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Keep fighting the good fight, Forar . Hope they offer the figure to you backers. It would make... too much sense.

Well, there's good news, and there's bad news.

Sorry for the delay, as you can imagine we have been working like crazy. For your June 16th question, the Max and Miriya will be a convention exclusive and not available through the Kickstarter. The character stats will be in the core game but the specific pose pieces will be an exclusive. Sorry.

The minis will be released in waves. At present we do not have a release schedule but we will make this information available as we get closer to their release.

We plan to have all pieces in house so everything will ship to the backers will be in one package.

Hope this helps.

Jeff Burke
palladium Books

So it appears the backers aren't getting Max/Miriya2. But on the up side, we can put to rest that "omg maybe the boxes won't have all the figures!" conjecture that occurred in a few places.

Thanks for the update even if I'm not happy with the contents. I guess I've got around $100 extra now in hobby money that was previously earmarked for Robotech add-ons. My existing pledge is enough to find out if there will end up being a Robotech scene in my area and I can use the money for more terrain instead.

 Forar wrote:
Well, there's good news, and there's bad news.

Sorry for the delay, as you can imagine we have been working like crazy. For your June 16th question, the Max and Miriya will be a convention exclusive and not available through the Kickstarter. The character stats will be in the core game but the specific pose pieces will be an exclusive. Sorry.

The minis will be released in waves. At present we do not have a release schedule but we will make this information available as we get closer to their release.

We plan to have all pieces in house so everything will ship to the backers will be in one package.

Hope this helps.

Jeff Burke
palladium Books

So it appears the backers aren't getting Max/Miriya2. But on the up side, we can put to rest that "omg maybe the boxes won't have all the figures!" conjecture that occurred in a few places.

Doesn't this mean that KS stuff will go out much later than the retail items?

 Azazelx wrote:
Doesn't this mean that KS stuff will go out much later than the retail items?

I suppose you could read it that way, but they've said in the past that they intend to ship Backers their boxes before the game goes to retail.

 Forar wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
Doesn't this mean that KS stuff will go out much later than the retail items?

I suppose you could read it that way, but they've said in the past that they intend to ship Backers their boxes before the game goes to retail.

When they said that, I read it as a reference to not doing what CMON does in shipping to distributors and selling at cons before backers get theirs. I believe they clarified it at some point and said that when they get the bulk shipments, the backers stuff goes out first and then the distributor stuff is shipped.

I put this in the KS comments as it sums up my thoughts:

It doesn't matter how you slice it. It's a slap in the face to 5,342 people that coughed up nearly 1.5m in an interest free loan to launch this system faster (and cheaper) than PB/ND could have done any other way. There is no excuse, none. If those minis are ready for the biggest Con in the U.S. then it's ready to be mass produced. I would gladly add the cost of both those minis to my $1000 pledge just so I don't have to spend the time and money to go get one. I will also posit that most of the ones purchased at Cons will end up on EBay for double or triple the cost if the buyer knows about this KS or even the popularity of Robotech in general.

Yeah, that KS Exclusive decision sticks in my craw. It certainly doesn't reach unethical, but it easily achieves solid douchiness. Guarantee I'm not adding a nickel to my initial pledge, and I'm not as enthusiastic about it in general.

Post it in the KS comments. Hell, post it in their own forums as well. Their gaining my $15 for Max but losing my $100+ that I had saved up for officer pod boosters, armored veritechs, zentraedi infantry, and objective markers.

I'll level with you guys, it won't stop me from snagging my current lineup of 3 add ons (you'll pry my MAC II and Armoured Battloids from my cold, dead hands). But it definitely kills any interest I had in going above and beyond.

I was easily good for $10-20 more for Max and I've had my eye on a round of infantry (among other things), but now that we've seen some MSRPs and are starting to see actual store prices (tentative as they may be) along with the prolonged sigh this brings out (especially as I've effectively had to stir up a ruckus and only got a PM'd answer after 3 weeks of rabble rousing), I'm definitely scaling back my enthusiasm.

It really feels like a wasted opportunity to snag some extra good will across potentially thousands of backers only to appeal to a couple hundred attendees, and that order of magnitude difference in scale simply makes it all the more baffling. Doubly so in that they're actively garnering some ire from more than just a few backers (and I suspect that number will increase as more people even find out that it's 'a thing'). Like, if interest could be measured, the net outcome here could easily be counter productively negative.

So... is this par for the course for Palladium? If so... how the heck did they net almost 1.5 million?

Good, IP, I'm guessing... not unlike the big game maker that everyone loves to hate

 Forar wrote:
Like, if interest could be measured, the net outcome here could easily be counter productively negative.

Appeasing a small minority at the expense of the majority is the Palladium way. It's why they don't update their rules despite the overwhelming opinion that they need it in the general gaming community on every site every time their name is mentioned except on their own very insular forum (and even there cracks in the wall have begun to form). I expressed reservations about pledging because of Palladium's general history as well as their history specifically with Robotech (regarding Paulson games) but I gave them another chance. I pledged despite my misgivings and actively stumped for the game both in real life and online. Unfortunately, they seem intent on squandering a significant portion of that good will. The most important thing is getting quality minis on time and if they do that then this whole endeavor will be a success regardless as fans will finally have Robotech minis for the first time since the late 1980's. If they screw that up then I won't be buying anything else of theirs likely ever again (including future Robotech era offerings). If the minis come out nice and on time, I'll consider getting the freebie pledge of the next era as well but no more than that and I certainly won't devote daily time and effort to help it succeed either. My significant enthusiasm for this project is largely gone at this point unfortunately. Maybe after getting the minis and putting a few games under my belt it'll return... but that is dependent on Palladium NOT continuing to screw up.

I think Kevin got fed up with not having much to flog other than his RPG books at these outings.

Having a hot item could help with buzz but at the expense of nerd rage (oh I am upset, but they will be mine...)

I had the "pleasure" of looking him in the eye at "Anime North" and saying "I got most of these books over 15 years ago, there is nothing for Tactics?".

I may have inadvertently helped create this problem.

I find almost all companies treat those who have "pre-paid" as a done-deal sale and will aggressively pursue new sales at the committed customer's expense.

We may see some "limited offer" if he comes back with any remaining.

Good luck with whatever means you get those.

Just got a survey link in e-mail.
edit: Bah, just shipping info.

 Forar wrote:
Well, there's good news, and there's bad news.

Sorry for the delay, as you can imagine we have been working like crazy. For your June 16th question, the Max and Miriya will be a convention exclusive and not available through the Kickstarter. The character stats will be in the core game but the specific pose pieces will be an exclusive. Sorry.

The minis will be released in waves. At present we do not have a release schedule but we will make this information available as we get closer to their release.

We plan to have all pieces in house so everything will ship to the backers will be in one package.

Hope this helps.

Jeff Burke
palladium Books

So it appears the backers aren't getting Max/Miriya2. But on the up side, we can put to rest that "omg maybe the boxes won't have all the figures!" conjecture that occurred in a few places.

I'm a little confused by what this email is trying to say. Are they really going to wait till all of the models have been produced before sending out a specific backers models? So someone could potentially be waiting until a wave 2 or 3 to receive their entire pledge?

Perhaps I should've included my questioning emails.

I asked:

According to Alliance Distributors and a local store, it appears that the Robotech minis will be released in 2 or more waves. If so, any chance you have further information about those (how often/over what timeframe?).

Also, will the figures be shipped to backers in one package, or will the production cycles necessitate multiple shipments? I assume a single box (as shipping 11,000/16,000+ boxes would be both a massive time/manpower sink and prohibitively expensive), but wanted to know for certain, rather than make those assumptions and possibly be proven incorrect.

And that was their response, along with the response to a previous question about the Max/Miriya Gencon figures.

They're planning to release figures at retail in waves. Hence the short list of 7 or so boxes that is popping up on a few shops and came out a few weeks back from Alliance Distributors. Like how X-Wing is doing things, they just don't have the specifics for how many/how often those waves will be.

But there was some concern based on this fact that they might be shipping out multiple boxes, which seemed crazy to me, and so I asked, and they said it'll be one box.

They've said a few times that they plan to get Backers their boxes before retail, and it's sending one box, ergo, we should be getting a full box of our paid for items before the game goes to retail (though I all but guarantee there'll be at least some backers who see figures on shelves before they get their packages, it's just the nature of trying to ship out nearly 5,500 packages and presumably trying to 'go live' in retail environments ASAP before the Christmas season rush gets into full gear.

 TalonZahn wrote:
I put this in the KS comments as it sums up my thoughts:

It doesn't matter how you slice it. It's a slap in the face to 5,342 people that coughed up nearly 1.5m in an interest free loan to launch this system faster (and cheaper) than PB/ND could have done any other way. There is no excuse, none. If those minis are ready for the biggest Con in the U.S. then it's ready to be mass produced. I would gladly add the cost of both those minis to my $1000 pledge just so I don't have to spend the time and money to go get one. I will also posit that most of the ones purchased at Cons will end up on EBay for double or triple the cost if the buyer knows about this KS or even the popularity of Robotech in general.

And of course, there ain't no cons for the vast majority of overseas backers. But I keep forgetting about the unwritten law of Kickstarters - our money is still good, but we don't count for gak.

What they are saying doesn't add up. They are releasing stuff in waves, yet we get our models first and they hold it all together until we get one massive box. I'm having a hard time trying to see this ending well. It sounds like some backers really won't get their stuff until after retailers.

Are the prices on Alliance already revealed? I was considering adding to my pledge because I only got the Rick Hunter's Veritech mini and I wanted more, but if the retail prices are ok I may just fore go the kickstarter route.

From what Forar posted, the core set is about $10 cheaper and the add ons are about $5-10 (usually $5) cheaper. I'd suggest going in for the $140 pledge as the minis come out to $1.50 each with a good variety in what you get (and that type of deal will likely never be seen again barring a game store clearance bargain). You don't get everything in the $140 pledge but you'll get enough and you can buy the rest for the same price online or only $5 more at the FLGS and support multiple tiers of the industry (and not just an ungrateful manufacturer).

 warboss wrote:
From what Forar posted, the core set is about $10 cheaper and the add ons are about $5-10 (usually $5) cheaper. I'd suggest going in for the $140 pledge as the minis come out to $1.50 each with a good variety in what you get (and that type of deal will likely never be seen again barring a game store clearance bargain). You don't get everything in the $140 pledge but you'll get enough and you can buy the rest for the same price online or only $5 more at the FLGS and support multiple tiers of the industry (and not just an ungrateful manufacturer).

The 140 dollar one is exactly the one I was thinking about. It comes with a lot of stuff and I honestly don't see this picking up at my FLGS. It'll probably be myself pushing the game with no one really caring except for my friends(similar deal with X-wing as you know), so I'll take your word for it! Once I can access the pledge manager I'll just bump my pledge up to 140.

The following is *assuming* that they're still coming out with dual skirmish and wargame sized army building. In a nutshell, the skirmish squadrons will be about half the size of the full wargame ones but otherwise use the same stats/rules.

The $140 level gets you almost 100 figs and is plenty enough for a good sized skirmish level game with you supplying the figs for both sides. My plan is to get a set of the Dropzone Commander cardstock buildings and try a few games over at Treefort before or after X-wing game nights after I get a few dozen painted up (which may frankly take me a while!).

 Red Comet wrote:
What they are saying doesn't add up. They are releasing stuff in waves, yet we get our models first and they hold it all together until we get one massive box. I'm having a hard time trying to see this ending well. It sounds like some backers really won't get their stuff until after retailers.

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. There's a lot of stuff in the $140 level - more than two waves worth for retail in my opinion. Probably a 3-4 month release cycle for a competent company at the very least before you look at add-on stretch goals. And I'd assume that even that stuff won't be ready from "the factory in China" all at once. Stretch goal items like Armoured Veritechs and the MACII are pretty much guaranteed to follow later - which means pledges including those items will ship even later.

warboss wrote:The following is *assuming* that they're still coming out with dual skirmish and wargame sized army building. In a nutshell, the skirmish squadrons will be about half the size of the full wargame ones but otherwise use the same stats/rules.

The $140 level gets you almost 100 figs and is plenty enough for a good sized skirmish level game with you supplying the figs for both sides. My plan is to get a set of the Dropzone Commander cardstock buildings and try a few games over at Treefort before or after X-wing game nights after I get a few dozen painted up (which may frankly take me a while!).

Exacltly how big is the Wargame sized game going to be? As it is the Battle Cry Pledge is pricey. Are they going the 40k route with cost?

Azazelx wrote:

 Red Comet wrote:
What they are saying doesn't add up. They are releasing stuff in waves, yet we get our models first and they hold it all together until we get one massive box. I'm having a hard time trying to see this ending well. It sounds like some backers really won't get their stuff until after retailers.

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. There's a lot of stuff in the $140 level - more than two waves worth for retail in my opinion. Probably a 3-4 month release cycle for a competent company at the very least before you look at add-on stretch goals. And I'd assume that even that stuff won't be ready from "the factory in China" all at once. Stretch goal items like Armoured Veritechs and the MACII are pretty much guaranteed to follow later - which means pledges including those items will ship even later.

Exactly. I wouldn't be surprised if I don't get my stuff till next year which is really frustrating.

 Red Comet wrote:


Exacltly how big is the Wargame sized game going to be? As it is the Battle Cry Pledge is pricey. Are they going the 40k route with cost?

The next step up ($260...can't recall the name ATM) gets you the wargame sized armies. For $260, you can't even get a single 1500pt army unless you go super elite/low model count in 40k like all Deathwing Dark Angels... in robotech, you'll get both an RDF and Zentraedi force. Take what I say with a grain of salt though as I'm *not* a play tester and can only repeat what they said in KS comments and make educated guesses from it. Things may have changed significantly in the meantime and real communication is largely lacking post KS.

 warboss wrote:

 Red Comet wrote:


Exacltly how big is the Wargame sized game going to be? As it is the Battle Cry Pledge is pricey. Are they going the 40k route with cost?

The next step up ($260...can't recall the name ATM) gets you the wargame sized armies. For $260, you can't even get a single 1500pt army unless you go super elite/low model count in 40k like all Deathwing Dark Angels... in robotech, you'll get both an RDF and Zentraedi force. Take what I say with a grain of salt though as I'm *not* a play tester and can only repeat what they said in KS comments and make educated guesses from it. Things may have changed significantly in the meantime and real communication is largely lacking post KS.

Its true 260 bucks doesn't take you very far in 40k now a days. I guess I forgot just how much prices have gone up. I bought most of my stuff when it was all about 10 bucks cheaper and at a discount so I don't actually know how much my 2k Blood Angels army cost. Regardless I doubt the 260 pack is a fully sized or fully optimized army. Its probably a small to medium sized war game for the game which I'm ok with.

If you go to the Kickstarter main page, there's a link to the two main factions with the last points costs per card that we were given.

Using those numbers, we were told that a "300 point game" usually took about an hour, and that the Ninja who posted the comment preferred "600 Point Games",which apparently usually took the better part of an afternoon (obviously doubling the models (roughly) on the board adds enough extra interactions and complexity that it does more than just double the playtime, which doesn't surprise me at all.

And yes, the Battlecry tier gets you 96 figures (70 units between the two factions, at my last count), and a Showdown is a double Battle Cry with a slightly lower cost per box and cheaper S&H.

When you look at the points lists, you'll see there are core cards, upgrades and elite additions. Far as I understand, for the main game you start with a core card (or more) and can choose to add upgrade cards and elite enhancements, as well as card specific upgrades (like better anti-air for destroids, was one example), which all have a point value. From there you aim to get up to the point limit set for the game.

The skirmish mode is basically the same thing, except you only use upgrade and elite cards, so the units are basically half the size. I imagine it'll probably be easier/quicker to learn using smaller Skirmish games (and less intensive on trying to build, prime and paint dozens or hundreds of figures quickly), and then my crew will work towards bigger games as our model count grows.

Is anyone going to gencon?

Swabby wrote:
Is anyone going to gencon?

Yep, looking forward to amusing my exhibitors access to get the figs before choas ensues.

There are usually a couple of people who work as middlemen for Gencon who post in the swap shop; I know that Sekai is one.

Here is a different spin on the announcements:

All Kickstart backers will get all they ordered in one box.
= greater profit in shipping rather than piecemeal.

The models will be released in waves.

The backers-box will not ship until all figures ordered have been released.

Not their fault to release the box sets of the game for retail ahead of kickstarters who are waiting on to be released models.

This could play out badly if they draw out the release date of the models.

Very careful ordering would be needed: want to bet the schedule for release will not been seen before we have to lock in our orders?

Hope I am wrong.

They've said they plan to get backers their boxes before retail. They are aiming to get to retail in October. Assuming a release schedule with some models per month or per couple of months, this could take us well in to 2014 or beyond.

Which seems more likely? They're going to use the Pledge Manager to get the exact numbers of the non-wave one figures they'll need and produce that many, or they intend to draw absolutely immense community ire by delaying the backer boxes for half a year, giving the people who were initially told they'd have "first shot" at the game the last shot in reality.

Man, I'm not exactly swimming in confidence for PB, but that'd be "pants on head slowed". Like, it'd be financial suicide. If they think the "Max debacle" was annoying, 5,400 angry backers would be bad press they couldn't walk away from, especially if they intend to farm out the production costs onto fans for the next waves.

It's not impossible, but it seems highly unlikely. Even talking about PB.

Edit: I've submitted a KS question to clarify this exact point.