Not sure if Mantic "needs" to do it this way, but may just "like" or "prefer" to do it this way!

 Alpharius wrote:

Earth Dragon wrote:
They'll be doing a KS for warpath? At some point, they really need to launch this stuff without having to Utilize KS. Specialty games make sense, but if you are struggling to obtain stable fan bases for your core games and have to "jump start" a game, you may need to re-evaluate your business plan.

Sure. It's great for the players who can get their stuff cheap, but all these games should be producing revenue to further expand other games. That way they aren't tearing into their profits everytime.

Not sure if you're serious?

Kickstarter has become, for some companies, a nice way to get a pre-order out there, gauge interest, market it, etc.

Not sure if Mantic "needs" to do it this way, but may just "like" or "prefer" to do it this way!

I WAS serious and YOU have 100% accurate and valid points.

(erased a crap load of detail that most readers already understand)

My concern is Warpath is already an established game and shouldn't need a KS if there was a lot of interest. It is also coming on the heels of a supplemental game for the Warpath universe and should be able to use the Deadzone kits, right? So as a fan of Mantic, it is just sad to see that Warpath isn't generating enough money to fund itself and it's own expansion. They have to resort to letting two other companies (KS and Amazon) take their cut and sell things at massive discounts (just judging off of dreadball) at which point, they aren't making any money off the pre-orders anyway, just funding it's creation.

The thing with Warpath..........it was one of their few products NOT generated from a KS (unless I got fed some bad info, but I'm pretty sure that is accurate). So backtracking a little to pick up some momentum is at least understandable seeing that they may be able to generate some additional interest that's not just current players getting stuff they would have purchased anyway in many cases for a price not initially profitable to Mantic.

In short, if Mantic and it's games are growing like I think many of us want them to, they wouldn't have anything to profit from by using KS for an EXISTING product and eventually wouldn't need it at all (Like, say, they had plenty of money to release Dreadball Season 1 with profits from other games, and then used profits from season 1 to fund season 2, which then funded season 3, so on and so forth). But since Warpath never had a KS, it's seems reasonable to explore, though dissappointing they have to do it.

At this point, for established gaming companies, KS is a marketing tool as much as anything else.
Nothing else generates the level of coverage or escalating interest like a KS does (at the moment), and the price you are paying for that exposure is literally directly proportional to how succesful it is.
As long as you aren't really bad at predicting your costs and margins then KS is the smart choice not the desperation choice.

Though to be honest I think established setting KS arent so bad if the funds go to hard plastic molds

Earth Dragon wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:

Earth Dragon wrote:
They'll be doing a KS for warpath? At some point, they really need to launch this stuff without having to Utilize KS. Specialty games make sense, but if you are struggling to obtain stable fan bases for your core games and have to "jump start" a game, you may need to re-evaluate your business plan.

Sure. It's great for the players who can get their stuff cheap, but all these games should be producing revenue to further expand other games. That way they aren't tearing into their profits everytime.

Not sure if you're serious?

Kickstarter has become, for some companies, a nice way to get a pre-order out there, gauge interest, market it, etc.

Not sure if Mantic "needs" to do it this way, but may just "like" or "prefer" to do it this way!

I WAS serious and YOU have 100% accurate and valid points.

(erased a crap load of detail that most readers already understand)

My concern is Warpath is already an established game and shouldn't need a KS if there was a lot of interest. It is also coming on the heels of a supplemental game for the Warpath universe and should be able to use the Deadzone kits, right? So as a fan of Mantic, it is just sad to see that Warpath isn't generating enough money to fund itself and it's own expansion. They have to resort to letting two other companies (KS and Amazon) take their cut and sell things at massive discounts (just judging off of dreadball) at which point, they aren't making any money off the pre-orders anyway, just funding it's creation.

The thing with Warpath..........it was one of their few products NOT generated from a KS (unless I got fed some bad info, but I'm pretty sure that is accurate). So backtracking a little to pick up some momentum is at least understandable seeing that they may be able to generate some additional interest that's not just current players getting stuff they would have purchased anyway in many cases for a price not initially profitable to Mantic.

In short, if Mantic and it's games are growing like I think many of us want them to, they wouldn't have anything to profit from by using KS for an EXISTING product and eventually wouldn't need it at all (Like, say, they had plenty of money to release Dreadball Season 1 with profits from other games, and then used profits from season 1 to fund season 2, which then funded season 3, so on and so forth). But since Warpath never had a KS, it's seems reasonable to explore, though dissappointing they have to do it.

Well KoW did not start out as a KS. It had one to help fund new sprues and to print the rule book and because of that they were able to afford 20 new kits I think it was 20, that's just pure awesome. They would not have been able to do this for a number of years. If they can replicate the success of the KoW KS for WP then it seems stupid that you wouldn't do it IMO. You also have to remember that mantic are still a smallish company and don't have the funds available that a KS can provide and I feel it's not really established yet and KS will also give it some great advertising.

And that's my only point. It'd be nice for them to get to the point where they don't need (not in desperation, but to avoid stagnation) to do a KS every time they release a product/expansion.

I agree with all other points made.

Meh, if it wasn't for the kickstarters people like me would never buy it.

Dread Ball is a perfect example. If I read they were releasing it, I would have just waited for it to come it and then got it at a discount, if I got it all, and certainly would have just only ordered the starter set. With the kickstarter they hooked me for 3 seasons worth of miniatures and an add-on board.

 plastictrees wrote:
At this point, for established gaming companies, KS is a marketing tool as much as anything else.
Nothing else generates the level of coverage or escalating interest like a KS does (at the moment), and the price you are paying for that exposure is literally directly proportional to how succesful it is.
As long as you aren't really bad at predicting your costs and margins then KS is the smart choice not the desperation choice.

KS is like advertising during the super bowl, it gets a lot of views.

It just doesn't cost as much.

Earth Dragon wrote:
at which point, they aren't making any money off the pre-orders anyway, just funding it's creation.

They won't make money off pre-orders under any circumstances, bar some sort of wargaming holy grail moment where everyone buys in because the upfront costs of making toy soldiers is relatively large. Bringing products like this to market is all about managing cash flow and the key thing about KS is not the advertising exposure but the cash flow implications of money-up-front that isn't a loan (because loans have a cost and getting them in the current UK banking environment is extremely difficult). I would question the sanity of any business owner that didn't take the best cash flow option available to them.

Earth Dragon wrote:
The thing with Warpath..........it was one of their few products NOT generated from a KS (unless I got fed some bad info

Dreadball is their ONLY KS generated product* at this stage, until Deadzone is launched. Kings of War had already been around for 3 years prior to the KS, the KS gave them the cash flow to bring forward about a years worth of releases. Dwarf Kings Hold (x3) and Project Pandora were not KS and Loka is River Horse's product that Mantic were providing support for because they already had the US company (required for KS) and the logistics to physically deliver it to market.

*In the sense that you describe an entire gaming universe as a product, I don't think it's realistic to view them in that way since the business reality is that each kit is an individual project in itself with varying payback periods - which is the key, only when the payback period is complete does a sprue/sprue set generate profit, until then it only generates revenue and cash flow.

@Baragash - There is a HUGE difference though between offering pre-orders at a discount while having to let another company in on that money generated and already having the ability to sell pre-orders at full price and having your tooling already bought from revenue being generated internally. If you can't see the downsides to using KS to take pre-orders against not using KS I don't know what to tell ya. There are pros and cons for both. I for one would like to see Mantic get to the point where the cons are out weighing the pros, much like they do for PP.

Without Kickstarter, we're back to restic/metal hybrids for all of Mantic's releases.

They need the funding, and it really helps them to take what would have been an "ok" release, and make it great. They have a dozen or so employees, which while reasonably large by the standards of the wargames world is still very much a small company.

For instance the original plan for Dreadball was to have metal ref, metal MVPS (which would cost double what the current restic ones do), stuff like the custom pitches and counters never would have happened, and the season 2 models would be penned in for some time 2014 instead of being on store shelves right now.

It would have been released, but not as good.

If KS didn't exist, they'd still be able to release stuff, but it wouldn't be as good because of lack of seed capital.

Look at the first warpath release as an example, they had to re-use the fantasy dwarf an orc sprues to be able to afford the tooling fees for hard plastic. If they'd kick-started that instead of being forced into making a "bean counter" decision we'd probably be looking at full sci-fi sprues for all races right now instead of some fantasy stuff with guns on and lots of hybrid metal/restic.

They also did pre-orders for products on their site before KS was popular, but they were nowhere near as popular as the Kickstarters.. it gets your product out in front of an audience.

Plus, Dreadball has already sold at least 2x the copies outside of the KS than it did during it. The KS was just a starting base to pay for their tooling costs, their actual operating profit (the stuff that pays staff wages and lets the company expand) comes from the general release sales.

hahahahaha.......Guys, I'm not slamming and saying they SHOULDN'T use KS at all and should have NEVER used KS for any of their products.

I'm wondering when they are gonna turn the corner and not feel they have more to gain from it's use. At some point, systems should be able to fund their own expansion, and your other products should be able to fund new products in a similar line. It's apparent Warpath pre-sales aren't enough, hence the KS.

I'm hoping for better is all.

anyone know when the kickstarter will be? im guessing june? i need to start to put away some money for this.

Friday the 26th of April seems to be the date at least according to this.

http://www.deadzonethegame.com/

well ***** me, can't wait.

Earth Dragon wrote:
hahahahaha.......Guys, I'm not slamming and saying they SHOULDN'T use KS at all and should have NEVER used KS for any of their products.

I'm wondering when they are gonna turn the corner and not feel they have more to gain from it's use. At some point, systems should be able to fund their own expansion, and your other products should be able to fund new products in a similar line. It's apparent Warpath pre-sales aren't enough, hence the KS.

I'm hoping for better is all.

Most likely when they have filled out their entire range at least once.

Normally the tooling costs from miniatures are recouped over a timescale of several years. With Kickstarter, mantic doesn't have to worry about that, and can move on to their next release without having to wait for old ranges to make profit. Once they have all their ranges released, and there are no glaring holes, they wont need kickstarter anymore. They will be able to rerelease product based on profits being made across the entire range.

As it is now, they have a horde of ravening fans, demanding quality mantic product immediately. And the options they can give us without kickstarter are restic/metal or wait 5 years for more plastic.

I would be perfectly content if they released everything in restic, really, as long as they had slot-and-tab joints instead of flat surfaces.

as long as the slot tabs are a improvement over the current ones. i had to cut many, many tabs to get them in.

Earth Dragon wrote:
@Baragash - There is a HUGE difference though between offering pre-orders at a discount while having to let another company in on that money generated and already having the ability to sell pre-orders at full price and having your tooling already bought from revenue being generated internally. If you can't see the downsides to using KS to take pre-orders against not using KS I don't know what to tell ya. There are pros and cons for both. I for one would like to see Mantic get to the point where the cons are out weighing the pros, much like they do for PP.

I don't believe that a company trying to "run a KS" through their own website pre-orders would generate any where near as much interest as running it through KS, nor do I think they would be given any where near as much patience in terms of the time to bring to market.

 Baragash wrote:

Earth Dragon wrote:
@Baragash - There is a HUGE difference though between offering pre-orders at a discount while having to let another company in on that money generated and already having the ability to sell pre-orders at full price and having your tooling already bought from revenue being generated internally. If you can't see the downsides to using KS to take pre-orders against not using KS I don't know what to tell ya. There are pros and cons for both. I for one would like to see Mantic get to the point where the cons are out weighing the pros, much like they do for PP.

I don't believe that a company trying to "run a KS" through their own website pre-orders would generate any where near as much interest as running it through KS, nor do I think they would be given any where near as much patience in terms of the time to bring to market.

Running a KS through their own site?

I have no idea what you think I'm saying at this point.

So any word on what we might expect from the starting pledge levels and such?

i'm expetcing some marines, some plague and some scenery as a minimum depends on what's in the rest of the Game.

heard a rumour it's played on a gridded mat too, so maybe one of those.

Some good info in the comments of this blog:
http://quirkworthy.com/2013/04/10/mantic-meeting-deadzone-dreadball-kick-off/

I'm hoping with Salute and Adpeticon this weekend that someone, somewhere, gets us a bit more information on what's going to be in this game.

That blog entry does point to the fact that there might be quite a few races showing up.

And most importantly (for me anyway)- Teratons are going to be making an appearance of some sort!

There is some amazing stuff coming in Deadzone.

Such as...?!?

Anyone watch today's video with the new community manager?

Dude's got a table full of scenery sitting in front of him. I wonder where it's from...?

Also on Mantic's website there seem to be glimpses of Dead Zone pieces for those that want to hunt for it- in the ad for the next open day there's some suspicious looking scenery.

I think I'm just getting very impatient on this one. I want more info!