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There will be a lot of 'wait and see' here because of that, which may mean it doesn't fund quickly, which leads to people not backing it because they're waiting and seeing, etc.

I'm in for the 'add-ons' though - the big monsters are the most appealing to me.

Hopefully this one can shoot up because I'm all Highlord-ing it up here, hoping for Lizardmen!

That has been a comment from people. Perhaps I should reduce the EB's? Perhaps 200 would be better?

I think it definitely would, at least for now. You can always increase or add another (second / not quite as early) tier later.

I like how my name has become synonymous with acquiring certain varieties of figures. Excellent.

Highlords gonna Highlord after all...

I should see Barzam this weekend and I'll see if he's pledging, or contributing to mine.

Will go talk it up at the Hobby Shop if my wife wants to go shopping nearby. Hint: she always wants to go shopping.

Progress may indicate two separate campaigns (with half the funding goal) may be more achieveable. It seems known companies are having more success...

I'm undecided at the moment if I want to piggyback Tamburlaine's pledge or do my own small one. Thankfully (for me) I don't need a ton of figures, so I can stay relatively low on this one. But one way or another, I will be backing this. I need my armored zombies.

RTides... That could be a possibility. Let's see how things progress.

Lifted my self imposed ban on kickstarter, and pledged for a box of goblins. These mini are too nice to not make it.

Sent through a message to Kaine/Richard:
You should add the "regular" Starter Set and Swarm pledge levels to the sidebar - with just the word "Early Bird" there, people have no context on how much money they might be saving with the EBs, so it's just another pledge level, rather than an opportunity to save money.
Response was a thank you and that he'll look into it tomorrow..

Hi Azazelx, I'm going to add these in this morning. When I originally showed people the set up for the KS I got so much conflicting advice that I didn't end up releasing an EB Starter along with a normal starter. It seems a couple of things are stopping people from pledging, the postage situation, on which KS have not yet come back to me and the initial target. It is a very ambitious project but I thought I had covered my bases. Let's give it some more time and we can consider our options...

I would have backed it if it was still for a mixed warband of various greenskins, like the plan originally was for. I don't really have any interest in larger formations of just goblins., especially when Mantic already has that in their store. :(

^ You can still get that, just pick the £24 pledge level to get yourself a warband. You can mix and match any sprues you like, undead or goblins. Mantic goblins suck, I have 40 that I tried to give away once, but got turned down. If you buy them instead, you *will* regret the decision, the casting is mushy, detail is worse than green army men.

I'm a little late going into this one and funds only allow for me to go for the EB starter, but at least I'm in.

Quite optimistic about this one at least being funded, 10% there already is good going.

We are seriously going to have to promote the feth out of this one though, it isn't going to be one where you can sit back, watch and it just gets funded, going to need to convince others to get in on it too or it won't fund. I will be mentioning this to everyone in my gaming group and going nuts on facebook linking to it.

Everyone grab a linked image for your sig! I made one below that you can use, and there's also the one Kaine has. High-quality hard plastic at low prices is worth supporting.

If it fails, expect another 70 PVC/restic Kickstarters in 2015 as the industry sees the failure of this (and that really nice fantasy empire KS earlier this year) and assumes there is no market for hard plastic wargame minis anymore.

Love the art style on the goblins and the bugbear is awesome, pledged!

I am trying to push this as much as I can. Seems to be a lot of fence sitting going on and I am trying my best to help people see the benefit of pledging for the project!

 scarletsquig wrote:
Mantic goblins suck, I have 40 that I tried to give away once, but got turned down. If you buy them instead, you *will* regret the decision, the casting is mushy, detail is worse than green army men.

I'm a little late going into this one and funds only allow for me to go for the EB starter, but at least I'm in.

I thought you were going in on this for about $500? You were saving and everything?

Anyway, Mantic Goblins fit the GW aesthetic, as they're a variant of the ol' GW style. These ones, nice as they are - do not. All they really have in common are a short stature and the name "goblin" strapped to them. They're close enough to the Moria Goblin look from Fellowship for me, but otherwise I'd only use them as something else (maybe with goblin stats in KoW, but not actual goblins)

If it fails, expect another 70 PVC/restic Kickstarters in 2015 as the industry sees the failure of this (and that really nice fantasy empire KS earlier this year) and assumes there is no market for hard plastic wargame minis anymore.

The bigger problem is brand-new companies with nothing to show for themselves but renders asking for a ton of money to get started. It's a bloody big risk, and people can see it as such. The figures being a year out (at minimum) doesn't help. (I'd say this was a safe and honest projection, these days I know that despite the best of intentions, it's probably the halfway point of production...

I've argued this before, but this is a situation where the art of a kickstarter can help or hinder.

The number of Early birds should be carefully set to help you get mostly there. Even "lieing" on the goal funding. Lots of companies low ball the target since getting to the funded level increases your visibility on kickstarter itself.

Not every kickstarter can be a runaway success, but keep plugging away at promoting, and talking to the community really helps.

 Azazelx wrote:
I thought you were going in on this for about $500? You were saving and everything?

Life happens! I'm hoping to go in for more if my DZ and Mars Attacks stuff actually shows up before October, overspent there and will be selling the excess.

The bigger problem is brand-new companies with nothing to show for themselves but renders asking for a ton of money to get started. It's a bloody big risk, and people can see it as such. The figures being a year out (at minimum) doesn't help. (I'd say this was a safe and honest projection, these days I know that despite the best of intentions, it's probably the halfway point of production...

I'm hoping the lead-time and slow build up of this one makes it a success. It could end up being a very close thing.

Here's the code for my image sig if anyone wants it:

[URL=https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1629942774/minion-miniatures][IMG]http://i.imgur.com/dxwZP0M.png[/IMG][/URL]

*sniff sniff*

... do I smell... multi part hard plastic?

*click*

 scarletsquig wrote:
^ You can still get that, just pick the £24 pledge level to get yourself a warband. You can mix and match any sprues you like, undead or goblins.

I have no interest in that. THIS is what the project was originally introduced as and that's what I would have been interested in:

Kaine Larson wrote:
The initial boxed set will be the goblin-kind boxed set with 12 28mm multipart plastic goblins, 6 hobgoblins and two enormous bugbears (see the pic above). The bugbears will be about 50mm tall.

The project has essentially flatlined at 10%, and I think it would be better to just cancel it ASAP and use the design work that's already been done to make sets of metal minis to go with the original concept. The Mantic approach clearly isn't going anywhere but it would be a shame to see all the work lead to nothing.

I cannot for the life of me figure out whats going on with this KS, its a good product, with clear quality, laid out with solid planning and approval from many sources with a clear timeline and the product itself is interesting. What it is stuck makes no sense. Is not this what a good KS should look like? Does the market really not want high quality hard plastic but instead more cheap PVC that ruins peoples hands? I just do not get it.

Not enough variety, not enough interest in goblins and/or zombies and a funding goal that seems like a bridge too far - maybe?

The quality is there - but you've got to REALLY want a lot of goblins and/or zombies.

Yeah, with there really only having 3 basic sprues, and the shield bear thing being rather expensive, I don't see this making it to the goal.

This one is VERY well prepared and deserves to do better, but...

My primary reason for not pledging (besides not being able to afford it right now) is that this was promoted as a skirmish game, but the rewards aren't conducive to that.

There's plenty of reasons people could want hordes of goblin and zombie miniatures, but if you want to sell this as a skirmish game then less volume, more variety would work better I think.

Also,a proper starter set. The set here really isn't a starter set, it's just another level of "x sprues of your choice".

Variety comes with stretch goals, sure, but with such a high funding goal before we even start unlocking that variety I don't see it coming anytime soon.

I suppose that is true but there have been other KS with the same (or less) variety do just fine. However I can see the large up-front cost of the thing is what is causing people to hesitate. A real shame, and I hope something can get it moving again.

Hello guys and thanks for your kind words...

Being my first kickstarter I think I have found myself caught between two markets, proxies for games like Warhammer and KOW and my own game. The other issue is hiding the range as stretch goals. I am going to have to rethink this and the current idea is to focus on my own rules and release more minis at launch. I have tried to listen to too much advice that perhaps made me try to cover too many bases. If I have to I will relaunch in a different format, focusing on the Skirmish game primarily with some larger unit deals too. I may also drop the plastic models and make them a stretch goal. This means I can have a lower initial goal with metal/resin figures that if well supported good go on to be made in plastic. I couldn't have worked harder on this project and I have been disappointed with the KS so far but I will give it some more time and see what happens. Primarily the learning curve has been worth it. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger and Minion Miniatures will be stronger than ever!

Yeah, I mean the design work has been really good and it shouldn't be too much work to get a more limited project up and running so that you can start to make back some of those expenses. And then plastics can be a goal a bit further down the line.

Keep up the good work.

Kaine Larson wrote:
Hello guys and thanks for your kind words...

Being my first kickstarter I think I have found myself caught between two markets, proxies for games like Warhammer and KOW and my own game. The other issue is hiding the range as stretch goals. I am going to have to rethink this and the current idea is to focus on my own rules and release more minis at launch. I have tried to listen to too much advice that perhaps made me try to cover too many bases. If I have to I will relaunch in a different format, focusing on the Skirmish game primarily with some larger unit deals too. I may also drop the plastic models and make them a stretch goal. This means I can have a lower initial goal with metal/resin figures that if well supported good go on to be made in plastic. I couldn't have worked harder on this project and I have been disappointed with the KS so far but I will give it some more time and see what happens. Primarily the learning curve has been worth it. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger and Minion Miniatures will be stronger than ever!

I think if you relaunched with a smaller range of metal/resin (not pvc) figures, have stretch goals to fill out the ranks with more elite units such as the bugbear and zombie hulk then you'll fund in no time.

Many people look at the 80k goal and just don't believe you'll fund unfortunately they then won't bother to pledge :( have a look at the failed Empire ks for plastic fantasy humans as an example of a great looking product with a high stretch goal that stalled early and didn't recover.

I'd definitely check out the Anvil industry Afterlife ks for how to launch a range with almost a pre kickstarter kickstarter.

I'm up for just about whatever you guys want to do with it. A shame the masses are so undecided.

I pledged for an EB knowing full well that I don't even need that many goblins, because you've presented a sound business plan and I like to see new material come to market.

If you wanted to try a smaller amount of resins, I'd be cool with that.

To be honest, I thought the idea of the warband with all the various races on sprues was a neat idea. I'd love to see a warband starter set of goblins with a hobgoblin or two, and a bugbear to round things out.

 highlord tamburlaine wrote:

To be honest, I thought the idea of the warband with all the various races on sprues was a neat idea. I'd love to see a warband starter set of goblins with a hobgoblin or two, and a bugbear to round things out.

To be fair thats what originally interested me in the project, that and the skirmish game rules. Mind you I'd still want a bucket load of those zombies in plastic

I have had messages from people saying they are not pledging until they can see that its heading in the right direction! I think if we have a mini surge it might attract a few others to pledge as well.