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 Alpharius wrote:
Do you believe them when they say only 10% extra via pledge managers?

I'm not sure I do, and not just because they are who they are.

No, sadly I don't but we have no way of checking. These are the people who promised us that the vast majority of the work was done BEFORE the kickstarter ever happened with the minis ready to be produced within 40 days. The reality was they couldn't figure out the pledge manager for almost 60 to see *what* they needed to produce (let alone actually make it) and had nothing approved by Harmony Gold till 4 months after the fact but told us that October was looking pretty good for a release the day after the campaign ended. I can only base my opinion off of people who post in threads like this or in the comments but that segment (admittedly the die hards) seemed to have on average added much more than 10% to their pledges.

 warboss wrote:
I can only base my opinion off of people who post in threads like this or in the comments but that segment (admittedly the die hards) seemed to have on average added much more than 10% to their pledges.

I wouldn't do that, as it easily provides highly skewed results.

The kind of person who posts about the game on forums is invested enough (literally and figuratively) that they may well have contributed significantly more than 10% to their pledge, whereas the collector who just wanted a Battle Cry and maybe one or two add ons probably dropped their $200'ish before the end and hasn't done much more than glance at updates whenever they go out.

One only needs to look at the KS comments to see the self selection in action. Many of those who stuck around are also those who seem to have put in more than the average, doesn't mean everyone did so. For each person who went from a Showdown to a Reckless there are probably dozens who got a box or two and called it at that.

According to Kicktraq, the average backer contributed $270, meaning they likely got a Showdown or a Battle Cry with some add ons and/or international shipping. Bringing that up into the $300 range doesn't move that estimate much. Even if it was 11-15%, that's not a Scrooge McDuck pile of cash, and if it were more like 20%+ it seems like something they'd brag about a bit. Basically, I can't seem them underselling how things went a whole ton, especially with so many people who might potentially leak about a glaring inaccuracy. HG, ND, PB themselves slipping up, just too many failure points to bother cooking things too transparently if they're going to bother saying anything as they did.

Personally it makes no real difference if the 10% more is a lie or not. I'm going to get what I ordered and the faster I do the happier I'll be. I pledged for $500 and then added $270 afterwards. I wish I had added it all in beforehand. I could have used a few other free minis.

Dang Mike! I feel pretty paltry compared to my weak $475.

You guys both way exceeded my total. I just went in for Battlecry and planned on doubling my pledge or more but the Max/Miriya you can't get this convention only debacle made me reconsider. I got a single box (VEF) and decals instead.

I went too far, but I plan on waiting for the right time to sell a few of these off to make up some of the difference.

Our only hope, Mike, is that B_S doesn't flood the market. It'd have repercussions across the globe.

For those who don't bother with the comments (it's for the best), one guy apparently dropped ~$3,500 on this thing. He's crazy, yes, we know that. It's definitely not a healthy behaviour, especially given how he'll wax at length about the hundreds upon hundreds of unpainted and unassembled figures he's got in his house from other campaigns, not to mention untold games that are unplayed and books that are unread.

We're basically expecting to see him on the next season of Hoarders at this rate.

But yeah... let's just say that my friends and I probably overdid it as well. >.>

I did about $200 which isn't too much but it's starting to feel like money wasted that would have been better invested in Wild West Exodus. This entire experience of broken promises has very much put me off of any future kickstarters sadly. I too fell for the whole "all we really need is the capital to get everything boxed up and shipped" bs that PB/ND sold us and I'm really regretting it now. $200 is a decent chunk of change for a college student that had I realized it was this big of a gamble, I only live 30 minutes away from an Indian casino that would have been happy to take my money but there would have been a greater chance of return on my investment.

Unfortunately no one here is willing to buy me out and since I went in partners with a friend who put it on his CC so unless he chooses to get out of it I'm stuck and he's more than happy to wait it out with some misplaced fanboy-esque PB loyalty.

From the beginning I anticipated April delivery.
I had hoped for better but oh well.
They will not get me to do another kick starter since this was the only IP I was willing to wait for and knew I would have to. I am looking forward to not having much to do with them in future!

I dropped 1k.

That grinding sound you occasionally hear is me chewing my own teeth in the background.

I do have the 2 promo figs to keep me company though.

I dropped about half that, but it's starting to feel like I literally dropped it somewhere...

My Pre-Game Rules have been updated and I have a cost calculator for units depending upon their stats. Please check it out over Christmas and provide feedback. I want to redo all the stat cards before the 1st.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1440349382851175/

My group ended up tossing in roughly 1.5k across the 3 of us, of which I was responsible for half.

So yeah, definitely not the biggest contribution out there, but it was a hefty chunk of change all the same.

Moreso, given that unlike US backers, $100 of that was tied up in S&H.

Jeez. I feel terrible for you guys. If I had put that much in, I'd be hounding Kevin whenever he left the Palladium warehouse. It really pizzles me off that PB treats fans and customers so badly.


Man, Kickstarter is turning out to be a real Monkey's Paw for all involved.

For those that missed it here's a podcast with one of the heads at ND. The RRT talks start at around 28:00 in.

http://www.tabletopgamingnews.com/2013/12/21/82467/

I listened to the second half of their RRT talk. Nice to hear someone mention it and wax a little about trying to make it true to the series, but nothing new really dropped.

Still curious to see if they'll actually say anything in the next week about the updated timeline, or if "by the end of the year" will become "sometime in the new year", as has been SOP for this campaign.

So they have pre production models in hand. . . why not show them?

There might still be details to tidy up.

 Cypher-xv wrote:
There might still be details to tidy up.

Then I would argue that they DON'T have the prepreduction models in that case but rather earlier versions. Prepreduction models in my decidely amateur view are the models you get when your DONE tweaking... not when you still need to tweak things.

It would be nice to have a spreadsheet ( Yes, I love spreadsheets, I'm an Engineer) that shows all the units and the present progress of each individial unit. Explanations on the who what or where are not necessary.

Yeah, a warzone style table of what is done and what needs to be done (with a date) would be good and keep the company honest about the delivery date which is why there is no chance of it happening. It's easier to just keep stumbling along blindly (from an outsider's perspective) rather than being open and honest about the KS. Palladium is secretive bordering on paranoid so we won't get a preview of the full rule set in all likelihood either. They made comments either directly before or during the KS that they didn't want to release too much information because other companies may try to steal it... because.. you know... palladium is known throughout the gaming hobby world for innovation and industry professionals hang on their every word to see which way the future gaming winds will blow. /sarcasm

Yeah, they were outright adamant regarding releasing a rules pdf. Hell, they've been in publishing for decades, watched the rise of digital distribution (iTunes, Kindle, Steam, etc) and yet they still remain highly wary of even a few books going digital, lest piracy!

Don't tell them, but a buddy of mine went hunting for their Robotech stuff and snagged a file with pretty much everything they've ever written in one place. And that's not a "my buddy, wink wink" kinda thing, it's literally a guy I know. The few books I give a gak about owning are sitting on my shelves beside me.

If people want to pirate, they can, that genie is out of the bottle. Do they really think that their rules and unit stats are going to remain quietly tucked away post release? Who cares? I'm sure someone out there will play with quarters as VT's and washers as Battlepods, but the money in miniatures wargaming is in the miniatures.

It's late, I'm going to cut this rant off before I really get into it, but yeah, that's something else that baffles me (on the long, long list, mind you). Not that they wouldn't adopt new tech, I read the thread about how their layout process apparently belongs in the long long ago. But that they'd enter a field where the revenue source is known but fighting tooth and nail to keep the rules under wraps.

Hell, with a little extrapolation from the RPGs for all we know Mike already has the stats available on Facebook, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof. Fat lotta good their 'no pdfs' stance has taken, given that people may thus effectively be stealing from the future!.

 Forar wrote:
Not that they wouldn't adopt new tech, I read the thread about how their layout process apparently belongs in the long long ago.

Funny you mention that. In the latest murmur Kevin talks about having a holiday get together with the printer he's known for 30 years. So there buds and hang out from time to time. That might explain why PB won't update their technique for getting books out in a modern fashion. Basically he'd lose a friend if he were to update using new tech because the printer still uses the old methods.

They have started (according to their press releases) using digital publishing and layout a few years ago (starting with the robotech RPG books) but they're still making the books look exactly like the cut with scissors and pasted with glue versions made 25 years ago with the original robotech books.

See this really frustrates me. They won't even show us these preproduction models they CLAIM to have despite the doubts cropping up around the internet. I spoke to paladium myself via phone & they say we SHOULD see a real model in a week. I won't hold my breath for fear of suffocation.

It just honestly pisses me off that they refuse to show us anything tangible & then sic the fanboys on dissenters instead of just being honest about the whole thing.

We didn't even get an update this week. There was the weekly murmur talking about what the above poster was referring to.

I'm kinda curious about the backing levels some people have mentioned, from what I read many of the models are priced out at around $1-$2 per model when buying at levels of $200-$300 yet I've seen mention of people dropping $500+ and in some cases $1k or more. Just how large of games are you expecting to play? and do you realize how much stuff that's going to be when it finally arrives?


The reason I ask is that when I pledged on Zombicide season 2 at a level of $200 I had both prison outbreak and toxic city mall arrive and there's the better part of 200 minis in there and it was rather overwhelming. That reaction was based on them being single piece 28mm stuff that didn't need any assembly or paint etc, the robotech models are roughly double the size and aimed more at the true minis audience meaning they are going to need a lot of build time and storage care than just throwing them in the box.

I guess I'm just scratching my head wondering why so many minis? I certainly get love for the setting but even basic level pledges dwarfs the size of 40k apoc games in model count let alone the sheer volume of stuff that some will get for having gone hog wild with pledges in the $1k range.

I've played some pretty large games of battletech back in the game but even then I don't think we had more than 25-30 mechs per side at most and those games literally took all weekend.

Paulson, I can only speak for myself in this. From the info I've seen the game will best capture the feel at a decent sized force on each side. Since squadrons are about 10 models for the valkyrie I have to assume that the huge backers are looking to recreate massively epic battles plus also resell a good portion for somewhere between ks price & retail to turn a small profit. Especially with the potential to have minis on hand for newbies until FLGSs are able to acquire them from paladium. And last but certainly not least one cannot rule out the fanboy and shiny factors. Personally I've only bought in for half of the $240 level plus some extras that I deemed core such as super and armored valkyrie. So I'm out about $165.

But I'm still mad as hell at the seemingly lies and disinformation since funding closed.

In my case, it's because my friends and I thought we could save on shipping by buying in together (spoiler alert: they changed that after the fact, so we didn't save squat). 2 Recklesses (8 Battle Cry boxes, ~$1200 including S&H plus currency exchange) is across 3 people (3 boxes for a buddy, 2 for another, 3 for me), so that explains my end. Even at that level, most of us will only be able to field 1 full card of a number of things (example; a card of something might be 4 figures, each battle cry only gets 2, so 2 BC's equal one card).

Then there were a bunch of things that weren't included in the BC. If I'd bought in just for myself, I'd probably have stuck to a Showdown (2 BCs). That's $310 right there, plus a MAC II, VEF/1D pack, and an Armoured VT pack and suddenly I'm back up at $400-450 after the exchange.

That said, as I've mentioned before I think we're sort of a self selecting crew here. The kind of person who spends half a grand or more on the campaign is also likely the sort to be invested enough to seek out others to talk about it with. The average amount per backers was $270, and at a glance there were ~3,100 people who bought a BC, and ~1,300 who bought a SD, meaning something like 80% of the backers either got a box and some add ons, or two boxes outright.

And yes, there are some crazy folks who intend to recreate minor wars with them. I know my friends want to do some epic 'omg all the figures' battles, but I suspect that if 300 points is an hour long game and 600 points is and afternoon, then we'll probably do 1000 or something, and all the extra models just let us tweak our lists to have more of X or Y or Z figures on hand.

But believe me, there are other reasons I'm interested in moving some of my stuff on the secondary market; I don't think I really need 300 figures to play this. :-P

I went in for $1,010.

Yeah, I love Robotech and minis - it's so I can field anything. I'll have at the least 2 squads of everything.

I figured I'd buy it all now and just not ever worry about it again.

Also, 4 rulebooks helps, unless they're as error ridden as I expect.